Pentecost in the House of Weaker Capacity: The Westminster Shorter Catechism in Ten Worship Experiences (1 Story Book 9)

We who read this book pretend it’s 1648 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and we are those first Puritan kids made by our parents to study curriculum approved last year in Westminster, London. Our class is called the “Shorter Catechism” because it’s designed for teaching “such as are of weaker capacity.” That’s us. Since we are so dumb, the teaching is done in conversation. For 10 weeks we are asked questions and reply with memorized answers prepared by people of stronger capacity. All this happens (in the book) within the context of 10 worship services with messages structured as historical fiction and organized around the Revised Common Lectionary for the season of Pentecost. The services may be read out loud or dramatized with multiple readers in a traditional church, house church, small group—or even in a catechism class.Given our weaker capacity, the curriculum narrows down the scope of our learning by asking, “What do the Scriptures principally teach?” The answer looks at the big picture: “The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.”Three weeks into it, the elderly Puritan Lady Teacher gets into a bind teaching about how “All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.” One boy bursts out bawling and wails, “There’s no hope for me! I might as well just go home and kill myself right now!” Here’s where the teacher wisely closes her book and says, “Boys and girls. It is our lot as the elect in this life to pursue true Christian religion. It is not our salvation we are trying to earn—our salvation is the free gift of our Lord Jesus to all who receive him. We pursue true religion both out of joy and gratitude for all God has done for us, and because we desire to obey all that he commands us, such that we can become like him. Today we may be people of weaker capacity, but a day is coming when we will fully know God, even as we are fully known by him.”Whew! The kid who broke out sobbing and contemplating suicide is back in his seat the next week with pencil poised to take notes when question 20 is read: “Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?” Now the teacher is a farmer with a thick index finger that he uses as a bookmark. He points at words in his text and carefully reads answers in a gravelly voice, and he entertains us with pastoral illustrations from his own pasture lot. After a few weeks under his soothing voice, a storm blows in, the door bursts open, and a dripping wet fisherman bolts inside. He shakes water off his dark blue, going-ashore quid gansey, the familiar garb of all our fishing fathers, and says, “It’s blowin’ a hoolie out there! Angus has his hands full out at the farm and won’t be in to teach today, an’ I won’t be going out on the high tide for long-lining on this dreich day, so I might as well be schoolin’ with you!”Class really comes alive now as Captain Cameron MacKenzie takes the helm, for he is the father of one of us and knows each of us by name. And he is followed by Samuel Rutherford himself, one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly, who deftly works into the curriculum some large portions of a sermon he preached three years ago—on Wednesday, June 25, 1645—to the Right Honorable House of LORDS, In the Abbey Church at Westminster in London when he was a professor of divinity at St. Andrews College. He must have forgotten about the presumably weaker capacity of his audience.And so it goes. Even the new minister here at the High Kirk of St. Giles, George Gillespie, tries his hand at training us. Catechism class ends triumphantly with Captain Cameron MacKenzie weathering the last meeting and even serving us communion, and thus we learned 107 ways to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Read more