Now, I want to tell you why Paul is a friend of mine.

Paul is a friend of mine because God brought us together. God placed Paul and me in the same church. I have seen Paul grow taller, get a little sister. He has seen me grow broader, and have another son. And I’m going to continue to see him grow taller, and I hope he does not continue to see me grow broader. But God has done something miraculous, in that God has caused our lives to become enmeshed in one another. And not just me and Paul, but me and the other children here at Christ Church, and many of the adults and other children here at Christ Church.

Paul once wrote a letter to the Church in Galatia where he said that in Christ’s Body, which is the church, there is neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor Gentile. Our differences don’t make a difference to God, and while God celebrates our differences--God doesn’t make us out of a single mold--they are ultimately irrelevant to whether we are loved by God or part of God’s Church. Children don’t seem to have been a high priority item for Paul. He doesn’t talk much about them in his letters. But if they had been, he probably would have also said neither adult nor child, makes a difference to God. Child or adult, adult or child.....both have a home in God’s holy community. There are no afterthoughts in God’s church, and that includes children.

We have heard these words from Jesus so often it’s difficult for them to not wash over us. They’re some of his most famous and beautiful words from the gospels. Sometimes Jesus is pictured as Max Von Sydow, stiffly British, a face permanently cast in seriousness, oblivious to humor and joy and playfulness. Well, this passage creates a portrait of him that begs more for Robin Williams. Squatting down, bouncing a child, listening to their questions, relishing their trustfulness and lack of guile and immunity to pretense.

It would be untrue to say that parents in past ages didn’t love their children. They did. Or that they didn’t hold out some of the same kind of hopes for their children that we do. Progress, the notion that the next generation will have it better than the one that precedes it, is a modern idea. But still, I can easily imagine Hebrew parents hoping that their young daughters and sons would not have to live under Roman rule when they grew up. But despite the similarities, children were viewed differently, also. They measured status. Lots of children reflected better on a woman and a man that few or none. They were an insurance policy. Who will take care of me when I get old if I don’t have any children? They were a labor force. They worked in the fields, or watched the flock, or helped in the home, or worked in the shop. Today we have structures in our society to protect children, even from parents who don’t act the way parents are supposed to act. Today, Michael Jordan gives away $5 million of his vast fortune, and for what? To help teachers who work with kids. In the time of Jesus there were none of these things. And though their parents loved them, they were little more than property. As I said, Paul wrote a whole lot to a bunch of different churches, but he didn’t say anything to them about what to do with their children.

And here’s Jesus, lifting up children, declaring God’s love of them, God’s grace toward them. Even giving us sophisticated adults something to look back toward, that maybe that stuff we dismiss about children, maybe it reveals something truthful about the kingdom of God.

Children aren’t perfect. They can be merciless and exasperating. They have a bent toward pursuing their own agenda at the expense of everyone else. They learn how to manipulate the behavior of others at an early age. Whether these things just mean that they’re plain old people like the rest of us, or that they’re beginning to grow up and become adults, is something I don’t know.

But experience with my own children has also proven to me that when they get mad, they get mad. And then they make up. One moment they’re socking one another, and the next they’re playing a game together. They don’t worry much about tomorrow. They have a hard time keeping things close to the vest, and will give when asked. They would much rather play than work, and if they don’t like something, they say so. All, of course, with people they trust. Their trust has to be earned, but it really isn’t so hard to do that. If children weren’t so trusting, we wouldn’t tell them to not talk to strangers. Guileless, immune to pretense, by nature forgiving and playful, shamelessly desirous of loving and being loved, not too proud to accept a helping hand from time to time, they show us something.

Because all this is true, from the beginning at Christ Church, we have said that it’s okay to have children here. We don’t turn our noses up at the them, and wonder why they aren’t someplace else. A long time ago, when Bernadette and I were newly married, I attended a church--one time--where the senior pastor somehow started talking about something, I don’t remember what. But he made the comment that M & M’s had been found on the floor of the sanctuary, and what would God say about his house being treated that way? It was all I could do to not stand up and shout, "God would say, ‘Hallelujah! There are children in my home!’"

Because children bring something special to a church that adults bring only with difficulty. They bring their trustfulness and guilelessness. They bring their enthusiasm and playfulness. They remind us older people, who know someday that we will grow old and die, that the future is real and has hope. They extend our lives. Our future is in God’s hands, yes, but the presence of children reminds us that the life of this community will extend beyond our own lifetimes. They charm us, and sometimes leave us in awe, with their simplicity and their willingness to believe. More comfortable with paradox than adults, they’re ready to believe. Their readiness to believe makes Santa real, makes Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Lala, and Po something more than made up characters on the television screen, and, if they could say it this way, would inspire something like "Well, why would I not believe that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

You ever seen that book "Children’s Letters to God?" Listen to some of these: Darla writes, "Did you really mean to unto others as they do unto you, because if you did then I’m going to fix my brother." Joyce asks this: "Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother but what I prayed for was a puppy." Larry has solved the eternal question of sin against one’s sister or brother: "Dear God, Maybe Cain and Abel would not kell each so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother." And my favorite: "Dear God, It rained for a whole vacation and is my father mad! He said some things about you that people are not supposed to say, but I hope you will not hurt him anyway. Your Friend, But I am not going to tell you who I am."

It’s hard not to laugh when we hear these questions, because it isn’t difficult to imagine a child asking them. And I have little doubt that they would have said things like this to Jesus. But the gracious thing about them is that if they don’t get the answer they want, it doesn’t mean that they stop loving God, or stop believing that God loves them.

For all of these reasons, because of what children bring, it has been our practice to not get bent out of shape when M & M’s get left on the floor, when crayons roll down to the front of the worship space during the middle of a sermon, or when teddy bears get left on stage when a bishop has just finished doing baptisms. Jesus doesn’t care whether they bring their teddy bears to worship or not. He’s just glad they’re here. We don’t freak out when a child cries and makes a disruption in worship, because adults make disruptions, too, just more quietly. We don’t keep kids away from the table because they’re Jesus’ children, too. Sure, they may not understand what happens when we pray over the bread and wine. But not all adults understand it, either. We offer both Sunday School and Children’s Liturgy of the Word, which is our children’s chapel. And we continue to offer them both as we go to two worship services, designing the morning so that parents can have their children present for one, or the other, or both. And we offer both because both are important. In their Liturgy of the Word, they worship God the way children worship God.....with their language and their songs, because for children to have the same thing adults have here, it needs to be different for them. In Sunday School they learn about Jesus, not just in their heads but in their hearts, and they experience the love of an adult in the community other than their parents. We have a Sunday Summer Vacation Bible School because kids don’t stop being kids just because it’s summer.

This is the way we serve them, this is the way we welcome their presence, this is why it’s sometimes kind of loud and crazy on a Sunday morning, because of what they bring to us, because of how Jesus welcomed them in his arms, and because Paul Duckworth is my friend. And his sister, Eliza, too. They are part of my family. They are my little brother and little sister. I am responsible for them, just as they are responsible for me. I will be held accountable for them, just as they will be held accountable for me. Not because I am a priest, but because I am a Christian, and this is my church home.

Someday, Paul, and Eliza, and my children, and all the other children here are going to grow up, and be adults. They may remember everything they learned in Sunday School. They may remember everything they heard in children’s chapel. They may recall every song, every prayer, every sermon. And then again, they may not. But in fulfilling our purpose and ministry to children, they’ll remember that they were loved, and that they had a home here. That it was a place of yes’s, not no’s. That as they grew up in a world that measured performance, gave grades, and constantly asks for justification of one’s existence, this was a place where they were loved just because they are, just the way they are. If we can hope for one thing for these children, it isn’t that they get good jobs, or get good grades, or be successful, it might be that when they get older and live in the adult world, they can tell their friends, and tell the people they might marry, and tell whomever, "You know it’s funny, I don’t ever remember not being welcomed in the church; I don’t ever remember not being loved by God’s people. God’s Church is my home, and it always has been."