Early in my career as a pastor I served a church that celebrated Children’s Sabbath, an annual event organized by the Children’s Defense Fund. On the designated Sunday, churches invite children to lead the congregation in worship—reading scripture, ushering, displaying art, offering prayer. It’s an occasion to embody Jesus’ words, “Let the little children come to me” (Mark 10:14).
One year I got the idea that it was time to hand over to children a piece of worship firmly in the grip of adults: the sermon. I had Hannah in mind for the job. She was naturally curious, and she could see herself in the role. One Sunday after Hannah read scripture from the perch of a 150-year-old lectern, she had turned to her mother and said, “I have been waiting my whole life to get up there.”
Because I was brave or foolish, or because the line between the two is very thin, I also decided we would stick with our already assigned reading from the book of Job. When I met with Hannah for sermon preparation I recounted the arc of the narrative, how God makes a strange wager with Satan that allows this tempter to kill off Job’s family, destroy his home, wreck his business, and then cover the faithful servant of God with sores from head to toe.
