The Park Road Pulpit

Boys and girls, listen to a story: Once upon a time, long ago, there lived a set of twins, Matthew and Tabitha, or Matty and Tabby, as their parents called them. Every year a group of people from their village made a trip to the great city for a very special celebration, and every year when the people left on the trip, the whole town would come out – it was like a great parade! Matty and Tabby had never been before, but this year, for the first time, they were going to Jerusalem!

Every day Matty and Tabby talked about their trip, and at night, they even dreamed about it – especially they dreamed of seeing the Temple. They had learned in school that the Temple was in the center of the city – in fact, Mr. Salomon had even said the Temple was the center of the whole universe.

Matty and Tabby knew about the Temple because nothing was more important in their religion and in their country than the Temple. All good Jews were supposed to go, at least once, to the city, which Mr. Salomon called the “City of Peace.” This year, Matty and Tabby, too would travel there to make an offering to God.

At last, the day arrived, and the parade began. It took several days to get to Jerusalem from their village, and each night of the journey, Matty and Tabby lay awake wondering if the Temple could possibly be as their parents had said. On the last day of the journey, every time that the dusty, rocky road turned uphill, they would run ahead of the group, breathing hard as they ran, and their hearts beating even faster from all their excitement, hoping to be the first to see the great city and its great Temple.

Finally, at the top of a steep, windy road Tabby called out to her brother, “Look, Matty – there it is! And it is as beautiful as Mr. Salomon said!” Across the valley, and on the next hilltop, in the center of a wide courtyard, shining like gold in the light of the afternoon sun – the most important building in all the world – for in the center of that great Temple there was a room where God actually lived!

From the time it was conceived by King Solomon, ten centuries before Christ, until it was razed by the Romans forty years after Christ’s death, nothing was more important to the Jews. Life revolved around that great monument to the God of Israel. Lives were lost constructing this masterpiece of the ancient world, and countless lives have been given over the centuries in defense of its walls and all that the Temple still symbolizes. Not a stone stands today, though one of the great retaining walls, which supported the plaza on which the Temple stood, still reminds Jews of the great house that once was there. And this “Wailing Wall” is still the geo-political center of our world, for the Jews, and for all who care about the survival of our race.

The 12^th-century rabbi, Moses Maimonides, knew of the importance of the Temple, of its centrality in Israel. He knew of the dreamy hopes that were still tied to its reconstruction, yet Maimonides knew that even in Israel there was something more important – “the education of the young must not be interrupted even for the purpose of rebuilding the Temple.”[1]

What is more important to us today, building and defending our many “Temples,” or taking care of our children?

Our preaching conversation this fall concerns the making of a good church, and we believe that nothing defines a “good church” more than a good program of education for its children. So how do we, as a church, put our children before the building of our so-called “Temples?” I make two simple suggestions.

Today’s familiar passage from the book of Ruth is a favorite for weddings, but those well-known words, “entreat me not to leave thee,” were not uttered as an expression of love between a husband and wife. Ironically, they were words of family-loyalty spoken between a daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law of her deceased husband. (Is this the way you talk to your mother-in-law?) The story is of two women: Naomi, an Israelite, and Ruth, of one of the tribes regarded as pagan by the Jews. Both find themselves widowed, and Naomi graciously offers to release Ruth, back to her own people. But Ruth’s commitment teaches us a lesson in fidelity and trust, in the importance of the family bond (whether blood-kin or not) – your people will be my people, and your God, my God.

The first thing we can do as a church to value our children is to value our children’s families. I have no right, nor the desire, to advise anyone on raising a family. Parenting is my life’s greatest joy. It is also a more difficult challenge than I ever imagined. Anyone who has been here knows. (And I think it will get worse before it gets better!) So I say only this: we must all work – parents, children, grandparents, neighbors, extended family, friends, blood-kin and members of the household of faith. We must all work, individually and corporately, to find ways to help families put families first, and to strengthen the ties that bind them together.

Patrick Thyne’s suggestion that we crawl up in our kids’ beds every night and say, “Tell me about your day,”[2] is not offered with his eyes closed. He surely knows what I know: that I can still get away with that, now, but when teenagers come to my house, such advice might begin to sound like utter foolishness. So instead of trying to tell parents today how to relate to your teenagers, for a moment, let me speak to the teens.

Young people, if you wonder why your parents are so out of it, so “stupid” (to use a word that is not allowed in our house), let me tell you why. It is because we are stupid! And this is because we are you! I’m not really meaning to call anyone “stupid,” only to tell you that life passes us by in such a flurry and with such relentless fury, that one day we are excitedly preparing for our High School Senior Prom, and the very next day we find ourselves arguing with our own teenagers about what time they must come in from the dance!

Are parents clueless? Without a doubt, we are clueless. But not about what you’re feeling. You see, we’ve been there. We’re only clueless about how to communicate our care across the age divide. You see, teenagers, at heart, your parents are all still you – same hopes, same fears, same drives to succeed (or tendency to procrastinate until the last minute!), same desires in sexuality … Same. Same. Same. Most parents of teens are really still teenagers themselves, but suddenly trapped in the changing body of a 40-year-old, who, without so much as a day’s training, realize that they have become something else. A parent. Parents are just grown up children, who realize one day that someone else is suddenly counting on them, every single day. What’s for supper? Can I have the car keys? I need some money! And good parents, however poor a job they may seem to you to do, are just grown up children who are trying to live up to our responsibilities – to ourselves, to our society, to our God. And to that which is most important to us and to the world, that is, to you.

So, children, bear with us, will you? We are just you, tomorrow. And tomorrow will come, and tomorrow… you will understand. Teenagers, why don’t you crawl up in your parents’ bed tonight, and ask about the day. You might find out that they’re not so stupid after all, and that we really are in this together, “wherever you go, I will go… your God will be my God, too.”

As difficult as it has always been, parents and children must work to get along. And we as a church must learn to value families, to encourage, and to protect family time.

Secondly, we must learn as a congregation, to truly welcome children. Our society, for all its advance, has not yet learned this necessary secret to our continued success:

Young families of all races… are in extraordinary trouble… The median income of young families with children fell by 26 percent between 1973 and 1989… Forty percent of all children in families with a household head under thirty are poor… A third of our mothers do not receive the care they need because our health care system, unlike that of every other major industrialized nation, does not provide for universal basic coverage for mothers and children.

Remember these children behind the statistics. All over America, they are the small human tragedies who will determine the quality and safety and economic security of America’s future as much as your and my children will. The decision you and I and our leaders must make is whether we are going to invest in every American child or continue to produce thousands of school dropouts, teen parents, welfare recipients, criminals – many of whom are alienated from a society that turns a deaf ear to the basic human needs and longings of every child.[3]

Our responsibility for taking care of our children begins at home. It is utterly important right here. In the conversations we have had over the past year concerning our church’s future together, you have told us, overwhelmingly, that you want to be more involved in missions, more involved in the community. I believe this is a genuine desire and a right impulse. Yet, we have to beg and plead and coerce and cajole, and Amy has to do her pathetic little Wednesday night guilt-tripping-preacher routine, every single year, to find enough teachers and volunteers to provide for the programs for our very own children! How can this be?

We have an exciting crop of children and youth coming along. By way of numbers, our averages have tripled in the last three years. But the only measure of any real success will be if our children one day become us, that is, if they continue to take up the call to tell their children the story of Jesus, to teach the infinite worth of all people, to believe in the intrinsic value of their own soul and trust intuitively in the unconditional love of God.

Boys and Girls, here’s the end of the story: When Matty and Tabby got to the courtyard of the Temple, there were thousands of people there, pushing and shouting, and there were strange smells in the air. While their father talked to one of the merchants, they slipped away, because there was a quiet man in a quiet corner of the courtyard, and there were children gathered all around. He was talking about the temple, but not about the great Temple of stone behind them. Jesus told the boys and girls of a Temple which was in their hearts.

Many years later, when they were old, Matty and Tabby learned that the Roman army had destroyed that great Temple in Jerusalem. There was great sadness in Israel, and immediately people began to talk about rebuilding the Temple. People are still talking about that today. But Matty and Tabby just smiled.

Let the little children come unto me. For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.

[1] Quoted by Emily Faust Korzenik, “The Child in Judaism and in Jewish Life,” The Living Pulpit, October-December 2003, p.24.

[2] Thyne, “Tell Me About Your Day,” The Living Pulpit, October-December, 2003, p. 36.

[3] Marian Wright Edelman, The Measure of Our Success, 1992.