This coming week at our church, we will be having a celebration at our Family Service, marking the the end of the school year and the beginning of the summer. It’s easy to celebrate the children – and right that we do that, too! They have been working hard throughout the year, and it’s good to recognise the changes and growth that they have been through. We’ll be presenting books to each of them, and they have written a celebration song to share with the congregation. I’m also planning some storytelling, and concocting worship packs so that we can make some art in church together. All that and a half hour service. Phew.
(If you are looking for ideas to use for an end-of-year celebration in your congregation, I suggest popping over to Worshipping with Children and reading this post. Lots of good thoughts here, as usual with this excellent blog.)
But it’s also important to celebrate the leaders. They have also worked hard this past year! Sadly at our church, two of the women who help in our Sunday School on the vast majority of Sundays won’t be able to be at church this coming Sunday. It’s unavoidable, but unfortunate, and I’m looking for other ways to celebrate their contribution to our children’s ministry. (Please share your ideas in the comments section – what is the best ‘teachers’ thank you’ that you can imagine?)
I think that it is remarkable how teachers commit their energy and creativity to sharing their faith with the children. At our church, we are blessed to have a mix of men and women teachers, both parents and other adults – and I am very grateful for all of them! – but it does seem that in many churches, it is women who run the Sunday school program. What is it like at your church? Who are your Sunday School volunteers? How do you facilitate the teaching and sharing experience? How does your congregation help Sunday School volunteers to avoid exhaustion and burn-out? How do you celebrate their discipleship?
This Sunday, the lectionary scripture lines up nicely with this line of questioning and helps us wonder about the Gospel’s first teachers and enablers, both male and female. We’ll be reading from Luke’s Gospel, which is often noted for its inclusive take on gender. Not only does Luke seem to include more stories about women, he often pairs a story about a woman beside a story about a man. Jeannine K. Brown, Professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary,St. Paul, points out examples of this pairing in her commentary on workingpreacher.org.
“…the healing of a centurion’s slave is paired with the raising of a widow’s son (7:1-17); and Jesus tells twin parables of a woman losing a coin and a man losing a sheep (15:4-10).”
In Sunday’s reading from Luke, the focus shifts from the the male disciples and the Pharisee who invited Jesus to dine with him to the female disciples and the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume. Professor Brown suggests that this passage from Luke gives us a chance to look at women’s examples of faith, providing paradigms for how we then might also respond to Jesus. We see women who follow Jesus and provide for him “out of their own funds” (8:1-3), and we focus specifically on one woman’s socially risky act of devotion and celebration. In this passage, she alone fully and explicitly celebrates Jesus and the new life he offers. This woman’s personal story provides others with light to see the enormous elasticity of God’s love. She teaches us about God’s love through her own loving devotion to Jesus.
That is beautiful, isn’t it? How we live and where we meet God in the particular details of our lives matters not just for us individually, but for those around us, too. It takes courage to teach in that kind of open way – and that courage is something that we should celebrate, alongside all the other ways we grow and work together.
Courage, too, is a gift of the Spirit for the people of God, and small acts blossom.
