In ancient times, people worshiped many gods. All over the ancient world, there were temples for different gods, and people brought sacrifices to those gods and the priests that served those gods. But the personalities of those gods were the personalities of the worst of human rulers. All of those gods were said to be ready to throw temper tantrums when ignored, or when offended. And the way to stay on the good side of those gods, it was said, was to bring food and drink and animals, and in some case, young infant children to those temples for the gods.
But the Jewish God, the God that Christians chose to worship, was different. This was a God who had a detailed list of sacrifices to be made, yet, but these sacrifices were conditional. Where other gods supposedly said, “Bring me the good stuff from your harvest”, this Jewish God said, “Bring me some of the good stuff of your harvest, and, more importantly, behave yourself. And if you do evil things, you’ll need to bring me more animals and grain from your harvest. So learn what is good behavior and what is bad behavior, and it will make a difference in your life!”
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19, 12-16; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46
And so, the Jewish people, following the orders of God through Moses, began to teach their children what was good behavior and what was bad behavior. They taught about the Law given to Moses, the Law given to the Israelites, the Law given to all of God’s people.
And when Jesus arrived, the teachings went even deeper in the new community that accepted that Jesus was the true Son of God. And since Jesus’ sacrifice eliminated the need for animal sacrifice, things changed. For Christianity is not so much about what sacrifices you bring, or even about how you behave, but about what you know and understand and believe, which makes Christianity much deeper than all other religions. It means that, more than other religions, Christianity must be taught from parent to child, from father to son, from mother to daughter.
And so, even more than in the rest of the world, each Christian has a phase in his or her life where we become teachers, teaching our children, our grandchildren, and our friends and neighbors and mere acquaintances about the meaning of who this guy Jesus is and what it meant for Him to go to the cross and be resurrected. After we learn, after we earn, after we lead, we are all to be teachers of the Gospel; We are almost all capable of teaching the Gospel, and we are all commanded to teach the Gospel.
Consider the professional Sunday School teacher. Imagine that this church could hire one of the best teachers in the country to teach our children. We’ll learn from her today how she teaches, for we each have children and grandchildren to teach – not only in Sunday School, but at home. So we each want to know how an excellent professional teacher teaches because we’ve been exposed to enough poor teachers over time. And we know that Jesus was an excellent teacher, but we need to see His methods in action. So let’s assume we have this professional Sunday School teacher here, and her goal is to teach her students to become functional Christian adults, with a desire to spread the Gospel and become professionals respected by all people.
The first thing a good teacher does is to remind the students of what they already know. Today, we’ll use the Ten Commandments from the Exodus 20 reading. She wants to involve the students, because what the teacher says is worth 1 point of memory, but what the student says is worth 100 points of memory. The best teachers involve the students, so the students will remember better.
“Now, you’ll remember that there are rules in most situations. Who can tell me a rule in your house?”
Little Johnny jumps up – “I know! We take our dirty dishes to the dishwasher when we’re finished eating.”
And the teacher thanks Johnny and compliments Johnny, because Johnny is right and he is bright and the teacher wants this lesson, like most, to be fun, because people open up their minds when they are having fun.
“There are ten important rules for living that God told Moses. There’s actually more than that – but these are the ten most important ones. “
And she put the list of the commandments in the students hands and on the chalkboard in front of them. You’ve got the list in your hands today. And then she reads them to the students.
The best teacher uses all the senses to teach. Notice that she has already used sound – by reading the commandments out loud – and sight – by letting the students read along. In fact, if the students are strong readers, she might have them all read the commandments together. Let’s read the first commandment together, from Exodus 20 starting at the beginning.
And God spoke all these words:
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me."
And now, she has every child draw a cross – to remind them that Jesus is the Son of God, the only God we will have. And she has just had them use their senses of touch and sight to learn this lesson. Then, she begins to work down through the list, just as you can work through the list, taking some time each day to talk about what these commandments mean with your children and grandchildren. And just like the good teacher, you’ll not just lecture, but you’ll discuss.
Discussion is the best way of teaching. Jesus took questions and was always asking his listeners, “What do you think?” We don’t have the option in here, for there are too many people, but that’s what we do in a Bible study. Four, six, or eight people can have a good discussion. When you get to more than about a dozen people, discussions work best when the group splits to discuss things, such as in groups of 3 or 4 people who discuss a question. And we see this dynamic at work in the way Jesus taught, for sometimes he’d give a parable to a crowd and then, later, the Twelve would ask Him questions about the parable and He’d give a more detailed explanation. So lectures work for large crowds, but discussion is better for small groups or individuals.
But when you are trying to teach really large numbers of people – and you want to be sure those teachings persist, ritual can be an excellent way.
When Jesus established the church, there were certain rituals which He commanded us follow, and certain rituals which came naturally. For example, when we meet, we light candles. We see the light of the candle, we might be close enough to hear the match lit, we might smell the hot wax.
We have communion. We see the bread, we hear the ritual words, we touch the bread, we smell the bread, we taste the bread. We memorize the words and with them, we memorize the important lesson that Jesus wanted: “This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you”.
We are baptized. The words are heard. We respond together and our mouth moves. We hear those words, too. We smell the river water as we walk down, we feel the cold water on our head and body. We feel the touch on our head as the pastor prays for the holy Spirit. And we remember.
There are other ways of teaching people. Around the sanctuary, there are paintings and arts and crafts which teach different things about Christ. Someone has made a cross. Someone else painted a painting. In some churches, there are the stations of the cross, small paintings or sculptures that tell the story of Easter Week.
But the place itself teaches. In this sanctuary, someone else choose to put a pillow on a pew, which makes the place comfortable. The smell of this place is something we will long remember. The smell of fragrant anointing oil reminds us and teaches us about the love of God and the fragrance of Christ.
And God teaches us through the Bible. And most of the Bible is not a listing of theological ideas, but a series of stories from which we are to draw examples. Most people remember bits and pieces about the story of Samson, that he was very strong, that it had to do with his uncut hair, but who was he fighting, why was he fighting, what were the morals in the Samson stories? You’ll find Samson in the Book of Judges, beginning in Chapter 13.
People remember stories. They remember those stories well when they are retold, time and again. People remember stories better than lists of names, than lists of words, than lists of rules. Which is more interesting to you? The book of Genesis or the Book of Numbers? Genesis is filled with stories – Numbers is filled with…numbers.
I always tell people new to the Bible to read the Gospels of Mark and John first, but I keep running into people that start at Genesis. Genesis goes well, Exodus goes well, but Leviticus and Numbers stops most people. If you’ll be reading the Old Testament, feel free to skip over Leviticus and Numbers, move onto Deuteronomy, and then the story really gets going again with Joshua.
Jesus also taught by stories. But His stories were parables, short stories where there isn’t exactly a moral, but there is a puzzle to figure out – who are YOU in the story? Jesus rarely told us the meaning of the parables directly, but left them for us to figure out.
In our Matthew 21 reading today, Jesus says:
“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
“The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
“But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
“Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
The answer was left to the listeners to answer, for if the teacher tells you, it is one memory point, but if you tell the teacher, it is a hundred memory points.
“He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
And the ones who were standing around put two and two together, and solved the puzzle. They figured out who the tenants of the vineyard were. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them.
And so when we teach Christianity to our children, our grandchildren, we should tell stories, and while giving them clues about the time, we should allow them to puzzle through to the answers, with guidance.
(And about that parable...I have known several churches where God gave that particular vineyard to other tenants when the existing tenants would not provide God with fruit. Churches that voluntarily sold out and moved to a different neighborhood - and more churches where the church closed, the building was sold, and a new, vibrant congregation moved in. Churches that don't provide fruit will lose their lease!)
Modern studies have shown that people remember stories far longer than we do facts. We learn from the stories we are told – we learn from the movies we watch, the television shows we see, the family stories told about how people reacted to hardship. What stories are you learning? What stories are you teaching others?
When we teach, we should remember that the best teachers tell stories.
In ancient Greece, there was a blind poet named Homer. Homer made his living telling two stories, long, very long poems which he performed over the course of a couple of weeks. He would speak for an hour at a time, telling a chapter of the story every night, walking blinding around a bonfire, speaking in an outdoor theatre, telling a story for his room and board and a little spending money. And so, for seventeen nights he would tell the story of the Iliad, the story of the Trojan War, and then for twelve more nights, he would tell the story of the Odyssey, the long trip home that Odysseus had to take to get home from that War. Then, he would walk to the next town, making the circuit of Greece every 4 or 5 years. And people memorized his stories and then, eventually someone wrote them down, and that is how we have today the stories of ancient Greece, because Homer’s stories taught the Greeks about warriors, about life, about love, about the world. Homer’s stories told the Greeks who they were and brought them together. Our great stories of American heroes tell us who we are and bring us together as Americans – the heirs of Washington, Franklin, Lincoln.
Jesus did the same, but Jesus didn’t focus upon a single nation. Jesus focused upon telling the world who He and the Father are, and how all people are potentially God’s people. And first the Twelve and then more people throughout the ages taught about Jesus and retold the stories found in the Gospel accounts. They told their own stories, and we began to hear stories of the men and women who stood in the great arenas and were torn apart by wild animals because they insisted that Jesus was their God and not Caesar. People told stories of the men and women who went into the desert to study scripture and stories were told of men and women who joined monasteries and abbeys to escape the world and spend time with Christ. People told stories of great Christians who were great not because they won wars, but because they sacrificed their lives for others, some quickly and others over the course of 70 or 80 years they sacrifice their wants and desires to help others. Sometimes the stories were passed down and told around the dinner table. Sometimes they were told in great church buildings. Sometimes people told the stories in paintings, in sculptures, in other works of art – such as an ornate building or a simple communion table. Sometimes people took the time to write down the stories, and those are the stories that lasted until today.
And Jesus taught by His example. He pointed people to God all of His life – His speech was not about worldly things, but He used the time He had to point people to the Father who loves them, the One who sent His Son to die so they could live. And in His example on the cross, He showed us the meaning of God’s love. He taught us most by His constant, daily example of living, and He taught us by His ultimate example at the cross, without which we would have no hope.
You also teach your children and grandchildren by example. Just by the fact you are at church every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, when you attend a Sunday School class, a midweek class, you are setting a good example and teaching your children and grandchildren what is important in life. Why and when you miss attending or let your children and grandchildren miss attending teaches them what is more important than church. Do you attend church when you go on vacation? Do you teach your children that sometimes we have to make a choice between worldly things and the things of God? When you decide to sacrifice your time for the benefit of others, you teach your children and grandchildren also. Particularly when they see the very real struggles this sometimes causes. After all, going to the cross wasn’t an easy thing, even for Jesus. But He did it for us – and people watched and learned what love for others means. When you make difficult decisions about how to spend your time and money, let your children and grandchildren see the sacrifices you make - and they will learn to sacrifice also.
We often think that teaching is something just the professionals can do. Right! You taught your children to dress themselves, to speak, to feed themselves. You taught your dog to go outside to do its business. You’ve taught someone how to send a text message or frame up a door. You’ve taught someone how to bake a cake, fry an egg, or knit a sweater. You may have taught someone how to drive, how to chop firewood, or how to put on makeup. Did a professional teacher teach you how to ride a bike or shoot a weapon or organize a dinner? And you think you can’t tell stories about Christ because you aren’t a professional? After your baptism, you are like a witness that is “under oath” 24/7. Everything you say, everything you do is a testimony to the God who saved you. Your example may lead others out of death into life….or not. How ARE you living your life? What example are you teaching those around you today?
After your baptism, you are like a witness that is “under oath” 24/7.
Each day, each hour we are with people we make decisions about what to talk about. We can talk about politics, the NFL – one and the same these days – a television show, a song. We can talk about a celebrity or something that happened at the doctor’s office. Or we can talk about a wonderful Christian you once met and how they handled a situation. We can talk about what Jesus said. We can imitate Christ. We can be teachers.
Teach your children and grandchildren by telling them these stories – Old Testament, Gospel, stories of great Christians. Live the way Christ would live. In that way, they will know how to live their lives for Christ.
You don’t know the stories? You don’t know how Christ would live? Why not? Is it because you don’t read your Bible, you don’t come to any classes, you don’t come to Sunday School? If you are afraid someone like me will make you read or talk in public, don’t worry about it. Just let whoever is leading know that you would prefer to listen rather than talk, and they’ll take care of it. Don’t let fear keep you from God.
Learn the stories so you can tell the stories. Learn about Christ’s life so you can imitate Christ to others.
And when you tell the stories, remember to involve their senses – sound, vision, smell, taste, touch – and they will remember. In your imitation of Christ, be memorable.
For all Christians are to be teachers. Sometimes we are paid professional teachers – other times, we are just “Grandpa” or “Grandma” driving the kids home from school. Sometimes, we have simply run into someone in the Wal-mart parking lot who needs a friend. But we can take that time, that precious time to teach the world, our community, our families about what it means to be loved by God, to know that the Son of God actually died that we might live, to show that we have great joy in our lives because the Son of God came back to life and said that those of us who follow Him will also come back to life, living forever in a beautiful land ruled by the One who loves us.
Amen.
Jesus also taught by stories. But His stories were parables, short stories where there isn’t exactly a moral, but there is a puzzle to figure out – who are YOU in the story? Jesus rarely told us the meaning of the parables directly, but left them for us to figure out.
In our Matthew 21 reading today, Jesus says:
“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
“The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
“But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
“Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
The answer was left to the listeners to answer, for if the teacher tells you, it is one memory point, but if you tell the teacher, it is a hundred memory points.
“He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
And the ones who were standing around put two and two together, and solved the puzzle. They figured out who the tenants of the vineyard were. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them.
And so when we teach Christianity to our children, our grandchildren, we should tell stories, and while giving them clues about the time, we should allow them to puzzle through to the answers, with guidance.
(And about that parable...I have known several churches where God gave that particular vineyard to other tenants when the existing tenants would not provide God with fruit. Churches that voluntarily sold out and moved to a different neighborhood - and more churches where the church closed, the building was sold, and a new, vibrant congregation moved in. Churches that don't provide fruit will lose their lease!)
Modern studies have shown that people remember stories far longer than we do facts. We learn from the stories we are told – we learn from the movies we watch, the television shows we see, the family stories told about how people reacted to hardship. What stories are you learning? What stories are you teaching others?
When we teach, we should remember that the best teachers tell stories.
In ancient Greece, there was a blind poet named Homer. Homer made his living telling two stories, long, very long poems which he performed over the course of a couple of weeks. He would speak for an hour at a time, telling a chapter of the story every night, walking blinding around a bonfire, speaking in an outdoor theatre, telling a story for his room and board and a little spending money. And so, for seventeen nights he would tell the story of the Iliad, the story of the Trojan War, and then for twelve more nights, he would tell the story of the Odyssey, the long trip home that Odysseus had to take to get home from that War. Then, he would walk to the next town, making the circuit of Greece every 4 or 5 years. And people memorized his stories and then, eventually someone wrote them down, and that is how we have today the stories of ancient Greece, because Homer’s stories taught the Greeks about warriors, about life, about love, about the world. Homer’s stories told the Greeks who they were and brought them together. Our great stories of American heroes tell us who we are and bring us together as Americans – the heirs of Washington, Franklin, Lincoln.
Jesus did the same, but Jesus didn’t focus upon a single nation. Jesus focused upon telling the world who He and the Father are, and how all people are potentially God’s people. And first the Twelve and then more people throughout the ages taught about Jesus and retold the stories found in the Gospel accounts. They told their own stories, and we began to hear stories of the men and women who stood in the great arenas and were torn apart by wild animals because they insisted that Jesus was their God and not Caesar. People told stories of the men and women who went into the desert to study scripture and stories were told of men and women who joined monasteries and abbeys to escape the world and spend time with Christ. People told stories of great Christians who were great not because they won wars, but because they sacrificed their lives for others, some quickly and others over the course of 70 or 80 years they sacrifice their wants and desires to help others. Sometimes the stories were passed down and told around the dinner table. Sometimes they were told in great church buildings. Sometimes people told the stories in paintings, in sculptures, in other works of art – such as an ornate building or a simple communion table. Sometimes people took the time to write down the stories, and those are the stories that lasted until today.
And Jesus taught by His example. He pointed people to God all of His life – His speech was not about worldly things, but He used the time He had to point people to the Father who loves them, the One who sent His Son to die so they could live. And in His example on the cross, He showed us the meaning of God’s love. He taught us most by His constant, daily example of living, and He taught us by His ultimate example at the cross, without which we would have no hope.
You also teach your children and grandchildren by example. Just by the fact you are at church every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, when you attend a Sunday School class, a midweek class, you are setting a good example and teaching your children and grandchildren what is important in life. Why and when you miss attending or let your children and grandchildren miss attending teaches them what is more important than church. Do you attend church when you go on vacation? Do you teach your children that sometimes we have to make a choice between worldly things and the things of God? When you decide to sacrifice your time for the benefit of others, you teach your children and grandchildren also. Particularly when they see the very real struggles this sometimes causes. After all, going to the cross wasn’t an easy thing, even for Jesus. But He did it for us – and people watched and learned what love for others means. When you make difficult decisions about how to spend your time and money, let your children and grandchildren see the sacrifices you make - and they will learn to sacrifice also.
We often think that teaching is something just the professionals can do. Right! You taught your children to dress themselves, to speak, to feed themselves. You taught your dog to go outside to do its business. You’ve taught someone how to send a text message or frame up a door. You’ve taught someone how to bake a cake, fry an egg, or knit a sweater. You may have taught someone how to drive, how to chop firewood, or how to put on makeup. Did a professional teacher teach you how to ride a bike or shoot a weapon or organize a dinner? And you think you can’t tell stories about Christ because you aren’t a professional? After your baptism, you are like a witness that is “under oath” 24/7. Everything you say, everything you do is a testimony to the God who saved you. Your example may lead others out of death into life….or not. How ARE you living your life? What example are you teaching those around you today?
After your baptism, you are like a witness that is “under oath” 24/7.
Each day, each hour we are with people we make decisions about what to talk about. We can talk about politics, the NFL – one and the same these days – a television show, a song. We can talk about a celebrity or something that happened at the doctor’s office. Or we can talk about a wonderful Christian you once met and how they handled a situation. We can talk about what Jesus said. We can imitate Christ. We can be teachers.
Teach your children and grandchildren by telling them these stories – Old Testament, Gospel, stories of great Christians. Live the way Christ would live. In that way, they will know how to live their lives for Christ.
You don’t know the stories? You don’t know how Christ would live? Why not? Is it because you don’t read your Bible, you don’t come to any classes, you don’t come to Sunday School? If you are afraid someone like me will make you read or talk in public, don’t worry about it. Just let whoever is leading know that you would prefer to listen rather than talk, and they’ll take care of it. Don’t let fear keep you from God.
Learn the stories so you can tell the stories. Learn about Christ’s life so you can imitate Christ to others.
And when you tell the stories, remember to involve their senses – sound, vision, smell, taste, touch – and they will remember. In your imitation of Christ, be memorable.
For all Christians are to be teachers. Sometimes we are paid professional teachers – other times, we are just “Grandpa” or “Grandma” driving the kids home from school. Sometimes, we have simply run into someone in the Wal-mart parking lot who needs a friend. But we can take that time, that precious time to teach the world, our community, our families about what it means to be loved by God, to know that the Son of God actually died that we might live, to show that we have great joy in our lives because the Son of God came back to life and said that those of us who follow Him will also come back to life, living forever in a beautiful land ruled by the One who loves us.
Amen.
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