Lessons from a Sunday school class of seniors

One of the joys of my aging years is the Sunday school class I teach at Faith Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan. We sit around a long table in a classroom that doubles as the health and wellness room. As one who has difficulty hearing, I like it that at the table we lean in toward each other as we speak, our quarterlies and Bibles on the table before us. We are the senior class—most of us in our 80s, all of us retired. We study our Mennonite Church Adult Bible quarterly, several using the large-print edition.

We bring to our class varied experiences: two school teachers, a school librarian, a former pastor, three merchants, a builder, a college professor, a factory worker, a farmer, several office workers. Six have graduated from college. All but four grew up on farms. Most attended one-room schools. Among us are five widows and two widowers. In the past we have been involved in various leadership positions in the congregation. Now we are learning to decrease as others increase. During the past several years we have helped one another bear the sorrow of death in the family. Around the table is a lot of accumulated living.

We are a kind of extended family. We enjoy being together. At the beginning of the hour we take time to share experiences of the week past and plans for the week to come. We talk of health, trips to the hospital, cancer in remission, broken bones. We share the joys and heartaches of children and grandchildren, trips and family gatherings, church and community events. Absent is talk about the recession and little about political events. We are an upbeat group, ready to encourage and bless each other. When the closing buzzer sounds, we often linger for more sharing, more to talk about. A class member reports that her son calls her from Chicago every Sunday afternoon. Invariably she shares with him what happened in Sunday school class that morning.

We may wish our class were more intergenerational, with some younger voices at the table. In discussing the lesson and in the sharing, some of us talk more than others, but most times, everyone shares something. We offer differing views but never a sharp argument or any intimation of anger. We are comfortable with each other. Although some of us have been activists in our day, we now are more subdued in our passions. We prefer now to encourage and bless those who are busy in kingdom work.

Each Sunday we review again Scripture we have studied many times before. That doesn’t mean class sessions are dull. Invariably members bring fresh insights to the old and familiar. Often this is triggered by a class member puzzled with a biblical passage. Our class members, firmly rooted in their Christian faith, cannot be faulted for lack of soundness of doctrine. That permits them to be relaxed in asking questions, even voicing an occasional doubt. Some may cheerfully acknowledge that sometimes they skip over difficult biblical passages and move on to what they do understand.

I am intrigued how a group of older people can identify with biblical people. For example, Elizabeth and Mary, one older and the other younger, each anticipating the birth of a first child. Mothers in the class engage in reflecting on what two expectant mothers might be discussing. They puzzle over how the two, separated by a two- or three-day walking journey—no postal service, telephones or email—might have kept in touch with each other. How would these two mothers parent their precocious sons, John and Jesus?

Then there are the husbands—Zechariah and Joseph—both good men but understandably perplexed by mystifying events. Class members speculate on how those two men might have sought to cope with the bewildering events unfolding. Add to this other intriguing topics on which the Bible is silent: How might Joseph have tutored his son in the trade of carpentry? And did Jesus, the Son of God, ever make mistakes requiring fatherly correction? Class members can bring a practical immediacy to biblical study.

In a study of Exodus, the class considers the story of the two Hebrew midwives—Shiphrah and Puah—who sidestep giving a clear answer to a direct question. Class members have had experience with truth telling and truth evasion. Amusing stories are shared. The biblical record sparkles with added energy as a class brings a heap of living to an understanding of familiar biblical events.

We were studying the story in Joshua of the Israelites forming a procession to follow the ark across the Jordan River. A class member, drawing on her experience in Africa, reflected on the spiritual significance of processions in worship and liturgical events. This led to identifying the role of processions in weddings and funeral services, commencements and inaugurations, the entrance and exit of a choir, the filing into the worship area of pastors and worship leaders. Thoughts connected to other processions in the Bible: the Palm Sunday procession, Jesus bearing the cross on the way to Golgotha. Then someone wondered whether the Anabaptists incorporated processions in their patterns of worship. Sunday school discussion can stretch our spiritual imagination.

Our peace-minded class has wrestled with vexing issues associated with the Israelite invasion of the land occupied by the Philistines. We squirm uncomfortably when Joshua’s forces (our team) use spies, mass killing and ethnic cleansing to achieve victory. We listen for the voice of Jehovah above the clash of swords and chariots. As followers of Christ we seek to discern how we should walk in the footsteps of Jesus as we wend through violent biblical history.

One of the joys of our class is that it provides occasions for us to tell our stories—usually relevant to the text, sometimes a bit distant. But they are our stories, and we want to share them: a grandmother reporting the bits of wisdom of a grandchild, after Katrina a couple visiting house to house among old friends in Gulf Port, Miss., the art and grace of greeting customers in a shoe store, stories from volunteering in the Mennonite Central Committee Et Cetera Shop, befriending Old Colony immigrants from Mexico.

As we grow older and our energies diminish, a Sunday school class can remind us there is continuing delight and nutrient in biblical study. Weaving imagination and experience into the fabric of God’s story, we continue to grow as a blessed community in Christ. Thus blessed, we are called to share these blessings with others.

Robert Kreider is a member of Faith Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan.