TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
October 21, 2007
Rev. Sally Iberg
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Luke 18:1-8

This is an auspicious weekend for our family.  We celebrate my grandson’s 3rd birthday and mark the first anniversary of my mother’s death.  Both of these events help me focus attention on Children’s Sabbath – commemorated in churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques throughout the United States this weekend.  Children’s Sabbath offers us the opportunity to reflect on how we’re doing with children – those we raised and other children.  We all know children.  We all have an effect, direct and indirect, on the well-being of children.

News assaults us daily, reminding us of how we are failing children.  We’re unable to pass legislation providing for adequate health care.  Schools throughout the country fail to meet standards developed to ensure a decent education.  Poverty, famine, disease and war create a toxic environment for the world’s children.  In the face of this news, we might just decide to give up.  The problem is much too large for us to fix.  Why even try?

That’s exactly how the exiles in Babylon felt 2500 years ago.  They had been defeated and taken by force out of Jerusalem and resettled in Babylon.  They didn’t want to be there.  They were aliens in an alien land.  We’ve been listening to their story for the past month and a half.  We’ve been checking in regularly with the exiles and hearing the words of hope that Jeremiah had to offer them.  On Rally Day we returned to the potter’s house and explored the imagery of God the potter – creating us and reshaping us to live in God’s image.  After that we talked about Jeremiah buying a field in Anathoth, investing in the future.  And just last week, the prophet was telling the exiles that they should marry and have children, establish roots where they were, and pray for the welfare of Babylon.  Jeremiah said, “You are here.  Live here fully.  Don’t wait for a time to come when you can return to Jerusalem.  Work and pray for the welfare of the place where you reside.” 

The Book of Jeremiah is a long book, containing 52 chapters.  The prophet spends much time berating his people about how they have abandoned God and God’s ways.  The readings we have heard recently focus on the covenantal nature of the relationship between God and humans and remind us that when we are ready to turn toward God, God turns toward us.  Our reading today is an astoundingly optimistic word of hope.  It is placed in what scholars refer to as Jeremiah’s “little book of comfort” or “book of consolation.”  In this reading we hear the promise of a new covenant.

The notion of covenant is repeated throughout the Hebrew scripture.  Today, Jeremiah refers to an earlier covenant that God established with the people of Israel when God led them out of captivity in Egypt.  Evoking the word “covenant” reminds the exiles of the numerous covenants that God has made with their ancestors, only to have them broken.  In this passage we have a covenant that cannot be erased.  No longer will people need to teach the covenant to each other; it will be written on their hearts.  They will know that they belong to God and God belongs to them.  “I will be their God and they shall be my people.”

When we take something to heart, we take it very seriously.  When we speak of the heart we are talking about our center, our very core.  We are talking about that which is most important, that which is most central to our being.  What is written on our heart is what informs how we act.  It informs how we live.   Ironically, how we live also shapes what is central to our being.  The influence is reciprocal.

The Book of Consolation (Chapters 30 and 31) in Jeremiah opens this way, … “write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you”.  In the next chapter we hear this new covenant, “I will write it on their hearts.”  We have lots of written rules about how to live.  We have tomes of instructions on how to guide children so that they can become leaders and role models.  All of those written words are of little use if they are inconsistent with what children experience.

In 1972 Dorothy Law Nolte wrote a now famous poem called, “Children Learn What They Live.”  You know it.  In the poem, Nolte reminds us that children who live with criticism learn to condemn.  If they live with hostility they learn to fight, with ridicule they become shy, with shame they learn to feel guilty.  How are we with the children in our lives?  How do we treat them and how do we act around them?  How often do we make plans that effect children and yet we don’t include them in the planning?  This is not to suggest that they should be in charge.  It is to suggest that they probably have some preferences that could be considered and that may even change the plan.

One church I attended some time ago started a Wednesday evening gathering for 4th and 5th graders.  They called it the KISS club.  It stood for Kids Interested in Service and Study. Ten years before there had been a very popular rock band called Kiss.  These 4th and 5th graders had no connection to that rock group.  The 9 and 10-year-olds hadn’t been included in the planning.  Few kids showed up.  One Sunday morning an adult asked these 4th and 5th graders what they might like to do and what they’d like to call it.  With that information they made some critical changes resulting in the Kids Club that attracted a couple dozen children each week.  By including kids in the planning, this program became a success.

Dorothy Nolte reminds us that if we are critical and complaining around children, they will become critical and complaining.  They will struggle to identify what they are good at and experience success.  They will feel as if they can never measure up.  Simple things, like noticing when a child is doing something well and praising them for that, helps build that child’s self-esteem.  Encouraging children builds their sense of confidence.

Glenview Community Church has a very strong program for children.  Every Sunday morning there are volunteers staffing the cradle/toddler room so that the youngest children have a safe place to be, with activities that catch their attention.  It gives them and their parents a bit of time away from each other.  There is Sunday school for children 3 years old and older.  There is a program for the 6th graders and confirmation classes for the 7th and 8th graders.  There are special programs for the high school students.  Many staff and volunteers are involved in providing these creative and effective programs.  Children have a special place at Glenview Community Church. 

Not only are there wonderful programs for the children, the children also see the adults around them participating in worship, education, missions outreach.  They see these adults setting a good example for them.  The children are aware of the group of adults who traveled to Biloxi Mississippi last month to help restore homes lost in the hurricanes of 2005.  The children help with the food collections each month to feed the hungry.  They are learning what they live, both in their own lives and in the lives of those around them.

The children are aware that GCC takes their safety seriously, especially when they know we have implemented a Safe Church policy and are securing background checks for every one on the staff and those lay members involved in a volunteer capacity in the programs of the church.  Those of us working in any way with the children have a slightly more elaborate form to fill out.  For some this program is a source of frustration and discouragement.  It feels like the evil that exists “out there” has crept into the church.  Our hope is that while we are indeed acknowledging that no place can be completely safe that we are committed to holding up a standard of behavior that will more likely offer a harbor for all children.

I want to ask you to remember when you were young, really young – when you were three or four or five.  When you were young, what was written on your heart?  Did you feel safe and secure?  Did you feel loved?  Did you feel important?   Maybe your felt sad or scared, angry or fragile.  What is it that you wish had been written on your heart when you were young?

And how about now?  What is written on your heart now?  When people look at you can they tell what is written on your heart?  Do you feel that covenant relationship with God?  Do you know that you are the beloved of God?  Do you in turn treat those you meet as God’s beloved?  When we know who is our God, when we know that we are God’s people, when we live the love we’ve been given then we are holding up our part of the bargain.  When what is written on our heart burns brightly, we are able to bring about God’s realm here and now. 

Children, those we raised and all children, need us to be God’s people.  They need us to care about what affects them.  They need us to make sure that they have access to good healthcare, quality education, a safe place to live, nutritious food, peace and justice.  The children in our lives need to know that we love them, respect them, and take their concerns and wishes seriously.  Children need to see us live as if we burned with God’s covenant written on our hearts. 

How about a “to do” list.  This is not a long term “to do” list.  This is a “to do” list for today.  First, go to coffee hour downstairs and talk to one of the children who will no doubt be there.  Find out their name, tell them yours, and let them know you are glad that they are here at GCC.  Second, call or write your legislators and insist that we do something positive for children’s healthcare now.  Third, send a check to an organization that provides services to or advocates for children.  And finally, call a younger person you know, ask how they are doing, and then listen to their response.

In the midst of their exile, the people of Israel heard a message from God through their prophet Jeremiah:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt – a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord:  I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.  (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

“I will write it on their hearts,” says the Lord our God.  Let what is written on your heart guide you to care even more for the children in our midst and for children everywhere.

Let us be in silent prayer, while we listen to what is written on our hearts.