Homework for the teachers

Pastor and educator Rodger Nishioka offers up an APCE talk centered on a single verse from Isaiah

June 11,  2022

The Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka preached during closing worship at the Presbyterian Church Camp and Conference Center’s Gathering as One online conference. (Screen shot)

During his engaging mini-plenary, the Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka gave educators attending the annual event of the Association of Partners in Christian Education in Chicago a homework assignment: Memorize Isaiah 50:4 and recite it to the folks back home if they ask what you learned at the “Circle of Faith” event of the organization formerly known as the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators.

In case you too want to set the verse to memory, the New Revised Standard Version renders Isaiah 50:4 this way: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens — wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.”

Just what defines the tongue of a teacher? Nishioka, the senior associate pastor and director of adult faith formation at Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, recalls the wisdom of his seventh-grade social studies teacher, Mrs. Williams. When students complained about too much homework or how they considered certain topics irrelevant, Mrs. Williams would have none of it. “You don’t know what you need,” she would tell the students. “Do not complain about what you’ve got.”

“That’s the tongue of a teacher,” Nishioka said. “Brilliant and spot on.”

Weary people deserve a word from their teachers, he said, adding, “If we don’t have a word to share, what are we doing here?”

The word translated “sustain” is the Hebrew verb “ezer,” which can also mean “help” or “uplift.” In Hebrew it’s an imperfect verb, Nishioka explained, which means the action is ongoing and incomplete. As such, “sustain” is a good translation, according to Nishioka: “that I may know how to sustain continually.”

“Morning by morning — what does that make us think of,” and some in the crowd started singing the appropriate lyrics from the refrain of “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”

Every day, God wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught, the verse says. Nishioka asked attendees for their interpretation, then offered one himself.

“We are called to be lifelong learners. We have the word to share and the tongues of teachers. Every day God wakes us up to listen as those who are taught, to be lifelong learners,” Nishioka said. “We need to grow so we can provide a word” to students, whether they’re children or young adults, “and we can’t do that if we don’t have the substance of lifelong learning.”

Then he asked, what is the word given to us?

One answer may be found in the hymn “Listen to the Word That God Has Spoken”: “Listen to the word that God has spoken; listen to the One who is close at hand; listen to the voice that began Creation; listen even if you don’t understand.”

“That last line — it is totally messing with you and me as educators,” Nishioka said with a smile. “We have prefaced our lives on helping people understand. Here we are hearing we may be called upon to share a word we don’t understand.”

“It is less about you, Nishioka,” he reminds himself. “This really is about the nature of God. To be faithful, you share that word and trust that it will sustain the weary.”

Again he asked, what is the word we are being asked to share?

“You have got to have that,” Nishioka said. “Our people are weary, and we are being less than faithful to our call if we don’t have that word to share.”

Nishioka brought three words forward as examples. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “All of the Hebrew scriptures can be summarized in one word: Remember!”

Share your word, Nishioka urged conference-goers, and they did not hesitate, calling out “faithful,” “enough,” “kindness,” “trust,” “connection,” “generous,” “Christ,” “promise,” and other words.

“God has given us the word. The sustaining is ongoing,” Nishioka said. “It has gone before us, it’s happening now and it will continue. Thanks be to God.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Today’s Focus: APCE – talk centered on Isaiah 50:4

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Edward Thompson, Senior Church Consultant, Louisville, KY, Board of Pensions
Mark Thomson, Senior Designer, Communications Ministry, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

God of the young and the old, we thank you for the opportunity to learn and grow together. Continue to stretch our boundaries, that we may ever grow into the people you have created us to be. Amen.