A NOTE ABOUT THE REMAINING
PROPERS OF THIS CHURCH YEAR: There is a group called The Advent Project (go to The Advent Project) that advocates returning to seven weeks
of Advent. They point out that Advent
was originally seven weeks, was not cut to four weeks until the seventh century
and that most western churches did not make the change until the 11th
or 12th century. Orthodox
Christians still hold to the seven week Advent.
At this point I am not very taken with their plan – especially for
children. But, I am grateful to have
learned that the lectionary texts following All Saints Sunday were not changed
and therefore are really Advent texts rather than a continuation of the end of
the year propers. They are texts about
waiting for God. They make more sense to
me when read that way and you’ll see some of that in my suggestions. I share this as deep background.
The Texts
for Today
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
~ Invite
all worshipers to join in the reading of this text. Take the role of the Narrator, introduce the
Joshua reader, and call the congregation to imagine themselves among the
Israelites who had come out of the wilderness and were beginning to settle in
the Promised Land. Tell them that Joshua
has called a meeting. Instruct them to
stand in place as the people would have stood the read the text together.
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Joshua 24: 1-3a, 14-25
Narrator: Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of
Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the
officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people,
Joshua: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve God in sincerity and in
faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and
in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord,
choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in
the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are
living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
People: Far be it from us that we should forsake the
Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our
ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did
those great signs in our sight. The Lord protected us along all the way that we
went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the Lord drove out before us all the
peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the
Lord, who is our God.
Joshua: You cannot serve the Lord, who is a holy God.
The Lord is a jealous God; and will not forgive your transgressions or your
sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve
foreign gods, then God will turn and do you harm, and consume you, after having
done you good.
People: No, we will serve the Lord!
Joshua: You are witnesses against yourselves that you
have chosen the Lord, to serve him.
People: We are witnesses.
Joshua: Then put away the foreign gods that are among
you, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.
People: The Lord our God we will serve and will obey.
Based
on NRSV
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
~ Children get the “make good choices” lecture
repeatedly. They enjoy hearing Joshua
give it to the adults. The text also
lets them know that making good choices is something they will not outgrow. They will be facing hard choices and trying
to make good choices when they are parents, even grandparents. So, they might as well start perfecting their
choosing skills now.
~ “Choose
Your Own Adventure” is a classic
series of books for older children. On
every page readers face choices and are sent to different pages to continue the
story based on the choice they made.
Each book contains many, many stories depending on the readers’
choices. To explore one of these books
in worship, read the introductory page to set the scene. Then read several of the ending pages. (They are easy to find because they each
bear THE END in large print.) Be amazed
at the very different endings and ponder the choices that would bring the
reader to them. The point of this is to
emphasize the importance of choices.
Some
story based children’s video games also
require choices that effect dramatically how long you can play, how many points
you accumulate, and where you end up. Again, choices matter. Or, choices have
consequences.
~ One of the difficult
choices many children and parents face is whether a child will participate in travel team sports. Being on a travel team brings more advanced
competition and coaching. It also takes
over the whole family’s weekend and wipes out church participation for the
season. This is such a hard choice
because it a choice between two good things rather than between good and
evil. You’ve got to decide what your
stance on these decisions will be.
IMO,
the church has copped out by not giving families guidance on this. It is a clear, “choose this day who you will
serve” decision. When families choose
the travel team, especially if they choose the travel team repeatedly, children
get the clear message that sports are more important than being among God’s
people on a regular basis. While you
might not want to say that choosing travel team is always a bad choice, you
might want to suggest that families include worship (either in their rooms or
visiting churches in the towns where they play) in their weekends. It might also be a once-for-each-child
choice. A church might also provide “on
the road” worship resources for families to pack with their gear.
~ Create a responsive prayer of confession with people of different
ages confessing problems with choices at their time of life and
the congregation responding to each one.
The one below can be easily adapted to add confessions from more age groups or life situations, e.g. in my university based congregation we would
add a prayer about the choices made in college.
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Child: Lord, we don’t like it when people tell us
what to do all the time. We want to make
our own choices. But, when we can choose
we too often choose the wrong things. We
choose what we want without remembering your rules. We choose what we want without thinking of
others. Forgive us.
All: Too often, we do not choose to serve you, O
Lord.
Teenager: Lord, it is hard to make our own
choices. Rather than ask what WE choose
we wonder what will THEY will think of us if we choose this or do that. Too often we end up choosing what we think THEY
want, not what we know is right.
Sometimes we choose things we don’t even want to do just because of what
THEY choose. Forgive us.
All: Too often, we do not choose to serve you, O
Lord.
Mid-Adult: Lord, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the
choices before us. Too much demands our
attention and our time. We feel caught
between the needs of our families, our jobs, our communities, and our
world. Too often we avoid even thinking
about the hard choices. We choose to
think only about ourselves and our families.
Forgive us.
All: Too often, we do not choose to serve you, O
Lord.
Older Adult: Lord, late in life we look back on some of
the choices we have made in our lives and are sorry. Often, we have chosen what ought not to have
and not chosen what we should have.
Forgive us.
All: Too often, we do not choose to serve you, O
Lord.
Leader: Remember always that God does forgive us when
we make poor choices. God also calls us
to choose more wisely. And, God is with
us as we make choices every day. Thanks be
to God!
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Psalm 78:1-7
~ To highlight the
responsibility of parents to teach their children, involve teams
of parents and children as worship leaders. These teams might be ushers, collect the
offering, read the scripture, etc. Ask
choirs of different ages to sing together.
Or, create a one-time choir of parents and children for this week. (Maybe members of the adult choir could sing
with their children or members of the children’s or youth choir could sing with
their parents.)
~ Below is a script for a
family of three generations to read Psalm 78:1-7. It could
obviously be adapted to include more generations or members of a family.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Psalm 78:1-7
Grandparent:
Listen, my
people, to my teaching,
and
pay attention to what I say.
I am going to use wise sayings
and
explain mysteries from the past,
things we have heard and known,
things that our ancestors told us.
Parent:
We will not keep them from our children;
we
will tell the next generation
about the Lord’s
power and his great deeds
and the wonderful things he has done.
He gave laws to the people of Israel
and
commandments to the descendants of Jacob.
He instructed our ancestors
to
teach his laws to their children,
so that the next generation might learn
them
and
in turn should tell their children.
Child:
In this way they also would put their
trust in God
and
not forget what he has done,
but
always obey his commandments.
TEV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Amos 5:18-24
~ The heart of this
reading is verse 24, “Let justice
roll down like water.” If
you do projections, this calls for a video of a rushing river. Try this one from You Tube
~ Create a Prayer of Confession identifying some of the things we claim in worship and the ways we fail to live them out during the week. Sample,
We
sing that we love all the people in the world,
but we say mean words to people we see
every day.
every day.
We
sing that we love you,
but we act like we only love ourselves.
We
say in our prayers that we want to work with you
for justice,
for justice,
but we ignore the people around us for whom
life is unfair.
life is unfair.
We
pray for you to guide and direct us,
but we most days we think more
about what we want
about what we want
than about what you want.
We
put a little money in the offering plate,
but keep much more in our pockets.
God,
let justice come over us like a rushing river of water sweeping us into new
ways of living. Help us live everyday by
the words we hear and sing and say in worship on Sunday.
(If
you have a time for silent confession following the congregation’s prayer, play
the video or just the sound track of the rushing water during that time today.)
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12 – 16 or Wisdom of
Solomon 6:17-20
 |
| Reid, Robert, 1862-1929. Wisdom Mural, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54178 [retrieved October 13, 2014].Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wisdom-Reid-Highsmith.jpeg. |
Introduce children to the
personified Wisdom before reading either of these psalms. Use the picture to talk about the fact that
Wisdom is often pictured as a wise woman with quiet strength and authority. Encourage worshipers to listen for other
adjectives that describe Wisdom as you read one of the texts.
Psalm 70
With so much richness in the
other texts for the day, I’d skip this psalm with the children – and probably
all worshipers.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
~ The Christians in
Thessalonica, who believed that Jesus’ return was eminent, were worried about
the fate of the Christians who died before Jesus returned. Largely because Paul so clearly settled that
question in this text, children today do not ask that particular question. But they do ask the question, what happens to
us when we die – more likely, “where is Grandpa now that he has
died?” This text can be used to assure
them that when we die we go immediately to be with God and Jesus and are safe
there.
~ This text also provides
an opportunity to speak with children as well as adults about “the rapture” as
it appears in lots of current literature.
This text is not so much a calendar of events at the end of time as it
is assurance that the dead are safe with God.
Much current literature, e.g. the Left Behind series, however uses this
text to build a time line. Be aware that there is a Left
Behind series of books for pre-teens that has been widely read
and discussed among older children. This
is another situation in which if their church does not speak up about what they
are reading and hearing from other children, children are left to draw whatever
conclusion they can. So speak up.
Matthew 25:1-13
~ Children need help with
a couple of the details in this parable before they hear it read.
Unlike
today when the bridesmaids escort the bride to her wedding, in Jesus’ day the bridesmaids escorted the groom to meet the
bride for the wedding. Instead of
carrying flowers, they carried oil lamps so that everyone could see how
handsome and well dressed (rich) the groom was and the groom could see his way
to his bride.
In a
day of battery powered flashlight, children need a brief lesson on how to keep an oil lamp burning. Show an clay lamp (like the one in the
picture) and point out where the oil and the wick went. Or, get a modern floating candle that works
just like the oil lamp and actually light it.
Place in a very visible place and invite worshipers to listen for ten
oil lamps in this parable.
~ If you are going to
build on the idea that we are called to keep our spiritual lamps burning so
that we are always ready to illuminate Christ the Bridegroom, take time to
explain oil lamps, specifically list ways we keep our spiritual lamps burning,
even sing a few light songs:
Give
Me Oil in My Lamp
This
Little Light of Mine
~ Frances Woodruff
preached a children’s sermon in which she talked about all the
stuff moms keep in their purses to meet the needs of their
families. She then urged worshipers to
fill their hearts with kindness, generosity, etc. so that we are ready to meet
the needs of others. It is Sermon #2 at On the Chancel Steps. It could be
part of the “real” sermon rather than a separate children’s sermon.
~ When Advent was 7 weeks instead of 4 weeks, this was the first week of
Advent. Reading the parable of the
bridesmaids on the first Sunday of Advent makes sense. We are beginning the waiting. If Advent is still 3 weeks away for you, get
out at least one purple parament or the box with the
Advent wreath in it.
Point out that Advent begins in 3 Sundays. Remind worshipers that Advent is the four
weeks before Christmas and is a time when we think about watching and waiting
for God. We tell stories about the
surprising ways God came to Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the whole world
when God came among us as a baby born in a barn. Then, fold up the parament or close the
box. Insist that it is not yet Advent
BUT…. We watch and wait for God every
day of the year, not just the four weeks before Christmas. The bridesmaids in the story needed to be
watching and waiting as they got ready for a wedding. We need to be watching and waiting as we go
to school, play on sports teams, ride in the car with our family, etc.
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