Sacri-fish-al

I wanted to share the experience of teaching 4-year-olds about Jesus taking on the merchants in the temple. The story is pretty straightforward. The temple sacrifices were supposed to be made from the best of the person's stock. People bringing their best animals were told the animals were substandard, and then they were forced to buy from the temple merchants at about 25 times the price. Yes, there was some serious money in animal sacrifice. Jesus knew people were being cheated, and in the Lord's house. So he raided their stall, overturned their counters and used a whip to drive the people, and presumably the animals, out of the temple.

Think about this; how is a 4-year-old child going to see this event? Can they relate to people coming in the church and making it into Offerings R Us? What do we do to explain Animal Sacrifice? (For the record, I simply told the children they had to bring animals to the temple; in no way did I explain what they were bringing them to the temple for. And no stuffed animals were harmed in the making of this lesson.)

So I gathered small stuffed animals at home, and made signs: Temple Animals $1 and Temple Animals $25. I copied some Monopoly dollar bills, and cut them out so each child would have some money. I arranged some of the animals just outside our door, and some inside the room, and posted the appropriate signs.

When we started our lesson, I divided them up into families. Each family had to go out to the Animal Store and choose an animal and buy it.

(Side note: we collect pigs, so obviously the animals weren't all kosher. I think I even offered dogs and cats and ducks. Good thing we didn't sacrifice them; the stuffing would have made a mess. And the Little Critter wanted to bring a unicorn, but I held firm on that one.)

When they had bought their animals, they went into the "temple" and met me inside. I told them their animals were too ugly, fat, thin, curly-haired, feathery, whatever. Then I made them give me all the rest of their money to buy new animals, and I recycled the ones they had to discard, so they could all catch me cheating.

I asked a ton of questions about this. Was I being fair when I was inside the temple? Was there really something wrong with their animals? Was I being greedy? What would you do about this? If you wanted to tell on them, who would you tell?

Four-year-olds answer almost any question in class first with "Jesus!"

But they seemed to understand at least the bad things I was doing, and recognize the unfairness of them. And in this case, the answer to the last question really was Jesus.

So sweet Christopher got to be Jesus. I gave him a rolled paper "switch" and had him throw over the desk where I was counting all my money. Then he whopped me out of the classroom saying: "Get out, and STAY out!"

Immediately everyone wanted to be Jesus. I mean, who doesn't want to whop Miss Fish around?

So seven more times I sacrificed my backside to this lesson. Did you know preschoolers can lay a beating on you that is difficult to forget? I didn't think you did; glad I cleared that up for you. You know you were dying of curiosity. Admit it.

But it was huge fun, and they all ran to their parents at pick-up time to tell them what we did. I bet there was no lack of discussion in those households about the holiness of God's temple. Or at least, no lack of giggling at the image of Miss Fish getting whalloped time and again.