From The Mouth Of Babes

Posted on January 31, 2021 by taylormertins

Psalm 8.1-5

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

Matthew 21.14-17

The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?” He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

It was a busy Sunday morning.

The confirmands were getting confirmed.

The choir was trying out a new anthem.

The sermon was a sitting at a solid B-.

Nevertheless, I stood and addressed the people of God, all while constantly referring to the overstuffed bulletin in hopes that I wouldn’t, accidentally, skip over part of the service.

God gathered us. God spoke God’s word to us. And the time had come for us to respond. The confirmands were, finally, confirmed, and were therefore the first in line to receive communion. They, being the good and holy tweenagers they were, made silly faces at me when I offered the bread, doing their best to mess me up. I kept my cool, being all holy up at the front with my long robe and made a mental note to teach those kids some some respect after the service.

I kept distributing the bread with the solemnity required at such a moment.

Eye contact.

Knowing head nods.

The subtle tap on the hand.

Until, the very end when the final person came forward to receive the body and the blood of our Lord.

Owen.

I confess I was momentarily surprised to see Owen standing before me and below me in the middle of the sanctuary because Owen was barely three years old, a child from our preschool, and his family had never been to church before.

I looked around for his mother, and father, and little sister and found them frantically rushing around the back of the church as if they had lost something.

The something they lost was standing right below me.

“It’s my turn pastor Taylor,” he said, “I want some Jesus please.” And he opened his mouth like a little baby bird and waited for me to drop a piece of bread in.

So I did.

I then, of course, picked him up and carried him to the back of the church where his family expressed their gratitude for the lost having been found, and then I sprinted down the center aisle to get us back on track.

As the big, grown-up, entirely responsible, never child-like adult that I am, I am quite good at making myself the center of all things.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m at a dinner party or standing up in a space like this on Sunday morning – I get used to things going a certain way, the ritual of it all, the comforting domestication of life. So much so that I, occasionally, forget to pay attention to the Spirit who insists on defying and upending expectations.

God, bewilderingly, likes to drop road signs pointing us in the right direction, or smacking us in the face with stop sign to halt us dead in our tracks.

God’s ways are not our ways.

One day, Jesus was walking with the disciples, teaching them about the Kingdom of God. All of them, being good and faithful disciples, were frantically taking down notes so as to not miss any of the important details.

But they were distracted.

One of them, perhaps Peter, interjected, “Lord, can’t something be done about all these kids who keep following us around? Shouldn’t we send them to the nursery, or children’s church, or maybe we could just put them down in front of an episode of Paw Patrol? They’re so distracting!”

And do you know what Jesus did? He plucked up the nearest kid and sat her down right in the middle of all of the disciples and said, “When you receive one such child… Surprise! You receive me also.”

One day Jesus was hanging out with his disciples in the Temple. Upturned tables littered the area and the money lenders grumbled in the corners. Meanwhile, the blind and lame came to Jesus and he cured them, he made them whole. But when the big whigs, the movers and the shakers, saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children singing out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became very angry with Jesus.

They said to him, “Do you hear what they’re singing???” Jesus replied, “Of course I can hear them singing! Don’t you remember what it says in Psalm 81? Oh, you don’t remember that one? Well, let me refresh your memory: ‘O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is you name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.’”

And then Jesus left them standing there with the jaws on the floor.

Stanley Hauerwas is famous for saying: “Beware when you hear a Methodist minister quote his/her twelve-year old in a sermon. When that happens you know you’re fixin’ to hear some baloney.”

Though, when he says it, he uses a much saltier expression than baloney.

That he says it so often is indicative of his desire for sermons to be about God rather than about us. For, when someone like me stands in a place like this regaling people like you with stories of “Kids Say The Darndest Things” moments, it is worth wondering what, at all, that has to do with the Gospel.

We aren’t here to hear stories that make us chuckle about the whimsy of youth.

We’re here to hear a Word from the Lord, from God almighty!

And yet, as Jesus so wonderfully reminds us today, the child sitting in the middle of the crowd, the kid who sneaks away from his parents in the middle of a worship service, the children singing in the courtyard of the temple, they are here to distract us from our big, serious, but utterly self-centered adult religion, all so that another kid, a baby actually, might get our attention about what’s really important.

How odd of God to chose a baby born to an unwed virgin to change the cosmos.

How odd of God to chose the baby turned adult to speak greater truth than we could possibly bear.

How off of God to chose children singing songs by the temple to shake up the religious sensibilities of those in charge then and now!

Notably, when Karl Barth (the great theologian of the 20th century) was asked to summarize the entirety of his theology he responded by singing: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so!”

Shortly before his wild temple tantrum, Jesus settled a dispute between his disciples about greatness by telling them, “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!”

So, should there be any children paying extra close attention to the sermon today, the next time you hear an adult tell you to “act you age” you have pastoral permission to respond by saying, “Well Jesus says that unless you start acting like a kid you’ll never enter the kingdom!”

Of course, it’s not just about having a child-like faith. We’re not called to be naive about the world. But, at least according to this moment from Matthew, when Jesus spins a verse from his favorite playlist The Psalms, it has less to do with being small or unintelligent and more to do with the fact that even babies and children proclaim the goodness of God.

Consider, for a moment, what it is that the children are singing that day in the temple courtyard: “Hosanna to the Son of David.”

Literally, “Save us, Son of David.”

The adults, the chiefs priests and elders, are all angry because they can’t stand the thought of Jesus being God, being the promised Messiah. They can’t stand to hear children confessing a truth that runs counter to everything they think they know. Perhaps they’re furious because they can’t imagine a world in which someone like Jesus, a wandering rabbi with a rag tag group of would-be disciples, could actually be the one to bring about the salvation of the cosmos.

But the kids… the kids that day see something more than the adults do, they hope for something more than the adults could wrap their heads around.

In Jesus, they see God.

They witness the abundant mercy of the Messiah who stoops to heal the sick, and the blind, and the lame.

They encounter the power of the Anointed One who rids the temple of its economic disparity for a reality in which all are welcome to worship no matter the size of their wallet.

They experience the King of kings who, in the end, rules from the hard wood of the cross and uses his final earthly breaths to declare, of all things, forgiveness.

Sometimes, kids get it better than we do.

It all began, the father starts his story, a few Christmases ago when my 4 year old daughter began asking questions about what the holiday meant.

So I began explaining to her that this was in celebrating the birth of Jesus and she wanted to know more about that so I went out and got a children’s Bible and we would read together at night. She loved it. She wanted to know everything about Jesus.

So we read a lot about his birth and his teachings and she would ask constantly about this one particular phrase and I would explain that it was “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And we would talk about those old words and what it all meant.

One day we were driving past a big church and out front was this big crucifix and she asked, “Who’s that?!” And I guess I never really told that part of the story, so I had to sort of fill the rest in. I told her that Jesus ran afoul of the Roman government and that his message was so radical and unnerving to the authorities at the time that they came to the conclusion that he would have to die.

About a month later her preschool had the day off for Martin Luther King Day and I took off the day from work and we went out for lunch together. We were sitting and right on the table was the local newspaper with a giant picture of Dr. King on the front. And she said, “Who’s that?” I said, “That’s Martin Luther King Jr. and he’s the reason you’re not in school today. This is the day we celebrate his life.”

She said, “Well, who is he?” And I said, “He was a preacher.” She looks up at me and goes, “For Jesus?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah he was. But there was another thing that he was famous for. He had a message. He said that you should treat everybody the same no matter what they look like.”

She thought about that for a moment and then she said, “Well that’s what Jesus said.”

I said, “I guess it is. I never thought about it that way but it is like ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’”

And my daughter looked down at the table for a long time before she said, “Did they kill him too?”

Devotional – Psalm 34.8

Posted on November 1, 2017 by taylormertins

Devotional:

Psalm 34.8

O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

Weekly Devotional Image

Last night, after we finished dinner, my wife and I got out the Robin costume for our 18 month old Elijah. The Halloween decorations had been up for weeks, we were stocked with candy for the neighborhood kids, and the time had come to begin trick-or-treating. And, wonderfully enough, this was to be Elijah’s first ever outing on Halloween and the excitement was palpable in the air.

However, once we made it outside we realized that no one else was combing the neighborhood. And, not wanting to be that family, we patiently waited in our front yard until we saw at least one other costumed child before we guided Elijah up to our neighbor’s front door. He only made it to ten houses last night but he ran down every sidewalk with the kind of excitement that leaves parents smiling and giddy with joy.

When we returned to our house, we set up chairs in the front yard and waited to pass out candy to kids from the neighborhood. And for the first fifteen minutes Elijah was fine with sitting on my lap, but at some point he remembered that people had strangely handed him pieces of candy and he wanted it. Lindsey and I quickly agreed that it would be fine for him to have one piece of candy (he’s maybe tasted chocolate all of three times in his life) and when he crunched down on his Kit-Kat bar his eyes lit up like fireworks. For the next fifteen minutes all he said was “mmmmmm” and “more.”

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In some strange way, the kind of excitement and joy that my kid experienced last night is the same kind of excitement and joy that we are privileged to experience in the church. The fleeting sugar rush that entered Elijah’s blood stream eventually disappeared, but the table that we feast at as a community of faith has an everlasting significance. The hope and wonder Elijah had while walking up to other homes is the same hope and wonder we discover when we actually do the good and hard work of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

The challenge of a holiday like Halloween is that there is so much build-up and when its over, its over. But with God we discover something that is truly good; we find a refuge offered without cost.

We can find happiness in this life through experiences of glee and moments of wonder, we can decorate our homes for all of the pertinent holidays, but true happiness comes when we discover that the Lord is good, and that one holy day with God is more powerful than any holiday.

The Tyranny of Titles – A Christmas Pageant Homily

Posted on December 20, 2016 by taylormertins

Matthew 18.1-5

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

A father was with his four year old daughter last Christmas, and it was the first time she ever asked what the holiday meant. He explained that Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus, and the more they talked the more she wanted to know about Jesus so he bought a kid’s bible and read to her every night. She loved it.

They read the stories of his birth and his teachings, and the daughter would ask her father to explain some of the sayings from Jesus, like “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And they would talk about how Jesus teaches us to treat people the way we want to be treated. They read and they read and at some point the daughter said, “Dad, I really like this Jesus.”

Right after Christmas they were driving around town and they passed by a Catholic Church with an enormous crucifix out on the front lawn. The giant cross was impossible to miss, as was the figure that was nailed to it. The daughter quickly pointed out the window and said, “Dad! Who’s that?”

He realized in that moment that he never told her the end of the story. So he began explaining how it was Jesus, and how he ran afoul of the Roman government because his message was so radical and unnerving that they thought the only way to stop his message was to kill him, and they did.

The daughter was silent.

A few weeks later, after going through the whole story of what Christmas meant, the Preschool his daughter attended had the day off in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. The father decided to take the day off as well and treat his daughter to a day of play and they went out to lunch together. And while they were sitting at the table for lunch, they saw the local newspaper’s front-page story with a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. on it. The daughter pointed at the picture and said, “Dad! Who’s that?”

“Well,” he began, “that’s Martin Luther King Jr. and he’s the reason you’re not in school today. We’re celebrating his life. He was a preacher.”

And she said, “for Jesus?!”

The father said, “Yeah, for Jesus. But there was another thing he was famous for; he had his own message and said you should treat everyone the same no matter what they look like.”

She thought about it for a minute and said, “Dad, that sounds a lot like do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The dad said, “Yeah, I never thought about it like that but it’s just like what Jesus said.”

The young girl was silent again for a brief moment, and they she looked up at her dad and said, “Did they kill him too?”

Kids get it. They make the connections that we’re supposed to make. And even though 2016 has been a rough year with the political rhetoric and partisanship at its worst, and all the culturally significant individuals we lost (David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Gene Wilder, John Glenn, etc.), and with the migration of refugees from the Middle East to Europe at the highest levels since the Second World War… our preschoolers have had a tremendous year.

Today, we adults live under the tyranny of titles. We want to label individuals based on a crazy assortment of criterion. He’s a Republican, she’s a Democrat, that family is poor, that family is rich, that woman is black, that man is Hispanic, that couple is gay, that couple is straight.

But the Preschoolers who gather in our basement don’t see the world and one another the way we see the world and one another.

Instead they see each other as Cruz, and Hadley, and Charlie, and Ellie Rose, and Owen, and Maddie, and Graham, and Henry. They, unlike us, do not view the world through the cynical lens that so many of us have adopted over the years. They, unlike us, see the world like Jesus.

Like that little girl with her father, they understand the cost of discipleship in a way that few us can.

I’ve been here long enough to have spent a lot of time thinking about what the Preschool should be teaching the children. I’ve had consultations with the teachers about curricula and paradigms. I’ve even met with some of you to discuss the growth and transformation of your children in response to the nurture and education they receive in the basement.

I’m guilty of the same cynicism that treats young people like objects to be molded in a factory to come out prepared for the world. When Jesus is the one who calls us not to make children into adults, but to change adults into children.

This Christmas, I have a challenge for you. Instead of being consumed by the desire to transform your little ones to fit into one of the labels of society, try to let them transform you. Try to look at the world the way they do. Try to love one another the way they do.

For it is on Christmas that we celebrate the birth of God in the flesh, born as a baby in a manger to a young couple all alone in the world. God did not come to change the world through political power or through economic wealth or through militaristic might. God changed the world through a baby, not unlike the ones we are celebrating with tonight. Amen.

C.O.G. – Sermon on Galatians 4.4-7

Posted on December 28, 2014 by taylormertins

Galatians 4.4-7

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

The sermon title this morning is C.O.G. which, if you are unfamiliar with the acronym, stands for Child of God. Made popular by the evangelical movement, COG is an identification with those who are part of a Christian community. For me, the use of child of God, happens whenever I baptize an infant or an adult. After going through the entire liturgy, blessing the water, and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit I always announce that they are a child of God. There is just something incredible about receiving a new identity and a family through baptism that orients one’s priorities toward the divine and the new family that is the church.

Other than baptisms, I use Child of God when referring to our little preschoolers that gather here during the week. It has been strange recently, since they are on Christmas break, the hallways and building have been significantly quieter, and I have gotten a lot more work done! Nevertheless the COGs in our Preschool are one of the most important elements of our church and I believe in sanctioning my time in such a way that I can be with them and communicate the gospel in as many ways as possible.

This has taken place from being present at the basement doors every morning to welcome the children and families, to inviting them for regular church functions. But the way that the gospel is best communicated is during our weekly chapel time here in the sanctuary. While many of you are at work or home, studying in school or day-dreaming about the future, all of our COGs make their way to the choir loft and they sit in eager anticipation of a new story. We began in Genesis and have made our way to the time of David, we have made Chicken Noodle Soup, and gone through obstacle courses, we have drawn our own technicolor dream coats, and we have pretended to be our favorite animals on Noah’s Ark.

The most profound Chapel Time experience, for me, took place when we prepared to wrestle with God. The kids lined up in the center aisle and did push ups and sit-ups in order to gain some strength, and then one by one I wrestled each of them by the altar in the same way that Jacob wrestled with an angel on the banks of the Jabbok river. Each of them came forward, we would go back in forth, I would let them think they would beat me, and then I would pick them up over my head and spin them around as they giggled and screamed. When our last four year old, Jack, made his way forward I began to bring the lesson home…

I got down on my knees and we grabbed hold of one another and I said to the kids: “This is what God is like. We can wrestle with the things that happen in the world, we can question and be angry and upset, and no matter how confused or frustrated we become God will never let us go. That’s how much God loves us. He can put up with all of our tantrums and yelling, He is patient with us when we no longer have patience. God loves us no matter what.”

The kids were silent and listening attentively. I don’t remember anything else I said, even though I went on for awhile, because I was distracted by something else. While I was holding Jack in my arms, I could feel his heartbeat through my hand. This precious and vulnerable little child, who I was wrestling with, was gripping me so tightly that I could feel his little heart beat. In an instant the lesson I was trying to communicate took a different form for me as I realized how fragile this child was in my arms and the kind of ways that we strive to take care of other children. In a fraction of a second I felt afraid of letting him go, out of fear of what could happen to him. Though not even a father, I felt responsible for him, and was terrified of what might happen if I let him go.

When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son in order to redeem us so that we might receive adoption as children. The world was a strange place when Jesus was born in Bethlehem; indeed the fullness of time had come. Between the Old and New Testaments a lot had taken place and changed. For a while the Jewish people flourished as their culture continued to grow and spread until Antiochus Epiphanes brought about a horrific wave of persecution. The Jews were hated and tortured for their faith and were driven to armed rebellion.

People, for the first time, were traveling beyond the cities and towns of their birth to see greater parts of the world.

During the time of Christ’s birth, the world was full of change and excitement. Add to that the Roman network of international highways over which the first Christian missionaries traveled, and the Greek language that united many different people under one tongue.

For Paul, writing the letter to the Galatians, the timing of Jesus’ birth was remarkably important. We too celebrate this event in such a way as to date everything that happened BC (Before Christ) or after his birth AD (Anno Domini) “in the year of our Lord.” (Now known as BCE “Before Common Era” and CE “Common Era”)

This was the specific and the right time for God’s new intervention in the world. Long anticipated through the Old Testament, the time of the Lord’s favor had begun.

Born into the rude stable that so many of us display on our coffee tables and mantles, God’s Word became incarnate in a baby born to a virgin. By becoming like us, by taking on our flesh to be just like us, God adopted us into his heavenly family so that we might become heirs and children of God.

Paul is then writing and pleading for the very thing that makes Christianity unique; the change that Christ can make in someone’s life so that they can possess and exercise total freedom.

Being Christian is all about freedom. God came into the world to free us from sin, and to free us for a new life.

However, this incredible gift cannot be brought about by unquestioning adherence to a book of rules. Otherwise we choose to break the rules, or we let the rules break us.

Too many of my friends have left the church, and left the faith, because it was made into a rule-system by which they were required to follow. Like the child I held in my arms during chapel time, the church refused to let them go and experience the freedom to question, doubt, and explore. Perhaps when they were younger the church had been life-giving and exciting, but as they grew older it felt suffocating and demanding. They heard about the “freedom” that Paul wrote about, but they certainly didn’t feel it in their own lives. They were taught to so fervently keep the faith whenever they doubted, even just a little, that when they had a crisis of faith their entire discipleship fell apart and they left the church.

Paul’s thoughts to the Galatians opens up a new vision of what it means to be a Child of God, and how we can, in turn, nurture other COGs around us.

I held on to Jack and I felt his little heart beat in my hand. I began to play in my head all the terrible things that could happen to him once he was released from my protective bubble. I thought about what I had shared with the children: God loves you so much that he will never let you go. But that’s not exactly true.

God loves us to such a degree that He will not abandon us, but at the same time God gives us the freedom to question, to raise our clenched fists in the sky in frustration, and to wonder about what all of this faith stuff actually means.

In that profound moment kneeling on the floor of our chancel I recognized that, like God, I had to let him go. That God’s love was so great and incredible that no matter what happens to him, God will never abandon him. That we have to give our children freedom to make mistakes and explore the world, because that’s the only way that they will come to know our God as “father.” They cannot experience God’s divine loves through a book and moral expectations alone. They will discover God’s majesty in those moments when they begin to doubt, and recognize that God’s love remains with them anyway.

Only a bible like ours would contain the psalms, a tremendous source of writing that has almost every single human emotion, most of them directed at God.

Only a faith like ours would gather in grieving people for funerals and triumphantly declare that death has been defeated in Jesus Christ even when the loss of a loved one feels so horrifically overpowering.

Only a God like ours would let us wrestle and walk away and still see us as his children.

Years ago I was lamenting with one of my friends about the ways certain Christians give others Christians such a bad name. It felt like every time I turned on the TV there was a report of some pastor abusing power from the pulpit, some church spouting off with heretical theology, or some Christian organization bashing anything and anyone that did not look or sound just like them.

I remember feeling beaten by these rogue Christians. How could we ever make the church appealing again if people like that are getting all of the attention from the media? Why don’t we share information about all the good the church is doing in the world? Why don’t we ever hear about the food pantries and clothing drives that are saving communities?

My friend listened patiently as I went on and on listing my complaints. She smiled politely whenever I went off on another tangent and waited for me to finish.

She said: “They’ll figure it out someday Taylor. When? No one knows, but at some point they will see how far they have moved away from God’s commands.”

“What makes you so sure?” I demanded.

“They’re children of God, just like you and me.”

Part of what makes our faith so beautiful is that we have been brought into God’s great family as children. We have been adopted into a new identity because God came to be Emmanuel by our sides. As God’s children we have been given the freedom to love God with our hearts, minds, and souls, and we have been given the freedom to question and wonder.

The future of our faith will largely depend on how we continue to nurture the spiritual questions of people young in the faith. We might want to grip those around us with structured rules of how to live and behave, but remember that God came to be with us to adopt us as children; our heavenly Father has given us the freedom that brings about true faith.

The world was a strange place and full of new and exciting things when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The world is still a strange place and full of new and exciting things. It will take a tremendous amount of courage to see others as Children of God just like you and me; to give them freedom to doubt, to be patient with their foolish ways, and to not abandon them. But if God is willing to do it, shouldn’t we?

Amen.