To Be a Child of God

Easter 3 – April 14, 2024

Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

To be called a child is not a compliment in our world today. You can even hear it in the children on the playground exclaiming, “I am not a child!” This may be because we associate children with immature and simple thoughts and views of the world. Although I have met children that seem to have more common sense than their parents. But I will leave that thought to ponder what John is saying when he calls us “little children.” This seems to be the opposite of what Paul talks about. Remember he tells us that he gave up childish ways to emphasize to the Christians he wrote to that they must give up the old way they lived for the new way Christ calls them to. For Paul that is the struggle. John takes a different stance on this. For John that has already been done. Through Christ, Christians have been made righteous. There is no work to be done here. 

John may be speaking in contrast here comparing how the people should live instead of how they were. He may be reminding them that their lives were not as God expected. Thus he calls them little children. They are not yet mature in Christ and as yet have not conformed their lives to his. Or, more likely, John truly believes that the hearers of this sermon are sinless – not by their own accord but by the suffering of Jesus. If that is so, calling them little children is to indicate to them who they are to listen to and obey – God the father. 

That might be part of the reason people do not like to be called children. They do not want another telling them what to do. Although in reality many do. Think about peer pressure, those who use psychics, the prevalence of advisors of all kinds advertised on television, and those who seem to want an authoritarian figure for a leader of their country. While saying we do not want to be told what to do we are often so afraid of making the wrong choice and becoming the laughing stock of our neighbors, we allow someone else to do the deciding. That is where the early Christians had the advantage. They were already the laughing stock of their neighbors. Why would anyone follow someone who died on the cross – belittled and humiliated? Actually that may be what attracted those first Christians. They themselves grew up poor and were treated as the dust of society. They saw Jesus as the God who understood them. 

Unlike the Jews of our story in Acts who thought they knew God’s will, John’s listeners realized that they did not have it all worked out. For them life was hard and chaotic. With Jesus they had been called into a community of support and love. To be little children also means to be part of a family – God’s family. Together they would be able to live as sisters and brothers of Jesus. Together they showed the forgiveness and saving help of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. 

Yes, little children, you have been called into the family of God, made sinless by the waters of Baptism, and fed at this holy table strengthened to proclaim the love of God to a troubled world. Share the gifts that God has given you and proclaim that Christ is Risen for them.