New-Kid Feelings

Sermon

I am more than 40 years old and I haven’t been in school for several years now, but I am very aware of my anxiety in August. Some of it, I think, is residual from keeping an office at a university for many years after my own schooling. I had a colleague who’d always ask, When is move-in week? When is the weekend when new students will be here with their grown-ups? And I initially remember thinking, “Wow, that’s so special that you want to pray for them,” and then she said, “Sure, I also don’t want to go shopping then.” And I took her advice. If you don’t need to be in a store with grieving parents and little adults trying to buy whatever they’ll need for the next three months, don’t. You don’t need to absorb that anxiety. Similarly, if you don’t need to drive by or through an elementary school crosswalk the last few weeks of August, please don’t. Don’t add to my parenting, I mean, the new kids’ anxiety!!

August can be anxious. I think we all have those big feelings, even if we can’t remember well, of being a new kid somewhere. There can be thrills, but there can also be tears and many emotions in between.

I love to imagine Jesus with everyone in this very brief but often-repeated story. I love to imagine the kids near Jesus for remembering why it’s important that we have children with us in church, when we can (sometimes they absolutely need to go with Eliz, Amelia, or Ellie). Some of us, or rather all of us, at some time, hope that our young people will always be listening in worship, in clean clothes, quiet, not coloring on materials that are not meant for coloring, or reaching for a phone, or squirming… but that’s what children do! And that’s wonderful.

We need that. If you are ever in a too-long worship service, may it never be here, and may a gift from heaven come to you in the form of a child that starts crying or crawling away. A smart, insistent child can often best voice your cries for mercy. So, there are many reasons to have children in church, not just so we have an excuse to leave for lunch, but also, that when they are here, we can model worship for them. We can model repenting our sins, being forgiven, passing the peace, listening, and praying for and welcoming one another.

We are modeling being in worship and each of the elements of worship in hopes people of all ages will continue to do this throughout the week and their lives ahead. Sometimes we need to do this and model doing this even when we don’t feel like it and know that is okay. It is great to see young people in church in their best dresses, but it is often greater to see them in the T-shirts they slept in the night before, irritated or laughing. Children are unafraid to be before God and God’s people as they are, even when they are not their best. This is one of many things our children must teach us in church. Our children teach us to be bold to come to God as we are, with our big feelings, authentic, even on the days we hate it. As I mentioned before, too, children help say when we should think about stopping the preaching and go outside (soon)!

Our children teach us to be children, to color and play, to cry and laugh. Often being a child of God means unlearning adulthood. All of us, kids perhaps especially, realize quickly that adults gain access to things often through other things: education, relationships, resources.

So then, wanting to be an adult is normal. It’s normal to want access to things that are out of our reach. The Pevensie children in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia are an example. All of them, in the story, except for maybe Lucy, have to unlearn adulthood. Wanting to be an adult is normal; it is that desire for access. Because the world often says children may not have access like adults. But Jesus says NO, let the children come to me, because if you want to enter my kindom, you must receive as a child receives. And that’s what Lucy, the youngest amongst the children, teaches her siblings. Peter, Susan, and Edmund want to achieve access through adulthood—they want to learn more, and be logical, and fight wars, and have greater independence from one another. But Lucy—Lucy wants to have tea and explore the snow.

All of Lucy’s siblings are struggling to be adults, stuck in what they see as childish trappings; they don’t often get to decide where they go, similar to the children Graham read about today. There likely already would have been some children traveling with Jesus, because we are certain there were women who would’ve traveled with Jesus as benefactors, friends, and even guides, so children would have likely been there, too. Additionally, there are some scholars that define “little ones” in the Gospels not as literal children but as newer disciples. Folks that the disciples, who had been traveling with Jesus from the beginning, might have had some big feelings about; maybe the anger wasn’t about children but Why are we sharing our beloved king’s kindom?!

I have heard big belonging feelings like this from all sorts of folks at Westminster. People who are visiting, sure. Young people. And people who have worshipped here for decades and still don’t always feel like they belong. All of us feel like a new kid sometimes. All of us sense a part of us that has been rejected, and sternly sent away, and wonder if it is really possible for us to be accepted and called in this space.

Though painful, we should all count that big feeling as a blessing. Because access to the kingdom, to our kindom, is not achieved through things. You don’t achieve it, Jesus says, you receive it. And it is only received as children receive. Wonderful. Wait. How do we receive like a child? I don’t know, fully, but I know it’s hard to ask and it’s certainly not assuming you have earned it. But you could lean into the new-kid feelings and say “hi” to someone. Risk the possibility that you will get ketchup on your shirt while you catch up today; know that God incarnate is right there, welcoming you, all the way. Lately I feel I’ve received the kindom through more childlike meditation, deep breaths that I remind myself are as wonderful and way more accessible than the nicest wines I’ve ever had. I try to remember the kindom, the love of God and myself and my neighbor, is a reality that’s here, there, and as close as this breath of you near and those who are far away.

The hope for us is not that we’d become faithful adults with access that young people do not have or have to earn. The hope is we’d receive as authentically as children do. The hope is not that we would know to be fully independent but that we’d grow and trust God and God’s people; the hope for the church is that people of all ages will be in worship, squirming below and around us, learning from each other as God’s children. The hope is that we breathe together as God’s children, eat hot dogs together, be awkward and uncomfortable together, just as we are, bold to approach God and one another. Amen.