Scripture: Matthew 22:15-24
Very often the subject matter for my sermons is dictated by things that are going on in the world around us, as it was last week for instance, when I felt I had to speak about the threat of war with Iraq. I often frankly begin, not so much with a direct message from scripture or a clear idea of what word of faith needs to be spoken, as with a conviction that something needs to be said, that there are realities we live in the midst of that it would be sinful not to talk about. Very often those matters that press themselves on me, on all of us, are deeply troubling. There’s more than enough to be troubled about, but it’s not enough just to be troubled, but to try to discern what it is that our faith may have to say to us in the midst of that trouble, or what direction our thinking and praying needs to go.
We have known for some time now that this weekend there was to be an event going on in our community that was not at all troubling, but that also commanded attention from our community, that it would be sinful to ignore. It’s nice to have your head turned every so often by an event of a positive nature, such as the dedication of Baker-Butler School. Since half of that name is present with us just about every Sunday here at Sojourners, and since Mr. Baker has stacked the worship service with a platoon of Baker family and friends, (although some of them insist that they are here voluntarily), it would be hard to just sort of go about our business this morning as though nothing unusual had happened yesterday. And I have known for some weeks now that that event was going to direct in some way my preaching for today. I just wasn’t sure how.
In the academic world there is something called a “festschrift”, which is a custom that was often observed at the University of Chicago—I’m not sure about UVa. Loosely translated, I guess it would mean something like writing in celebration or in honor of someone. As I recall it was most often something that was done at the time of retirement for a person who had become well known in his or her field. Rather than simply recite a list of a person’s achievements, other scholars would write papers about subjects that related to the work the person had done, and they would then deliver the papers at a conference and maybe collect them and publish them as a book. The point was not to simply applaud the person but to draw attention to the subjects that the person herself had cared about.
It occurred to me that this would be an appropriate spirit for us to have today as we acknowledge yesterday’s dedication—not just to express a joy at prayer time, not just to express our own affection and esteem for a member of our family, not just to applaud John for what he has done to earn the honor, or to applaud the school board for exercising such good judgment in the choice of the name, but to spend a few moments directing our thoughts and prayers in the direction of things that John Baker has cared about and continues to care about, actively: public schools, the education of our children, more broadly perhaps the welfare of our children.
But those are broad topics, aren’t they? And just saying that it might be good to orient ourselves toward education and the needs of children I have to say has not helped a whole lot in zeroing in on that sermon topic for today. There are a lot of preaching possibilities here, and I am not an expert in any of them. I am aware that I am surrounded by people who are experts, in various ways, not in some high falutin’ technical sense necessarily, but in the sense of being immersed day by day in education or in matters relating to children. Teachers, tutors, mentors, home schoolers, school system administrators, school board members, consultants, analysts, advocates for children to the courts, the government, the public, parents…I’m not even actively involved in parenting any more. I am very much aware that I am not an expert, and I will try not to speak as though I think I am.
But then while expertness or expertise is necessary, it is also not sufficient, and is not always the point. Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and director of the Children’s Defense Fund, certainly qualifies as an expert. Last Sunday, by the way, was the day designated by the Children’s Defense Fund as Children’s Sabbath, and that has fed into my thinking about today too. Marian Wright Edelman wrote a book that I came across recently, book of prayers, from which I adapted our invocation for this morning. At the beginning of that book she wrote: “I set out to write a very different book—a policy book—but out tumbled prayers instead.” Which of course is where we all come together, regardless of vocation or avocation, degree or area of expertise, type of involvement or stage of life.
We all have prayers inside us that are directly or indirectly prayers on behalf of children. When they come tumbling out, it is not as policy proposals, or reasoned appeals, structured argument, action plans, or lesson plans. You can turn prayers into all of these (maybe that’s the job of experts, whatever we mean by experts), but our prayers don’t begin that way. They begin just as disconnected pieces of thoughts and feelings, stammering expressions of hope or concern. My thoughts relating to this sermon have been very much that way, and rather than try to impose some order on them, I think I want to simply retrace my thought process with you, hoping that at some point it will resonate with your own or spark some thought or prayer of your own.
Knowing that I wanted in some broad way to focus on education and children this morning, I turned a few weeks ago to the scripture for today, the lectionary scripture, which you’ve heard. Jesus said that of all the commandments, of all the things that God has or might ask of us, the first and greatest is this: “To love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind…And the second is like it: to love your neighbor as you love yourself.” On the one hand this is pretty basic stuff, and pretty broad, and can certainly be applied to pretty much any topic or situation. On the other hand, there’s nothing in it that specifically suggests a relation to education or children, so I just sort of let it be inside me as I reflected on how I might relate the scripture to what I had in mind for this morning.
Then I saw a picture in the newspaper. This was, I think, back in the early days of the sniper shootings, as people were beginning to realize that this was not going to be an isolated incident or two and were beginning to feel unsafe doing normal everyday things. The picture I have in mind was of someone crouching down behind their car and peeking up over it as they were filling up the car with gas.
The picture made me sad. For whatever reason it appeared to me not as a picture of a single person behind a car but as a portrait of our society, what the inner life of our society might look like if we could take a picture of it. It was a picture of pervasive fear, and if it doesn’t cause everyone to hide while they’re pumping gas, it does seem to represent a widespread feeling that the world is not safe.
And then the question did occur to me: What kind of a picture of the world does this present to our children. What do they see in this picture or in so many other images that they may be presented with in the world around them? What images shape our children’s psyches and spirits? What kind of a world do children see? A world in which people are afraid of each other? Afraid to move about in public? Afraid of what’s in the woods across the street? Afraid of what’s in the mind of the person walking toward you? Afraid of what’s in the mail?
What children see is hardly a new concern of course. There’s been talk for a lot of years, for instance, about the negative effects of what children see in the media, movies, t.v., internet. Does seeing gratuitous violence or just plain too much violence or graphic and loveless sex hurt people, hurt children? And what should we do about it, and where does the responsibility lie? Important questions.
But it occurred to me that it is not just a question of what children see, ought to see, are allowed to see on a movie screen or monitor. It’s also a question of what they see in us, in the real world. It’s too easy to shove the question off on the movies. It’s not only the way reality is depicted. It’s the way reality is that can be harmful. And how extra sad it is if we are teaching our children, through the pictures of our lives we present to them, to be afraid of people, even if there is good and understandable reason sometimes to be afraid. We can debate how or whether to control media images our children see, but real life images are not very controllable.
Then I remembered the scripture again. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength…and your neighbor as yourself.” In the specific context those words took on a specific meaning for me. It is not only what children see that may be the issue but what they don’t see, what is missing from the picture. It’s not so much that there are images of violence or fear all around us, manufactured or real. It’s that there aren’t equally powerful images of love. The images we have are only part of the problem. That there is fear in our world and in ourselves is only reality. But we’re in trouble if we’re missing images that tell us about another reality, that there is something stronger than fear.
That thought led to still another thought. O.K. It’s not just the made-up images we need to be concerned about, it’s the real life images. And it’s not just the images that are present in our world that should concern us, but the images that are absent. It’s also not all about the images that we see, that children see, in the outside world, it’s about the way they see and the images they carry with them on the inside. It’s not just a matter of what’s in front of the eyes but also what’s behind the eyes.
How do we see, and how does what’s inside us change what we see outside us? I started out seeing a picture of someone crouched behind an automobile in fear and what I saw was a social commentary, a picture of where our society is heading, a kind of object lesson. And I worried that in some less intellectualized way that maybe that’s what children would see—a picture that communicated fear.
But there is another way of seeing that picture that I discovered as I continued to look. It is a picture after all just of another human being who yes appears to be afraid, but with different eyes I look and I see, and I want to just walk into the picture and say that there’s lots that makes me afraid too. How about if we just put our arms around each other for a few minutes and lend each other some of the strength we also have. We can see one and the same picture as a disturbing social commentary or as a call to love each other. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind…and your neighbor as yourself.”
I know Jesus was answering a question about commandments. He said these were the greatest. But I hear them in a different way, not so much “do this” as an invitation, a hope, a prayer. How do we help our children to see their world and other people with eyes of love? How do we help pictures, what children see, become invitations to love? I don’t propose any short answers to that. I only suggest it is important—that we help our children not only to have loving things to see, but to have eyes that see lovingly, and what is equally likely, that we allow our children to help us to have eyes that see lovingly. “You shall love—you are made—to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind…and your neighbor as yourself.”
And, in addition to some holy, loving spirit that informs the eyes we see the world with, dreams. We pray for dreams, don’t we? Even for ourselves, whatever age we are, that there be dreams inside of us still. But especially for our children. That they have dreams inside their heads and their hearts. Things they can see on the inside. Dreams, of course, about some imagined future that is good and that have them in the picture. Dreams about what they might grow to do or be. Dreams that are not squashed by people who tell them they are no good, or treat them as though they are no good, or a world that tells them they are no good.
But other kinds of dreams too, not only individual dreams, ambitions to do or be this or that. But shared dreams. Dreams not only about who I might be, but who we might be. In the church we talk a lot, I hope we talk a lot, about the kingdom of God, the reign of God. Maybe that’s too fancy, too remote, too religious, too…something. But however we think about it, or talk about it, we surely pray for some common dreams to be planted in the spirits of our children and to thrive in our own. Without those dreams too, what children see will not be nearly enough.
As I said at the beginning, I don’t speak in the spirit of trying to offer some policy proposals or action plans. Simply to begin to try to give voice to some fragments of prayers, prayers that at least speak of some things we hope we are about. Like finding ways to say in ways that are embedded in our living that love is stronger than fear. Like finding ways to see with eyes of love. Like discovering dreams that are not just yours or mine but ours.
These are some things I pray that we may be about for the sake of our children, for God’s sake, for the wholeness of our souls. Amen.
Jim Bundy
October 27, 2002