Sunshine and Seeing Through

Palm Sunday.

Bright, warm sun that lures the 4th and 5th grade leaders outside, small groups trailing out in front of us as we give them tasks to illustrate the idea of perseverance. One group is playing football, another trying to hit a target with a frisbee. My girls are scattered on a hillside, taking it in turns to run barefoot circles around the gym.

We move to the edge of the property, and they twirl through the long row of trees. Faster. Slower. Stopping to pull sharp things out of tender feet.

Palm Sunday, we take the time to play, even those of us who are all misplaced limbs and awkward timing. Because, I never have learned the art of making round things travel in the direction that I intend, but that doesn't seem to stop the kids. Not today, at least.

The 6th grade girls pull out an inflatable ball for volleyball before middle school starts. 8th grade boys the octagon. 6th grade boys for monkey in the middle after service. High schoolers for frisbee and four square before youth group.

And, perhaps, these are our palm branches, or mine, at least, this spring time laughter the cloaks that we throw under the feet of the approaching king.

A king on a colt.

All misplaced limbs and awkward, excited gait. The disciples must have shuffled through the branches, high stepping over sharp edges and kicking at things, now and again, the way that high schoolers so often do. Let themselves ignore the nagging hints of wrongness, because, today was a day for celebration.

And, I see them in these kids. In the one who throws things at me: tennis ball, chalk, wadded up bits of paper that ping off my cheek as we settle into breakout groups; see the teenaged disciples walking, playful along the road; wonder if, when the first one fell asleep in the garden, the others thought of throwing something at him to wake him up, or if it was the sort of slow falling where rooftop talks fade into blackness and then sunrise.

In the group that freezes in hesitation when someone suggests that we break apart and the halting conversation that follows, as if we're learning to walk with a missing limb; see how the two on the road to Emmaus could have missed it, been so caught up in their own heads, their own grief, that they didn't see their rabbi walking beside them.

In the way that we start to head towards the corner we've been pointed to, but they veer back to the red dot, the indicative rug where we always meet; see the disciples returned to their nets, back to the known and the familiar.

We're talking about the concept of Trinity tonight. They're more comfortable with the Holy Spirit than with this distinction between Son and Father, and I make a note to talk more about Jesus. More about Jesus than Paul. More about Jesus than the nuances of trinitarian heresy. More about Jesus to these ones who make me think so much of His very first followers.

Calvary Night

High schoolers.

Bonfires. Banana splits. Bodies every direction that you turn.

There are either 130 of them here or 140, a tightly packed crowd of heads that we count, instinctively and with varying levels of success, as if there might be a point in the night where we were asked to give a reckoning. A moment where the Divine might step down and require a roster, a list of what we've done with these precious lives.

It's a children's ministry habit, not a high school one, this always knowing how many you are responsible for. This counting of bodies and souls before you even realize that you are counting. Because, not all of these are even "ours." We've combined with another youth group tonight. But, we count them anyways.

So long as they are here, they are ours.

So long as their faces echo in our prayers; so long as their voices fill this space with truth and laughter and music; so long as they are here to pour out and be poured into, they are ours.

Some of it is simple Grace, boys still young enough to come at me with a lowered shoulder or a gentle kick to the back of the knee, to laughingly acknowledge that I could no longer take them down -- but that it no longer seems to matter. The physicality of draping a scarf around a freshman neck while we talk. You are seen. You are known. Even in the midst of all of this. Let me use the solidness of our beings to prove it.

The smell of 120 shoes thrown into the middle of the room for a mixer that might be suited to better ventilated spaces. AC that can't quite seem to kick in and decorations that flutter loudly when the kids prop open the doors for air flow.

Ice cream. Wood smoke. Soccer balls and name tags.

Not because of the things themselves, but because of the sense memories that follow them, the grounding-ness of food and warmth and wind and sunshine. The relationships that they make a space for, the layers of reality.

Because, Divinity hovers over and in this place, Grace and Love and Mercy that would comfort these kids. See them as messengers of healing and wholeness. See them healed and whole.

So, we come, months into this process, this transition, messy and beautiful and hurting. "Calvary Night" we have been calling it, after the name of the church that has joined us. Calvary Night. Calvary. Where the Christ came, messy and beautiful and hurting. Where Divinity hovered in and over and, somehow, incomprehensibly, turned its back, so that we might be healed.

Calvary night. It would have been Good Friday. Mourning marked by a broken, impatient hope. Sorrow interrupted by Sabbath.

And, I wonder if we aren't so much the same.

We hold the match to these Sabbath lights that flicker in the parking lot. Offer food, community, music, tradition. And, underneath the consistency of it, some of our kids grieve.

They carry some of the same questions that the first disciples must have, the 'why's' and the 'how long's' and the 'what next's.' A milder set of the unmet expectations that must have sent Jesus' young followers reeling, knocked them from their feet as the world around them consumed an all too familiar meal of bread and wine.

These kids are excited by the possibility of what is going on here, awed by it, overwhelmed by it. Using the novelty of it to propel themselves through. But, a little lost in this sea of unfamiliar bodies. A little befuddled by what they have created.

It washes over their faces in honest moments. The loneliness of being one in a crowd. The uncertainty when we split up small groups not-quite-the-way-they-expected without warning them, because we didn't know ourselves. The wishing and the reminders of what isn't.

"It was nice," they tell us afterwards, child after child repeating the same words that must have been shared over post-youth group frozen yogurt, "having a youth pastor. Even if he wan't ours."

Because, we're still searching. Five and a half months later, we're still looking for someone to meet the sky high list of expectations we have for the one who will be allowed to shepherd our kids. Searching. Waiting. Watching to see God move.

Because, all of Jerusalem had been in an uproar about This Man, and, surely, surely as they lit small flames in the darkness, broke bread, and sang ancient prayers. Surely there were echoes fresh in their minds.
"...neither does one light a candle and hide it under a basket..."
"...collect the pieces that are left over..."
"...beware the leaven of the pharisees..."
"...do this in remembrance of me..."
"...this, then, is how you should pray..."

"What are you doing, God?" These teenaged disciples must have wanted to scream it at the sky. Wild flutters of hope mixed with desperate grief. "What have you done?"

And, yet.

Sunday came.

Resurrection.

God be praised.

Sunday changes the story, lights a fire that changes the world. Sunday brings joy and healing and disbelief. Triumph and victory like the world has never seen. Sunday makes Friday worth it. But, Sunday also gives us reason to remember.

Our Calvary night is on a Sunday, echoes of this older story, deep in the center of Lent, pulled between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Already. Not yet.

So, they hurt. But, we also celebrate.

In the Middle

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace."

My 5th graders stand on a hillside in bright sunshine and shout the words, playing with an app that superimposes their playful squeals with special effects - rock slides and flying cars. And, I am caught in the tension of it.

These beautiful words, and the realities that they are echoing, unknowing.

Missile strikes that are as unreal to them as the giant spider effect or the USS Enterprise flying across the screen. A conflict in Syria that has been going on since they were six or seven years old. South Sudan. The Gaza Strip. Refugees returning to rebuild in the Ukraine. Ferguson. The list goes on and on and on.

And, yet, we are here, running, laughing, playing, building these beautiful words into them, so that, when they start to know, they will have something to stand under, something to hold on to.

"In this world you will have trouble. But, take heart! I have overcome the world."
John 16:33

Because, if these words were true in the midst of Jesus' upper room discourse: occupied Palestine, Roman brutality, a soon to be crucified Christ, soon to be scattered disciples, then, they are certainly true now.

True for our 5th graders who are growing up into a messy world. True for the 8th graders, about to feel themselves scattered to new schools and new challenges. True for our high schoolers, far more aware of current events, walking forwards without a youth pastor even as we find ourselves with more and more children.

There is peace here.

In the midst of this tension.

Middle schoolers who sit, enthralled, watching stories of people who were unafraid to step out and do big things - small things, with great faith. We talk about it a little in breakout groups, and I bite my tongue, try not to push them too hard, try to let this be a thing that they come up with on their own. Because, they already have ideas. They simply need a space to let them grow.

Because, these 8th graders are firmly caught in a tension of their own, deciding, each week, what skin they are going to try on for the day. Chameleon like, testing to see what feels safest for this transition up to high school. This group or that group? Familiar or new? And, of course, whether or not to let any of these strangely zealous adults along for the ride.

So, we dance.

In the midst of the phone borrowing and video taking and game playing happening around us, we dance with emotion and expectation and responsibility. Steps that I half remember from my own 8th grade year. Movements that the mama bear in me wishes I could shield them from, and others that I wish I could capture, let them hold on to.

Remember this, guys. Remember that brief moment of certainty, of belonging, of knowing that the God of the universe thinks you enough.

Remember that you are never alone.

Because, I would gather them all up if I thought it would help, these 8th graders and these juniors who are so alike. Climb with them to the Top of the World - climb, not drive, because their bodies need to move to listen. Tip their heads back to the stars. And, tell them again and again.

You. Are. Not. Alone.

Not when you have my full attention in the hallway, and not when our small group is too big but you give it your best anyways. When church is long over and the emotions come bigger than you ever wanted to handle. When there are people everywhere and you think that you're excited about it, but you're also pretty sure of the frustration that must have led that man's friends to dig a hole in the roof. Even then, you are not alone.

And, you are loved.

More than the words that catch in my throat would ever be able to express. You are loved with an infinite, restless, unceasing Love. You are precious. Treasured. Held in the palm of one who is captivated by the details of your being.

The God big enough to contain an ever expanding universe loves you with a love that never ends.

We love you with as much of that echo as we can fit into our finite souls.

You are never alone.

Our course, I'm pretty sure that there is a chapter in the leaders' handbook about NOT totally freaking kids out. So, we'll go with icebreaker questions and high fives instead and let them go out star tripping after youth group on their own. Because, even when we aren't very good at saying it, holy cow, do we ever love these kids.

It is Lent. The tension of waiting. Waiting for the beautiful. The Resurrection. Knowing that the Passion and the Crucifixion come first.

Searching for Peace in the midst of a world full of troubles.

"But, take heart! I have overcome the world."