"Rachel's Children"

a sermon by Jean Rodenbough
Mother's Day, May 14, 2000

"A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. 
Rachel is weeping for her children; 
she refuses to be comforted for her children, 
because they are no more." 
Jer. 31:15

Jeremiah 31:15-17
I John 3:16-24


Today, on Mothers' Day 2000, Rachel marches in Washington. She is marching for her children shot and killed because the forces of anger, hostility, fear, ignorance, poverty, neglect, have taken her children, and they are no more. Rachel weeps in Ramah, and marches in Washington. She laments for those children who are no more, but today she is saying, "Enough!"

Rachel also is in Washington because Presbyterians have joined her, along with other people of faith to call for sanity instead of the continual madness of gun violence. She is joined by busloads of marchers, many of whom are Presbyterians from our presbytery and from all over our denomination.

Rachel represents all who care about the lives of children. She weeps for the 12 children who are killed each day in this country from gunshot wounds. Twelve a day, 4,272 each year. During the time you came to Sunday School this morning until you leave this sanctuary for your Sunday dinner, somewhere in this country a child will have died, shot to death by a gun -- it may have been an accident, a suicide, or an intentional shooting. The child is no more.

But gun violence is only one of the ways that we are losing our children. On Mothers' Day 2000, we are called to reflect upon what is happening to our young, who were birthed into this world by women whose fears for the future are being fulfilled. This year Presbyterians observe the Year of the Child. In part, that observation includes celebration. In part, we must lament and weep, like Rachel, for the children who disappear from our arms.

The Children's Defense Fund provides us with startling numbers: every day, 6 children and youth commit suicide; 78 babies die; 420 children are arrested for drug abuse (we're speaking of children!). What chance does a child have in this country when we consider that 1 in 2 live in a single parent household; 1 in 4 is born poor; 1 in 7 has no health insurance (1353 are born each day without this insurance); and 1 in 5 lives in a family receiving food stamps (meaning that the family income alone cannot support the costs of acceptable nutrition). No wonder Rachel stands in Ramah and weeps -- but why must she do so even unto this very day? Where is God's intervention for the suffering young?

Look to this passage from Jeremiah once again. It is found in a section known as "the little book of consolation," because in the loneliness of exile, in the separation from a homeland, in the midst of experiencing God's earlier judgment, comes a word of hope. If this prophet of God has gotten the message right, then let us rejoice in this promise: "there is a reward for your work . . . they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future . . . your children shall come back to their own country." Today we might define the "land of the enemy" as those alien streets and tenements, those hours when children are without supervision, those situations where a child has everything but what is most needed: the love and protection of parents. They have been exiled without cause; they are Rachel's children, wandering and lost, seeking their home country where God's grace abounds.

Jonathan Kozol is a teacher and writer who has been visiting children in the poorest area of the US, the South Bronx. One of his books, Amazing Grace, describes his experiences with children there -- you may have read it. In a service at Washington Cathedral a few years ago that was dedicated to the children of this nation, he made this comment, with its accompanying charge to each of us: "If there are amazing graces in these poisoned inner cities of our land, I am convinced that they are these good children, sent to us by God and not yet soiled by the knowledge that their country does not love them. But their soiling will come. It is as certain as the night follows the day, unless good people who have power in this nation find the courage to take action in unprecedented ways, and with the fervor and impatience and the morally wise anger known to saints and gentle rebels in all ages."

Those "gentle rebels" today have gone to the Million Mom March. In other moments, they serve in PTA's. They are Cub den mothers. They prepare bake sales for the school band. They write letters to their elected officials. They sing in church choirs. They join Bible study groups. They serve food at homeless shelters. They drive a van full of kids to sporting events. They are our Rachels, our mothers, our gentle rebels. They insist, with "morally wise anger" that we pay attention to statistics about the children they have given birth to, have grandmothered, have mentored. They will not let us sit back in complacency. We have committed the dangerous act in this country of raising their ire, and once the mothers and those who do motherly acts are angry, life begins to change. The mother bears are out to defend their cubs. Watch out! These Rachels are Mother Courage in the flesh.

But it is God who gives us the last word -- and that word is hope. That word is full of promise. But we cannot go there unless first we pay the entrance fee of involved action. We discover our own ways to march for our children -- and we take heed of John's words to that early church, for they are words to our own church as well. Let's hear them again: "Little children [for we are all children in God's eyes, are we not?] let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth. . ."

Can we find a story that illustrates our hope, the possibilities when we act as God's own? Perhaps it is enough to tell the story of how the Million Moms March got going. Donna Dees-Thomases is a New Jersey mother of two and former publicist for a Senator as well as for CBS. Last summer she saw a TV news film of preschoolers the age of her own children running from a Jewish community center in Los Angeles following a gun attack by a deranged man. It was a moment of recognition for her -- that what happened to those children could happen to her own, could happen to other children.

She became aware of internet sites that promoted gun sales, of images that reinforced violence. Within a week she had created a web site and obtained a permit for the march in Washington. Friends rallied and soon there was a logo and a T-shirt. There was a rapidly growing support group through email connections. Rosie O'Donnell agreed to be an emcee and mentor. The Million Mom March was up and running. "The goal," she says, "is to make others feel what mothers feel when they've lost a child." And there are other goals, which boil down to pushing for legislation that requires licensing and registration of handguns.

So what if the March doesn't accomplish its goals? What if after it's all over everyone goes back to business as usual? Dees-Thomases comments: "If we do not deliver the message, shame on us." She must have read this letter from John. "By this [action] we will know that we are from the truth." When we stand up for our children, we live into God's truth. If we try and succeed, we know the blessings. If we try and fail, we receive our rewards from God and not from a world that does not care for its future. Donna Dees-Thomases is one woman, who has answered the call to truth and has asked others to join with her. And because of her willingness to risk failure, today the country witnesses the presence of those we name Rachel, who are in Washington -- and who are in over 70 other cities today calling for our nation to stand in the path of truth and love, to care for God's children.

There was another woman, besides Rachel, whose child died because of an act of violence. When Mary saw her first-born son dying on a cross she knew in her heart that this death would have meaning deep into the cosmic future. Yet for her, at that moment, she was only a mother whose son had died, killed by the violence of this world's powers. Mary, like Rachel, weeps in Ramah. And Mary, that brave mother, like Rachel, had spoken as a prophet in her pregnant youth when she revealed unknowingly, that through this act of violence the powerful would be brought down from their thrones, and the lowly lifted up. The hungry would be filled with good things, and the rich sent empty away. The promise of God to the faithful is being fulfilled, and we are those who will make it happen, for we have no other choice. "If we do not deliver the message, shame on us." Let us love "in truth and action."