Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
November 9, 2008
CHRIST AT THE CENTER: THE FAMILY OF
FAITH
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Scripture:
Matthew 19:13-15, James 1:17-27
INTRODUCTION
This past week, I asked the
members of our staff if anyone knew the origin of the phrase “No Child Left Behind,” which is also a Federal
Education law in this land designed to enrich the lives of our children. Rev. Charles Black spoke up and said, “I
believe those words first came from Marian Wright Edelman, President of the
Children’s Defense Fund,” and he was correct.
I have here the book she
wrote sixteen years ago entitled “The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My
Children and Yours,” which was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list back in
the early 1990’s. And this is the
paragraph that set it all in motion:
“I wrote this book out of fear and
concern for America’s future…The greatest threat to our national security (is)
the enemy within – our loss of strong, moral, family, and community values and
support…All Americans must commit personally and as voters to a national
crusade of conscience and action that will ensure that no child is left
behind. Only we – individually and
collectively – can transform our nation’s priorities and assure its future as
we face a new century and begin a new millennium.” (From “The Measure of Our Success” by Marian
Wright Edelman, Harper Collins, 1992, pages 19-20)
Now what this visionary woman
has said and written is not a partisan slogan in an election year, neither is
it a politically correct statement just to get our attention. The theme “No Child Left Behind” is instead a
Biblical mandate and a theological imperative that we as Christians and all the
citizens of this nation need to accept and affirm.
I
That is surely true here at
the corner of 16th and Peachtree as we seek to become “The Family of
Faith” which the Lord has called us to be, caring for and sharing our love with
the children who belong to this congregation.
Moreover, it is equally true out there in the world, where millions of
hungry, hurting and often hopeless children are waiting for someone to help
them.
And the reality is, in the
midst of our Annual Giving Campaign, that it will and it should cost all of us
something as we work toward and pray for the day when “No Child Is Left
Behind.”
Several weeks ago, my good
friend Dr. Scott Weimer, Pastor of the North Avenue Presbyterian Church, began
his sermon with a brief prayer from a young boy:
“Dear
God,
If you will give me a Genie lamp like
Aladdin, I will give you anything you want…except my money or my chess set.
Love,
Raphael”
And you may remember the
story about a little girl who slipped a quarter into an offering envelope and
added this note:
“Dear
Preacher,
Enclosed is a small gift for the
church…and there’s more where this came from if you will just shorten your
sermons. Thank you very much.
Your
friend,
My friends, if we believe
that all of our children are the greatest gifts God has given to us, then He is
counting on us to give as much as we can to reach out and embrace them with
open hearts and with open hands.
That’s what Jesus told us a
long time ago. He wasn’t talking about
annual giving campaigns, but He was referring to a generous spirit and an attitude
of gratitude when He said: Let the little children come to Me, and do
not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs. And the Gospel of Matthew reports that Jesus laid His hands on those children to
bless them. (Matthew 19:13-15)
As you know, those are the
same words we use when little babies are baptized in worship – that “Jesus took the children into His arms and
blessed them, even as we do today.”
And once the parents have made their promise to bring up their son or
daughter in the faith, then we ask this entire congregation to make your
commitment, that you will “be the sponsors of these children, to the end that
one day they will confess Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.”
So we are in agreement here,
that no child will be left behind. And
in order to keep our promises to every child and teenager in this church –
numbering now almost a thousand from the little ones in the nursery on through
high school – we have recruited more than 100 volunteer teachers and leaders
and a staff of 10 full-time and part-time Christian educators to raise our
children in this family of faith and lead them to the Lord.
Moreover, you can see and
hear the children and youth participating in worship services on Sunday mornings,
including our choirs led by additional volunteers and a staff of four
professional musicians.
As I have told you before, my
own experience in the children’s choir of the church my father served as pastor
was not so good. The volunteer director
was an older woman who didn’t care much for me, and one night at rehearsal, as
I completely disrupted the boys soprano and alto sections, she stopped the
singing, stared me down and said, “Young man, I don’t care if you are the
minister’s son, either you are going to shape up or ship out.” With my heart beating and my body trembling,
I stood up and said “Miss Degraw, I’m shipping out” … which, as you might
imagine, caused some rather significant repercussions in my life back then.
Well, just the opposite is true
here my friends. The teachers and
leaders and Christian educators and volunteer and professional musicians who
work with our children not only care for them – they love them and are
committed to walk alongside them in this journey of faith. And as we have said, that costs us something
– in time and energy, and also financially.
Your pledge to the Annual Giving Campaign makes all of that possible.
So I ask you: how much are
the lives of these children and young people worth to us and to God? That is a good question to think about as you
and I decide what we will give. Jesus
said Let the little children come to me,
and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the
II
Now there is one more thing
to say before the Benediction, and it is this:
Jesus was talking about children like ours right here in this church,
but He was also talking about all of the children out there in the world.
If the author of the New
Testament Letter of James was Jesus’ brother, as church tradition claims, or
Jesus’ disciple as some Biblical scholars say (see “The Letters of James and
Peter,” by William Barclay, pages 7-39; “The Letter of James,” The Interpreters
Dictionary of the Bible,” pages 794-798; and “The First to Follow: The Apostles
of Jesus” by John R. Claypool, pages 117-120), then either way, James probably
heard Jesus’ words that day about letting the children come to Him, and the
lesson was not forgotten.
In fact, it was actually
expanded, because approximately 40-50 years after Jesus’ death and
resurrection, this is what the author of the Letter of James had to say:
Every
generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above…In fulfillment
of God’s own purpose, He gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would
become a kind of first fruits of His creatures…
Be
doers of the word, and not merely hearers…and you will be blessed in your
doing…religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to
care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by
the world. (James 1:17a, 18, 22a, 25b, 27)
Now this is what I think
James was telling those first century Christians and all of us still today:
everything we have received and whatever we decide to give comes from God. And through God’s Son, Jesus Christ – the
Word of Truth – we are all called to share our first fruits with others,
especially with orphans, widows and people who are poor and distressed. And as we do that, said James, we will be
blessed.
My friends, that is what the
Community Ministries and Mission Outreach of this church are all about. If you will turn to the back of the bulletin,
you can see that our partnerships with people in need are focused first in this
city, then across our nation, and wider still around the world. And I count more than 50 projects and
programs which are directly related to children, to women and to families who
are in distress.
Your giving reaches out to
touch homeless infants and their mothers in the Genesis Shelter. Our partnership with Hillside Presbyterian creates
the opportunity to teach children how to read, and we’re also able to feed and
clothe many of them, which is true as well in our refugee resettlement efforts.
During the past six months,
mission trips sponsored by this church have taken our elementary children and
teenagers to poverty stricken neighborhoods in Macon, Georgia, Boston,
Massachusetts, Mexico, Honduras and Costa Rica to lend a helping hand; we have
sent adult groups to orphanages in Mandeville, Jamaica and Nairobi, Kenya,
ministries which your faithful giving supports and sustains; in addition, we
have worked alongside our mission partners in schools and medical clinics in
Fortaleza, Brazil, LaGonave in Haiti and Kibera, Kenya.
In all of those places and
there are many more, God has provided us with the privilege to reach out and
touch an increasing number of children, mothers, fathers, families and to join
our hearts and hands with community ministry and mission outreach partners across
our city, state, nation and world…hoping and praying that no child within our
sphere of influence will be left behind.
You say “Preacher, don’t you
realize we are in the midst of a financial crisis.” I do, and so do all of you. And that’s why I agree with the former head
of the U.N. Kofi Annan, that now more than ever before is when we need to reach
out to the poor, especially the children of this world. Kofi Annan, speaking just the other day to
the World Food Congress said on that day 10,000 children around the world would
die from malnutrition and starvation – 10,000 in one day. And Annan added, “The financial crisis
deserves our urgent attention and focus, but so does the hunger of all of these
children, millions of them.” (“Annan: Hunger an urgent crisis, too,” The
Atlanta Journal Constitution, Friday October 17, 2008, page C1).
And he’s right. As we reach out to touch them we hope and
pray that the children within our sphere of influence will not be left behind. And they, my friends, are actually reaching
back to us, to bless us with joy for the journey and a spiritual vitality that
has changed our lives. Someday I can
imagine that some of those children will grow up and graduate from the
theological school of the Presbyterian University of East Africa which our
church has recently helped to build, and they will be sent here as mission
partners to help us learn how to grow deeper in our faith and to strengthen the
Presbyterian Church USA – that is a vision, my friends, which has already begun.
But as all of us know, we still have a
long way to go.
CONCLUSION
At the end of Marian Wright
Edelman’s book is a prayer for children, written by Ina Hughes who is a
Presbyterian. In closing, I want to
share that prayer with you, but before I do, please listen to this story Ina
Hughes told about a long trip that she and her husband took with their three
children.
The kids kept asking “How
much farther do we have to go? Are we
almost there? When will be arrive?” over
and over again, until finally their father, with his hand on the wheel, said
out loud “Don’t ask me that question anymore!”
After a few seconds of
silence in the back seat, one little voice persisted: “Dad, just tell me
this. How old will I be when we get
there?” (From “A Prayer for Children” by
Ina Hughes, William Morrow and Company, 1995, pages 141-142)
In this journey called life, surrounded
by hope and despair, prosperity and poverty, we may not know the final answer
to that question. But we can be
absolutely certain that God does not want any child to be left behind, and
neither do we. Neither do we.
Let us pray:
“Dear
God,
We pray
for children
Who
sneak popsicles before supper,
Who
erase holes in math workbooks,
Who can
never find their shoes.
And we
pray for those
Who stare
at photographers from behind barbed wire,
Who
can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
Who
never ‘counted potatoes,’
Who are
born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,
Who
never go to the circus,
Who
live in an X-rated world.
We pray
for children
Who
bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
Who hug
us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.
And we
pray for those
Who
never get dessert,
Who
have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
Who
watch their parents watch them die,
Who can’t
find any bread to steal,
Who
don’t have any rooms to clean up,
Whose
pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser,
Whose
monsters are real.
We pray
for children
Who
spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
Who
throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
Who
like ghost stories,
Who
shove dirty clothes under the bed, and never rinse out the tub,
Who get
visits from the tooth fairy,
Who
don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
Who
squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,
Whose tears
we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.
And we
pray for those
Whose
nightmares come in the daytime,
Who
will eat anything,
Who
have never seen a dentist,
Who
aren’t spoiled by anybody,
Who go
to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who
live and move, but have no being.
We pray
for children who want to be carried and for those who must,
For
those we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance.
For
those we smother…and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to
offer it.
Lord:
please help us to offer our hands to them so that no child is left behind
because we did not care or did not act.”
In
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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