Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The Gospel as a Fairy Tale

I apologize in advance for this crazy spacing.. I can't figure out how to fix it...
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.

No comments:

Post a Comment