3rd and 4th graders are awesome

My 3rd and 4th grade Sunday school students are officially some of my favorite people. They jockey for more verses to read aloud and they ask ferociously indignant questions when they don’t understand something, whether or not it’s related to the actual reading. Sunday we read about Jesus’s baptism:

“Wait—this book is called LUKE!! Why are we reading about JOHN?!?!”
Me: “Different Johns.”
“Oh! That makes sense!!”
(Later) “What happened with Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection? Where’s that?”
Me (after pointing out which chapters in Luke tell that part of the story): “Don’t worry—we’ll spend LOTS of time on that later.”
“Oh good!...But WHY was Jesus crucified?!?”
Me: “…..You mean, why did people crucify him, or why did God—“
“The first one!”
“Well, that’s a long story [tells the long story]”
“That WAS really long!”

They’re all brilliant, and even though they’ve all grown up in the church, so much of the story is still weird and wonderful and confusing to them. We never get to the activities on the handouts because there’s so much to talk about. I’m really ok with that—yesterday the suggested activity involved flicking water at each other as part of the baptism discussion, and I’m thinking that it’s 5° degrees outside and the only reasonable explanation for someone thinking a children’s lesson in January should involve playing with water is that the author is Australian.

So yes, I sometimes play fast and loose with the lessons. When I saw the reading for today was Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 with a big gap in the middle, I decided that darn it, we were going to read the whole thing! I’m a bit of a completionist, and I think it’s important that kids be introduced to what kind of a person Jesus submitted himself to be baptized to—a loudmouth in the middle of the desert who wasn’t afraid to call out the powerful, but of whom the powerful were so afraid that they locked him up and eventually executed him. That matters. So we read that part too, even though it wasn’t going to be the focus of our discussion. And it was initially a weird digression, and they were confused about why Luke stuck that piece of the story there in the middle, but when my student asked (entirely out of the blue) why Jesus was crucified, having that context helped explain why powerful people might have it out for people like John the Baptist and Jesus (no one likes being called a “white-washed sepulcher” or a “brood of vipers”).

I take these stories for granted—I’ve been reading and hearing them for so long (for years I was even taken midterms on them!) that they’ve seeped into my subconscious. But then my students ask questions about something that I always assumed was obvious and I realize it wasn’t really obvious at all—they know individual stories, but they haven’t seen the connections between them. And by having to fill in those gaps I’m reminded of pieces of the story that I barely think about anymore, and suddenly realize how important they are.

Basically, everyone should spend more time talking with 3rd and 4th graders. Especially about stuff that matters.

My kids still complain that I don’t bring them candy every Sunday, but not as much as they used to, and I’ve promised them a LOT of candy if they can memorize the books of the Old and New Testament. Honestly I would be happy with them just being able to identify which book goes in which testament, but I won’t tell them that because they’re smart cookies and I’m sure they can do it.