My phone buzzes at odd, unpredictable hours, especially around the big holidays: amber alerts—child abductions.  Often at those times of the year, it seems one parent is taking a child from the other parent.  Children become tools, weapons, for people who are hurt to inflict hurt on others: retaliatory strikes.  Oh, I know it’s immensely more complicated, motives dreadfully mixed.  Most parents value their children; they do care about them.  And adults make children their battlefield: parents use their children; society uses children.  Story after story.  Last Sunday got me thinking about children, and it occurs to me that maybe our society doesn’t value children as much as it may claim.  Oh, it does value them: as consumers, patients, institutional subjects, subjects for Party indoctrination.

The perilous condition of the family in America is a direct consequence of the perilous condition of our culture and society, and the perilous condition of these is the direct consequence of our own brokenness, our own sinfulness—not just theirs out there.  If I were to ask you to tell me your family’s story, how long until it would start to get messy, and sad?  In my family, it starts with my own generation, and then just sort of keeps going on back and back.  The family is also Ground Zero in the politico-cultural war for hearts and minds raging around us.  As usual, children are collateral damage.  I believe Jesus would want it to be otherwise; but that never stopped us before.

So, there’s a sickness, a social sickness, an inner disease.  We all know we’re supposed to have regard for our physical health, whether we actually do or not; we, society, the church, would also do well to take a greater interest in promoting mental health.  Church should be a place for fostering true, robust mental health.  My sense is that mental and physical health are both very much tied to, maybe even dependent upon, spiritual health.  Christ came to heal, to heal what is broken between me, you, and God.  It’s a little too tidy for me to stand here and tell you the Bible is the answer to all our problems.  It’s not.  Don’t be shocked.  My love for this book is beyond measure, and my love for God beyond that.  This book remains a dead letter until God sends His Spirit upon people, to open eyes, minds, hearts, souls to His healing Word.  We, even we here today, do need, very much need, an outpouring of the Spirit, showers of blessing!

The family is Ground Zero in the war being waged in this sin-sickened society.  Nothing breaks a family, and the members of it, like divorce.  We barely blink an eye now, when there’s a divorce.  Oh well.  There are enough divorced people in church, as well as those who have remarried after divorce—including pastors—that it can feel like hopping around in a minefield to attempt to remind us that Jesus sets narrow grounds for divorce: only for infidelity, adultery.  Well, Jesus, you know, just didn’t, couldn’t, understand then how things would be now.  He wouldn’t talk like that, now.  Historically, even within the memory of those still living, our own denomination—the Southern branch of it, anyway—was officially, theologically, institutionally reluctant to encourage or bless remarriage, even for the one sinned against.  Perhaps devoted singleness was what God had in view for that person all along?

But what people demand, the church provides—people and the times call the tune and the church dances to it.  I know there are reasons, even strong reasons, to consider divorce, and the frequency of divorce is one example of how parents, and their children along with them, have been sucked into the Me First Movement, the Convenience Complex driving our contemporary, adult lives.  This is to no one’s benefit.  I’m convinced Jesus wants something else for us, something far better, healthier, holier.

Last Sunday, I shared the very French observation that God is what children know, not adults.  Someway, the process of becoming an adult in this world in these times is also the process of losing God, what some have sung as losing their religion.  We may balk at that—we haven’t lost our religion, or our God!—but I think we’ve got to admit that the largest group absent from churches on any given Sunday are those aged seventeen to forty-seven.  And it’s not because they’re just so dreadfully busy.  As far as faith and religion go, it’s not just coming to the worship service that doesn’t matter so much to them.

To lose God—I know it sounds a little melodramatic, but bear with me—to lose God is to become increasingly occupied with, maybe even enamored of, the things of this world; as people become increasingly absorbed by the things of this world, to that extent they lose God.  Building a life, for example—you’ve got to!  What’s the alternative?  Christians should be at work on the life to come.  I’m not naïve regarding the difficulties, hard choices, and sacrifices that come with both.  Getting established in the world.  Christians should aim their labor at getting established in the kingdom.  Graduating, starting a career, maybe starting a family . . . . At what age did you have your first child?  Within living memory, it was common enough to have a first child when both parents were in their early twenties.  For mothers, that number is now nearing the thirties.

It’s not hard to understand—a couple want to establish a solid foundation for future prosperity.  That’s not unfaithful; that’s not dishonoring God.  There’s biblical warrant for such building.  They want to make strong strides in their respective careers—they’ve made a huge, costly investment in those careers!  They also want to grow in the certainty that their marriage will last.  No one goes into a marriage thinking: well, I’ll try it for a little while.  And we all know of far too many marriages that ended, failed; more than some of us have been through one, as spouse or as child.  It wasn’t all hallelujah, amen, about time!  What did it do to our health, emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually?

Maybe the young couple isn’t even sure they want to have children: children will change their lives.  Maybe they’re enjoying their lives and finding great worldly fulfillment in their lives without children.  God doesn’t call every husband and wife to have children, so none of this striving to build a life here is necessarily blameworthy from a Christian point of view.  Not wanting children is also entirely in line with the secular values saturating us daily, the Me First Convenience Complex; let’s never be surprised that the church sings society’s tune.  Let’s also remember that we are the church, that we represent the church outside these doors, where we live the other 99% of our lives.

Jesus began by calling disciples, personally; many answered the call in the affirmative.  Through this current section of Mark’s account, we see the inner circle, the twelve, particularly preoccupied with rank and station, relative importance—they’re arguing over who has prominence, who has done the most, been the most zealous, faithful, obedient.  Precedence, in other words: who matters more and who doesn’t so much.  We live this way every day; it’s just the way human society is.  Who matters more gets more; who matters less gets less—every four years, this is the call to arms, the call to the ballot box.

Who matters and who doesn’t.  It’s not that we’re impolite to anyone, usually—but we don’t stop.  We don’t stop for the one.  We’re on our way, on our journey, and our journey is about us.  We prefer, if we can at all help it, not to be inconvenienced.  Jesus was always permitting himself to be inconvenienced.  In a sense, he came to be inconvenienced; that is, he came to be available for others.  You and I know very well that it can be risky to be available for others.  We sigh, give them a moment, and soon regret it—they want like ten moments, all at once.  Are they so starved for attention, acknowledgement, for affection?  We don’t know how to extricate ourselves politely, and they don’t seem to want to let us go.  About twenty years ago, I was walking home from work in Charleston; a man coming toward me along the sidewalk dropped to his knees right in front of me, lifting up his arms, talking to me as though I were Jesus.  Obviously out of his mind.  I walked right past him without giving him a second glance, I remember the expression on his face as I acted as if he weren’t even there.

Who matters?  Oh, yes, yes, we know the Christian answer: everybody matters.  Look around and listen, though.  Jews don’t matter: there’s history repeating itself all over again, and again!  I’ve encountered the ugliest, entrenched antisemitism even right around here.  Though you and I know it isn’t so, it sounds as if a significant number of black people can often feel as if they don’t matter.  There’s also a growing sense among young white males that they aren’t valued in this society, and they’re taking it to heart, sometimes in horrible, heart-crushing ways.  I wonder how female athletes—genetically female, that is—are feeling, these days.  Who will stand up for any of these?  Who will stop for the one to show love looks like something?

And, in the pull and push of this big, all too adult world, children don’t matter.  Well, they can matter as tools and weapons through which to hurt other adults.  They can matter as a demographic through which to access the wallets of parents, as institutional subjects and therefore accounts for government dollars, minds to shape according to the Party’s standard, but children as children don’t matter in this culture, this society, these times.  They aren’t heard, aren’t seen, but they are sexualized and then murdered, as we learned even here just a couple of months ago.  It’s the old pagan gods: Sex and Death.  They never went away; idols rarely do.

And God, the only, true, living God, is what children know, not adults.  “People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them” (10:13).  Of course they do.  Jesus is Number One, as the disciples were all quick to say, even as they jockeyed for position amongst themselves.  They also knew that Jesus’ time was valuable, almost immeasurably valuable; so, too, the time the disciples had with Jesus.  Any time with or for others was time lost to the disciples, as they saw it, some of them.  They wanted Jesus for themselves.  They each wanted that walk and that talk in the garden, forgetting again that gardens were for betrayal.

The disciples who were more sensitive noticed that Jesus seemed to be getting worn out more quickly, more often, maybe sadder?  And they knew they could help.  They could insulate him, intervene, interpose.  They could regulate access to Jesus: to do so meant exercising judgment regarding who could and could not come to Jesus.  Pharisees and scribes?  Sure—under the right circumstances.  The demon-possessed—head of the line!  The blind, deaf, mute, and lame?  In regular doses, of course.  Those with various illnesses?  Plenty of those already: later!  Women?  Nah.  Gentiles?  Eew.  Children?  Really?  Don’t bother the Teacher.  He can’t see you now; he’s busy . . . sitting over there, by himself.  They thought they were helping.

“When Jesus saw this, he was indignant.  He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’  And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them” (10:14-16).  Jesus came to help, to welcome, to receive, to bless, to teach, to heal, to cleanse, to offer up his life a ransom for many.  It’s no inconvenience.  It’s no bother.  All are worthy because all are unworthy.  All need healing because all are broken.  All matter.  And yes, all is a lot.

Children can’t do anything for Jesus.  They’ve no clout, no influence, no pull—here below.  They can’t connect him to the cool, beautiful people who do amazing things in spectacular places.  They can’t add to his glamor, wealth, or prestige.  I’ll tell you, though, I think there’s something to it, this thought that God is what children know, not adults.  Jesus is reminding us, on several levels, that children matter tremendously.

Children matter to God because children are from God.  Scripture is quite clear.  Oh, some children are conceived contrary to God’s will, contrary to God’s way; God allows them to be conceived, even if we won’t allow them to be born, because He can bring good out of even the saddest beginnings, even out of terrible hurt and ugliest sin, as Scripture reminds us in so many powerful ways.

But what really matters, after all, above all, is Me . . . just like Jesus shows us.

Not long after I began in ministry Nicholas came along, and then Evan.  I think in part because of that I’ve been especially attentive to and repeatedly devastated by news about the inhuman and too human ways in which adults demonstrate, repeatedly, that children—even their own—don’t matter.  Yes, the counterargument is a good one: the instances of inhuman treatment at the hands of adults, parents, are the exception, rarities.  It would be inaccurate, irresponsible, to blow matters out of proportion.  Only, the stories keep occurring, year after year, every year, story after story.  I can’t tell you all the stories that have stuck in me: I couldn’t continue with any composure if I did.

So, permit me to share a few facts to make my case that children too often become collateral damage of our brokenness; that children too often are tools, used and abused to serve our demons.  In 2021, 1,820 children died as the result of abuse, a number that has been consistent for several years.  Well, it’s not three thousand!  Well, that’s only like thirty kids per state, after all.  I mentioned earlier that there are those black people who can feel as if they don’t matter.  We can think to ourselves it just isn’t true, only consider: the rate of abuse fatalities among black children is nearly three times higher than for white children.[1]

Despite all the sad love songs, people do not abuse those who matter to them most.  Earlier this year, a Houston woman left her six- and eight-year-old children by themselves while she went on a six-day cruise.[2]  Well, she left them corn flakes and told them to get to school on time, for heaven’s sake!  An extreme case, to be sure, only consider also the story from just a few weeks before that of the mother who left her fifteen-month-old alone while she went on a ten-day cruise.[3]  The child wasn’t alive when she returned.  Let me leave it at that.  The mother told the judge that she knew God and her child had forgiven her.

Heinous as it certainly is, those parents went away.  My heartbrokenness is inexpressible for the children of those who didn’t leave, who stayed to take out their rage on their children.  Rare!  Yet all too frequent.  The father in Georgia who savagely beat his two- and three-year-old toddlers because their room wasn’t tidy to his liking.  The father who murdered his five-year-old daughter.  The list continues; maybe you can add stories that you recall.

In our brokenness, we adults, even those of us striving to live by faith, can all too easily place our desires above God’s requirements, our compelling, irresistible passions above God’s government.  Always calling to us is that seductive voice saying what really matters, after all, above all, is Me.  There is that in our culture and society that entirely approves, indeed, expects that we will, should, and must put Me first.  The Me First Movement, the Convenience Complex driving this culture, keeps the pressure on.

Our time is valuable, and we’re a little over-committed as it is, so time for others and God will just have to, you know, give a little . . . more.  Well, Christianity is all about giving, isn’t it?  Jesus tells his followers not to hinder the children.  By their actions and also by their inaction, Jesus followers were keeping the little ones from Christ.  We hinder the children from coming to Jesus by failing to teach or commend the faith through our own choices, actions, and words; oh, they’re learning from us, but what are we teaching them?  Don’t for a moment think I’m excluding myself from that question.  We don’t teach them the Bible; we barely read it ourselves.  Once they’ve outgrown their picture Bibles, we figure they’re sort of on their own, and we have better things to do anyway.  We don’t talk with them about prayer or faith, even when they ask; if we don’t dismiss the subject outright, we respond with vague assurances of later not now.   Then they grow up, leave home, and leave church, if they hadn’t already years before.

Well, who wants to argue?  Jesus never argued.

Beloved, God is what children know, not adults.  Ah, what do children know?  Children know they need.  Children know they need help; some even ask.  Children know trust.  Children want someone to be proud of them and love them and hold them and kiss them goodnight, even if the children, smiling to themselves, sort of pull away and act like they’re too old for such stuff.  “And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them” (10:16).  Even now, there is that in us longing, pining for that embrace, that blessing, that deep assurance of being loved, valued, treasured.  Let your children know you treasure them, and not just by buying them things; show them God’s love through your own love, deeds and words of love; pray with them, and pray with them for the children who aren’t embraced and who, either through the action or inaction of their adults, aren’t shown God’s love.

[1] https://www.cwla.org/child-maltreatment-2021-report/; https://www.aei.org/op-eds/black-children-are-suffering-higher-rates-of-abuse-and-woke-officials-are-making-it-worse/; https://www.statista.com/statistics/255032/ number-of-child-fatalities-due-to-abuse-or-maltreatment-in-the-us-by-race-ethnicity/

[2] https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-mother-arrested-allegedly-leaving-young-children-home-alone-go-cruise

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/20/us/ohio-mom-toddler-death-sentencing-cec/index.html