Children's Stories

Kids Korner: Sermon on the Plain (February 13th)

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Read Luke 6:17-26 with your family.

Luke’s gospel is the Social Justice gospel. About a hundred years ago Christians focused on asking “what would Jesus do”? when seeing all the problems in their communities, the churches looked to Luke’s gospel and read about these promises. They read how people needed to be fed, so the churches started feeding people. They read how the prisoners needed better care, so they started working for prison reform. They read how children needed to be loved, so they encouraged education for all children and supports for families. They read how the rich had to give up their wealth, so the church joined campaigns to have the rich pay for more social programs.

All of this is found in Luke’s gospel. And the great thing about the promise of food, comfort, happiness and respect for the poor is that the promise was to start immediately, not some imagined time in the future. The promise of equality in God’s world where everyone had enough and no one had too much or too little, was a promise that the church wanted to see happen today.

We are still that church and we still work to make things better for the poor, struggling, ignored and insulted people in our community. Jesus made the promise, and as disciples we are called to help make it reality.

Kids Korner: Fishers of People (February 6th)

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Read Luke 5:1-11 with your family.

In Galilee everyone knew how important fish was. There were villages named after the act of fishing (one of the Greek names for the place the Bible calls Magdala was “town where they process fish”). However, people didn’t just go to fish and feed their families, selling some along the side and have control of their work. The Roman government through King Herod, controlled the water and the fishing industry, and everyone had to get special licenses to fish. Whole families would be fisherfolk because these licenses were often handed down from parent to child.

And if that wasn’t hard enough, all of the fishing happened at night when fisherfolk hard a had time seeing if the moon wasn’t high and bright. Most of them didn’t know how to swim, so it was a very dangerous job.

Simon Peter, James and John were brave men who went out to fish every night to feed their families and earn some money for other goods, even though they had to give most of what they caught to King Herod’s officers. They knew how to work hard. They also knew they were not perfect people and they didn’t have much education. Simon told Jesus he wasn’t worthy to be Jesus’ follower, but Jesus ignored his claim.

Jesus recognized people who would be good sharing the message of God’s new world of acceptance for all people. The people Jesus picked came from all sorts of jobs and parts of the country. What they had in common was their faith in Jesus and their ability to talk to people like them and show them the hope that Jesus brought to all people.

Kids Korner: Jesus rejected in his home town (January 30th)

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Read Luke 4:14-30 with your family.

Jesus grew up in a small village called Nazareth, in the northern area known as Galilee. In those days Galilee was one of the provinces of the Hebrew territories, and Judea was another (that is where Jerusalem and Bethlehem were located). Jesus travelled all over Galilee and Judea, as well as the surrounding communities.

This story happens when Jesus returns home for a visit. It was typical in synagogues at that time, that male guests were invited to read from the section of the prophets (in this case Isaiah 61) and then talk about it, especially if they were recognized as someone who studied the scriptures, as Jesus had done growing up. So Jesus did what was expected…. and then told them things that they didn’t expect.

Jesus told them that outsiders, people who were not Hebrew, had been favoured in the past and would be again. He told them his healing gift would be shared in other communities, just not Nazareth, and he told them that he was the fulfilment of the “Year of the Lord”, or Jubilee Year…. a once every 50 years experience where all slaves were released, all debts were cancelled, all land had to be given back to the original owner, and anyone in prison had to be set free. Jesus said his existence was the promise that that would happen. That made the people in the synagog mad, especially since most of them were probably rich and wanted to keep their money and property.

Often times the community we grow up in wants us to stay a certain way, the way they remember, and not change. However Jesus shows us that change is important, and when we know more or differently, we have to act on what we believe to be true, even if those around us are not accepting of what we have to say.

Kids Korner: The Body of Christ (January 23rd)

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Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 with your family.

A very important person in the early church named Paul, wrote a letter to his friends in the city of Corinth in Greece. They were arguing about something and Paul was trying to explain to them how the Christian family was supposed to get along. He used the image of a body with all our different parts as examples of people being different from each other but still needing to work together.

The city of Corinth was mostly Greek people, and some Greeks joining the Hebrews in worshipping Jesus. There were rich people and poor people, there were slaves owned by the rich, and free people who could make their own decisions. There were people with all different skin tones, and from different places. Paul wanted to remind them that in God’s eyes, they were all the same and should act like family.

Paul also talked about the gifts that people had, and how everyone was part of the work of the church, no matter what they did or couldn’t do. Not everyone was supposed to be a teacher, he said. Some were supposed to manage the money, others were supposed to care for the sick, and others were to spread the word of Jesus. But ALL of them were to work together.

That goes for our churches today as well. We all need to work together and respect each others differences. That was one of Jesus’ most important lessons: that everyone was equally part of the family of God, and part of the body of the church.

Kids Korner: A wedding at Cana (January 16th)

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Read John 2:1-12 with your family.

Weddings were a very big deal in Jesus’ time. They weren’t just about the bride and groom, they were also agreements between the families to support each other in good times and bad times. Usually the wedding was for the whole village and only special people travelled from outside the village to attend. Mary would have been very important to the families of the bride and groom to get an invitation for herself and her children.

The groom’s family hosted the wedding celebration, which could be up to 7 days long. When they ran out of wine on day 3, that was a problem. If Jesus hadn’t stepped in to make more wine, the groom’s family would have been shamed and reminded for the rest of their lives that they didn’t know how to provide enough for their guests for such an important occasion. Mary knew that would have been very bad, and she knew what Jesus could do, so she asked and Jesus made it happen.

In the story Jesus calls Mary “Woman”. In English and in western countries, we don’t call our mother’s “Woman”, because that sounds like an insult. But in Jesus day, the word used for woman could also mean “Queen”, or “My lady”. Jesus wasn’t angry at his mother, he was pleading with her that he not have to show his power yet, he wanted more time. However, Mary knew that he was ready, and like all good parents she pushed Jesus a little. Mary encouraged Jesus to start his ministry, because it was now his time to show the world what God could do.

Kids Korner: Visit of the Magi (January 9th)

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Read Matthew 2:1-12 with your family.

Did you realize that Matthew’s story does not have the shepherds or the angels announcing Jesus’ birth? Sometime, a long time ago, the church started putting the stories of Matthew 2 and Luke 2 together to make the story we all know about Jesus’ birth.

Matthew tells us that the Magi didn’t arrive until Jesus was a toddler or preschooler, and that Jesus was living in a house in Bethlehem with his parents.

And who were these Magi? Well, we aren’t completely sure but Bible scholars think they were well educated people with some authority in the religious community in Persian (modern Iraq), who spent their time studying early science including astronomy. They knew about the Hebrew prophesy of a new Messiah, and they read in the stats that it was time. They started their journey to Bethlehem, travelling in a caravan with many more people than just three, and arrived in time to celebrate Jesus as a small child.

Kids Korner: Jesus is born (January 2nd)

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Read Luke 2:1-20 with your family. This is the second Sunday in Christmas. The twelve days of Christmas start on Christmas Day and end the day before Epiphany in January. This is a good opportunity to listen to the story again without all the excitement of Christmas Day. Read this story from different versions of the Bibles (you can find different version on Bible Gateway dot com).

Did you hear anything different in the story when you listened to the various versions? Imagine hearing it for the first time. What does it mean to you when you hear that God came in human form as a baby to live among us, so that we would know God better?

Kids Korner: Jesus as a child (December 26th)

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Read Luke 2:41-52 with your family. This is the only story we have of Jesus as a child, and that was when he was around 12 or 13. Mary and Joseph were in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, and probably wanted to show Jesus the temple for the first time.

Hebrew culture in first century Palestine didn’t celebrate birthdays like we do today, but they did celebrate when a child turned from 12/13 to 13/14. That was when they considered children becoming adults and started taking on adult responsibilities like training for their eventual careers or running a household. Jesus most likely trained to be a carpenter because that was what his father did, and the oldest son usually grew up to work at the same job as their father.

In those days people travelled in groups to be safer on their journey. Since Jesus was grown enough to be considered a man, he was able to travel with his father and the rest of the men in their travelling group. However, since he was still so young, travelling with his mother made sense too. Since each parent thought Jesus was with the other, they didn’t notice that he stayed behind in Jerusalem.The story ended well. Both his parents risked the travel back to Jerusalem alone and found him safe and talking with the elders at the temple.

This one story of Jesus’ childhood reminds us that even though Jesus was a person just like the rest of us, Jesus was always very special and had a deeper understanding of God. People wanted to hear what Jesus had to say.

Kids Korner: How to prepare for Jesus’ coming (December 12th)

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Read Luke 3:7-18 with your family. This is the second of our two weeks looking at John the Baptist.

John was a very educated man. His father and mother were both educated in the ways of the Hebrew Scriptures, so John grew up learning about God’s promises and how we were to live. In today’s lesson he is talking to a number of people who worked for the Roman government. A Hebrew person working for the Roman government was considered a traitor to the Hebrew people and less important that a Roman person to the Romans. They were not respected or liked. The fact that the jobs they did hurt the Hebrew people made it even worse. We can kinda understand why they wanted to get some pleasure out of working the job – even if it was only extra money.

However John told them no! Don’t take more than you should have, and be satisfied with what you earn. John did not stop with telling them to change their behaviour, he also told them that there was someone coming who would make life better for everyone: The Messiah, the long awaited person who the Hebrew people believed would save them from the Romans. Even those who worked with the Romans and were disliked by the Hebrews, would get to share in this new world that would be created. But before any of that happened, they had to change their behaviour (we use the word ‘repent’, which means be honest about how you have been acting and promise to do better).

God’s promise of the saviour was not dependent on people’s behaviour, but people would have an easier time hearing and accepting God’s message if they changed their behaviour first.