May 10, 1998

It was about 3 o'clock in the morning, and I was laying quietly in my sleeping bag, listening intently to the whispers of the kids attending our little youth group's sleep-over. Even though it was my first church and my first youth group, I knew it would be very unwise to fall asleep. Part of this I knew by nature. After all, I was once a kid. Another part of this I knew from our previous sleepover when I had actually fallen asleep. When I awakened - in the middle of the night - there were no kids left in the room, and from the storage area in the back of the hall, I heard someone whisper the words "strip poker."

So there I was that night, refusing to fall into that trap again, laying quietly, listening to their giggles and just waiting for their next move. It came soon enough. One by one by one, the little buggers crept down the hallway, opened the door, and disappeared into the cold winter night. I knew they wouldn't go far because I had heard them say they were going to make some snowballs and bring them back as a gift - for me. So I lay there. Waiting. Until they were all outside. And then I locked the door.

At first, there was just a jiggling of the doorknob, as if maybe it was stuck. Then there were anxious whispers and a rattling noise as they tugged more forcefully at the door. All the while, the voices were becoming more and more urgent and I could hear one kid say they were getting cold.

"Knock on the door!" someone begged.

"No way! He'll KILL us!" someone else answered.

And just as the anxiety reached its peak, I slipped out a side door, made up a couple of snowballs, and then - screaming like a banshee - jumped out of the night from behind a snow drift and pelted them with snowball after snowball. It took the kids a moment to react, but once they did, they quickly outnumbered and outflanked me and I ended up IN the snowdrift with the whole bunch of them laughing and jumping on top of me and stuffing fistfuls of snow down my shirt. It was hilarious.

And as I lay there, completely vanquished yet fully enjoying the playful antics of these beautiful kids, my eyes happened to drift down the darkened street to the big old parsonage where Sandy and I lived. There was a light on in the living room. And for a brief instant, the sounds of the kids and the cold of the night just sort of melted into the background as I realized that the light was on for an important reason. In my mind's eye, I could picture Sandy sitting there on the Boston rocker, gently cradling our newborn child, nursing and singing and rocking him back to sleep.

And for a frozen moment in time - both literally and figuratively - my mind drew a connection between the tiny infant in the arms of his mother down the street, and these wonderful teenaged kids pig-piling on me in the snowdrift in front of the church. And in that miraculous instant, I imagined my son not only as he was, but also as he might one day become.

One of the most important teachings circulated in the Early Christian Church was a thought just like this. People are not only what they appear to be right now. People are also what they have the potential to become. The little letter of First John puts it this way:

And then First John adds these words:

This morning, I want to chat with you for a few moments about the thought behind this text, which I would call the art of Christian nurture. It is one of the most powerful and practical practices by which you and I can touch the lives of others with the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We can see one version of this kind of nurture in our celebration of Mother's Day. For you and I well know that most of us were not simply born and sent out to live in the world on our own. We were lovingly and carefully nurtured by persons who not only saw us as we were, but who also dreamed about what we might become. And how thankful we are for mothers and fathers and all others who have given us the gift of nurtured growth.

But the art of Christian nurture is not exactly the same. Its focus is not just on children, but on adults as well. Its aim is not just within families, but between families, and beyond families. Its context is not just the circle within which I live and move, but the all-inclusive circle of humanity as a whole. And the dream that drives Christian nurture is not a vision of some human ideal, but the very belief that we have been created to become like Christ.

I think the first step in practicing the art of Christian nurture begins right there. In perceiving the image of God in the life of every person.

One of the great stories of this kind of spiritual perception is in the Book of Exodus, in the story of Moses.

You know who I'm talking about. Moses - the big-time Egyptian mucky-muck. Moses - the Deliverer. Moses - the leader who brought the Hebrew people out of the bondage of Egypt. Moses - the guy who played Charlton Heston in the movie The Ten Commandments.

Well...Moses was nothing but for those who nurtured his soul.

And among them were some plain old, ordinary midwives.

Do you remember the story? Pharoah, the King of Egypt, became paranoid about the growing Hebrew population. Fearful that the Jewish slaves might rise up against him, Pharoah ordered the midwives to kill all the male Hebrew babies in the process of delivery. They could tell the mothers that the babies had simply died before birth.

So what would the midwives do?

Well, these heroic women cooked up a grand story. They told Pharoah that the Hebrew women were sort of like the Arnold Schwarzenegger's of pregnancy. So robust were they that the babies just came POPPING out of them, so fast in fact that the midwives couldn't get there in time. By the time they arrived, the mothers were already nursing the babies so the midwives couldn't execute Pharoah's plan. And Pharaoh - not being the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree - believed them.

Now the Bible says the midwives acted so courageously - risking their own lives to save these babies - because they feared God.

This is an interesting description. To fear God is not to be afraid of God, but rather to be in awe of God. Another way of describing what happened with the midwives is that they perceived the wonder and majesty of God in the lives of these innocent children. And seeing God present and at work, they risked their lives, they used their creativity, they lived altruistically so that God's dream could be fulfilled in the lives of these tiny human persons.

You see, the art of Christian nurture is first of all the art of perceiving the divine in the midst of the human.

I wonder what you see when you look at your children. Your spouse. Your neighbors. The poor. The oppressed.

This week, take up the art of Christian nurture. Look at those around you and see in them a potential Moses. Or Miriam. Or Joshua. Be awed by the fact that God is in their lives, at work transforming them into the likeness of Christ. The art of Christian nurture begins with the practice of perceiving the divine at work in the midst of the human.

Second, it's the practice of stirring up the divine in others' lives.

You know, Barbara Mandrell talks about wanting to acquaint her baby Nathan with the presence of God from the earliest days of his life. Being a singer, Barbara sang three songs to Nathan every day that she hoped would form positive images of God. So she crooned "Jesus Loves Me", and "This Is The Day The Lord Has Made", and "Jesus Loves The Little Children". Every day, she sang these three songs. And she says the whole family breathlessly waited to hear which of the three tunes little Nathan would first begin to hum. Finally, the day came. The family heard Nathan singing to himself in his room, the way little children do. So they crept to the door and listened intently. But what they heard wasn't "Jesus Loves Me", nor was it "This Is The Day", nor was it "Jesus Loves The Little Children". The tune little Nathan was humming was the tune of his mama's latest hit - "All My Ex's Live In Texas"!

Which ought to teach us that there's a difference between short-term and long-term nurturing. So often, we want other people to come to faith. Now. We desire our children to turn away from bad things and turn toward good things. Now. We want people we love to be healed of the things that make them broken, and we wish they would be made well NOW.

But Christian Faith, dear friends, is a lifetime process. It will not be completed in any of us, according to First John, until Jesus comes. So our work in stirring up the divine within the hearts of the people God sends our way needs to be gentle, and releasing, and trusting of God's mercy and grace.

We see this in the life of Moses' mother. For when Pharaoh got over being put off by the midwives, he simple ordered the execution of the male Hebrew children by having them tossed into the Nile River to drown. And Moses' mother, in a tremendous act of faith, puts her baby in a basket, and patches it up with tar so it will float, and pushes it out toward the bulrushes, and sails her child toward heaven.

What an image, of how you and I are called to nurture the souls of others! By gently setting them to sail toward God.

I think, of all the gifts I've received in my life, among the most important were my mother's persistent but careful nurturing of prayer, my father's daily demonstration that a man can love the Lord and be a real person too, and my church family's gentle exposure of my life to Christian service and high ideals. Over the course of my lifetime, these gifts have led me to Jesus.

Oh, the art of Christian nurture is first of all the art of perceiving the divine at work in the midst of the human. And secondly, it is the art of gently helping others set sail toward God. And there are gifts of the spirit that you have, that can fill the sails of people so that they can journey toward the kingdom. Learn to give these gifts away.

And thirdly, the art of Christian nurture is the art of revealing Christ to others.

The story of Moses takes a dramatic turn when the daughter of Pharaoh himself finds the baby in the basket in the bulrushes. Moses' older sister, Miriam, sees that Pharaoh's daughter is taken by the baby, and loves it at first sight. So Miriam pipes up and says, "If you're going to keep the baby, why don't I go get you one of the Hebrew women to nurse him for you!"

And Pharaoh's daughter agrees. And Miriam goes and gets her mother. Moses' mother. And in that strange and miraculous way that God is famous for, it works out that Moses is raised by his own mother in the very house of Pharaoh. And while Moses grows, his mother teaches him about his heritage as a Hebrew, and about the covenant with God - the God of Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob. She teaches Moses about her belief in God as a God of love, as a God who cares about the enslaved, as a God whose mercy is over all his works, as a God who sets people free!

And years later, when Moses faces a crossroads moment in his life, he yields himself to this God his mother revealed to him. And Moses becomes the Deliverer of Israel!

Sometimes we forget, in the rush of our lives as Christians, that we are the Body of Christ. The visible presence of Jesus in the world. We are his hands and feet and eyes and lips. In fact, the very name we bear - Christian - means like Christ.

So the art of Christian nurture is only truly fulfilled when those people God sends to us can look at us and see Christ. And when we can help others clear away the dust of life's confusion to see who and what Christ is like.

You see, Christ is not the crooked televangelist who manipulates the emotions of people. Christ is not the priest who molests little children. Christ is not the person you meet who tries to scare you into salvation and tells you how bad you are. Christ is not the parent who denies his child medical care while waiting for a miracle. Christ is not the church that hits people over the head with the Bible, nor is it the church that treats the Bible like a comic book. Christ is not the group that blows up abortion clinics, nor is he the group that promotes abortion. Christ is not the person who sits in church and can't bring himself to step beyond his clique and welcome a stranger. Christ is not the territorial battle fought out in a church committee meeting. Christ is not the Christian who testifies to salvation yet does nothing for the poor, and the hungry and the hurt.

Oh, all around us are examples of who and what Christ is NOT!

So how will the people God sends your way discover who Christ IS?

Why, through you. You can point the way to the Christ you've met - the Christ you know - the Christ you believe in.

This is all the art of Christian nurture. To see God at work among the people you meet. To give people gentle gifts that help them set sail toward God. To help others catch sight of Jesus - and his mercy - and his love!

May these words become your prayer this week as God shows you how to practice the art of Christian nurture!