Just before what I read, the Pharisees, hoping somehow to trap Jesus, bring up the matter of divorce.  Because he’s asked, Jesus gives his teaching.  Divorce has been around almost as long as marriage.  When and if God grants me more wisdom, I’ll turn my attention to this subject, not today.  Today, we observe World Communion Sunday.  Today, we particularly remember our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world.  Many are thriving, even in situations of difficulty we can barely imagine, though some of you who have been to such places can imagine better than me.  The Church is growing in China, to the chagrin of the government.  The Church is growing in Iran, to the chagrin of the government.  The Voice of the Martyrs magazine recently highlighted a Somali man, a former Muslim, Ibrahim, who has planted twenty-three churches among ethnic Somalis in Kenya.  The Church is thriving, growing, in many unlikely places around the world.

Many of our fellow believers here and around the world are also struggling, beloved—oh, how they need our daily prayers!  Afghanistan comes to mind: hard to believe there are Christians there; in a few months, there may not be.  Today, we particularly remember our brothers and sisters in Madagascar: a very beautiful, very poor place, where most must find a way to live on less than $2 a day.  The special offering we give today will help Dan and Elizabeth Turk’s ministry of blessing for these people.  Today in our worship and in our Communion bread, pandesal, we also particularly remember our sisters and brothers in the Philippines, the only majority-Christian nation in Asia.

Well, the United States is also a majority Christian nation, but what does that mean?  Is it more than a statistic?  Every Christian on this earth faces difficulty because every Christian on this earth is in the world.  The world, despite the ugliness and sorrow, tends to be an attractive, comfortable place.  As you and I start to get comfortable, the world also urges us, always and rather persuasively, to enjoy its idols.  Mankind has a history of making room for them.

God sends help.  We have His Word.  We have Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church.  We have one another.  Today, set upon this table, we also have the bread and the juice, wonderful reminders, potent signs, of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and the food for life he provides for those who come to him, whose hearts receive him in faith.  Let us long for this food, this connection, this grace, this communion on high and across this earth.

It is the Holy Spirit alone who brings, the Spirit alone who can.  Our faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, not any work of our will or wisdom.  Our love for God is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  See how God loves us, that He makes it possible for us to love Him!  To the extent we value the Word of God, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit brings, and calls and commissions bringers.  I bring no one to Christ, but I can bring someone to church.  You bring no one to Christ, but you can bring someone to church, with all that the Spirit makes available to those who do come.  Each one can reach one.  Who is your one?  As we regularly and lovingly extend invitation, let us stay connected with and concerned for those outside the church: they might yet come!  Let us cultivate with them relationships of mutual trust, listening and respect.  World Communion Sunday is potent testimony that Christ overcomes differences, reconciles, and makes us one blessed Church.

The Spirit enables us to be bringers.  Some of us bring our children, some their grandchildren.  Some even bring their great-grandchildren.  God bless you!  We know Jesus delights in the children; we delight in his delighting.  I see stories in the news that make me grieve that I ever checked the news, ever wanted to find out what’s happened in this world.  What’s happened is what has happened too many times before.  The hardest stories for me involve children.  There have been so many.  Sometimes it feels like the Spirit points the stories out to me, but why?  A four-year-old was shot and killed a few weeks ago in Chicago: he wasn’t the first, there, this year.  More recently, a six-year-old was kidnapped out of his mother’s car in Pearland.  Oh, what those stories do to me!  I shudder to think what these events do to the heart of God.

That opens big questions, beloved: if God is so hurt by all these sad things, why doesn’t He do something about it!?  All I can say, take it for what you will, is that He has.  He sent His only-begotten, well-beloved Son, who was ridiculed, neglected, abused, and brutally killed.  Both the political and the religious authorities had their part in his death, as well as the crowds—all were guilty of his blood.  God sends His Holy Spirit, and some hearts are opened while others as yet remain hard, closed, and dark.  I can’t tell you why, except that it has to do with our sin and God’s grace.  I don’t have those answers, but in Christ we have one another: God is transforming our hearts.  He is doing something about all the sad things, right here, now.  Here, God gives us a holy glimpse of a better life.  Here, He makes it possible for us to start living that life, now.

I don’t know why the disciples try to keep the parents from bringing their children to Jesus.  Maybe they’re tired of people treating Jesus like some sort of lucky rabbit’s foot.  Maybe they think they are protecting Jesus—giving him space to rest, find some peace far from the madding crowd.  The world can seem very crowded: so, too, our hearts.

The disciples have really been blowing it, lately: they just can’t seem to get it right.  They mean well; they think they’re doing the right thing, but time and again Jesus corrects them.  Thank God he does.  How we need that ongoing instruction, correction, from Jesus!  We won’t get it completely right in this life, beloved—please don’t set your heart on that—but, by God’s grace, we won’t get it quite so wrong!  I’m nowhere near the man, the husband, the father, the pastor, the disciple that I want to be!  Grace is that God accepts me, even so, and has covenanted to remake me according to His plan and His timing—not mine, but His!  And so it is for each and all of us here this morning.  Be still, and know that I am God; still like children, safe in the arms of Jesus.  His plan, His timing, His way.  Lord, make me more patient; Lord, make me more holy; Lord, make me more loving; Lord, make me more faithful.  I hunger.  I thirst.

Mark records this moment with the children because it made a deep impression upon Peter.  Tradition tells us Mark wrote down what Peter told him.  It’s clear many things made a deep impression upon Peter.  We may envision Peter throwing his weight around, loud, blundering, oblivious, the bull in the china shop, but as we read, listen, and feel our way through Mark’s account, it becomes clear that Peter was listening, closely, often, and feeling many things, deeply.  Peter mentioned the many things they got wrong so that those who came after might make a better start at getting it right: the benefit of experience!

The parents want Jesus to touch their children.  Yes.  Oh, yes!  Jesus, touch my children, too.  Touch all these children, these young disciples.  Jesus welcomes them, wants them to come: “the kingdom belongs to such as these”—to those who come to him as a child would, come in the character of a child.  If we would receive the kingdom, let us receive Jesus with the dependence of a child, with the realization that we need him for everything!  I need Thee every hour!  I don’t doubt some of those young ones were shy, bashful, held back a little: clung to mom’s skirts or dad’s sleeve.  No one rushes to Jesus without prompting or encouragement, without assurances.  Jesus doesn’t feel like home until the Spirit touches us.  Jesus is still a stranger to so many, beloved.

Biblical scholar and pastor W. Graham Scroggie observed that “the parents brought their children to Jesus.  That is what all parents should do, but cannot unless they themselves have first come to Him.”[1]  We know; we see that.  We’re all busy, more than a little overextended.  Yet we have made the commitment to be here today—God has moved each of us to come here.  We don’t do anything for blessing, whether our own or that of others, without this prompting, this encouragement, this assurance from the Holy Spirit.  Too busy, too tired, too worried for Jesus?  Of course not, never!  Too busy, too tired, too worried for church?  Well, you see how it is.  There’s so much to do and never enough time.  There is nothing new, strange, or surprising about that.  We are diminished, sisters and brothers, but never defeated.  Let us exalt God.

We brought our children to church.  We wanted to bring them to Jesus.  They came to church.  Some still go.  Some don’t.  Did they come to Jesus?  We thought so—hoped—then maybe we weren’t so sure.  We pray they will, still.  We so want to see Jesus in them!  They assure and scold us.  How did that hurt get into that happy?  Beloved, that’s the question of Eden.  We’ve been wrestling with that question a long time.  How could we stray?  How could we have thrown that away?  Adam and Eve were still thunderstruck, all those generations later.

We brought our children to church, when we came.  But when we gather, it’s for one hour once a week.  That leaves vastly more time outside church, time for other messages and examples, other interests and pursuits to take root, like weeds in the garden.  Weeding is tedious work: ongoing, never-ending work.  Why keep a garden at all?  We each keep a garden: the garden of our soul.  Our children sometimes get to play there; they know what’s in there, though not all of what’s in there.  They see.  They hear.  None of us pretend to be perfect; let’s never pretend to be perfect with our children.  They see.  They hear.  They know.  We don’t have to be perfect, for ourselves, for our children, even for God.  What we must always strive to be is Christian: for God, for ourselves, and for our children.  We bring our children to God, to the extent God will allow, by being devoted, obedient followers of Jesus Christ.  Little as we may like, we are examples.

Pastor, are you saying it’s my fault my children don’t attend church and don’t seem to want to?  I wasn’t Christian enough, is that it?  I’m saying, beloved, that this world in which we are immersed offers powerful, alluring examples on every side.  Out there, Christianity is just one option among many.  I’m saying that, with few exceptions indeed, it’s always easier not to do something than to do something: easier not to read the Bible, not to come to church, not to pray.  Easier not to be a devout follower—why the very word devout seems silly, stiff; though it’s the flag of freedom, it feels foreign.

We’ve got an awful fight on our hands, a big, tangled struggle!  It’s hard enough to keep ourselves on the path, let alone keep our eyes, hearts, and hands on our children’s walk.  It can be too much.  It can feel as if we’ve failed ourselves, failed our children, failed God.  It all leaves us sad and heavy.  What can we do?

We can do what those parents did so long ago.  We can bring our children to where Jesus is.  We don’t create their faith.  We don’t cause love for him.  We bring, and we don’t hinder them for whatever reason, excuse—our tiredness, our preference for ways misaligned with God’s way, our hurt and anger, our lukewarmness.  Some come to Jesus seeking teaching, some healing.  I suppose a few come just to test the waters, dip a toe in, lightly.  Others couldn’t tell you why they come—habit?  Surely, each of us has something else we could be doing right now!  Beyond and beneath all that, people come for blessing.  They might not call it that.  That word might not mean anything to them; they might be quite confused about that word, blessing: it’s when good things happen for me, right?  It’s a feeling: God making me happy.  No—that’s missing it completely.  Blessing is Jesus.  Jesus is blessing.  Jesus in you is blessing.  Jesus blesses through you.

The truth, the reality of all this is put on powerful display for us not only by those parents, so eager for Jesus to touch, to bless their children; that truth is also put on powerful display at this table, by this bread and this juice, this body and this blood—blessing is Jesus.  Jesus is blessing.  Jesus in you is blessing.  Is your faith weak?  Come.  Is your faith lukewarm?  Come.  Do you wonder where your faith has gotten to, where it could be?  Come.  Receive God’s blessing, the blessing of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Will this bread and this juice crack open your heart, flood your mind with light, lift your soul to heaven?  They can, by grace, through the Spirit!  And if these sacred gifts don’t do all that miraculous wonder all at once in these next minutes, even so, know for a certainty that, by this Sacrament, by faith, by the Spirit who brings, God makes His way in you, so that, by His grace, you shall make your way to Him.  He gives you His Word.

Now, to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.

               [1] W. Graham Scroggie.  Gospel of Mark.  Study Hour.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976.  178.