Opening Sentences:
Leader: The Lord be with you.
People: And also with you.
Leader: Lift up your hearts.
People: We lift them up to the Lord.
Leader: Every 10 seconds a high school student drops out.
People: Jesus loves me, this I know.
Leader: Every 35 seconds a child is abused or neglected.
People: For the Bible tells me so.
Leader: Every 40 seconds a baby is born into poverty.
People: Little ones to him belong.
Leader: Every 51 seconds a baby is born without health insurance.
People: They are weak, but he is strong.
All: Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.
(Adapted from the Children’s Sabbath at First Christian Church [Disciples of Christ] in Frankfort, Ky., published in Shannon Daley-Harris, National Observance of Children’s Sabbath Manual, vol. 16 [Washington, D.C.: Children’s Defense Fund, 2007], p. 69.)
Sermon:
Call me Rachel. I’ve been called worse. She is crying inconsolably. Her tears will not stop. There is no end to them. At the beginning of this morning’s Scripture lesson from the 31st chapter of the book of Jeremiah, Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted, verse 15 says. Have you ever been there? Have you ever known someone who has?
In this morning’s Old Testament lesson, Rachel was there and not for the first time. Rachel was the wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph, he of the coat she had made him with fancy sleeves or many colors, depending on how you translate it. Her son, you may remember, was reportedly torn to bits by a wild animal, when in fact his half-brothers had sold him into slavery. Rachel did not live long enough to be a party to the discovery and the happy tears that her son was still alive in Egypt. His name meant “he adds,” but he was taken away from her. Rachel was also the mother of the twelfth and last of Jacob’s sons, in whose childbirth she died after naming him Ben-Oni, “son of my sorrow.” Evidently, her husband Jacob was unwilling to live with the constant reminder of his late wife’s grief, so he renamed the boy Ben-Yamin, “son of the south” or “son of the right hand,” depending on how you translate it. Rachel was a woman of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and by the time the prophet Jeremiah invoked her name and her tears, the descendants of her beloved Joseph and Ben-Oni had been exiled from the land of their living into Assyria, modern-day Iraq, for more than a century. Rachel’s tears for children in Jeremiah 31 are the tears of an entire people. They are tears for innumerable children whose days have turned to darkest night, whose dreams have turned to nightmares, whose lives have been cut short by death—or worse. Have you ever been there? Have you ever known someone who has?
One afternoon, thirty years ago this fall, I came home from my job as a classroom teacher’s aide and announced to Bev that I hoped we didn’t ever have children. That was something of a departure from previous discussions we had had, so I had some splainin’ to do, as Ricky Ricardo would say. “I can’t stand the pain,” I told her. She said, “Well, aren’t we selfish? You can’t stand the pain?” I said, “No not my pain, their pain. I can’t stand their pain.”
Some of you have heard me speak of TW. TW was 14 years old and in the sixth grade. You do the math. TW was a disturbed and troubled child. He was a volatile sort. TW was in school each day because he got himself up in the morning, got himself dressed and got himself to the bus stop in time to catch the bus to school. Incredible grief and pain and anger always lay just below the surface of his skin. One day when he was 6 years old, he stood in his family’s kitchen as his mother lay on the floor and bled to death from a hemorrhage in pregnancy. In the intervening years, TW had been institutionalized repeatedly as he tried to come to terms with his grief and his guilt and his failure: his grief over his mother’s death, his guilt from assuming that somehow he had something to do with what happened to her, and his lingering sense that he had failed to save her that day. Other children in the class, one or two of them at least, loved to set him off, trigger his rage and get him sent to the principal’s office. All they had to do was whisper in his ear “yo’ momma.” It was a common street and playground insult, “yo’ momma.” But not for TW. It brought his grief and his guilt and his failure bubbling up to the surface, and he would fly into a rage, at the end of which I would walk him to the principal’s office as he sobbed. I wanted to bring TW home with me, but such things were not allowed.
I probably haven’t told you about Brenna. Brenna was also in that class. She was 15 and in the sixth grade. You do the math. She was 15 years old and had a record for prostitution. Brenna was tall and very dark and very strong. To tell you the truth, I was scared of Brenna. She was taller than I was. She was stronger than I was. And she was faster than I was. There is a lot about Brenna that is memorable, but what I remember most are the three primary looks I saw in her eyes. The first was a dazed and distant look she would wear into class some mornings that made me wonder what in the world had happened the night before that she was trying to ignore or forget or recover from. Her second look was fury. It was a wild fury that screamed out through her eyes even when she stood silent. The third was longing. It was the look of a child who just longed to be loved and cared for instead of used. I wanted to bring Brenna home with me but such things were not allowed, and she would probably take the gesture the wrong way anyway.
What I know now that I didn’t know then about TW and Brenna is that their name is Legion. There are tens of thousands of children in our communities and in our country and millions all around the globe like them in one way or another. We see them. And we hear them. And we persist in ignoring them. They are casualties of AIDS in Africa. They are casualties of political violence and genocide in places like Somalia and Iraq and Afghanistan. They are casualties of war and famine poverty all over the world. Call me Rachel. I’ve been called worse. Rachel is crying inconsolably. Her tears will not stop. There is no end to them.
But this morning’s scripture lesson does not abandon Rachel in her disconsolate weeping. In verse 17, the Lord announces to her—and to all who weep for the children, “There is hope for your future.” “There is hope for your future.” Hope is that thin thread of anticipation that just maybe the future might be better than the present. Hope is not optimism. Hope is what sustains us when there is every good reason for pessimism. Hope is not looking on the bright side. Hope is what keeps us going when we can see nothing but darkness on every side. The goal of hope is not the gratification of our wants, but the fulfillment of our deepest needs and the deepest needs of others. Even others like TW and Brenna, whose name is Legion.
“There is hope for your future, says the Lord.” And the bridge between weeping and hope is work, according to verse 16. Work. “There is a reward for your work, says the Lord.” In the end, the reward is not for our weeping but for our working, even as we weep. So don’t get caught up in the arrogant conservative assumption that the children of responsible parents are not at risk because they’re being brought up in the right way and they will not depart therefrom. Children of responsible parents are at risk as well as children of irresponsible parents. And don’t get caught up in the arrogant liberal assumption that only poor children are at risk because children from affluent homes have everything they need. Children from affluent homes are at risk, as are children from poor homes. In fact, the tide has turned in our culture. Children of affluent families in the suburbs are now statistically at greater risk for drug addiction, alcohol abuse and illicit sexual activity than poor, urban children. And the reason, sociologists tell us, is because affluent children from the suburbs have the money, the transportation, and the unsupervised time necessary to mix the cocktail of drug addiction, alcohol abuse and illicit sexual activity. Arrogant conservative assumptions and arrogant liberal assumptions alike are crippling our culture and killing our children. All children everywhere are at risk.
So don’t just sit there. Start weeping, like Rachel. And don’t just sit there weeping. Start working, like Rachel. For in your work there is a reward, says the Lord. There is hope for your future in your weeping and in your working, says the Lord.
This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
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