This Sunday we bless backpacks, but it’s way more than that.
Support Our Schools Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays of the year, and it lands this week. Every year, this service lifts up our ministry alongside the public schools in our own neighborhood. It grows straight out of one of our core values. We say we care about “community,” and we mean the real thing. God planted Emmanuel in this place, among these neighbors, on these streets. Part of why we are here is to help build God’s kingdom in the place we actually live. And not much shapes a community like its schools.
The evidence is not subtle. A strong school raises the whole block around it. Property holds its value. Crime drops. Kids grow up with a shot at something. Families who will never sit in that school building are better off because it is there and it is good. When one child learns to read, all of us gain a neighbor who can read. That is the common good, close enough to touch.
Lutherans have believed this for a long time. In 1524, Martin Luther wrote an open letter to the town councils of Germany, urging them to build and maintain schools. His argument was simple. Teaching the young is not a luxury for the church or the city. It is how a whole society survives its own children growing up. That letter turned 500 years old last year. It reads like one of the first cases ever made for public education. When we stand behind our schools, we are doing something Lutheran Christians have done since almost the beginning.
So here is Support Our Schools Sunday. We will pray, out loud, by name, for every public school in High Point, and light a candle for each one. We will bless the backpacks and the briefcases in the pews. Mostly we will pray for the people who carry them. The five-year-old on the first day. The senior running on no sleep. The teacher, the bus driver, the cafeteria worker, the counselor who stays late.
Grace Taylor will speak to us. She is the social worker at Sylvia Mendez Newcomers School, a place that welcomes children who just arrived in this country and helps them and their families find their feet. New language. New city. A place to belong. That partnership is one we want to keep growing, and Grace is a big reason why.
Then we will bless the coffee. And the tea. For some time now, we have kept the staff lounges at Northwood Elementary and Sylvia Mendez stocked, so that a teacher reaching for a cup at 2:00 on a long afternoon knows somebody outside that building is pulling for them. This Sunday we bless the next round before it goes out the door. Ask any teacher. That cup is not a small thing.
Bring a backpack. Bring a briefcase. Bring the names of the kids and teachers you love, and pray for them by name with us. This ministry with our schools is worthwhile. This ministry is holy work.