Sermon for August 3rd, 2025

Back to School Sunday: Psalm ??

Since today is “Back to School Sunday” I’d like to talk to you about the difference between a teacher and an educator. Which one is better? Which one is more like God? And for those of us who are students, what should our response be, when we have been taught, when we have been educated? That’s where our Psalm today comes in, but first—to illustrate the point—a story.

At a small private school somewhere in America (not our school, of course!) the teachers were faced with a unique problem: A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick for the first time, and they would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night, the school custodian would clean the mirror, and the next day, the girls would put the lipstick marks back again. Several teachers tried their best to address the problem, asking the girls not to do this, and explaining to them at great length the extra work they were creating. All to no avail. The lipstick marks flourished on the bathroom mirror.

Finally, Mrs. Johnson (a true educator) decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the custodian. To show how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the custodian to demonstrate his cleaning efforts. He took out a sponge on the end of a long handle, dipped the sponge in the toilet, and proceeded to clean the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers, and there are educators. What’s the difference?

The English verb “to teach,” (which is where we get the word teacher from) comes