I used the following story as an
illustration in one of my final reflective essays over a book called Telling the Truth by Frederick Buechner.
Buechner's kind of a crazy old liberal, but the gist of His book makes
sense to me. The book talks about the Gospel as tragedy, comedy, and a
fairy tale. The tragedy is our horrendous sinfulness. The comedy is
that we are still forgiven, loved, cherished, and bled for by God's own Son.
Finally, the fairy tale is the Gospel's story of God's
"extraordinary" love that makes "extraordinary things happen to
[sinners] just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen."
That's what the small commentaries about Buechner, tragedy, comedy, and
fairy tale are about.
So, check out this conversation
that went down in Sunday School this past Sunday. I had just told the kids the story of
Cleopas and his friend and their walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus. As
Cleopas and his friend are walking, they are discussing how sad they are that Jesus' body is missing
from the tomb. The women have told them that He is alive, but no one has
seen Jesus, so Cleopas and his friend still believe His body has been stolen or
something. Jesus joins the friends while walking, but they do not
recognize Him. When they reach Emmaus, Jesus breaks bread for communion
and reveals Himself to the men. As suddenly as they realize who He is,
Jesus disappears. Cleopas and his friend journey back to Jerusalem to
tell the 11 disciples that Jesus is alive. At the end of the story, they
are rejoicing and happy because
JESUS IS ALIVE!
This is beautiful. The next
generation is going to be spreading the Gospel like a pandemic.
“Kids, should we be happy or sad
about this story?”
“Sad!”
“Why?”
“Because Jesus died.” Wow.
I never get anything but “GOD!” on the first response.
Okay, so I’ll go in that
direction. “That’s
right. Why did Jesus have to die?”
“Sins!” Where are these
answers coming from? We talked about that two weeks ago, and these kids
rarely remember a word from the memory verses we work on each week. Whatever
the case, I decided to keep prodding answers out of these kids.
“Right, Dakota! And whose sins?”
“God’s!” Oops.
There’s that “GOD!” answer as usual. “No, Jackson, ours!” The
female twin just corrected her fraternal brother’s answer. I am so
impressed right now!
“That’s right, guys, we should be
sad because Jesus had to die because of ours sins, because we are naughty and
don’t listen to our parents, hit our brothers and sisters, steal candy when Mom
and Dad aren’t looking, and don’t listen to our Sunday school teachers.
We should be very sad that Jesus had to die because we are naughty. But
can we be happy, or do we always have to be sad?”
“Happy!” This was a chorus of shouts from
all of the kids except the boy who was chewing on his toes in the corner.
I had sent him to the ‘timeout’ chair in the corner before this conversation
began.
“Right! We can be
happy! Do you know why?” Here
comes Buechner’s “comedy” (7).
“Because Jesus is alive!
Because of the big stone!” We
acted out the stone being rolled away from the tomb in a previous week.
That’s what she meant by that. But still, wow.
“Yes! Because Jesus died and now
lives!”
I went on to describe how Jesus
died on the cross because we were supposed to die for our own sins and was
buried in the tomb, and then came to life again. Because of our tragedy,
Jesus lived out the comedy. I explained to the kids that because Jesus
lived after dying for our sins, we no longer had to die for our sins.
This is the truth of Gospel. By mere coincidence, no, by God’s great and
extraordinary means, I was able to share the Gospel story of tragedy, comedy,
and fairy tale with my students. The kids listened, were
attentive, and learned what God was using me to teach them.
As a future teacher, this has
been the most exciting teaching moment of my entire pre-service
experience. I do not know that any student teaching or future teaching
experience will be able to top it. An entire room of preschoolers
understood the Gospel. As I explained more and got more excited, my
students got just as excited. Eventually, I was standing, bouncing,
and jumping next to the table they were seated at.
"Yes, kids. That's
right! We should be sad because we are sinful and Jesus had to die
because of that. But we can be happy, we can be SO happy (this is where I
started jumping) because Jesus is alive. And because of that, we can be
alive in Him!" I was trembling at this point and covered with
goosebumps at the beauty of the Gospel.
“Jesus is alive, Jesus is alive!”
They chanted and sang as they followed me upstairs to their parents after
Sunday school.
Cute, yes, but they understood
what this meant. They knew the tragedy of the Gospel. They
understood the comedy that “Jesus is alive,” and they knew that they could live
a fairy tale because of that. However, unlike fairy tales, this story is REAL.
So wonderful. So, so,
beautifully wonderful. Praise the Lord for His amazing faithfulness.
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