It started out as a joke. Really. When I visit family and friends I like to drive their children to school in the morning. That windshield time without their parents has always been fruitful. After driving Joey one morning a few years ago when he was in 6th grade, he joked that I should teach one of his classes the next day. I took him up on the offer, watched that night with amusement his verbal processing of deciding which of his teachers he wanted to have replaced for the day, and knew he had me when he declared with a grin belying his age: “Religion”. Joey’s father, a former teacher, currently a school administrator, and a life-long friend of mine was somewhere between stunned and bewildered (but admittedly not at all surprised by my antics) when the arrangements were all made without any discussion between the teacher and me on the lesson for the day. (PLEASE CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE TO CONTINUE READING.)
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“I am an alien who just arrived in my spaceship. On the way over here I noticed the same name on a lot of big, beautiful buildings – tell me, who is this ‘Jesus’ guy?” was how I started. The responses came quickly from these 12 year olds in a Christian school: “Son of God… Son of Man… Emmanuel… King of the Jews… The Savior”… and so it continued for a few minutes. They exhausted their list long after the one in my own head. I then asked: “If He has so many names, which did He most like to be called?” I told them I would just walk up and down the aisles listening until I heard it. No need to raise your hands, just call it out. It started slowly, but once they felt the freedom to just call out, their responses picked up, both in volume and number. Minutes passed and sensing their growing frustration, I finally heard it –‘teacher’ (Rabbi in Hebrew). “OK”, I said, “if this guy is who you say and He most liked to be called ‘teacher’, He must have had some great lesson that He wanted to teach us – what was that lesson”? I wrote feverishly on the board as all the learned catechism poured out, and it didn’t take long at all for the ‘love’ lessons to flow: “love your neighbor… love your enemy as your friend… love one another as I have loved you… and the greatest of these is love”. We were doing great until I asked these pre-teens to tell me what it meant to love in this way. They squirmed and fidgeted, eyes darting away from mine as I challenged them while they struggled to grasp and then explain this concept in front of their peers. Catching, on, they shared some real examples from their own lives. We all took a deep breath. Finally, at the end of this fascinating discussion, here is what was left on the blackboard in response to that final question – the lesson Jesus most wanted to teach us: Listen with an open mind, It’s just that simple, and it’s just that difficult. Through this class these students came to recognize that Christ lived this perfectly, and that this was his greatest lesson.
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