John 16:12-15

Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush.

I’m sure you recognize these little pearls of wisdom as the creative work of Robert Fulghum who, in 1990, treated us to a best-selling book called, “All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

Fulghum begins the book by saying that true wisdom is not found at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School.

And we all resonate with that humble idea.

Only trouble is, it’s not really true.

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus says to the disciples something that goes like this: “Everything you really need to know - about life, about God, about yourself - you haven’t even started to scratch the surface of!”

Now these disciples had been with Jesus for three years. They had just completed the most advanced and intensive course in discipleship training ever offered. For twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, with no holidays or summer vacations, these men – for three years – had been totally immersed in the life of Jesus. They were up to their necks in the sandpile of Sunday School, so to speak. They heard his teachings, saw his miracles, and witnessed the incredible beauty of his life. And now, after all this exposure to true wisdom, Jesus is about to leave them, and this is what he says:

“There’s a whole lot more I’d like to tell you – about life, about God, about yourselves - but you’re not ready for it yet.”

I think that statement pretty much dispels the theory that everything WE ever really needed to know we learned in the sandpile at Sunday School!

Why, in my case, I didn’t even show up at the sandpile all that often. I remember how our Sunday School used to give out these Cross and Crown pins for perfect attendance. Remember those? They started with a round pin with a Cross and Crown on it, signifying that the student had been in Sunday School enough to qualify for perfect attendance – although in our church, perfect attendance allowed for two or three – or, in some cases, five or six - absences. While our Sunday School taught us that, “Ye must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” and heaped piles of guilt upon us for not being anywhere near as perfectly perfect as that, the Sunday School’s own standard for “perfect attendance” was not exactly that perfect.

So most of us got our Cross and Crown pins. The second-year pin was a wreath that fit around the first one. Then the third-year pin was a bar that hung from that wreath. And then more bars were added – each hanging below the other - for each year of perfect attendance.

Some kids had a chain of those pins so long they could trip over them! My friend Ricky earned twelve perfect attendance pins. I got three.

And these attendance awards were handed out every year on Children’s Sunday, and what I remember most about it is how some kid would start crying because he or she did not get one of those pins, and the adults would have a big fight about it until the powers-that-be finally caved in, and little Suzie or Stan got their perfect attendance pin even though they’d been absent FIFTEEN TIMES!

I don’t know about you, but I learned a lot in Sunday School! And not all of it was good!

Not all of it was true, either.

For instance, while Sunday Schools in those days were quick to point out the differences between Catholics and Protestants, they were slow to teach about Jesus’ prayer “that they all may be one”. God help a Catholic kid who went into a Protestant church, and God help a Protestant kid who married a Catholic. And, in those days, churches made it very clear that preaching is a man’s job, and women need not apply. But nobody ever mentioned the fact that one of the apostles in the early Church was a woman named Junia – the equivalent of our Julia, probably. Imagine that? A female apostle! They never told us either that early Bible scholars had deliberately misrepresented her gender in order to maintain the view that women were not allowed to hold positions of authority and preaching in the Church. Those scholars were all men, of course.

Can you imagine the Church misrepresenting the truth this way? Why, the next thing you know, they’ll start giving out perfect attendance awards – even with five or six or fifteen absences!

No, not everything we need to know – about life, about God, about ourselves – was learned in the sandpile of Sunday School.

But Robert Fulghum does point out some good things we learned. And along with those I listed earlier, let’s add two more of Fulghum’s thoughts:

Be aware of wonder. That’s a good one!

And remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down, and the plant goes up, and nobody really knows why, but we are all like that.

And those two things sound to me a lot like what Jesus was getting at when he told the disciples that day, “I have much more to teach you – about life, about God, about yourselves – but you’re just not ready for it yet.”

There are some things you can learn only when there are a few years between you and the sandpile. Some things take a lifetime before you are ready to learn them. Some things are learned only through the experience of suffering. Some things can only be learned in the school of hard knocks.

And what the Christian Faith insists on is that we who follow Jesus must be willing to develop a sense of wonderment about life, never fooling ourselves into thinking we know it all, or even a little! Like the little seeds in the Styrofoam cup, you and I must let our roots go down, and our lives grow up. And nobody knows why it happens that way.

Well, that’s not true either.

Jesus told the disciples why – and how – true growth happens!

It happens through the Holy Spirit. Listen:

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can bear right now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all the truth.”

What Jesus is saying is that he sends into the lives of people of faith, a spiritual power that has the curious effect of causing us to seek ultimate truth in life. This spiritual power comes to us as a gift from Jesus. It is called the Holy Spirit, and one of the Spirit’s jobs is to lead us deeper and deeper into the truth about life, about God, and about ourselves. And this Holy Spirit is in you today!

Some Christians think that when we find ourselves having questions and doubts about things, it is a sign of weakness on our part. I’d like to challenge that diagnosis. I don’t think questions and doubts are a sign of weakness at all! More often than not, the questions and doubts that arise in our hearts come as a result of the prodding of this Holy Spirit. We have one understanding of life, or God, or ourselves. And now the Spirit is leading us to a deeper truth.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all the truth.

When I was growing up, the kids in our neighborhood loved Mexican Jumping Beans. I don’t know if you can get them any more, although if anybody here knows where you can, would you get me some? But back in that day, you could get Mexican Jumping Beans right up at Slattery’s Spa on the corner of Clark and Burncoat Streets. We neighborhood kids used to go up to Slattery’s and go over to the counter where they had some of those beans in a glass case. And sure enough, every once in a while, one of them would jump! Or spin! Or just wiggle! It was fascinating to watch! We didn’t know then that there was a moth larvae inside that bean that caused it to move. For all we knew, it was some magical power that caused them to jump. And that’s why my best friend Dennis Astrella and I used to pretend to eat them. And then we’d jump, and spin, and twitch…!!!

Now, I’m not going to compare the Holy Spirit with Mexican Jumping Beans. But I do want to say that many of us have had the experience of something within that causes a certain amount of involuntary twitching in our lives.

The first time someone asked me, “Have you ever thought about going into the ministry?” something jumped inside my heart. The ministry was not something I had EVER considered. I saw myself as a person wholly unsuited for such a thing, and much more interested in other things besides. But there was this inner twitching going on, as if the Holy Spirit was tugging me toward a deeper truth about myself than I had ever imagined.

Some of you have felt that tug, too. You may be feeling it right now. Not for ministry necessarily, but for using your life for something greater than yourself. A number of you have expressed interest in the newsletter article inviting you to a meeting to explore the possibility of organizing some mission teams that would go to different parts of the country and world to help children, or build schools, or bring medical care. Maybe that’s the Holy Spirit stirring something in you. Maybe there is a truth about your life that can never be satisfied until you give in to the twitching and go and see what it’s all about.

“He will lead you into all the truth.”

Will Campbell, one of our 20^th-century prophets, was an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the sole white minister in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a close friend of Martin Luther King. A man like that would be expected to disdain racists, and especially members of the Klan.

But in 1969, the night before Bob Jones, the Grand dragon of the North Carolina Klan was to enter a federal penitentiary, Campbell went to the Dragon's den to befriend him. In fact, Campbell not only befriended Jones, but helped many Klan families get their kids scholarships to college. He visited with James Earl Ray in prison, the convicted assassin of his friend, Dr. King.

This outreach to racists infuriated some of his friends in the movement. How could he do such a thing? Well, perhaps because there was something stirring deep inside, leading him to deeper truth about others, about God, and about himself. This is how Will Campbell explained it:

“I have seen and known the resentment of the racist, his hostility, his frustration, his need for someone upon whom to lay blame and punish. I know he is mistaken, misguided, and willfully disobedient, but somehow I am not able to distinguish between him and myself. My sins may not be his, but they are no less real and heinous. Perhaps I have been too close to this man. Perhaps if I had not heard his anguished cry when the rains didn't come in time to save his cotton, if I had not felt the severity of his economic deprivation, if I had not looked upon his agony on Christmas Eve while I, his six year old child feigning sleep, waited for a Santa who would never come; if I had not been one of him through these gales of tragedy, I would be able to condemn him without hesitation. If I had not shared his plight; if I had not lived with him in an atmosphere of suspicion, distrust, ignorance, misinformation, and nefarious political leadership, surely my heart would break less when I see him fomenting mob violence in front of his schoolhouse and his church house. Perhaps I would not pity him as much if I were not from his loins. But pity him I do.”

Wrestling with this twitching vision of his own face in the face of his enemy, Campbell came up with what he called his theology in a nutshell, which can't be repeated with children present, but can be paraphrased something like this: "We're all (jerks), but God loves us anyway!"

“He will lead you into all the truth.”

In our faith, the Holy Spirit has often tugged at people to step out from where they are, and into a whole new realm of God’s grace that is unfamiliar and frightening. The early Jewish Christians had to learn that God loves Gentiles as much as God loves them, and they had to learn how to love them, too. People who have spent their whole lives suffering under the misguided efforts of their parents have had to dare learn to love themselves as worthy children of God. Abused people have been tugged in the direction of freedom, and given strength to confront their abusers. And folks who never in their lives would imagine themselves risking something for the good of others have often found an inner twitching – to step beyond the familiar, and toward a deeper truth.

I have found myself deeply moved this weekend watching the television coverage of the 60^th anniversary of D-Day. Seeing row upon row of the graves of gallant young people who laid down their lives for the sake of a better world touches my soul. And seeing thousands of their comrades – most in their 80’s now - mingling around their memorial stones, holding precious the memory of their friends, leads me to a deeper understanding of how each generation has a responsibility to make the world a better place for the next generation. And we who grew up in the “me” generation, find some twitching going on when we see the heroes.

This is what it is like to be a follower of Jesus Christ! There is a Spirit that has been placed within us, and it is all the time pushing us, prodding us, leading us to truth deeper than what we already know.

So the message I want to share with you today is simply this.

Watch for the places in your life that are being tugged at.

And dare to go and find the Truth!

____________

I want to acknowledge Dr. Larry Bethune, University Baptist Church, Austin, TX, as the source of the story about Will Campbell.