“Until The Children Are Well” with Rev. Lisa Yebuah

What a time to ask the question, are the children well? What a time to ask the question, are all the children well? Last week, a little boy by the name of Liam Tadeo was walking with his father to go to a soccer game.

Liam was about to start kindergarten in Austin, Texas, but instead he was taken in by ICE and detained alongside his father in the Dilley Detention Center where he is right now.

Liam, alongside almost 6,200 children, are currently detained in ICE detention centers.

Are all the children well? Last week, on August 19th, Nolan Wells was supposed to turn 19 years old.

The week prior to that, he was supposed to start school.

However, he missed that milestone of starting school, and he missed that milestone of turning 19.

Are all the children well? When we say Newtown or Uvalde, we no longer think of it in regards to place, except for places of pain and sites of terror and places of disregard for children's bodies.

Why? Because not much has changed around gun control after incidences in Uvalde and in Newtown.

Are all the children well? Cullen Wiley are all the children well.

Polly Likens are all the children well.

You can go down Rock Quarry Road to the Southeast Raleigh Elementary School, and if you walk into a bathroom right now that is designated for children, you will see signs that ask, are you living in a car or a motel? Are all the children well? It would make sense for us as people of faith to begin to wonder if all of our letter writing, if all of our signing of petitions, of all of our back to school drives, if all of our organizing, even some of us whose very lives are yoked to the flourishing of children, wondering if any of it makes a difference in the material realities of children's lives.

or the work that we do if it makes a difference in shifting the imagination of this world to not just say that we love children, but actually to love children in word, action, deeds, and policies.

We're out here beating our chests, begging people not to kill our children.

Hashtag after, hashtag after, hashtag after, hashtag after, hashtag after, hashtag.

Are all the children well? So James Baldwin's words should cut deep.

The children are always ours.

All across the globe, from Southeast Raleigh to Sudan.

From Gary, Indiana to Gaza.

from Holly Springs to Haiti, and that if somehow we cannot recognize that when children are not well, then none of us are going to be well, how can we actually believe that we are anchored to a vision of Jubilee? We who are people, who in the season of Advent make room for the Christ child, God wrapped in flesh.

God who was born in inadequate housing.

God who had to flee infanticide.

and became a refugee and yet this God who comes in the form of a child that we adore, that we sing to, that we even decorate our homes because we believe in the primacy of this Jesus who comes as a frail child that has to be cared for by a mother named Mary and a father named Joseph is the very one who says, I will disrupt systems that keep children from having what they need.

Here's the beautiful thing.

In the midst of a world that is as cruel as pig iron as it relates to children, this Jesus who we adore, who comes in the form of a child, also gives us a tangible reflection every single Sunday.

Because from Sunday to Sunday, we have children who march down this aisle, and I tell you, they'll march down this aisle, heads lifted high, Asking for a large piece of bread, not begging for a large piece of bread because they know their birthright, who dipped their hands in water, remembering their baptism or anticipating their baptism or recognizing that they serve a God who is able to take you through the waters of life and to bring you on the other side.