Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-30-16

Graduation time. As much as part of the season as the swallows “coming back to Capistrano”; the welcome of “sweet springtime, we greet thee in song”; and all that. Smart investors would have looked, in winter months, for manufacturers of caps and gowns, T-shirts that proclaim “I finally made it!” and makers of Dollar-Store trophies – brass filglagees with bronze oak-leaf palm and plastic plaques that read “Teacher of the Year.”

It is the time of year, also, for news stories about teachers, students, achievements, and academic statistics. We hear that the United States falls yet farther down in the world’s ratings of student grades and scores. We learn about dropout rates in urban schools, and meth epidemics in rural schools. Again, and again, of lowered minimum standards of aptitude tests, artificially to counteract the galloping moronization of American education.

On the other hand, bright spots. A student who scored perfect verbal and math SAT scores. Impressive winners of spelling bees. But the smaller numbers of quality student graduates are doomed to attend colleges where sensitive feelings and useless degrees predominate.

A bright spot for me this week was judging a competition (yes, the word is still legal) of students delivering orations. They had to compose and deliver – as I furiously took notes and assessed them – informative or persuasive speeches. Ages 10 to 15, any subjects of their choosing. I was impressed by maturity, self-awareness and self-assurance, and indeed, first-rate information and persuasion.

My easiest task was to critique and encourage; the toughest challenge was to choose the top three of impressive presentations. I felt a renewed hope for the future of our culture. Of course, eventually I stepped back out into the springtime air of Michigan. (Not incidentally, this was a group of home-schooled students.)

With the seed of a message planted in my mind, I did research into the Teacher of the Year concept. Like ants at a picnic, they are too many to count. Every state has an official Teacher of the Year – in fact, every county, district, town, school, and, often, grade-levels have them. There are rival associations that sanction Teachers of the Year. Every year. If you feel overwhelmed by the ubiquity of it all (how many Bests can there be?), save yourself the trouble of looking for sanctuary: even the North Marianas Islands have multiple Teacher of the Year awards.

By itself, this is encouraging, even if it says more about courtesy and gratitude than excellence. But there is that inevitable Other Side of the Coin. Teachers make headlines these days, sadly, for more than classroom excellence or inspiration. I did a Google search of “Teachers Charged with Sex Crimes” and 59 pages of stories and reports (each page, of course, with multiple links) were displayed.

Enough said about what we may call “mixed grades” to American education in 2016. Back when I was an elementary-school student I respected my teachers as people, but recognized that many of them were nitwits drawing paychecks. This generalization might be a rule of life, overall, and ultimately students excel by overcoming the mundane, perhaps a greater challenge than overcoming more blatant handicaps. But… today. A different world. Metal detectors in schools; the Bible proscribed; sex instruction and indoctrination masquerading as “sex education”; teachers whose names appear in sex-offender registries.

My mind, still racing if not reeling, thinks about some of humankind’s greatest teachers. Many were not from classrooms; many great teachers never were trained as educators. Indeed, some of our greatest teachers – I think of Abraham Lincoln – spent nary a day of their lives even as students, in the classroom-attendance sense. That mind of mine went back to Jesus, as all our minds would do well frequently to do, who at places in the Gospel accounts is addressed as Teacher (Rabboni).

It is funny that many people who deny the divinity of Christ – no, actually, it is not funny – quickly will concede that He “was a great teacher.” Usually, that is to assure us believers that they sufficiently respect Him… so that we are not offended in a conversation. They don’t mind offending the Son of Almighty God; but they want to avoid offending us.

Jesus was indeed a great teacher, the greatest in human history. But, sorry, friends, that has nothing at all (conflict-avoidance or not) to do with His claims on us.

Jesus was born of virgin, fulfilling prophecy. Accept or reject that, but do not dwell on it in relation to His claims on us.

Jesus performed miracles, healed the sick, raised the dead, which astonished witnesses, both followers and enemies; but those miracles alone did not make him divine – and is separate from His claims on us.

What Jesus really cares about is that we come face to face with the same thing He did: the Cross. He could have done nothing after fulfilling uncountable prophesies; the virgin birth; turning water into wine; walking on water; feeding 5000; raising Lazarus from the dead… and it would not mean that He was God Incarnate, or not. We are not saved by believing that a blind man could suddenly see. Salvation is, rather, in the Cross.

Without the Cross – the death that the Christ was destined to suffer, the punishment in our place, for our sins – and the Resurrection from the Dead, Jesus’ life would be the stuff of information and persuasion, perhaps; but not of Divinity. Those claims on us are the most compelling, and cannot be explained away or hidden behind honorifics of Jesus solely as “a great teacher.”

He was, of course, a great teacher. The greatest. But if that were the extent of His ministry, or His Incarnation… then His plastic nameplate would be lost among thousands of the Teacher of the Year trophies that, eventually, gather dust in our closets and storage boxes.

Jesus is the Teacher of every year, let us agree. But for Eternity, He is the Savior.

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Click: At the Cross

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