In the beginning

I started reading the Bible when I was 30. I started going to church regularly when I was 33. I got baptized when I was 35. I'm glad I lived that long. I'm 42 now, and it's been a better life since those events than before.

Another happy change in this regard has been my becoming acquainted with and then getting trained to become a storyteller in "Children's Worship and Wonder," a worship service for 3-year-olds through third-graders. It's a fairly regimented program of worship based on two fantastic books, Young Children and Worship by Sonja M. Stewart and Jerome Berryman and Following Jesus by Stewart. It typically runs parallel with and in a separate room from a church's primary, adults-oriented worship service. There's a call to worship, a story based on a story from the Bible, a period in which the kids work individually to think through their understanding and response to the story, a reading of the Bible verses on which the story was based, what is effectively a pastoral prayer, an offering, a shared feast, some singing and a sort of benediction.

As the stories are told, they are also depicted with sand, felt and unpainted, wooden representations of people, buildings, trees and other story elements. The stories are to be told slowly, with plenty of air between sentences. The storyteller is to maintain a consistent, unremarkable tone of voice, and he or she is to keep eyes focused on the story depiction--avoiding eye contact and direct engagement of the children. The children are asked to remain quiet and still and to keep their eyes cast on the story depiction, as well. There are not to be questions or comments during the storytelling itself; there is a period for this back and forth in a "wondering" time following the telling.

It may not be for everyone, but I have been surprised to see for just how many kids and adults it is. I, for one, find it to be a pretty-darned dependably powerful and moving worship experience that strengthens my belief in the reality of Jesus's ministry and my own sense of call to follow Him.

This coming Sunday's story, "A New Teaching," is based on Mark 1:21-27. For my money, no one has done a better job of getting a book going than did the author of Mark. Chapter 1 just rocks out of the gate. Of course, none of these is at all a new thought, but here are some things that I wonder about when I read Mark 1:

-- It's interesting that Verse 2 introduces a stage-setting quote by saying, "It is written Isaiah." To me, that seems like the readers were expected to already respect the book of Isaiah. One of the things that I bump into in business writing with clients is that they'll want to couch some argument they're about to make by introducing it with a phrase along the lines of, "According to Somebody, ..." I almost never know who Somebody is, and so the question I have for my client is whether her or his intended audience will. The author of Mark presumably had reason to believe that the readers would care that something had been written in Isaiah.

-- I have a tendency to not think of John as a real person. But he was. And he was out there on the outskirts of Jerusalem, wearing clothes that he might have made from stuff like camel's hair and animal hide and perhaps living off of bugs and honey he had fished from hives. That's a hard life. And even though he had an amazingly strong commitment to his calling and that calling was validated by "the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem" (5), he appears to never lose sight of the fact that he is not the hero of the story. There's a lot to admire about John.

-- "At once," Verse 18 says, Simon and Andrew left their fishing nets and answered Jesus's call. At once. There's a lot to admire about Simon and Andrew.

-- "News about Him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee," Verse 28 says. And even after dark--maybe when folks would normally be watching TV or getting themselves to bed, maybe even on a school night--"the whole town gathered at the door" (33) to receive His healing. Jesus was different, and people knew it and responded immediately.

-- Here's where things get especially treacherous for me. "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed." That's Verse 35. What we get in Mark after that is that there were still plenty of people right there in Capernaum who wanted something that Jesus could give them. And then we get that Jesus instead moved on to other parts of Galilee "'so I can preach there also,'" Verse 38 says, "'That is why I have come.'" I have a tendency to look at what was going on before that prayer in 35 and look at what was going on after that prayer in 35 and think I know the nature of Jesus's prayer and logic. But I don't. It's an incredibly heady, intoxicating feeling to muse on the mind of Jesus. For me, though, it almost always gets me going on what I then come to discern is a wrong, sluggish track.

-- In Verse 40, I admire the humility of the man with leprosy coming to Jesus "on his knees," begging for healing. Jesus gives it--but strongly warns the man, "'See that you don't tell this to anyone'" (44). The man does, however, talk freely about the miracle. This is understandable, and what we have in Mark about the man seems to indicate to me that his exuberance was born of a genuine and thankful zeal to evangelize Jesus's power. That said, it was disobedient--and the man's disobedience was significant enough to alter (even limit?) Jesus's ministry. Verse 45 says, "Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places." The takeaways for me are that at least some folks who know they have been saved by Jesus will still disobey and that even understandable, well-intentioned disobedience can be a significant problem.