June 16, 2024 – Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

No Link to Service

Deuteronomy 4.5-10, 6.6-7, 11,18-21

Our Children’s Children

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

 I had a Children’s Message ready for Easter morning.  I did not list it in the bulletin, because I had no idea how many kids we would have in church that morning, so I kept it in my back pocket just in case.  Last year, we had about a half dozen on Easter, so I pulled it out and used it.  This year, we had only two, and I didn’t want to put them on the spot, so the Children’s Message stayed in my pocket.  I was reminded of this earlier this week after reading a comic online.  A minister stood in the pulpit on Sunday morning saying, “For those who keep telling me I use too many big words in my sermons, I now invite you to come hear the Children’s Message.”  And while I get it, for me the comic misses the mark; the Children’s Message almost always stays with us longer than the sermon does, right?  and that’s a good thing, so far as I’m concerned.  Which is one of the many reasons I wished I still had a reason to bring you Children’s Messages.

Even though we do not sell sponsorships for Sunday morning, this morning’s sermon is brought to you by Bob Luther.  Bob was the highest bidder at last year’s silent auction, and won the chance to request a sermon on the topic of his choice.  Now when I agree to auction off a sermon, it is only the topic that gets chosen, the winner cannot tell me what to say about the topic.  So while we have Bob to thank for the subject, we have only myself to blame for the content.

Bob’s original request reflects something that I’d wager most of us have thought about since the pandemic, which is the lack of families with children in Sunday worship.  The two of us sat in my office about a month ago and talked about it, and the conversation had the effect of broadening the idea from the elementary ‘We want more kids in church’ to the deeper, ‘How do we continue to support children and families, church families and others, in a day and age, again, specifically in this post-pandemic day and age, when so much is already demanded of them, and parents feel pulled in seventeen different directions every day?’  Is there a way we can pass along our shared faith and tradition, however these are understood, in a time when there is so much on their plates already?  In the Deuteronomist’s words, how do we “make them known to our children and our children’s children?”

The title of the book of Deuteronomy is Latin for “second law.”  That is, it borrows from the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers – three of the five books of the law – and summarizes and distills them for easier reading.  This is why much of what we read in Deuteronomy duplicates what we’ve already read in the earlier books – for example, the Ten Commandments are in Deuteronomy 5, even though we’ve already read them in Exodus 20.  So it is notable that we find the instructions to pass our faith and heritage down to future generations at least three different times, the first in the passage Jennifer read, and the other two times in the passages I read:

“Recite [these words] to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise… so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lod swore to your ancestors to give them.”

If the injunction appears three times in a work that is basically the Cliff notes to the books of the law, it figures to be pretty important.

The pandemic – and its attendant social quarantine – did a real number on families to an extent I can only imagine, because it’s been a years since I had children in school.  But the thought of having two or three children who are all being educated remotely, who each need their own computer to connect with their teacher and class, the struggle to understand assignments, to complete and submit homework, and in the broader picture to try to mitigate the social isolation that self-quarantine imposed boggles my mind.  I mean, do you remember those first several Sunday mornings when you and I were trying to connect on Sunday mornings via the internet?  The comments section said it all:  You’re breaking up!  Where’s the sound?!  Wait – now I can hear you but I can’t see you!  The screen just froze again.  Remember those days?  Now try to imagine a family with three children doing this five days a week, with their children’s education in the balance.  And then, after fourteen months or so, the isolation eases up and morphs into a blended concept, where some things are online and others are in-person.  And as a parent, you’re trying to keep track of who needs to be where when.  Is this in the classroom or on the computer?  What if they have to be in school and I’m not comfortable with that yet?  What if I bring them to school on a day everything is virtual?  And just try figuring all of this out when both parents have to work!  The pandemic did a real number on our families, and the effects are still being sorted out.

How can the church provide support in just such a time as this?  Do we tell parents, “Oh, by the way, we know you have a lot on your plate, but now that things are back to normal, you need to bring your kids back to church on Sunday mornings!”  Is this a helpful message?  In some sense, I think we would do best by allowing parents and their families to have some breathing space.  That said, throughout our days of isolation and quarantine our United Church worked hard to keep our families in the church’s tether:  we sent them church school lessons and age-appropriate activities, each of our Christian Ed committee members “adopted” a family, sending the kids personal notes and small gift items, I was able to visit our families in person, although socially distanced, and overall we kept them in the loop.  But I get it: habits are easy to lose and difficult to get back into.

Besides, I think we may be asking the wrong question, or at least there might be a better perspective, or approach.  The question, ‘How can we get kids back into church?’ is in a way more about us than about them, isn’t it, about maintaining and perpetuating the church’s life as we once knew it.  We want children in church because it fulfills what we believe is our ecclesiastical identity.  But times change, and circumstances change, and the old lenses through which we once viewed our church and our world will not always provide a vision of what life is like today.  The most reflexive answer to the question, Why should our children be in church, is almost always, Because our children are our church’s future.  But can you hear the self-interest in that response?  Is it about the kids or about the future of the church?  This, I think, is why we need a new lens.  The answer to this question needs to consider what is best for our children and their families, not what is best for our church.  And while I agree that knowing the faith and tradition of the church of Jesus Christ, of knowing that God loves them no matter what, to experience the love and community that can be found within and beyond these walls, to experience how the compassion of Jesus for those less fortunate can shape and inform their moral growth, all of this is important and all of it can be found in church.  But are there ways we can support the families and children of our church and also of those beyond our church without telling them or at least implying they have to be in this building between 10 and 11 o’clock on Sunday morning?

I think there are – and I think we do.  I think there are – and I think we do. Because the larger picture, which I believe is consonant with what we heard from Deuteronomy this morning, is that all our children are in our care.  I asked Sally to put together a list of the ways we as a church already support local youth and families by providing safe space for activities that build character and community.  Among the organizations we welcome and support are Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts – there are five different scout groups who meet here; the Irish Step Dancers you all enjoyed last St Patrick’s Day; the Treehouse Players, a summer camp that begins meeting in our building tomorrow; the Montessori School next door; and the children and families we provide backpacks for, not just during the school year, but all year through.  Sally gave me some rough numbers as well, and these efforts impact more than 150 young people who have an opportunity to learn and express gifts and interests they may not be able to pursue otherwise.  And then think of the children and families we support with the gifts we make at Thanksgiving and Christmas and other special times of year.  This easily doubles the numbers I just mentioned.  Friends, these are our children too.  These are our families too.  Remember, Jesus said, “Let the children come to me.”  He did not say, “Let your children come to me.”  Now is every child and every family who comes through our doors coming to Jesus?  No.  But is every child who comes through our doors for these and other activities learning what it means to be part of a community, to cooperate to achieve a goal greater than themselves, to find something within themselves to give to others, to practice a new skill and discover a new experience that may remain with them for  a lifetime?  You tell me:  were you ever a scout?  Did you go to summer camp?  Did you learn an art?  Have you ever taken music lessons or dance lessons or crafting?  Did any of it broaden your horizon, perhaps help make you the person you are today?

These are all our children.  These are all our children’s children.  And these are the 2020s, they are not the 1950s.  It is a new church in a new world undertaking new ways of supporting youth and families, it is new wine that cannot be contained in old wineskins.  And the best the church can do is to recognize the tools at our disposal and be sure we use them helpfully and faithfully.