Sunday School 101

The Beginners’ Sunday School class was down the stairs from the church foyer and just to the right, hidden behind a door that swung open at the top while remaining securely latched at the bottom, and it was superintended by Mrs. Teare.  There were toys in Mrs. Teare’s classroom that I looked forward to playing with each Sunday morning.  The floor, covered in faux stone linoleum tile, seemed slightly pitched so that, when it was time to clean up, my classmates and I pretended to march uphill and down putting away toys.  We sat down at tables for snack time and ate Nilla wafers and drank juice out of Dixie cups.  Then it was time for a Bible story.

One day, Mrs. Teare gave us gum.

Gum seemed an unholy, sacrilegious thing to have handed out in my little Beginner Sunday School class.  Sunday School took place in church which was God’s house.  In God’s house, I wore my best dresses and my Sunday shoes and carried my red-letter King James Bible.  I did not run in God’s house, and most certainly would never, ever have considered chewing gum.

I’m sure I heard many, many Bible stories in my little Beginner classroom, but I can still picture Mrs. Teare telling the one about Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.  I remember because of the gum.  I can still see Mrs. Teare acting as though she had been bitten by a writhing, fiery serpent, doomed to fall dead in the dusty wilderness.  She then lifted her eyes as the Israelites had been told to do, to gaze upon the snake Moses had lifted on a pole so that she, like the Israelites, could be healed.

Then she handed us the gum and told us we could chew it.  Hardly daring to believe her, we removed the gum from its silvery wrappers and popped the sticks into our mouths.  After a precious few minutes of illicit gum chewing in God’s house, Mrs. Teare told us to take the gum out of our mouths and stick it on a piece of cardstock.  We were told to use it to make a picture of the serpent on the pole from the Bible lesson.

I’m pretty sure that right after Sunday School, I scraped the gum off the card and stuck it back in my mouth.

I graduated from Mrs. Teare’s class and moved to the one next door for the primary grades.  There, too, I heard many, many Bible stories.  I ate snacks and made crafts out of Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners and spray painted macaroni and cotton balls which were to be glued onto silhouettes of sheep.  Faithful godly women told story after story using cut-out figures on flannel graph boards.  I remember wanting to have a flannel graph board of my very own and going home and trying to make flannel graph people out of scraps of pieces of felt.

The story I remember most didn’t need flannel graph figures.  It was the story of Jesus calming the stormy sea.

I remember because we were told to move aside the tiny, painted wooden chairs which were lined up neatly in rows for us to sit on quietly, my classmates and me, in our Sunday-best dresses and shoes.  Instead, we were told to sit on a large braided rug on the floor.  We were told to sit on the floor in our Sunday clothes during Sunday School which took place in God’s house.

One of the teachers sat at the front of the room telling the story.  Another stood at the back of the room flashing the lights off and on as we imagined the thunder and lightning.  We were told to lean over, first to our left and then to our right, as we pitched about in our braided rug boat on the waves crashing all around us.  Then the teacher at the front of the room stood and, in a commanding voice, spoke the words of Jesus,

Peace.  Be still.

And it was.

                                                                                                                                     

I remember with fondness the crafts, the snacks, the flannel graph figures, the Sunday dresses and Sunday shoes.  I remember the sweet stories and the dear saints who told them.  They were simple stories told in simple ways.

God heals.  Jesus calms the storm.

Now that I am grown and my children are grown, I read new stories.  Words flicker across my computer screen and I read stories of healing from all sorts of addiction, disease, abuse, depression.  For some, the healing is complete.  Others continue to gaze upon the One who is high and lifted up, waiting in hope.

I read stories of those who are tossed about in the storms of life.  Violent winds blow, threatening marriages, families, jobs, relationships, sanity.  These stories bear witness to the reality that Jesus continues to speak,

Peace.  Be still.

And the wind and the waves obey His voice.

God heals.  Jesus calms the storm.  Simple stories I’ve known since being handed through the half-open door of Mrs. Teare’s Sunday school classroom.

But am only now beginning to believe.

Telling my story with emily and others at Imperfect Prose: