That The Next Generation Might Know

Psalm 78: 1-7 Marianne Niesen November 13, 2011

A Sunday School teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to honor thy father and thy mother, she asked "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?"
Without missing a beat one little boy (the oldest of a family) answered, "Thou shall not kill."[1]

Consider these Bible stories as heard and recounted by children:

In the first book of the Bible, Guinness, God got tired of creating the world, so he took the Sabbath off.
Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.
Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark.
Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire by night.
Samson slated the Philistines with the axe of the apostles.
Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients.
The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert. Afterward, Moses went on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments.
The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him.
David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar.
Solomon had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

Or there is this one…

Nine-year-old Joey, was asked by his mother what he had learned in Sunday School. "Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When he got to the Red Sea, he had his army build a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely. Then, he radioed headquarters for reinforcements. They sent bombers to blow up the bridge and all the Israelites were saved." "Now, Joey, is that really what your teacher taught you?" his mother asked.
"Well, no, Mom. But, if I told it the way the teacher did, you'd never believe it!" [2]

I would guess our Sunday School teachers – and many of you – have memories of things children have said or questions they have asked that both delighted you and gave you pause. There is nothing quite like hearing age-old stories through the ears and heart of a child. There is often nothing more insightful than the wisdom of childhood interpretation. Sometimes, they see things we don’t see or get the point – whatever it is – better than we do.

Most of us would agree that education is important and that religious education is just as important as ‘reading, writing and arithmetic.’ It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who said, "To train a man in mind and not in morals is to train a menace to society." The people of Israel understood that. Religious instruction was not considered simply a measure of faithful piety; it was regarded as insurance against national disaster. It was a guarantee that the people would never forget God's standards for right living, and that their ancient faith would never die. Listen to the first seven verses of Psalm 78:

Listen, my people, to my teaching;
tilt your ears toward
the words of my mouth.

I will open my mouth with a proverb.
   I’ll declare riddles
   from days long gone—
   ones that we’ve heard
   and learned about,
   ones that our ancestors told us.
We won’t hide them
from their descendants;
   we’ll tell the next generation
    all about the praise due the LORD
    and (the Lord’s) strength—
    the wondrous works God has done.
God established a law for Jacob
  and set up Instruction for Israel,
      ordering our ancestors
      to teach them to their children.
This is so that the next generation

      and children not yet born
   will know these things,
      and so they can rise up
      and tell their children
to put their hope in God—
      never forgetting God’s deeds,

but keeping God’s commandments— [3]

The psalm went on for some 65 more verses which recounted some of the important history of the Hebrew people. This ‘instruction for Israel’ was specific, recounting God’s saving power, mostly through the events of the Exodus. However, the point of this remembering was not simply a history lesson. The memories evoked in the psalm were meant to remind people in the present that the same God who had led them and fed them and loved them in the desert, led them and fed them and loved them still – and always would. That’s what it meant to be God’s people. They had a God they could count on – and a God who counted on them to live like they knew who they were and whose they were. For the Hebrews, religious instruction was the passing on of that precious knowledge of belonging and responsibility.

Is that not what we want our children to know as well? There are ‘facts’ about our lives and world that we must all learn. But we people of faith want our children to know deeper truths as well. We want them to trust that even in hard times we have a God who lives with us and loves us and who will never leave us – and we want them to know that because of that, we have a responsibility to be good, to care for the poor, be generous, to look out for the vulnerable. I was really struck with that quote from Roosevelt: "To train a (person) in mind and not in morals is to train a menace to society." Our news today is filled with the scandal and tragedy at Penn State. I confess that, before last week, I did not know who Joe Paterno was. (For those who are still ignorant, he is the now fired long-time and highly regarded coach of the Penn State football team.) As I have listened to the facts and the endless coverage of the case, it seems fairly clear that Mr. Paterno, followed the law when the incident of the sexual misconduct of one of his coaches was brought to his attention. He reported it to his superior. That was his legal obligation and he did it. The issue that seems patently clear however is that legal ‘rightness’ is not the same as moral integrity. To know that a child is being raped on your watch and not take extra steps to make sure it is stopped, to make sure it is punished, to do nothing to follow up – that, it seems to me, is immoral even if it is legally defensible. We don’t know where this will all go or even the scope of the scandal. We do know that children were abused and nothing was done. And we know that we must be better – and do better - than that.

My message today is simple and brief. What we do here matters. We give Bibles to our children today not because it is a nice custom but because we really believe that the deeper truths contained therein have the power to shape our lives and our world for the better. But this isn’t only about our children. They will only learn if we, the adults live out of the grace, the hope, the love we have learned and found to be true. They will only learn to be generous if we are generous. They will only learn to do the right thing in hard times if we do it. That’s why we keep coming together and why we must keep learning as well. Because, much as I enjoyed the book, everything we need to know we didn’t learn in kindergarten. We’re still learning. And we are still called to ‘grow up in faith’ that the next generation might know the love, the forgiveness, the goodness to which we are called as people of faith. We are still called to do the right thing even when it is difficult.

One of my favorite contemporary ‘prophets’ is Will Campbell, a southern farmer, writer and preacher. In his book Soul Among Lions: Musings of a Bootleg Preacher, he writes:

Usually when I am introduced to someone, he or she will ask and what do you do, Mr. Campbell? If I am in a frivolous mode, I sometimes respond, What do I do about what?

… Of course, what that question means is, what do you do for money? What kind of work do you do? Not important, I think. Scripture takes a dim view of money. Root of all evil. Jesus even called it filthy. Also, work as it has been known is vanishing in our part of the world. Those who make really serious money don’t work at all. They talk on the phone, go to lunch, where they have meetings, talk on the phone some more, and then go to a gym or golf course to do for their body what work used to do. Work, in the sense of physical exertion, is rare where making money is involved.

Jesus never asked people what they did for money. His concern was ‘how do you justify yourself?’ (i.e. do right)* The ultimate inference was, ‘at the end of the day, or at the end of your life, what have you done to leave the world a better place than the one you entered?’ [4] (*asterisk insertion mine)

The really important things of life are the things that make us better, that open us up to claim grace over grudges, forgiveness over judgment, gratitude over anxiety, hope over fear. Those are often hard lessons to learn and even harder to live day by day. My hope each Sunday as we gather for worship - and today, as we give Bibles - is that we re-commit to learning those lessons ourselves so we can pass them on that the next generation might know and the world might be better for our having been here.

[1] http://javacasa.com/humor/mouthsofbabes.htm

[2] Stories found at http://www.clarion-call.org/humor/stories.htm

[3] from the Common English Bible.