All My Children

Scripture: Micah 6:8; Romans 8:12-17

Text: See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are. I John 3:1

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta

September 10, 2000

 

Introduction

Before we pray let me say how good it is to be back here at 16^th and Peachtree with all of you in this great church. Since the wonderful 10^th Anniversary celebration you gave to me and our family in late May, I have spent the past three months on a sabbatical leave, studying, reading, preaching, praying, fishing, playing golf, spending time with my family and enjoying our travels to Scotland, Chautauqua, Wyoming, Montana, Linville, North Carolina, Nantucket, Massachusetts and last weekend to Pawleys Island, South Carolina.

 

While away, I have prepared the preaching calendar with sermon titles and scriptures for the next ten months, worked on our church’s long range plan for the next five years and begun to write three research papers as the result of my study program which will be presented to the Session and shared with all of you in sermons I will preach between now and next June.

 

This sabbatical has been a time of renewal, relaxation, spiritual growth and productivity, and I am deeply grateful to the staff and to this congregation for giving me the opportunity to re-charge my batteries and reflect on the ministry and mission we share together. I have missed all of you, prayed for and with you every day, and as Barbara and I have now returned to Atlanta and moved into the house in Ansley Park, thanks to your generous support, I am ready and eager to get back to work again.

 

Unfortunately, even with the golf clubs which you gave to me last May, I was not able to improve all that much on my handicap this past summer. Standing at the first tee of a Scottish golf course with a fellow Presbyterian pastor and two crusty old caddies, I watched my colleague, Reverend David Smith from St. Andrews, hit his drive straight and true into the middle of the fairway. As my turn came, I drubbed the ball less than twenty yards down a steep hill into the deep rough. At that moment, one of the caddies, named Harry, whispered to his colleague so that all of us could hear, “Dear God!” Well we never found the ball…but what I did re-discover that day and during the entire sabbatical leave was a sense of joy in being alive and a profound realization that the dear God whom we worship and serve loves us and accepts us as we are, in all of our imperfections, and has promised to lift us up and lead us forward in the way He wants us to go. To that end, as we seek God’s direction, I join you with great expectation in the journey which the Lord holds in store for all of us. Let us pray:

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Through Christ we pray. Amen.

 

Part 1

If any of you have wondered about the origin of our sermon title today, let me confess that “yes,” I am aware of the daytime soap opera “All My Children” but “no,” I have never watched an entire episode all the way through. Back in 1970 when the program began, my grandmother who lived with our family, got so hooked on the show that we thought perhaps a deprogrammer or shock therapy might be the only cure.

 

So as you can probably surmise, our sermon title does not come from the soap opera “All My Children.” It actually reflects the theme we have chosen for this new church year; “Justice, Kindness and Humility for all God’s Children.” The theme was affirmed by the Session to embrace our ongoing commitment to the vision in Micah 6:8, about “what the Lord requires of us – to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.” Moreover, we are also lifting up our Presbyterian Denomination’s focus on “The Year of the Child.” It is my personal hope and prayer that as we pay extra special attention to our children in the months ahead, we will remember as well that the Bible describes all of us, young and old and everyone in between as “the children of God.”

 

The Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Rome, put it this way: When we say “Abba! Father!” it is the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Romans 8:15-16). And in I John, chapter 3, the author of that letter says See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are.

 

In other words, from God’s point of view, looking out over the whole human family, all of us are His children. And since the day we were born, God has been reaching out to us with open arms and a wide open heart to let us know that each one of us is unique and important to Him.

 

As Christians, we believe that Jesus came into this world to tell us that is so. In the Sermon on the Mount, He said: Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they are? (Matthew 6:26)

 

You see, Jesus of Nazareth, more than anyone else who ever walked the face of this earth, saw the intrinsic good in other people. He called forth the best from people, He sought to help people become all that God meant them to be. So it was then and so it still is today. Jesus has given us His Holy Spirit to bear witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And each one of us is unique and important to Him.

 

Do you remember the telephone company advertisement some years ago? “There’s no one else in the whole human race with your kind of style, your kind of grace.” My friends, those words come ever so close to the gospel because the way God made us, no two people are the same, not even identical twins. Carbon copies simply do not exist in the human family. There is only one “you” in this whole wide world and you, as a child of God, are of indescribable value in His sight. And that is exactly the way God wants us to look at and to love each other.

 

When Dr. Jim Forbes, pastor and preacher of the Riverside Church in New York, was growing up on a South Carolina farm, he had nine brothers and sisters. The way he tells it, “My mother would prepare supper for our family, and every evening, as the time came for us to finish our chores and head toward the house, she would ring a bell and then call out ‘Are all the children in? Are all the children in?’ We’d gather around the table, and just before the blessing, my mother would ask once more, ‘Are all the children in?’ because until we were all at the table, our family supper could not begin.”

 

Just so, said Jesus, you are of great value to your Father in heaven. Each one of us is unique and important to Him.

 

Part 2

And when we as His children come to believe that is true, then what God wants us to do is to make sure that everyone is included in the family of faith.

 

As we baptize our babies in the church, their parents and the whole congregation promise to bring them up in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” When we confirm our teenagers in the church, all of us pledge to stand by them and walk with them in their spiritual journey. When we welcome adult new members into the church, we receive them as brothers and sisters in Christ and offer them our friendship, singing “Blest be the ties that bind our hearts in Christian love.” And as we gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we say “All who humbly put their trust in Christ… are invited and encouraged in His name to come to this table.”

 

In those sacraments and sacred rituals, we are affirming that each of us is important and every one of us is to be included in the family of faith. And in the ministry and mission of this church, no one should ever be indifferent to another child of God.

 

For the Lord has given to you and to me the Christian responsibility to reach out to people who need Christ’s love, to people who feel lonely and left behind, to people who have lost their sense of hope and are looking for help. Some of those people are sitting in this sanctuary today and many more are out there on the streets of this city, in the offices where we work, in the neighborhoods in which we live and in housing projects blighted by poverty. And they are waiting, waiting, for someone to reach out to them with justice, kindness and mercy, and that someone could be you.

 

The award-winning author Jonathan Kozol knows what it means to reach out to children in need. For the past thirty years, this former teacher has been traveling to cities across America, interviewing children, parents, public school educators and administrators, police officials and local politicians who are living in and dealing with urban poverty. The books Kozol writes tell the stories of their lives, and the struggle to survive.

 

Last May, the Christian Century magazine did an article on him. In speaking about the children of the South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the country, this is what Kozol said:

 

“It is true that the conditions of their lives are different in many ways from the conditions…for more favored children in our nation…but the ordinary things they long for, and the things they find funny, and the infinite variety of things they dream of, and the games they play, and the animals they wish they could have…and the clothes they wish they could afford to buy, are not as different as the world seems to believe from what most other children in this land enjoy, or dream of, or desire.” (The Christian Century, an article entitled “The Hopeful Years: Children of the South Bronx,” May 10, 2000)

 

Kozol has committed his life to those children, and there are many like them here in Atlanta who are waiting, waiting for someone to reach out to them, and that someone could be you.

 

Conclusion

Bevel Jones, the United Methodist Bishop-in-Residence at the Candler School of Theology, told a story last spring about a young boy who reached out to an adult. The boy was standing on the corner of a crowded city and noticed a Catholic nun nearby to him with an armful of packages. He’d never seen a nun before and she was in full regalia.

 

The boy said “Can I help you across the street with some of that stuff?” She answered “Why yes, I would appreciate that.” When they got to the other side, he handed the packages back to her and she expressed her profound gratitude. Whereupon the boy replied “I’m glad to do it, ma’am, because any friend of Batman is a friend of mine!”

 

Well, that boy had the right intention and he did a good thing. He just got a little mixed up about the source of his motivation. But we Christians can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that when we reach out to any of God’s children, it is because we have a friend in Jesus and He wants to be their friend too.

 

Are all the children in? Are all the children in? My friends, unless and until that day comes, our work as Christians is yet to be done.

 

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.