Dear Friends,
Recently, I started a position at a new church, and with that new role, I found myself in conversation with volunteers about their schedule of lessons and my work on recent changes to Godly Play materials (more on that below!).
As we chatted about the materials and the program’s evolution, one volunteer mentioned that there were lessons they just couldn’t teach. I was started. There are lessons I don’t love or don’t prefer, lessons that may not be pitched to teach to PreK/K children, but that they couldn’t teach at all? That didn’t seem quite right, so I asked, “Which ones?” And the thing that immediately came to the surface when I asked that question was The Ten Best Ways.
Now, I had just taught the Ten Best Ways a week or so before departing my previous role, and I was surprised to hear this. What was the problem exactly? The answer was actually fairly obvious: that there are almost always children with divorced parents in the circle and that the ‘don’t break your marriage’ piece made the lesson untenable. Sure, there are notes on how to frame that, or the option just to tell the three core elements (Love God, Love Neighbor, God Loves You), but the story felt harmful. It bumped people out of the circle. And that was something to grapple with.
Looking ahead to the Gospel for this Sunday, the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, I found myself thinking about this conversation. In the passage from Matthew this week, Jesus has returned to the Ten Commandments – and judges them as falling short, but not in the ways we might. Instead, Jesus seeks something bigger, messages that are, in their way, more extreme. The very first lines of this week’s reading, in fact, take me aback -
Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.
We have all had dishonorable feelings, feelings of anger or even a desire for vengeance. We speak without thinking, or with malice in our hearts. We can do our best to act with kindness and generosity, withholding judgment because who are we to judge others, but we are human, not divine. And, much like the people we shake our heads at or think ill of, we are just out here doing our best.
Of course, Jesus also has something to say about adultery in this passage (what, in Godly Play language, is framed as “don’t break your marriage” and often heard by children as meaning divorce):
It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
This message, taken at face value, simply doesn’t do well sharing the table with modern values. It isn’t a complicated metaphor or literary device we can quickly contextualize and reinterpret. It isn’t so ancient and irrelevant as to be nonsensical. It is, realistically speaking, the sort of message that still has material effects on the world we live in today. Roman Catholics must still seek annulments in order to remain within the church. Episcopalians seeking second marriage after death or divorce can only be married in the church (at least in my diocese) with approval from the Bishop. How do we share space with this information?
Perhaps the best answer is the least helpful: sometimes scripture simply fails us. And the Holy Spirit can pick us up right there.
Following The Spirit
In many ways, relative to the people living immediately after Jesus, those existing beside the Apostles, we’re terribly lucky. When we run into a passage like this, when scripture fails us, there is almost certainly somewhere to turn. We very rarely find our lives turned upside down by new interpretations. Sometimes we read something or hear a sermon that is revelatory, but very rarely does that translate to how we live our lives.
Last week, GrowChristians published a striking article, “No Child of God is Unclean,” by Rev. Sara Irwin, that turns to the moment when Peter is confronted by the magical floating sheet of animals that acts to overturn the purity laws around food. Told to kill and eat, Peter is appalled. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” But he is met with a vital declaration:
“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
This is not to set aside purity laws belonging to other traditions. That is never our place. Rather, as Irwin writes, we are called to confront the way we treat other people as unclean. So often, as someone with a history of significant mental health issues and, I think most strikingly for those who find themselves working with me, as someone who looks like the kind of woman more conservative traditions might warn you about (pink hair, tattoos, and face piercings, never mind the gay marriage bit), I find myself thinking about these cultural ideas about who is “clean” or who is right with God. I don’t present myself to the world the way the women who taught my Sunday School classes did, by any stretch of the imagination, but I am no less worthy to God for that.
In writing about these ideas of cleanliness, about the conflicting nature of the message Peter receives in that vision, Irwin draws a striking conclusion: “Peter, here, is choosing the guidance of the Holy Spirit over tradition.” The Spirit picks us up in the gaps. It’s the voice we can listen to, the movement of grace among us.
When the volunteers in my congregation told me that the Ten Best Ways story wasn’t serving them, what they were saying was that they were choosing grace. That leaving this out helped them show God’s love to the children. What a beautiful thing.
As we approach Lent, a season of repentance that often leads us toward some concerning theological moments, I want to point us emphatically toward that Grace. Or, as one of the first Christian music artists I came to love as a teen put it on a (more-or-less) recent album, Let Love Be The Loudest -
At The Foot Of The Cross
We still have all of Lent to prepare ourselves for the great and daunting stories of Holy Week, but you all know the drill by now – we need the lead time! So, a few things:
In keeping with this conversation about grace and about what kinds of messages we send, I want to point folks toward this conversation between Traci Smith and Laura Alary, on how we move beyond substitutionary atonement in talking to children. There’s a lot wrapped up in the idea of substitutionary atonement that isn’t actually nourishing for us, and that can contradict the idea that we are God’s beloved children. We all gain by learning to navigate this aspect of Lent & Easter more wisely.
Speaking of these coming seasons, this is also an important time to point toward some of the notes on liturgical color usage in the Godly Play Equity Audit toolkits. It’s been a privilege to get to participate in this process for about a year now and it continues. As we look towards Lent and Easter, we inevitably encounter a lot of light and dark language that is also morally weighted. For many of us, this will begin with telling The Mystery of Easter story, with its reversal from purple to white. In a season of repentance, one thing many of us need to repent of is the sin of racism, and this is one place where that work can begin.
We are still quite far from the foot of the cross, but a reminder for your planning processes: if you are working on a lesson or stations program that includes children, make sure resurrection is present. We don’t leave children at the foot of the cross. It is not theologically appropriate. We can bury the Alleluia, but Christ cannot remain in the tomb.
There is always so much more that can be said. But we don’t need to do or be it all. We can do small things with great love.
One Last Note!
It still needs work, but I’m excited to announce that my church consulting site, A Bird In Church, is live and open for business. It’s not very mobile device-friendly yet and there’s still bits in progress, but if you’ve ever wondered about programming support, resource development, disability-related trainings, or other topics you’ve read about here, you can now set up a consultation. I feel very blessed to be in a place in my professional life where I can hang out this shingle, so to speak, and hopefully to connect with more people in this work.
Peace in your journey this week and always,
Bird