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1 Sam 3:
1-10 “Speak Lord, for your
servant is listening”: This morning at the 9 am service, we celebrated Children’s Day, the last day of our Sunday School program until the summer program begins on July 11th. It is a time to celebrate the children in our program, to honor our third graders with a monogrammed Bible, and to express our appreciation for our dedicated and devoted teachers and Senior Pilgrim Fellowship assistants. You will see all of their names listed on the insert of the bulletin, and if you recognize any of these dedicated volunteers, express your gratitude for all that they offer to our children and the life of our church. Today I would like to reflect on Christian Education in the 21st Century, the challenges that we face in our complex, post-modern, high-tech society, and the vision that we have as a church for our youth. I remember very clearly attending Sunday School every single Sunday. It was not an option. I have my Bible that was presented to me in third grade, and in my jewelry box is my Sunday School pin for good attendance. I have to admit, I am still proud of the fact that I never missed more than 3 days a year (the requirement for receiving the pin). My parents strongly believed that Sunday School was paramount to their children’s upbringing, and so my 4 siblings and I were in attendance every week. The program I thought was boring. We memorized Psalms and the books of the Bible, colored pictures of Jesus and the prophets, and talked about many stories in the Bible, but we didn’t relate them to our own lives, and so I viewed the Bible as an important, much respected old book with some pretty gruesome pictures. Surprisingly enough there are still many churches that follow the same Christian Education program resembling that program 50 years ago. A stagnate, outdated curriculum could be part of the reason that many churches suffer of a failing Christian Education program, but there are many other challenges as well. Even though our program is thriving, we face many of the same challenges as other churches. One of greatest challenges is sport activities scheduled for Sunday mornings; the sacredness of Sunday morning is a thing of the past, and many children have to choose between the two, opting for the sports. I have talked with other churches in the area, and they all concur that this problem is of growing concern. The other challenge we face is that families are simply exhausted from their lives. Children are involved in a multitude of extra-curricular activities, so much so, that students are fatigued as well as their parents, who work full-time at stressful jobs plus have to drive their children and attend these activities. Many families share with me that they never have the opportunity to even sit down as a family and share a meal. They are constantly on the run. For some families, especially with young children, Sunday morning is a time to stay at home, rest, re-connect, and share a family breakfast together. This is very understandable, but Sunday morning worship is left out of the picture. There are other families who see Christian Education as irrelevant for today, and therefore not an important element in their children’s lives. They feel as if the schools do a good job exploring and teaching issues of respect, diversity, awareness of world problems, and the importance of volunteering, and they don’t see that church school would add anything more to that picture. So you can see some of the basic challenges that we face as a church in this increasingly secular society When I was called here three years ago to be an Associate Minister, one of my responsibilities was to oversee the Christian Education program, and to envision a program that would best reflect the theology and missions of this church in an exciting way that would attract and keep children active in our program – a program that parents would understand as paramount to their child’s development as citizen’s of the world and as Christians in a post modern society. Understanding full well the challenges of Christian Education, I felt daunted by this call and wanted to look at the program with fresh new eyes – using my wisdom and experience as a mother and grandmother as well. In communication with our ministers, the Board of Youth Ed, the teachers, parents, and children, we put together some goals for our program. Kendall Perkins, our Coordinator, and I begin to write our own curriculum, because there was not one that we could find that fit our needs. Our objective was to help the children feel that God is a living God of love and that each of us are called to service as ambassadors of God’s love; to help them see the Bible and the teachings of Jesus as relevant for our lives today; to understand that everyone in the world is part of God’s family, and that we are all related and interconnected; that diversity in God’s family is natural, good, and must be respected; to help them see the world as God’s creation and to see their role as caregivers of this great gift; to believe that we each have a role to play, and every act of kindness no matter how small is important to God and to God’s vision for our world. We want the children to feel that God is, as Paul Tillich would say, the ‘ground of our being,’ and so this God-centered world view would replace the self-centered world view, which leads to selfishness, greed, and disinterest for anything or anyone outside of one’s immediate circle. As you can see, our objectives for our program are grand, but I believe that they are crucial in the foundation of our youth today. This year we changed the name of our program to God’s Neighborhood, because we felt that this name better reflected the aims of our program. A neighborhood conjures up images of a caring community and of individual responsibility, and by calling it God’s Neighborhood, it suggests that it is God-centered and moves our horizons beyond our own intimate surroundings to the world at large. Our hope is that each child will truly feel membership within this divine neighborhood, and feel compassion for all his or her diverse neighbors. We want our children to feel their faith, not simply recite it, but to feel passionately about their world and see all aspects of the world as issues of faith. A God-centered view of the world makes almost every aspect of life an issue of faith, and that is the major difference between our program and programs of social justice offered by schools. Understanding ourselves and our lives in relationship to each other and to God is a critical part of Christian Education and matters of faith. Whether it is healthcare, poverty, peace and reconciliation, care for the environment, and politics, as it relates to human rights and issues of justice, these are all matters of faith and are reflected on in the Bible. As Christians, we teach our children to be active in making change in this world. The life and teachings of Jesus Christ show us a man who was active in the social issues of his day. Jesus did not simply sit with his disciples and ponder the issues, but rather he healed people on the Sabbath, associated with so-called polluted people, communicated with marginalized people, challenged the authorities, and he did all of this in the name of God and understanding his call to practice the ‘love of neighbor.’ Mother Teresa, who was very active in her faith, said “The poor have no need of our pity, they need our assistance.” From our experience among the poorest in Haiti, we know that this is true. As our children grow into adulthood, our goal is to help them recognize and understand this call to practice “love of neighbor” as a way of life – to truly care about their fellow human beings. We have failed, if these young adults feel neutral about issues, not really caring and having no opinion. We have failed if the problems here at home and around the world don’t seem to matter to them, if they say to one another, “Those people over there, what does that have to do with my life?” We want our young adults to want to help those in need, to understand that volunteerism is natural and right, and that we are called to participate in God’s service – to be ambassadors for change. I have many young people share with me that volunteerism is fun, and it makes them feel good about themselves. Volunteerism is healthy and rewarding for our youth and for all of us. It adds a broader dimension to living, and contributes so much to a more meaningful life. It is critical that our youth feel that they have a life that truly matters; that their life makes a difference; that they are important to God and loved by God. This reminds me of Mohandas Gandhi’s belief that, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Many of us know the joy that serving others brings to our lives. Yes, many times it is hard work, but the rewards are great. One of the requirements in our confirmation class is 15 hours of volunteer service. For some volunteering is not new, for others, who have never volunteered, our hope is to introduce them to it in the hopes that they will feel the rewards of serving others and feel called to make volunteerism a part of their life. Getting young people involved in social work has many advantages: they are seldom bored, they feel useful, and it broadens their horizons beyond their circle of family and friends. We offer the idea that every act of kindness matters, especially to the person to whom it was given. Viewing volunteerism as something that you have to do, or as atonement for perceived sins, misses the beauty of the gift of giving to another, of helping another for purely the love of it, for responding to God’s call to practice love of neighbor. I have been very proud of many of our children and young adults this year, and I have seen where our program in conjunction with the missions and programs of our church, and, of course, good parenting have really made a difference. I would like to offer several examples of how our children and young adults have answered the call to help those in need. One day I was sitting in my office and the Cox children who live next door came in carrying bags and bags of groceries for the food pantry. I asked them, “Where did you get all of these groceries?” And the older daughter speaking for her little brother said, “Jack had a birthday party, and instead of everyone bringing him a present, he asked them to bring food for the food pantry. And this is the food that we collected.” Jack is 6 years old. And this was not the first time or the last time that this has happened. These young children are listening to what we are saying, they may not seem it sometimes, but they are listening, and they are responding to the need. They want to help. My second example is taken from Matt Searle’s reflection on the trip to El Salvador this past February. As you will recall, 27 members and friends from this church, under the leadership of Allison Hine, traveled to El Salvador to work with the Fuller Center for Housing. 14 of those 27 were teenagers from our Senior Pilgrim Fellowship. These teenagers chose to work in El Salvador in the hot sun, participating in bucket brigades of concrete that went up ladders to pour foundations and digging septic holes with pick axes in heat of the afternoon. This was how they spent their spring vacation. When I asked them about their trip, many responded, “It was great!” I would like to read a paragraph written by Matt Searle that shares a poignant moment. Matt writes: “One little boy in particular, named Kevin, came over to me while I was taking a break and put his arm around me. I was touched by the gesture, as I had never met or said anything to him before. This moment allowed me to see that there is nothing in the world that can compare to an act of human kindness. Though the people in El Salvador may live in a foreign country and lead lives dissimilar to our own, they are not all that different than us. In retrospect I, as well as the other members of the group, were simply reaching our arms around a random stranger, and doing so purely out of the kindness of our hearts. We may only have helped build two houses, but the care we displayed made our impact far greater. For me, the trip was not only one of the most memorable experiences of my life, but also the most rewarding.” Matt’s reflection is one of many reflections that are on our church website, and if you haven’t read them, I invite you to do so. My last example is from one of the eight teenagers who traveled with the most recent Tree of Life Journey this past March. Hear these words from Mattie Renn’s reflection: “We went to one of these Bedouin villages, to the home of Khalil Al Amour. He welcomed us with open arms and offered us tea and cake that his wife had made. There were children who followed us. One of the girls gave me a little hair tie, and I, in return, gave her a necklace. They were sweet. They were just like kids everywhere else. They sleep like us. They eat like us. They laugh like us. They cry like us. They dream like us. And then we went on a tour of the village, with those little kids following us. We saw a demolished house. You think you understand how you’ll feel when you see one. You read about it in books, and you think you understand. But that is nothing compared to how it really is. After seeing those kids and feeling their humanity, you see a house that could easily be theirs. It is on the ground; a heap of rubble that housed their lives and their happiness and their sadness. And there are no words to describe what you feel. There are no words.” These examples are but a few of the experiences that our young adults have shared with us. Eliza Nguyen’s blog of the Tree of Life Journey is full of very thoughtful reflections on the trip and the way in which it impacted her life. I urge you to explore these writings on our church website. Our youth have a lot to say, and, I think you will soon understand why we are so proud of them. Our scripture lesson today tells about the call to a young boy named Samuel, ministering to the priest Eli. At first he did not recognize the call as coming from God, because the story tells us that the Word of God was rare in those days. Yet through the guidance of the priest Eli, he soon understood that God was calling him to service, and Samuel answered, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” Our role as ministers and teachers in our Christian Education program is much the same as Eli’s role. We guide our youth to understand that God is a living God and active in this world, constantly calling us to service, challenging us to take on the problems in our community and around the world, demanding that we be so much more than our own vision of ourselves. We are so proud that our church, meaning all of you, understand this call to mission, and we are proud of our work here at home and around the world. Our vision is that the children and all of you will hear that call and understand it as from God. That you will feel that God is “the ground of your being,’ and believe in your hearts that the world is truly “God’s neighborhood.’ With this understanding of self and the world, our children and all of us will strive together toward a better, more hopeful future, one that is well pleasing to God. From the author of the Letter to the Hebrews (quoting Jeremiah), we hear God’s promise, “I will put my laws in their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach one another or say to each other, ‘know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me.” Speak God, for your servants are listening.. Amen
The Rev. Rebecca Crosby First Congregational Church of Old Lyme
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