Incorporating Children in Worship

Mark of the Kingdom

Clifton-Soderstrom, Bjorlin

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781630871970
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Incorporating children in worship is a powerful and overlooked mark of God's kingdom. This book argues that children's full participation in worship signifies not only a vibrant, faithful communion but also offers a critical window into the Spirit's work of linking the church to Christ. Children have a vocation in worship. They embody the theological virtues in distinct ways that enrich the worship of the whole church. Moreover, incorporating children reflects the difference in unity that is God's triune life. Receiving children in their difference moves the worshipping body toward the telos of worship--glorification of God and sanctification of humanity--and habituates the worshipping body to incorporate other, often more threatening, kinds of difference.

Children

Worship

Incorporation

Virtue

Vocation

Vision

1. Children

If you tour Joe’s parish in Chicago, he will tell you that the front doors of a church are called portals. Joe is a church artist and points out that doors take persons from one bounded place to the next. Portals do more—they allow participants to pass from the quotidian into the sacred space of the people of God. Will Willimon writes, “In past times, when the Christian entered the sanctuary and its liturgy, it was not a matter of leaving the world, but rather of entering the world as it really looked in its full, transparent reality—as the place of God’s love and activity.”8 Portals open into the sanctuary, where the faithful enact the Christian story, form their faith through worship, and offer themselves to the kingdom of heaven.

Young Brooke grasps the idea of portals instinctively. When I (Michelle) entered the doors of her church for the first time, she exclaimed, “Michelle, that’s my church! It doesn’t look that big on the outside, but inside, it’s really big!” Brooke’s church refers to the people she knows, the stories she indwells, and the sacred spaces she freely navigates. “Really big” reveals the truth about what lies within the church portals, where Brooke is an active participant in a believing community that lets God in. Brooke is not leaving the real world when she goes to church—she is entering the world as it really is. God’s kingdom reigns within the seemingly small exterior of Bethany Covenant Church, and it is doing big things for young Brooke.

Brooke’s discerning ecclesiology of perceiving the big in the small applies to many other aspects of the kingdom of God. Throughout Scripture, God works through people or images that seem small in order to communicate big truths. The woman of 1 Kings 17 possesses only a handful of meal and a tiny bit of oil, yet these sustain the great prophet Elijah. The poor widow in Mark who casts two mites into the treasury gives the most, Jesus says, because she gives all she has. Five loaves and two fish equal food for more than five thousand? God fills the biblical narratives repeatedly by creating something from nothing. Readers learn to expect that in God’s economy, every little bit—and most especially every little bit—counts.

Children constitute a significant path through which God works in the small to advance the bigness of the kingdom. “Welcome the little children,” Scripture urges. “The one who welcomes the least of these welcomes me and my Father,” Jesus says in the Gospel narratives. Jesus’ behavior toward children is striking, and the meaning of his actions communicates an often overlooked truth: children are integral members of Christ’s church. They have something big to offer the advancement of God’s kingdom on earth.

Additionally, children embody God’s kingdom in unique ways. In his book on improvisation and Christian ethics, Samuel Wells notes that the most faithful responses are often the most obvious.9 Children tend to be obvious, and when adults take more than a moment to pay attention to their messages—both verbal and nonverbal—they open themselves to some of the obvious ways that God is working in their midst. Philosopher and educator James K. A. Smith begins his book Desiring the Kingdom with these words: “For Madison: That little glint in your eye is, for me, a sure sign that the kingdom is a kingdom of love.”10 Smith’s dedication is noteworthy, for he attributes to a child the evidence that love constitutes God’s kingdom. Although his book takes on the complex themes of liturgy, desire, and Christian formation in order to envision God’s kingdom, young Madison’s glint—something so small that Smith must have paid attention in order to catch it—reveals with clarity the obvious truth that the kingdom is a kingdom of love. Every little bit counts in God’s kingdom, and that is the interest and pursuit of our work overall and this chapter in particular.

In the introduction, we affirmed that incorporating children is a mark of the kingdom. Incorporating children signifies a vibrant, faithful communion, and it also offers a critical window into the Spirit’s work of linking the church to Christ. This chapter addresses the above two aspects of our thesis. First, we explore why children’s incorporation signifies faithful worship by looking at the child in the biblical narrative and how children are important to the communities God calls. Second, we show how children’s incorporation provides insight into the Spirit’s work of linking the church to Christ. In this section, we focus on the child as a trope in Scripture. Biblical writers use the child as a trope in multifaceted ways to reveal the contours of faithful relationship with God. In marking humanity’s path with God, the trope of the (small) child expands the (big) vision of the Spirit, conjoining members of the body with one another and with Christ. These sections culminate with the good news about the small: our very big God became a small child. Throughout the trajectory of Scripture, not only are children lifted up as both people and as trope, but most importantly, God enters human history in the form of a Child. The final section celebrates the big news of the Christ-child.

Children: Blessed Participants

Valued in Themselves

Presbyterian churches typically call on all members of the congregation to become godparents to the child being baptized. The congregation’s vows include promises to undertake responsibility for children who are not their own, biologically speaking, and to practice this responsibility for the glory of God. While this is a tall order for all members to assume, it is close to Jesus’ promise to his disciples: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you” (John 14:18).

The kingdom of God has ample room for the small, and God’s heart for the child is perhaps best revealed in Scripture’s attention to the orphan. Psalm 10:14 describes Yahweh as the helper of orphans, a sign that God also helps all who are helpless. The biblical narrative recognizes children’s vulnerability and calls the Israelite people to respond by ensuring their care. In fact, Israel’s faithfulness is measured by how it cares for the orphan, among others. This test is also found in James 1:27 as a measure of genuine religion.

In addition to care, Isaiah exhorts Israel to execute justice for the orphan (Isa 1:17). Neglect in these areas of care and justice evokes God’s judgment. God recognizes the plight of orphans, works to overcome it, and ensures that none—even the smallest among them—will be left alone. The injunction to care for the orphan in the entirety of both Testaments solidifies the value of the most oppressed children. The depth of God’s love, care, and justice endows children who are not even part of a familial heritage with inherent worth.

Children also have a central place in God’s blessing. The command for humans to be fruitful and multiply occurs in the context of God blessing humankind. Israel’s blessing passes through children, and they are valued recipients of God’s call to be a people. The sign of blessing is circumcision, the mark of which denotes that children are initiated into the covenant, heirs of God’s promise, and part of God’s creation of a new people.

Fertility is a blessing and a mitzvot, or command, in Jewish theology. Readers of Scripture know that children are deeply valued because of the suffering involved in barrenness. Barrenness is portrayed as one of the greatest sufferings a human being can experience (e.g., the Genesis matriarchal narratives, Proverbs 30:15–16).11 Children are evidence of God’s blessing, not only in a biological or reproductive framework, but also as gifts for the entire human community. Children belong to God, as Hannah recognizes in her willingness to give Samuel over to God’s service. All God’s people are integrally connected by sharing in the care and the fate of children. Often the larger community ensures children’s survival and flourishing. Pharaoh’s daughter exemplifies (somewhat ironically) the potential of non-family members in the care of children when she takes in baby Moses. The people of God, in other words, are charged to steward their blessings together and in broad-minded ways.

Children also represent the vastness of God’s promises and faithfulness. According to Judith Gundry-Volf, children have great significance and important roles in Old Testament-Jewish tradition.12 Children are made in the image of God, and this image is a gift that grows over time. Biblical scholar W. Sibley Towner applies the image of God to all human beings universally and describes its growth. “The imago dei is displayed in individuals and communities differently as maturation, experience, or character-building take place.”13 The process of maturation assumes the existence of the imago dei and inherently affirms that the young bear God’s image in their very potential to grow and mature in faith.

The New Testament similarly testifies to the value of children. The Gospel of Mark shows a particularly high regard for the status of children. In her book Welcoming Children, Joyce Ann Mercer discusses the themes of God’s reign and the centrality of social status as it pertains to children in Mark’s Gospel. The contrasts between the empire of Rome and the kingdom of God form the foreground for understanding the place of children and the significance of Jesus’ responses to them. Mercer notes descriptive themes of the kingdom of God in Mark. Mark portrays communities who follow the way of Jesus as communities where the most vulnerable thrive, the least powerful are valued, and disciples live in radical solidarity with one another. Moreover, these discipleship ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Children
• Chapter 2: Worship
• Chapter 3: Incorporation
• Chapter 4: Virtue
• Chapter 5: Vocation
• Chapter 6: Vision
• Conclusion
• Bibliography