Sunday School
A Lent break lets me do something a little different.
I’m still on a break through Lent (at least) from writing about film. There will be an episode of We’re Watching Here posting in the coming days, though. And, as Lent allows for breaks on Sundays, I want to use that to post random thoughts or experiment with different types of writing.
This weekend, my wife and I attended an arts retreat at our church on the topic of lament. I was given some time to write about the prompt “When I was a child…” Oddly enough, as I’d gone into the retreat, a picture that had been on my mind had been of the Sunday School classroom in the church I went to when I was a child. Using that as a starting point, I wrote the following, and I want to share it with you. Some of it is pulled directly from my experience; some of it incorporates things I head from others. It’s a lament, a screed and yet I was surprised how wistful it turned out. I hope you enjoy it.
Sunday School
When we were children, my parents dropped me at Sunday School every week. We met in a small cinder block room at the back of the church. The paint was peeling, it smelled faintly of mildew, and there was a draft from windows in need of replacing. The linoleum tiles were scuffed and cracked, the painted murals of Noah and his happy animals faded after parading for generations of classes. Even as a kid, the tables and chairs designed for preschoolers were too tiny for my first grade butt.
But it felt alive and warm, even in the doldrums of winter. This is where I was introduced to friendship, family and community. We broke bread over animal crackers and Dixie cups of water. Here, a construction paper Moses was rescued from the reeds and a flannelgraph Jesus multiplied bread and fish. Smiling from glossy photographs arranged around a giant map were the faces of missionaries – families, couples and intrepid singles who would occasionally visit to regale us with tales of serving the Lord and meeting needs in Mexico, Israel and the Ukraine. Sometimes, we sat crisscross-applesauce on a circle atop fraying, stained carpet while a woman old enough to have been an acquaintance of Elijah told us God loved us and gave his son as a precious gift. It was following one of these carpet talks that I went home, crept upstairs, laid my head on my pillow and asked Jesus to come into my heart while my parents were downstairs on the couch, unaware that a moment of spiritual import was happening a floor above.
It’s been decades since I’ve been back in that room. Flannelgraph has given way to pictureless theological tomes, and I’ve long since traded Oreos and apple juice for bread and wine. The warm carpet conversations gave way to TED Talks in dark auditoriums, and songs with intricate motions turned into concerts with worship popstars in the spotlight.
My faith is older, some would say more mature. Is it better? Am I? Are we?
Many of the same boys with whom I shared animal crackers and juice boxes refuse to break bread with me because of how I vote. The guys who could quote Bible verses and win “sword drills” now regurgitate Fox News talking points, and the friends who wept with me cheer when CEOs are shot in the street. The missionaries who told me Jesus loved the little children of the world cheer as we send bombs to kill Israeli and Palestinian kids, stand idle as we abandon the people they led to Christ in the Ukraine, and ship the hungry and suffering back to countries where they will starve and die. They have no room for a smiling flannelgraph Jesus who said to love our enemies and show compassion to the marginalized because they prefer saviors who don’t bleed and gods who don’t die. I’ve had friends kicked out of their parents’ homes because of who they love. Kind men and women who taught me the chorus “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight” now rant about DEI and illegals devouring cats and dogs on Facebook.
We’ve forgotten this little room, where we learned nothing more than that God made us and loved us. We’ve complicated simple faith, put conditions on unconditional love, and treat the Sermon on the Mount like a suggestion from the town drunk. We’ve traded cracked linoleum and scuffed carpet for coffee shops, arena lighting and celebrity pastors, and never stopped to ask whether this was what Jesus meant when he warned about gaining the world and losing our souls. We’ve traded the Word for cable news, fellowship for an algorithm, and love of our enemies for power over the marginalized. When we outgrew this room, did we also outgrow our faith?
I forgot to mention the centerpiece of this room: an old, wooden upright piano. Even when I was a kid, it was chipped and splintered in places. But it could make music. The simple chords of “Jesus Loves Me” plunked out on them was more moving to me than anything I’d hear from professional musicians later in life. We sang these simple songs of simple faith around a simple instrument. It didn’t sound professional, but I wonder if it was a more joyful noise than any worship team a megachurch could produce. We thought nothing of how we could use our faith to get one over on another person, or leverage it to secure power. We sang because it was what we believed, and we had no reason to doubt or twist it.
Where is that piano today? Maybe it’s in a church basement under an old paint-splattered sheet. Maybe it’s a piece of furniture in someone’s home. But maybe it’s still in that little room. Maybe we could find our way back to it, down the hall and up the stairs from where our polished Sunday praise is performed. It likely has a coat of dust and the white keys have probably yellowed with time. It’s probably out of tune; that’s okay, so are we. But what I wouldn’t give to sit in there, cross-legged on the carpet, and sing with my friends like when we were children.