Recently my partner found some photographs of me when I was a child. I was startled from another room by cries of ‘Oh wow, how lovely’. I’m pretty certain I wasn’t cuter than any other 2 or 3 year old but the photographs offered Fiona a new view of me: a joyful and determined me as I bounced on a small trampoline, a sorrowful me as I was comforted after falling over. I wonder what Jesus was like at that age. I wonder what little conversations he had as he pottered around Mary’s kitchen. I wonder what he thought as she took him to market and synagogue. I wonder what he was like when he was hungry or learning independence as a toddler. Did he wail when he was given bread cut into triangles when he had imagined it would have been cut into squares? From what we know about Jesus learning how to empathise as an older child I suspect he was a very human baby and toddler. Away In A Manger got it wrong. I’m sure he was anxious and uncomfortable as a baby and cried with the best of them.
What do we learn from babies and young children making noises in our church services? The first thing is that Christ, the person we’re all here to discover, spoke as they do in his place of worship. Maybe Christ will speak through them sometime to us too. The second is that their families have made a costly decision to continue to be part of us. It’s hard to get out of the house with young children on a Sunday morning. Harder still to travel across London. Those of us without children are privileged that they have decided that we are worth that. We are planning for children’s ministry to start this term during our Sunday services so there will soon be activities for children of all ages in the time of the prayers, readings and sermon. However, I hope we don’t lose the gift of children’s noises in our worship. I hope we can continue to grow as a church for all ages and a church which will continue to emerge into a future of making noises to God and each other.
Revd Sally Hitchiner
