July 2 Children's Sermon: Welcoming God

Before we get too far away, I also want to record my children's sermon for July 2.  I don't know that I'll document every children's sermon, but I do want to make a blog post when it seems important or when I learn something or when I want to remember.

On July 2, I knew that I would talk about this part of the Gospel, Matthew 10: 40:  “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me."  I knew I would talk about treating others the way we would treat God.  

But at the last minute, I decided on a twist.  Usually the children come forward and sit in the front row.  But on July 2, someone else sat on the front row and spread out his belongings.  I wasn't sure there would be enough room for the children.  I looked out across the church and made a snap decision.  I invited the children to join me at the back.

We stood by the door, where we could see the sidewalk leading up to the church.  I asked the children to imagine God coming up the sidewalk.  How would we greet God if God came to our church?

Then we talked about how we would even know it was God--what does God look like?  We know what Jesus might look like, right?  I asked the children to describe Jesus and one looked above the door, where conveniently, we had a picture of Jesus, and it wasn't even the clean-scrubbed, white-skinned Jesus.

I talked about the Biblical convention of entertaining angels and God when people didn't realize that was who was with them.  I talked about the importance of treating everyone the way we would treat God and what a much more delightful world that would be.  And then the children went back to their seats.

I liked changing the routine, and it worked with the children's sermon beautifully as we all stared out that door, imaging God as a visitor to church (at least I hope that's what we were imagining).  It got me out of what was becoming a bad habit, looking too often beyond the children to see how the adults were responding.

And I really liked the message.  It's better than the Golden Rule, I think, the variations on treating others as I want to be treated, which is also an important concept, but a bit too rooted in the self.  I like the idea of treating everyone as if they are God, which means we will honor the holiness of it all and hopefully lead us to treating all of creation in a more care filled way.