Suffer the Little Children

Today we witnessed our children's dramatic Christmas presentation at church — apparently the first such in this church's six year history (but don't quote me on that). Afterward we had another practice for our upcoming Christmas Eve drama.

As I was leaving following the practice, something reminded me of the first "adult" drama I participated in. My father had a role in a Christmas drama, and for some reason brought me along to one of the rehearsals. One of the men was absent — again! — and to help them out with the practice I was asked to read the part. By the end of the rehearsal, the part was mine. I was nine, I think, or ten at the very outside.

From those recollections, I was reminded of many other ways that I had participated in the worship life of that particular church community. I remember singing solos as special music on more than one occasion in the main morning worship service. I remember being appointed the official teller of children's stories in the evening service — the sort of stories that the adults are just as interested in as the children.

In a very real sense then, when I was baptized at age eleven and officially became a "member" of that church, it really was just ratification of what had been true for some time already — as a child I really was an active participating member of that faith community; a part of the body of Christ that really was being built up through my gifts as well as those of others.

I realized just how much so many of our churches have lost since then, in not making the spaces available for the gifts of all her members to be utilized in the life of the community, but rather relegating the gifts of so many to little ghettos rather than the service of the community as a whole.

Maybe that's the real tragedy in our ongoing arguments over style and technique and vision and the best way to enculturate the gospel — we are so focused on getting the stuff right that we overlook the gifts that the Spirit has given our churches in the persons of the "least" — in our eyes, if not in God's — of these members; whether children or other groups that are reduced to mere spectators.

Maybe too, it was the way that church we attended from the time I was five until just after my twelfth birthday included me as a fully participating member even as a child is what has kept me committed to this messed up way of being that we call church through all the struggles that came later.

Thank you God, for this reminder of how you have brought me to yourself through so many little, yet wondrous, ways. Teach us also how to recognize and value the gifts you give us in those little packages we rarely pause to consider.