Every child, a universe

 

Luke 2: 1-16
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
Christmas Eve 2023

Photo of the nativity scene at Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. A baby doll wrapped in a keffiyeh lying in a pile of rubble with a candle burning and wooden figurines of Mary, Joseph, a shepherd, three Magi and a sheep look on. Original photo can be found here.

When I first started in ministry as a young associate pastor, my colleague Bill Youngkin and his wife Betty, who was a professor at the University of Dayton, would invite me over to their house every now and then for lunch after church. Sometimes their young adult children, Molly and Jeremy, would be there, home from college or graduate school. I remember being intrigued at the way Betty and Bill would talk with Jeremy and Molly, not like their offspring but like separate and independent adults, as though they were speaking with colleagues or close friends.



I couldn’t remember ever having witnessed parents speaking to their young adult children like that. Sorry, Mom, I’m too close to be objective in our case. It made such an impression on me that I promised myself that I would do the same, that I would raise my children with the knowledge that they are separate and independent people and not an extension of myself or my ego. Of course, I haven’t always succeeded. From the moment our children enter our lives, they begin their path away from us and we are continually learning to let go in big and small ways.



I recently read a poem entitled “Just Let Them” by Cassie Phillips and it’s about parents who are alienated from their children but it’s also about letting go of our needs when it comes to our children.



If they want to choose something or someone over you, LET THEM.

If they want to go weeks without talking to you, LET THEM.

If they are okay with never seeing you, LET THEM.

If they are okay with always putting themselves first, LET THEM.

If they are showing you who they are

and not what you perceived them to be, LET THEM.

If they want to follow the crowd, LET THEM.

If they want to judge or misunderstand you, LET THEM.

If they act like they can live without you, LET THEM.

If they want to walk out of your life and leave,

hold the door open, AND LET THEM.

Let them lose you.



Aaaand once again, you may be saying to yourself, this is pretty depressing, this is not why I came to church tonight, and yet Christmas is about two parents who raised a child who was utterly not theirs. A child who stayed behind in Jerusalem when he was twelve and questioned the temple priests and scholars, rebuked his parents when they desperately went searching for him, and as an adult referred to his mother as “Woman”.



It was James Baldwin who said that the children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe, and that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality. They are ours to care for, ours to provide safety and the secure knowledge that there is nothing they can do to lose our love for them, but they do not belong to us. Just as it is not good for a sapling to grow in the shadow of the mighty oak that produced it, so too the love that we give is one that gives light and space and freedom so that they can become themselves.



Every child, every human being is a universe unto themselves, waiting to be discovered, for us to be curious about them, their ideas, their unique view of the world and the gifts they have to bring to it. Mister Rogers said, “Love is at the root of everything. All learning. All parenting. All relationships. Love, or the lack of it.” And in all this time we have yet to bring love to our governance, to healthcare and housing, to education and to employment, to our foreign policy, to our neighborhoods. Every child lost to war, to violence, to hate and bigotry is a devastating loss not only to the here and now but to the future. Every Trayvon Martin, every Breonna Taylor, every Matthew Shepard, every Leelah Alcorn, every child at the border, every child in Palestine and Israel, in Sudan and the Congo, in Ukraine and Russia.



Christmas could’ve been a story about a god-man who came with the heavenly host, an angel army to defeat the powers of evil. Or an earthly army joined in a war against the occupying Roman Empire. That is what some people want now.



Instead, Christmas is a story of courage and ordinary human beings who give love and safety to a child in such a way that when he is grown, he can give himself to the world and change it, change people’s lives. Would that we do that for every child, for that is certainly what they need and deserve. Jesus placed a child in the midst of his disciples and said, “Truly, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kin-dom of heaven...and whoever welcomes one such child, welcomes me.”



This morning we prayed these words: “We pray for our children, which is every child everywhere, by undoing our complacency in their demise. By throwing sand in the machine of their destruction. By co-creating a world where gentleness is our guide and our movements across the earth are so reverent that we dare not wake a sleeping child. For when children are free, we all are free.” Amen.

Benediction – Rachel Hackenberg


Light the lamp of gladness.
Burn the fire of freedom.
Bring candles aplenty
so that no one in despair lacks comfort.
Fuel thanksgiving like a beacon for praise.
Spark goodness for warmth
when the night runs too long and cold.
Testify to joy,
now and always,
until dawn’s light is eternal.