“IF A child doesn’t understand that church is a holy space, they shouldn’t be in church.” This — or something close to it (my emotions blur the exact words) — was said to me at the door after church on a recent Sunday morning. It was a Sunday when my four-year-old, who comes with a side of neurospicy-ness and a pink hearing aid, had shouted “Mama!” in church for approximately two minutes during the service, as he came to the altar rails, with about 15 other young children, for a blessing. For the remainder of the 65-minute service, he was not in church — and he rarely is.
He loves church, but it is an overwhelming space. When he is in church, he likes to stand at the back, moulding Play-Doh or pressed against the organ casing so that he can feel the vibrations of the sound. He also loves cleaning; so, most Sundays during church, he gives the vestibule, entry areas, lavatory, and kitchen a good mop — complete with at least one “Wet Floor” sign. After the service, he waits for people to move to coffee, and then spends the next 45 minutes vacuuming the sacristy, children’s area, and any other place where he spots something on the floor.
But, according to this person (and it’s not the first time this has been said to me concerning children in church), if he can’t be silent, he shouldn’t be there, because he doesn’t understand holy space.
Here’s the thing about children — which I say as a parent of one who hasn’t slept until sunrise in years, and so my glasses are far from rose-tinted: what has surprised and humbled me, in more than two decades of ordained ministry, is how deeply they understand the sacredness of space and God’s creation. When was the last time you stopped to smell a flower, admire a tree’s shadow, collect leaves of every colour, try to catch a bird just to say “Hello”, stomp in a puddle and let the water splash on your face, or say “Wow!” at how fast the clouds move on a windy day, or the brightness of the moon?
While some in church struggle to worship in the 63 minutes when a child is not audibly present, my child spends double that time each Sunday tending the church space: mopping floors, hoovering the sanctuary, righting flowers blown over by the wind in the churchyard, and clearing dirty water from the memorials. (When I say he loves cleaning, it really is all-consuming.) And, when he comes forward for a blessing, all he wants is to tell me about the church’s Hoover, and to light a candle to say “Thank you” to God.
A FEW weeks ago, our beloved Labrador died at the age of 15. As his final days drew near, I began gently talking about death, and heaven, and God watching over us. No questions came — apart from a small misunderstanding that our dog was going to “Helen’s” rather than heaven. But, on the basis of several “Christian” children’s books on death, in which I hadn’t quite noticed the detail that often shows the person or pet as somehow floating off to the side in the air, my son became convinced that our dog would go to heaven on an aeroplane.
After our Labrador’s death, two additional books were recommended to us: Air Miles, suggested by my son’s teacher, and Dog Heaven, by a dear clergy colleague. Air Miles tells of an older dog, Miles, who lives with a little boy and learns to fly a plane. When he gets old, and can no longer walk well, he flies higher and further than ever before on his final journey. Dog Heaven imagines dogs running free in endless fields, and a God who watches over them, smiles at their joy, and has quite a sense of humour when it comes to dog biscuits.
For weeks, these have been read over and over again at bedtime, and now my child sees God and heaven everywhere. He sees biscuits in the shop and says, “God likes to make biscuits.” He sees clouds, and says “God sits on those and watches over us so we don’t have bad dreams” (at the top of his Christmas list, alongside a green Hoover, was “a cloud from God”). Just this week, in the park, he shouted from the swing: “Mama, look! Those dogs are running just like [our dog] did when he first got to heaven.”
All of this is to say: children get holiness, and it’s not confined to silence in a 65-minute service on a Sunday morning. They want to know that God cares for us — all of us. They want to light candles and say thank you. They see God behind trees, in racing clouds, and in dogs running at full speed in the park. And they worry about the comfort of those who are suffering or sad.
In Matthew 18, Jesus tells his disciples that “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven” (18.3), and “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (18.5). Becoming like children doesn’t mean becoming silent. Jesus puts no conditions on their welcome, no requirement of understanding, behaviour, or volume. Instead, Jesus simply says, “Become like children.”
HOW, then, might we look at our world and see and seek God and all that is holy? How might we say “Thank you” more often, look out for those who are suffering, begin each day in wonder, and expand on our sense of what “holy space” really means?
Perhaps holiness is not found in the silence that we demand, but in the love that we notice: in the small hands that want to make God’s house beautiful; in a child’s joy at seeing heaven, and God’s presence in clouds and dogs and biscuits; in every whispered “Thank you” and wide-eyed “Wow!”. Maybe what makes a space holy is not the absence of noise, but the presence of wonder, gratitude, compassion, and love.
When Jesus said, “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven,” he wasn’t asking his disciples to be quiet: he was asking them to be open, and to see the world as children do — full of grace, alive with possibility, brimming with God’s presence.
So, the next time we hear a child’s voice in church, perhaps we might pause before calling it a disruption and, instead, hear it as an invitation, a holy reminder that heaven is not silent, but alive with sound. Revelation speaks of “the roar of many waters”, rumbling thunder, and harping harpists filling the heavenly space (14.2); of winged, eye-covered creatures who never stop saying “Holy, holy, holy” (4.8). Heaven is full of sound — roaring, singing, cries of praise — and, perhaps, in the voices of our children, we are reminded of what Jesus meant when he said that the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
Canon Jenn Strawbridge is Professor in New Testament and Early Christian Studies at Oxford, and serves on the Faith and Order and Liturgical Commissions.
