Suffer the Little Children

Suffer the Little Children

Luke 18:15-17 and Matthew 18:1-5

Series Slide

It is good to be back with you… though it was hard to leave the beauty of God’s underwater world.  Those of you who saw our pictures understand why I enjoy sharing the beauty of the 71% of the earth that fewer than ½ of 1% of the world ever experience!  “Truly the sea is vast and spacious, teeming with creatures, living things large and small” to quote Psalm 104:25.

I also want to say, Thank you, to Dustin for stepping into the pulpit to lead Communion and share God’s Word with you.  As always, he did a great job.  He continues to grow as a minister and I am so proud to have him as a part of the team here at First.

Today, we are back to looking at the windows as we prepare to celebrate 175 years in ministry on this corner.  Speaking of 175 years, today we are celebrating the kids with our back to school bash, and then I hope that many of you will come back with your favorite ice cream to share with each other as we sing the old hymns from the Cokesbury Hymnal… but that’s at 2:00… right now we are wanting to look at the windows that say, “Suffer the Little Children to come to me.”

Sermon Slide

Now, maybe you think we are to make the kids suffer!  I mean, we are sending them back to school… we make them sit in long boring worship… well, I hope it isn’t long and boring, but you get my point.

Suffer didn’t always mean what we think it means.

English is an interesting thing… words have meaning, but sometimes the meaning changes through the generations. For example…

When we talk about the teachings of John Wesley, we talk about Sanctifying Grace, and we talk about Justifying Grace, but before all that, we consider what is called Prevenient Grace… or what John Wesley called, Preventing Grace.  Preventing grace sounds kinda strange, it’s like the church that was in Kennedale, between Mansfield and Arlington called Overcoming Faith… like, this faith is a tough thing we’ve got to overcome it.   Right?

Preventing Grace sounds like we want to keep people away from it… but that isn’t what it means at all.

Prevent

This is a picture of a dictionary from 1851.  The Methodist Movement had been in place for more than 100 years by this point, but prevent and prevenient still held the same meaning… to make a way.  Today it means to block the path, but when this church was founded, when this land was dedicated to the Methodists of Navarro County, Prevent meant to make a way… so, Preventing Grace, or Prevenient Grace meant the grace that comes before we ever recognize it.

The word, “Suffer” is much the same.  Today, to suffer means to experience pain.  Suffer the children would mean to “cause pain” when the children come.  However, in the Middle age of our language, it meant to allow them to come.

Here is the definition of Suffer from a 2003 copy of the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary:

Suffer

Yes, we see all the roots and origins of the word.  Middle English, Anglo-French, Vulgar Latin… then we get to the meaning.  Even in the 2003 dictionary, you look down at definition #4 and what do you see?  To Allow.

Jesus was rebuking the disciples and telling them to allow the children to come to him… more on that in a moment.

Sermon Slide

First, I want us to consider who gifted these beautiful windows to the church. This one we see on the front wall by the choir is the ribbon and Lillie window with the words of the King James verse emblazoned on the green ribbon. It was given by the “Earnest Workers” Sunday School Class.  Now, we don’t have a class by that name anymore, but the "Earnest Workers" Sunday School class was a significant part of the Methodist community in the late 1800’s and early 1900s. Their focus was engaging the members in mission and ministry in the community… you know, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving a drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick and lonely.  They encouraged the laity to step up and serve, especially during the time of the Circuit Riders, when there wasn’t a clergy person available all the time.

The Jesus with the children window was given in honor of W.H. and Kosci S. Jack… I lovingly call it the Jack window.

W.H., William Jack Sr., was a prominent attorney and businessman here in Corsicana at the turn of the century.  He was a part of the local Bar Association here in Navarro County and actually served an unexpired term as Judge when the judge died before his term ended.  William Harry Jack, Sr. Was also a cousin of the Calicutts… Of whom Margaret and Cylynne sit here near that window many mornings here in this sanctuary.

Not only that, William and Kosci are the great, great, great, grandparents of Brian McDaniel.

The window was beautifully restored at the hands of Stanton Glass and rededicated to Laura Cox Love… who passed in 2012 after a life loving and serving this community, especially the children of this community… and her relatives, including her son Atwell Goins, still attend worship here today.

One thing I have found as I have studied these windows and the dedications of these windows, is the history of First Methodist Church is still alive and well here in Navarro County.

And, now that we are 10 minutes into the sermon, let’s pause, pray, and then get into the scriptures behind these windows.

<Prayer>

Little Betty was 12 years old, and she was a good girl.  She was conscientious, she was smart, and she was compassionate.  But on the day in question, she was home sick.  Mom had been called in to work and a coworker came by to pick her up, leaving Betty home by herself with their little doggie, Biscuit. 

A couple of hours after mom left for work, Biscuit seemed to be getting sick and Betty started to get worried.  She called her mom at work but no one answered.  After about another hour of not being able to reach her mom, Betty knew what she had to do.  She had to get Biscuit to the vet… and if mom wasn’t their then she would just have to take mom’s car without her.

So, 12-year-old Betty took mom’s car keys, put Biscuit in the car and did everything she had seen her mom do. She cranked the car, backed it out of the garage, closed the garage door, and carefully backed into the street.  She could barely see over the steering wheel, and she didn’t go too fast, but she was being careful and she was on the way to the vet when… a police officer spotted her and pulled her over.

Little Betty pulled over, but she was almost hysterical by the time the officer approached the door.  Biscuit was laying in the front seat, not feeling well, and Betty just knew she was going to be arrested and Biscuit wouldn’t make it to the vet, but the officer saw what was happening and reacted a little differently than he might have usually reacted.  Instead of a ticket or an arrest, the officer helped Betty park the car safely, loaded up Biscuit and Betty in his patrol car and took Biscuit to the vet where he got the care he needed, then took Betty to her mother at work.

The mom was almost beside herself… she couldn’t believe what her daughter had done, but the officer stepped in before Betty got in trouble and said,

“Ma’am, I want to compliment you on raising such an amazing, brave, and compassionate young daughter,” and he told her all about the adventure, and ended with, “Hopefully, before she gets her license, she will learn to drive on the right side of the road.”

Children are amazing, aren’t they!

Those of you that were here for VBS and Art Camp saw how amazing these kids are!

However, so often we overlook the kids.  We say, “We’ve got to have kids in the church!” but when the kids do kid things, like spill red Kool-Aid, we fuss.

I remember one church I served back in the old Bishop Appointment days… where we were sent to a church and the church didn’t really have a say and neither did we… I had a meeting with the members of the church and the number one thing they said was, “We want children in the church.”  They had been an aging congregation and the only children in the church were the occasional grandchild that visited.  Well, Renee and I show up and we had half a children’s ministry with us.  Pretty soon, Renee and I started working on the ministry and a young family came in.  Then we started a Scouting program at the church and another family started coming.  Then it happened… one Sunday, a family showed up with a baby… I mean less than a year old, baby.  We had a couple of restless 8-year-old twins on the 4th row on the right…  A couple of cute girls 3 rows from the back on the left, scratching away on a piece of paper with a crayon… my kids being kids on the 2nd row on the left… and a baby… who started to cry.

I could see some of the lifelong members getting a little agitated.  Most of these people had grown up in an era when children were to be seen and not heard… But I don’t think I have to tell anyone that those days are long gone!

They had said they wanted children in the church, now they had them and… heaven forbid, the children were making noise.  When I stood up and stepped up to the pulpit, with a smile on my face, I said, “Wow, isn’t it good to hear children in the church again?”

And it was like a collective sigh was let out and everyone relaxed, the mom, the grumpy old men, the cranky old grandma’s, and the sweet little old ladies that just wanted to hold the baby themselves.  Children bring life into the room, don’t they.

The disciples were in a culture where children didn’t have a place outside of the family.  They were barely to be seen, and definitely not heard.  Why would these people be bothering Jesus, the Messiah, with children… He had important things to worry about.  He had adult issues to deal with.  So, they did what any good disciple of a Rabbi would do… usher the children away so the Rabbi wouldn’t be bothered.

But, they should have remembered what Jesus had said just a few days before in Galilee.  They had left the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus became radiant and met with Moses and Elijah… all in front of Peter, James, and John.  Then they saw Jesus heal a demon-possessed boy, and heard Jesus talk about his pending death… and Peter experienced another miraculous catch, this time it was one fish, but the fish had a silver coin worth 4 Drachma… a ½ Shekel… to pay the Temple Tax.

After seeing all that, the disciples wanted to argue about who was going to be the greatest… Peter’s probably thinking, “Well, Jesus said I am the rock… I am Petros, not Simon. I must be the most important.”  And Judas and Simeon are thinking, “well, Jesus is our cousin, so we must be like prince’s.”  And Andrew is saying, “I was the first one he selected so I must be first.”  And Judas is saying, “but I have been put in charge of the treasury, I will be the treasurer in his Kingdom and I will be most important.”  And of course, John is saying “I’m the disciple Jesus loves, so I must be most important.”  All the while missing the point.

Then, when Jesus hears all their bickering and arguing, he calls a child over…

Matthew 18:2-5

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

I heard a story recently about a dad picking his child up from pre-school.  It was the end of the day and it was time to clean up… you all know the clean-up song… “Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean-up, Clean-up, everybody do your share.”  Right… they are almost done and the teacher could see one more toy.  She said, “There’s one more toy left, whoever finds it gets a prize!”  and all these 2-year-old kids started looking frantically.  Little Johnny sees the toy and he takes a step towards it when Debbie sees where he’s looking, and then she runs and grabs it.”  This dad said, “at that moment, I just sat back and waited for the meltdown.”  You know why, right.  We all hear that story and know the boy deserved the prize… the dad was expecting little Johnny to go crazy, but what did he do?  He didn’t do what we adults would do… no, what did he do?  He rejoiced! He raised his hands in the air and said, “YAY!!!!”  It wasn’t about the prize or anything else… He was happy they were done! That his friend put the toy away.

We jockey for position.

We work to be great.

We think, we’ve earned the promotion.

We deserve the honor.

We won the competition.

We are number 1!

That’s the way this world works isn’t it. 

The early bird gets the worm.

Winner takes all.

Second place is just the first looser.

Sermon Slide

We live in a world that glorifies winning over everything.  But children haven’t become jaded like that. 

Children are innocent.  They are naïve… they are harmless…

Children are humble.  They are simple, meek, modest…

Children are curious.  They ask “why,” they pay attention in ways we don’t even realize.

Children are imaginative.  They can take a toy out of a box, and make the box the best gift of the day.

And Jesus says we need to be like a child!

The first half of our childhood, we love being a child… then the world starts pressing in and all we want is to become an adult… we want to have our independence… we want to make our own decisions… we want to be on our own…

Then, once we get there… once we become an adult, we wish we could become a child again.

We long for that innocence.  We long for the humility that comes from being a child.  We long for that curiosity and imagination that the world beat out of us by the time we were 18.

The problem is, so often we try to make it back to childhood by making childish decisions.  And there is a big difference between childlike and childish.  We don’t recover the innocence of childhood by making childish decisions.  We don’t become humble and curious and imaginative by ignoring the things we have learned in life.

How do we become like a child?

By returning to Jesus.  The word we read in the NIV as “Let”, and in the KJV as “Suffer” is the Greek word, “Apheimi”

Apheimi

It is rightly translated in this context as “allow” or “let” or “permit”.  But it is also a word that means “Forgive” or “to be forgiven”…. “To be pardoned or exempt from the consequences of an offense.”

Friends, repentance, returning to Jesus, accepting his forgiveness, his pardon, is how we become like a child… trusting Jesus as Jesus trusted the Father… placing our faith in him, as a child trusts their parent.

Sermon Slide

And that is why we gather here each week.  Yes, it is a beautiful place… Yes, this building holds great memories… we look around the room and see empty seats of great saints who have gone to be with the Lord… we walk around the building and remember our own childhood and the childhood of our children… and that is all great. But that is not why we are here… we are here to become a child of God.

We are here to return to Jesus.

We are here to accept, with the faith of a child, the message of hope that Jesus offers us through his death, burial, and resurrection.

We are here to return to Jesus… so today, as we sing the anthem of our childhood, I invite you to return to Jesus, to become like a child.

Let us pray…