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METAPHYSICAL MEETING, June 22, 2009
Contents
| - Topic | |
| - Call to the meeting | |
| - Opening readings | |
| - Member contribution A | |
| - Member contribution B | |
| - Member contribution C | |
| - Member contribution D |
Topic
To improve our ability, individually and collectively, to revitalize our Sunday School.
Call to the meeting
What does Sunday School have to do with me? I’m too old to attend and I’m not a teacher. Why should I consider the Sunday School as an essential part of my church work? Just as active citizens continue to participate in public schools long after their children have graduated, church members continue to have an active role in the Sunday School, whether or not they are physically present during the sessions.
Our next metaphysical workshop, Monday, June 22 (the fourth Monday), at 7:30, will focus on “improving our ability, individually and collectively, to revitalize our Sunday School.” As you consider this topic, you may want to review Article XX in the Church Manual (Man. 62:7-11 np) and think about how you participate on the Sunday School team, even if you aren’t serving in the Sunday School. Here are some questions to consider:
- What role do the Scriptures, the “first lessons”, and the “next lessons” (see Man. 62:18-8) play in your life? How can they be used to revitalize the Sunday School? Why are they important?
- What is “absolute Christian Science” (see Man. 63:8)? How is it relevant to the Sunday School? How is it relevant to your support of the Sunday School?
- How would you define “Sunday School” spiritually (as if it were to be included in the “Glossary” in Science and Health)? How can we as church members improve our demonstration of the spiritual aspects of Sunday School?
- If you wish, include a written Christian Science treatment for Sunday School in your remarks.
We look forward to your participation in this workshop.
Opening readings
Matt. 18:2-5
III John 1:4
Ps. 82:6 all
Mis. 110:4
Big Children's Prayer
Closing of the meeting:
Little Children's Prayer
Member contribution A
For my preparation, I did a quick analysis of Article XX in the Church Manual. It gives us several action verbs concerning Sunday School students. We receive them. They attend. We teach. We instruct. So, I looked up both the definitions of these words and their etymology. The result was enlightening.
Receive. We receive pupils into Sunday School classes. Along with the more usual definitions of “receive,” is “to give...protection or refuge to”. The Sunday School is a place where the pupils are safe from the world’s beliefs about the vulnerability of children and they are taught how to defend themselves.
Attend. “Attend” is from the Latin attendere, which literally means “to stretch toward”, with the notion of stretching one’s mind toward something. In Sunday School, we don’t place limits on the children. Instead, we expect them to “stretch,” to understand and demonstrate the spiritual truth about the material counterfeit.
Teach and instruct are both processes used in education, which has as its root “to lead out”. We aren’t pouring knowledge into the students, although that can partly be the result. Rather, we are helping them to discover their innate spiritual nature through the tools, such as Bible stories, used in instruction.
The “first lessons” of the students give us a guide to life. As we demonstrate these lessons in our lives, we will be supporting the Sunday School, because we will be proving their efficacy. It’s interesting that besides saying that the First Commandment is her favorite text, Mrs. Eddy quotes it 25 times in her writings. A careful study of these references reveals that total adherence to this commandment is the complete demonstration of Christian Science (S&H 340:17 only). The First Commandment is synergistic with the Lord’s Prayer, which “instantaneously heals the sick”. (S&H 16:23) “The Sermon on the Mount is the essence of this Science...”, as Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (271:22-24). She says in Miscellaneous Writings, “If ever I wear out from serving students, it shall be in the effort to help them to obey the Ten Commandments and imbibe the spirit of Christ’s Beatitudes.” (Mis. 303:16) So, she thought these “first lessons” were pretty important, and expected us to learn and obey them, too.
The “next lessons” are based on our weekly Bible Lesson, “on which the prosperity of Christian Science largely depends” (Man. 31:8-9). Even when I’m not teaching Sunday School, I find I study the Bible Lesson in largely the same way, asking myself, “What does this section or citation mean?” “How would I explain it to somebody else?” “How would I demonstrate it in my life?” “How would I apply it to a case?” Most importantly, “What did I learn from this Lesson today?”
Finally, the teaching in Sunday School “must not deviate from the absolute Christian Science contained in their textbook” (Man. 63:9). Is there a simple definition of “absolute Christian Science”? In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy says, “That evil or matter has neither intelligence nor power, is the doctrine of absolute Christian Science, and this is the great truth which strips all disguise from error.” (S&H 454:11) This takes us right back to the First Commandment, “no other gods”. Note that the Manual bylaw refers to Science and Health as the pupils’ textbook. It’s nice to remind ourselves that it is a textbook and we should use it that way.
Here’s my spiritual definition of “Sunday School”:
Sunday School. Safety in divine Science; spiritual receptivity; purity; understanding. The vestibule in which mortality is replaced with immortality; earth’s preparatory school.
Member contribution B
In the Church Manual, Article XX, Sunday School, the “first lessons” are specified as the (a) Ten Commandments, (b) the Lord's Prayer and (c) its Spiritual Interpretation, and the Sermon on the Mount. To explore these three topics, we can look further into the three words Commandment, Prayer, and Beatitude. A great place to do this is the web site Visual Thesaurus. It is a subscription service with a small fee, and is highly instructive in the way it depicts word relationships graphically. For copyright reasons, we are unable to reproduce the material here. But it does present the three words with these synonyms:
- Commandment: Linked to teaching, precept, command.
- Prayer: Linked to supplication, orison, petition, entreaty, appeal, supplicant, religious writing, sacred text, religious text, sacred writing.
- Beatitude: Linked to beatification, blessedness, expression, locution, saying
Member contribution C
The Manual seems to suggest that the ethos of Sunday School is exalted living. Mrs. Eddy never introduced the adult problem of being to children. From the outset, she set forth living the Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the superabundance of biblical teachings. By implication, she expected that church members would be so focused on “being” God’s expression, that by example and precept, we would naturally teach our children how to live a life elevated above mortal discord and in harmony with the kingdom of heaven. She never said, “You know, kids, I hate to break it to you, but we’re all stuck in an enigma of illusive pleasure and pain. Sorry that you were brought into this mess, but Christian Science explains that you must dispense with much of what the world considers as fun and to devote yourself to a realm of unseen, sterile thought.” No!
Our approach to children begins and ends with God, with absolute Christian Science. Children, and indeed all of us, deserve to know that every concern, every human issue can be resolved by correct spiritual identification and Christly living. In terms of teaching methodology, we shouldn’t rely haphazardly on rote knowledge or utilize modes of teaching that merely stimulate the senses in order to make Sunday School more palatable. The message of the Bible, we recognize, is more than adequate to satisfy longings and to answer life’s deepest questions. Knowing that Truth is always ready, is equal, to any occasion in a child’s day to day life and in Sunday School, and responding this way, is practicing “absolute Christian Science.”
Sunday School. The vestibule of thought which honors and upholds the maturity, completeness, and continuity of God’s ideas.
Treatment: Children are never in a tumultuous state, the possessions of pride or the pawns of merciless circumstance. They are not caught in the cross-currents of secular humanism and religious indoctrination. They are forever at one with their Father-Mother God, at the apex of ability, the epitome of eloquence, and the paragon of purity. So-called stages of human development never define or dictate identity or behavior. The Christ reveals true character and identity through such qualities as these, found in the beatitudes: willingness, compassion, meekness, aspiration, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and longsuffering. True childlikeness recognizes the cross as the crown of opportunity in an expanded sense of one’s worth. Children are unburdened of the world’s ignorance of Truth, and our church community is devoted to instilling an ever-renewed sense of ourselves as the “Children of Israel.” This is the bread which is not to be concealed in uncertainty or timidity, but boldly broken among our students. The children of Christian Science have a legacy and a calling, they can never be disseminated and drowned by the flood of materialism. They are the children of Abraham, the Christly descendants of Elijah, Daniel and Paul, and the disciples of Jesus.
Reference: “The ‘cost’ of Sunday School,” by Scott Truesdale Thompson (Christian Science Journal, Jan. 1990, p. 24)
Member contribution D
The demonstration of Christian Science results from realization of the absolute facts that it represents. It does not operate by asking God literally to fill a need or set an injustice right. To the contrary, it functions by seeing that divine Principle is present and in operation now. This approach to Sunday School affirms the nature of Sunday School as an element of church, “The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle” (Science and Health 583:12). This structure is already present and in operation.
Our task is to actively understand that this is so. A school is a place to learn, and in this case it represents the active development of spiritual ideas, ageless and eternal. That applies to me, and to all of us, and when we see that spiritual development is an active element of divine consciousness, of Principle and Mind ever at work, then we can expect to see the related structure and operation present in our church experience.
Today we deal with a secularization of society where many young people do not see a need to be associated with a church, and where parents often see no need to educate their offspring religiously. Why is this so? One reason may be that church is no longer central to the functioning of human society. Instead, it is perhaps seen as an add-on to life, which makes it more of a hobby or special interest for those few who are so inclined.
However, Christian Science goes beyond that. It is vitally central to life itself, an understanding of the fundamental spiritual reality of God’s creation. It teaches us how to acknowledge what is spiritual and true, and to recognize and abandon the material beliefs of mortal thinking. This is a refreshing, different approach to life that gets to the core of reality.
With that understanding in mind, we can see how Sunday School is a key element of “that institution, which affords proof of its utility” (S&H 583:14). And like everything else we deal with, the human manifestation is only a shadow of what it truly is, a spiritual element of divine Love and divine Life that provides nourishment, care, and practical knowledge to its spiritual ideas.
The exact form of Sunday School is another question; but that will be looked after as we understand that the completeness of its true, spiritual nature is fully established and utilized. With that in mind, I see myself unwinding the stereotype of what Sunday School is. Those “first lessons” and “next lessons” outlined in the Church Manual (p. 62) speak of the pure truth of Christian Science, and it’s universal applicability.
Thus we come to a Glossary-style definition of Sunday School that tells us what it is, what it does, what we can do, and what we can expect of it. It is manifest as the facility our church provides for young people, but it operates in the consciousness of us all.
Sunday School: The ageless unfoldment of man as God’s expression; divine possibilities acknowledged and demonstrated; the evolving of what is already true about God’s children; the recognition of children as God’s compound ideas, complete now and needing no development; an organization that promotes the ever-increasing manifestation of divine Love, thereby eliminating erroneous beliefs about Life and facilitating individual advancement.
