Blessed are the Meek

Some frustration in planning this one, mainly because the standard Chinese Bible translation of “meek” is more like “nice” or “kind.” I preferred to go with the traditional interpretation of meekness so had to sneak in the fact that another translation does suggest this.

The hero of today’s story was John the Baptist. We introduced our John the Baptist, dressing him in a “camel’s hair garment” (a wooly jacket-liner) and leather belt. Then he was supposed to eat locusts and honey. As when we did this the first time, we explained that we didn’t have any locusts (Wòhng Chùhng in phonetic Cantonese) but we did have ordinary Chùhng (worms). Our previous John had been totally shocked when I offered him a gummi worm; had to be coaxed to eat it. This time, our John had no problem; grabbed the worm and started munching. But then we brought out the jar of honey and he was having none of it! I have no idea why he had such a big reaction. Neither did his mom, who was leading the story and who finally convinced him to dip the end of his worm in the honey. After which he turned it around and chewed only on the other end!

Many people liked to come out to the wilderness to hear John preach. Sometimes they would stay a long time & might get cold or hungry. So some people wore extra clothes (one person puts on two jackets) or brought extra food (one person with a bag of snacks). John preached the importance of repenting and living out God’s law of love. For example, people with two coats should share with those who have none (so she did), and people with extra food should share with the hungry (food-bearer passes out snacks to everyone). Lots of people wanted to be his disciples.

Then one day Jesus (in trademark white vest) comes along and is baptized by John (who sprinkles blue tissue scraps on his head). Immediately a voice from heaven announces that Jesus is God’s beloved Son. Wow! Suddenly it seems everyone wants to follow Jesus instead of John. So they all but one or two walk away from John. One asks John if he is jealous. John says, of course not! The whole purpose of my preaching is to get people ready to follow Jesus, so why should I be jealous?

Funny how there were other preachers at that time who wanted to be famous, but we don’t know their names. And here’s this John the Baptist, who wanted to give Jesus all the glory, and we have all heard of him! Even Jesus Himself had good things to say about him! We had written on the board His saying, “there is no one who has arisen who is greater than…” and one of the kids wrote in “…John.” Then Jesus stuck a gold star on John.

Our game was a meek/humble task: throwing out the garbage. Had a big piece of cardboard with a flap in it like a litter bin; everybody got to take a few tries at throwing a bag of “garbage” through the open flap.

Craft, likewise, was a meek/humble task: washing cars. Everybody got a very muddy toy car and was supposed to scrub it clean with a toothbrush.

John the Baptist was supposed to be our model of meekness for the day. So I was surprised, but not in a bad way, when someone was struck by how meek Jesus was, being without sin yet willing to be baptized by this nobody named John (who ate worms!). :-)