We came to quite the problem when presenting Palm Sunday and Holy Week to our church school children. Our curriculum has readings and a video, but both the children and the teachers found it a little disturbing. Good Friday in particular was a bit much. One time during the year, my own daughter came downstairs at night and said that she couldn’t fall asleep because she was thinking about the Good Friday video. My wife (our children’s coordinator) and I decided that we should do something different, and so we sat down with the teachers and brainstormed some ideas.

What my wife and the teachers came up with was to present the events remembered in Holy Week in little stations. There would be footwashing and sharing a snack (Maundy Thursday), then veneration of the cross with little tea lights. Teachers would be joined by other adults and leaders in the church community to guide the children through the readings, help put on and take off their socks and shoes, and generally be present for the children during these tough stories.

I think that this was a good thing to do with the children for their education, but it was also important for the adults. For children, Jesus is a person of perfect peace and love. He holds children, protects them, teaches them right from wrong in a really loving way, and (I think) is a pretty perfect male role model. When they see this perfect role model being beaten, nailed to a cross, and killed, they are quite understandably disturbed. Parents and other adults are present to help walk kids through this difficult lesson about human sin and evil. That act of guiding children is good in and of itself, because adults (be they parents or not) become shepherds.

Priests and other ordained Christian leaders are often called “pastors”, and a lot of our education is in what this means. We are to go out and seek those who are lost, to tend to their needs and their hurts, and to prevent them from wandering too far from healthy pastures. Pastors need a healthy dose of humility, too, especially when they are deciding what it means to be hurt, what pastures are holy and which aren’t, and just which of our neighbors is “lost”, but also because the role of pastor can be a very powerful position. Pastors can do a lot of good, but we can also do a lot of hurt.

The role is, however, one of grace and significance. Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but I take great pleasure in walking beside my parishioners in their journey with God in Jesus Christ. It’s hard to overemphasize how deep a privilege it is to be welcomed into such an intimate relationship – indeed the most intimate that any of us have. I am privy to secrets that people hide in the deepest parts of their hearts, and people share them not just to inform me of what’s going on inside of them, but because they want some direction, or help, or assurance, or company in those secret places.

When adults take part in events like this past Palm Sunday, they are welcomed to be pastors as well. Most of the chatter around footwashing and sharing a snack is, probably, the usual childish chatter of being able to play with water and eat together – but there are comments to show some really deep engagement with some of the central tenants of what it means to be a Christian. There are also many opportunities to teach and guide children in a healthy way to see God and our neighbors.

This is starting to sound like a commercial for all you adults out there: teach Sunday school! I’d certainly love to see more adults (and ore varied adults) in the classrooms, but my point is more than that. I think that a lot of us have become elders in the church without realizing it. I don’t mean that we’re all the old guard (though some of us might be), but that we have gained wisdom and insight into living the Christian life that needs to be passed down. And some wisdom – most wisdom, really – is not meant for us to sit with in quiet contemplation but to be passed down to younger generations. In other words, being a pastor “completes” wisdom.

I wonder what those children experienced as they sat around the cross with their little tea lights. I wonder what they wondered about when people were washing their feet, just as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. I wonder how they grew together by sharing a snack, just as we share the Eucharist together each week. We can really only know by asking and by walking beside them through such important events in their lives.