Category: Sermons

What We Don’t Want To See

Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein

Preacher’s note: My gratitude goes to the Rev. Laura Lyter (“Girl Wonder”), whose passion for the issue of human trafficking ignited mine, and who referred to me http://love146.org/. All statistics about child sex trafficking was taken from their site. Other quotes are from The Week weekly magazine and Joe Ehrmann’s book, InSide Out Coaching. – VW

 

It is a season for children. We think about what they represent for the world: hope, and responsibility of our generation to theirs. We think about them personally, the children we know and love, by name, each of them precious, each of them people we wish we could protect from life’s harshness.  Our preparations for Christmas – for all the winter holidays — are really about the magic of childhood, treasuring that unique perspective of the child, the natural wonder that is the heart of reverence. The innocence of a child are no myth, they are a reality, and a fragile one. Children (along with our elders) are our most vulnerable citizens. It hurts all of us to think that there could be a child who will not get to experience the magic of the season, even as we know there are many who will not. The holidays are a time when we also revisit our own childhoods and think affectionately of those who wrapped us in a secure feeling of warmth and love and being treasured, of being good children who were deserving of gifts and treats and special memories. We think sadly of the hurts of childhood, of the neglect, the pain, the confusion, the guilt we may have experienced when our homes were not places of safety and warmth, and we did not understand that it was not our fault. Some of us — and in fact probably most of us – have reason to both grieve aspects of our childhoods and also to remember them with appreciation.

 

It is a time of year to especially think of children and our obligation to them. And so we cannot turn away from stories such as the one that broke a few weeks ago out of Penn State University, where it was revealed that assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had sexually abused children who participated in the school’s community outreach program  for years without being stopped, even though there is clear evidence that many people knew what was going on. It had been reported multiple times. We can’t turn away because this is not an uncommon crime, and because we owe it to all children to be awake, and in the words of our child dedication service, “aware of the world as it is and of the power of one dedicated individual to change it.” One such person is Joe Ehrmann, a coach and former NFL star, now an ordained minister and the founder, with his wife Paula, of Coach for America. Coach for America’s mission “is to inform, inspire and initiate individual, community, and societal change through sports and coaching.” I heard of Ehrmann through the Rev. Deborah Spratley, the Associate Pastor at the UCC Norwell Church. She told me that Joe is coming to speak in March here in Norwell and she loaned me his book InSide Out Coaching, where I found this powerful passage. Erhrmann writes,

“Childhood is a unique time of life to be honored with certain inalienable rights critical to children’s development. All children are entitled to far more than they are receiving. All children merit a positive identity based on their inherent value — not based on their skin color, creed, performance, or ZIP code. They merit being cared for simply because they exist and not because they perform. They are entitled to a safe environment and protection from violence – whether that violence is in the home, in school, on the streets, or on the athletic field. Children who play sports, like all children, are also entitled to be free from adult sexual demands, exploitation, and exposure. Sadly, the contract is repeatedly broken and few provisions and protections are provided. We need to write a contract mandating that young players’ security, well-being, self-esteem, and joy be primary and absolute in our coaching and programming.” (108)

I would call that a prophetic voice. What Joe Ehrmann is calling for is a covenantal approach to sports programs, a sacred promise that those participating in sports — players, coaches, parents, teachers and institutions (and their leaders) — will put human relationships and human person’s well-being first, and winning secondary. And that includes all the money and the endorsements and all the alumni gifts that come with winning. How different things would have been at Penn State if this ethic had prevailed. It is an ethic that needs to prevail in our schools, our religious organizations, our arts organizations, our neighborhoods, all our institutions. “Children merit being cared for simply because they exist, not because they perform.”

 

Outside of the gates of ancient Jerusalem there was a place known as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, recorded in the Hebrew Bible as “Gehenna.”  If you grew up hearing the Bible read regularly, you will know this word, “Gehenna,” and the horror it connotes. Jesus used the word eleven times in the synoptic gospels that record his teachings (eg, “It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”) The word “Gehenna wound up being translated later as “hell” or “everlasting fire.” It was an actual location, not just a metaphysical idea, as Hell has come to mean to us. Gehenna was a place where children were sacrificed by the Canaanites to their god Moloch. Fires burned in the valley day and night, where was thrown anything that anyone wanted to get rid of. Terrifying place. Everlasting fire.

 

No one sacrifices children to Moloch anymore. Today we sacrifice children to Mammon, the Sumerian god of wealth and prosperity whom Jesus warned was an ungodly power that would divert us from ethical commitments and the moral life. “Man cannot serve both God and Mammon,” he famously said.

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