What 6th Graders Taught Me About September 11 – and taking Jesus seriously

They taught me to wrestle with the hard sayings of Jesus.

September 11 will roll around again in a couple of days.  In 2001, the year of the attacks, I was teaching 6^th grade Sunday School.  It was part of a spiritual formation program that encouraged discussion and real encounters with Jesus, where we expected the Holy Spirit to speak deep truth to the children.  I’d been walking with some of these sixth graders since they were 4 or 5 years old.
 
We had started a unit on the maxims of Jesus – sayings of Jesus that help us know how to live.  We had about 20 of them that were part of the unit and we’d talk about a few of them each week.  Sayings such as:

• This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.
• No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.
• I tell you, do not forgive seven times but seventy times seven times.
• Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
• With the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more.
• Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
• Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
• Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’.
• If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
• But I tell you:  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

We had stacks of laminated copies of each of them and every week, at the end of Sunday school, each child would choose one to take home.  It might be one we had discussed that morning or another one that caught their attention.  The idea was to pay particular attention to trying to live by it that week.  On any given week there would be a wide variety of maxims chosen to be the take-home item.
 
In the midst of this, September 11 happened.  And suddenly, these sixth graders were wrestling with “But I tell you:  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  The discussion was real and raw and honest. 

• “But what Osama bin Laden did wasn’t okay.” 
• “If we love him, doesn’t that seem like we’re saying it was okay.” 
• “Does Jesus really mean this?” 
• “Did stuff like this happen when Jesus was alive on earth?” 
• “Is it okay to pray that something bad happens to Osama bin Laden?” 
• “Is it okay to pray that he gets punished?” 
• “Does loving him mean we have to like him, or what he did?” 
• “Can you love someone if you are angry at them?”

 
I sat in awe as I watched them make a commitment to do what Jesus said.  To figure out what that looked like in the aftermath of September 11.  At the end of the morning, every child chose that maxim as the one to take home.  On one level, they didn’t like it.  But on another, they didn’t want to run away from a hard saying.  It would have been easy to choose a different one – but they didn’t. 
 
Their decision to choose the hard thing, to not look for an “out”, challenged me then and it challenges me now. 
 
How seriously do I take the sayings of Jesus, the ones that tell me to give away my things, to pray for my enemies, to forgive over and over?  Do I face up to His words and wrestle with them until I can do it?  Or do I choose an easier saying, an easier path?
 
I know where I want to be.  I want to take Jesus seriously, even when it is hard.  I want to be like those sixth graders.