If I were ruler of the world.....a child's answer

A post from Pr. Sherry McGuffin, a Lutheran  pastor from Michigan, on facebook.  She reflects on a children's sermon on Christ the King Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016 when the little children preached gospel to her.  The post is used with  her permission.

It was Christ the King Sunday.  The children came forward for the children's time.

My heart had not been in the church.  In fact, I was a little upset to say the least concerning the election, hate mail, and the daily grind of ministry and community after such a devastating blow to the civil liberties and rights for which I work so hard.

So I pulled ou the same blanket that my racist godmother crocheted me for my ordination and watched the children run up and help to spread out the blanket.  The rule is that everyone has to be touching the blanket so no one starts running around. I was sick to my stomach as I watched them cuddle into the blanket making room for one another.

I asked the flat question....if you could be the ruler for a day what would you do? You have the freedom to do anything. The answers came flooding in after a bit of a pause.

 "I would make all of the water in the world clean for Flint and other places where kids are thirsty." 

"I would make everyone healed." 

I am going to make sure that Betsy has friends cuz she sits all alone all of

 the time and is sort of mean."

I would erase the frowns in hearts and make them smiles." 

And the children kept shouting out all of the wonderful things they would do for others.

I stood up, looked at the congregation and said, "Amen." They congregation clapped and shouted. When it quieted down I looked and folks were filled with tears.

Hope restored by children. See, they are NOT our future. These children are here and now and are relevant TODAY. These children have dreams of pretty great things for our world that don't include what is pushed on them like toys and gadgets. They get it.

I felt the fight in my soul light with passion again. And felt the hope of recreation. I feel so very blessed. Ministry of Word and sacrament....and love.

...they will remember war no more......

perhaps this is our deepest hope....a peace so secure that our children will not only live in a time without war, but actually remember war no more.  The prophet Isaiah holds this vision before the eyes of the people of Israel thousands of years ago....a vision still powerful today in modern America.

It will be God's peace; a time when our hard labor will be engaged in the work of living: plowing and seeding, feeding and sheltering, laughing and loving.  No more will we give life to children who will offered up as sacrifices on the altar of war.  We will turn our swords into plowshares: instruments of life and not death.  Our spears will become pruning hooks, trimming our vines to produce grapes each year rather than slaying those called 'enemy.'

All will be life; life will be all.  We will know nothing else.  This is peace....and it is God's promise to all people, all nations in the gift of Jesus.

'The Lord's mountain will be the highest of mountains' Isaiah tells us.  The Lord will reign above all other powers, all kings and all nations.  It will be a place where God makes the judgments - judgments that lead to peace and prosperity, to life and not death.  This is a kingdom where swords and spears are no longer needed to make war but to nurture life for all.

This is the kingdom that comes to us in Jesus - this is the peace that passes all understanding.  This is the peace we long for, and so together we pray "Come Lord Jesus."

Reformation Monday: Saint and Sinner.....that's us

Baptism was/is a big deal.  It is not just a marker or sign of a renewed life but rather it is a new reality of new life in Jesus.  In baptism we die to our old life:  we put aside its values and hopes and promises and powers.  Then we are re-born into new life in Jesus, the resurrected one.  Now our values, hopes, promises and powers are grounded in Jesus and through him in God.


Jesus commanded baptism and joined a promise of forgiveness of sin to it.  (For Luther, it is this command and promise that makes it a sacrament.)  We are born again as people without sin. Once baptized, we are saints in the eyes of God.;

And yet.......

We are fairly aware of our own brokenness: the places and habits in our personal lives that do harm to others and to ourselves.  These broken places also break us off from God; the church calls this sin but you can use whatever word reminds you that God is far above us in holiness and we stand before the face of God with this broken reality on our hearts.

Even the baptized are touched by sin and are guilty of harming others.  We are saint by virtue of our baptism and sinner by virtue of still being alive and breathing.  For me, this is the most obvious of Luther's teachings.  Paul himself says 'I do not do the very thing I wish I did; and I do the very thing I wish I didn't'  (paraphrase).  We can all relate to that. Living out the holiness that is ours through Jesus is a never ending (and never accomplished) battle.

In God's eyes we are children of the water of baptism, while in this world we still struggle against the power of sin around us and within us.  We are saint and sinner at the same time simul justus et peccator

Lutherans take the power of sin very seriously.  Most Lutheran worship services have an element of confession either at the beginning (as we enter into this time with God) or often just before we take communion (as we enter into this physical encounter with God).

However, Lutherans take the love of God more seriously still.  On this side of the grave, the walk with Jesus means constantly checking and re-calculating our route because sin is ever before us.  Yet we hold Jesus before our eyes at all times, reminded of his great grace, and walk towards him day by day.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

Author Anne LaMott has been quoted as saying, "there are two kinds of prayer:  help me, help me, help me and thank you, thank you, thank you."  We surround those two prayers with praise and longing, sadness and joy, confession and forgiveness, but at the core, these are the ever present ideas at the center of our prayers.

This week we focus on Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!  We as a nation will take a day (or if you work retail, part of a day) to gather with some special folks and take time to offer thanks.  Although I am just as big a football fan as others, giving more time to giving thanks on this third Thursday in November is a very good idea.

I say this because it can all become perfunctory; our friends, our family, our food, our homes........rattled off in quick succession without a deep consideration of exactly what good these things bring into our lives. Of course, it is not the same for everyone: some families are so challenging that giving thanks for them is beyond difficult.  For some, food is not a given and a full belly (the mark of too much stuffing and turkey taken) is a rarity.  There are those, maybe among our acquaintances, for whom avoiding foreclosure on their home is a primary worry.  They give thanks with a slightly different slant.

Yet where would we be without our children or friends?  What part of our life would be less rich, less comforting without these people we know?  Are you able to move beyond the surface and offer up thanks for some of the difficult places from which you have learned valuable lessons?  Can you move away from an attitude of scarcity towards an awareness of the abundance that is yours?

Spiritual teachers point us to the practice of giving thanks: naming something every single day for which we are thankful.  The discipline of thanksgiving raises up within us an acute awareness of all the wonder around us and we grow in recognizing blessings and being a blessing to others.  It can truly become second nature and give shade to each of our days.

Let us lift up a loud Thank You, Thank You, Thank You prayer this Thursday.  Let us outshine one another in naming all the good that God has given onto us.  Work at it.  Challenge one another to name one more thing.  Be as excited about the giving of thanks as you are about the apple pie that awaits.

Like anything, with a little practice, this will become a new way of being.  And for that I give thanks.

Reformation Monday: Saint and Sinner......forgiven and forgiven

It's a muddle:  we are saint by virtue of our baptism and sinner by virtue of the fact that we are still alive and breathing.  Perfect holiness is accomplished (completed) only when we are one with God in the life to come.  So what's a faithful and earnest believer to do?

Rely on the great and enduring forgiveness of God in Jesus.  Into this muddle of saint and sinner comes Jesus' announcement of forgiveness and invitation into the Kingdom.  Remember on the cross how Jesus forgave the thief?  So too with us.  Again and again we approach the cross, cry out to God, and leave to live yet another day as an imperfect child of the water. We are always forgiven but remembering that and trusting it deep in our hearts is another thing.

Of course, the more you are aware of your own brokenness, the more powerful the gift of God's forgiveness becomes.  God  loves us.  Not in spite of who we are but exactly as we are.  God is not fooled while at the same time God will not be turned aside.  That forgiveness offers us a new beginning to life with a clean slate.

Some will discount this great gift of forgiveness and simply rely on it as if entitled....as if God owes it to them.  That's a dangerous approach to life in God.  When we fail to pay attention to God, when we get lazy in our relationship with God we risk simply forgetting....wandering away without any awareness that we are lost.

Saint and sinner....forgiven and forgiven....in the waters of baptism, in the meal of bread and wine, body and blood, and at the cross for all eternity.