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Last week I talked about the children we know and love - how they bless our lives, and how we have a responsibility both to teach them and to learn from them. Today I would like to talk about the children we don't know - millions and millions of them across the earth - and what they are facing in today's world.

     This past year, UNICEF published a report entitled "The State of the World's Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible." It is a distressing picture, and not pleasant to read. But it is so important that we not get hardened to these realities, so I share a few of these items with you today. The quotes are from the newspaper article about the report.

     "Hundreds of millions of children suffer exploitation and discrimination but are virtually invisible to the world.. .Millions of children who are trafficked - often for sex- or forced to work in domestic service 'disappear' from sight every year into underground economies.. .  Other children, including those who live on the street, are denied fundamental services and protections like schooling and health care."

            Here are some of the categories of risk:

    "Children without a formal identity. Over half of all births in the developing world . . . go unregistered, denying more than 50 million children recognition as citizens." (I don't know about all of you, but I can't even fathom this: Over 50 million children in this world are not even registered as being born. Unbelievable.)
 

     The next category of risk: "Children without parental care. Around the world, tens of millions of children spend a large portion of their lives on the streets and more than 1 million live in detention." Next category: "Children in adult roles. Hundreds of thousands of children are caught up in armed conflicts as combatants, messengers, porters, cooks, and sex slaves. An estimated 171 million children work in hazardous conditions." And one more category: "Children who are exploited. Some 8.4 million children work in the worst forms of child labor. Nearly 2 million children are employed in the commercial sex trade."

    I don't know what is harder for me to get my head around - the sheer numbers of young human beings living in these horrible situations; or the depth of torment and dehumanization that some children live through; or the evil in those who would exploit, use, and just plain degrade childhood this way.

     We are blessed - we know we are - to live in a time and a place where we don't have to dwell on those terrible realities. The children we know, by and large, are safe and provided for. Their births are an occasion of celebration, and most of them are welcomed into this world by loving families, and are loved and fed and nurtured. There are exceptions to this - and probably more secret struggles than we know. We shouldn't kid ourselves; there is hunger and there is exploitation and there is abuse right in our own neighborhoods. But, by and large, the children we know are well-cared for.

 
    Millions and millions of the children we don't know are at risk. And not so far away. There are children just fifteen minutes down the road who will probably have to join street gangs to find their identities and to stay relatively safe. And then, of course, millions of others around the world.

 
    Who watches over those little ones?  When evil is all around them, who watches over the innocent ones? The ones who should be learning addition and playing with toys and being the apple of somebody's eye.  Or, to borrow the question that is sung this time of year by the Band Aid singers - the rock stars who gather to try to fight world hunger - "Do they know it's Christmas time at all?"

 
    We love the nativity story this time of year, and we draw the beauty and magic out of it.  Our nativity scenes are gentle and lovely.

 
    But the reality was much different, and we need to remember it. It's a story about poverty and violence. And it's not a kind story to children. A Roman decree goes out that forces Mary and Joseph to journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem at the fullness of her pregnancy. Did no one care that such a journey could jeopardize Mary's child? Then an innkeeper turns them away at the door. Did he even give a second thought to the idea that this woman was in labor ~ that a child needed a safe and warm place to be born?   And then the jealous and paranoid king, who wanted to destroy the child - so, instead of tracking down the one child that he feared - he ordered that all male children must be executed! This is not some charming, idyllic story. Jesus's birth was in the context of a world that disregards, and even attacks children. His birth could have been a disaster. If he had been yet another child who died because of poor birthing conditions, the world would hardly have noticed, except for his grieving parents. But the world is full of grieving parents, and even more full of forgotten children.

 
     The truth is, we don't want to look at the reality of children’s' lives today - because to look it full in the face is almost unbearable. We feel angry; we feel sorrowful; but, probably more than anything else, we feel helpless.

 
    Thank God there is another reality that is happening in that story as well - and that is the reality of who Jesus is, and what God is doing in Jesus. Mary expressed it so beautifully in what has become known as the Magnificat - her prayer of joy in discovering that she was carry the baby who would be the Savior of the world. "My soul magnifies the Lord," she begins. "And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." As her prayer unfolds, it thanks God for choosing Mary as the one who would be blessed and honored for this task that has been placed upon her. But then her prayer takes on a social aspect: "(God) has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away."

 
    I can't imagine anyone more worthy of the title "lowly" than a little child who is being exploited as a soldier or a slave - or a little child whose home is the streets or the refugee camp - or a little child whose birth is not even recorded. But God, says Mary, has lifted up the lowly. And this is what we need to remember. We feel the weight of all of those children we don't know - how do you even fathom 50 million children whose births are not even recorded? But God knows every one of them. I trust that with my whole heart. Jesus said that not even a sparrow falls without the knowledge of God. So it must be true that God knows that little child I can't know - the one the world has forgotten. That's why Jesus came; that's why Christmas is so important. We know that evil is real. But, we also know that beauty and kindness and love are real - because Christ is born, and so the lowly are lifted up, and each child given hope through the grace of God.

 
     I'm a little more aware of that this morning because I rang the bell for the Salvation Army kettle last night, and people-watched. There were matronly older women, teenagers with spiked hair and tattoos, people dressed to the nines, and people whose clothes were full of holes, little children and senior citizens, people in a hurry, and people stopping to chat - every shape and size and class and race and gender and variety of person you can imagine. And every one of those groups had at least one representative who stopped and put money into the red kettle - caring for children they didn't even know. If that's not something real, I don't know what is. If that's not lifting up the lowly - caring for the children - bringing real hope into the world - I don't know what is. And one of the biggest joys was when parents taught their little children about what the red kettle stood for, and where to put their money. There was so much joy on their faces as they put pennies, nickels, and dollars in the slot. I believe acts like that are what make Christmas real because they spread the love that God sent through Jesus.

 
     There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about whether you should say, "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings." The fact is, the meaning of this season is not going to live or die over what greeting we use. It's going to turn on kindness and generosity, much of it toward people we don't even know.

 
    I am always humbled to see the generosity of people in this church - the responses to offerings and appeals - you've brought in toys and food, supported offerings for the needy, made baskets, rung bells, built ramps - the list could go on and on. We discuss a lot in our meetings whether we should keep putting so many offerings in front of people. It seems like every Sunday we're inviting you to support some cause or other to help the needy. Sometimes it seems like too much. But folks, this is what Christians do. We respond to that child no one cares about - with prayers, with gifts, with loving actions. In Mary's words, we lift the lowly, and fill the hungry with good things, because that's what God has done for us.