Necessary Roughness

Devotions. Memories of parents reading to their kids. Some Lutheran grandparents and great-grandparents still have their copy of Little Visits with God that they might dust off for the kids come age 3 or 4. Most devotions I’ve seen regardless of denomination have a nice moral story and that verse at the end that ties in tangentially to the story.

Even outside the Ten Commandments, the Bible is full of nice moralisms that can be used to drive home stories of “oops, Jimmy did a bad thing” but can fail to mention Christ. Given the attention span of a 10-year-old or less, this may be prime time for an article about forgiveness rather than just more Law. We don’t wait until the end of an evening to give a 3-year-old the Law and tell the child they shouldn’t have colored on the kitchen table after dinner.

Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us in John 5:39, “…(the Scriptures) bear witness about Me”. NIV and KJV say “testify about Me.” From this we gather then that Scripture is more than a Book of Virtues but saving Gospel, and we should be able to pull some Gospel out of these verses and share it with our kids. Moral stories are not enough; Judaism has its Torah, after all.

Earlier tonight I asked two of our younger Lutheran collared personnel, Pastor Borghardt and Vicar Lehmann, about some quick how-to in this regard.

Pastor Borghardt’s answer went something like (cleaned up from an AIM conversation):

ME: Is there a standard method by which pastors unpack verses that don’t mention Christ directly, to still get to Him?

PASTOR BORGHARDT: Well, these are the words which “testify of Him”. So the question is, “What does this verse confess of Jesus?”

ME: Ok. An example of a verse I saw at the end of a devotion was Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

BORGHARDT: Some verses are Law. Love the Lord with all your heart… is both.

ME: The Law is easily seen (in the “You shall”). The Gospel is that Christ did that, right?

BORGHARDT: The Lord does the Law too. Fully.

ME: Right. Anything else?

BORGHARDT: What does this verse confess of the Cross of Christ? How does it deliver Christ? Then, you are on your way to the Gospel.

The vicar’s answer was much shorter:

ME: I was wondering, when you write a sermon on a text, according to John 5:39, how do you get Christ out of a particular passage? Is there a method?

VICAR LEHMANN: Every passage is always Christ speaking to His Church. Where is Israel? Where is Yahweh? What is Yahweh saying to Israel?

Thank you Pastor, and Vicar, for your comments.

Deuteronomy 6:5 was identified easily as Law. John 3:16 is easily identified as Gospel; one can’t avoid Christ any more than a semi can avoid a deer on the highway: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Yet there is Law in there, too, that some people do perish, that there is eternal death for the nonbeliever. Of course, one might have a hard time squeezing Law and Gospel out of John 11:35, “Jesus wept”; a little context may be necessary.

Adults may have the attention span but not the time; kids have the time but not the attention. When we get the chance to inform kids as to what is going on, our time is precious. When we get to the verse that is worth memorizing, it may be worth not leaving the story as a moral tale but instead getting both Law and Gospel out of the verse. It’s a task worthy of anyone leading devotions.