The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity - August 23, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

When we want to train a child to do something, we are generally pretty good at knowing how to do that. We recognize that there are short-term goals that lead to ultimate goals or hopes. If you want a boy to excel at baseball, you work on hand-eye coordination. You make sure they practice their batting and throwing and catching. You get them on a T-ball team, then slow pitch, and on up the line. There are a lot of skills to learn that will build up to a good ball player. But every parent knows that it’s good to reinforce at home what they’re leaning on the team. Talk through the lessons of practice, and put them into practice even at home.

But what is the ultimate goal? Not every parent wants their kid to play in the Majors League—or even thinks that their kid is good enough to do so. But that’s often not the ultimate purpose of sports. There are a lot of other reasons to put your kids in sports. They learn teamwork, leadership, responsibility, resilience, respect, and how to win and lose with dignity. These “soft skills”  accompany the “hard skills” of technique and knowledge of the game and are just as important.

This is true across a variety of human endeavors. Whether you have a girl in dance, or kids learning music, mechanics, language, robotics, or any other skill, there are two goals to keep in mind: short term and ultimate. What do you want your kid to learn now, and what do you eventually want of them?

This is also true of teaching the faith. It’s probably magnified, actually, because the ultimate goal should loom larger. It depends on the sport, but roughly 0.1% of high school athletes reach the major league of their sport. 100% of our children will stand before the throne of God. We raise our children for two reasons: first, to be Christians in this life, and second, to be with Christ for all eternity. These two goals go together, as they do with sports. If you teach a kid how to play the game with both hard skills and “soft skills,” then they will enjoy it for as long as they are able to play, whether that ends in the major leagues or not. If you teach a kid to live as a Christian here in this life, it’s not just for this life.

We should not boil down Christianity to its morals, as if it’s only important to be a Christian to behave well in this life. St. Paul says that if “we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). Nor do we Christians take the opposite position and say that eternal life is the only thing that matters, not what you do during this life. The finish line of the race matters, but how you run the race does too.

It reminds me of the fable the “Hare and the Tortoise.” You probably remember it: the hare challenges the tortoise to a race. They set off, the hare speeding off quickly, but decides to take a nap. The tortoise plods on slowly, all the way to the end. The hare wakes up in time and tries to catch up, but is too late: the tortoise has already won. The moral of that story is “slow and steady wins the race.” Regarding salvation, this is echoed in Hebrews: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (12:1–2). St. Paul also says: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it” (1 Cor 9:24).

So, how do we do this for our children? How do we encourage them to run the race of faith? It begins by understanding how faith is given and sustained. This happens through the Word of God. As I quoted on Confirmation Sunday, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). For children, this begins with Bible stories. These are stories that demonstrate to us how God works in our lives. We need to know what Jesus did for others and for us, how he died to save us and rose again to promise us life. Parents and grandparents, I encourage you to use those Bibles that we have given your children. Read to them those Bible stories. Talk about them with your kids. Teach them to pray by showing them how. And yes, bring them to church and bring them to Sunday School.

None of this needs to be fancy or complicated. It doesn’t need to be. Just like you don’t need a whole system in your backyard to teach your kid how to hit, throw, or catch, you don’t need a whole system to teach your kids the faith. Read through the Bible story, ask questions to see if they grasped it, and answer their questions that come up. Prayers can be very simple too: “Dear Jesus, thank you for this day. Thank you for my family. Forgive me where I’ve done wrong. Protect me this night. Amen.” What is most important is consistency. Children learn through habits. What are you doing day in, day out? They’re watching and learning.

I’ll give an example of how to lead your children through a Bible story, from our Gospel reading for today. Let’s say you’ve just read it to your children. Ask them what it means to be deaf. Deaf means that you can’t hear anything. Ask them to imagine being deaf. Maybe even have them put their hands over their ears so they can’t hear much at all. Tell them to imagine living a long time without being able to hear. Then ask what Jesus does. Why might Jesus touch the man’s ears? Why might he spit on his hands and touch his tongue? Does that sound gross? Yes, but how is he communicating to a man who can’t hear? He’s telling him what He will do! After the man is healed, do you think he’s happy? How do we know he’s happy? Would you be happy? What has Jesus done for you to save you from your problems? He has forgiven you and teaches you to do better. We can now pray to Him and praise Him for all that He has done.

Yes, some Bible passages may be harder to explain than others, but the whole Bible was written to point us in some way to Jesus. Sometimes it’s about His people of the Old Testament and what they needed to learn. Sometimes it’s a moment of glorious salvation when defeat seemed imminent. But here’s the overall point: it’s great that you send your kids to church and Sunday School, and thanks be to God for the education they receive here. But it’s also important to live that out in your homes, to reinforce the teaching and to show them that it matters to you as well.

After all, the goal of every Christian parent is to want to see their children with them in Heaven, just as we should want to be with our parents and grandparents and ultimately with Jesus in Heaven. There are many things that are important in this life, like sports, like telling good fables to your children, and so much more. But the one Story that really saves is found in the Bible. It saves because Jesus saves, and He is the Word of God that is found on every page of the Bible. So let us cling to Him and His Word, and teach it to our children.

Now may the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.

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