Are You Ready for School?
Deuteronomy 4: 1-2 & 5-9
MARK 7: 1-8 & 14-15
SEPTEMBER 1, 2024
If you close your eyes and dig deep into your memories …, can you remember that first day of school? Did you have a brand-new shirt or skirt? New shoes on your feet if you were lucky. Perhaps you went school shopping with your mom and dad before that first day of school getting new notebooks or lunchboxes. Were you excited and filled with anticipation? On your very first day of school EVER, were you wondering why you were being told that you had to leave the comfort of everything that you had been used to and that you had to go to a place filled with other strange little people? You had to meet someone called a teacher. Eat cafeteria food …eww or maybe mom packed a lunch.
I have been wondering what my parents did to get me ready for kindergarten. To a class taught by Miss Eastman, I wonder what ever happened to her. A class where I would meet friends who are still my friends 65 years later. What building blocks for life did we experience in school … in those early grades or when we invested our time in learning at places called school later in our journeys … including schools that we chose to go to?
September always makes me think back in time. I have a great photo featuring my brother and me along with Johnny Tammaro, Cindy Giles, Eddie Wagner, the Fisher girls, and another kid or two waiting for the bus across the street from our house … I think it must have been the first day of school because we were dressed so neatly. And, yesterday we walked to the building that Dax will call his school … he’s a walker so there will be no school bus photo’s. What will he experience … how will going to school change his life? Who will he meet? Is he ready for school? Were we ready? Ready for the building blocks of life that only school can provide.
And, this morning as we hang out here at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church either in person here in West Deptford New Jersey or somewhere in the world via Facebook I am wondering if we are still ready? Ready to continue our education … ready to learn more or whether we want our faith walk … our God connection … to be more like a recess from whatever else is challenging us in our lives but just a good time without any pressure to learn.
We heard today from one of our earliest Scripture lessons that Moses was attempting to remind the people of Israel … he was teaching the adults not just kindergarten children but adults … and he stated with emphasis, “SO PAY ATTENTION!!! I am teaching all of you!”
If you are like me, you probably wonder why some people just push aside the teachings that God has provided. I know that all of you know the key teachings from Scripture because we repeat them so frequently as lessons for living life. Or at least they are words that can be stated from our memory if we are tested somewhere … actually, do you wonder how many church folks place enough value in the Word of God to repeat the words from faith lessons when challenged out in the world. Or do they curse and scream and join the worldly crowds? To share what we have learned about God … from God … about Jesus … what Jesus taught. Now, there’s an interesting concept that perhaps leaves one wondering about the faith education system we offer in church.
I would have loved to hear Moses when he said, “Surely this great nation is a wise and insightful people” because I wonder if he was being sarcastic. Was he looking out on those folks shaking his head at how easily they ran from God to align with false gods. When I focus in on this brief passage from Deuteronomy the sentences that really impact me are “keep God’s rules faithfully because that will show your wisdom and insight to the nations” and “be on guard and watch yourselves so that you don’t forget. AND teach them to your children and grandchildren.”
Which brings us to the 21st century and all of us. I know that some essential lessons from my days at Forest Elementary School still resonate with me. I don’t know if Miss Eastman, Miss Downs, Mrs. Andrews, or Mrs. Knoppler developed my basic math skills but one of those or some other teachers made sure that I could add numbers without a calculator or without looking at my phone. Frankly, I do not think calculators were in existence back then and if I had told my parents that I needed to look at my phone that hung on the wall of the kitchen to do math problems they would have called for help.
Ironically, it was Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson who looked at the so-called religious and legal experts of His time and declared, “CLEARLY, you are experts at rejecting God’s commandments in order to establish your rules.” These of course were the leaders who eventually plotted to have Jesus killed and very briefly thought they had succeeded when they hung Jesus on that wretched cross but we know the Easter truth. He is Risen <<HE IS RISEN INDEED!>> God’s love for humanity won THE day!
But this Gospel lesson from Mark’s Gospel is a good reflection for us to consider. Are we so easily taken in by the world because we are naïve? Because we want to wear the uniform of humanity? Because we don’t like what we find when we study God’s Word … or do we just not want to study God’s Word and discover what God expects?
I had a discussion with a friend a few days ago talking about this ‘Information Age’ that we live in. Seriously, I think that we are living in a disinformation age based on the number of SPAM e-mails and SPAM calls and misleading websites. Their goal seems to be get me to make choices that truly are not good for me. While the internet is a marvelous tool that can connect me to friends across the globe … a tool that lets me have immediate updated information about sporting events and world happenings … and a place where God’s Word can always be read on my phone … there are many days when I wish that I still had my Funk and Wagnell encyclopedia on the shelf at home to search through when I need to find out the answer to which bird has the largest wingspan or to find out what the most popular question is that is asked on Google.
Perhaps I am just old … not as tech-savvy as I am reputed to be, but I think life would be better if we slowed down to look it up, to read and to study. A time when we had conversations. An era when we invested time in learning rather than quickly getting what we need in the moment but not really learning. I am thrilled that schools across the country are beginning to ban cell phones in the classroom … preventing kids from looking online for the answers and to stop them from chatting while the teacher is teaching. Sometimes even in church we get distracted by those cell phones … even though God might be wanting to pass along a lesson or two through worship.
By the way, the answer to those two questions I mentioned, in case you didn’t just Google them while I was speaking, are: the wandering albatross with a wingspan of up to 11.5 feet has the largest wingspan or any living bird, which is even larger than the marabou stork’s wingspan that some of you might have been thinking of. As for the most asked question on Google … I will give you the top two. The first is “Where is my refund” and the second, which really made me wonder about the global education system is “How many ounces are in a cup,” which on average 8.6 million people ask each month.
So, what are the two commands that God has put before God’s people … I know you know because you have paid attention. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” that’s the TOP COMMANDMENT and the second is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And, Jesus tosses in that “there is no other commandment greater than these.”
But as people who identify as Christians how do we value our faith education as the public-school year and college year begins across this nation? Here at St. Paul’s, we will hold our RALLY DAY next Sunday to celebrate this year’s Vacation Bible School and also to focus in on the beginning of a Sunday School year. I am pretty sure that all of us want every child that we know to get a foundation in faith while they are young … because if they don’t discover God’s love now … if they don’t learn the lessons of faith from Scripture when they are young … based on the lack of adult Bible studies and the disappearance of adult Sunday School classes … I sincerely doubt that those future adults will ever know the lessons of Job, Esther, Moses, Mary or Ruth.
If it wasn’t for a Bible study a few years ago in the Psalms I would not have found my favorite Psalm. You see when I hold a Bible study on the Psalms I make the class members open to the Psalms during the first class. Wherever they open their Bible to one of the Psalms on those two pages will be their Psalm for the rest of the class. During one of those exercises I opened up to Psalm 63 and as I read the first eight verses of David’s Psalm I found me … because of that adult Bible Study I have read those 8 verses over and over again. I have shared them bedside with the sick and dying. My Psalm … from a Bible study.
I think of our Wednesday night online Bible study where we use an ancient study method lecto divina, which means “holy reading.’ We don’t take a summer vacation and the group has really gotten closer to each other through God’s Word.
I celebrate all the women coming to Patty’s Wednesday morning Women’s Bible Study. Around 40 women are signed up to start this class in another week or two and that’s awesome!
So, what about you … are you willing to learn? Willing to study? Ready to go back to school to discover perhaps a Psalm that will resonate with you for the rest of your life? To rediscover a Gospel truth that will inspire you to take on challenges for God? A reflection on the perspective of an author that will draw you closer in faith to friends and strangers who will become your friends.
Celebrate the individuals who have taught you through the years … consider the teaching of Moses to “be on guard watching yourselves so closely so that you don’t forget” what you have been taught and that God’s lessons for living life “never leave your mind as long as you live. Teach them to your children and grandchildren.”
And, consider whether you are still willing to learn … to have new “school experiences” through a Bible study group or Sunday School class. Are you willing to teach and lead.
I know I will never forget and will always celebrate the schools I went to, the teachers I have had, and most of the lessons I learned … I didn’t do well in the sciences. After all, I still have and proudly display my Forest Elementary School beanie! AMEN