Sermons for the Month
Come Children and Live
DATE: December 17, 2000
SERVICE: Advent III
TEXT: Isaiah 12:2-6“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Twelve-year-old Luther Htoo is a rebel in God's Army. God's Army - that's the name given to a military rebel organization in Myanmar, and Luther is one of its soldiers. He fights alongside his twin brother, Johnny, for the ethnic Karen rebel group in the former Burma. The M16 rifle he carries, if stood end-on-end is taller than he is. My son Skip visited this country in 1999 in his across Southeast Asia walking tour and he gave me a vivid account of the situation there. Luther and Johnny are among the lucky ones. They're still alive, and they're not responsible for toting grenade launchers like some of their younger pals. Over the past decade, several thousand children each year have been abducted or drafted by direct force. The most glaring examples today are in Sierra Leone and northern Uganda, where militias systematically kidnap children to increase their ranks and to terrorize communities. Says one 13-year-old Ugandan girl, describing her abduction: "It was tough. Some children who were too weak to walk were just chopped up with pangas [large knives] and left to die on the way. This scared me so much." "Suffer the little children to come unto me." That's what the Bible says, at least in the King James Version (Matthew 19:14). It's not a pleasant phrase, but maybe there's a poignant truth in this timeless translation. "Suffer the little children to come unto me," says Jesus, and - quite frankly - today, as then, little children are suffering. While the church celebrates the 2000th birthday of the Christ child, the harsh reality of life in this new millennium is that around the world children by the thousands are dying. Of substandard education and discrimination, yes. Of disease and malnutrition, yes. Of abuse and exploitation, yes. Of almost unimaginable suffering, yes. Even worse, however, is that thousands of them, as young as 5 or 6 years of age, are being armed with rifles and sent into war zones and are dying as child soldiers on the battlefield. Today, some 300,000 kids are actively participating in 36 ongoing conflicts in Asia, Europe, Africa including Israel, the Americas and the former Soviet Union. Children used to be merely bit players in a country's total military. Now, however, they comprise significant percentages of the total force. In Sierra Leone some 80 percent of all rebel forces are aged 7 to 14. Military strategy consistently factors in children because they are more impressionable and thus easier to train, and more expendable. In 1758, the Prussian general Frederick the Great issued a call to the young: "Come children, die with me for the fatherland." Many of his soldiers were boys in their early teens. While Frederick the Great called children to go and die, Jesus the Christ calls children to come and live. When Jesus said "Suffer the little children," he meant "Let them come to me and do not stop them." He was inviting them into abundant life. In this joyous feel-good season of peace on earth, good will to all, there may be some of you squirming and thinking, "Why is he bringing all of this up now. This is not going to work for Christmas!" And you might be right. That is, if you don't remember that the Christ in the cradle was forced to flee to Egypt because Herod wanting to see him dead, killed hundreds if not thousands of children hoping he would be among them. You may be right if we don't remember that Jesus had to suffer through Good Friday before he could enjoy Easter to become the hope of the world, including children. This is the joyous news of this season, that while child soldiers are abused and dying on battlefields, in our streets, even in our towns around the world, Christians with the hope of Bethlehem in their hearts are equipped to stand up and shout - stop it. In today's text, the prophet Isaiah proclaims that "God is my salvation ... my strength and my might; he has become my salvation" (12:2). Christ is the hope of children, and as Christmas Christians, we have an opportunity to make the hope a reality. Indeed, we Christians control the world's wealth. Collectively, we have more money at our disposal than any other government including the United States. We economically could stop this. John the Baptist in our good news text for this morning didn't have a sweet and soothing message for those who were waiting for the Messiah, and we shouldn't expect this season to be any more comfortable for us than it was for stable-bound Joseph, Mary and their baby boy. Since the time of Christ, children have been thrust into dirty, dangerous and desperate situations. Jesus was born in a war zone, one in which the carnage was catastrophic. Herod's "Slaughter of the Innocents" caused the daughters of Rachel to weep with inconsolable grief. The Holy Family, homeless and with no visible means of support, fled to safety in Egypt and lived as aliens with their child in a strange land. Even today, children are dying in the very same streets where Jesus once played. This is the dark undercurrent running throughout the Christmas story, the undercurrent that is largely lost in the sanitized Christmas most of our country celebrates. It's a theme we would prefer to gloss over, but should never forget. The truth of the matter is that wailing and loud lamentations continue today, wherever children are beckoned to come ... and die. It's clear that the Christmas-season slaughter of the innocents is not just a historical horror found in the Bible- it continues today. Yet what can we do about that which is occurring "way over there?" Well, we can become involved with the Human Rights Watch or lobby gun manufactures whose new light-weight guns makes arming an eight-year-old that much easier. Recently, in the news you read of the Vietnam Veteran amputee that is helping people in these war-torn areas make their own prostheses for children who have had hands and legs cut off to prevent them from becoming soldiers for the other side. Lutherans can help by giving to the Hope for the Children Fund or the Ministry to Street Children in Brazil. Closer to home, we can help St. James Lutheran Church in Cleveland who have a wonderful array of youth oriented ministries for inner city children. And, of course, we can continue our support of the Summit County Children's Services and the Salvation Army Giving Tree. If we see the Lord God as our strength and our might, and as the one who inspires us to draw water from the wells of salvation (Isaiah 12:2-3), then we should be outraged by these hellish practices and do whatever we can to save these children. If we see the baby Jesus - born in a war zone - as our Lord and Savior, then we should reach out to these babies in his name and do anything possible to rescue them from danger. There's no doubt that the Christ child wants to help children whether soldiers on a battlefield or pawns in a political tug-of-war. To save them, salvage them, deliver them, free them and restore them to fullness of life, that is our call. God in Christ wants to deliver these children - like the boy in northern Uganda, aged 6 when abducted into anti-government forces, who said: "The bandits killed my mother. And my brothers, too. They took me to their base camp. Yes, I was with the bandits. I had a gun. The chief taught me to use it. He beat me up. I had a gun to kill. I killed people and soldiers. I didn't like it." God doesn't like it either. In this season of salvation, let us join our Lord in saying to the world, "Come, children, live." Children of Uganda, Burma, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Iraq, or Akron ... come and live. AMEN