A Child of God



Programs Support Volunteering Immediate Needs Calendar Special Events Newsletter & Mailing List History Staff & Board Articles & Sermons Agencies & Links Home Page Donate online 1. Enter amount 2. Choose donation type 3. Click Donate Amount: General Donation Annual Campaign Christmas Campaign Children and Family Urban Ministries 1548 Eighth Street P.O. Box 41125 Des Moines, IA 50311 (515) 282-3242 Email info@cfum.org		A Child of God Jeremiah 29.1, 4-14, Luke 17.11-19 "A Child of God" Carmen Lampe Zeitler Offered October 10, 2004 Children's Sabbath St. Luke's UMC Newton, Iowa I thought of Julio this week as Linda and I were planning this service together, and we decided to include the song "A Child of God." It was Julio's favorite song. Julio showed up at Children and Family Urban Ministries one summer afternoon a few years ago. He was just out walking around the neighborhood and he saw people coming in and out of the church door at Trinity United Methodist Church where CFUM rents space. So he decided to come in and see what was going on. Some folks were getting ready for Supper Club and had been bringing in food and getting things set up. The woman who was supervising the Supper Club at the time, introduced herself and asked Julio if there was something she could do for him. He asked what was going on and she told him. She invited him to stay for the meal. After phoning his mother to get permission he stayed. Over the course of the summer we got to know Julio and his family. His parents were from Mexico and were new to Des Moines. The person in the family with the best English was Julio, and his English was quite good. His dad worked construction and his mother stayed home with Julio and his younger brother, Bradley. Sometimes they all came to Supper Club, sometimes only Julio. One night when he was by himself, I sat down to eat with Julio. As we were talking other Supper Club guests walked by and Julio would speak to them and call them by name, "Hi, Lois, how are you?" "Hello, Mr. Johnson, how are you doing?" Everyone he spoke to he called by name. Lois was a person who had come to Supper Club for quite some time, but I didn't know her name. She didn't look like she wanted to talk to anyone so I had always just left her alone. When Julio called her by name I saw her smile for the first time. After I learned her name from Julio and used it she smiled at me, too. That night sitting with Julio I asked him how he knew all these people by name. He looked at me and said very matter-of-factly, "They're my neighbors," which seemed to imply, "Of course I know their names." During that summer Julio came every night to a week of Vacation Bible School that CFUM and Trinity offered together. He loved singing. We sang fun, lively songs like "Pharoah, Pharoah, let my people go! UHH!" and "Jesus is the Rock and He Rolls My Blues Away." Kids love songs like that. We also learned "A Child of God," and used it to close each evening. After the first night, whenever we asked kids for requests, Julio would raise his hand and request "A Child of God." We would say, "Oh, we'll sing that at the end." But he would insist, "Can't we sing it now, too?" And we would always give in. Who can say no to a child who wants to sing, If anybody asks you who I am, tell them I'm a child of God... If anybody asks you where I live, tell them in the love of God... If anybody asks you where I'm going tell them to the children of God... Julio was in his being and in his actions a child of God. He taught us something about what it means to "Seek the welfare (the well-being, the good) of the city in which you live".... It is a city that we no more want to live in than did the people of Israel in exile in Babylon. It is a city, on this Children's Sabbath, we must acknowledge, where things are not good, where children do not have what they need for their well-being: Where six children, ages 1 to 12, live with their three single moms in a dwelling made for one small family because no one mom can make enough at her job to afford housing alone. Where children, without a doubt, will live this winter without adequate heat, blankets, warm clothes Where children and their working parents do not have health insurance and put off going to the doctor too long too often while conditions such as asthma and allergies and depression go undiagnosed and untreated Where the schools children attend do not have the textbooks, equipment, and staff to offer the education children need to be their best selves and to live the lives we need them to live Where children worry about things like having enough to pay the rent, to make the car payment, to pay the utility bill let alone having money and gas to go skating on Saturday Where children are left at home alone before and after school with strict instructions to stay in and lock the door because parents need to work and cannot afford to pay for childcare Where children see their parents working hard but not getting ahead because too many jobs do not pay a family sustaining wage The litany goes on and on, to the point that we cannot hear anymore; to the point that we would rather listen, like those long ago exiles in Babylon, to the false prophets around us who say things are not so bad, everything will be all right, all will be somehow magically made well, that we are certainly not responsible for the welfare of this city, this place in which we live. But the call of God through the prophet is to see the realities clearly and seek the welfare of the city. And I'm not talking about Des Moines alone, I'm talking Newton and Colfax, the wide open spaces of Jasper County, the far corners of Iowa, the far reaches of the United States, the Sudan, Afghanistan, India, Iraq...anywhere where the welfare, the well-being of the children is at risk. Because we all know that when the children are not doing well, the "city" is in trouble. Julio taught us that the way to begin to seek the welfare of the city is to begin with our neighbors, to know them by name, their strengths, their struggles, their wounds and wishes; to see them, truly see them, first in love, and without judgement, each one as a child of God and to respond to them as a child of God, one made in the likeness of God. It is the way that Jesus saw and responded to the ten lepers that came to him on the road, not with the judgement they had tragically become accustomed to, but with the compassion that is the love of God played out. Even those lepers, it seems to me, had found some success in doing what God through Jeremiah told the people of Judah to do. The devastating illness they shared had created among them a community, a city if you will. In seeking the welfare of that city the nine had crossed an enormous boundary, they had accepted into their midst a Samaritan, one usually condemned by good Jews. They were traveling together, depending upon one another as they tried to keep life and limb together. Although no one else would see it to look at them, they were in their being and in their actions, each one a child of God. They were, in some measure, able to settle into that place and seek the welfare of all who shared that place with them. When they come to Jesus they do not seem to be looking for an escape, a quick fix, only for mercy; which might have meant simply food or a few coins to get them on their way. They did not ask to be healed. But they listened to Jesus when he sent them to a place they dared not go: to the priests, to the temple, where with their disease they would not be welcomed. The text says, "...as they went they were made clean" - they experienced a possibility they could not have imagined: wholeness, health, well-being for them all. And isn't that the way transformation almost always comes - somewhere down the road, somewhere between hearing the word we need to hear and reaching the place that word would take us, our lives and our life together is transformed. That is what Children's Sabbath is all about. We hear the state of the children in our community, our nation, our world; we hear God's call to assure care and justice for children; we hear how we might begin to do that - care for the needs of the children, insist upon the justice that will eliminate those dire needs and treat them, each one, like the child of God they are. Then we start down that road together, and we begin to be transformed, ourselves, into the children of God we were made to be. Mary Louisa seems to find people to take care of her, sometimes unlikely people. Last Monday morning Mary Louisa, a kindergartner, and her older sister, Graciela, a second-grader, came to the Breakfast Club that begins our all-day programming during the school's two-week fall break. They had not been there long when Mary Louisa told the Breakfast Club Supervisor, Carol Kuehnhoff, that her stomach was upset. Her sister and her cousins did not have much sympathy for Mary Louisa, telling Carol that Mary Louisa had eaten too much on Sunday at a family gathering. Mary Louisa does love to eat, and it shows a bit in her round little body and perfectly chubby, cherub-like cheeks. Carol gave Mary Louisa a little soda, hoping the carbonation might do its magic and she would feel better. Then she suggested she lay down on a sofa over in the book corner of the dining room. Pretty soon we noticed that Halen had joined Mary Louisa on the sofa with some books. Halen is in the fourth grade and is an enormously creative and sensitive kid, who also has frequent lapses of judgment with regard to his behavior. (We're all a mixed bag, aren't we?) He saw that Mary Louisa was not feeling well, and with no one even suggesting it, he went over and asked if she would like for him to read to her. She agreed and Halen read for quite a long time, until Mary Louisa felt good enough to get up. The next day Mary Louisa sought out Halen again - she can be quite persistent and somewhat demanding. He started reading to her again, but she was feeling better and kept trying to tickle Halen in the ribs, which he put up with patiently for a while, then started tickling back, pretty soon they were rolling all over the sofa in the book corner and I had to step in, encourage the return to reading. On Friday Mary Louisa was working on her "I Am a Child of God" drawing, when I walked by. "I'm doing this for you, Carmen," she said. "Thank you, Mary Louisa, that is a great picture. When you're finished you come give it to me." By the time she finished I had left the dining room and returned to the office. Apparently she was looking all over for me. Charles noticed her looking around. Charles is in the seventh grade and totally off the hook - cool beyond cool - and little kids are not his thing. He even resists any interaction with his younger sisters at our programs. But he saw Mary Louisa's dilemma and asked what she needed. She said, where is Carmen? I have to give her my picture." Charles told her he thought I might be in the office, so Mary Louisa reached up and took Charles' hand and waited for him to take her there. And he did, when they came into the office, he stooped down low and, pointing to me at the far end of the office at the computer, he said as kindly as I have ever heard him say anything, "There she is, Mary Louisa." Once again, Mary Louisa had found someone to take care of her, a very unlikely someone. Mary Louisa is good at finding people to care for her, to make things better, right for her, even unlikely people. I pray that will continue her whole life long. But we cannot take any chances. We are called this Children's Sabbath to seek the welfare of the city, which surely means to seek the welfare of the children first. We are called to transformation, even healing, along that way. We are in some ways unlikely people to do this, just middle class, white, churchfolk, not much power, not all the resources we required, not all the skills we need, but we have heard the word, and we will soon be on our way. We are the children of God in this place, seeking the welfare of the children of God in this and every place. I heard a story about a single mom, and her young son. On the way home from work and picking up her son from daycare the mom began to think about how she might occupy her son while she finished some of the work she had to bring home to do. She hadn't come up with anything by the time they got home. As they brought in bags and jackets and such her eye caught the latest National Geographic magazine lying on the table. She had an idea. She remembered seeing a map of the world on a page of the magazine. After dinner she found the map, tore it into lots of pieces. She gave the pieces of the map and some tape to her son as a puzzle to put together. She thought that surely that would keep him busy while she finished some of her work. But minutes later he showed up at her desk with the map all put together. Mom was astonished. She asked, "Now, how did you get that together so quickly?" He turned the map over and there was a picture of some children. "It was easy, Mom. Look, you just put the kids together and the world comes together, too." We are children of God. We live in the love of God. We are called to go to the children of God, to assure care for their needs and justice for their lives. We are led by the power and promise of God, we are led by the children themselves.