Dear Friends,
Recently, I’ve been really into cross stitch. I don’t know why exactly – I’ve always been crafty and can passably knit and crochet, sew a bit, and I’m even attempting to learn a very old lace making practice called tatting. This past winter, though, something about cross stitch, which I haven’t done since I was a kid, got into my head and I started rummaging about at my favorite craft shops for AIDA and fun patterns, and acquired more thread than I could go through in a year. And as I’ve worked on these projects and gotten quicker and tidier, I’ve discovered something both obvious and yet not quite self-evident: the order in which you work a project matters.
With the benefit of practice, of video clips, and reading, I steadily discovered that in order for the process to work, the steps needed to take place in a particular order. That doesn’t necessarily mean the order on the page – when you’re working a large, elaborate project, you may jump around within an area to complete a particular color, or even one stitch at a time. No, it’s more precisely that you need to find a way to work that keeps all of your stitches going in the same direction, that if you’re going to stop working a color, that you leave the thread “parked” in the front of the design, rather than in the back. It’s the various meticulous elements that distinguish basic work from more skilled execution.
Of course, this issue of order applies to all kinds of things, and in this week’s Gospel reading, we encounter one of those moments in which order matters so much, yet isn’t quite at the time as it will become in retrospect. I’m speaking, of course, about Jesus’s baptism by his cousin John in the River Jordan.
“After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”
In this week reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus comes to the River Jordan where his cousin John has been baptizing people. This is the John who leapt in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary came to visit with her following the Annunciation, who likely grew up playing with Jesus, sharing meals, getting into the harmless trouble of children. Whether you have a lot of cousins or just a few, you probably know the sort of hijinks these two were capable of. Now, though, they are men, and they are both men of unusual presence and practices.
John, he was a wild man. When we tell the Faces of Easter story in Godly Play, we gesture to an unruly head of hair that stands in for John’s presence. He lived on locusts and honey in the desert. He made ready the path that Jesus would travel.
And Jesus, well, here in the early days of his work, Jesus comes to John with one of those requests that unsettles things. Yes, John has been baptizing others, but in other Gospels, when Jesus asks John to baptize him, it gives John pause. After all, as John tells others,
After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.
To phrase it another way, after John would come someone who turns things on their heads. After John’s baptism with water would come someone who could baptize with the Spirit because the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and the Son is begotten of the Father. The one who ranks ahead of John is a timeless one and everything about John’s strange Gospel helps to remind us of this. It’s not just the Parables that confuse everything we know about God and the Kingdom of Heaven and how we are supposed to live, but it is everything about Jesus’s very existence.
Calendars, Curricula, & The Question of Order
One of the tidiest parts of writing this newsletter each week is turning to the lectionary. Among Sunday School leaders, even among specifically Godly Play storytellers, the particulars of what we might be doing each week vary. There are templates and suggestions, but few rules, and our programs all respond to different needs, different local calendars, and other variables.
Unlike what takes place in any given Sunday School program, the Revised Common Lectionary unites most mainline Protestants, plus Roman Catholics. It’s something of a shared language and, as many of my priest colleagues wisely note, it forces us to reckon with challenging texts because we can’t just skip to a different reading on a whim. It pushes us to be present to the fullness of scripture, and that is a wonderful thing. It’s also something our programs could benefit from in many ways, and this week’s reading from John highlighted this challenge for me, courtesy of a story sometimes scheduled during Lent: The Greatest Parable.
Even if you are very well versed in Godly Play, it is possible that you have never seen The Greatest Parable told, never mind told it yourself. This is despite the fact that it’s been around as long as Knowing Jesus in a New Way, which I think a huge portion of storytellers are familiar with and, especially for programs that reach into middle childhood, is often the story scheduled for the weeks following Easter. No, the Greatest Parable stands apart in part because it’s long and complicated in ways that can push storytellers a little harder than average. If you listen to the beginning of the story above, you’ll notice it’s a lot like the opening of John. It’s bafflingly riddle-like, entangled in linguistic play and reversal.
Here’s the other particular thing about The Greatest Parable: If you’re still writing a program calendar for the Spring (since I just moved to a new congregation, I certainly am!), you might consider whether you want to tell this story during Lent. Or, if you’re at home, whether you want to watch & listen to it during Lent (all 4 parts - the “without words” presentation and the three parts with words - are on the Godly Play Foundation’s YouTube page). As much as the Circle of the Church Year and its rhythms and the unspoken lessons of the Godly Play classroom help us understand what we do, there’s a lot of room for variation and too many of us seem to avoid this beautiful story, like priests shying away from a challenging reading while writing a sermon.
One more near-term calendar note: this coming Monday is MLK Day and telling his story is important work for the church. You can hear my pal Nikki, another new Godly Play trainer, tell Godly Play’s story about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on YouTube (or in Spanish here care of trainer Br. Jorge Sierra of Godly Play Spain). Alternatively, my friend and colleague (and neighbor!) has another Godly Play-style telling of MLK’s like and work on her site A Good & Joyful Thing.
Prepare “Yourshelf”
2023 is going to be a *great* year for new books! Here are a few I’m already excited about:
Sparrow’s Prayer by Roger Hutchinson (out Feb. 14): Roger Hutchinson is responsible for a number of absolutely charming children’s books, including The Very Best Day: The Way of Love for Children, and I am so excited about Sparrow’s Prayer. Sparrow is a little bird with some big feelings, but who doesn’t always have the right words to talk to God about them. With help from some wise friends, Sparrow offers us wisdom on praying, with or without words but with our whole beings, because we can all be present to and with God in different ways.
I Am Not Afraid: Psalm 23 for Bedtime by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso (out Feb. 21): I’ve been sorting books in various children’s areas and storage spaces at my new job, and every time I encounter a Sandy Eisenberg Sasso book, I’m delighted. That’s because, in addition to being a groundbreaking rabbi (she was the first woman ordained a rabbi within the Reconstructionist Judaism tradition), Sasso has been lending her talents to the children’s book world since the early 1990s. You may even have a few of her books without realizing it. All of that’s to say that even though I don’t get terribly excited about rehashing Psalm 23, I’m excited about anything Sasso brings to the table.
For the Beauty of the Earth illustrated by Lucy Fleming (out April 11 in paperback): Okay, this one isn’t brand new, but it is newly out in paperback this spring. It’s always great to have beautiful, kid-friendly representations of hymns, and particularly such a grounded, visually appealing hymn as this one. Maybe you even want to get it as a gift for the choir director in your life or use it to help younger children who may not be able to read a hymnal yet connect with our shared musical traditions.
There is an order to all things, even when it isn’t evident, and there are book orders (and pre-orders), and routines in so many different areas of our lives. Right now as I write, my cats are yelling at me because I am late to their bedtime routine, and so off I go to set things right.
Peace as we go -
Bird