Matthew 19:13-15
Deuteronomy 24:17-22
“The Good News Is….Protection & Care for the Vulnerable”
Preached, Sunday March 15, 2026
This, this is where children belong
Welcomed as part of the worshipping throng
Water, God’s Word, Bread and cup, prayer and song
This is where children belong
So we have sung every Sunday for almost three years.
We sing this song to celebrate the presence of children in our midst. To let them and their caretakers know that they are loved and welcomed here - as they are. Whether they stay in the sanctuary in the pews, sit in the Pray-Ground, or go to childcare or Sunday School. Whether they are so quiet you didn’t even know they were here, cooing and whispering, or having a full blown tantrum. Whether, whether, whether - they belong here.
We sing this song to remind us adults how we should welcome the children in our midst that they might come to know God and know God’s love through our community. It echoes the vows we make in baptism to surround these children with a community of love and care.
We also sing this song because we are all God’s children - no matter our age. Each of us is claimed and celebrated, cared for and loved, as a beloved child of God. We belong here - in God’s house, hearing God’s word, sharing in the sacrament, worshiping God and singing praises together. Each and everyone of us belongs - to God and to community.
And this is part of the Good News of the Gospel we are exploring today.
We are on our fourth week of our Good News Lent - passed the halfway point and rounding closer to Easter. We are continuing our sermon and worship series, “Tell Me Something Good: Grounding Ourselves in the Good News of the Gospel this Lent.” In a world desperately thirsty, parched, for some Good News we have chosen this Lent to focus on the core tenets of the Gospel that are, as the angels proclaimed at the birth of Jesus, “Good News of Great Joy for all people.”
Historically, how churches have treated children - along with the last and the least - hasn’t always been the good, good news of the Gospel. How we treat children is a baseline that reflects how we treat and feel towards other vulnerable populations. And we haven’t always gotten it right. And in our world today the evidence of failing our children - and other vulnerable populations - the alien, the orphan, and the widow - is all too evident. I will admit to you, when I was writing this sermon I had to take a deep breath here but I was - I am - angry about how as a society we are failing children. From human trafficking and the horrendous abuse that goes along with it. To school shootings. To separating families based on immigration status. To the school to prison pipeline. To children who are victims of war. And so much more.
The reality of children as representative of the last, the lost, and the least - the most vulnerable of society - changes how we view our Gospel lesson. It goes from a cute “aww, that’s so sweet” moment, reflective of the precious and cared for children in our midst running down the aisle to sit on these steps - to a more convicting moment of how we live as Christians who recognize that all children, and all people, ultimately belong to God.
In that vein, let us consider how Jesus’s disciples and the crowd that day would have reacted to Jesus’s invitation to let the little children come to him. In True to Our Native Land, author Michael Joseph Brown gives insight into the reality of children in first century Israel. He writes: “We should dismiss ideas of childhood bliss when we read this passage. Childhood in antiquity was difficult. Fifty percent of children died before the age of five. They were the weakest members of society. They were fed last and received the smallest and least desirable portions of food. They were the first to suffer from famine, war, disease, and natural disasters. Many, some say more than 70 percent, would have lost one or more parents before reaching puberty. A minor had the same status as an enslaved person, and it was not until adulthood that they would be considered a free person.”
Because of this harsh reality for children, Jesus’s disciples did not understand what he meant when he said that they must become like children in order to receive the Gospel. They did not understand why Jesus would welcome the children into his sacred space. For them to be lifted up by a parent before him. For Jesus to bend down and teach them at their level. For a highly regarded holy person, this just…wasn’t done. His attention would be expected to go to the adults - not the children who were considered among the last and the least, many not even guaranteed tomorrow. And so the disciples rebuked those who were bringing their children to Jesus - which tells me, even though times have changed, the love of parents for their children was present 2000 years ago as it is today. Of course the parents of these children who they loved would want to bring them to be blessed by Jesus - who healed the sick, who cast out demons, who at this point even had raised a precious child of God from the dead. For those who loved their children and would have done anything for them to ensure that they lived to adulthood, to see another day, of course those parents would do what they could to bring them to Jesus to be blessed. But the disciples don’t get it. To them the children are a distraction, a nuisance, unwelcome in their midst. And so they rebuke the parents and try to usher the children away. But then Jesus rebukes them in turn.
The Rev. Dr. Brian Blount phrases it like this: “So Jesus rebukes, not the parents and their children, but his dull disciples. They refuse to entertain the radical truth about God’s reign that Jesus is trying so desperately to teach them. The reign of God belongs to children and everyone who, like children, is not granted polite society’s respect and acceptance. The children, then, are a metaphor for all who lack societal status, who so-called decent folk find distasteful and undesirable. The migrant worker. The immigrant. The alien. The homeless. The powerless. The undocumented. Harking back to Deuteronomy 24:17-22, where God commands the people to care for the socially downtrodden because they themselves had been beaten down in Egypt, Jesus issues a clear, if not controversial, command for his followers. They are to live as an ekklesia, a ‘church.’ And this church is to exist in this world as a refuge of radical welcome.”
This is the Good News of the Gospel - that this, the church, the community of believers, is to be a place a radical welcome - this, this is where children belong, welcomed as part of the worshipping throng. That this, this is where the last, the lost and the least belong. This is where the most vulnerable of society belong. Because God has great care and love for all of God’s people and has a preferential option for the poor. And so we are to create those churches, the communities, of radical welcome and belonging and extend God’s care and protection to the vulnerable in our midst.
This is the Good News of the Gospel that we, that the world, so desperately needs. And the Good News of the Gospel requires us to not be complacent with the way the world is now. We must actively work to create places of radical welcome and belonging. We must actively work to share God’s love, care, and protection for the vulnerable.
Pastor and theologian Brian Zahnd has a convicting reflection on this mindset, centering on how the Chief Priests, religious people who should have relied on the prophetic visions of peace and lordship of the Messiah, rejected Jesus and called for his death by relying on the excuse of three simple words, “but not now.”
Let’s consider Zahnd’s words:
“They would certainly give lip service to the prophetic promise that Messiah would someday come and establish a kingdom of peace, but they forestalled it with a simple rhetorical trick of three words: but not now. Caiaphas and his cronies would say, ‘Oh, yes, someday Messiah will come as the Prince of Peace and establish God’s kingdom of shalom, but not now. For now, we must live by the sword. For now, we have no king but Caesar.’ Then the chief priests played their ultimate trump card: ‘If you release this man, you are no ‘friend of Caesar.’ Anyone who declares himself a king is a rebel against Caesar’ (Jn 19:12 NLT). This is when Pilate knew he had no choice but to acquiesce to the crowd.
But lest Christians feel superior to the chief priests who rejected Jesus as king, haven’t millions of Christians since the time of Constantine done the same thing when we kick the eschatological can down the road by saying that someday the Messiah’s peaceable kingdom will come, but not now? When we refuse to live as if the Prince of Peace is King of kings and Lord of lords right now, aren’t we, too, essentially saying, ‘We have no king but Caesar’? When we do this, we continue to mistake truth for the lie that the way the world stands is the way the world must be. No! Jesus died to do nothing less than re-found the world.”
This ends the quote but I want to lift up that one line again: “When we do this, we continue to mistake truth for the lie that the way the world stands is the way the world must be. No! Jesus died to do nothing less than re-found the world.”
The Good News of the Gospel is that we do not have to accept the way the world is not as the way the world must be. We cannot accept the mistreatment and abuse of children, the alien, the orphan, the widow, the most vulnerable of society - whoever they may be - as just the way the world is until Jesus comes back. We cannot just shrug, accept it, and go about our business.
The Good News of the Gospel is that Christ has already died to change the world’s order and through the Holy Spirit we are empowered to live into the eschatological vision now. We do that when we create places of belonging and welcome, when we offer care and protection, when we live into the peaceable, welcoming, and loving Kingdom of God in the here and now.
This is the Good News of the Gospel - we can make a difference by treating each and every person as the beloved children of God that they are and being a church of welcoming them.
This is the Good News of the Gospel that:
This, this is where children belong
Welcomed as part of the worshipping throng
Water, God’s Word, Bread and cup, prayer and song
This is where children belong.
Amen.
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