As We Are Commanded
What We See When We Let The Hard Stories Lead
Dear Friends,
There’s something about writing to you about these readings from Lent that is so grounding: unlike other parts of the lectionary, there aren’t tracks or options – just these deeply familiar texts that most of us know so deep in our cores. After all, the average Sunday School program spends a disproportionate amount of time on the 10 Commandments, and even if we don’t make much of it, it’s hard to miss the appeal of Jesus flipping tables in the temple, especially to a teenager (though my friends preferred holding a Bible up and shouting “The Power of Christ compels you!” as though we were casting out demons). But what can me make of these stories right now?
Well, that’s when it gets tricky.
It’s easy to talk to kids about the Ten Commandments if we don’t try to make them make sense for our lives today.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them
Idols? Since most of us aren’t hanging out with golden Trump statues at CPAC (I don’t need to rehearse the past week’s discussion of how that was straight out of the golden ass playbook), the notion can seem a bit remote. But when we reframe this language of idols to be about the things we prioritize above God, to which we ascribe inappropriate power, then there’s something in that commandment, in particular, that we all can learn from.
As adults, I think many of us know what we make idols of: status and money stand out if only because they have material consequences for our lives, even as we can wish they didn’t. But how do we figure out what our children make idols of?
Surely those of you with children have a better idea about this than someone like me – I work with kids and adore them, but don’t have any myself. Now, with the pandemic, I don’t even get to be with them in person. In a lot of ways, though, I think children make idols out of the same things they see the adults around them choose. Fame, or the famous, stands out. Money is certainly a factor. Popularity – often an extension of fame and money at a more personal level – is a player. But maybe it’s also easier to see our acts of idolatry, even among children, when intersect with other stories and commandments.
For example, the other day, these words came across my Facebook, linking the Ten Commandments and this week’s Gospel:
When Jesus flips the table of the money changers in the temple, he is rejecting the ways we prioritize money and commerce above God, how we defile the holy, even as we use it for our own purposes. To use the temple in this way is truly to use God’s name in vain, to use the holy to authorize the worldly. It’s dangerous territory.
Especially with children, there tends to be a lot of emphasis in Formation circles about offering up the positive aspects of our faith, the narrative of God’s love, rather than God’s demands on us. And that part is necessary and important and should lead the conversation. But the fact is, it isn’t supposed to be easy to be a Christian. Or at least, practically speaking, the world doesn’t make it easy. So, just like we have to sometimes tell scary stories to understand who we are – God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of his faithfulness or, as we approach it in a few weeks, Jesus’s trial and death – we can’t pretend that we aren’t asked to make hard choices. Lent is just one of those times in the church year meant to drive that home, but it should be part of our daily lives.
Some months ago at a conference, the theologian Amy-Jill Levine said of the parables that so many of these stories exist to indict us. They point us to the things we might know but don’t want to acknowledge. So, this week I ask you, what about the Commandments are you avoiding? Which ones do you and your children find hardest? What is the difference between how we read the Commandments and what we’re really being told? Will we reject the tables that Jesus would have flipped or are we standing there, looking for our seat?
My usual messy living room dispatch from the Faces of Easter is coming - keep an eye on the Wiggles & Wonder Facebook page or Twitter, but this week I needed to slow down. And, if you’re looking for one now, you can’t go wrong with the official Godly Play Foundation video, which is truly beautiful.
If you’re feeling tired or worn down – and who isn’t? – I hope you can take that space when you need it, even in the small things.
In Peace, Beloveds,
Bird