Monthly Archives: October 2008

October 19–Have you ever seen the stars? I mean really seen the them, like Abraham saw the them? Last night and the night before last I laid down in the middle of the road at 9 o’clock at night with many other friends on a church camping trip to Big Bend National Park. You cannot believe the stars. Jupiter was as bright as a candle. We could both see the Milky Way as a fuzzy band across the sky, but we are also a part of the Milky Way galaxy. We could see our neighboring Andromeda galaxy through binoculars. (That really changes the question, “Who is my neighbor?”) We couldn’t even begin to count the stars, or answer the children questioning, “How many are there?” It changes God’s promise to Abraham to truly see the stars.

Tonight I’m home from the wilderness of Big Bend, and I have visited my backyard. The sky here is boring: a few determined stars and some airplanes. If this was the only sky I knew to understand God’s promises, how much would I miss? Please, take your children to the wilderness and look up!

October 5, 2008–Today’s Gospel text was Matthew 21:33-46. To set the stage, Jesus is in Jerusalem the last week of his life. He is preaching in the Temple and is continuing a series of parables with a strong theme of rejection. People have been given something wonderful, and they waste it, don’t recognize it or somehow mess up the situation. The theme is fairly consistent that the people appearing to not be the rightful receipients of the gift are the ones that welcome it with joy.

This series of parables ends with Jesus recalling the Psalms118:22-23 text: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing and it is amazing in our eyes.”While I’m not a Greek scholar, my NRSV says he goes on to describe this “cornerstone” as something that could be tripped over or something that would fall on you.

In Michael Yardley’s Architecture History class in the early 1990’s, he mentioned something as he described one of the most influential architectural leaps of ancient architecture: the Roman keystone. The ancient word for keystone was used interchangebly with cornerstone. The Roman keystone, or capstone, was the perfectly hewed stone that carried the load, by compression, for the arch and the load above it. This innovation allowed for spans to increase, allowed for aquaducts, great gates and walls to spread across the land with the Roman army and culture. It gained common use increasingly in the time of Jesus and the technology exploded with spinning the arch on it’s axis to form a dome as early as the first century AD.

The description of the cornerstone in the Psalms text was most surely our traditional (to lay a straight course) understanding of it, for the keystone technology would not be familiar at that time. But in the time of Jesus, the keystone would be as innovative and talked about as the Eiffel Tower, Falling Water, Bird Nest or Water Cube–but it was Roman. It symbolized the pop-power culture of the time. So I wonder if Jesus was speaking of this “cornerstone” as not just one low down, to be tripped on, but maybe as one that is both carrying and distributing the load? What would that really mean then?

I wonder if God can be both the creative spirit in the very foundational structures of the universe and still somehow be working, holding things together? Or maybe it is not that gradiose. Maybe this was a social statement, to not be so enamored with the newest technology, culture and innovation, so as to forget our core principles of humanity: love God, love God’s creation. Or maybe this was truly a carpenter’s commentary on building materials or a foretelling of the Temple’s pending fall. What do you think?

Today, some children (Sanctuary class) and I played with this story. We built a Roman arch with some beautiful blocks designed just for this purpose. The slate floor didn’t make a very even surface, but we got it together. When we removed the scaffolding, and the arch held, there was a gasp. They believed it would work, but I don’t know if they really knew it would work. Somehow all the “what-ifs” just didn’t matter. The wonder didn’t come when it all came tumbling down–the wonder was that it held up.

For October 5, 2008-This Sunday, we hear one of the all time favorite children’s stories–not just Bible stories, but all stories. In addition to this wonderful story, our church will welcome the scaly, furry and feathered for our annual Blessing of the Animals.

The story of the flood, the ark and Noah has been embraced by artists, movie-makers (Steve Carrell and Morgan Freeman among my favorites) and designers of coffee-cups, nursery linens and just about everything–the sacred and secular alike. What makes this story so interesting? Is it just the cute animals? Is it the curiosity and plausibility of “who cleans out the cages” and “how did they all fit”?

Some respected theologians argue that it is not a story for children. It is just too catastrophic, and children should not be exposed to such a scary expression of God’s wrath.

Is that our view of children? That they should be kept insulated from God? That they are insulated from all other scary things in life, and should not have access to expressions of fear, hope and promise? The sad reality is that all children live in a world that is potentially scary. They don’t cross over at some point to sharing with all other people the fears and wonders of life, but have those from infancy as a mark of our shared humanity.

Bible stories, when presented in wonder, mystery and honesty provide children with valuable access to tools. These tools help children to ascribe their fears to something safe and distant from themselves, play around with it, and then incorporate a new understanding in their own life. I would even go on to say we all access Bible stories this way. Somehow, though, children seem to be naturally insulated and be able to ignore the part they don’t need to hear or deal with at that time. While I would never suggest children should be exposed to something fundamentally inappropriate, I do wonder if children have a healthy sense of selective listening skills. Their “listening ears” can hear what information they can process with their current tool kit or for current problems.

This concept is fundamental to Godly Play. We tell children the hard stories, but in a safe way. The Flood and Ark story is an excellent example of that. Most children when asked “where are you in this story” are very safe and sound on the ark. It is the happy yellow submarine, complete with the most amazing selection of pets.

One of the most memorable responses I got from that question still haunts me. One little boy in our preschool class many years ago was clearly struggling. Whether it was home-life, having the new responsibilities of kindergarten or what was truly troubling him, I was not privy to–for I only saw him for one hour a week in Godly Play. When I asked the group, “where are you” I got the typical responses, until he spoke. “I’m under the water,” he shared. This story was an avenue for him to verbalize a deep fear and a feeling of being overwhelmed. The fear existed before the story, and was expressed after the story.

Somehow, the cuteness of the story is irrelevant.