Sermon for Children's Sunday

By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church

(The following is a transcript of the service audio, May 5, 2024)

In the name of God who loves us as a parent and loves us as a child and loves us as a friend and a companion. Amen.

It is Children's Sunday today. In Japan, this day is called Kodomo no hi, and we fly the Carps and we celebrate children and their happiness, and because we celebrate children and their happiness, I'm not going to make them unhappy by preaching up there for a long time. I'm going to do a slightly shorter sermon from down here on the floor.

A couple of weeks ago some friends of our family, Jewish friends came and they celebrated a Seder meal at our house. It was really lovely and we gave thanks for the liberation of the Jewish people and we prayed for the liberation of all people. Our kids were there and other kids were there. There were a handful of kids at the house and one of the things we did at the beginning of the meal was one of the adults said, before we started, that everyone had to close their eyes and then take the shape bodily of what they imagined God to be. We all had to close our eyes and take this shape, and I panicked because I didn't know what to do. So myself and one other person, we just hid. We just left and hid. The explanation I gave was God is mystery, so there's nothing. The most common, and I'm glad to say this, the most common bodily posture was an embrace, because God is love. I'm going to talk more about that in the rest of the sermon, because God is love.

There was one person, and I won't name names, I will say it was a child, but I won't name names, one person who had their arms like this. As we were going around the table saying what each of our postures meant, and I was calling from the other room where I was hiding saying what my absence meant, we got to the person who was like this, and that person said, "God's not real." This doesn't actually bother me very much. I'll tell you that it's my belief that unquestioning dogmatism, unquestioning belief, religious or otherwise, has caused a lot more harm in this world than healthy skepticism. So this is not a problem for me.

However, I do want to think about what's real about God. Our lessons this morning tell us, they invite us to imagine, they invite us to think about, they invite us to know what's real about God, and actually, children, our love for children, our embrace of children as Jesus embraced children, that also tells us what's real about God.

My spouse, Colette, who is a couples and family therapist, in a previous life she actually developed a church school curriculum, and it's the curriculum upon which Harriet has based our church school's curriculum. The curriculum is just all about love, because God is love. The curriculum has three units. The first unit is love yourself, the second unit is love your neighbor, and the last unit is love God. After the sermon, we're going to summarize the law that Jesus said was the most important law, and Jesus says, "Love those three things." But Jesus puts them in a different order. Jesus says, "Love God, love your neighbor as yourself."

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I had a person ask me once, "Aren't you all doing it backwards? Why do you go self, neighbor, God, when Jesus says God, neighbor, self?" How do we know what's real about God? If we want to start with God, how do we know what God is? Where do we get our ideas about what and who God is? Sometimes we have these ideas about what and who God is, but are those the right ideas about what and who God is? We might have ideas that God is an all powerful, almighty, sometimes vengeful judge. Where do those ideas come from? We might have ideas that God is a God of exclusion and punishment. Where do those ideas come from?

Jesus, in our reading from John today, actually tells us how we can know what God looks like. Jesus says, "Whenever you love, whenever you love, God is there. And that is what God is like. That is what is real about God. God is love, and so when you love, that's where God is." If we start from here, start with what love is like, love for ourselves, love for our neighbor, then we can start to discern. Then we can start to see where God is in the world and what God looks like and what God really is. We might find that God looks more like mercy and patience than vengeance and judgment. More like steadfast love, creative, life-giving love, than punishment.

Now, some of you careful thinkers out there might be saying, "Well, that's just begging the question, because what is love? How are we supposed to know what love is?" Lots of, as I alluded to at the beginning of this sermon, lots of bad things have been done in the name of God. Lots of bad things have been done in the name of love as well. So if we want to say that God is love, how do we know what kind of love? What is the kind of love, where God really is? If God is love, where is that real? And Jesus gives us another clue in the lesson that Helen read, and that epistle writer tells us more in the letter in John. Jesus says, "It's not just any love." Jesus says, "When you love as I loved you. When you love one another as I loved you, God is with you." So how does Jesus love us? Jesus just loves us.

Whoever we are, however we are, think how different that is from the way we often love. When we fall in love with somebody, it's usually because they're handsome or smart or talented. We look at all the good things about that person, and all the good things about that person draw us to that person. We love them because of how they are. We are drawn to them because of how they are, but that's not the way that God loves us. God loves us because of who we are. Just because we are. This is where Children's Day and the love we have for children becomes important, because the love we should show our children is that kind of unconditional love.

I remember very distinctly the moment each one of my three children were born, and I love them with my whole heart, when I held them in my hands, the love pouring out. I'll tell you, they were beautiful, beautiful children, but they'd been through a lot that day. Babies don't always look their best as soon as they are born, kind of cone heads and swollen faces. I didn't love them because they were especially handsome. In that moment, they weren't especially witty or wise. In that moment, I didn't know what kind of talents they would develop. I didn't know any of that stuff. The reason I loved them in that moment was just because they were there. That was absolutely and entirely sufficient, grounded everything. They could grow up to be beautiful and talented and wise or all of the opposites of those things and it wouldn't make a difference to me. I would love them with my whole heart. And that's how Jesus loves us. That's how God loves us. And that is also the kind of love Jesus calls us to, which is why Jesus says, "Love your neighbor."

The word neighbor just means the person next to you. Whoever is next to you, whether they are handsome or not, or pretty or not, wise or not, whether you like them or not, that's not the reason you love them. You love them because they're there. That's why Jesus says love your enemy. The one who is not only someone you don't find admirable, the one who is someone who you are pitted against, but they exist, they are, they are a child of God, and so you love them because they are, and for no other reason. That doesn't mean you let them do whatever they want to you, but it also doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want to them. That's why Jesus says, "Love yourself," because we know that none of us are perfect. If we are going to love ourselves, we have to know ourselves with all our faults and all our flaws and love ourselves just because we are, the same way that God loves us. This is the love where God is, and where that love is, that's what we mean when we say, "I believe in God."