0:0 - Good morning.
0:2 - It's wonderful to be back with you after a month away.
0:7 - I always so much enjoy the praise time here.
0:10 - And the music before the service started was fantastic as well.
0:14 - It was all I could do to not burst into applause, but with my Presbyterian background, you know, a person would be asked to leave the church if they did something as wild as applaud during a service.
0:29 - But thank you very much for all of that.
0:30 - And that last hymn we just sang, I mean, you can't go wrong singing the Nicene Creed.
0:38 - It's the center of our belief and our faith.
0:41 - So thank you for that worship time and for your good singing.
0:47 - Our scripture reading this morning begins with Deuteronomy verses 6.
0:54 - Oh, that's not me.
0:58 - It's appropriate for the sermon, though, that one.
1:0 - Here we go.
1:3 - Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 9, reading from the New International Version of the Scriptures.
1:11 - The readings from Deuteronomy.
1:12 - Deuteronomy was put in its final form in the 500s BC.
1:19 - And so we're going back at least 2500 years and to words that were spoken, perhaps even 3000 years ago.
1:27 - And so as these words come before us, we know that they have been heard many, many times before.
1:34 - And in fact, they are heard every day as people recite them as part of their daily prayers, particularly our ancestors in the Hebrew faith.
1:45 - And now they are the God's word to us today.
1:48 - So as the Holy Spirit gives us understanding and opens our hearts to these words, may they be a blessing to us and God's fresh word to us this day.
1:59 - Deuteronomy 6, 4 to 9.
2:1 - Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
2:7 - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
2:13 - These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts, impress them on your children.
2:20 - Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
2:27 - Tie them as symbols on your hands.
2:30 - Bind them on your foreheads.
2:32 - Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.
2:38 - From Deuteronomy, we jump forward five or 600 years to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verses 13 to 16, a passage of scripture for which the Gospel of Mark is quite famous and one which is familiar to all of us, I'm sure.
2:57 - People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.
3:4 - When Jesus saw this, he was indignant and he said to them, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
3:19 - Truly, I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.
3:25 - And he took the children in his arms and placed his hands on them, and he blessed them.
3:33 - And finally, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21, verses 12 through 16, a reading which we are accustomed to hearing before Easter, but today we're hearing it now.
3:47 - Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there.
3:52 - He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.
3:58 - It is written, he said to them, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.
4:8 - The blind and the lame came to him at the temple and healed them.
4:13 - But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did, and the children shouting in the temple courts, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.
4:27 - Do you hear what these children are saying?
4:29 - They asked him.
4:31 - Yes, replied Jesus.
4:33 - Have you never read from the lips of children and infants?
4:36 - You, Lord, have called forth your praise.
4:42 - May God bless to us the reading of his word.
4:50 - It's an odd story, this.
4:54 - Jesus rolls into the temple, has a look around, and he isn't at all happy with what he sees.
5:1 - The place looks more like Walmart on the day before a hurricane warning than like the nice, quiet spot for a bit of prayer and praise he had in mind.
5:11 - And so with a fit of pique and righteous indignation, we seldom associate with Jesus.
5:17 - He tips the tables and kicks the chairs, and now there's money rolling on the ground and feathers everywhere, and it's every man for himself.
5:25 - It's not very Jesus-like this.
5:27 - It's certainly not what we've come to expect from him.
5:31 - It's probably not what you came to expect coming here this morning either.
5:35 - And so you may be wondering why I bring this up today.
5:39 - Well, because it leads into further events in the temple.
5:44 - So listen, it says the blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them.
5:52 - But when the chief priests and teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did, and the children shouting in the temple courts, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.
6:1 - Do you hear what these children are saying?
6:3 - They asked him.
6:4 - Yes, replied Jesus.
6:6 - Have you never read from the lips of children and infants, Lord, you have called forth your praise?
6:14 - The chief priests, the teachers of the law, the head office crowd, they're angry.
6:20 - Fair enough, no surprise there, and serves them right, we say.
6:24 - But what is surprising is what makes them angry.
6:28 - Matthew has Jesus tipping tables and kicking chairs and otherwise making a shambles of the whole commercial machinery of the temple, and the big wigs stand silently by.
6:41 - Not a word, but now, a day or two later, a far more threatening development.
6:49 - Something which puts the whole religious structure at risk.
6:53 - Something which causes the head office hearts to grow cold, sweat forming under their big black hats.
7:0 - The children are praising Jesus.
7:6 - Hooray, Jesus, the children are saying.
7:8 - Three cheers to David's son.
7:12 - And the blood of the temple executives turns to ice.
7:19 - Why?
7:21 - What's the big deal?
7:22 - The whole financial operation of the temple is put at risk.
7:26 - Nobody lifts a finger.
7:28 - But some children start singing worship choruses to Jesus.
7:32 - Jesus loves me this I...
7:35 - And everyone gets their boxers in a knot.
7:38 - Since when are children more important than money?
7:45 - Who cares what the kiddies think?
7:48 - Well, the chief priests and teachers of the law, that's who.
7:51 - And for good reason, because these guys didn't get to where they were yesterday, withstanding the military, economic and social might of countless hostile empires and somehow keeping the faith alive, they didn't get where they were by standing idly by while their children wild away the hours playing Nintendo and watching TV.
8:14 - No, at the very heart of their familiar religious and social structure was passing the faith onto the children, child by child, family by family, home by home.
8:31 - Every single Jewish ritual, religious observance, every holiday, every festival, every Friday night contains at its heart a teaching component.
8:44 - This is why we do this, this is why we believe this, this is why we remember this, is what every Jewish service of worship had and even today has at its core.
8:58 - Ask a Jew and they'll tell you.
9:1 - I have and they told me.
9:3 - We have Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur because God is faithful and God never forgets and God ever forgives.
9:11 - We have Passover because we were Pharaoh slaves in Egypt and the Lord brought us out.
9:17 - We have Hanukkah because God continues to be with us in the midst of a hostile society.
9:22 - Every holiday has a story, a festival, a lesson.
9:28 - Every speech of Moses, there's a reminder to tell the children, to teach the children, to make the story theirs.
9:35 - It's the heart of the Jewish faith.
9:38 - Here's the most central scripture in all of Jewish teaching, the central instruction and confession of faith passed down through the centuries, known by heart by every observant Jew.
9:51 - Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
9:56 - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
10:2 - These commandments I give you today are to be upon your hearts.
10:6 - Impress them on your children.
10:8 - Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
10:14 - Tie them as symbols on your hands.
10:16 - Bind them on your foreheads.
10:18 - Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.
10:23 - This commandment is taken literally.
10:27 - Tie them as symbols on your hands.
10:29 - Bind them on your foreheads.
10:31 - These are known today as phylacteries and observant Jews around the world.
10:35 - Literally tie a bundle of scriptures around their forearm and on their forehead at their times of prayers.
10:43 - Write them on the door frames of your houses.
10:46 - If you go into the Jewish home, you will see on the door frame a small container and that container contains the Shema Yisrael.
10:54 - Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.
10:57 - And on the way into the house, they'll kiss that scripture.
11:3 - They take them literally.
11:5 - But also taken quite literally is this, the phrase, impress them on your children.
11:11 - The word here is Shema, which means to carve or press or stamp, to leave an indelible lasting mark, a mark that will last throughout all of life.
11:20 - Now, they don't do that with a physical stamp, but they do that with the stamp of faith and belief and the teaching week after week after week, because that's how you pass the faith on from one generation to another.
11:34 - You do everything in your power to bring the teaching home to the children, to the children.
11:44 - I'll never forget an interview being conducted with Dov Marmor, who was the chief rabbi of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, and the interviewer asked him, what's the most important service of the Jewish year?
11:57 - And he said, every Friday night, when the family gathers for Shabbat and lights the candles at home and says the prayers together as a family with the children, that's the most important service of the year.
12:10 - Every Friday night.
12:12 - Impress them on your children.
12:16 - And now Jesus shows up.
12:18 - And to the horror of the religious professionals, the children, taught from the time they opened their eyes and glimpsed the light of day to expect the Messiah, the son of David, the one to set the people free, God's answer to our need, these children, they look at Jesus and they listen to Jesus and they come to the obvious conclusion and they say, hooray, Jesus, three cheers to David's son.
12:42 - And they have a party and they break out the cookies and the milk.
12:45 - And with these words, the old time religionists see everything they knew and held dear, roaring off in a direction they never thought would materialize.
12:58 - Stop them, they say to Jesus.
13:2 - Don't you hear what they're saying?
13:5 - Yeah, isn't it great, says Jesus, just as God said would happen.
13:10 - With praises from children and tiny infants, you've built a fortress that makes your enemies silent and all who turn against you are left speechless.
13:21 - And it was right around then, Mark tells us in his gospel, that they decided to kill Jesus.
13:33 - When the children started to praise him, that is when they decided to kill him.
13:42 - No more fooling around, no more trying to trick him with questions.
13:48 - Now he had to go.
13:51 - You see, these old temple officials knew something we forgot.
13:55 - Or maybe more accurately, they took to heart something we all too readily dismiss, and that is this, what our children believe is important.
14:5 - Very important, vitally important.
14:8 - What our children believe is a matter no less of life and death.
14:17 - Is that statement overly dramatic?
14:21 - Life and death, should I be calming down and taking a pill and easing up a bit on the pre-service caffeine?
14:29 - No, I don't think so.
14:31 - For if we inculcate within our children only the values of our world, the values of rampant materialism and blind peer acceptance and transitory values and relativism run amok, if we let the values of Hollywood and TikTok dictate the way in which our children see the world and horror of horrors view themselves, then we send them out to their peril.
14:58 - A generation which thinks of five second sound bites, undergirded by a what's in it for me materialism, a generation hollow from the inside out, striding off lemming like into oblivion.
15:14 - But if we give them God, if we give them God, we give them hope.
15:25 - For God is hope and peace and joy and love.
15:30 - In God is found hope for the future, no matter what the day might bring.
15:35 - In God is peace, no matter the chaos of our situation.
15:41 - In God is joy, independent of whatever stuff we manage to accumulate.
15:46 - And in God is love, love for us, for each of us, a love not based upon the right clothes or the right appearance or the right peer group.
15:56 - It is a love based upon God deciding to love and promising to never, ever stop.
16:5 - That's what we can give them.
16:8 - And that is the gift of life, fullness of life now and forevermore.
16:16 - Now, of course, Jesus knew this, lived for this, died for this.
16:23 - In saying, let the little children come to me and do not stop them, Jesus put them front and center and said that they were important, vitally so, and that they can teach us plenty about God.
16:36 - And he said, we should, we must bring them to God and let nothing stand in their way.
16:43 - When the disciples stood in the way, Jesus was no less upset with them than he was with the money changers in the temple.
16:54 - We heard it earlier.
16:56 - People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.
17:3 - When Jesus saw this, he was indignant.
17:7 - He said to them, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
17:18 - Jesus was indignant.
17:22 - It's not a word we use often.
17:23 - It's kind of like angry, offended, and worried, kind of put into a blender, and what comes out is indignant.
17:34 - Jesus is angry at this great and obvious wrong.
17:40 - It's the only time in all the New Testament that this word is used to describe the reaction of Jesus.
17:50 - It isn't found more than a half a dozen times in the whole New Testament.
17:54 - It's a word that is used very, very sparingly, but it was a word used in one of our other readings this morning.
18:3 - Not to describe Jesus, but to describe the temple officials.
18:9 - This is no coincidence.
18:11 - Listen, but when the chief priests and teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, Hoseanna to the son of David, they were indignant.
18:25 - Why?
18:26 - Because in their view, the foundation of their faith was under threat.
18:33 - And Jesus, in seeing the disciples prevent the children coming to be blessed, believed the very same thing.
18:41 - Keep the children away, and the foundation of the faith in our faith, in our context, the Christian faith.
18:50 - If you keep the children away from the Christian faith, then the faith is under threat.
18:55 - The faith will die.
18:58 - That's how important it is.
19:3 - And so, we must do our best for the children.
19:10 - I challenge each and every one of us to listen to the voice of God and to say, I too will help.
19:16 - I too will come forward.
19:19 - I will participate in the ministry of our congregation to our children.
19:23 - I will support with my time, my talents, and my resources, the Christian education of this congregation.
19:30 - I will volunteer.
19:31 - I will pray.
19:32 - I will work.
19:33 - I will make children and youth a priority.
19:36 - I won't let my fear or my uncertainty or my age or my inexperience get in the way.
19:43 - I'll hear the voice of Jesus and I will respond.
19:46 - I will add my name to this number because I want the priorities of Jesus to be my priorities too.
19:53 - And the priorities of the church I call home.
19:57 - I won't wait for the next person to volunteer.
20:1 - I'll be the next person.
20:3 - I will put up my hand and when I do, God will use me and help me and I too will learn what it is to be part of the kingdom of heaven.
20:13 - I will do my part.
20:17 - Throughout just about 40 years of ministry, one of the greatest challenges I ever had was working with the Sunday School and Christian Education Departments to recruit people to be Sunday School teachers and to help in Sunday School and Christian Education.
20:35 - I remember one Sunday bringing this news to the congregation, I said, oh, by the way, Sunday School is starting in September and we're really gonna need some new teachers and if you want to come and be a part of that great ministry, please see our Sunday School Superintendent, she'd love to meet with you.
20:54 - Of course, she'd come to me and report, well, nobody came.
20:59 - So the next week, I'd say, hey, September is coming fast and Sunday School is really coming here, really need you to help out here and we really need some people and so really ask God to lead you and speak to your hearts and bring you into this.
21:12 - There's nothing more important than we can do.
21:18 - Nobody, nobody this week.
21:20 - So now I'm getting desperate and the following week, I'd say, okay, little Billy, come on, come on up here and little cute, I picked the cutest kid in the whole church.
21:28 - Have Billy stand with me.
21:29 - It's little Billy here, he's got to learn these stories and he's the nicest little boy.
21:33 - You just love spending time.
21:35 - What an honor and what a privilege to do so.
21:36 - You can teach him the great stories of the Bible.
21:39 - Little Billy will be happy to have you there.
21:40 - It's just the most wonderful thing you can do, to see our Christian, nothing.
21:46 - So now it's a week before Sunday School.
21:49 - Bring little Billy back up.
21:51 - I said, folks, little Billy here, beautiful little Billy.
21:55 - He's going to hell unless you teach him Sunday School and all of this.
22:2 - You got three or four desperate people who couldn't sleep at night.
22:5 - I thought it was them.
22:14 - But wait, there's more than what we do here.
22:18 - Our children need more than us bringing them to church, to Sunday school, to youth group.
22:24 - They need to learn from us.
22:27 - They need to learn from our example of faith.
22:31 - Faith, as the old but deeply true saying goes, faith begins at home.
22:38 - And that's not a new idea.
22:40 - We began our service with this passage from Deuteronomy, and if we were to continue a bit further in this passage we were reading, we would come to this part.
22:50 - It says, in the future, when your children ask you, what is the meaning of the laws, commandments, and rules that the Lord our God gave us?
22:56 - We tell them, we were slaves to the king of Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt by his great power.
23:4 - The Lord showed us great and terrible signs and miracles, which he did to Egypt and the king and his whole family.
23:11 - The Lord brought us out of Egypt to lead us here and to give us the land he promised our ancestors.
23:16 - The Lord ordered us to obey all these commands and respect the Lord our God so that we will always do well and stay alive as we are today.
23:26 - The right thing for us to do is this, obey all these rules in the presence of the Lord our God as he has commanded.
23:36 - Now, this was said at Passover, and that first Passover was over 3,000 years ago.
23:42 - And at Passover time to this day in Jewish homes around the world, families gather around the table for the Seder dinner where the Exodus story is read along with the ceremony known as the Passover Haggadah.
23:55 - And the central part of that ceremony are the four questions.
23:59 - And the four questions are centered around the big question, why is this night different from all other nights?
24:8 - And do you know who has to ask the big question, the central part of the whole service?
24:14 - The children.
24:16 - And if there are no children present, and if there are children in the family, believe me, they would be present.
24:22 - But if there are no children present, the youngest adult takes the role of the child and asks the question, even if the youngest adult is 82 years old.
24:32 - All of this means that the central purpose, the central purpose behind the celebration of Passover is to pass our faith over to our children.
24:43 - It's the whole point.
24:45 - I wish we could learn from our Jewish forebears and see the primary purpose of, for example, Easter, as passing the knowledge and the belief of the death and resurrection of Jesus onto our children, in addition to the chocolate bunnies and chickens and eggs.
25:4 - This tradition, this necessity of passing the faith onto our children, is not only known in Hebrew circles, it's how the Christian faith established itself.
25:14 - It was from the beginning, multigenerational.
25:17 - Children were always involved.
25:20 - Our witness to the earliest days of the Church is the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and the very first sermon preached on what is known as the birthday of the Church, the day of Pentecost has Peter proclaiming this.
25:34 - Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
25:45 - The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call.
25:53 - The promise is for you and your children.
25:57 - They're included too, as they were in every baptismal act throughout the remainder of the Book of Acts.
26:5 - And grandparents, you have a part to play as well.
26:10 - Remember Paul's second letter to Timothy.
26:13 - He writes this, I'm reminded of your sincere faith, Timothy.
26:16 - Timothy was a young man.
26:18 - I'm reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother, Lois, and in your mother, Eunice, and now I am persuaded, now lives in you also.
26:29 - The faith was passed on to Timothy from his grandmother and his mother.
26:36 - As grandparents, we have the enormous privilege of loving our grandchildren and sharing with them our faith.
26:45 - One of the highlights of our times with our grandchildren, who were blessed with living close by, is the prayers with which we begin our meals together with them.
26:58 - Our three-year-old actually refuses to eat and won't let you eat either until we say our thank you God prayers, telling God those things for which we are thankful.
27:11 - Just try to take a bite of your lasagna before you pray when Maeve is sitting there at the end of the table.
27:17 - She will yell.
27:19 - Hearing our grandchildren thank God for whatever is on their heart and mind that they are doing on a particular day is a wonderful glimpse into the Spirit of God working within them.
27:30 - And it teaches us something too.
27:32 - To be thankful for even the smallest things, things which a child notices, but which often pass us by.
27:42 - When your child asks you, you shall say, There is no other answer.
27:50 - There is no other way.
27:52 - Children, grandchildren, friends, tell them the story.
27:56 - Impress upon them the story.
28:0 - Tell them the story and in telling them, bring them and bring us to God.
28:4 - And God will bring us and our children to life.
28:11 - Thanks be to God.
28:14 - Let us pray.
28:20 - Lord God, we give you thanks for the children of our church, the children of our church families.
28:28 - We thank you for the gift that they are.
28:32 - We thank you for when we heard the faith in our youngest years.
28:37 - And we thank you that you have brought our faith to maturity and growth so that we can pass it on to others.
28:47 - We pray, Lord God, that you will help us to see needs where they are and where they arise, needs to help families, needs to help one another, need to bring our children into the knowledge of you and your unending and undying love in Jesus Christ.
29:6 - For this central, central responsibility and for this need which is so central to the heart of Jesus, we give you thanks and we pray that you will show us the part we might play.
29:20 - And so we ask in Christ our Lord, amen.