We're taking a different word Jesus spoke about every week. On Sunday mornings, we talk about what was said, the meaning, the definition, what it looks like in our lives and what it's looked like in other people's lives. The kids are given a verse to memorize, and a story to read over the course of the week with some questions to answer. These are meant to get the kids thinking about the lesson over a longer period of time, to get the kids reading their bibles, and to get the kids and their families engaged in what's going on. The Wednesday night crew gets double the teaching... We take the same basic lesson from Sunday morning, but this time we apply it to the story that was the take home for the week... We use games, drama, movie clips, food, whatever it takes to reinforce the point. For those of you who want to get to this on your own, this week we studied Matthew 22:34-40, and the take home is the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
In this lesson, we come across the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They are, like always, fighting! We had to understand, of course, why these two groups of people seem to always be at odds with each other. Well, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were both brands of the Jewish faith, but they were vastly different. The Sadducees believed in only the written word of God... This means that anything that was spoken ORALLY to the people by God was out of the Sadducees mindset... Think about some of these things... The kids got a few of them! One of them said "Don't kill Isaac!" which I thought was pretty funny and also very telling at the same time--what if Abraham had been a Sadducee!? Regardless, we tossed around a few ideas (Noah and the ark, Abraham and Isaac, etc, etc) before we finally hit on the big one. What about those 10 commandments we're supposed to be following? Those were definitely spoken to Moses! We talked about the Sadducees and how they lived a pretty sad life (pnemonic device! sad life, saducees!) because they didn't believe all of what God had for them. And they lived their lives in a mentality of "well if I think it should be right then it is!" which wasn't good. So those were the Sadducees, and they were always fighting with our friends the Pharisees. You see, the Pharisees took everything very literal. You know, so when the bible says "an eye for an eye", they literally thought you should pluck out someone else's eye if yours was plucked out (so they couldn't see, pnemonic device. Pharisees, couldn't see!)... So they took everything very, very seriously. So these two groups obviously didn't have much in common... But that's enough background for now.
So, the Pharisees come up to Jesus because they've heard that Jesus has basically zip-lipped the Sadducees. And hey, most of the time when someone zip-lips our enemies, we tend to think that person is on our side. So, you know. I suppose they did. Then all of a sudden, this lawyer-Pharisee (what a combination, huh?) asks Jesus, "hey, Jesus, old buddy, old pal, what's the greatest commandment?" (and you know these Pharisees are going to do so much with this info!) and Jesus basically says "Love." I mean, he says more than that. He says "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul." But really, it all boils down to love.
Now, I've been reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you do. I also recommend that you find a good time where you can be alone when you read it, and that you really take what it says to heart. I'm only on chapter five, and already I've been challenged. The book is all about how we don't love Jesus correctly. But I won't spoil it for you. Basically, the point is that before this lesson I was already thinking about this whole concept of loving Jesus. Really loving him. Full on with everything I've got. So this lesson was just another kick in the rear. But, back to the actual lesson.
We split the kids into groups after our super awesome discussion with them. In one group, we had the "mind" group. In another, the "heart". And in another, the "soul". We gave each group four markers, a piece of paper, and three to four brains (aka children). Each group had two tasks. The first was to draw a picture that answered this question: "How can I love Jesus with my whole ______?" (mind group filled in mind, soul group filled in soul, etc). Then, after they had done that, they were supposed to come up with a fun dance move to do whenever they heard the phrase "with all my ____" (mind, heart, soul). We gave them a few minutes for this activity.
We played the song "Love the Lord" by Lincoln Brewster, and had the kids jump up and do their dance as quick as possible when they heard their phrase. This was chaotic and super fun! By the end of the song, most of the kids knew the bible verse. AND if they didn't, we had moves for them to learn in the order of the bible verse. I'm interested to see how many of them retained it. We'll review it the next Sunday.
After this, each group shared their answers to the first question. We got some great answers.
- Heart : loving my neighbors, helping my friends, feeding hungry people, being like Jesus
- Soul : praising Jesus, worshiping, being happy with Jesus, praying
- Mind : thinking about Jesus, praying, reading my bible, doing my best in school
