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On Growing Up in Every Way
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis April 30, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Deuteronomy 11:8-21 Ephesians 4:1-16
"My family," writes Joyce Carol Oates, "lapsed Catholics,…did not approve of my attending Methodist Sunday School and services in a country town two miles from our home, though apparently they did not forbid it. A girlfriend in my seventh-grade class who rode the school bus with me had one day invited me to come with her to her church," Oates goes on, "and I'd accepted the invitation, eager to be included, hopeful of an adventure…In Sunday School, as in school generally, I'd been the brightest, most cooperative and, how to say it?--most hopeful of young people, astonishing our teacher, with having memorized no less than one hundred Bible verses in a regional competition among Methodist churches…. “My religious yearnings, like the emotions of early adolescence generally, were powerful, disturbing, and inchoate; I did not know what I believed, or if I was capable of any sustained belief. Certainly I wanted to believe--something. I wanted to be what I perceived as normal, happy, adjusted, chosen. [And] I was enchanted by the…language of the Bible, so new to me, mysterious and incantatory and vaguely terrifying, its cadences quite apart from its meaning. (Its meaning, I was told, was exactly what it was: just what the Bible says.)" From such hopeful beginnings this now prolific author has grown up, so to speak, to characterize herself as "a nonreligious observer of religion….I have retained my original fascination with the Bible," she observes, "but it has long become a purely poetic/metaphorical/psychological fascination….My Christian faith could not be sustained against a ceaselessly active curiosity and skepticism that began in adolescence." All of which underlines the question left unanswered by our text: how exactly are we, are our children, are our children’s children to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ? I think of those who have raised a family in the church and now can only wonder what was missed in those early years such that the Christian faith could not be sustained in their adult offspring. I think of those with children now eager to be included, baptized and signed on to the adventure that happens every Sunday morning in the Village on the Hill, and can only pray that they will go from this place in the assurance that they are accompanied by the God on whom they may call, the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Though I also think of each and every adult in this sanctuary, some so steeped in the faith that doubt never had a chance, but others raised in an age of such skepticism that now they hold onto faith with little expectation that faith's hold on them will be sufficient to sustain them. That is why these few verses read from the Letter to the Ephesians this morning are oddly reassuring because they tell us that the early church struggled in this way too! Those who were so much closer to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were also those given to dullness in understanding, an infantile grasp of faith's substance, a being tossed to and fro and blown by every wind of doctrine, a falling away from the faith once given. We are not the first to wonder why, out of 168 hours in a week, two are too much to spend in worship and church school. We are not the first to compete with the more attractive promises of a secular society. We are not the first to watch as the truth of the gospel is dismissed by the arrogant perspective of sophisticated academics or the shallow pronouncements of fly-by-night gurus. But that is small comfort. For still we are left, as the early church was, with the responsibility of growing up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, against significant odds. Biblically, growing up into the faith of the community had its start with a child's question. So the Book of Exodus records, "When your children say to you, 'What do you mean by this service?' you shall say..." and later, "When in time to come your son asks you, 'What does this mean?' you shall say to him...." and in Deuteronomy, "When your [child] asks you in time to come, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord our God has commanded you?' then you shall say to your [child]"...and in Joshua, "...that this may be a sign among you, when your children ask in time to come, 'What do those stones mean to you?' Then you shall tell them..." Growing up in every way into him who is the head still begins, and begins no matter the age, with an eager question and a mind hopeful of an adventure. But make no mistake! Such eagerness and hope are not our own doing: they are a gift of the God who always takes the initiative, sight unseen, with the hardest of hearts and the youngest of minds. How many of you returned to this institution-abandoned-in-adolescence because a four year old one day out of the blue said, "Daddy, how did God get his name?" I do believe a child's questions about God are God's undeserved means of grace to a lapsed parent, propelling a household toward the community called out by God’s address. That address, of course, is heard most fully in the biblical witness, in the stories of scripture that turn us toward the God we know in Jesus Christ. To a child's questions, then and now, "The adult answers characteristically, 'Let me tell you a story.' It is our story," says Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggmann, "but still only a story. That is all that has been given to us. In that way," he says, "the child learns both about the deep conviction of the adult and about the precarious foundation of faith." In others words, this is the story on which you and I have staked our lives. Or have we? This is the story through which we know who we are and to whom we belong. Or do we? This is the story most of us were told as children and, though we may have run far a field in the days of our youth, at least the prodigal's story within the story is true. There is this reliable Parent who has set us free to roam and has welcomed us, each one, home. How might we tell this story to our children such that they may live in trust all their days, such that they may be given the adventure of faith until they lie to die, such that they may tell the self-same story to their children when, in time to come, their child asks. How might we, together and across generations, grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ? First of all, [says Brueggemann] we must know the story for ourselves and tell the story in all its concreteness. For the most part, we have been given in scripture not a set of propositions, but a scandalously specific narrative with characters that are flawed and confused and forgiven by a God in relentless pursuit of them, a God who is merciful beyond all telling. As adults who mostly are but babes in the woods when it comes to the Bible, why not, each night before you go to bed, let the Bible tell you a story as though you were the child you still are, the child still longing to grow up in every way. Notice the incredible, recognizable detail. Commit parts of it to memory because you never know when you will be left in the dark. Wrap your mind around its peculiar asides. Store these tales in the marrow of your bones, that you may have a treasure trove ready for the next question tumbling from a toddler's lips. Like the oxygen mask in the plane going down, scripture must first be written on your own heart before it can be handed on to your children and children's children in all of its astonishing concreteness, before it can be the means of grace whereby you and your household grow up in every way into Christ. Then, in the second place, knowing that 'its meaning is not exactly what is: just what the Bible says,' knowing that the community which first told the story was not interested in static meanings or flat memories, spin for the one who has just asked an impossible question, spin an open-ended tale filled with invitation…a story with the power to "create a context, evoke a perception, form a frame of reference" as vivid and real and true as when it first was told. I think of Bill Cosby's telling of Noah…I think of Casey’s conversations on these steps every week with our children. Within the boundaries of form and plot and characters, there is a world of faithful proclamation awaiting the wide eyes of the littlest of these, the open minds of the wariest of these. Our literal minds have long ago forgotten that the stories of scripture are stories which were first intended for the imagination. The rabbis believed God had left silences and inserted contradictions into the text so as to draw us in and cause us to wonder. "The listener is expected to work as resiliently as the teller," says Brueggemann. "The communication between the two parties is a bonding around images, metaphors, and symbols that are never flattened to coercive instruction. Israel has enormous confidence in its narrative speech, sure that the images and metaphors will work their own way, will reach the listener at the point of his or her experience, and will function with claiming authority"; or to use Joyce Carol Oates early experience, we must tell the stories confident that God’s address will inhabit the imaginations of our hearts with language that is mysterious and incantatory and vaguely terrifying and true beyond all telling. Third, know when you dare to give your child the story that constitutes God’s people in the world, you are giving them a counter-story to the story they will be told by the culture every day. You are giving them a subversive story in relation to the powers and principalities which seem to rule the day. You are letting them in on an angle of vision: that power is made perfect in weakness…that the last are first and the first last…that service is true freedom…that things seen are less important than things unseen. They are given to know these truths not as disembodied principles, but only through the stories of a pilgrim band fleeing Pharaoh's army through a parted sea, stories of a dozen guys given the keys to the kingdom while the religious establishment gaped, stories of shipwrecked prisoners bound toward home by way of a cross. These stories of God may find you raising revolutionary children, for Christ's sake, or at least children who may grow up in every way into him who is the head…and then, who knows? For if we dare to tell these stories with confidence…as the starting place for the truth that will set them free…we may also set them on a road clean contrary to their own choosing. Therefore, says Brueggemann, "The question was always alive in Israel, Shall we risk these stories? Shall we take our stand on them? If we do, we must do so with the awareness that not only the substance, but our claims for truth are suspect and troublesome in the world." Foolishness to those who are wise; folly to those who are perishing! Though in the end and in spite of Joyce Carol Oates' interest in the poetic/metaphorical/psychological value of the Bible, this story we have been given is more than an idle tale. For it points to One who not only told the story, but was its incarnation, the flesh on the words, the point of the plot, the savior of our lives, the Lord of the dance. These are stories which finally invite us, no matter our age or sophistication, to know Him and trust Him and follow Him all our days. Therefore, speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body is joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” Thanks be to God! |