Proverbs 1:7
Joshua 4:19-24
Deuteronomy 4:1
Exodus 4:10-12
Isaiah 28:10

I: — How important is our Sunday School? I know, it’s important that adult worship not be disrupted, and therefore younger people leave the sanctuary on Sunday mornings. But more profoundly, how important is the Sunday School itself? Surely one measure of how important it is is given by how deeply Sunday School events imprint themselves on someone’s mind and heart.

One hot Sunday in July when I was 7 or 8 years old there were so few of us youngsters that in place of our age-divided classes there was an open session conducted by one teacher. The lesson was simply a protracted children’s story. It had to do with mailing a letter through Canada Post (at that time, Royal Mail). We were told that the moment we dropped a letter into a letter-box vast resources were mobilized. The simple act of sending the simplest communication activated unseen myriads in ever so many places. Why, things hummed at the local post office, at a regional postal station, even at the airport where an airplane would soon be speeding to Zambia or Zimbabwe, only then to render operative ever so much there! The simple act of communicating shifted so much in the world as to leave the world altered ever after. I was only 7 or 8, but I was old enough to remember the point which the teacher made from the story: every time we prayed we called on resources vaster than anything we could imagine. Not only did we call on them, they were rendered operative, mobilized, so as to leave the world forever different. As often as we pray our praying is honoured and its fruitfulness guaranteed. As often as I pray now I think of the story — and find myself encouraged to pray again.

Some time later, at another open session, a woman introduced us to the ‘tater family. The ‘tater family consisted of potatoes which had had faces carved in them and had been dressed up. There were several members of the ‘tater family: spectator, dictator, prestidigitator, plus so many others. Spectator said much, did nothing, offered useless advice, helped no one. Dictator, nasty, was everywhere disruptive and destructive. Prestidigitator was a trickster, a phoney, deceiving people day after day. It took 30 minutes for us to meet all of the members of the ‘tater family. The teacher has been dead for several years now, but I have never forgotten her or what she brought to us.

During the season of Lent, when I was 9 or 10, the teacher told us of Good Friday, told us about the cross and what it meant. After the class I stayed behind to tell her that I now understood the provision that Jesus had made for me in the atonement. As a 9 year old I certainly didn’t use the words “provision” and “atonement”; of course I used the vocabulary of a 9 year old. Nevertheless, that particular Sunday has been seared into my mind and stamped on my heart forever.

A few years later I was walking down a Toronto street with two fellows who weren’t in my Sunday School class inasmuch as they were older than I. (I was 12, they 14.) Still, we were friends, and soon we had the idea of a contest among ourselves as to who could think of the most repulsive thing. What was the most revolting thing imaginable? I did my best but I lost. When Gordon Rumford brought forth the fruit of his fertile imagination we all agreed that Gordon was the winner. (I won’t tell you what his ultra-revolting idea was, since I want you to hear the rest of the sermon.) Gordon Rumford is currently the preacher at Erindale Bible Chapel, just south of us at Dundas and Mississauga Road. We get together frequently at Pastry Villa for coffee. Recently he told me that as a 14 year old he ran with a rough, rough crowd, several members of which went to prison. Gordon was tempted to fall in with them too in their assorted escapades, but couldn’t quite let himself do it, for as often as he was about to he asked himself, “How am I going to face Jack Shepherd”? (my father, and Gordon’s Sunday School teacher). Gordon tells me that the fellows in the Sunday School class (not to be confused with the crowd he ran with) ridiculed my father behind his back, played the occasional practical joke on him, were regularly rude, smart-alecky, obstreperous. My father’s response, Gordon tells me he will always remember, was endless kindness and affection and patience. “How am I going to face Jack Shepherd?” Gordon tells me that my dad’s unwearying kindness and affection and patience stayed him when nothing else would have. (I have asked Gordon to write my long-widowed mother, and he has.)

II: — I am aware that many people are fearful of teaching Sunday School. We say we are not born-teachers. We say we don’t know enough; the children are too smart; our biblical and theological resources are too slender; we can’t make the lessons sufficiently interesting for the children, and therefore won’t have their attention. All of this is little compared to the natural curiosity of children. The natural curiosity of children is the entry-point, the beachhead, from which we can move ahead in exposing children to the riches of our faith. Put differently, the natural curiosity of children is their invitation to us, an invitation to impart information, to be sure, but more profoundly an invitation to include them with us in our ventures in life and faith. The question the child asks us is the occasion of our inviting the child into that venture under God which discipleship is.

Before the Blue Jays came to Toronto the city had a professional team in the topmost level of the minor leagues. In those days players were not introduced one-by-one through the public address system. Instead, when the clock struck game-time the dugout exploded as nine men ran onto the field at the same instant. It was a moment of magic for me. The magic, however, was complicated by one perplexity. As soon as the Toronto catcher ran behind the plate he dragged his cleated shoe through the lime which marked out the catcher’s box and scuffed it until he had obliterated it — when the groundskeeper had painstakingly limed the perimeter of the catcher’s box only minutes earlier. I asked why and my father told me why. If an opposing baserunner attempted to steal a base and the catcher had to rifle the ball to the proper base; and if at that moment the pitcher inadvertently threw the ball into the dirt, the catcher didn’t want it coming up with lime on it, for then his grip on the ball would slip and he would throw it wildly.

Because children are naturally curious they are always inviting us into their lives and inviting themselves into ours. As they invite themselves into our lives they invite themselves into our apprehension of truth and life and way. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of himself as way, truth and life — in this order. Our Hebrew foreparents scarcely undervalued schooling children in the truth, scarcely undervalued schooling them in truth for the sake of life. At the same time they knew that such schooling unfolds most naturally and penetrates most thoroughly as youngsters are exposed to that way which the parents themselves are walking. As children see the way their parents endeavour to walk the children will ask questions concerning the truth and come to know the life.

Joshua is the leader of the Israelites as they move toward the promised land. Their deliverance at the Red Sea and their crossing of the Jordan are behind them. Joshua has brought with him 12 stones from the Jordan riverbed. He has the people set up the stones in a pattern that will intrigue children. Then Joshua tells the adults, “When your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’, tell them! Tell them about slavery in Egypt and deliverance at the Red Sea! Tell them about their parents’ resolve to cross the Jordan and never go back! Tell them of your resolve always to be moving ahead to the promised land!”

In the same way it is assumed that the peculiarities of the Passover celebration will be the occasion of a child’s natural curiosity as the child asks, “Why is this night different from all others?” And then the parents will have an entry-point for telling their children of the mighty acts of God.

I was riding in a car when a boy spotted a bird in the sky and asked, out of the blue, “How high does an eagle fly?” In the same way when children see what we use in worship and do in church life they will ask, “Why do we worship on Sundays? Why is the cross everywhere we turn? Why is there a candle on the communion table? Why does the minister wear a gown? Why do we always read the bible in church? Why is money received at worship?” The questions arise as children see us older people in our venture on the Way. The children’s curiosity invites the children themselves onto the Way with us. As they move onto the Way with us our schooling them in the Truth of the Way unfolds naturally and penetrates profoundly. The result is Life at the hands of him who is himself Way and Truth and Life.

I mentioned a minute ago that adults are often reluctant to teach Sunday School because they fear they are going to be “stumped”; lacking vast erudition, they feel they can do little beyond retelling bible stories.

But this is the most important thing we can do! Northrop Frye, the peerless scholar of English literature in Canada, insists that children should be told and retold the stories until the stories have sunk into the child indelibly and have become the interpretive key which they must have to unlock the riches of English literature, replete as it is with biblical allusions.

English literature? In Sunday School we have to do with something far more important than English literature; we have to do with life under God, in the world, at a particular point in history, for the sake of a creation which God loves ceaselessly. Our children have to be equipped for this. The old, old stories must sink into the child indelibly so as to become the interpretive key for life. You see, the old, old stories are never merely old. Stories which have to do with the human condition are rendered forever new as they are used of God to illumine our situation before him and his people and his creation. It doesn’t matter if the child doesn’t understand the story thoroughly right now. Nobody, whether child or adult, even octogenarian, understands the story “thoroughly” in the sense of understanding it exhaustively, since the story is inexhaustible. What matters is that the story become permanently part of the child’s mind and heart, for then the story will forever yield riches as it is pondered years later in different life-settings and perplexities.

This past summer I re-read the old story of Lot’s wife. She and her husband and others were fleeing Sodom, now in flames, when she looked back, according to the ancient legend, and became a pillar of salt. I had heard the story a hundred times ever since I was 3 years old. At one point I was satisfied with the most arbitrary understanding of God’s judgement: she had been told not to look back, she looked back anyway defiantly, she became frozen salt right there. As I grew older and understood what Sodom was all about I thought she had been attracted pruriently by the luridness which Sodom represented. And then during the summer as I read the story again I saw that there is nothing in the text to suggest that she was attracted by the luridness of Sodom. I thought about the thrust of biblical narrative as whole, thought of the surge forward of it all, realized that the God of history is always directing us ahead. Ahead, forward, onwards! We look ahead to that city whose maker and builder is God; we look ahead to that kingdom which cannot be shaken; we look ahead to the visible manifestation of him whose triumph is known now by faith. Lot’s wife looked back inasmuch as what was behind her possessed greater significance for her than what was in front of her; and such a mindset is fatal! We don’t look back! Never look back!

In my older age I have been nurtured endlessly by stories on which I was raised: Abraham and Isaac, the deranged fellow who ran around in the Gadarene hills and whom our Lord restored to his right mind (even as the townspeople objected!), the woman who unselfconsciously poured out on the feet of Jesus everything she had and was, the dying criminal whose eleventh hour desperation wrung from him a one-sentence prayer of repentance which rendered him a citizen of the kingdom.

When we feel we can do little more than tell the stories we should understand that this is the most important thing any of us will ever do.

If we are still fearful of becoming Sunday School teachers we should remember that we are not the only teacher in the classroom. Not only are we not the only teacher, we are not even the primary teacher. According to the book of Deuteronomy God sends Moses to be the teacher of Israel. At the same time that Moses is to be the teacher of Israel (without peer to this day), God says to the people, “Give heed…[to what]…I teach you”. When Moses complains, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent…I am slow of speech and of tongue”, God replies, “I will be with your mouth…”.

If we feel that the Sunday School enterprise appears to move ahead so very slowly, with little seeming to be taught and even less appearing to be learned, then the prophet Isaiah reassures us that the process is cumulative, and the accumulation is always underway even if we cannot measure it. Says Isaiah, “For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” It takes a long while to build up a coral reef in the ocean, but no one doubts the fact of coral reefs!

If we still feel under-equipped to teach Sunday School we must remember that everywhere in scripture the effectiveness of the teacher has much less to do with what the teacher knows than with who the teacher is. The apostle James makes this point most tellingly; so does Peter; so does Jude; so does Jesus himself. It is the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, not a postgraduate degree in theology. It is that respect and reverence for God and his living truth which the teacher quietly exudes, however little might be said; this is the beginning of wisdom for our children.

III: — I began the sermon with the question, “Does anything of lasting significance happen in Sunday School?”, and I said then that the answer is given by how deeply Sunday School events imprint themselves on someone’s mind and heart.

A confirmation class is a Sunday School class for adolescents. In 1932 Dietrich Bonhoeffer conducted a confirmation class for youngsters from the slums of north Berlin. Bonhoeffer himself had been born to the aristocracy. His family was well-to-do, socially prominent, cultured. His father was professor of neurology at Berlin University and chief of the hospital’s department of neurology. Germany of 1932 was in dreadful economic condition. Inflation galloped at 1000% per day. The economic collapse was matched by near-social chaos. Bonhoeffer himself was brilliant, having completed his doctorate by age 21. Now he was with a class of rowdy boys who were poor, ill-educated, and whose future was materially bleak. The first day Bonhoeffer appeared on the scene and walked up several flights of stairs to the classroom the boys pelted him with balled-up paper as they threw it down the stairwell at him. Later in class one boy took out his lunch and began eating his sandwich. Bonhoeffer said nothing, merely looked at him until he put his lunch away. Gradually, however, the boys came to cherish their teacher. In his spare time Bonhoeffer taught them English; weekends he took them to a cottage in the Harz mountains. One boy fell ill and was told that his leg would have to be amputated. When the youngster was hospitalized Bonhoeffer travelled across Berlin by streetcar three times per week in order to be with the boy during the latter’s difficult days.

1932 was 60 years ago. I like to think that somewhere in Germany today there is a 75 year old man whose life was rendered forever different because of his Sunday School teacher. More likely there was a 25 year old serviceman who died in North Africa or the North Atlantic and who died in the holy comfort of a gospel pressed upon him by his Sunday School teacher.

The boys in Bonhoeffer’s class were poorly educated and expressed themselves haltingly. The story I have just told you comes to us from one of the boys in the class, Richard Rother, who has written himself, “The gratitude I feel for having had such a [teacher] in our confirmation class makes me write down these recollections”.

Is it really important — Sunday School, that is? How important was it for Richard Rother?

F I N I S

Victor A. Shepherd
1993 September 12

1 John 1:6-13
Romans 8:14-16

I: — I remember so very many of them, the Sunday School teachers who are memorable just because they were of unspeakable help to me during my most formative years.

June Hocking was my teacher when I was 8 years old. As we approached Good Friday and Easter she explained to us 8-year olds what the cross was about. She told us it was God’s provision for us needy, needy people who were so very needy on account of our deep-dyed depravity and God’s just judgement. (Of course she didn’t use big words like “provision” and “depravity”; she knew the vocabulary of 8-year olds; because I don’t, I shall have to tell the story in my own words.) Then she asked those who grasped this, anything of this, to stand up if they wanted to own it for themselves. I stood up. She asked me specifically if I understood what any of this meant. I convinced her I did. Again in words suitable for little people she told me that my public declaration on that day was ratified in heaven eternally.

Soon afterward my family moved to another congregation. Now Catherine Heasman was my teacher. She was quiet, gentle, understanding. She knew I felt strange in my new church-home. She went out of her way, in her sensitivity, to defuse my apprehension.

When I was 10 or 11 my teacher was Dorothy Greenshields, an unmarried woman about 50 years old. One Sunday I became embroiled in a vehement argument with a classmate as to the correct spelling of an obscene word. Can you imagine it? Your beloved pastor arguing heatedly over the spelling of an obscenity! Miss Greenshields let the argument rage for a while, then told us we should talk about something else.

By the time I was 12 Gordon Fairbank was my teacher. Gordon was a graduate of the University of Toronto in Greek and Roman history. Gordon spent much of class time telling us that Greek and Roman history was the finest university program anyone could pursue. The weekly lesson always had much to do with the Roman background to the gospel-stories, and it was in Gordon’s class that I learned the word “Mesopotamia”, together with many other unusual words. One Sunday Gordon had to be in New Orleans (he worked for a travel agency) and so he sent along his fiancee, Jean, in his place. I thought she was the prettiest woman I had ever seen.

Grace Eby was another teacher: middleaged, reserved, anything but outgoing or hail-fellow-well-met. While she was much older than I, and often appeared to a live in a world that seemed older still, there was something about her that hooked my heart — for when I was 14 I discussed with her my new-born call to the ministry. Earnestly, haltingly, fearfully I discussed my unsuppressible vocation with her, and discussed it with her when I didn’t say anything to my parents. (In fact I was 22 years old before I breathed a word of it to anyone else.)

My last Sunday School teacher was Carlton Carter. He was a superintendent with the Scarborough Board of Education. He taught a class of 15-year olds. Every Sunday he brought so many books and reference materials to class you’d have thought he was doing Ph.D research.

II: — What was the point of all that my Sunday School teachers did on my behalf? What was the point of the diligence and faithfulness and affection that they exemplified? What is the point of Sunday School teaching now?

The point of it all was highlighted for me through a recent newspaper article. The article accompanied a photograph of Mafia gangsters in Hamilton carrying the casket of one of their fellow-thugs out of a church. Mr. Dominic Musitano had died. “Tears flow at funeral of mobster”, the headline read. Dominic Musitano had engineered the beating and killing of many people in the course of his underworld career (fellow-gangsters, I assume, who had been less than cooperative). He had the conscience of a cobra. At his funeral the clergyman said, “As a young child Dominic Musitano was brought to this church for baptism with holy water. It was then that he became an adopted son of God.”

No! He didn’t become an adopted child of God because he was baptized with holy water. And it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been baptized with unholy water. And it wouldn’t have made any difference of he hadn’t been baptized at all. According to scripture we become adopted sons and daughters of God through faith; only faith, always and everywhere faith. John writes in the fourth gospel, “To all who received him [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” To all who received him, who believed in his name (nature, presence, effectiveness).

Paul says more about adoption than any other New Testament writer. The apostle insists that while Jesus Christ is Son of God (uniquely) by nature, you and I become children of God by adoption into God’s family through faith. The point of Sunday School is the quickening of faith in youngsters. The point of Sunday School is the fostering of that faith by which they will come to first-hand experience of what Paul speaks of when he writes to the believers in Rome, “You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery that plunges you back into fear; you have received the spirit of sonship, of adoption. When we cry, `Abba! Father!’, it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

We sometimes hear it said that faith is caught, not taught. It’s a false dichotomy! Something has to be taught. The gospel has a precise content; youngsters must become acquainted with it. The gospel is truth; youngsters must learn to distinguish it from error, falsehood and illusion. The gospel is inseparable from him whose gospel it is; youngsters must grasp, therefore, how truths are related to Truth (i.e., how correct articulation of the gospel is related to the reality of living person, Jesus Christ.) “Faith is caught, not taught”? It’s a false dichotomy! Something has to be taught!

At the same time, something also has to be caught. If Sunday School concerns only what is taught, never what is caught, then Sunday School is simply an exercise in shuffling one’s mental furniture. To say that something has to be caught is to say that youngsters have to be infected. And the teacher, from a human standpoint, is the “infecter”.

Jesus speaks at length with a Samaritan woman, speaks with her alone. The woman in turn goes back to her village and tells the villagers all that Jesus Christ has come to be and to mean to her. A short while later several of the villagers come to faith in the master on the strength of the woman’s testimony. Then as faith grows in them and with it the assurance of faith, they tell her, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this indeed the Saviour of the world.”

What’s the point of Sunday School? — the fostering of faith, such faith as will find the youngster-turned-adult saying, “It is no longer because of your words, Sunday School teacher, that we believe; we now know, for ourselves, him whom we have trusted.”

III: — Yet more than faith is needed, and therefore more than faith is the purpose of Christian Education. A Christian mind is needed too. A Christian mind can’t be acquired overnight. It takes years to develop spiritual antennae that can discern critically what is going on in the world and whether the Christian should support or oppose, welcome or denounce, wait for further light or warn others loudly. It takes years to develop that critical sophistication without which victimization is inevitable.

During the daily update on the Bernardo trial this summer a newspaper columnist, commenting on the sexual adventures of Mr. Bernardo, poured scorn on a lawyer connected with the prosecution. The columnist spoke of this lawyer as slightly older than middleaged, gray-haired, someone who had no doubt married only once and who had had, no doubt, one sex-partner only. What would such a man understand of Mr. Bernardo and his proclivities? So that’s it! Someone who has been married only once and has had only one sex-partner (spouse) is a 14-carat “nerd”? There are several issues here that have to be assessed on the basis of a Christian understanding.

Daniel Johnson, the Quebec politician, was annoyed (again, during the summer) at the outrageous and fatuous pronouncements of Jacques Parizeau, premier of Quebec. “Who does Parizeau think he is?”, said Johnson, “an archbishop or something?” Are church leaders inherently outrageous and fatuous? Church leadership is to be patterned after the leadership/servanthood of Jesus Christ himself. He gives himself up to death even for those whose hearts are ice-cold and treacherous towards him. It takes diligence and patience to acquire a mind that thinks in Christian categories.

When our daughter Catherine returned from Hong Kong during July she told us she had had a terrific argument with her Chinese boyfriend. The argument concerned China’s practice of packaging human fetuses (10 to a package) and selling them for food. The Chinese people add ginger to the fetuses, mix them with pork, and eat them. Catherine’s boyfriend defended the practice, explaining that in a nation of 1.2 billion people anything that can be eaten must be eaten — or else people aren’t going to eat. The Chinese, he insisted, don’t have the luxury of fastidiousness.

Catherine told us she replied to her boyfriend, “The line has to be drawn somewhere, and your people don’t know where to draw it.” (I was surprised at Catherine’s vehemence, since I didn’t think she was particularly eager to draw lines.)

Once again there are several issues here: abortion, cannibalism, and the matter of what (who) is going to be eaten next. Will a corpse be eaten next, provided it didn’t die from disease but was rather a traffic accident victim?

The story Catherine related to us had already been sent to North America by means of UPI, the international wire service that sends news items around the world. Not one North American newspaper picked up the story from the UPI wire; not one! A Christian Publication, First Things, did pick it up and print it. And therefore I was able to read more about this abhorrent development. Dr. Qin, a physician in Shenzhen, said she herself had eaten 100 fetuses in the last six months. Said Dr. Qin, “We don’t carry out abortions just to eat fetuses, [but they would be] wasted if not eaten.”

Not one North American newspaper wrote up the story handed to it by the UPI wire service. At both the Ottawa Summer School of Theology and McMaster University Divinity College I have lectured students — and illustrated my lectures profusely — that the manner in which the media handle news has more than a taint of propaganda. In both institutions students have looked upon me as an extremist. Discernment is needed if we are going to identify the distortions and assess the nature of the distortions that the media foist on us every day.

If the purpose of Sunday School is to foster faith, it must be understood that the faith so fostered includes the foundations of that Christian mind which adults must acquire.

IV: — Tell me: do you think I am possessed of faith in Jesus Christ? However slight or weak or sin-riddled my faith might be, do you think it is nonetheless genuine? And the faith that possesses me: has it issued in a Christian understanding beyond the kindergarten level? If so, then my Sunday School teachers are to be honoured and thanked.

Where are my teachers now?

Misses Dorothy Greenshields and Grace Eby are enjoying that reward which Jesus has promised to faithful servants.

June Hocking is the assistant minister at Knox United Church, Calgary. I didn’t know she was there until I spoke at Knox Church one weekend last October. During the question and answer period after my first address she stood up and asked, “Do you know who it is?” Did she think I was ever going to forget the person who first acquainted me with what St.Paul calls “the word of the cross”?

Catherine Heasman is the secretary in the chaplain’s office at Scarborough Grace Hospital. As often as I have reason to phone the chaplain’s office there I speak with her and thank her again.

Carlton Carter has long since retired from the Scarborough Board of Education. With his remarkable administrative abilities he has volunteered himself to his congregation as unsalaried church-administrator. It’s important that I tell him what he meant to me when I was 14. His three adult offspring worship nowhere themselves and make no profession of faith whatsoever. I have heard him ask, “Where did I fail?” He needs to hear from me that he hasn’t failed.

This leaves Gordon and Jean Fairbank. My little book, Making Sense of Christian Faith, is dedicated to them. The inscription reads, “To Jean and Gordon Fairbank, because they were there.” When I was 19 several developments precipitated me into a dark valley that was near-hideous and that lasted longer than I ever thought it would. Jean and Gordon kept me going, one fumbling foot in front of the other, until I emerged on the other side. They stood with me at the edge of the abyss, and what I owe them I shall never repay.

Still, I do what I can. Two or three years ago Jean was waiting alone, at night, for a train in the Rosedale subway station, when she was “swarmed” and assaulted by a band of hooligans. She was badly “unhinged” by the incident. I visited her several times afterwards, lending her whatever comfort I could. Last April her husband asked me if I would serve on the board of trustees of an institution related to the University of Manitoba. I said “yes”. (Don’t worry, it involves only one, two-day trip to Winnipeg each year.) Of course I agreed to help Gordon. Street-wise people are fond of saying, “What goes around, comes around.”

When I am on my deathbed and there is little breath in me, I shall nonetheless summon what little breath I have and pronounce “Blessed!” those men and women who were my Sunday School teachers and without whom I should today be who knows where, and be who knows what.

Victor A. Shepherd
September 1995

Sunday School Teachers’ Dedication, 1996

1 Samuel 3:1-10
Romans 5:1-5

I have never looked upon the Sunday School as babysitting. I have never regarded Sunday School as a means of keeping adult worship free from distracting sights and sounds. On the contrary I know that Jesus Christ can surge over and forge himself within the youngest hearts and minds. For this reason I pray for our Sunday School teachers every day. After all, what can be more important than having a youngster awakened to God by God himself as the boy Samuel was three millennia ago? (I Samuel 3:1-10) I long to see our Sunday School children “arrive at real maturity — that measure of development which is meant by`the fullness of Christ’.” (Eph. 4:13 JBP) One aspect of such “real maturity” is to know the love of God. I want our children to have first-hand acquaintance with the God whose nature is love. (I John 4:8) I want our children to find themselves startled and awed and overwhelmed at the love God has for them, for others, for the entire world. I want them to come to know, together with the maturest saint, that the tidal waves of love that wash over them repeatedly are but a ripple in the seas of love that will remain inexhaustible eternally. Through our Sunday School I want our children to know — and keep on knowing — the love for them that streams from the heart of him whose love is undiminishing and undeflectible.

I: — First of all I want our children to know that God so loved the world; so loved the world that he gave himself for it in his Son; gave himself without hesitation, without calculation, without qualification — just gave himself — gave himself up, for us all. (John 3:16)

To know that God loves the world is to know that God loves those who don’t love him; don’t love him at all; hate him, in fact. Everywhere in the writings of the apostle John “the world” consists of the sum total of men and women who are hostile to God; and not merely hostile to God individually, but united in a semi-conscious conspiracy to resist him and mock him and repel him. And this is what God loves with unrelenting constancy and consistency. In other words, God loves to death what you and I would long since have given up loving out of frustration and anger, given up loving for reasons that make perfect sense.

The history of humankind is the history of our repudiating that which is our sole good: God. The history of humankind is the history of our preferring our fatal sickness of selfism to him and his healing love for us. Adam and Eve — whose names mean “humankind” and “mother of the living” (respectively) are awash in blessing upon blessing; unalloyed blessing, unconditional blessing, with nothing to mar their blessedness or even put it at risk. What do they do? (What do we all do?) They cast aspersion on the goodness of God and endeavour to prove themselves God’s equal. Yet despite this outrageous effrontery God refuses to quit on humankind, so incomprehensible is his love.

Noah, together with his family, is delivered from the flood, in the old, old story, in order that God might begin anew the fulfilment of his heart’s desire: a holy people who are the faithful covenant- partners of the holy God. And what does Noah do upon his deliverance at the hand of God’s measureless mercy? He gets drunk! The irreverence, the ingratitude, the culpable stupidity of his response is mind-boggling.

Undiscouraged in his quest of a holy people for himself, God liberates his people from degrading slavery, brings them through the Red Sea, and acquaints them with his will (their blessing!) at Sinai. Or at least he tries to acquaint them with his will, tries to press his blessing upon them. But they will have none of it, preferring to caper around a hunk of metal oblivious to their self-induced spiritual infantilism.

The prophet Hosea swears he hears God say of these people of perverse heart, “Lo-ammi, lo-ruchamah!”: “Not my people, not pitied.” Then Hosea knows he has heard God say in even clearer, louder voice, “Ruchamah, ammi!”: “Pitied — loved — and therefore my people still.”

I trust no one here this morning misunderstands the unrelenting intransigence of the human heart, its wilful blindness and deafness, its irrational folly. Remember, when the apostle John speaks of “the world” he means the sum total of unbelieving men and women hardened in their defiance of God and their disobedience to his will for them and their disdain for his gospel. So unimaginably senseless is the depraved heart of humankind that it will even despise the gospel, its one and only cure!

In our age of ascendant secularism we nod knowingly and say that secularized people are indifferent to the gospel. They are indifferent, to be sure, but such indifference is never mere indifference. In the face of a love that pleads and entreats, such indifference is nothing less than defiance. We must never agree with those who cavalierly suggest that secularized people are ignorant of the truth and righteousness of God. They are ignorant, to be sure, but such ignorance is never mere ignorance. Their ignorance of the truth arises from a suppression of the truth; their ignorance of God’s righteousness arises from a repudiation of righteousness. Truth is suppressed until it can no longer be discerned; righteousness is repudiated until it can no longer be recognized. Indifference to and ignorance of a gospel that is wrung out of the Father’s heart and displayed in the Son’s anguish; this is not mere indifference and ignorance. This is nothing less than contempt.

And in the face of it all God stands loving. Nothing can get him to stop. His love cascades ceaselessly; his love also infiltrates undetectably. Both are needed — both the torrent and the infiltration — if the calcified human heart is to be softened and wooed and won. Hearts are softened and wooed and won. The most stunning miracle of all is that people do come to faith and obedience and love of him.

The most stunning miracle that a child in our Sunday School will ever witness is the miracle of her own coming to faith; the most astounding development to amaze any of us, young or old, is the beginning of one’s own heart to beat in time with the heart of God. Nothing less than the love of God — both its “Niagaroid” torrent and its undetectable infiltration — is needed to remove us from the category of “the world”. It is as God loves “the world” that we are released from “the world” as we are made children of God by faith.

I want our Sunday School children to know that love of God which brings them and others to faith.

II: — Even as God’s love for us does this it continues to do something more: it continues to pulsate within us, with the result that we are little by little transformed in the midst of life’s unavoidable pain. Paul begins his first paragraph in Romans 5 (Rom.5:1-5) with the ringing reminder that we are justified by faith; that is, we are set right with God by clinging to the crucified one. Paul ends the paragraph by affirming emphatically that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit; has been poured into us and now fills us up. What happens in the middle of the paragraph between the ringing reminder and the emphatic affirmation? Suffering; suffering is what happens in between.

Because of our righted relationship with God, because God’s love fills us to the brim, our sufferings are never bare sufferings. Our sufferings, undeniably difficult, don’t render us desolate. Our sufferings are now the occasion of our endurance, and endurance of character, and character of hope (hope being our confidence that it all ends in our being bathed in the splendour of God’s glory).

When Paul speaks of endurance he doesn’t mean that we hang on grimly by the skin of our teeth. “Endurance” is a military term borrowed from the Roman army. Soldiers exemplified endurance when (i) they remained steadfast, (ii) they remained steadfast just because their commanding officer had acquainted them with the purpose of the battle and its unavoidable suffering. The soldier could remain steadfast — could endure — just because he knew how crucial the struggle was.

When God’s love floods the heart of those who have been set right with God through faith, suffering produces endurance; i.e., suffering produces steadfastness in those who know why it is necessary to keep up the struggle. Such endurance produces character, maintains the apostle. The Greek word Paul uses for “character” is DOKIME; literally it means refinement. He has in mind the kind of refining that a smelter does. A smelter subjects metallic ore to intense heat and pressure. In this process of intense heat and pressure base elements, worthless elements, are purged away; what’s left is a precious metal that is both valuable and attractive. Refining is a proving process that results in what is proved being approved. We who are set right with God through faith and flooded now with God’s love; we know the ultimate outcome of our suffering, endurance and refining; the ultimate outcome is “hope” — being bathed in the splendour of God’s glory.

Before I leave this point I want to make sure we understand something crucial. When Paul speaks of God’s love flooding us he is speaking of experience: immediate, visceral, palpable experience. He is not speaking of an idea, the idea of God’s love. We always tend to reduce concrete spiritual realities to mere ideas: we unconsciously reduce God’s love to the idea of God’s love. Odd, isn’t it, but we never do this with our suffering; we never reduce pain to the idea of pain. We can’t reduce pain to the idea of pain just because our pain is too real! After all, what is more immediate, less deniable, than pain? Paul’s point is this: in Christians what is more immediate, less deniable, than God’s love? God’s love flooding us is as immediate, visceral, palpable as our pain is piercing us. As God’s love surges over our pain, suffering yields endurance, endurance character, and character the confidence that one day it will all be taken up in the splendour of God’s glory.

I want our Sunday School children to know this when they are 30 years old or 45 or 60 years old.

III: — Lastly, Paul prays that the hearts of the Christians in Thessalonica will be directed into God’s love (2 Thess. 3:5 NIV); farther into God’s love, deeper into God’s love. Is this possible? Are we not at this moment either “in” God’s love or not “in” his love? To be sure, either the love of God is the sphere, the atmosphere, the environment in which our lives unfold, says the apostle John, or else “the world” is the sphere, the atmosphere, the environment in which our lives unfold. Of course! Either we are united to Christ or we are not; either we are “in the right” with God through faith in his Son or we are “in the wrong”. Nevertheless, even as believers are “in” the love of God, we can always move farther into God’s love, go deeper into it. We can, we should, and Paul prays that we shall.

In 1964 I came to know that Maureen loved me. She loved me then. She loves me now. To say that she loved me in 1964 and loves me in 1996 is not to say that nothing has happened in 32 years. Each year has found me moving deeper — and deeper still — into her love. Just when I think she loves me so much she couldn’t love me more, I discover that there are reservoirs of love in her that I never guessed and before which I can only marvel — and love her yet more myself.

Several months ago I did something that did not cover me in glory. In fact I was ashamed. It haunted me. I said nothing. Maureen knew something was wrong but didn’t guess what. Finally I told her. Now I know Maureen well. (Remember, we have loved each other since 1964.) Because I know her well, and because of my shameful misadventure, I expected her to react in any combination of the following: she would be hurt, she would be angry, she would think ill of me. Contrary to everything I expected from the woman I already knew so well she said only, “It took a lot of courage for you to tell me what you have.” It was obvious to me that as well as I knew her, knew her love for me, I didn’t know her and her love as thoroughly as I thought I did. More to the point, as deeply as I had lived in her love for years, that moment found me moving into her love yet again, deeper into a love that was plainly greater than anything I had known to date.

So it is with our life in God. As much of his love as we have known to date; as deeply in his love as we are at this moment, it is still the apostle’s prayer that our hearts be directed into, farther into, God’s love for us. So vast is God’s love for us that we can only plunge deeper into it, and deeper still, until we are astounded at it, then lost in it, thence to find ourselves, with Charles Wesley, “lost in wonder, love and praise.”

I don’t expect our Sunday School children to grasp now all that I have said in this sermon. I merely want the door to be opened for them, the seeds to be sown, the truth declared, the child’s first steps encouraged. Then when they are older and they are acquainted with the intransigence of “the world” plus the anguish of their own suffering and above all the fathomless depths of God; when they are older they will newly apprehend every day the love wherewith God loves them, loves an unbelieving world, and loves his own people yet deeper — always deeper — into himself.

Victor A. Shepherd
September 1996