This past month would count in my life as “the month of the child.”

I suppose for most parents, “back to school” is very child-centered. For me this past month has also included “back to Sunday School”, my youngest daughter’s birthday and my oldest daughter beginning her last year at a school she’s attended for eleven years. In our church community, we all cautiously rejoiced at the birth of twins and welcomed them in baptism, and in nearly the same breath, told them both goodbye for now. In our extended family, we had news that our cousins will in fact get to adopt two sweet girls who need a home. We’ve seen the first smiles and first laughs of friends children over the internet. This very weekend, we got to spend time with another cousin and her children, who are her spitting image.

Tonight this is pause in thanksgiving for the month of the child. And today was one of my favorite Gospel readings.

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me. Mark 9:33-37

I usually LOVE to do the Children’s Story (sermon) in worship, and you would think I would have looked forward to this one. However, I’m a stickler for not wanting to stage a cheap laugh (even though sometimes it happens), or teach the adults through the child’s unknowing responses (even though sometimes it happens). I really want to be authentic with children–so today I struggled getting ready.

It would be so easy to just say, “Hey, kids you transform adults completely into jiggling vats of Jello because they love you so much. You drive them crazy, some, if not most, of the time. But they are addicted to you, because you are the closest glimpse of God most of them will ever see.” While true, I’ve heard that Truth is best welcomed when disguised as her sister, Story, so I stuck with the Gospel story.

So, the story hatched–it seemed safe. In telling the Gospel, I would line the children up in a line and remind them how it feels to be “the line leader.” I knew they’d been working on this at school. I’d seen them in the church hallway during the week, holding onto the little rope with handles. So during worship, the really wise ones, un-tainted by too much school yet, shook their heads and teared up at the mention of standing in line. Standing in line is hard when you are a child. Adults do it with ease, forming a line at the drop of the hat. We relish orderly establishments like the bank, theme parks and Southwest Airlines that have made “standing-in-line design” a career option.

I wonder if adults are okay with standing in line because it speaks to what Jesus’ disciples were arguing about–who gets to be the first-est with the most-est? It is a safe feeling to know your place. As long as there are fewer in front of you then there are behind you, one might feel pretty good. Lines are great because you don’t really have to look any one in the eye, touch them or react in any other way then step forward when it’s your turn.

Children don’t stand in lines well. They clump and circle. They relate and cling.

So I thought I could get the children in the line, and move the ones at the front to the back, but I didn’t really know how it could end. I knew that somewhere in that last part of the Gospel, rested the really important part, but I was going to have to wing-it. I really don’t like to wing-it, but I’ve done it enough to know that there lies the Spirit. Somehow, in the midst of children and chance, the ether catches fire and evaporates to insight.

Jesus put a little child AMONG them.

One cannot put a child “AMONG” folks that are in a line. If we think we are in a line, needing to gain on the guy in front of us, and hold back the guy behind us, we are wrong. The disciples then and we today, are in an amorphous clump–just like what the line of the children disintegrates into as soon as given the chance.  We are clinging to each other–whether we know it or not. The clump is not necessarily a hand-holding, daisy-chain wearing, Kum-ba-jah singing clump of happy people. But it is relational and responsible to the whole.

So to all teachers out there, my apologies. I told the children, “Jesus messed up the line. Look! When we come close to each other, we are more like a circle.” Maybe you could get a bunch of hula-hoops for them to hold onto to walk down the hallway?

I am so lucky in my line of work to sometimes get to hear spiritual insights from children. Sometimes it is a reflection of their consumer culture and television or sometimes a parroting of a “cultural Christianity” that infuses society. However, sometimes they make a connection that seems so clear and beautiful that comes from some deeper place of faith — a kind of refraction and knowing that we miss as adults. You don’t have to be a Child and Family Minister to have heard these wonders. This I encountered as a parent. This story was from my daughter and has no filters for political correctness, but does come from the purest affection and love between childhood friends.

Summer loves dolls and I bought a new baby doll to be baby Jesus in the manger at church for Christmas. Summer loves it and she can hardly stand for it to stay at church. She was carrying it around and taking it’s pink jumper off to don the requisite swaddling clothes.

She exclaimed, “Hey Mom, the baby’s name is printed on the back!”

I looked, and replied, “No, it is not a name. It says ‘MADE IN CHINA.’”

Summer was quiet a long time and we carry the baby out to adjust the hay in the stable. After a little bit, Summer asked, “Mom, where was Hallie made?”

I reply, “Well, Hallie was born in China.”

After a long stretch of silence (so much, I’d really forgotton what we were talking about.) Summer responds with a awe-filled voice, “Mom, baby Jesus and Hallie were made in the same place!”

I reply, “Yes, Summer, they were.”

It made me think that the nativity story is about the greatest adoption story seldom celebrated: Joseph. I also celebrate with my friends on December 22, the day they laid eyes on their forever daughter, Hallie, now seven. I listen to adoption stories, with the same wonder as I listen to birth stories. We get caught up in the wonder of the Christmas birth story, but this year I’m in love with the adoption story.

This very moment the plastic baby Jesus from China is lying in a manger in front of our church. There is a fake sheep and some hay, but no mother, no father. The original intent was to be a fun place for children to sit and pretend. We thought we’d bring the baby in at night, so it doesn’t get stolen. Then we realized it is part of the Christmas mystery to leave it alone and cold, with empty seats beside it. Maybe it is a kind of surrogate warmth for our resident homeless to hold through the night. Maybe it will be stolen, and find it’s forever home. I hope people driving by will be appalled and asked, “Who is going to take care of that baby?”

It is these types of responses I live for in a circle of children learning about God. These types of responses are the surprises, the ah-ha’s that take your breath away and shift your paradigm. “Dancing on the bread and swimming in the wine” was a response by a five-year-old boy to the wondering question “where are you in this story?” The story before us was the Godly Play story, the Faces of Easter. The card he pointed to was the picture of Jesus at the last supper.

The picture doesn’t appear to have any dancing or swimming. The looks on the faces before us aren’t especially joyful. But somehow, the boy saw himself in that painting, and he was joyful, playful–bouyant even. So much for unleavened bread, not much bounce.

The truth was the little boy’s life wasn’t too rosy either. His mom was recovering from emergency brain surgery. His worry over what he knew and what he felt like he should know, showed on his face in the weeks prior to this response. His little friends in the circle around him prayed fervently and out loud for the mom. They gave him a break on the playground, in the lunch line–they took care of him. However, this day mom was better, definitely on the road to recovery. It felt lighter, the air, that day.

So his comment shouldn’t have blindsided me like it did, but I love these blindsides. This response, and similar amazing words from children, seems to point directly toward God–just as God says “peek-a-boo.” There seems to be an ability, seemingly unique to the childlike, to place the hard stuff of life and the joyful play of life together like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

This past summer, Souls, Young and Old, at Play and in Story gathered at a like-named international conference in Berkeley, California. Presenter and theologian, Dr. Rebecca Nye, compared her concept of the “reflective soul” and the “refractive soul.” She offered that when presented with concepts spiritual, perhaps children “refract” instead of “reflect.” Those who sit beside children learning religious language, walk beside children in the woods or rest beside them reading a bedtime story could probably support this hypothesis. They can blindside us with their (refracted) insight.

So maybe that is why Jesus mentioned welcoming children at least eight times in the Gospels. If we could somehow be like them or at the very least welcome them, maybe we could have just a bit of this playful clarity. Maybe we wouldn’t think of God as either the commanding puppeteer pulling our strings or the disassociated Creator, watching this creation spin out of control. Maybe we could join the game of peek-a-boo? Maybe we too could dance on the bread and swim in the wine.

I wanted to begin by telling you about this photograph and what it has to do with minstry and children. It is a vacation photo from a family trip a few summers ago to Assateague Island in Virginia (inspired by a two generation fixation with the book, Misty of Chincoteague).

This is the last photo in a series that chronicles an afternoon of playing on the beach. I started drawing a giant labryrinth in the sand. That is an easy task if you have a few miles of pristine beach to start over if you mess up. However, this one, I took my time. I thought about it. The rest of my family ran here and there, dancing with the waves. I was really concentrating, so I didn’t notice my youngest daughter, about four, starting some little creation of her own several yards away. She didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother her. We just kept our heads down working.

When I finished drawing I started walking around the labyrinth. When I came to the end, and looked around a bit, I saw my daughter’s own little spiral, both whimsical and serious, just a short distance from mine. She walked her labyrinth, too. Then the whole family joined in, walking around and around the spirals. (I’m sure we looked a little strange from a distance.) Then my little daughter, carefully and seriously walked around the big labyrinth I had drawn. One path in, one path out–no way to get lost. When she came to the center, she threw up her hands and “click” my husband snapped this photo.

Dr. Jerome Berryman, creator of the Godly Play movement, offers children’s response to the expanse of the ocean. Children, when faced with a view of the ocean, so vast and awesome, they turn their backs and dig their own hole, their own little ocean. The daughter, when faced with her mother’s labyrinth, will make her own–and maybe walk her mother’s path in her own way and time.

Walking beside children on a their spiritual journey is a profound honor. Adults feel the need to model a Godly life, guide toward the best ways to live, steer away from things dangerous. Do we think our own path, directs our child’s feet? Maybe instead, it is their skipping, kicking and dancing on our well designed paths, that change us, not them. This joy and fearlessness in the face of the great expanse of ocean, in praise and thanksgiving for the One that creates, redeems and sustains it all–isn’t that the real path?