Mariner Family Conference
Sunday, July 28, 1996

Some of the best times and most
important experiences and deepest
friendships in my ministry have happened

because of Presbyterian Mariners.

I had been called to my second church,
Bethany Presbyterian Church, Lafayette,
Indiana, a 15 year-old NCD which had
blossomed, grown quickly, leveled off

and started a precipitous decline.

A young congregation, all or most of us
in our 30s or 40s: all or most totally

absorbed in the demands of parenting

young children, keeping up with mortgage
payments, careers, fighting crab grass,
coaching Littie League, music lessons,
orthodontist bills -- not to mention

coping with ten year-old marriages.

We worshipped together, but something
was missing at the heart of our

experience of the faith and church.

One night Sue and I were invited to
monthly Mariners at ---- -- a Luau -- I
still remember it. We sheepishly found
garish Hawaiian shirts, rolled our pants
up to mid calf, put leis around our
necks, dined on pork and pineapple
shish-kebabs -- and then played games.

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I recall my first, unsuccessful attempt

at the limbo.

After a brief business meeting and

prayer, we went home -- great time.

We gathered four other couples our age -
- told them about it and one month later
the BPC Mariners was launched -- with a
Luau -- Same menu, same games. To our
surprise, 20 other couples came and for
the next four years it grew and became
the backbone of what was shortly a

growing and lively congregation.

Among other things, we had good programs
on parenting, the first in the city on

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sex education ... but the best part of
it was the opportunity to share an
important part of our faith journey.
Many of those friendships have continued

over the years and are very precious.

A confession: we never became part of
the national organization. But we
borrowed concept and plans and the
critical commitment to families,

marriage, parenting, family ministries.

There is no more important issue and I

congratulate you for your commitment.

I’m grateful for your spirit as the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) enters a

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new era -- in a sense you are pioneers.
We will not be doing business as usual
out of national headquarters in the

future.

I know it did not make you happy
initially -- but your emerging
partnership with the PC(USA) is a model
of how we must learn to be a church in

the future.

It is not a diminishment of the
importance of your work, or of the
issues -- simply an example of our
church in the process of reconfiguring,
realigning, adjusting to the new
realities that mission and ministry will

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not be initiated or funded from the top

down but from the bottom up.

Thank you for what you do -- keep it up.

I’d like to think with you about what it

means to be a family today -- under the

general topic "It Takes a Village to
Raise a Child.”

It’s an old African proverb. It is aiso
the title of a wonderful children’s book

by Jane Cowen Fletcher.

The setting is Africa. Everyone in the

village is going to market, carrying

produce, pottery, cloth to sell and

trade.

Yemi, a little girl, is given the
important task, for the first time, of

caring for her baby brother.

Yemi feels grown up and important
bearing with pride the sole
responsibility for her brother’s well -

being.

At the market, Kokou wanders off. Yemi
is beside herself. He will be lost, she
thinks: hungry, thirsty, hot, tired and
in danger. No such thing happens, of
course. The little boy wanders from

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market stall to stail and is cared for
at each by other men and women from the
village: given food, drink, water to
cool him, a mat to nap on, pats and
smiles, and at the end of the day, when
the mat vendor returns him to his
family, Yemi has learned the lesson her
mother and the other people already
know: “It Takes a Village to Raise a
Child.”

Margaret Mead said that the nuclear
family -- mother, father and children
living apart from extended family -- is
a recent invention and not a very good

one. It takes a village ...

You know the story about Mary and Joseph
taking Jesus to Jerusalem when he was
twelve and discovering on the way home
that he is lost, apparently. The point
of the story has to do with Jesus
conversing with the learned teachers of
the law in the Temple but in the middle
of the narration, there is a bit of

ancient Jewish wisdom. Luke 2:44 reads,

"Assuming that he was in the group of
travelers, they went a day’s journey.
They started to look for him among their

relatives and friends.”

It is a description of a cultural norm,
extended family and friends, a village,

caring for a child.

J. Randolph Taylor, former President of
San Francisco Theological Seminary,
tells about his early life as a child in
China. His parents were missionaries
and when he was three his mother died
tragically. His father gathered his
five sons, carried them across the
Pacific and across the continent until
they settled in North Carolina at a
place called Montreat where there were
homes for retired missionaries and
missionaries on furlough. There, Randy
Taylor remembers,

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"He put us out and we ran freely on the
hills in part because of the knowledge
of family and kin, and missionary kin
who would take care of us. I know that
I owe my life to God and to my mother
who bore me and my father who raised me
and also to this enormous extended
family of missionary kin who surrounded
me with the irrefutable evidence of

community and caring.” [Journal For

Preachers, "Pentecost," 1995]

That is part of what is going on when we
baptize babies. There is theological
affirmation to be sure. God’s amazing
goodness and grace is nowhere more
eloquently expressed than in the gift of

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life, given to parents, but given to all
of us, over and over. God's love is
nowhere more eloquently proclaimed’ than
in the affirmation that babies, before
they know about God, before they have
faith, before they have done anything

are all objects of God’s infinite love.

But part of baptism, as well, is about
community, the village. That truth
transcends denominational differences
and even language and culture. Two
years ago a group of us were traveling
in Greece. "In the Footsteps of Saint
Paul." We were on the island of
Santorini (where Paul never visited but
probably wished he had). We were

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walking up a steep winding road between
shining white buildings, beneath the
bluest sky I have ever seen. We passed
a small church. Several of us stepped
inside. When our eyes adjusted to the
darkness we saw a baptism, a large group
of people standing, mostly dressed in
black, in the middle an elaborately
attired priest and a baby, quite bare.
Not wanting to intrude, we began to back
out the door but by this time we were
noticed, all eyes on us. We gave a
friendly wave and continued our exit.
They, on the other hand, were pleased.
"Stay," the indicated. “Come close.
Join us." So, in Reeboks, bermuda
shorts and polo shirts, we joined in a

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Greek Orthodox baptism. The baby was
immersed in the font and his response
was immediate. It was apparently cold
water. Then placed in a towel while the
priest changed and sang, he was handed
around to a lot of people, family and
friends, I assumed. As we left, a woman
greeted us, in difficult English and
told us that because we had participated
in the baptism, we were now part of
their family and community and then gave
us a tiny little ribbon with a medallion
of a baby’s head to wear as a mark of
our new status. Several of us have them

still.

it takes a village ...

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In a Presbyterian baptism, one question
is asked of the congregation. In fact,
Presbyterian baptisms happen in the
context of regular public worship
precisely because the community has an

important part to play.

"Do you, the people of the church,
promise to tell these children the good
news of the gospel, to heip them know
all that Christianity commands, and by
your fellowship to strengthen their ties

to the household of God?"

The minister lets the people see the
newly-baptized, symbolizing that what is
happening is not only the affirmation of

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a mysterious and wonderful truth about
God and the child, but also about the
community of faith, the church -- the
village -- in which she or he is now a

member in good standing.

"Remind us of the promises given in our

own baptism ... ," we pray in unison.
And I am reminded. JI know, although I
do not actually remember, the peaple who
were present at my baptism that made
promises and kept them. I tell this to
every parent who brings a child here to
be baptized. I tell them about Mrs.
Evans, a tiny, white-haired wife of a
retired dentist, a lady whose mission in

life was, I think, to be the "Hound of

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Heaven" for surly, unruly,
uncooperative, and generally unpleasant
adolescent Presbyterian boys. She was
our Sunday School teacher. How she did
it week after week, I’1]1 never know. We
were not a group of eager students.
Quite to the contrary. We were not
happy to be there. And when we
graduated and went off to college or the
service she continued sending us letters
and little devotional guides that I used
to hide in my desk drawer. I’ve
concluded that part of the reason I am a
minister is that I couldn't get away
from Mrs. Evans, and I’ve concluded that

she must have been in her pew when I was

Li?

baptized and she simply made good on her

promise.

I tell every parent that. I tell them
that the people in the congregation take
that question very seriously; that they
fully intend to be the church for you
and your child: that they, on behalf of
other Christians, in other places where
you may end up living, fully intend to
keep their promise and will be church
school teachers, advisers, sponsors,
counselors, mentors and friends for you

and your child in all the days ahead.

And baptism points to the truth beyond
our small community of faith; that

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children are in trust for the future
with us: that the village it takes to
raise a child is sometimes the City of
Chicago, the State of Illinois, the
United States of America.

At that level, this topic becomes
difficult.

Cornel West, speaking at Rockefeller
Chapel recently about his experience in
the African-American Christian Church,
commented that we are having a crisis in
this country in all “the contexts of
nurture.” Nobody is tending the
children. Everybody has abandoned them.
Two parent families, on their own, have

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never worked, he said. When you see a
nuclear family that looks like it’s
working, you can count on the fact that
there are others, probably lots of
others involved: grandparents -- who
are the real moral models -- aunts,
uncles, almost surely a church full of
surrogate aunts and uncles and

grandparents.

"Without Deacon Jones and my basketbal]
coach and my Sunday School teachers, in
addition to two good parents, I wouldn't
be where I am today," said Dr. Cornel

West.

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If it really does take a village to
raise a child, our village isn’t doing
so well. We cherish the idea that we
cherish children in America. And
perhaps we do, individually. But as a
community? Marian Wright Edelman

writes:

"Things happen to children here that
don’t happen elsewhere. Every day three
children die from abuse, nine are

murdered, thirteen die from guns."

A recent report published by the Council
on Families in America revealed that in

every measurable category from health to
SAT scores the quality of life for

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America’s children is deteriorating.
Rates of delinquency, crime, drug and
alcohol abuse, suicide, depression,

poverty ...

The matter is complex. It will not
reduce to the ideological mantras of too
much government or too little
government: too much money -- not
enough money. But there are basic
issues we ought to be able to agree on
as a village. The first is that it
takes a village. All of the children,
in some way, belong to us. Parents are
not in this alone. Another is surely
that it is not a good idea for weapons
designed to kill as many people as

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quickly as possible to be available to
our children. it may be
constitutionally correct but may I
suggest that it is insanity to put the
full weight of government on the side of
the right of a gun dealer and to sell
weapons beside a public school. That is
a village that has lost it heart and its

mind.

There are things we can agree upon,
while we are disagreeing and discussing
specific political strategies. For
instance, that it is a wise and
conservative use of our resources to
care for pregnant mothers: to do
everything humanly possible to sustain

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their health. Spending on children is a

bargain. TIME Magazine says,

"One dollar spent in prenatal care for
pregnant women saves three dollars in
individual care during the first year of
the infant’s life. We can provide nine
months of full drug treatment to a
pregnant woman who is addicted for
$5,000; or we can pay $30,000 to care
for the addicted baby she is going to

bear for twenty days."

Or, as some are proposing, we can do
nothing in order to teach
responsibility, in the process

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sacrificing a generation of poor, mostly
minority children who will, we Know,
make this beautiful culture and nation a
nightmare for our children to resolve
after we have made our point about

responsibility.

Robert Bellah has written an important

book, The Good Society. He writes about

religion and people of faith as
custodians of vision and creators of

community.

"If we are fortunate enough to have the
gift of faith through which we see
ourselves as members of the universal
community, we bear a special

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responsibility. We can be ...
ambassadors of trust in a fearful
world." [See Cynthia Campbell One
Baptism, One Body, One Community, a
Sermon, April 26, 1995]

When we baptize infants if is our
attempt to say something about the
precious gift of community, to do more
than say it, to be a community of faith
in the midst of a fearful world, to show
an alternative to life lived in
isolation and fear and distrust, to show
- as we hold these babies close -- a
picture of the human community as God

intends it.

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Our children need the church, the
community of faith. No more, however,
than we need them. "Let the children
come to me," Jesus said. “For it is to
such as these that the kingdom of God

belongs.”

He was, at that moment, talking to
adults who we working very hard and
intensely on being religious. It’s a
hectic scene. Crowds of people are
showing up wherever he is. They are
clamoring for his attention. They are
bringing their elderly and sick and
blind and crippled. They come to him at
all hours: from first dawn, through the
heat of midday, to evening. They come

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without food and get hungry. They come
without provisions for lodging. The
crowd is growing. In the midst of it
all, there are learned scholars from
Jerusalem asking difficult questions:
"Why did you say that? Why did you say
this? Don’t you know it’s against the

Taw?"

And here come the babies. His friends
intercede. "Not now: can’t you see how
busy he is? It’s late. We’re all tired

and hungry. Come back some other time."

And Jesus says:

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"Let the little children come to me and
do not stop them: for it is to such as

these that the kingdom of God belongs, “

And this ...

"Truly I tell you, whoever does not
receive the kingdom of God as a little

child will never enter 17.”

"Why doesn’t anyone see God nowadays, "
someone asked. A wise rabbi answers

that people are not willing to look that

low.

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"The fingerprints of God are not
difficult to spot once you’ve found the

proper angle of vision."

My friend Joanna Adams, pastor of
Trinity Presbyterian Church, Atlanta,
tells a story that I’d like to borrow as
a conclusion. It’s a southern story and
not an urban setting, and she could tell
it much better than I. It’s about the
day the children of Trinity Church got
lost. There was some children’s event
at the church. Lots of children were
there and the time came for their
parents to pick them up. They drove
around the building, around to the back;
no children anywhere. They came into

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the building: no children. They became
a little uneasy. Turns out all the
children were sitting up in a big
magnolia tree in the center of the
circle in the driveway, watching and
waiting for their parents to come;
waiting for them to find them: hoping
they would find them.

Joanna says she wonders if the children
are not watching and waiting to see if
we’re going to raise them right. And I
think that’s exactly where to end this -
- with the children watching and waiting
to see if we’re going to figure out how

to be families again.

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The children need the community of
faith, all of us: parents,
grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends,
and the many of us who don’t know them
at all. They need all of us -- because
it really does take a village. And we
need every one of them -- to remind us
of God’s wonderful gift of life, God’s
amazing grace, God’s gracious presence,
God's love in Jesus Christ ... the One
who welcomes the children, who opens his
arms to us all. The one in whom the
little ones -- the old ones -- and ali
of us are loved and cared for and

forever safe. All praise to Him.

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