Children's Story

[Ed. Note - These are the verses I read to the children for my service with the sermon Good Guys. They are from Leviticus and Mark. I changed some of the words for the children, to make it easier to understand. I took out the parts about sex, too. If you are old enough to read it on the web, you are old enough to read the unabridged version.]

A man named Leviticus told the Jewish people what they could eat, three or four thousand years ago:

(Chapter 11)

9: These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.

10: And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:

13: And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,

14: And the vulture, and the kite after his kind;

17: And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl,

19: And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.

21: Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;

22: Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.

Then, about two thousand years ago, someone asked Jesus about eating things. To understand this, you have to know that "defile" means "make unclean in the sight of the Lord".

(Mark, Chapter 7.)

18: And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;

19: Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?

20: And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.

21: For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,

22: Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:

23: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

(I asked; two adult members of the congregation had eaten chocolate covered grasshoppers, but no one had eaten a bat. The point I was trying to make was that if you were Jewish, you could be a good guy, in part, by eating some things and not eating others.)

[This was the Children's story for the service with the sermon Good Guys. We have four auxiliary pages for that service, in this order:
Opening Words, from Sam Spade, in "The Maltese Falcon";
Responsive Reading, inspired by the hymn "Comfort Me";
Children's Story (above);
Meditation, a reading about good, evil and easy.]