Man Chops Off His Arm
Ever notice Mark has no infancy narrative? The magi visit Jesus in Matthew, but not in Luke. Only John begins at the beginning? Communities hear and retell stories differently, each informed by experience, place and context. One Sunday morning last year I was reminded of this when preparing teach 5th grade. The story was Mark 9:42-50 where Jesus tells his disciples what to do about appendages, metaphorically speaking, when they cause you to stumble. Cut them off! The reading ends with salt, “Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”
I looked at the lesson plan. What was it about? Salt. I thought about the 5th graders. Salt? Would salt would capture their attention? Probably not. My bet was on the body parts. So, that Sunday we made our own lesson plan. Rather, the plan unfolded as our class gathered, read, reflected and shared. What was going to capture their attention that day? It was up to them and Holy Spirit. Such an approach might seem daunting, but a sound framework makes it simpler. This is what we did that day, and for the rest of the year:
We set the table: A youth places a piece of felt with the color of the liturgical season, sets a candle on it and lights the candle, noting that Jesus is with us this day.This liturgical action sets our gathering space as sacred. We check in with one another: If you had to describe last week as a color, what would it be and why? You can also ask questions about how was school? What person this past week made you really happy? What can you celebrate about last week? What was difficult? Community is about relationship and caring about one another’s lives. We say prayers: We do our prayers using a ball of string in a way that shows we are all connected by weaving. We begin with asking–for whom or what do you pray this week? The first person holds the end of the string and throws the ball of string to someone else who then names her prayer. This goes on until the last person offers his prayer. And then we reverse the process, this time, giving thanks. At the end we raise the web up over our heads and say,And the people said “Amen!” With the “amen” we lower our arms and let the prayers go. We read the Bible: We read the lessons for the day, taking turns by paragraph and sometimes reading the story more than once. We read from the Message because the NRSV has far too many unfamiliar words. Everybody has his or her own Bible and we look up the passage together. We respond: We generally map out what happened in the story on newsprint–who what, when, where? What’s the most exciting thing that happens? If the story has enough of a story line, we often act it out, each choosing a character for the speaking parts or the narrator for the telling parts. If two people want the same character we might do it twice. After the retelling we gather and ask the characters what they thought happened and what their character was thinking or feeling the story. We then talk about what God might be telling us in the story. Another option is to write a front-page of a newspaper. (They really got into this one!) We divide newsprint into three parts–a side column (the opinion piece), a top article that tells the story and a bottom article that talks about what the passage means that answers the “so what” question. We usually come up with a headline together and then take turns writing one sentence at a time. We also leave room for hand-drawn “photos.”
There are many other options: We also did a serial telling of the story on mural paper, dividing it into screen shots. On Passion Sunday we painted the far right side of a piece of mural paper black for good Friday and put words and pictures from the part of the story we read on the left. We’ve also responded with crafts. You might write a list of possible activities for which you have materials on index cards and let them decide. We end with prayer: Give thanks for your time together and blow out the candle. Every faith community hears the story differently and every community has its own story to tell. On that Sunday morning when reading Mark, the newspaper headline read, “Man chops off his arm!” The sidebar photo showed half an arm. And we talked about what gets in the way of doing what’s right. We had a blast all year, and they remembered the stories.
Jenifer Gamber speaks nationally about Faith formation, is a volunteer Christian educator at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and author of Call on Me: A Prayer Book for Young People. She also blogs at MyFaithMyLife.org .