The Sunday School year is winding down–and lest I forget what I learned teaching through 66 books in 36 weeks, I’m going to be doing a quick(?!?) review of this year’s Sunday School lessons.
Ignore or enjoy at will.
It took a while for me to find my feet with the Route 66 study I went through with my 2nd and 3rd graders this year.
I started out following along with the curriculum rather closely–and trying to adapt the “small group” method the woman who was going to be my co-teacher had suggested.
The small group method could have been a good one, I think–but not for the group I had (which included both pre-readers and quite good readers) and not for my personal giftings. If we’d have ended up teaching together, it might have been a whole ‘nother story–but she was called to another class that had no teacher and I was on my own with a helper I didn’t yet know. It was a whole different ballgame than we’d originally anticipate.
Now let me make clear–I am a teacher. I love to teach. I love to teach the Word especially.
I understand the importance of activities and interaction and the like, but I am a teacher–and that format wasn’t allowing me to operate in my giftings.
Nevertheless, I tried.
For Genesis, we split into two groups. One read and discussed creation. One read and discussed Abraham. Then we joined together and each group “reported” their story to the other.
I intended to try again with Exodus–but the mood of the classroom made me change my mind mid-course. We ended up discussing Moses’ “escape” from Pharoah’s deadly rule and Israel’s “escape” from slavery together. We focused on how God is the deliverer.
By Leviticus I’d scrapped the small group idea entirely, but was still trying to follow the “Fuel Up” worksheets found in the curriculum. I struggled with this book, because it’s one of my favorite books of the Bible and because I wasn’t sure if I could articulate the book in a way the kids would understand.
On Wednesday before the week I was to teach Leviticus, I wrote on Facebook: “How do you teach Leviticus to 2nd and 3rd graders? Me, I’ll be talking about a God who’s holy, a law that we can’t keep, and a temporary sacrificial system that points the way to a permanent solution.”
That was the plan.
Then I got to actually writing the lesson–and I freaked out. I wrote on Facebook again: “I’m kinda (really) nervous about Sunday School tomorrow. This could be the most theologically important lesson of the entire year–understanding the holiness of God, the inadequacy of works to make us holy, and the substitute Lamb who took our sins and gave us His holiness. Please pray that I would speak clearly and that the children’s hearts would open to hear and understand.”
Many faithful people prayed. God was gracious in providing an illustration. I think it sunk in.
A glass of distilled water represented God’s holiness–His complete separateness from anything dirty or wrong.
We talked about what would happen if we mixed dirty water in with the clean–how the water wouldn’t be holy any more.
We talked about how God is holy, separate from sin. We talked about how only holy people can spend time with God.
A glass of muddy water represented us–unholy, born as sinners and adding sin upon sin to our inheritance.
We talked again of how the dirty water can’t mix with the clean. If we are to spend time with God, we must be holy. We talked about what happens when unholy things go into the presence of God–how God’s anger burns against them and destroys them.
But how can we be made holy, we asked. We looked at some of the rules in Leviticus that describe what holiness, separateness looks like. We talked about how no one could follow those rules. We talked about how even following those rules couldn’t make us holy.
We poured our muddy water through a panty-hose filter–and ended up with still-dirty water.
We talked about how God knew from the beginning that the rules He gave the people wouldn’t make them holy. That’s why He set up the system of sacrifices.
We read how God had the people confess their sins over an animal’s head, transferring their sins to the animal and the animal’s cleanness to the people. We traded in our glass of dirty water for a clean glass.
We questioned whether the sacrificed animal could actually get rid of man’s sins.
We likened the sacrifices to a movie trailer, giving us a sneak preview of the show that would be coming up–where Jesus would take our sins, bearing their punishment, and give us His righteousness.
At last, humans born unholy could spend time with a Holy God.
That lesson was pure grace, the children who had been so unruly those first two weeks listening intently as we grappled with works righteousness and substitutionary atonement.
I was completely in awe.
Review to continue…
That’s exciting to hear!