Everything I really needed to know about Jesus I learned in Sunday School

Last week our Sunday School lesson was about Moses and the Bronze Serpent.

Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread." So the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.

Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD that He take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people.

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live." So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
Numbers 21:4-9 (NKJV)

Now that I'm teaching the Grade 1 class, (I formerly taught Grade 5) I have to remember to keep the lesson objectives simple. For our craft, we cut and paste a serpent onto a wooden pole and Jesus onto a cross. Then as a quick game, I asked them to hold up the correct pole when ever I said "God saved the Isrealites from the snakes" or "God saved us from sin". That's basically what the lesson boils down to - just as God saved the Isrealites in the wilderness from dying from the serpent's bite, so He saves us from the death that we deserve as a consequence of our sin.

Call me a cynic, but I can't help wondering how many Isrealites died because they didn't look at the snake. I'm pretty sure I would have died. Because it doesn't really make sense. Think about it: I'm lying on the ground, feverish and convulsing from the snake venom that's coursing through my blood. A snakebite is the cause of my suffering and will soon be the cause of my death. And then along comes Moses who tells me to look at an effigy of the snake - the very cause of my suffering! - and I will be saved from death by snakebite. (Uh...yeah. Sure Moses, anything you say.) It just doesn't make sense, does it?

In fact it seems like the opposite should be true. The snake, apparently, was called "Nehushtan" (2 Kings 18:4). The word "Nehushtan" is not only a combination of the Hebrew words for "bronze" and "snake" but it also sounds much like the Hebrew word that means "unclean thing". And my intellect tells me that I have no good reason to believe the "unclean thing" will be of any help to me. In fact it tells me the opposite: the unclean thing can't be trusted.

Yet obviously some of the Isrealites believed and looked at the bronze serpent and were healed. Despite the fact that it made no human sense whatsoever, they trusted that God would be true to His word and looked up for their healing.

In the same sort of paradoxical way, Luther had this idea that the Cross turned everything that we think we know about God on its head. From a human perspective what kind of Messiah is a dead messiah? How are we supposed to trust a Messiah - killed in the most shameful way that the Romans could devise, whose followers appeared to have deserted Him and who seemed to lack the power to stop even his own unjust death sentence - to save us? Like the serpent on the pole, the Messiah on the Cross as a means of salvation makes no sense.

Yet Luther insisted that the shame and agony and senselessness of the Cross is precisely where God best reveals Himself to us. God hides himself (Isaiah 45:15) in what appears to be weak and foolish yet paradoxically this is where the very power and wisdom of God are found. God, who is all-powerful, hides Himself in weakness. God, who is all wise, hides Himself in foolishness. God, who is living, hides Himself in death. Luther called this the "Theology of the Cross".

To fully understand the implications of Theology of the Cross (if such a thing is even possible), one must first understand it's converse: what Luther called the Theology of Glory. Under such a theology, man seeks for himself the glory that belongs to God alone. Thus, theologians of glory see themselves as having the capacity to understand God - and even approach Him - apart from His final Revelation to man, which is Christ. The theologian of glory applies his human reason to understand what God is like.

This is why the Sunday School lesson is so powerful. Human reason tells us that a bronze snake on a pole is not going to save us from a poisonous bite. And human reason tells us that a dead man on a cross is no help to us either. Yet in both cases our human reason deceives us.

The children in Sunday School, whose faith God began in their baptisms, accept unquestioningly that God saves through a lifeless bronze serpent and they accept equally unquestioningly that Jesus dying on the cross saves them from death. They don't believe it because they have applied human reason, or reached an "age of understanding". They believe it because God, who revealed His greatest promise in the paradox of the Cross, gave them faith to trust that His promises are true.

Here endeth the Sunday School lesson.

Spykids

Yesterday was our big Sunday School Rally. Our Sunday School goes on hiatus during the summer months and starts up again in September when we go back to two Sunday morning services. (We have an "early" service at 8:30 am, a late service at 11 am and Sunday School for the kids/Bible study for the adults in between.)

There is no grade 5 class this year so I am helping out with the grade 1/2 class instead. Our first lesson was about the 12 spies that God told Moses to send to Canaan so we made the kids be the "spies" and told them they had to find out about the land and the people. We gave them "ID" cards and took their pictures and their fingerprints for their cards. Then we gave the the story and the had to listen for the "clues".

The kids seemed to enjoy it. One little fellow came out of the classroom waving his ID card. "Look!" he said, showing his brother his card. "I'm working for JESUS!". Too cute.

Lessons from Sunday School

Our Sunday School lesson yesterday was Luke 1:26-56, the Annunciation to Mary. Since our lesson last week had been the fortelling of the birth of John the Baptizer, I had the kids spend some time comparing the similarities and the differences in the accounts. One of the things that I really wanted them to pick up on was that unlike Zechariah - who doubted God's message to him - Mary unreservedly believed.


These kids surprise me sometimes. Not only did they notice right away that Zechariah doubted while Mary believed, they noticed something that I failed to pick up on: Zechariah, who doubted, was a priest, a "professional" if you will and Mary, who believed, was just a young, ordinary girl.


I think I've told you before that I teach the grade 5 kids. I love this age, because they are old enough that they are really starting to get it. They have such great questions and we can easily become sidetracked from the lesson if I'm not careful. But sometimes the "sidetrack" will take us places that are really powerful and I have an opportunity to really connect with them and really bring home a Scriptural truth to them. Today's observation that Mary was a nobody who believed was one of those opportunities.


Here's the thing: God chose Mary. Nothing about the Biblical account in either Matthew or Luke indicates that Mary was in any way special. There was nothing extraordinary about her to commend her as a candidate for Mother-of-God, but God chose her nonetheless. Upon hearing the news that she will carry the Son of the Most High in her womb, she believes right away. I wonder - did she believe because she already had great faith, or did hearing the Word create the faith that allowed her to believe? In any case, she believes and even asks how this thing will be accomplished. Gabriel's answer to her is telling: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." In other words, you're not going to do anything little girl, God's going to take care of making it happen.

This is what we believe happens in baptism: the Holy Spirit comes upon the one baptized to create saving faith. God accomplishes his purposes through his divinely appointed means.

I'll be unashamed

After a summer hiatus, I return to teaching Sunday School today.

Please pray for me as I teach, and for the little ones who have been entrusted to me.

I find that it's so easy to fall into the trap of preaching "ought tos" to the kids. "Jesus wants us to do this, and Jesus wants us to be like that." Or, "Because we love Jesus we ought to be like (insert Bible character) and do (insert virtuous behaviour).

Lord, please don't let me be like that! Let me speak the GOSPEL to these precious ones. Let them hear of your grace and mercy toward them and let your Word accomplish it's purpose.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes Romans 1:16

He's not a PK

I had one of the pastor's grandsons in my Sunday School class last year. Jacob can be a little rascal when he wants to, but he is quite dear to me. He reminds me a lot of my own son Brent.

Last year he told me how he really wanted to be like his grandpa when he grows up.

"Isn't that sweet?" I thought to myself. "The little fellow wants to follow in the footsteps of his pastor-grandpa."

"Yeah," Jacob continued, "when grandpa was young he used to be a REALLY good football player!"

It's like going to the movies for free

I am one of those lucky people who dreams at night in widescreen, surround-sound, full-blown Technicolor. Really vivid stuff. I tend to remember the details in my dreams for quite a while afterwards, and I'm typically able to recount two or more dreams the morning after. My husband thinks I'm so weird. He hardly remembers his dreams, if at all.

Even though I have a very rich dream life, I don't put too much stock in my dreams. I mean, I've heard that our dreams are supposed to be our subconscious "working things out" and I suppose that could be an explanation for them, but I personally think that given the complexity of the human mind, we just can't say for certain what the purpose of dreaming is. Nor do I believe in so-called "dream interpretation". (Joseph's ability aside...Joseph himself attributed his ability to the Lord; he did not claim to have any insight in and of himself.) Yes, sometimes I will have a dream about something that just happened to me, or something that I am looking forward to. For example, I had a dream last night that I was at my little cousin's first communion...which we will be attending this Sunday. I am very excited to be a part of this so obviously I'm dreaming about it because it is really on my mind right now. Nothing unusual about that. On the other hand, there are times when I dream about something that I was not aware of carrying around on my heart; in cases like these I really do think that it is my subconscious telling me something.

I had a dream on Saturday night that is a perfect example of this. I have been trying to decide if I will continue to teach Sunday School next year, or put that aside for now to focus on my Department for Outreach activities. I am torn, because I love both, but I recognize that for the sake of balance I must give one of them up. Saturday night this is what I dreamed:


I dreamed that my grade five Sunday School students were being sent to fight
in Iraq. I was full of sorrow over this because of the dangers that they
would encounter. The children were bewildered by what was happening.
They held up guns without any idea how to use them. So I showed them how
to load and fire their weapons (I don't really know how to do such a thing!) and
I showed them how to protect themselves from enemy fire. I told them
everything I could think of that I thought might help to protect them.
When it was time for them to go, I wished that I had been able to give them more
to arm themselves with, but I had simply run out of time. I cried as each
one was taken away.

Now, I am no expert, but I don't think it takes a genius to figure out what is going on here. I think it's pretty clear that my desire (in my dream) to arm them against the enemy is really my desire to arm them against the Enemy.

The Enemy accosts us from all sides - but we are not without protection. Ephesians 6:10-20 testifies to the Armour of God with which we may be able to "stand against the schemes of the devil". But like the weapons in my dream, we don't always know "how to use" the protection we have been given. We must be taught, by God's Word, how to make full use of the armour that He so graciously provides. Now, I don't mean to imply that there is some sort of "secret" to using the full armour of God, only that it is God Himself, through His Word to us, who reveals how we may take up the full armour of God. And as a Sunday School teacher, this is what I have been charged with: to faithfully bring God's Word to those students in my care, that they may be fully armed against the temptations of the world, the devil and their own sinful flesh.

I still must decide which I will choose, but obviously, these precious little ones are on my heart more than I even knew. I just thought it was interesting how God would use a dream to bring this to my attention.