Remember today is Time Change
Sunday in the USA. Prepare to lose an
hour’s sleep and get to the church on time!
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| Zurbarán, Francisco, 1598-1664. Crucifixion, from Art in the Christian Tradition, project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=47447 [retrieved February 22, 2012]. |
Today’s cross is a plain wood, nail cross (if you will not feature it on
Good Friday) or a picture of the crucifixion. (The one here comes from the Vanderbilt
Divinity School library with permission to use non-commercially. You may have other images hung on the wall in
the church or in great art books.) Display
the cross in order to talk about the facts of crucifixion and to highlight
Jesus’ courage in facing crucifixion.
Facts need not be as gory as Mel Gibson’s film, but do need to insist
that this was a very painful way to be killed and was meant to make fun of the
person being killed. If you are using a
wooden or nail cross, pass it among worshipers to handle as you talk about
crucifixion. If you use a picture, point
to details in it, describe what they meant and how they felt to the one being
crucified. (In the posted piece I’d
point to the nails in the hands and feet, the fact that most of the crucified
one’s clothes have been removed, and the sign over Jesus head.) All this information helps children
understand crucifixion in general and today impresses them with Jesus’ standing
up to people (the Temple authorities) who could do that to him. One preacher said to children, “Jesus loved
you so much that he would die rather than stop loving you.” That is love and courage children can
respect.
Both the Ten Commandments
and Psalm 19 appear on World Communion Sunday in the lectionary.
Go to Year A World Communion Sunday for a children’s version of
the commandments, suggestions for children reading both in worship, directions
for making a set of tables to display in worship, an idea using honey flavored
hard candies, and notes about how children understand rules.
Exodus 20:1-17
U Go to the World Communion Sunday helps at the
link just above.
U Turn the Ten Commandments
and 1 Corinthians 1:25 into a responsive reading with
leader reading each commandment individually and the congregation responding to
each one with the Corinthians verse (For God’s foolishness is wiser than human
wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.) Practice the verse with the congregation
before the reading. Briefly explore how wise
or foolish it is to keep one of the rules (maybe one about telling lies). Then challenge worshipers to listen for how
wise or foolish each of the other rules are.
This
could be the Old Testament reading for the day or could be done at the
beginning of the sermon as an interactive part of the sermon.
U Create opposites for the Ten Commandments and
imagine a world lived by those rules.
This connects to the Epistle question about what is really wise and
foolish. The list below is a starter, suggest others in comments.
1.
You are your own
boss. Do whatever you want to do
whenever you feel like it.
2.
Decide who and what
is important to you. Pay attention only
to those people and things.
3.
It does not
matter when or how you say God’s name.
You can use it to swear or cuss or to get what you want (as in “God is
on my side” statements).
4.
It doesn’t matter
if you worship with God’s people on Sunday/regularly. If there are other things you’d rather do, go
do them.
5.
Parents don’t get
it. Ignore them whenever you can.
6.
Kill whatever or
whoever gets in your way. The strongest
live longest.
7.
Don’t worry about
your family. Think only about yourself
and what you want.
8.
Finders
keepers!
Toddler’s Rule of possession: I see it, I want it, it’s mine!
If you want it, figure out how to get it.
Toddler’s Rule of possession: I see it, I want it, it’s mine!
If you want it, figure out how to get it.
9.
Lie if you have
to get out of trouble.
Lie to get
what you want.
Lie to make yourself look good – even if it makes someone else look bad.
Lie to make yourself look good – even if it makes someone else look bad.
10. The one who dies with most toys wins.
The world is
full of wonderful things. Get your
share.
U If
you are recognizing Scout Sunday,
talk about the importance of the scout laws to scouts. Living by rules or laws helps us know who we
are and how we want to live.
To
take it to another level that will be a stretch for younger children: Just as scouts do not have to earn the right
to become a scout by proving they can live by the scout laws but work at living
by the laws because they are a scout and want to be a good scout. So, God’s people don’t live by the 10
Commandments to earn God’s love, but live by them because they show them how to
be God’s happy, loving people.
Psalm 19
See the note and link at the
top of this post for ideas about using the psalm linked with the Ten
Commandments.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
U See the cross
suggestions at the top of the page and the suggestion for a responsive reading
intermingling the Ten Commandments with verse 25.
U Children are
intrigued by Paul’s discussion about what is wise and what is
foolish. Is it wise to
share the fries or to keep them all for yourself? Is it foolish to risk being laughed at by the
popular kids if you sit with an outcast?
Linking this text with the Ten Commandments to explore the wisdom and
foolishness of individual commands draws children’s attention.
U Go back to the
featured cross of the week to ask whether allowing
Jesus to be crucified was a wise or foolish move on God’s/Jesus’ part. After looking at the details of crucifixion,
ask “What was God thinking? Was God
nuts? People wanted a leader, someone who can get through any situation and get
us through any situation, not someone who gets killed! On a cross!”
John 2:13-22
John is always working on
several levels of meaning. In this scene
one level is about the moneychangers.
Another is about Jesus replacing the sacrificial system of the Temple,
and even the Temple, entirely. The first
makes more immediate sense to children.
The second requires some care.
U To unpack what
was going on with the moneychangers at the very beginning of John’s gospel.
Two
specific things about the Temple scene made Jesus so angry that he went into
action. The first was that the Temple
had been divided into sections for different types of worshippers. The Jews got the best section. The foreigners got the section furthest from
the altar. Imagine
with worshipers different parts of your sanctuary set aside for different kinds
of worshipers. If you are
an old Southern US church, this is a good opportunity to point out the history
of a slave balcony and slave doors. To
make matters worse, Temple leaders had allowed business people to set up booths
in the foreigners section – really disrupting their ability to pray in peace!
Use
some play money or foreign coins and some daily coins to demonstrate
what the moneychangers did.
Show the “different” coin and explain that the Temple leaders had
decided that only this money could be put in the offering boxes at the
Temple. Act out the purchase of these
special coins from money changers who charged “a small fee” for each coin.
After
setting this scene in Temple take time to identify what about it made Jesus so
angry. (Don’t count on the children
getting it on their own.) Point out that
Jesus did not just “lose it” and act out in way he would later regret. He knew exactly what he was doing and he knew
that it would make powerful people very, very angry with him. But, he still did it. Describe Jesus’ actions not so much as wildly
angry, but brave and courageous.
Before
singing “God of Grace and God of Glory” point to the “Grant
us wisdom, Grant us courage” chorus noting both the repeated
words and the words that are different in each verse. Practice singing it together. Then invite worshipers to sing it. The vocabulary of the verses is difficult for
children to follow, but even the youngest can sing the repeated “grant us
wisdom, grant us courage.”
U If you want to
explore John’s insistence that Jesus is turning over the
whole Temple sacrifice system, talk about the sellers of animals
rather than the money changers. Name
some of the animals sacrificed and very briefly describe the altar ritual in
which they were killed as an offering to God.
Most children are deeply offended by the idea of killing an animal to
show that you love God or to ask God to forgive you for the bad things you
do. They are happy to hear Jesus insist
that the whole idea was wrong. All we
need to do is praise God with words and songs and the way we live every
day. When we mess up, God will forgive us
when we say you are sorry.
WARNING: John sets up Jesus as the new sacrificial
lamb for all times. This made sense in
John’s world. In today’s world,
especially among today’s children, it makes God look highly suspect. If God needs some animal or Jesus to die a
painful death in order to forgive us, God looks a little weird and rather
mean. I know it is the base of classical
atonement theology, but I’d stay away from it.
It makes more sense to simply say Jesus said killing animals to
communicate with God was nuts.
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