CHILDREN’S SUNDAY
The Good News:
1 Samuel 2:1-9, The Song of Hannah Common English Bible
2 Then Hannah prayed:
My heart rejoices in the Lord.
My strength[a] rises up in the Lord!
My mouth mocks my enemies
because I rejoice in your deliverance.
2 No one is holy like the Lord—
no, no one except you!
There is no rock like our God!
3 Don’t go on and on, talking so proudly,
spouting arrogance from your mouth,
because the Lord is the God who knows,
and he weighs every act.
4 The bows of mighty warriors are shattered,
but those who were stumbling now dress themselves in power!
5 Those who were filled full now sell themselves for bread,
but the ones who were starving are now fat from food!
The woman who was barren has birthed seven children,
but the mother with many sons has lost them all!
6 The Lord!
He brings death, gives life,
takes down to the grave,[b] and raises up!
7 The Lord!
He makes poor, gives wealth,
brings low, but also lifts up high!
8 God raises the poor from the dust,
lifts up the needy from the garbage pile.
God sits them with officials,
gives them the seat of honor!
The pillars of the earth belong to the Lord;
he set the world on top of them!
9 God guards the feet of his faithful ones,
but the wicked die in darkness
because no one succeeds by strength alone.
Matthew 18:1-5, 19:13-15 Common English Bible
18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 Then he called a little child over to sit among the disciples, 3 and said, “I assure you that if you don’t turn your lives around and become like this little child, you will definitely not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Those who humble themselves like this little child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
19
13 Some people brought children to Jesus so that he would place his hands on them and pray. But the disciples scolded them. 14 “Allow the children to come to me,” Jesus said. “Don’t forbid them, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to people like these children.” 15 Then he blessed the children and went away from there.
Reflection: “Like a Child”
When I was at Cumberland United Church we experimented with a ministry called messy church, a midweek family-friendly event aimed at parents and their children who find it hard to attend Sunday morning worship. Usually it includes a short worship time with a couple of hymns and a short reflection, followed by crafts and games and a simple dinner.
At our very first messy church, we were celebrating the beginning of Advent, and I was talking about how Jesus is the light of the world. I asked, somewhat rhetorically, if folks thought one person could light up a whole world. One little five year old with a mop of curly dark hair leapt to her feet, threw her arms in the air, and cried, “I can!” And in that luminous moment she believed she could, we believed she could, and it was so.
That is the kind of hope and joy and energy that children bring to our world and, if we’re lucky, to our lives as a community of faith. Children who know that they are loved also know that they have love to share. When they respond to the good news, they respond not just with their minds and words but with all that they are: body and soul. And when they do, they light up the world.
Maybe it’s because they are still so close to the source of being that is our divine origin. Remember this verse from William Wordsworth’s poem “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”?
| Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: | |
| The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, | 60 |
| Hath had elsewhere its setting, | |
| And cometh from afar: | |
| Not in entire forgetfulness, | |
| And not in utter nakedness, | |
| But trailing clouds of glory do we come | 65 |
| From God, who is our home: | |
| Heaven lies about us in our infancy! |
There are two children in the Scripture readings we heard this morning: Samuel, the longed-for child of barren Hannah, and the unnamed child that Jesus places on his lap to help him teach his disciples about the kingdom of heaven. Trailing clouds of glory, they come: one dedicated to God, destined to become a mighty prophet and to anoint kings, the other anonymous, briefly emerging from the crowd, then returning to obscurity. And yet both of them, in such different ways, heralding the coming of a new kind of kingdom.
The story of Samuel’s birth to Elkanah and Hannah signals his importance. In a patriarchal society where a woman’s worth was dependant on her ability to produce sons, Hannah’s barrenness was seen as a sign of divine punishment. So when she gave birth, it was understood as a miraculous intervention, as God visiting the marginalized. Children born to marginalized women were destined to be important figures in history, like the children of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Elizabeth. In Samuel’s case his destiny is to help the people of Israel transition from a loosely-organized tribal society to a monarchy. He will be the last judge, and he will anoint King David and help to establish the dynasty of kings to follow.
As a very young child Samuel is dedicated to God out of Hannah’s gratitude to God, expressed in her Song that we just heard. He is destined to be a power broker for the emerging new monarchy and his role as prophet legitimizes the kingdom that he helps to form. Long after that kingdom falls apart, the people of Israel look back to it with nostalgia, and hope for the return of a leader like King David.
But Jesus has not come to create that kind of kingdom. Over and over, he tells his disciples that he has come to proclaim a reversal of power where the last will be first. In our reading from Matthew the disciples, still longing for a Messiah who will return the people of Israel to glory, ask Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?” Instead of describing a powerful king, Jesus takes a child from the crowd and says, “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
The child is not named as Samuel was named. There is no story of her birth as there is for Samuel, no indication that she is destined for any important role in history. But Jesus tells his disciples, and tells us, that unless we change and become humble like her we will not be part of his kingdom. Jesus tells us that to welcome a child is to welcome him.
Children’s Sunday is observed by some churches on the Sunday closest to Nov. 20, World Children’s Day, UNICEF’s global day of action for children marking the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. UNICEF says “Upholding children’s rights is the compass to a better world – today, tomorrow and into the future.”
The World Council of Churches states, “We affirm that children’s dignity comes from their creation in God’s own image. They are precious human beings with rights that need to be guaranteed and protected by our families, our societies, and our churches. When Jesus called a child and put that child in the centre, he not only demonstrated extraordinary respect for children, but he upheld their inherent human dignity and challenged his disciples to learn from them.”
What can we learn from the children?
Children teach us that we are always on that balancing point between our origins and our destiny.
Wordsworth’s poem reminds us of our sacred origins, reminds us that we come from and will return to a reality that is beyond our imagining during our time here. Children help us glimpse the innocence and glory of the mysterious ground of our being. Parent after parent, grandmother after grandfather, has gazed at the innocent miracle of a newborn child and glimpsed another, deeper reality behind the world that we experience with our senses.
And today’s children are the first generation of the generations to follow, the seven generations that many Indigenous spiritualities teach us that we are responsible for. These generations to come are our accusers and our encouragers. They call us to look at the many, many ways in which we don’t care for the children of our times and the future generations cut off when children die. They call us to look at the world that coming generations will need to live in, and to take better care of that world.
Children teach us to take honest stock of the impact of our lives on those to come, and ask us to do better. And, thank God, children also teach us to laugh, to play, to find what joy there is to find in the seemingly small things in our lives.
There is another child hidden in full view in our stories this morning: a child descended from King David, a child who grows into a servant leader, the child whose birth we look forward to during the coming season of Advent: Jesus the child of God. Jesus who comes to us from God trailing clouds of glory, who tells us how close our children are to heaven in their humility, their simplicity, and their honesty. Jesus who shows us the way to the kingdom of heaven by welcoming children into our midst and becoming like a child.
Jesus, the incarnation of the love of God in the world, the eternal unknowable Word shaped like us so we can finally recognize its truth. Christ arrives as a child, full of life and grace, throwing her arms in the air and inviting us all to accept the great gift of God’s love and to carry that divine light wherever we may go.
