Big people: please consider asking a bilingual friend(s) to help with this lesson.]

 Hi everyone.  Thank you for clicking on this option to hear a lesson.  We miss you at church and we can’t wait until we can all be back together again in church.

Do any of you speak two languages?  What a wonderful skill to have.  It allows you to listen and be heard by people from a different country or culture than your own. If you speak one language, as most of us do, you must depend on an interpreter to help you understand the words of those who use a different language.  An interpreter speaks on behalf of you. 

Big people, please demonstrate how words said in one language are translated to another by asking bilingual friends, including bilingual children in the group, to participate.  Maybe consider using phrases such as:

God loves you.  You are a precious child of God.  Let not your heart be troubled.  Believe in God; believe also in me.

Ask the children to offer suggestions for words or phrases they would like to hear spoken in another language. 

Before Jesus went to be with God, He prayed on behalf of His disciples and for all the people of the world including each one of us. He said, “Holy Father, keep them through your name…, that they may be one, even as we are one.” 

Children, I hope you get to hear this passage in two languages. Jesus asked God to protect us and to help us learn to get along together so we feel united like one family – God’s family. As Jesus prayed He said, “I pray for them … and for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. ” This prayer reveals that each one of us is a precious child of God.  

In a way, Jesus was acting as our interpreter, taking our requests to God and asking for His blessing on behalf of you and me.

— Peace, Chuck

Spirituality The Episcopal Church Children's Homily Clergy Podcast Sunday after the Ascension The Rev. Charles C. McCoart Jr.