by Rocky Supinger
I once rescued a listless high school youth group with a bit of form criticism. No lie. Here’s how it happened.
They were sprawled out on couches in the youth room on a warm Sunday night smack dab in the middle of college admissions season for seniors and midterms for everyone else. They were worn out from a game of scatterball (or “everybody-for-themselves dodgeball”), but also from the daily grind of advanced placement classes and debate tournaments. Neither the caffeinated soda on the snack table nor my breathy, impassioned exposition of the Easter story stirred them.
I hadn’t planned for a comparative analysis of the synoptic Gospels’ resurrection narratives, but nearing the end of my rhetorical plank I said something about “manuscripts” and two heads popped up from gazing at the floor and focused their attention. I sensed an opening, so I continued. “Yeah, you know not all of the Gospels tell this story in the same way, right?” More heads turned up. This was an idea they hadn’t heard before. They were intrigued.
I’d like to say that I turned those high schoolers into biblical scholars that night, but I can’t; the narrative analysis was mostly off the cuff, and nobody lingered when it was time to quit. But I took a mental note that has shaped the way I interact with teenagers around the Bible ever since: Some of them are really interested in wonky biblical criticism.
The way we engage Scripture with youth needs to resemble how we do it with adults far more than how we do it with children. Sure, as we do with children, I want to dwell on the stories’ details. I want to hear teenagers repeat the story back to me. But I want to do more than that. I want to push teenagers to use their emerging ability for abstract thinking in service of contemplating not just the Bible’s component stories, Psalms and verses, but also the Good Book as a whole: where and when it came from, why it contradicts itself, what kind of book it is, really. My experience shows me that many youth are eager for that opportunity as well.
This feels like an especially useful insight when dealing with the anchor narratives of the New Testament: the incarnation and resurrection. Taking the latter example, there’s a goody bag full of things to explore with youth. Why is Matthew the only one who describes an earthquake and depicts an angel rolling away the stone from Jesus’ tomb? Why does Luke say there were two men in the tomb, when Matthew and Mark only have one? And speaking of Mark, what about the shorter ending/longer ending business?
These are thorny questions that will challenge a simple understanding of what the resurrection story contains. Rather than fear those questions, though, youth are developmentally well situated to embrace them, to grapple with them and to emerge with a more nuanced — even lively — relationship with Scripture as a companion and guide for days that are anything but simple.
ROCKY SUPINGER is the associate pastor for youth at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. He blogs at yorocko.com and claptrack.com.
