In the fourth chapter of the Book of Joshua, Israel sets up twelve stones at Gilgal, taken from the Jordan, to help them to remember who they are and what has transpired for them over the past four decades. Twice (at verses six and twenty) the issue is raised about what to tell the children when they ask what these stones mean. The answer is to tell them the story.
I am spending this week on vacation with my extended family, where stories are told again and again over dinner. The stories take on a life of their own over many decades now of being told and the next generation hears the stories told about parents who were (unbelievably) once as young as they are now. They have heard the stories many times.
Families, and faith communities, exist in order to keep the stories alive. We get mixed up whenever we begin to think the "stones" are an end in themselves. The stones are "outward and visible signs" - literally a kind of sacrament - meant to generate a narrative that tells us who we are.
In the congregation I serve, I am surrounded by reminders that the Church has not taken this imperative very seriously over the past fifty years or so. Often our children are being taught things in Sunday School that their parents either never learned or have long since forgotten. Ironically, it is very often the children who are needing to tell the parents what "the stones" mean. And sadly, this sometimes is accompanied with feelings of guilt or shame.
The Church doesn't need a quick fix, a new program for church growth, a new bowling alley or gym. We need to remember the stories and if in our time it means the children are to teach the parents, then so be it. We have our work cut out for us.
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