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Welcome to Sabbath…a gracious gift from a loving Creator. From the beginning of our faith story, Sabbath was understood as integral to the life of the planet and to the lives of its people. Sabbath represents the balance between work and play, between production and rest, a necessary balance that keeps us balanced. Sabbath. Balance. The seventh day—the last day of creation. Easy to forget…easier to neglect. Sabbath.
A couple of weeks ago, as aging Auntie Sharon and Uncle John provided round the clock care for three young children while their parents traveled to Paris for a much-needed nniversary Sabbath of their own, I would have paid top dollar for a day or two of Sabbath rest! The frenetic energy of 3-year old twin boys, Elliott and Owen, and the creative juices of their 6-year old redheaded sister Samantha, all kept John and I hopping, jumping, and running—physically and mentally—just to try and remain caught up! Sabbath would have been nice! Yet we thoroughly enjoyed being able to help our friends, the parents, in this way, and deepened our love for these three darling children in the process. And we learned a few things from the wisdom of these young ones!
One night, as I was tucking Samantha into bed, she initiated a conversation about vegetarianism. Noting that she proudly ate mostly fruits and vegetables, and knowing that this was a commitment of mine as well, she asked, “Auntie Sharon, why don’t you eat animals?” I responded, “Well, Samantha, animals are my friends, and I try not to devour my friends!” We laughed, and she continued, “I think that when I eat chicken, it’s ok, because when the chicken is killed, it’s [hack]…and it doesn’t really hurt it.” I thought, then responded, “I’m not so sure that it doesn’t hurt the chicken to be killed, after all, I’ve heard from people who take care of chickens that they have personalities just like we do.” Samantha’s quick retort, “You mean, Auntie Sharon, that they have chicken-alities!” From Chicken-alities to Backyardigans to Thomas the Train to Aquadoodle, John and I received a total immersion education into the sights and sounds of our nation’s youngest citizens.
Marian Wright Edelman, who is founder and director of The Children’s Defense Fund, has been admonishing Americans for over 25 years to pay attention to the voices of our nation’s children, not because they are our nation’s future, but because they are a necessary part of our present community. Decades ago, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the test of the morality of a society is how it treats its children. Edelman quoted Bonhoeffer while speaking at the recent UCC General Synod this past summer, and several of us from Redlands UCC heard her. Edelman focused her comments about children on the crisis in health care that is impoverishing and even killing uninsured children in the
United States
. One after another, Ms. Edelman showed us video clips of children without insurance as, through her dedicated and singular message, she told their stories of pain that could have been healed if only paid health care was available.
One particular story deeply touched my heart. It was of a young boy—about 10 years old—who had a toothache and whose family had no insurance. His working mother could not afford a visit to the dentist’s office, and the toothache remained untreated. By the second month of pain, the tooth was severely infected, and by the time he was admitted to a hospital, the infection had spread through his body to the point that there was nothing the medical doctors could do. The boy died, for lack of insurance to pay for treatment of a simple
toothache. In the wake of this week’s congressional debate over children’s health coverage, Edelman’s words to us this summer take on particular poignancy:
“Our children are not partisan political fodder,” she said. “You must insist, you must demand, that this year we will provide health insurance for all our children…You, as people of faith, must make a strong, unwavering commitment to this cause…We must reset America's oral compass…You must insist! You must. Small babies die every day of preventable diseases, quite legally. Children die from guns, quite legally. The rich get richer at the expense of the poor, quite legally…May God help us, as people of faith, never to confuse what is quite legal with that which is just and right.”
On this particular Children’s Sabbath, our scripture readings invite us to consider what is just and right and they challenge us to apply God’s standards of justice and righteousness to the plight of our nation’s children. Jeremiah boldly declares that now is the time for God and the people to build and to plant. Now is the time for children and parents to enter into the covenant of love that is within the heart and mind and soul and body. “Know God,” Jeremiah preaches to his audience; his admonition is just as relevant for us today. Knowing God, entering into God’s loving and compassionate heart ourselves, will give us the direction to do what we can to care for our community’s children.
The readings from the two letters to Timothy remind us that neither youth nor inexperience is an excuse for inaction. “Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, faith, and purity…Continue in what you have learned and believed…so that you will be equipped for every good work.” Such words from these ancient letters inspire us with the strength needed to act on behalf of our community’s children.
Finally, in the gospel reading, Jesus links faith and justice, and embodies it in the widow who persistently demands that her needs be addressed. In first-century society, we can
imagine that this widow would have had no social standing, no gainful employment, no source of income, perhaps no home, and certainly no health coverage. Being disconnected from a man, yet trying to live in patriarchy, she knew she deserved justice and was unafraid to keep asking. The justice she sought was not that of having her opinion rule the day, or winning some kind of theological or personal debate. The justice for which this widow advocated was the bread and butter of her life. She needed food and water and a place to live. She needed healing from pains physical and emotional. And she needed this yesterday, not tomorrow. Like today’s children who are the focus of Marian Wright Edelman’s work, this widow had no time for politics or debates, nor could she afford the luxury of hiding behind others.
Jesus makes the point, that even the unjust, unfeeling, unfaithful, uncompassionate, and unloving judge who did not know God in the way declared by the prophet Jeremiah… even this blind-to-justice judge could see enough to grant the widow’s request. The next step in Jesus’ teaching is obvious: if this judge could see the need for justice, then certainly God—who is loving and compassionate and caring—will grant justice to all those in God’s family. Jesus penetrates the most hardened heart with his final question, “Will God find faith on earth?”
In other words, given that God helps those who cry out for justice, God also expects that our faith will produce the same level of compassion and assistance for those whose cries we hear today. There is no excuse, and there really is no other definition of faith, according to Jesus.
Put quite simply, and in the words of Marian Wright Edelman herself, “If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much…We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee…You really can change the world if you care enough…If you don’t like the way children are being treated, you change it. You have an
obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time…”
So what of this special Sabbath for Children? What is the purpose of a day such as today? Does the notion of Sabbath rest perhaps distract us from the need for advocacy and action? I believe that Children’s Sabbath invites us to ponder in a way that motivates us. From what do children need to rest? There are many answers to that question, and we don’t have to look far to see them. In our world every day, millions of children have inadequate nutrition. These children need a rest from hunger and starvation. In our nation, approximately every 21 seconds, a young person attempts suicide, and countless more consider it. These children need a rest from hopelessness and depression. In our community alone, dozens of children are without safe homes. These children need a rest from uncertainty and rootlessness. And Ms. Edelman’s tireless work reminds us that in these United States, millions of children are unjustly denied the basic need of health care coverage. These children need a rest from illness that goes untreated. In own our families, children are often overworked, overscheduled, overstressed. Our children need a rest. All of these children need a Sabbath. And so do we.
This Sabbath invites us adults to slow down and to listen attentively and responsively to young people. Given its place in the context of the whole created world, Sabbath also invites all of us—children and adults—to learn from other creatures. Lessons on providing rest and safety for children abound in the animal world. I think of the many meerkat communities I have seen—and they are numerous, as meerkats are some of my favorite animals—while most of the members furiously dig for food, one meerkat stands guard…a kind of sentinel, watching for predators and alarming the other meerkats when danger is near.
I think of the story of Binti, an adult female gorilla in the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago. Her simple act of compassion made international news several years ago. You may recall the story. A young boy, only 3 years old, had become separated from his family. He wandered over to the gorilla enclosure, and somehow slipped and fell 18 feet onto the concrete floor inside the enclosure. He hit his head and lay unconscious. The then 8-year old gorilla mother named Binti, made her way to him with her own baby on her back. She picked up the human child, carried him gently in her arms and placed him near a door where the zoo staff could reach him. The toddler was taken to a local hospital, and made a speedy recovery. Of course, the follow-up Jay Leno-like line was something about “When the courts reached their final verdict a few weeks later, custody was awarded to the gorilla!” In a number of articles and editorials about this story, Binti’s actions were described as “kind, compassionate, humanlike, empathetic, altruistic, and caring.” When People magazine named Binti one of the “25 Most Intriguing People of 1996”, they praised her as a rallying symbol of her endangered species and an example to us all, reminding us that behaving like an animal may not be such an ignoble thing after all.
Another Binti—this one the son of Birute Galdikas who has spent her life studying and seeking to protect the orangutans in Indonesia—noted that the gorilla’s dramatic rescue of the child carries a certain irony…here is “a gorilla, who shares 98% of her genetic material with us, whose species is going extinct because of human greed, [how ironic that she] could save one of our children, while we, the so-called compassionate ones, destroy their habitat and their children every day.”
Sabbath. A time to rest and reflect on all the world’s children. A time to rededicate ourselves to compassionate living, to acknowledge the interdependent and interwoven world in which we live.
Each day in the news or via email messages, I am inspired by the creative actions humans take on behalf of children and youth. Taking time to tutor a child who is having difficulty in school. Teaching another to appreciate the joy of making music. Walking beside a former gang member to show him a better way. Each one of us has something that some child needs—from something as simple as an unused piece of clothing or an unopened can of food, to the more complicated and time-consuming community efforts to change a child’s paradigm of hopelessness into a hopeful vision of the future.
Sabbath. A time to see that when we throw a pebble in the pond here, it does ripple over there.
On this Children’s Sabbath, I urge you—adults, children and youth—to take a break, just like a child at recess. Take a break, and enjoy the children in your life. Offer a break to a child…with your unlimited creativity, offer to that child a rest from illness…a rest from hunger… a rest from hopelessness… Give of yourself, like Binti gave of herself. In response to this Children’s Sabbath, do something to make a positive difference in the life of a young person who has a “chicken-ality” all their own!
Sabbath…Children’s Sabbath…a time to listen and to act, to dedicate ourselves to compassion and to justice, a time to ponder the needs of children and to begin a new level of advocacy on their behalf. This, in a word is our way of helping Jesus find faith on earth.
Let us follow the leader with our children out in front of us on this journey of faith.
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