Hope Songs
Mark 10:13 –16
October 8, 2006
University Christian Church, Seattle, WA
Rev. Sandy Messick

• Reportedly, one of the girls said “Shoot me first,” and another said, “Shoot me second.” That’s what we’re hearing in the aftermath of the horrifying shootings in an Amish schoolhouse. Young girls offering up their lives in order to protect the lives of others. In the end, five girls dead, five others wounded and a nation in shock.
• Though really, we shouldn’t be. It wasn’t the first school shooting in the past week.
• And children the world over find their lives in jeopardy every day. New statistics report that 1.3 million children have fallen into poverty since 2000.
• I can’t even get an accurate count of the number of children killed in Iraq since 2003, but it’s more than a few.
• Children living lives at risk. And though we perhaps shouldn’t be surprised. Thankfully, we still are.

• As civilized as we like to pretend we are, children are still among the most vulnerable in our society today. Just as they were in Jesus’ day.
• Jesus welcomed the children as they came to him. In our story for today, a familiar story, a story that’s been immortalized in song, Jesus Loves the Little Children, and in paintings (how many of us remember a picture of Jesus surrounded by children from our Sunday School days!) In this story, Jesus welcomes the children. Jesus gathers the children around him and shelters them and blesses them.
• To be sure, the Disciples tried to intervene. “Don’t bother Jesus,” they said. “We’re doing important stuff here,” they said. “He doesn’t need to waste his time with the children,” they said.
• But Jesus rebuked the Disciples. He didn’t thank them for protecting him from the interruptions. He rebuked them! “Let the children come, don’t even try to stop them, for to such as these belongs the kingdom of God.”
• I know that just because things are put in a certain order, it’s not necessarily that they happened in that order. But from a purely chronological or cohesiveness standpoint in the gospel of Mark, you have to be surprised at the actions of the Disciples. Only a chapter earlier, in chapter 9, as the Disciples were arguing over who was the greatest, Jesus had taken a child and put the child in their midst and said, “Whoever welcomes the child, welcomes me.”
• So theoretically, the Disciples already knew how Jesus felt about children, yet they still try to stand between him and the children.
• Hear again Jesus’ words, “The kingdom of God belongs to ones such as them, and you too must be as a child in order to enter in.

• Many sermons have been written about this passage, imploring us to be like little children. They name characteristics of children and preach that we should emulate those characteristics.
• They preach that we should be childlike, innocent, trusting, eager, open to surprises, and on and on.
• Somehow they don’t usually name the less attractive traits of children: children can be self-centered, stubborn, prone to temper tantrums, willful, manipulative. Why some of the best negotiators I’ve ever met were children who could spot a loophole in your reasoning from 50 yds. away.
• So I’m not sure Jesus is telling us to act like children. Maybe there’s something else here.
• What if Jesus saw children as they were in his day and as they still are: as vulnerable. Perhaps the most vulnerable within a culture.
• If so, then the kingdom of God belongs to the vulnerable in our world. And we too need to be vulnerable in order to see God’s kingdom.
• And having said that, Jesus then put his arms around the most vulnerable and blessed them.

• It seems to me that Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is made known, that God’s vision for God’s world is realized when we come to God as ones who are vulnerable, without defenses, and when we as Christ’s body, Jesus’ hands in this world, stand with the most vulnerable in solidarity and compassion. The kingdom of God is realized when we, in Jesus’ name, place our arms around the defenseless, and in Jesus’ name, act as God’s blessing for them.
• Jesus was a song of hope, a Hope Song to the children brought to him, and we are to be Hope Songs for the children we meet in this world; and in this place.
• I preached a similar sermon last year. I asked if you knew where your children were. All of your children. Not just the ones that are in here, but the ones that are out there. Look what we’ve done as a congregation since then:
• We’ve welcomed the children into our worship, as participants in the children’s message and as acolytes to bring forth the light of Christ. And you’ve welcomed them to the point where now you’re complaining that you can’t see them down here in the Social Hall, and you miss that. Good.
• You collected peanut butter and jelly for the food bank so that hungry children could have one of their favorite meals, and hungry adults could eat too.
• You collected school supplies so that children could have tools for learning, pencils and crayons, and paper, and glue sticks.
• And you set aside money and volunteered time to begin Hope Songs our new children’s music ministry. So that children could learn songs of hope, and learn to sing them to others.
• And I could name other ways too. Ways that indirectly offered songs of hope to our children, especially our children out there: Offerings for Week of Compassion that helps in disaster relief throughout the world, participating in the ecumenical prayer vigil, prayers of peace for all of God’s children, supporting ROOTS, the teen shelter, and Teen Feed for children in the U District needing help.
• Those are concrete ways that we have stood and are standing alongside the vulnerable, welcoming them in, offering songs of hope.
• But I don’t need to tell you that there’s more to be done. This morning, this very minute, there are children, the most vulnerable among us, who are suffering in Iraq, and Darfur, and Afghanistan, and Palestine, and Israel, and Pennsylvania, and Seattle. There is a whole word of children out there, and they too need to hear God’s Hope Songs sung to them. And so we will. And so we do.

• Jesus welcomed the children.
• Not, as we sometimes do, because if you welcome the children then their parents might come too and our church will get bigger.
• And not, as we sometimes do, because they are the church of the future and someday we might need them.
• No, Jesus welcomed the children because they represented for him the most vulnerable, the most defenseless, and because to them God sings songs of Hope.
• So come before God this morning, vulnerable and defenseless as a child, and hear God’s Song of Hope sung for you.
• Then go out into the world to sing God’s song, God’s Hope Song, loudly enough and often enough that every child may hear.
• By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.