PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Luke 18:15-17                Bringing Children to Jesus                             Text

        After the prologue of the Book of Proverbs, the first section begins with these words:[1]

The great wisdom tradition of the Bible is very practical, but the way it is expressed is beautiful; and it begins by saying to children, “Listen to your parents.”  This is a good place to begin a Mothers’ Day sermon on “bringing children to Jesus.” 

        Bringing children to Jesus.  One of the most enduring mental pictures about the life of Jesus is mothers’ bringing their children to him for a blessing, and yet this story is told only twice.[2]  You don’t have to say it very often to see the beauty and the joy in it.  And then we remember Jesus’ own words, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”[3]  And he uses childhood as a symbol of the disciple:[4]

I think Jesus was staying with Mary and Martha and their little brother Lazarus when he told his disciples, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” because the story continues:[5]

I think that child was Lazarus himself.  What a marvelous picture for Mothers’ Day.  Bringing children to Jesus was a natural thing for mothers do to, and yet it has such spiritual depth, such symbolic power—even two thousand years later. 

        If a mother in our time should want to bring her children to Jesus, how would she do it?  Who would be involved?  What resources would she have?  Why would she want to do this beautiful thing in the first place?  That’s what I want to talk about this morning.

        First the question:  how would a modern mother bring her children or her grandchildren to Jesus?  When I was a pre-schooler my mother bought a Bible story book and read a story to me every day.  When I got into school and could read along with her, she put the story book aside and we read the Bible itself, her sitting on a chair beside my bed, me in my pajamas sitting on top of the covers.  We read the King James Version, and she taught me how to pronounce all those old English words and what they mean.  That daily reading set a spiritual tone in the home—not a sickly-sweet religiosity, but a practical, morally high-minded view of the world and how we fit in it.  She was bringing me to Jesus every day. 

        There is also prayer in the home.  Maybe you still remember the prayer you were taught to say at meals, and the prayer you offered at bedtime—“Now I lay me down to sleep….”  When our children were little Harriet and I agreed that “if I should die before I wake” was just a little heavy for pre-schoolers; so we wrote a whole new prayer for our children at bedtime. 

        When a child becomes a teenager she crosses some kind of barrier:  she puts away her dolls and starts asking for heels and lipstick.  He may keep his bat and glove, but he’s watching the girls over on the bleachers.  They leave childhood things behind, and for many youth one of the childhood things turns out to be Jesus.  A mother whose own spiritual life is more mature, or moving in that direction, can show by example that Jesus is not just for children—it becomes more important for living as an adult in the world.  You may not think your child is paying attention to this, but it will pay off in the end.         So the how of bringing a child to Jesus begins in the home and the home environment.

        Who?  Who does this?  In the Gospel narratives of parents bringing their children to Jesus it uses the word “they.”  It’s plural.  A wise mother knows she can’t do this alone, and she welcomes the community around her.  It doesn’t matter whether you believe “it takes a village” or not, children are influenced by the community of people they know.  This includes, of course, doctors, teachers, maybe a child psychologist sometimes—and the mother is certainly in on that.  The church also tries to help build a bridge from childhood faith to a more mature faith through youth groups, Sunday School classes and Confirmation Class; and one of the great blessings of the church is adult examples of faith other than the parents.  I’ve told you before about one of the older men in the church where I grew up—his name was Myers Wilbanks; he was the music director; but the kindness in his voice, the gentleness of his manner, the depth of Christian love he showed not just to the young people in his church but even to people whom others didn’t like:  all these values and character qualities showed me what following Jesus can look like. 

        So the first who is certainly the mother; then the family; but the faith community with whom you surround your child is very important.  This is the who.

        A mother has resources to help her bring her children to Jesus.  As I said before, her own faith needs to be growing—she needs to discover the spiritual challenges that confront her:  not just challenges about money or health or communication, but the growth of her spirit.  My sister has two daughters, Ginger is a supervisor in an insurance group in Chattanooga, and Linda is disabled.  What they saw growing up was a mother who loved Jesus enough to take them both to Sunday School and church even without the support, or even the faith, of a Christian husband.  And Ginger is an active Christian in her own church, growing and challenging her own daughter Aubrey to be that kind of mother who grows in faith, hope and love. 

        A mother’s resources include literature—not just the Bible, but the magazines that come into the home, books and iPad and internet resources on the life of the human spirit in the world.  Her children may disagree with her choices of books, disagree with her interpretation; but to have this in the house makes a place for the resources of spirituality in a young person’s soul.  As my mother moved out of her last apartment and into a nursing home, I ended up with her Bible concordance, a biography of a minister she had known, a church pictorial directory from my senior year in high school, and the memory of a weekly magazine from our church.  And when my maiden aunt Vada died, she left me my mother’s mother’s New Testament.  Resources. 

        Why?  What’s all this for?  I started this sermon with a quote from the Book of Proverbs, and I’m coming back around to Proverbs:[6]

My mother and father would have been the first to say that my choices and the direction in which my study took me were definitely not what they grew up with.  Compared to the extremes some Christian fundamentalists and some Christian liberals defend today, I guess my parents would have been “conservative,” but not all that conservative.  They taught me to take the Bible seriously, and you know that even though I am not a conservative I still take the Bible seriously.  My mother gave me roots:  God gave me wings.  She brought me to Jesus, and Jesus just won’t turn loose of me! 

        Try this.  If you are the mother or grandmother of a child, envision your child as a spiritual leader.  I don’t mean think about jobs she can grow up and do in church somewhere:  I mean a spiritual leader—like Myers Wilbanks was for me.  Envision your son or daughter as a soul person, to whom other people look for wisdom, who know how to point people to Jesus.  THAT is the why.

        As Jesus walked the dusty roads of Palestine, teaching in the open air, preaching in the synagogues, training his disciples in the faith, healing and forgiving and blessing, there were mothers everywhere he went; and they kept “bringing their children to Jesus.”  And he would lay his hands on them and bless them. 

        That’s something to think about on Mothers’ Day—even if you aren’t a mother, you had a mother; and if you didn’t have a close relation to your biological mother, there was a mother for you somewhere, or you wouldn’t be here today.  And so we all pause this second Sunday in May and remember that the work of a mother is spiritual work, and the church affirms it and blesses what you do.

AMEN