Children’s Sabbath

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

October 17, 2010

 

^Reading

Our reading this morning is from Marion Wright Edelman, founder and director of the Children’s Defense Fund for many years, from her introduction to this year’s call for Children’s Sabbath this weekend:

Dear Faithful Friend of Children: 

Just over a decade ago, in the preface to my book Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors I wrote, “I am blessed with a good husband, three great adult sons, enough money, and more honors than I can pack away. And yet I feel an urgent need to throw all caution to the winds and to risk all to try to finish the quest for justice and inclusion that our founding fathers dreamed of but did not have the courage to constitutionalize and practice….It is now time for the next great movement, for our children. It must be led by mothers and grandmothers of all races and faiths, with youths and all others who want to show the world that America is decent enough and sensible enough and moral enough to take care of all of its children. I invite you to join me in the urgent [movement] to Leave No Child Behind so that one hundred and one thousand years from now, our children’s children will call us blessed and God will say ‘well done.’” 

I believe that God calls us still to build this movement for children and that all of our blessings are meant to be used to bless others, especially children in difficult circumstances, especially to express love and achieve the justice that God intends. 

We have work to do. In our rich nation—and yes, even in the midst of the economic downturn we are still a wealthy nation—we allow children to be the poorest citizens. More than 14 million children, through no fault of their own, are living in poverty, six million of them in extreme poverty. Most live in working families. This national child poverty rate isn’t due to a lack of resources; it is due to a lack of political will, civic determination, and moral and ethical standards for who we are as a nation. Too many of us act as if we have been blessed for our own personal  benefit. The blessings we receive are so that we may be a blessing. The greatest blessing we have is our children, and yet that precious blessing is squandered and abused every second of every day somewhere in America. Our children, our blessing, are packing prison cells, filling emergency rooms, standing in line at food banks, ingesting lead in substandard housing, and, perhaps most damaging of all, absorbing our nation’s scornful lack of concern…. 

As our nation reels from the financial downturn driven by the greed of the few, heedless of the needs of the many, the tendency for many is to hold tight to what they have, to circle the wagons, to take care of their “own” with the narrowest definition of who one’s “own” includes. 

God, however, is ever inclusive, all giving, and always loving, and beckons us to do the same with the freedom that placing our trust in God allows. 

On this Children’s Sabbath weekend, we invite you to pray, worship, study, and act to fulfill God’s invitation to be a blessing and to nurture and protect the children God has entrusted to our care….

Together, we must, can and will make a difference. With God’s help, we will be a blessing to this and coming generations. 

In faith and hope, 

Marian Wright Edelman         

^{Prayer by Gary Kowalski}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{For the voiceless, for the innocent, for the vulnerable, for the least powerful among us, and those most in need of our protection.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{Who depend on adults to make their world safe, to create networks of care and learning, and to provide the schools and doctors and counselors and teachers that support them in their growth.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{Who do not understand partisan politics, who are not registered to vote, who are not interested in debating points, but who have a very deep interest in clean air and pure water and a world without war.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{Who trust their elders to exercise wisdom, to act responsibly, but who are so often disappointed and betrayed in that trust.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{Who are satisfied with so little-a warm blanket, a roof overhead, a good pair of sneakers-but who often lack even the barest of necessities.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{For the ones on honor rolls and the ones on drugs, for the well-adjusted and those who have been battered and traumatized by life.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{For those tormented by bullies at school and for the bullies themselves, tormented by demons we cannot even imagine.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{For girls and boys who see far too much sex and violence on TV and are assaulted and seduced with unhealthy images of femininity and masculinity.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{Who remind us of all that is tender and playful in ourselves, and of our own capacity for laughter and for love.}

^{We pray for the children,}

^{Who contain all the promise of generations to come and all the possibilities of tomorrow.}

^{Help us, we pray, to be the guardians and advocates of all children everywhere, with eyes to see that all are children of God.}

^Amen.

^Sermon

This weekend we and congregations from all religious traditions – Muslem, Jewish, Christian, Baha’i and many others – set aside a Sabbath – a time of rest and reflection – to consider how we may be a blessing to our children, all the children of our neighborhoods, our nation, and the world.  On this day of remembrance and recommitment, I am particularly concerned about two plagues that haunt our children – bullying and poverty.  The Children’s Defense Fund, founded and led for over 20 years by Marion Wright Edelman, has offered this occasion annually to focus special attention on the fate of our children, all of our children, in this wonderful and prosperous land we love so much. The theme this year is Blessed to be a Blessing, and it is inspired by the reading from the Torah for this week, the portion of Genesis in which Abraham is called by God to leave his father’s home and found a new nation.  God promises Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”  The focus this year is on how we, too, can be a great nation in caring for and loving all the children in our land, and how we, too, can be a blessing.

We all have our own special children to care for; our own children, our grandchildren, children of relatives, the children here in our congregation.  Sometimes it feels like we are completely taken up by the burdens and tasks of taking care of our own – working, caring for, babysitting, managing our households, and all of the other burdens and distractions of our immediate circle of care.  We need to recognize, though, that part of providing a better world for our children includes caring for our broader legacy in this world.  We are using the term “stewardship” in teaching our children about their obligations to those broader responsibilities.  We are teaching them that we are all stewards – caretakers or trustees – of all that we touch and rely on in our own lives. 

Children outside our families are an important part of our stewardship as adults.  The world we leave for our children will be made up of all of the children growing up today.  If some are bullied, an atmosphere of bullying will affect our children.  If some are growing up in poverty, the workforce they will join will lack some productive workers.  Too many will be much less productive, less educated, less able to care for themselves and their children, and more prone to engage in anti-social behavior and be incarcerated.

You will all have heard the story of Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers University and by chance a resident of my family’s home town of Ridgewood, New Jersey, where he was a member of the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra and won several awards and a scholarship for his skill as a musician.

At Rutgers, he was a rarity — a freshman who wasn’t majoring in music, but who played in a competitive, graduate-level orchestra.

Diane Wade, a violinist with the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra who often sat next to Clementi at rehearsals and performances, said,

“He was so incredibly talented — I could not believe how good he was for such a young boy…. Such a nice kid all the way around. … As a parent, he was the way you want your kids to be — polite, courteous, serious about the work he was doing and a hard worker.”[i]

Tyler jumped off the George Washington Bridge two weeks ago after his roommate broadcast online a photograph of an intimate encounter Tyler had with another man.  Cyber-bullying has become a topic of deep concern and even of legislation as the number of children who have committed suicide after being bullied online seem to have skyrocketed. Bullying takes many forms and starts much earlier in the school lives of our children; a recent article in the New York Times Magazine spoke of children being shunned by classmates for being different as early as kindergarten.

We as a religious community, like all people of faith, need to stand up and declare that this bullying of our children – any of our children – is unacceptable and must be stopped.  Our Hingham Hull Religious Leaders Association is taking up the issue to determine how we as leaders can take this message to all of our congregations.  We as parents and supporters of our schools also need to make it clear to school authorities, teachers and our own children that this is a serious issue and needs urgent attention.

I cannot pass over this issue without noting that much of the bullying in our middle schools and high schools involves sexuality – whether gay or straight, children are harassed for who they are; boys are targeted because they’re gay, girls on grounds of promiscuity or other behavior or dress.  In too many cases like that of Tyler Clementi, homophobia is the basis for bullying both in person and online.  We need to examine ourselves and make sure that we are not tacitly prone to homophobia ourselves, especially in ways that influence children around us.  That is one of the tasks our conversations about the possibility of becoming a Welcoming congregation will take up.  I believe this is not at heart a social or political issue, but rather a matter of our commitment to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We often think of our neighbors as our peers, but children are our neighbors, too, and they are also our future and our children’s future.

The other issue I want to talk about today is child poverty, the focus of the Children’s Defense Fund’s efforts for many years.  A recent study of the impacts of pre-natal care for and by mothers – good nutrition, abstaining from smoking, drinking and drugs, and regular visits to doctors – can have a dramatic impact on the child’s life after birth.  Children whose mothers are unwilling or unable to provide for themselves during pregnancy often suffer from lifelong deficits in learning ability, impulse control and ability to support themselves as adults.  This is one of the ways in which poverty can be transmitted from generation to generation, and may be a more important point of intervention to end the cycle of poverty than early childhood programs like Head Start.  To raise children with a healthy future, mothers need to have enough food of good quality, medical care, and information about how they need to care for themselves in order to care for their unborn children.

Here’s A Snapshot of One Child Living in Poverty: 

Five year-old Herardo peeks out from behind his mother’s protective arm with a sweet and playful grin. His brothers, Alfonso, 10, and Eduardo, 9, stand beside them, looking down with more bashful gazes. Another brother, eight-year- old Antonio, stands off to the side, not wanting to be photographed. Behind them is their home, a cramped weather-beaten trailer, its rusting metal sides a patchwork of paint that reflect efforts at various times to fix it up. The “stairs” in front of the trailer door are an uneven stack of wooden beams, making it more difficult and unsteady to get out than through a traditional home’s wide, smooth doorway. The battered, peeling tires of the trailer home have sunken into the dusty dirt—the trailer has been there for quite some time and will be challenging to move. The trailer’s buckling sides are somewhat steadied by wood propped against one end while cinderblocks under the trailer help support the worn tires. The trailer is, in many ways, a metaphor for the circumstances of poverty that grip the Torres family. 

The father works hard—toiling in the fields as a migrant worker as soon as the school year ends, and caring for people’s yards whenever he can get the work. It is hot, sweaty, physical work that is unforgiving should ill health strike and that fluctuates with the season. When he can find yard work, he earns about $90 a week. Each month, $75 is spent renting their trailer space. The family does not own a car so the father must rely on co-workers to pick him up and get him to his job. The lack of transportation poses other daily challenges for the family, from accessing supermarkets with the best prices to taking the children to appointments. They live in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, in Hidalgo County, one of the poorest counties in the nation. There is no public transportation where the family lives–the nearest public transportation is in the neighboring city of McAllen, which is approximately 12 miles away. They rely on neighbors or relatives to get around. Fortunately, the father’s meager salary is augmented by the food stamps the family receives, so they are able to purchase more food than his salary alone would have provided. When the children were asked recently if they had enough food, they all replied yes, although it is not known if their diet was bulked up with cheaper, less nutritious food. The boys, all born in the United States, previously received health care through Medicaid, but were recently denied coverage. Their mother does not know why and has embarked on the difficult task of working through the system to reestablish that they are eligible and secure their coverage once again. She is trying to work through the school district social worker, but even the social worker has not returned her calls. She has asked the Children’s Defense Fund’s Rio Grande Valley office to assist. In the meantime, she has not taken the children for medical care. There are no books or a computer in their home. Still, so far the children are doing well in school. But one of their older male cousins who lives nearby was recently sent to a boot camp for continuously missing school. His grades are now improving, according to his mother, but it remains to be seen what influence his choices—bad and good—will have on the young cousins.[ii]

To broaden the picture of how bullying, despair and poverty stunt the lives of our nation’s children, consider that Each Day in America:

2   mothers die in childbirth.

4   children are killed by abuse or neglect.

5   children or teens commit suicide.

9   children or teens are killed by firearms.

32 children or teens die from accidents.

78 babies die before their first birthdays.

202        children are arrested for violent crime.

377        children are arrested for drug offenses.

964        babies are born at low birthweight.

1,210     babies are born to teen mothers.

1,240     public school students are corporally punished.*

2,060     babies are born without health insurance.

2,175     children are confirmed as abused or neglected.

2,222     high school students drop out.*

2,692     babies are born into poverty.

4,435     children are arrested.

4,498     babies are born to unmarried mothers.

18,493 public school students are suspended.[iii]

* Based on 180 school days a year

What Can We Do to Be a Blessing to a Child Living in Poverty?

Be a Blessing by Speaking Out

• Communicate regularly with your legislators and urge them to lead on behalf of poor children and families. Sign up for the Children’s Defense Fund’s legislative updates so you will be informed and equipped to act. www.childrensdefense.org/signup

Be a Blessing by Reaching Out

• Volunteer as a tutor or mentor to a child in a low-income family.

• Make sure families know about the benefits for which they are eligible, like the Earned Income Tax Credit. Work with a community agency to spread the word.

• Talk with families experiencing financial difficulties or with staff of organizations and agencies serving them. Listen for ways you can help.

• Give even more generously than you already are of your time, talents, goods, and money to benefit children living in poverty.

Be a Blessing by Praying

• Pray for families in difficult financial circumstances. Pray that each of us will find ways to use our resources of time, skills, money, and political influence to end child poverty. Pray that our leaders will show courage and compassion and make ending child poverty a priority.[iv]

 

Being a blessing for our young people who are bullied and those who are living in poverty is not beyond our capacity.  Indeed, it is part of our obligation to be good stewards of the earth and all that lives upon it, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

As Jesus put it near the end of his life,

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” [Matthew 25:35-40, NRS]

The Buddha sums up this aspiration in this saying:

“A mother, even at the risk of her own life, protects her child, her only child. In the same way should you cultivate love without measure toward all beings. You should cultivate toward the whole world—above, below, around—a heart of love unstinted, unmixed with any sense of differing or opposing interests. You should maintain this mindfulness all the time you are awake. Such a state of heart is the best in the world.”[v]

May it be so, and Amen

                                                                        www.secondparish.org