September 23, 2012 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The Exchange

K.C. Ptomey Jr.
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Psalm 84
Proverbs 31:10–31
Mark 9:30–37

Q. Who made you?
A. God
Q. What else did God make?
A. God made all things.
Q. Why did God make you and all things?
A. For God’s own glory.

The Children’s Catechism

Her name was Mrs. Dugger. I cannot for the life of me remember much about what she looked like or the sound of her voice. I want to say that she was short of stature and wore her snow-white hair in a bun on the back of her head, but I could be wrong about that. Anyway, Mrs. Dugger was my first grade Sunday school teacher, and at the time I thought she was older than God and I was afraid of her. I can remember sitting in a little wooden chair in a room in the First Presbyterian Church of Andalusia, Alabama, Mrs. Dugger hovering over me, as I tried to recite from memory the answers to the questions in the Catechism.

Q. Who made you?
A. God.
Q. What else did God make?
A. God made me and all things.
Q. Why did God make you and all things?
A. For God’s own glory.

That was a long time ago and my memory is hazy, but I believe there was a large chart on the wall and that we received little gold stars if we did our memory work well.

A catechism is simply a set of questions and answers based on some creed or confession of faith. A catechism is a tool for learning the basic beliefs and doctrines of a particular faith tradition. Mrs. Dugger thought it was important for kids to learn theChildren’s Catechism,because it was based on the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was for generations the basic theological standard of the Presbyterian church. And so she drilled us and drilled us and drilled us some more on the Catechism. There are a number of questions in that catechism. I can remember the answers to only three.

Yet now, sixty-four years later, I look back with great appreciation for those Sundays under Mrs. Dugger’s tutelage. It is obviously not because I retain much, if any, of the content she tried to impart but because of something else, something much more significant.

I think it had something to do with her passion for teaching basic Christian doctrine, her deep conviction that theology matters. I don’t remember much of the content that Mrs. Dugger sought to impart. But I am convinced that her passion for things theological contributed to my becoming a person with a lifelong passion for theology.

Mrs. Dugger planted the seed. And perhaps more significantly, she gave me herself—her love, her attention, her care, which nurtured and nourished the seed and enabled it to grow.

Alice Walker captures it perfectly.

. . . Well, there we stood
Three feet high
Heads bowed
Leaning into
Bosoms.

Now
I no longer recall
The Catechism
Or brood on the Genesis
Of life
No.

I ponder the exchange
Itself
And salvage mostly
The leaning.

(Alice Walker, “Sunday School circa 1950,” cited by Rick Spalding at the January 2000 Moveable Feast gathering)

It’s the “exchange itself” that made such an impact in my long-ago relationship with Mrs. Dugger. It’s that she cared about Christian beliefs and she cared about little fledgling first grade Christians. It’s that she was there and was engaged both by the Catechism and us. It shaped my soul.

Jesus is on a journey with his disciples. He is trying to teach them something, something important. He is headed to the cross. He is trying to help them understand what is about to happen to him and to them. But, Mark tells us, “they did not understand what he was saying.”

As they are on their way, their conversation makes it painfully obvious that they do not understand that he is going to give up his life and that he is calling them to do the same. He’s talking about sacrifice for the sake of God’s kingdom. They are arguing about which one of them is going to be greatest in the kingdom!

Twice he tries to explain to them, but they don’t get it. It is no wonder that Mark couches this section of his Gospel in a journey motif. They are on a journey. It is, metaphorically, a journey toward understanding and toward deeply committed discipleship. It is a long journey. They come slowly to understanding and even more slowly to loyalty and commitment. Remember, on the night before Jesus was crucified, Simon Peter denied even knowing him. At the cross, all the disciples fled. Following the resurrection they all hid in fear. Theirs was indeed a long journey to maturity as followers of Jesus.

What Mark’s journey narrative is about, then, is formation, the formation of disciples. It doesn’t happen in a blazing moment of insight. It is not an instant conversion experience. Jesus drills and drills and drills them. Still they don’t get it. All they can think about is what rewards he will give them, who’s going to be first in the kingdom of heaven.

So Jesus takes a child and puts her down in their midst. A child, who has no status, little or no value in that culture. A child who, being second only to slaves in the pecking order of the society, cannot give Jesus anything in return for his kindness to her. She has no honor to bestow on him. She cannot enhance his prestige or advance his cause. She cannot reward his attention. So he stoops down and gathers her into his arms. He puts her in their midst, encircled with his attention and love, and in that act, those self-seeking men come face-to-face with a love that seeks no reward. They are face-to-face with precisely the kind of lives to which he is calling them.

I think it must have been a stunning moment. It was not his words but his action that made the impact. To use Alice Walker’s turn of phrase, it was “the exchange” that made the difference. He cared about a child. He loved a child. He embraced a child. He shared himself with a child. It was an enacted parable, and it would shape their souls, turn them away from themselves and in the direction of discipleship. It wasn’t really what he said in that moment. It was how he related to that child and to every other person he met: a prostitute, a tax collector, a woman caught in adultery. It was how he related to them that made all the difference. It was the exchange.

Think about it. Isn’t it true that the people who most have influenced you, shaped you in profound ways, are not those whose words you remember but those who were a constant, caring, accepting, and inspiring presence in your life?

Not long ago the newspaper in my town carried a front-page article about a seventy-six-year old woman who volunteers in the public school system. A woman not unlike the dozens of you who this morning are being commissioned as Sunday school teachers. She is a friend to children. She cares about children. She sits with them, holds them, gives them a little attention. She said about her work something to this effect, “A person who is sincere and cares can make a difference in a child’s life.”

Indeed!

I thought about that woman when I saw in this morning’s bulletin the list of Sunday school staff and leaders, youth staff and youth leaders. And yes, I thought of Mrs. Dugger. I thought of her as well as I read about Chicago Lights Tutoring, your ministry of outreach in which almost 200 of your members and a couple of hundred others serve as tutors. I thought of the children and tutors who fill your building and will be accommodated in the new Gratz Center—people like Mrs. Dugger, who have concern and love for children. Such persons who care can make a difference, a significant difference.

When I think about the people in my own life—Mrs. Dugger, other Sunday school teachers, youth advisors, camp counselors, my parents, my mentors—I am filled with gratitude and with dread! I am grateful for those who by their very living had such a positive impact on me. But I shudder to think that it is not so much my words or our words as a Christian community but our lives that have the greatest impact on others. We are all, finally, teachers, even those of us who do not volunteer to teach a particular class or tutor a student; we are all teachers of Christianity, examples of discipleship, pedagogues individually in the way we live our lives and corporately in the way we live as a congregation—models of what it means to be committed disciples of Jesus as Lord and Savior. It’s our relationships with others; it’s the exchange.

I no longer recall
The Catechism
. . .

I ponder the exchange
Itself

The human interaction, the compassion, the care, the love. The exchange. It is what made and what makes all the difference.