Ps. 119: 33: Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end
34 Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
35 Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight.
36 Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain.
37 Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.
38 Fulfill your promise to your servant, so that you may be feared.
39 Take away the disgrace I dread, for your laws are good.
40 How I long for your precepts! In your righteousness preserve my life.
After 25-plus years of ministry, I confess, I still get a little nervous stepping up to this pulpit to preach. No fault of yours, don’t worry. But I get the most nervous when going to preach, teach or lead worship or Bible studies in nursing homes or retirement centers. By no fault of anyone there, either. In fact, after my visits, I’m always glad that I came. Even for those in a memory care center, suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s Disease, I’ve seen, as the nurses and care assistants and attendants lead them in or roll them in on their wheel chairs, how the troubled looks on their faces often give way to looks of peace, almost sheer bliss, as they hear familiar words of Scripture, and beloved hymns that have not escaped their memories, songs and words they’ve heard and loved for many decades of their lives.
In those settings, it’s not the people themselves that makes it hard or scary to come preach, teach or lead a Bible study. It’s the nagging question, What could I possibly have to tell people who’ve come to stages and experiences of life ahead of me, and who have more years and challenges and experiences to tell me about, than I have to tell them? Or even, What right have I to tell them something about God, about life, about the Bible, when they have walked with these subjects much longer than I have, and I can only anticipate what all they have lived, and gained, or suffered and lost?
But they’re not usually wanting me to tell them anything new and novel. After living 7, 8 or 9 decades, you may not be all that impressed anymore with novelty. Yes,going from the Model T to the moon landing to pictures sent back from Mars, and from the party line to Skype and Facetime, is impressive. But as far as the nature of God, the nature of people, the nature of life and the nature of nature are concerned, they know the truth of Ecclesiastes, that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Some things in the world have gotten better during these decades, but some things have gotten worse. So their hope and faith are not in some inevitable, unstoppable and natural process of ever-growing liberation, enlightenment, progress and improvement, but in a timeless, unchanging God, and in God’s Word.
What I suspect that they’re hungering for from Bible studies, worship, sermons and prayers is not novelty but depth. For that is the journey of our lives of faith, from cradle to the grave, from birth to resurrection: to go deeper and farther into a timeless and unchanging God and God’s Word. So with some fear and trembling I have brought the story, or the lesson, or the message to people the age of my parents or grandparents, the age I shall also be sooner than I know. And however lame or clunky or overlong the message might be sometimes, you see in their gratitude and appreciation the truth of those words from the old hymn, “I Love To Tell The Story:” that “those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.”
And they can pray with the Psalmist in today’s reading, from Psalm 119: “Teach me, Lord, the way of “your decrees, that I may follow it… to the end.” Or as you heard it in The Message version just now: “so I can stay the course,” even to my last dying breath. Or in the words of the hymn, “O Sacred Head:” “Lord make me thine forever, and lest I fainting be, Lord, let me never, ever, outlive my love for thee.” Which brings me to the first point of this message: That the Christian Education we are celebrating today is not just a program for kids and youth; it’s every Christian’s lifelong journey. Don’t let the fact that most of the Christian Education workers whom we are commissioning today are working with youth and children fool us into thinking that any of us ever really graduate from Christian Education. Not until our memorial service.
For we never know the true nature of any journey until we reach the end of it. In our case, the end of the journey will be a different worship service, around the throne of the Lamb with the angels and the throng beyond numbering from every tribe, tongue, nation and generation which John the Revelator saw and recorded in Revelation chapter 7. Until then, every Christian’s Education is still underway, because Christian Education is all about preparing us for a new heaven and earth, as worshipers with that throng around the throne of the Lamb. Christian Education is citizenship education, so that we won’t arrive among that throng around the throne and feel like strangers in paradise. There are still prayers to pray, Bible verses to study, ponder and memorize, classes to attend, small groups to join or lead, service and witness things to do, life experiences to undergo, life transitions to manage, challenges to overcome, spiritual gifts to discover and use, fruits of the Spirit to cultivate and grow, and, yes, even more sermons to hear, to prepare us for citizenship in that new heaven and earth, and to fit us for that throng around the throne.
Everything we do as Christians is part of our Christian Education curriculum. That means that this church, like every other church, then, does not only have a Christian Education ministry. Every church IS a Christian Education ministry.
So, handle Christian Education with care. Not like the time I went to a nursing home in Kansas, and the lesson was going to be on the Magnificat, the song that Mary, the mother of Jesus, composed and sang after the Angel Gabriel told her she would bear the Christ Child, the song or prayer or poem that begins with the words, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” I didn’t have any study guide to help me prepare, nor was I having any great ideas on what questions to ask. So I thought we might start by listening to a classical music setting of Mary’s Magnificat, in Latin, which no one there could understand. Half a minute into the piece, someone spoke up and said, “This ain’t any kind of Bible study!”
Woops. She was right, I had to admit. It might make a very good music appreciation session. But it was billed as a Bible study. That’s what she wanted, that’s what she came for, with an aide wheeling her down a long hallway, and that’s what she deserved. So I apologized, stopped the music, and haltingly, awkwardly, got the reading and discussion going of Mary’s Magnificat. And I found that I didn’t have to worry as much as I had about having any meaningful kind of Bible study session. The Holy Spirit was our very present partner and guide, and through the few who did speak up and reply, the riches of their life journeys came out. For those who didn’t speak out, or could not, again, I could sense the peace and comfort they were experiencing just from gathering with other believers and hearing the Bible.
Which brings me to the second thing I hope we never forget about Christian Education: that it is also and always Bible education. That’s what all the laws, commands, decrees, precepts and promises in today’s Psalm reading are about: the accumulated record of God’s work and God’s Word that is our Bible. The Psalm itself is composed and structured as an aide to Bible reading, in the original Hebrew. Each of the sections of seven verses is organized around the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each verse in each section begins with a word that starts with that particular letter. Hebrew-speaking students would learn from that Psalm how to read the rest of the Old Testament in Hebrew. They’d also learn why.
Even if and when a Christian Education class is not specifically a Bible-study class, when it focuses on topics like racism, environmental stewardship or relationships, even if our classes and studies and books and discussions bring in valuable resources like science, social studies, history and experience, as they should, they need to be biblically based and biblically informed if they are to be called “Christian Education.” Or we need to use them in such a way that the Bible informs our perspective on them, and our application of them, if they are to serve the purposes of Christian Education. Beware of the temptation, by contrast, to drift from a Biblical perspective of the world and its issues, to a worldly and issue-driven perspective of the Bible. For the Bible is our unique treasure to contribute to all of life. Sure, the discoveries, experiences and insights of those other domains and disciplines must illuminate our study of the Bible. But let also the Bible interpret our use of those discoveries, insights and experiences.
Now to many of us it may sound drop-dead obvious to say that Christian Education is Biblical Education. But we can’t take that for granted anymore, not in an age of growing biblical illiteracy. A recent Barna Group survey of American churches found that less than half of self-identified church-going Christian adults can name all four Gospels in the Bible, or name more than five of the Ten Commandments correctly, that more than half believe that there’s a Bible verse that says, “God helps those who help themselves,” and even that many respondents identified Joan of Arc as Noah’s wife. And frankly, many people today are embarrassed by an ancient collection of ancient writings that include detailed purity codes and regulations about animal sacrifices, which challenge our liberty to amass unbridled wealth and to seek any pleasure we want. If we’re not sure how all the parts and pieces of the Bible’s sixty-six books and two testaments fit together, we might throw up our hands and say, “Forget it!”
Those codes and those seemingly dour, doom-saying prophets of the Bible, and the sorrowful Psalms certainly don’t fit with today’s modern and post-modern mindset. But things change, while God and his Word are timeless. Give us a few decades and our grandchildren may turn out to be just as embarrassed by our modern and post-modern mindset as we seem to be about worldviews of the Middle Ages or the 19th Century. If church history has taught me anything, it’s that every generation is tempted to pitch all or parts of the Bible for the sake of greater freedom and less scandal to the world, or to add traditions and regulations onto the Bible in order to make it seem more appealing and relevant, but only to find ourselves in greater bondage, and all the more powerless and irrelevant.
The Bible is not always easy nor automatic to interpret or apply. It does not reveal its treasures to shallow, fatuous and mere casual curiosity. That’s why we need each other to help interpret the Bible. Not only our fellow Christians within any congregation, but fellow Christians from other churches, from other centuries, generations, countries and cultures. While we struggle together to understand, interpret and apply the Bible, let the Bible interpret and challenge us. I love what St. Augustine said about the scriptures in his spiritual autobiography, The Confessions: “We have not come across any other books so destructive of pride, so destructive of ‘the enemy and the defender’ who resists your reconciliation by defending his sins. I have not known, Lord, I have not met with other utterances so pure, which so persuasively move me to confession, make my neck bow to your yoke, and bring me to offer a free worship.” St. Augustine, Confessions
Those words bring us to the third and final point about Christian education: Christian Education is not just for our information but for our transformation. We often read the Bible as information and instructions about what God wants us to do for God. True enough, to a point. But these verses in Psalm 119 tell me much more about what God wants to do, and can do, for us. These verses are not commands from God to us; they are are prayers to God, for God to do what he desires and promises for us in his Word. The biggest question that Psalm 119 poses to us is not, Will we strive hard enough to do God’s will, but will we surrender enough and trust God enough to receive God’s will? Not just, will we follow Jesus, but will we also accept his grace? The grace that will not only pardon our sins, but which also empowers our discipleship?
For the final proof of the truthfulness and authority of God’s word and work throughout history is in our lives and our loves. That’s why we don’t have standardized tests with bubbles on paper that you fill in with a number two pencil after every unit of Christian Education. Our progress in Christian Education will be tested strenuously enough when we leave the Sunday School classroom or the Bible study group, maybe while we’re driving home and someone cuts us off in traffic, or when that junk ad for pornography arrives in our email. Again, I cannot say it any better than Bishop Aurelius Augustine of 4th Century North Africa: “Whoever seems to himself to have understood the Scriptures in such a way that he does not build up that double love of God and neighbor has not yet understood.” St. Augustine, Confessions
Again, Christian Education is not just for kids and youth: it’s our lifelong journey. Secondly, the curriculum of our Christian Education ministry is in the Bible. In effect, it is the Bible, no matter what subject we’re studying. Thirdly, the proof of our Christian Education is not just in the information we carry in our heads, but in the transformation of our lives, our loves, our actions and our attitudes. That means that Christian Education is not so much an obligation as it is an invitation, an invitation into transformation, such as that prayed for in Psalm 119. Christian Education is more than our ministry to each other; it is God’s gift to us.