How Does the Body of Christ Learn?

Sermon preached for First Presbyterian Church of New Haven on August 5, 2018

Texts
Romans 12:1-8 (read by liturgist, prior to sermon)
John 14:1-12 (read by preacher, with contextual introduction)

Our reading from the Gospel of John begins just after the friends have shared the meal that has become our Communion liturgy. Jesus is still comforting his disciples and preparing them for his departure. It’s the passage including the well-known words: “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Before we read the rest of it together, there are two things I’m obliged to mention.[i]

Number 1: I would like to hold space for a moment for all those whose previous encounters with this text were not always life-giving. For some of us, those encounters took place in settings where the intent was to close Christians off from the rest of the world, or to invoke fear or conformity without any real space to breathe, without the encouragement to perceive a God that was not spoken at us. Breathe in a deep breath of new air… and let it out again. I am not suggesting that our reading today will heal every hurt, but I want to offer the assurance that today’s word is not one of condemnation. You and your whole self are welcome here today, and especially to the Communion table. Take the time to notice what you are feeling in your body as we read the text together, and do not let your heart be troubled if any of it is difficult to name.

Number 2: While I have a map of something I’d like us to explore, let’s not assume that a wandering mind is a bad thing. Preachers and teachers like me believe that sometimes a listener hears something worth hearing that isn’t said aloud. There are a lot of questions to ask of this text—and a lot of good things to wonder that have little to do with it. If at some point later on you’d like to talk more with me or Pastor J.C. or the church community about anything that bubbles up, anything in your mind or heart, we are here as spiritual companions to do that.

But while I was preparing this message, I received a prophetic word from my Dove chocolate wrapper. It said, “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”[ii]




So this morning, at least out loud, we will focus.

I’d like to imagine what it may have felt like to Jesus to be reassuring these people who knew him in what was about to be their darkest hours without him—and what the story of this night means to a community now striving to teach and grow in Christian faith. How does the Body of Christ learn?

Let us hear from the 14th chapter of John, picking up shortly after the meal, and just a few chapters before Jesus’ death. Jesus is speaking:

14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” 

⁸Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. ¹² Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

The Word of God for the people of God.

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Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, you infuse this space. You fill our lungs, whisper at our ears, and breathe life into our curiosities. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God. Let this preaching moment be one not only for our minds, but for our bodies and spirits; and not only for ourselves, but for the ongoing creation of our communities of faith, that we might live fully into your promises and purposes. Through our faith in Jesus Christ and Christ’s faith in us, we pray. Amen.

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“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he says, and for some reason when I read it this time I hear a tinge of frustration in his voice as he searches for the Right Words, because how on earth is he going to capture the enormity of what he wants to tell them in the Right Words? He says, “Believe in God. Believe also in me.”

This word “believe” sometimes carries with it a bit of baggage. Now that so many teachers over time have understood it in a specific way, it may be even more difficult to hear it differently.

Years and years and years of hearing this text as though it were a battle cry or a command or an indictment of non-believers.

It was a comfort.[iii]

Some translations of this text go like this, “You believe in God. Believe also in me.” Or, in my best Frustrated Jesus voice, “Well, you believe in God, right? Yes? Okay! Build on that. Go from there.”

Frustrated, you see, not out of anger or impatience with his disciples but because time is short. A teacher who knows that the dismissal bell is about to chime. A man on death row having his last visit with his friends. He cares about the people listening to him and what they take with them from their time together.

(How does the Body of Christ learn?)

So Jesus leans on what he knows of his friends and the knowledge they already have. He’s not talking to people who haven’t met him yet. And he isn’t weighing for them the likelihood of whether or not God exists. The Gospel writer of John more than any other chose words to emphasize Jesus’ divine being, but is that all that Jesus himself is saying?

What does it mean to believe in someone you know?

[to J.C.] I believe in you, J.C. I believe you are the Pastor and Teaching Elder God has called to us, for such a time as this, to lead us in our hearing of the Word and our communing at the Table, in offering Sanctuary to our immigrant neighbors, in learning all the new ways we will be Christ’s hands and feet and ears in this world. I believe in you.

[to the congregation now] At any point of that did it sound like I was telling J.C. that I think she exists?

See, we do understand on a deep, resonant level this use of the word “believe,” but whenever we start using it for Jesus or God it can take on this whole other connotation. A purity test of opinion or a creed to affirm as though it’s little more to us than a passcode into heaven. And none of this is necessarily what Jesus is saying.

He’s saying to those with him, those who already know him, those for whom he has been an access point, that they can believe in him and who he is to them.

To Believe is to trust; to Believe is to sense — not necessarily that something is verifiable fact (maybe because it is still in progress) — but that it is the ongoing fulfillment of a promise, or something hoped-for, or something worth witnessing.

Truth itself, as in the line where Jesus says “I am the truth,” is not a static noun, the Fact we crave in the so-called age of ‘Fake News.’ Instead, it’s that ongoing process, the fulfilling of the promise. One author[iv] writes that it’s as though Jesus is saying, “I am the unforgetting.”

The Unforgetting; the very act of not-forgetting. The act of remembrance. Yes, our remembrance of God, and also God’s remembrance of us and promises made to us. That is the truth we trust in. That is the truth we teach.

(How does the Body of Christ learn?)

Every time we gather for worship or study with faith or care for our neighbors, we participate in the unforgetting. When we join together around the Communion table today we will share Jesus’ message, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Be part of the unforgetting.

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Right up there with the words “believe” and “truth,” do you know what my favorite phrase of this Gospel text is? It’s when Jesus tells the disciples, “but if you do not.” The full line is: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.”

By saying this, Jesus creates space for his disciples to breathe. To be unsure. To learn by some other means than the one he’s just presented. “If, after that explanation, it doesn’t make sense, then try this activity instead.” And then, like any good teacher, he provides the alternative that’s accessible in a different way. Witnessing the works themselves. And not only witnessing them but doing them.

He says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these…”

People mixed up with Jesus are going to find themselves drawn to do some peculiar things, like sharing food with strangers. Proclaiming the sacredness of people the world degrades. Housing the guests that others build walls to keep away.  Singing in a crowd on a Sunday morning.

His death will shake them. His absence will test their faith. His resurrection and ascension will be an unforgetting that stays with them long after he’s gone.

And when he’s gone, they altogether will be the physical form of his Body on earth. Every time we gather as members of the Body of Christ, we are literally and figuratively “re-membering.” Resurrecting the Body in a living Church.

And the disciples will not know everything they need to know or do in an instant. They will lean, as even Jesus has, on discernment and prayer and the wisdom of the generations.

Then, to do the things that Jesus believes in them to do, they will need to trust their muscle memory. And to be able to trust their muscle memory, they will need to hone it. They will need to practice. Sometimes, the practice itself will be a comfort. During our confirmation class this past year, I was moved to hear how many of the youth talked about our traditions as a comfort to them—particularly the Doxology. The Sunday school children have said the same about lighting candles and the quiet of prayer.

And what does J.C. tell us in worship every week about passing the peace?

‘We practice this sign of peace here not so that we can keep it to ourselves, but so that we can take it with us out into the world.’

Practice. We don’t do this only for ourselves. We learn here how to greet our neighbors and reconcile with anyone estranged to us. And then we bring what we have learned, how we have been renewed and transformed, to those we meet. For non-believers, the Good News of this story is that they are not to be condemned for disbelief or belonging to another Body; they are to be invited as neighbors and friends of the resurrected Christ who lives on in a peace-filled people. Whether or not they ever sense themselves to be a part of this Christian Body, they will have occasions to know us. And if we study and practice well, we will be renewed and transformed into something worth trusting.

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In June, our Session voted for us to become a Sanctuary church, meaning we are prepared to open our doors to an immigrant or refugee and bear public witness if ever ICE tries to deport them before the person has the opportunity for legal defense. At three separate events before that decision, 70 people completed Sanctuary training here in this very room.

What did that training look like? We learned why the work mattered and what difference it could make to anyone we host. We voiced our concerns, reflecting on what troubled our hearts. We searched our faith tradition and our scriptures for guidance. Then we discerned together what kinds of practical help might be needed – a list of tasks that would be physically impossible for only one person to fulfill. We didn’t concern ourselves yet with who might have the gifts to do what. At that point it still wasn’t about each of us volunteering or being nominated to do a job. It was about saying, “What would it look like if ICE were to come to the door, looking for our guest? When one of us is responsible for hosting, what will they need to know? What should they do? When one of us is responsible for leading our crowd of witnesses in prayer and song to draw public attention to this injustice, what will they need to know? What should they do?” It would all be needed, if and when the time should come. And if we each did our best to prepare ourselves to do any role that might be needed, each of us would be ready to contribute anything. Together, we would be able to do everything.

And then we practiced it. We volunteered to “try on” a role and work together as one unit.

On the night that I was trained, Art had a chance to feel just how uncomfortable it might be to listen to an ICE agent on the other side of the door and practiced remaining steady under pressure.

Tim drew from his love of worship to lead the crowd of witnesses in singing, quickly recalling a song everyone could sing from memory.

One of the training instructors played a news reporter who was actually doing very little to help amplify our message and a whole lot more to get in the way of our witness. Sue, in a moment of outstanding inspiration, managed to distract her with food.

And we, a crowd with courage in our purpose and the confidence of prior instruction, answered J.C.’s call-and-response loud and clear.

All of this, you could say, was pretend. Imaginative play, not unlike the scripts that our children bring to life at church a few times a year. Our ideal situation, of course, is one where we never need to confront ICE agents in that context at all, and it’s possible that we will never need to.

But we are people of both prayer and preparation.

(How does the Body of Christ learn?)

It’s two chapters later, in John’s chapter 16, by the way, that Jesus and the disciples have an exchange that, to a teacher’s ear, sounds kind of like this: “Oh!!! We get it!” I mean, from some of the larger context it seems the disciples may only kind of get it, but still! They share a moment!

Back in chapter 14, the disciples are telling Jesus they don’t even know yet what he says they know. And unless they’re just stalling their teacher, they mean it. They need a new perspective. But by chapter 16, the disciples say to Jesus, “Now you are speaking plainly!”

And the Good News is this: Jesus teaches the Body in any way that will get us to those moments of assurance and understanding, no matter how much more there is for us to understand. Sometimes—sometimes he uses words.

(How does the Body of Christ learn?)

(1) By recognizing that troubled hearts can cloud our minds; by comforting our hearts enough that we are in a position to listen. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

(2) By building upon knowledge or resources we already have, and knowing that Jesus will always meet us first wherever we are. You believe in God, believe also in me.

(3) By trusting that Jesus himself is the ongoing fulfillment of his promises to his disciples, promises for abundant life and a directed path. I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

(4) By exploring alternate avenues of understanding, recognizing that a God who prepares a place for us would not prepare it somewhere inaccessible to us. But if you do not.

(5) By participating in the Unforgetting, in the remembrance, in the witness. Believe me because of the works themselves.

(6) And by receiving the Holy Spirit and entrusting her with opportunities to practice within us, honing the muscle memory of our embodied faith. The one who believes in me will do the works that I do, and greater works than these.

Creating a Christian community of faith like ours means we will recognize that not everyone will learn as we do, trust as we do, even believe as we do.

It means being patient and reflective, honoring one another’s wounds and giving those parts of the Body of Christ the care they need to heal before they can be asked to stretch, carry, lift, perceive, speak, sustain. Healing work is learning, too.

And creating a community of faith means humbly acknowledging that, no matter how much we may know alone, we must practice together. We promise to one another that we will show up – to share in our practicing whatever way we are able, so that the Body of Christ is wholly prepared to move as one.

And all the people of God said, “Amen.”

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[i] I learned the importance of such hospitality and embodied care from Heather Elkins, my professor for courses on the Church at Worship and Narrative Preaching; from Angella Son, my professor for Pastoral Care and a week-long intensive on the Spirituality of Joy; and from Lynne Westfield, my professor for Educational Ministries and a week-long intensive on the Holy Spirit, all at Drew Theological School (2010-2014).

[ii] Literally a Dove chocolate wrapper. First Presbyterian Church of New Haven (2018).

[iii] I draw mostly from ideas presented to me by Wesley Ariarajah in Interfaith Dialogue and Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre in New Testament at Drew Theological School (2010-2014) and Cameron Afzal in a course on the Gospel of John at Sarah Lawrence College (2009-2010), alongside other biblical and theological influences and meditation.

[iv] Author Stant Litore

Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning Is the Word

A dozen youth had the task of leading congregational worship from start to finish on Trinity Sunday, 2017. Themes of the day (aside from the obvious) were mystery, mish-mash, dialogue, creation, and creativity. One child served as a visual pastorist, i.e. pastor-artist, painting on a 20"x36" canvas we'd hung on the wall, and another as a vocal pastorist, singing a solo version of Holy, Holy, Holy. Everyone else was eager to read, pray, and speak. The kids delighted in their different ways of contributing.

Our opening and closing hymns were by Ruth Duck: Sacred the Body and Colorful Creator, while our hymn following the sermon was Thomas Troeger's Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud.

We also involved the congregation in a bit of music that tested our abilities of timing and communication: For a short Song of Praise, we sang the first verse of This Is the Day as a call-and-response, and for a song to prepare us to hear the scriptures, we sang Listen to the Word That God Has Spoken as a round - I think it's one of my new favorites. The lyrics were especially poignant for the day:

Listen to the Word that God has spoken;

Listen to the One who is close at hand;

Listen to the voice that began creation;

Listen even if you don't understand.

And the mish-mash of everyone's voices overlapping, singing the same parts at different times, had exactly the order-within-cacophony effect I was going for!

We had five readers share the whole of Genesis 1, which was in our lectionary for the morning - two alternating narrators, and three alternating voices of God. We also read the Psalm and Gospel, but focused most of the day on the Hebrew text.

Later, two youth shared a short sermon I prepared with them in mind. It's based largely on letters and conversations we shared together, and what we learned during our January Gender Series about always honoring someone's self-identification. The full text is below, and you can also hear them deliver the message here (5 min).

In the Beginning Is the Word

A: Tohu va bohu!

B: It sounds like a spell from Harry Potter –

A: -- or a sneeze --

B: -- but it’s actually a phrase used in the first Creation story in Genesis, and nowhere else in the Bible. Since it’s only used once, it’s hard to say exactly what this ancient Hebrew phrase means.

A: In this morning’s passage, it’s translated to “formless void,” as in, “…when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void.” And in some modern languages like German and Hungarian, it means “confusion or commotion.”

B: But judging by the sound of it, it’s a nonsense word. It just sounds funny. So another way of saying tohu va bohu in English is “mish-mash.” Imagine how much less formal Genesis would sound if it began with, “In the beginning… y’know, back when the world was just a mish-mash…”

A: We can easily imagine people gathering around a fire under a deep night sky, telling each other how they believed the world came to be.

B: Their words likely gave ancient communities a sense of shared history and peace about things that were unknown and mysterious to them.

A: Speaking of divine mysterious things: Today is Trinity Sunday, a day when we remember a core mystery of our faith.

B: If our church year were a novel, days like Easter and Pentecost would be plot points. They’re events when we celebrate certain things the Triune God does.

A: Trinity Sunday is more like a chance for a character study on who God is – who God has been revealed to be, all throughout the Story we’ve been telling and re-telling.

B: The Companion to the Book of Worship tells us that Trinity Sunday “celebrates the unfathomable mystery of God’s being as Holy Trinity. It is a day of adoration and praise of the one, eternal, incomprehensible God.”

A: It’s a day to remember that even what we cannot fathom is worth celebrating, and even what we cannot understand is worth receiving.

B: There are biblical passages like this morning’s Gospel text which directly name the three persons of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or similar names. But, for more reasons than we could discuss in a year, let alone in a morning, Genesis chapter 1 is a surprisingly good narrative to help us reflect on this mystery of faith.

A: The simplest reason being – because Creation doesn’t end with tohu va bohu.

B: And neither does God.

A: We can acknowledge that the fullness of God confuses us and is beyond our human understanding, while still recognizing the numerous ways that the Divine is revealed to us – through words or in spite of them.

B: It is both our responsibility and our pleasure to take great care to use language that is based on God’s self-revelation to us and to the keepers of Scripture, and not something we or our ancestors have forced without holy collaboration. The challenge is knowing the difference.

And as any cat owner can tell you – there’s a big difference between being put into a box and choosing to get in one yourself.

A: Though if the Trinity is as much God’s self-identity as we say it is, it figures that God would climb into a box as un-boxlike as the Trinity.

B: We’re about to sing a hymn written by Thomas Troeger, a graduate of Yale University ordained in both the Presbyterian Church USA and the Episcopal Church.

A: The hymn is called “Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud” and explores an impressive collection of 40 names or images for God, every one of them in some way biblically based. You may also notice that the structure of the verses reminds you of the Trinity. Each group of images focuses on the various roles associated with one of the three.

B: It’s our hope that this hymn will express just how much possibility exists in co-creating with God in the midst of what may feel to us like mish-mash.

A: And we also hope that the refrain does justice to the Holy One who – forgive us for saying this so un-biblically – has out-catted the cats.

B: It seems that whenever we humans name something, we are either taming the unknown, or claiming it as newly familiar.

A: One suggests an act of control, the other an act of intimacy. But both intimacy and control are capable of misunderstanding the heart of whatever we name.

B: May this hymn, and all of today’s worship, help us to center ourselves in religious language that is creative and never coercive, intimate and never assuming, and rejoices in the ability to know something of the unknown.

Both: Amen.

Teaching Kids about the False Gender Binary

Today, Kim Frizzle wore a pin that reads "Challenge False Binaries" and began class with an unmarked picture of an American child who lived about 100 years ago.
"Do you know who this is, or when this picture is from?"

"No."

"That's okay. What CAN you observe about it?"

"She has a white dress/a hat with a feather/an interesting haircut... I'd guess she's about 3 or 4 years old... It must be an old picture, not just because it's in black and white but because she's not smiling and usually today photographers get kids to smile for pictures..."

"Great! Yes, this picture is probably from 1884, so the person was about 2 years old. This was one of our country's former presidents: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. See? Here he is all grown up."

"...waaaaaat."

"Do you have a question?"

"Why was he in a dress?!"

So we learned the history of a few cultural norms, including the tradition of dressing boys and girls in white dresses until about age 6 basically just because white was bleachable/thought to be a "kid" color, and how pink and blue emerged (and eventually swapped) as color "codes" around the WWII era.

We looked at the pictures from the Lumberjanes series and noticed how different all the girls look - their body types and hairstyles and fashion choices, quite different from what we're used to seeing in, say, Disney movies.

We talked about frustrations we feel when we're shopping for new clothes and it feels like a lot of choices have already been decided for us.

We learned what "inclusive language" means (they knew the phrase from around the church, but not what it meant). We recalled the Doxology we sing and how in this church instead of "Father and Son" we say "Creator and Christ." (Later on, the kids silenced our activity room just to be able to listen for these words during the service.)

We studied several feminine images for God used throughout the Bible, and talked about the kids' perception (one they brought up) that girls are encouraged to look up to men and sometimes to emulate traits considered masculine, and boys are comparably less encouraged or actively discouraged from looking up to women and emulating traits considered feminine.

We read an article from a mother talking about her 5-year-old son, who agrees vehemently he's a boy and also loves painting his nails and wearing dresses. We learned from this mom that some of the best ways to love people are to listen to them, to use the pronouns and names they ask us to use for them, and not to assign them a label based only on our perceptions of them. (I revised an excerpt from the full text at this link; I removed some major portions and some otherwise significant terms for both time and clarity suited for where they're at right now.)

We learned that sometimes it's good for kids to learn cultural lessons from adults about "how things work" and "why things are," but they should also trust their inner sense of who they are.

And then we spent the rest of the time making fashionable people cutouts to adorn the bulletin board beside the Pride flag. The signs we'll post with them read: "God is gender fluid" with a definition below it, and: "WE ARE ALL MADE IN GOD'S IMAGE."

This is one of the ways I followed up with the kids who asked me about a month ago, 'Why can't boys wear dresses?' Question-led lessons are my favorite lessons.

If you are also an educator/caregiver and any part of this lesson plan would be helpful to you, you are welcome and encouraged to use it.

Children's Ministry Moment for MLK

Source

As the kids lined up at the Communion table, I introduced our Children's Ministry Moment to the congregation:

"I believe how we tell history, especially to children, is important. This weekend, as we celebrate our nation's hero, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it may be tempting to condense the breadth of his life and work to the famous words, "I have a dream." But when we reduce this great man to a dreamer, we neglect to remember all he did and said for the here and now.  We forget what he challenged not just the nation but the Church to be and do.  Today we'll share part of his Letter from Birmingham Jail -- words that are difficult to hear, but that I hope we will hear with an open mind and a ready spirit."

Then the children presented this speech I adapted from The Year They Walked by Beatrice Siegel and Letter from Birmingham Jail by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I've shortened just a few sentences from MLK's excerpts; mainly the punctuation has been simplified for the children's ease of reading (fewer quotation marks and no ellipses). In our preparations the previous week, we talked about any vocabulary that was unfamiliar to them and they tackled it all with grace and persistence.

R: As a young minister, Reverend King was patient and cared for the needs of his church. His deep passion for social issues had not yet been tapped, but he knew some things for certain.

A: He wanted freedom and justice for all African-Americans.

M: He also knew that violence was not an answer to their problems.  Violence was not the way of God.

L: But Reverend King’s nonviolence was not passive.  He was patient, but also persistent.  He did not believe in waiting for justice and equality to come in their own time.

I: Some ministers and rabbis said they believed in justice and equality, too, but that Reverend King was going about it the wrong way.  They wanted to wait until a more “convenient” time.  Reverend King wrote a letter to them from jail.

M: You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergy would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist.  But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist.

L: Was not Jesus an extremist in love? “Love your enemies.  Bless them that curse you.  Pray for them that despitefully use you.”

A: Was not Amos an extremist for justice? “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I: So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be.  Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love?  Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

R: There was a time when the church was very powerful.  Early Christians suffered and sacrificed for what they believed.  The power structure convicted them for being “disturbers of the peace.”  But they went on with the conviction that they had to obey God.  They were small in number but big in commitment.

L: Things are different now.  The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound.  It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.

M: Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are.

I: If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for [this] century.  I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.

A: I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour.

Children in Worship

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Children remaining in the sanctuary. I have long respected, even preferred, that way of involving children in worship.

Once upon the 1980s, I was one of those church babies passed around between churchgoers. I'm told infant-me spent many a hymn entertained by shiny keys.

As I grew in everything but attention span, I brought crayons and dolls and figurines and God knows what else to play with in the pews. I knelt there on the floor and poked my head up to sing and, only with time and curiosity did I learn, prayer by prayer, sermon by sermon, what else people "do" at church.

For children's sermons, all the kids were called up to the front where we learned that the answer was almost always "Jesus" except when it definitely wasn't. As I recall, we didn't leave the sanctuary. We returned to our families in the pews, to dolls and figurines, to crayons and markers that were not modern-magical and could have made marks on non-paper surfaces like nineteenth century wood.

How did you learn church? That's how I learned church.

I marveled at the operatic voice of the woman who sat in the pew in front of us. I grew to have a favorite hymn to request when requests were requested (even though the deciding powers ruled that Go Tell It on the Mountain was not a hymn meant for summer, which is true but dumb).

I learned to say prayers I didn't write and to say prayers no one else would ever know but God. I came to enjoy the fellowship of the people around me without the company of miniature figurines and homemade paper dolls.

Having said all that, this is not the style I've adopted in leadership. I've found something that works for me and the community I've been serving as a lay staff member as of August.

My approach is what First Pres has done before my time here, adapted slightly to suit my current understanding of children's ministry. We have what we (they) call Children in Worship -- yep, a designated gathering of a child horde. So here's how it goes.

No children's sermon in the sanctuary. Just a mid-service invitation (read: exuberant parade) for kids to come together in the next room, where we can still hear the murmur of laughter and music but also each other's quietest voices, a place where we have direct access to the outdoors if we want fresh air and sunlight as well as a wide-open warmth inside if that's all we need.

One of the co-pastors (a husband and wife team who alternate their preaching and other responsibilities) joins us to get to know the kids better and share the gospel. Sometimes we hear the same illustrations that the adults are hearing at that very moment, just in a different way, like that one Sunday that multigenerational families went home and discovered they'd all heard a biblical application of Finding Nemo.

Here in our own little un-pewed space, the adult worshippers are not spectating, so the kids have just as much time as the adults' sermon experience to ask as many questions as their hearts desire (without a roomful of grownups' unabashed giggling, because hey, some kids do fully intend to be funny, but some of them just want to know, you know?). They voice their own prayers, sharing joys and concerns that range from announcements to profound expressions of sorrow and excitement. We listen to as many as we can.

We pray with our mouths and our bodies. We invite bowed heads and clasped hands and raised heads and hands open to receiving and meditative poses and peeking eyes and closed eyes and lying on our backs with our eyes focused on origami birds. We say the Lord's Prayer by rote, letting the rhythm of the words soak into our bones, but even this same prayer looks different in each body's language.

And we stretch our bodies often to remind us that it's good and right to move around, that there is a time to "be still and know" and there's a time for dancing and wiggling, and they're both sacred.

On Communion Sundays, the kids teach each other about Communion (!) -- what it means, what it looks like, and how we'll celebrate it when we return to the sanctuary.

Then we help the kids to develop something to share with the congregation during a later worship service, encouraging them to be inter-generational teachers. The children experience the sanctuary as a place where they not only sing and listen but also lead on a regular basis.

I have, at this stage in my ministry, no use for in-sanctuary children's sermons where the adult speaks to the children and the rest of the adults spectate or participate peripherally. If adult parishioners "get more out of" the in-sanctuary children's sermons (as some universal parishioners say, fairly enough), maybe the adult sermons aren't doing quite what they're supposed to do.

If the messages aren't just for the children, why are the children so often the only ones called up front and quizzed (yes, okay, even in a friendly sort of way)? Why not let everyone stay where they are and let the leader say something so interesting and clear that it makes little heads pop up from the pews or wander forward on their own to get a better look? And if the messages are just for the children, why isn't there nearly enough time to let them ask questions and share more insights and responses than those that are prompted directly?

I've known some excellent pastors who speak beautifully with the children, who manage their limited resource of time with both wisdom and grace. But I've also seen a lot of shy kids who'd rather fall through a hole in the floor than be put on the spot in front of strangers and friends, a lot of good questions shut down too soon, a lot of potentially serious answers drawing ripples of laughter from mentors and role models, a lot of lost opportunities for meaningful conversations that were right there within reach.

No, I like this sacred space, away from grown spectators. I like this sacred time when a worship agenda doesn't get priority over curiosity and necessary time for processing and application. I like worshipping God in the spontaneous, childlike movements of the Holy Spirit.

And, when they feel good and ready, after they've had some time to ponder and practice, I like to hear the children speaking in the sanctuary, teaching their elders like the little boy Jesus in the temple.

If they are truly respected as people, not trained like circus animals or even just constantly called on for answers like grade school students, I think many children will grow -- in knowledge, in confidence, and in faith -- more from teaching others and being heard and known than they ever will from being talked at.

Even if we're good at it.