What we want for our children

A sermon for baptism

There is nothing more adorable than a little one, just after a bath. They jump in all sticky and sweaty from a full day of play and emerge sweet smelling, their fingers wrinkly, and too cute for words after their hair is combed and their little jammies donned. Then they climb into your lap and cuddle for a story before surrendering to sleep. I apparently am in serious need of grandchildren! But even if I were not in such a condition, the sight of a child washed free of the world’s grime would still make me go, “aaaw!” There’s something about the innocence and vulnerability that makes us want to give them everything, the perfect life, the perfect world. That’s a pretty tall order, even for the most accomplished and energetic among us. It also invites some questions….

What would a perfect life look like? Does perfect mean that the answer to every prayer is ‘yes?’ Jim Carey’s movie Bruce Almighty gave us a humorous take on that. If every prayer were answered with a yes, everyone would win the lottery, get into an Ivy League school with a full scholarship, marry the most beautiful girl or the smartest, richest man. You would get every job you applied for and be well paid. We would all be perfect physically and always healthy. This kind of life only sounds ideal for how could there be any sense of accomplishment if everything were handed to you? How could we ever develop a sense of compassion? Such a life would be the death of imagination, so I don’t think that could be what we mean when we consider what a perfect life would be like for little Sara Jane, who is, after all, about to get her holy bath. What do Scott and Amber envision in their hopes and dreams for their daughters? What do all of us want for our children?

I think that we want for our children is a world filled with the things that the apostle Paul identifies as the gifts of the spirit in his letter to the Galatians; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It’s hard to argue with such things but I think we also seek something more - a world that is fair, a world in which hard work and honest effort produce a satisfactory outcome; we want a world in which there is an opportunity to express and actualize what we sense is useful and fun. We want a world in which we enjoy some level of security, both physical and emotional. We want a world in which we have some level of ability to choose and make our own decisions about what we do and how we do it. I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that such desires are fairly universal—we all want this for our children. But the real question for this morning is how badly do we want this for all the children of the world?

Now let me ask you, how many of you think we live in a just world? How many of you think that we live in a world in which there is justice for some and not for others?

Let me take this a little further, do you believe that the things we want for our children could actually be jeopardized if the world continues to be an unjust place? Martin Luther King reminded us on more than one occasion that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Continued injustice keeps the Kingdom of God unrealized.

The prescription for this condition is right in front of us – we see it in the cross, we hear it the Gospel, we taste it in the sacrament of bread and wine. It is a commitment to the Kingdom of God which is possible when we give ourselves up and become the true Body of Christ.

We know the difference between how our world operates and how God would have it operate by what we know of Jesus’ life. Jesus’ first words in the Gospel of Mark, the earliest record of his teaching, were “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” In these words, Jesus becomes the sunrise of God’s time on a broken world. And then he set about creating the Kingdom wherever he was, starting with healing all who were brought to him. In God’s Kingdom, no one is sick. He fed people who couldn’t afford to feed themselves. In God’s Kingdom, no one goes hungry. He lifted up little children as examples of how all people are within the kingdom of God. He called people on hypocrisy and gave hope and good news to people who for whom those were in short supply. The deaf man in today’s Gospel needed Jesus’ intervention to be able to hear the news of God’s love and God’s will for his life. That healing wasn’t the healing of just one man, but all of humanity that had been deafened and made voiceless by indifference and injustice.

Jesus knew that the work was not his alone. He gathered people around him who heard the message he delivered and believed in God’s Kingdom. He shared himself and his power with them. That power is the one that we become a part of when we are in Christ. Having our ears and hearts opened begins it. Baptism is our yes to God’s invitation and with every subsequent baptism, we recommit ourselves to what we want for all of the children of God. We are promising to do all that we can to give Sara Jane and every other child a just world, a peaceful world, a world that looks more like the Kingdom God today than it did yesterday.