4/10/09 Proper 22

Theme: Children are best!

Bible reading

Mark chapter 10 verses 13-16

Preparation

You need two flashcards (examples below)

If you have a copy of one of the famous paintings of Jesus with children, or an appropriate picture in a Bible story book you may like to use that here.

The aim of the introductory activity is to show that sometimes things are made far more complicated than they need to be. Older pupils will realise what you have done if they have worked on writing step-by-step instructions.

Introduction

Tell the children that you are starting the assembly with a competition. You want two teams of three people (one of whom must be a good reader). The two teams will both be given a task, and the ones to do it fastest win.

Each team has one reader and two runners. The reader reads out the instructions and the runners carry them out. The runners all go at the same time.

One group has the flashcard:

• Go and find your best friend and bring them back here

The second group has the flashcard:

• Look around the room and see where your best friend is sitting. Make your way over to your best friend as quickly as you can. Tell them that they have to come with you to the front of the hall. Lead them back up to me.

If this works properly then the first team should arrive back first! Discuss why.

Both teams were doing exactly the same thing, but it was far more complicated for the second team because they had to listen to a much longer set of instructions first. Sometimes people make things in life very complicated when they could be very simple.

The Message

In a way this reminds us of one of the really well known stories about Jesus. When you read about Jesus you find that he loves everyone and wants to talk with everyone. The important men of Jesus’ time found this very difficult to understand – they just could not believe that he wanted to spend time with women or poor people, or people who were unpopular like tax collectors, when he could be spending time with them instead.

There is one particular story where parents were bringing their children to Jesus. They wanted him to bless them and pray for them. Jesus’ followers pushed the children away because they felt it was far more important that Jesus spent time with the adults rather than being distracted by the children. The story says that Jesus got angry at this, and told them that it was very important that the children were allowed to come to him. He also told the adults that they should be more like the children, because the children trusted and believed in Jesus without making things all complicated, or worrying about things like religious rules, or who was the most important. This is why you often see pictures of Jesus surrounded by children.

So the readers for the two teams at the beginning of the assembly were rather like the adults and the children in the story. The reader for the fast team had the simple instructions, and s/he was like the children who went straight to what is important. The reader for the slower team had more complicated instructions, so this made him/her like the adults who wanted to know exactly how everything worked and spent much longer getting to the important bit.

Perhaps this means that all the adults in the churches should spend time listening to what the children think is important, now wouldn’t that be interesting?

Prayer

Pray for your local church(es) and the place of children in your church community.