Read Zechariah 8: 4 – 5  

For centuries, Israel (the Jewish people) had sought security of place.  Zechariah voices hope for a secure future, safe from harm and threat, a place and time when the people will be able to return to Jerusalem and find peace there to worship God in their own way, a place where they could sing the Lord’s song in their own land, not a strange land.  You’ll perhaps remember the song by Bony M – ‘By the rivers of Babylon’.  They sang ‘How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land’. The song is derived from Psalm 137 when the Israelites were in Exile.

Their captors asked them sing their songs remembering Zion (Jerusalem and the Temple).  ‘How can we’, they said, ‘in a strange land?’

Zechariah looks forward to encourage people not to lose hope, there will be a day when all will be well and once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age.  The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there.”

And the sign of security for them will be when people of all ages can flourish in Jerusalem, where the Temple will be rebuilt and ‘everyone will live in peace among his own vineyards and fig trees, and no one will make him afraid’, as Micah told them.

And what flourishing is there now in a world where children, boys and girls are not safe, when children have no time or toys to play with.  Parents working 2 or 3 jobs are still unable to make ends meet because of the low waged, high-cost economy in which we live.

And we still look forward with hope and work to bring about a time when men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets perhaps with cane in hand and when parks and beaches and homes are joyously filled with the laughter of with boys and girls playing there.  Because we live in a country and a world in which not every child can play

And what about children in our holy places, in the Temple as it was organised in Jesus’ time with its strict regulation about what and who was allowed where – and jumping forward 2,000 years to our churches.

Matthew’s Gospel 21, has some light to shed on the attitude of religious folks to children and their joyful exuberance.  Read it and let your mind rest on Jesus’ attitude towards the religious authorities versus the children!

Rev Janine