"Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."

What makes Clover Hill, Clover Hill?

That is the question that I will invite you to consider today and throughout this anniversary month.

What is it that makes us special in the eyes of God and the hearts of those who love this Church?

For just as every child is special, in unique ways, to a parent, so every congregation is special, in unique ways, to our God. And you won’t hear me use words of judgment in these sermons, words like better and worse, successful and failure, wealthy and impoverished, are not words that ought to be used in connection with the Church of Christ, faithfulness alone is what we are called to.

There are many congregations, full of people and rich in things, that are abject failures in faithfulness and there are many congregations that are now closed down that were remarkably faithful as they ran the race that was given to them.

And so I probably won’t compare us to much, except ourselves, the us we have been, the us we are and the us we are becoming, all held up against the us, the People of God in Clover Hill that we have been created to be in the heart of God.

And so we start, today, with a realization that we are, and have been, a Church for kids.

Twenty or so years ago I asked the members of Consistory to each speak with 5 neighbors who were not a part of our Church, and to ask them what they thought about us, what their perception of our Church was. The overwhelming response was: Clover Hill is a Church that loves its children.

Not bad. Not a bad way to be known in the community and in heaven and that has only increased over the past few decades. For, despite our inadequate facilities and our always strained budgets, every time there has been a need for our children and teens, the consistory and the congregation have found ways to respond positively. We have arranged our schedules around the children, we have provided financial assistance so that children can attend Camp Warwick, we have given gifts to HS graduates who have been a part of our music program in Joe Castallano’s memory, we have given scholarships to our college students in memory of Chris and Liz Johnston, we have underwritten a significant part of the cost of each year’s youth retreat.

And it has been a two way street.

The children have lifted our hearts with their songs and crafts through the year and in VBS; the teens have touched our souls on youth Sundays and in Confirmation projects; the last time our steeple was being repaired, 15 years ago, we didn’t have enough money for it and the YG members went to their leaders and said “this is what we want to do” and they stepped up, in worship, and surprised us as they presented us with a gift that helped tremendously and this year’s youth group has made a gift toward the Anniversary celebration.

Isaiah promised that “a little child shall lead them” and we have experienced the fulfillment of that promise, over and over again.

We have been led into the kingdom of God:
“Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

But I find myself wondering what that really means, especially for those of us who aren’t children any more?

We know that we love the verse, we know how much we love children, we know how much Jesus loved children – the disciples, that day, were trying to keep him focused on the big issues, the important and serious things of life, but he overruled them, and he identified the children as the owners of the Kingdom and he blessed them.

But what does it mean to be like a child?

At least in part it means understanding that life is not fair!

Anyone who has spent any amount of time around children is aware that they learn to say, at an early age,: “It’s not fair!”

Which brings us to the story of Job, a story that is going to guide us through this anniversary month.

You should read the whole story of Job for yourself. It’s a pretty easy read, it’s written like a script for a play, it is epic poetry, similar to the Iliad and Odyssey but the great quest is not for military power or human achievement, it is for an understanding of life, a way to reconcile the unfairness of life with the providential love of God.

And isn’t that we are really looking for? All of the questions that we ask of each other, or of God, are faced in Job.

All of the frustrations that we know when we do everything right and it all turns out so wrong are confronted in Job.

Job, more than any single character in scripture, demands fairness with an unshakable integrity, he won’t be bought off by the well-meaning counsel or criticisms of his closest friends, he won’t be deterred by the love of his wife who agonizes over his agony, he will – with the purity of a child – insist upon fairness.

And his quest for fairness begins with Job, stripped of all the treasures of his life, stripped of his health, sitting in the ashes of mourning and sorrow.

Let me just stop there for a moment.

I was asked, this past week, by a potential candidate for the pastoral position at the Three Bridges Church, to describe the people of this area and the realities that they live with, the concerns and fears of their lives, individually and as a Church.

And the answer was easier and clearer than I think it has ever been.

It’s the economy.

If you, or someone in your family, has not suffered a job loss, a furlough, a significant reduction in your income, or been threatened with any of those things, then there is, right now, within 10 yards of you, someone who has.

These have been a tough couple of years for many of us and this year, for the first time, we can see the results in our Church giving and it is sadly understandable.

The fragility of our jobs, our homes, our children’s educations, our dreams, all of these things are either on or just beneath the surface of our conversations and our lives.

And the job reports this week in the papers coincided with Bruce Springsteen’s concert tour: “they say these jobs are going boy, and they ain’t coming back.”

It is not fair. And there are no easy or comfortable answers.

And our faith calls us to do what Job did, to sit in the ashes, to honestly feel lousy, and to ask the questions that come from the deep places within us and then to wait for answers that are equally as deep.

You see, too many of us settle for the quick and surface answers, the clichés and empty slogans of the politicians.

We never wonder if we have trusted too much in our careers and our possessions and too little in our God.

The answers don’t come easily; Job doesn’t ever get any clear answers from God, indeed God answers him with questions of his own.

But Job does get the reminder that doing the right and good things, being good people is not a way of gaining joys or avoiding sorrows, it is its own reward; and Job is reminded that that integrity is not integrity if it collapses in the storms of life, being faithful and loving and forgiving is for the bad times as well as the good.

This is a truth that would missing from the Church’s proclamation for long centuries until the great Reformers of the 1500’s rediscovered the power of God’s grace over our own actions, declaring that we are saved by Grace – the unearnable and undeserved love of God - alone.

“Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

You see it all comes back to the children, for us a Church and for us as individuals. We need to grow up to be children, to be child-like, not childish, but child-like, children of God.

For what do children do when their world is shattered?

What do children do when the unfairness of life threatens to suffocate them?

They cling, don’t they?

They seek companionship, some one to hold them, to be with them.

And at the end of the prologue of Job’s story his friends join him in the ashes and there they sit, for 7 long days and nights, without saying a single word.

That is what our children need – and that’s what we need.

Oh they need our words – at least some of them, probably not as many as we think.

And we need each other’s words – at least some of them, probably more of them then we think.

But more than words, they need and we need what Job needed if he was going to hold on to his identity and integrity: we need people who care enough about us to be willing to sit, silently, providing the reassurance that when life is good, we belong to God; providing the reassurance that when life is shattered, we belong to God; providing the reassurance that although the search for perfect and permanent fairness will never end in this world, life can be made more fair only by forgiveness offered and accepted. There is a fairness in the universe, a fairness not seen in the micro-details of our lives, a fairness not measured by bank accounts or good health, a fairness not limited to the here and now, it is the fairness of a child’s heart.

I’ve relearned a lot about children over the last 19 months, things that I had forgotten, probably things I should have known and never did. I relearned that children don’t pretend when it comes to their feelings, they love and mourn and laugh and cry openly and honestly – and isn’t that what we have outgrown? Isn’t that what Christ may have been calling us back to?

That’s what the church is for, to be honest with our hearts and souls and to sit with each other, in the ashes when necessary.

This is a Church for children of all ages where God calls us to honest reactions to the events of life – deaths, diseases, divorces, none of them are fair, all of them cause pain and suffering; all of them demand our sorrow and all of them are best met by simply being there with each other and with God, not explaining, not blaming, just loving and trusting and sitting in the ashes, together. No, it’s not all ash sitting, because when we leave the ashes many great and wonderful things happen, many hard and painful questions are answered, many new blessings and joys are experienced. But if we don’t sit in the ashes when we should, and if we don’t stay there long enough, if we don’t share what God has given us with each other; if we don’t mourn what we have lost; if we pretend that everything is just fine, when it is not; we will never move forward, we will never capture the faith of a child, we will never be able to know life in the Kingdom of God today.

This is and has been a church for children of all ages, may it always be so.

"Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."

Clover Hill Reformed Church 1834-2009 A 175 Day Scriptural Companion Dear Friends, As we progress through our Anniversary Year, I invite you to join together in a shared reading of scripture. I have selected 175 passages, from Genesis through Revelation, that have had special meaning in our Congregational life. Go Here