Posted by PS on December 16, 2004 at 14:08:15:
In Reply to: back to sunday school posted by giveawayboy on December 16, 2004 at 11:47:51:
: agreed, you know, I keep going back to the things that I can't quantify or measure. I go back to simple phrases my mother told me about God, things that some hyperorthodox intellectuals might say were old wives tales. I go back to blue-haired old ladies, who smelled like mothballs and brought me buttercookies with pink icing and made me memorize the books of the Old Testament in order. I keep going back to Christmas songs and hymns which were riddled with cultural filagree and perhaps even historical and theological inaccuracies. Still, all those things, plus the Bible, plus some theology thrown into the mix are all little touchpoints for me along the way. The most profound things that I can share with another are the things which I can embrace only with the mind of a child. When I look at the Christian Church throughout history I can choose to see the abuses, the punishments of heretics, etc. I can see all that actually. I don't deny it. I can also see the Gospel reality marching across Europe, marching across the world, in a broken down ragtag way. I can see a culture of tolerance in Spain from about the 900s to the 1100s, finally dying totally around the 1400s. I can see Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisting and learning both sacred and secular knowledge and sharing it and putting it into books. I can also see the dissolution of that and still not hate Christ for what the Christians did. I can see all this and think there is hope for society, even if it must endure so many aeons of darkness. Or even if the hope coexists w the darkness. I can see a whole community of Muslims forced to convert (at least externally) to Christianity. I can see the language of Iberia, Arabic, become the enemy tongue. I can see them in the streets selling old Arabic texts to people to destroy and use for making other products. I can see a guy coming over there and rescuing one of those texts. I can see it. Something about giants and windmills. Now I can see that the present state of Christendom has no bearing on the truth of giants and windmills, or of little old ladies with buttercookies and bible verses. I can see that nothing can really stop Abraham or Moses or the angels walking up and down on a ladder to Heaven. I like what Jesus said, what were you going out in the wilderness to see, a reed blowing in the wind? Were you going to see people in fine robes? People who wear such garments live in royal palaces. Were you going to see a prophet. Then I tell you this. Among women there is born no one greater than John the Baptist, but in the kingdom of Heaven, the least is greater than he. Those words don't seem to be arrested by scholars and priests. They don't seem to lose their otherworldly reality though we might say it is unorthodox to render them in Arabic or English or some other tongue. That stuff, that stuff I heard as a child and can hear freshly as a childlike person today, that stuff has power behind it. I listen. Or I pray for the ears to listen.
This is a wonderful post. Wisdom here. Thank you.
I remember those blue-haired ladies. I remember some of them that had brown hair and blonde hair when I was a child, and it later turned gray, and later still they died. They were my Sunday School teachers. It has been 50 years since I was born and I can hardly believe it.
When I buried my father in Arlington National Cemetery in 1997, there were two of these former Sunday School teachers I had not seen in over 30 years. One of them especially remained distinct in my mind through my life, though I had not seen her or talked to her in decades. When I saw her at my father's funeral, she was very happy to see me, to see I was a pastor, to know that I had turned out OK. She commented that she knew my teenage years had been rough ones. I was finally able to tell her how much she had meant to me, that I never forgot the things she taught, and that God had used her words to bring me back to Him. That was one of the great privileges of my life. We often do not have the chance to go back and share with those who have been God's heralds in our lives what they have truly done.
Hey, maybe we should be thinking about whether we are missing any opportunities to do so presently.
Again, a great post, Mr. Rogers.