Peculiar People

What follows is the Children's Story for Sunday's Service (which we recorded today). I don't often do the children's story -- harder I think than preaching any day! But here it is, as best as I could do.

Lee’s sermon is called “A Peculiar People”. What do you think the word “peculiar” means? It means strange or unusual – and not always in a good way. If I look at you and say, “You’re peculiar!” you might not like me very much. But what do you think when Pastor Lee says he’s going to preach about peculiar people?

I think he means us, the church! I can tell you what I think about this, and Pastor Lee will tell us what he thinks in his sermon. You can ask your parents if Pastor Lee said the same thing as I did. If we say the same thing, that’s great! And if we run down different tracks, that’s okay too.

Anyway, my grandparents would have said that the church is “a peculiar people” (or a peculiar group of people), and they would have meant “unusual” – and in a good way. They were unusual because they wanted to follow Jesus more than anything else in the world. The way that they showed it was definitely unusual. They dressed differently than the people around them. I have a picture here. You can’t see it, but I’ll describe it to you.

My grandma is wearing a long dress all the way to the ground. She always kept it buttoned up all the way. She is also wearing a bonnet that covers her whole head. My grandpa is wearing a plain coat and trousers of dark material and a white shirt, buttoned up all the way without a tie. They dressed what they called “plain”. They said that people outside the church dressed fancy, and that they wanted to show that they listened to Jesus and not to the people around them. So they dressed plain. If you saw them today, you might think they were Amish or Hutterite or something like that.

When they walked down the street, some people might have thought they were peculiar – and not in a good way – because of how they dressed, but what they really cared about was not this “peculiar way of dressing”. What they really cared about was what Jesus thought of what they were doing.

Now that’s the kind of peculiar I want to be. I don’t dress like my grandparents! I don’t wear a plain coat, and Lois doesn’t wear a bonnet. But I want to follow Jesus just like they did. I want Jesus to guide my life. I care more about what Jesus thinks of me than I do about what people outside of the church think.

I think that’s probably what Pastor Lee is talking about too. We don’t have to look peculiar to love Jesus. The way my grandparents dressed was one way that they tried to follow Jesus, but they did a lot of other things too. They loved the people around them, and they helped those who needed help, and they cared for their family, and they always asked what God wanted them to do. That’s a good kind of peculiar. We are a peculiar people – unusual because we want to follow Jesus wherever he leads us.

Appendix
The issues this memory of my grandparents get us into are complex indeed, far too complex even for the full sermon. They understood that dressing plain was only a symbol, and they held on to that inner meaning (following God faithfully whatever the world says) fiercely. I remember them with deep respect, even if I never put on the plain suit or ask Lois to wear a head covering. I wish we today had half their desire to follow Jesus; we would make our world a better place if we did.