Our annual Children's Sabbath took place on April 22, 2018, and featured a sermon by 5th grader Ady Jaeckel. Below is the transcript of Ady's sermon.
In Psalm 127:3-5 it says, 'Children are a heritage from the Lord.'
This verse makes me think of a pot. This beautiful pot is passed down through the generations. Cherished and loved, yet always missing out on something. Now to me this pot represents children and the adults take us, the pots, and cherish and love us yet like a young puppy we seem unable to comprehend certain things.
I personally feel like some adults think we cannot understand adult things like politics, crime, art, moral philosophy, history, and many, many other things. We know what is right and what is wrong, maybe better than some adults do! We can see beauty and joy in places that others forget to look. We can spot a phony from miles away. But I personally believe kids can understand a lot more than we get credit for. For example a kid named Dylan Malinham at the age at 9 founded a nonprofit international development and youth empowerment organization. You might say “one in a million!” well maybe the other 999,999 of us can do exceptional things too! Children at a young age start to learn about art, from finger painting to music, or playing an instrument. We can understand moral philosophy in the form of what is right and what is wrong, but that doesn’t exactly prove my point, maybe 5 and 6 year olds can’t understand the more complicated things but I can tell you we can understand enough.
During the latest presidential election my friends and I were always talking about the last debate, and whose principles were better. Over time we are better able to better comprehend crime, art, and politics. As for history, easy peasy, it has only taken me from pre-k to 5th grade to learn all about the Egyptians, Greeks, World Wars, even the founding of this country up until 1964.
One day at school my teacher was leading us in a discussion about space, and what can be seen from space. We were reading accounts of seeing the great wall of China from space, we started having this huge discussion about the wall. My classmates were all saying something along the lines of “Oh its so awesome!” or "Yeah we saw that last summer!” or "Oh it must be so big!” Our teacher was telling us all about the wall - and who built it - and everyone was going on and on about how amazing it was. But something was bothering me. I was so, so confused. My thought was: why did my teacher not mention that it was created by slave labor? She mentioned when it was made, why, even that it has sticky rice in the foundations. But she somehow failed to mention that it was created by slave labor! It seemed to me we were forgetting to see all of the truth about it - which is really important.
Kids may not understand all the little details of everything you adults are saying, but we understand a lot, and we really want to hear the truth from you. The whole truth. Today on Children’s Sabbath I want to encourage adults to be brave in talking to children, talk to us about things that matter to you. Help us to see the truth about life and trust always that we can understand it, sometimes in our own ways.
And kids I am talking to you. Never let anyone tell you that you cannot understand anything. Now if children are a heritage from the lord and a blessing for all generations then let’s honor that blessing by speaking only truth and trusting that God is working to help us understand things.
Now I lay to rest my debate for now until another young scholar picks it up again. AMEN