Category: Children’s Sermon

Delivered on June 9, 2024

Bring toothpaste. 

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And I’d like to do a children’s sermon I’ve done before and it involves…a tube of toothpaste. This is just a regular, everyday, typical tube of toothpaste. And what do we do with toothpaste? Use it to brush our teeth. We squeeze a little out on a toothbrush and then spend 2 minutes brushing our teeth and gums so we’ll have a healthy mouth. These tubes are designed to let us squeeze and get the toothpaste out. So let’s do that. Squirt on a plate. It’s out in the world! The toothpaste tube has done exactly what it wants to do. But I’ve got a question for you. Now that the toothpaste is out of the tube, go ahead and put it back in? 

We can’t. 

And that’s right. We can’t. Once the toothpaste is out in the world, it’s not designed to go back in. The action of squeezing the tube led to the consequence of the toothpaste coming out and not being able to get back in. If we were going to use that toothpaste, great. But if we did it by accident – then we just wasted it. The consequence – the outcome – what happened when something was done – is something we have to live with.

And today’s first reading [Genesis 3:8-15] from our Bible is about that – a consequence. It comes from the very first book of the Bible – the book of Genesis – which is filled with stories wondering why things are the way they are. One of the stories is about how God cares about the world is made, like a hymn, singing it into being. Another story is about the first people – and wondering why we aren’t as kind or loving or helpful or respectful as we should be. In that story, the first people live in a garden that God takes care of. And God tells them they can do anything and eat anything except for the fruits from two trees in the garden. Since they’re people, someone saying “don’t do something” just made them want to do it and a serpent convinces them that they should eat from the tree, claiming that there would be no consequences if they listen to someone else rather than God. So they eat fruit from the tree and the people suddenly discover all about what’s good and bad and everything in between. And once that happens, there’s no going back. Like the toothpaste out of the tube, things are now different and the first people have to live with the consequences. 

We don’t hear much of those consequences in the reading today – and we might want to wonder and spend our energy thinking about why they did that. But rather than focusing so much on the why, I think it’s okay to focus on what God does in this story. God starts the story in the garden. God is there. God is present. God is hanging out with them. And even though Adam and Eve don’t listen to him – God doesn’t give up on them. The consequences are great; their selfishness – and the ways they chose to act like God rather than listening to God – is something we still struggle with today. We want our way and our needs met at the expense of everyone else; we want things our way, right now, and we don’t always listen to people around us. We do this a lot with our actions – but also our words – and we don’t like living with the consequences that come. Those consequences might be something small but they can also be large. And we’ll often get more mad at the consequences rather than the original actions that caused that issue in the first place. God, though, doesn’t let us run away from our consequences. God knows that we make mistakes, we mess up, and that we fail to love others the way they should be loved. God knows that – and doesn’t want us to do that – nor does God sanction us acting as if we are God ourselves. But God doesn’t give up on us. God chooses to be present with us. God chooses to be with us through the consequences with grace and mercy and promise that lets mercy, love, and forgiveness win in the end. So – we should be mindful that our actions and our words are like toothpaste in a tube – once it’s out, it’s out and we should face and live with the consequences that come. And yet those consequences don’t drive God from us. Rather, God chooses to be with us through those consequences – through what we have to live through – so that those who have been affected, those who have been hurt, and even those who did the hurt – can be with the One who, through grace, mercy, attention, time, and guidance – help them discover who God knows they can be. 

Delivered on May 26, 2024

Bring a windwill

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And I brought something from the front of my lawn. What is it? A little windmill. It’s a decoration that does one thing. It spins. And when it spins, it makes these pretty colors that are fun to see. But it needs something to spin. What do you think? Wind. It needs moving air to whirl and take something static, something not moving, and bring it movement that others can see and enjoy.

Today is a day in the church calendar when we celebrate who we experience God to be. And the special word we use to describe that is: Trinity. Trinity means “3” – and we talk about God as One thing but with 3 expressions or abilities or ways of being in the universe. That does not mean we worship 3 gods or that one part of God is better than any other or whatnot. Rather, I see the Trinity as a way for us to try to use our limited language and human mind to put into words who we experience God to be. God is always bigger than any metaphor or idea that we have. Yet God chooses to make sure we experience God in concrete ways. One way is through God as creator – and we experience that becase we are created. We live in a world that was created, the stars were created, our food was created, and more. Just by being, we experience God’s creation – a creation we and our friends and even strangers are part of. Next we experience God as Jesus. God chose to live a human life, to experience life as if God was created, and how scary and limited and beautiful life can be. We listen to Jesus’ story through stories in our bible, through the songs we sing, as well as through the worship we do everytime we gather in Jesus’ name. But there’s another part of God that we often struggle with. And that’s God as Spirit – which is, to me, our experience of God moving and living and impacting our lives and our world. It’s the Spirit that tells us we’re loved. It’s the Spirit that inspires us to do good and kind things. It’s the Spirit that reminds us that we are not alone. And it’s the Spirit that brings us hope when we feel hopeless. But what does that look like or feel like? Well – that’s why I like the windmill.

The Bible will often describe the Spirit as wind – and wind moves things. It can be very big and scary and frightening. Yet it can also cause clouds to be in the right place so that rain can water crops that grow. The wind causes things to move – and when we see something beautiful, lovely, kind, supporative, patient, and brilliant happening – like the windmill turning and all the beautiful colors – that’s the Spirit moving.

But what happens if there’s no wind going. How could wind happen when we’re inside – like here? Accept examples but then talk about breath. We can breath out – and that wind that we generate can cause a beautiful thing to happen. You, as created and beloved children of God, carry within you God’s Spirit. And just like God’s spirit spreads love, we get to do the same. We get to be kind even when it’s difficult. We can to love even when it’s hard. We get to make sacrifices so others can experience joy. And we can remember those who did exactly that – especially those who served in our military who died so others could live – which is what Memorial day is all about. We don’t always realize how the Spirit is showing up in our life yet we do have the gift of the Spirit within us that we can give and share to others. So remember that God is with you – Jesus loves you – the Spirit is moving through you – and we see that Spirit at work when life, love, and hope are made real in our world.

Delivered on March 3, 2024

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And I’d like to keep talking about a word we learned two weeks ago: covenant. A covenant is a list of shared promises and, in our Bible, often follow a pattern. God makes a promise, people respond with their own promises, and then God says – yeah, I’m going to keep my promise even if you don’t. So far, we’ve heard the promise God made to Noah after a giant flood and heard the promise God made to Abraham saying how he will become part of a big, holy family that we are a part of too. Those focused a little bit on the promises God makes to us and so we’re shifting a little in our first reading because God is going to invite us to think about the promises we make to God. And while these promises come from God, they really are about our way of being in the world – and we give them a special phrase: the ten commandments. 

So to think about these ten commandments – ten big rules to help the way we care about ourselves and each other – I wonder what kind of rules we would create for ourselves. Imagine, for a moment, you woke up this morning and you decided all the rules you were going to live by. The rules your parents make no longer apply. What kind of rules might you come up with? Accept answers. I wonder what it would be like to live by those rules at school or maybe if you went out to the store. I wonder if coming to church today would be part of your rules. Maybe it wouldn’t be – and it’s okay cuz sometimes coming to church is hard because you physically can’t or maybe you’re not feeling well or maybe you’re mad at someone in the church or mad at me or you’d rather go to a store or sleep in. How we live our life is complicated – and different situations or different things we’re feeling can make it complicated too. 

So those are the rules we might make and those are helpful to wonder and compare those to the promises God wants us to make. We can also, as we think about those promises, wonder what the opposite of these promises might be. I saw someone compose their own opposite ten commandments [which I slightly modified] (worshippingwithchildren.blogspot.com) and I’d like to share those before we hear the promises God wants us to make. 

1.    You are your own boss.  Do whatever you want to do whenever you feel like it. And pay attention to the people and things that only you care about. 

2.    It does not matter when or how you say God’s name.  You can use it to speak in a way that harms others or use it to claim that God is on your side so you can get what you want. 

3.    It doesn’t matter if you worship with God’s people on Sunday/regularly.  If there are other things you’d rather do, go do them.

4.    Parents don’t get it so ignore them whenever you can. 

5.    It’s okay to hurt, harm or even kill those who get in your way. The strongest are supposed to live the longest. 

6.    Don’t worry about the promises you make to each other. If you break your promises, that’s other people’s problem – not yours.

7.    Finders keepers! I see it, I want it, I get it. 

8.    Lie if you have to get out of trouble, lie to get what you want, and it’s okay to lie about other people and pretend that they are evil or bad or dumb or anything you want them to be. 

9. The one who dies with most toys wins. 

10. The world is full of wonderful things and there’s only so much that can go around. Get your share or else someone will take it from you. 

The ten commandments – and all the promises GOd invites us to make – are gifts from God that invite us to live our lives in a way that doesn’t center ourselves at the expense of everyone else. Instead, God invites us to recognize the love God has for everyone and how we, with God’s help, can be just as loving, kind, patient, and caring as God is to us. 

Delivered on January 28, 2024.

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And I want to talk a little bit about communion with you. Earlier this week I had a conversation with a friend who is Episcopal priest. That means she’s a pastor for a different flavor of Christianity known as Episcopalian. Lutherans and Episcopalians talk about Jesus in very similar ways which is why there are Episcopalian priests serving as pastors in Lutheran churches and Lutheran pastors serving as priests in Episcopal churches. But we tend to emphasize different things – and what we emphasize might be why the Holy Spirit brings us into faith traditions we didn’t grow up in. She wanted to know what I would do if we ran into a certain situation – and the question is so good, and so practical, I thought we’d talk about it to. 

So let’s go up to the altar and look at what we use for communion. Go to the altar. Unwrap everything. We have bread – and gluten-free wafers. We have individual cups filled with red wine and white grape juice. If you look at what we have here and you look at the folks here at church – do you think we have enough to serve everyone? Yes. I think so to. So later on, we’ll all stand up and I’ll share some prayers over the bread and drink and we’ll talk about Jesus being this bread – not as a metaphor but really this bread because Jesus says he is. It’s an odd thing for Jesus to say and the bread or wafer will taste exactly as bread and wafer. But it’s a promise he makes and a promise we trust cuz Jesus is with us all the way. 

Yet let’s use our imagination. What would happen if I spilled all the drink? What would happen if I dropped the bread? What would happen if we didn’t have enough bread and drink for all the people who were here? What would we do? Get more! We would go to the sacristy or the fridge or the altar guild room and get more. But all that bread and drink wasn’t here when we said the words and said the prayers. So what would we need to do? Would we need to stop feeding people and go through the prayers again? Accept answers. 

Here’s where our Lutheran focus comes into view and it has to do with something Jesus says. When Jesus was talking to his friends, offering bread and wine – he said this was “for you.” And that’s what we emphasize. Jesus offered love and grace, his body and blood, his very self on the Cross – for us and for the world. Jesus loves you. Jesus died for you. Jesus showed what loves look like for you. And when we serve communion – that’s for you. So we wouldn’t need to say the prayers again or chat or anything like that. We would just do what Jesus did and offer it to people who need to know they are loved and valued no matter what.

Delivered on November 19, 2023.

*Bring some Gold Coins*

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And I want to talk a little bit about our reading from Jesus today. He’s going to tell a story and in the story – he’s going to talk about people who had talents. 

Talents is a word we use often and we usually use it to mean some special gifts or ability that someone might have. So what might be a talent? Accept answers. A few of the gifts highlighted on our stewardship drive about the gifts we’ve noticed in others are about their talents – what they do and what skills they have. You all have talents and God gave you those talents because you are worth having those talents. 

But back in Jesus’ day, a talent was like this: show a gold coin. A talent was a coin that was worth a very large amount of money. It was worth all the money you might raise while working for twenty years. It might be hard to process just how much that might be. I know, in my house, my kids like to collect Pokemon cards and we often talk about what it would be like to buy a booster box – 36 packs of pokemon cards. A booster box, depending on what cards it contains and how old it is, is roughly $110 – which is roughly how much a person might make working minimum wage here in NJ. So if you didn’t have to pay for rent or food or health care and clothes – all you needed to buy was booster boxes of Pokemon cards – one talent would allow you to buy over 6,000 of them. That’s a lot! 

And so Jesus tells a story about someone who received 1 talent, 2 talents, and 5 talents. 3 different piles and so we’ll make those piles. Make the piles. If it’s helpful to think in terms of pokemon cards or whatnot – imagine 6000 and then 12000 and then 30000. So we should think about those piles as we listen to those stories and wonder what God would like us to do with all the gifts God has given us. 

Hand out some coins to folks. 

Delivered on October 29, 2023.

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And I wonder – have you ever played Peekabo? Let’s play it together. Play Peekabo. It’s a silly game – but an important one – because, for babies, when you cover your eyes, they really do imagine that you’ve vanished. You’ve hid – and they do not expect you to come back. But then you do – in the place they least expect – and they smile, laugh, coo because your presence brings them joy, kindness, and love. 

If we’re not babies, though, maybe a better hide game would be Hide and Seek. So look around the sanctuary. If we were going to play hide-and-seek right now, where would you hide? Accept answers. All great places to hide – and the person seeking would have a hard time finding everyone in those spots. But imagine, for a moment, you were the seeker – where’s the place you wouldn’t expect anyone to be hiding? It might be in a very obvious space – maybe sitting in a pew – or standing at the altar or something else. If we’re playing hide and seek, we’d go for all the obvious places we’d expect someone to hide at. But the least expected place is one we might visit last – or not at all. 

Today is Reformation Sunday – a day when we celebrate the Lutheran flavor of Christianity. We are all Christians – followers of Jesus – but there are different ways to think about God and Jesus so that has led to different versions of Christianity that emphasize different parts of Jesus’ story. 500 years ago, a monk named Martin Luther posted 95 concerns and complaints about how the church functioned in his day. He nailed them to a church door which was the bulletin board of his town. But he also mail a copy to his boss – known as an archbishop – who wasn’t thrilled with what he wrote. Legend says Martin Luther posted these 95 thoughts on October 31 and we mark that as the birthdate for Lutheran Christianity. We take time on the Sunday before October 31 to remember our Lutheran birthday and I like to think about one of the parts of Jesus’ story that Lutheran Christians choose to emphasize. And one thing we emphasize is how God shows up in the places we’d least expect. 

God – created everything and God continues to create. God is powerful, divine, immortal, who is beyond space and time. God is beyond the limits of our imagination and we imagine God as powerful, ultimate, even more powerful than any superhero in the Marvel universe. And so we’d imagine, when God shows up in our lives, for God to be just that powerful. God would be strong and mighty and always in charge. God would be whatever we imagine power to be. But where God chooses to show up – as we see in Jesus’ story – is on the Cross. God chose to discover what it’s like to be a child; to learn; to grow up; and to be cared for. God chose to live with people and in creation and to have friends and those who didn’t like him. God chose to love and serve and challenge all the images of power we hold. God showed up to us in Jesus – revealing who God is – and this Jesus even died on a cross to show how far God will go for each of you. The Cross is the unexpected place we’d find God to be and yet that’s where God shows up because love is bigger than anything we try to do to end it. 

As Lutheran Christians, we emphasize a lot of different things. We emphasize faith as a gift; grace as something we are given; the joy of reading the Bible in our own languages; and how we are saints and sinners all at the same time. We emphasize what God has done before we talk about what we can – or should do – and we notice how God shows up in unexpected places. There’s no place you can hide – nowhere you can go – where Jesus isn’t with you. And that is a gift that helps us grow into the people God knows we can be. 

Delivered on October 22, 2023.

*Bring the book Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts* 

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And I have a book with me. It’s called “Atlas of Monsters and Ghosts.” I think I got this last year at my school’s book fair. Since it’s almost halloween and many of us have already been to trunk or treats and other events, I figured it would be fun to open up and see what monsters are inside. 

Go through a bit of the book. Highlight any from the Near East and New Jersey (since that’s where I am). 

Since it’s halloween, we see a lot of monsters and ghouls, ghosts and goblins, and other scary things. And it’s okay if seeing those things make you feel scared. They might be plastic and fake – but we might get scared. They’re designed to scare us and to worry about monsters. But just because we might be scared or worried about monsters that doesn’t mean we get to be one. Dressing up as a ghost or a ghoul or a zombie doesn’t give us permission to be a ghost or ghoul or zombie. Rather, I think it’s a reminder that we can dress in different ways, put on different clothes, put on any costume we want – but that doesn’t change “whose” we are. No matter what you wear – you are loved and belong to Jesus himself. We can dress up in our costumes but that doesn’t change Jesus loves for us. And so, since Jesus, loves us – we can act like Jesus regardless of what costume we’re wearing. So we can be kind; we can listen; we can help; and we can be patient; and we can protect others even if our friends, family or others are being like a monster to them. That might be difficult to do – but it is what we get to do because Jesus has already decided that nothing, especially any monster, will stop God from loving who you are and will keep helping you be like Jesus today and always.

Delivered on October 15, 2023.

*Bring a birthday hat* 

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And I want to talk about something I’m wearing on my head. It’s a birthday hat! Since my youngest is now in school, she’s been invited to several birthday parties recently. Even if we haven’t been to a birthday party in awhile – what happens at a party? Accept answers. Where do these parties take place? Accept answers. Who gets invited to the party? Accept answers. 

 Jesus is going to tell another one of his parables – a short story today. And it’s a story that is a little weird with lots of strange details. But one of the important parts of the story is its setting – where the party happens. And it happens at a party. It’s not a birthday party but a wedding party thrown by a king. And since it’s a king – who do you think would go to that kind of party? Accept answers. If the king invites you to go to a party, you pretty much have to go. Yet Jesus’ story will reveal something a bit weird. The king will send out invitations – and no one who was invited wanted to come. So the king made the guest list even igger – inviting EVERYONE TO THE PARTY. It includes people the king loved – and many who they didn’t. It included people who were good, helpful, and kind; and those who weren’t. The king invited everyone to the party because everyone deserves to be at that party. 

So if everyone belongs in that party – do you know who else belongs in that party? Us! That’s right. And since it’s a party – it means that we get to follow the party rules which is all about having fun, making sure others have fun, and that we do our part to experience joy – and help other folks experience that joy too. In other words, to join in the party together – with each other – and with our God who always invites us into a heavenly party where the only party rule is that we should love and serve one another like God loves, serves, and includes each of us.

Delivered on September 17, 2023.

bring coins

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And today I have with me a few coins. I have a quarter, a dime, a nickel, and some pennies. We use money – usually plastic money rather than physical money – to pay for things and the work people do. For example, if I wanted to buy a pack of pokemon cards in person, I’d need to go to the store – pick a pack – have the store tell me how much that costs – and give them the amount of coins or dollar bills for me to walk out the door with it. We’ve decided that money has value – and we can exchange that value for something else of value too. But what happens if we don’t have enough money for what we want?

We don’t get it. Or we borrow money to buy it.

Right. We can borrow money – telling a company or a bank or a friend or our parents that, we promise, to pay back, eventually, what we owe. If I’m explaining this correctly, when we borrow money – we take on what is called a “debt.” We’ll get the pokemon cards but we’ll owe money to someone else. And that other person or bank or whatever will often charge us “interest.” They want to make a little money from us by giving the money first hand. So sometimes we take on debts – believing and trusting or knowing we can pay that debt off in the future. Every person and family has different debts they can safely hold and, sometimes, debt becomes a problem based on things we can and can’t control. Knowing our debts – and how having a debt impacts our thoughts, feelings, and life – are important. And the language of debts – and situations about debts – show up in our Bible all the time.

Jesus will, in a few minutes, share a story about debts. He’ll talk about the story of someone who owed someone else 10,000 talents which is a lot of money. But this person couldn’t pay it back. They were going to be punished for it – but begged for another chance. Instead of being given more time to pay it back – or lessening the amount or anything of the sort – Jesus talks about this person having their debt forgiven. What do you think it means for a debt to be forgiven? Accept.

In this story, the debt is wiped away. It’s now 0 and the person no longer has to pay it back. Imagine having a debt for the pokemon cards and always just having to worry about it. But now…you wouldn’t. The debt is gone so you can live and act as if it no longer exists. That kind of forgiveness is freeing. It enables us to do things we might not be able to do. And Jesus, in the story, invites us to practice that kind of forgiveness. Part of what we do as followers of Jesus is to live as if forgiveness is real. It’s something we experience and something we offer to others. Forgiveness, though, is really difficult because it can involve more than just money. Our feelings or our bodies or our emotional health might have been impacted by the behaviors of others or we might have done something, said something, that hurt someone else too. Forgiving someone in those cases might not be something we can, or want, or should do since it might ask us to forget or act as if something that harmed us never did. Forgiveness is hard and complicated work – but if we pay attention to what forgiveness does in the story Jesus shared – we can see what forgiveness should do. It should be difficult, costly, but also freeing – something that, if we can, we offer to others. It’s about letting ourselves and others live freely – but not to simply just do or get what we want. But rather, a forgiveness that recognizes how we all need forgiveness because we are not perfect yet we receive that forgiveness from our God who wants to free us from our hurts and how we hurt each other so we can love, care, and support one another just like God does with us – everyday.