WLSU: Our Children

How do we care for them? What is our responsibility to our children?

I have been thinking about this a lot. And I want to say this very clearly: I don’t just mean my responsibility for the children I call mine. I also do not mean our responsibility to children because of what they will mean in the future when they are grown up. I mean our shared responsibility for the children among us right now. What is their value? What is their place in our community? And what is our responsibility to them? All of them, by the way. All of them.

I am a parent. I have three children, and I confess that much of my wondering about this has been based on my experience of raising them. More specifically, I am raising them in public schools in Cincinnati. And of course, that pushes me to think regularly about our city’s commitment to children. In the aftermath of yet another school shooting, I wonder if we value their safety, their very lives.

And I confess, I wonder if my children were not in public schools, would I care so much? And if I didn’t have children at all, would I care the way I care now?

Jesus didn’t have children. Jesus didn’t have a wife.

In American Christianity, heterosexual marriage with children is the cultural norm. It is held up as the standard, and in many cases within Christianity it is assumed, or vehemently defended, as the ideal unit for Christian life. But Jesus, our primary teacher, never spoke a word about how our families should be structured. In fact, he preached repeatedly that following his teachings could very possibly break up our families, and that we should do it anyway. And the very same Jesus, after whom we commit to pattern our life, very famously never belonged to what we consider a traditional family structure.

Yet, we do not see this as a shortcoming in Jesus’ life or teachings. Nor should we. Nobody’s value or belonging is in any way defined by their marital or parental status. It never has been in God’s eyes. And it never should be in ours. Being married is not the Christian ideal. It is a calling for some people and not for others. Being a parent is not the Christian ideal. It is a calling for some people and not for others. When a culture that self-identifies as Christian pushes marriage and parenting as normative, as ideal, we misrepresent God.

Christians are meant to be experts at pointing out the beauty, blessing, and belonging of all people. That is our vocation. That is Christlike. We know we have not earned that reputation. We know we are often at the forefront of movements that seek to narrowly define God’s blessing.

For the Christian, Jesus is the embodiment of God’s blessing, and he spends his ministry ever widening the boundaries of that blessing so that more and more people are seen as beloved and valuable just as they are.

Children have a special focus in Jesus’ life and teachings. In fact, Jesus, the unmarried adult with no children, makes an explicit point of challenging his followers to pay attention to children: To love and care for them; to see within them not just some abstract potential for future relevance, but in fact to recognize God’s presence and brilliance and power in them in the here and now.

This matters because Jesus is combating the notion that a child’s primary value is in their potential – what they could become, what they might someday accomplish, how they will live into their parents’ expectations, how many children they might themselves someday produce. If you want to see the glory of God, Jesus says, hang out with a child. Get to know them. Try to see what they’re seeing. Some see this as wide-eyed idealism about the innocence of babes. It’s not. It’s profoundly practical. It pushes us – all of us - to see God in the sloppy, untucked, runny-nosed, stubborn, passionate, unruly life of someone we’d normally look down upon.

What is our responsibility to our children? How do we honor God’s presence within them? More pointedly, how do we honor and love the children who do not live in our house, do not share our last name? What about those who do not live in our zip code? Those who do not have the same color skin as us? (Those last two are often connected.)

Cincinnati has a school bus problem. Well, actually we have a funding problem. Which feels like a tired old cliche for public schools except that it continues to be utterly, depressingly true. As Cincinnati Public Schools face what feel like the annual ritual of budget cuts, they found a way to cut $9 million: They cut yellow school bus service for all middle school students. Well, not all middle school students. Thanks to Ohio state law, they are required to provide yellow school buses for private and charter schools. You heard/read that correctly. Only public-school children – 79% of whom are racial minorities – will be affected by this change.

This is not the first time the school buses in Cincinnati have been affected. In the aftermath of the pandemic, devoted bus service for high schoolers was suspended. Hundreds of children who previously had been picked up on school grounds were directed to take the local city bus. It just so happens that there is a public school down the street from Church of the Redeemer. It’s called Clark Montessori High School. And it just so happens that the majority of the bus stops closest to that school are all directly in front of our church.

Starting a couple years ago, hundreds of Clark students were walking down the street and hanging out in front of Church of the Redeemer while waiting for the bus. So, we opened our doors and invited them in. Not to convert them, by the way. To love and bless them and treat them like they matter. Because they do. It started simply with open doors, available phone chargers, and some water and lemonade when it was hot out, and cocoa when it was cold. Oh, and free snacks. Lots of them.

At least one student has asked the question, “Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?” “Nothing”, our Minister for Family Discipleship, Tym House responded, “we just love you.” -

In the last four years this ministry has grown. We have added tutors and free yoga classes, and arts and crafts classes. Some play video games, some make TikToks, some just grab a snack and run out the door.

Clark Montessori, like many high schools in Cincinnati goes from 7th to 12th grade, so middle schoolers are part of the student body. With bus service now being removed for them, we have seen even larger numbers of students joining us every day. Many of these younger students now wait with us until their parents can get off work and pick them up.

This church blesses hundreds of children every week. The other day I pulled into the parking lot and saw several Clark students in our pollinator garden yanking weeds because they wanted to. They giggled and talked smack with each other. They didn’t even notice this priest. They didn’t need to. They were comfortable. They were home.

They belong to us, and we belong to them.

It is our Christian vocation to learn how to understand this reality. To embrace people for who they are, to embrace our mutual belonging.

Frankly, it is also our Christian responsibility to vote to properly fund their education and care, and to prioritize their physical and mental safety. I know I will be voting for candidates and measures that take seriously the value of all people this November. It is also our Christian responsibility, as it has been throughout history, to meet the humanitarian needs of our community in the places where our government repeatedly fails to do so. This is why so many hospitals, for instance, have been started by churches and Christian organizations. But systemic change is a long and winding road. A lot of Christians still need to be convinced that these children are ours. In the meantime, I am so grateful to belong to a church that is learning the truth:

They are our children. Every single one of them.