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A sermon preached on January 18, 2009 based upon 1Samuel 3:1 – 10, entitled “The Gift of Children and the Danger of Generational Segregation.”

To start off, a story about a kid: last fall our household was blessed to have the Cogan brothers, Eddie 8 and TJ 4 as overnight guests. Bobby had a big soccer game in Newark, and so we took the boys along with us. It ended pretty late. Sarah and I had driven two cars, so on the way back I had TJ and Eddie, which meant Bobby had to come along as well. On the ride back to Parsippany the boys fell asleep. To celebrate Bobby’s big game, I pulled into the parking lot of TCBY, the ice cream store, so that Bobby could hop out and get a treat with Sarah, who pulled in behind us. The plan was I would drive the sleeping boys home.

As I was pulling out of the parking lot, however, Eddie woke up, looked out his window, and said, “What were you thinking?”

Excuse me? I said.

“What were you thinking. You left Bobby back there.”

He thought I had abandoned Bobby.

The voice of the child reminds us that the pack never leaves anybody behind.

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I am aware that despite the fact that I put in a whole lot more time preparing for my adult sermon, it’s the children’s sermon that is most peoples’ favorite spoken part of the service. And I understand why. In the unplanned chaos of the children’s reponses, there’s a good chance we will hear God speak through something the children.

Here’s a few things I remember kids saying in the children’s sermon time:

When I asked, “What is the holy spirit?” Mark answered, “Everybody knows what the holy spirit is.” I said, “O really? Tell me what it is.” Mark answered, “The holy spirit is God praying.” Never have I heard a more profound or intriguing definition.

Words I had reported to me that were said by Eddie to Sarah Jernstrom while I was babbling on: “Sometimes people die young. Sometimes people die old. We don’t know why. I’m sorry your husband died.” I cannot imagine a more truthful response to somebody’s grief.

The pure unbridled delight of Marissa who declared, “It’s my birthday and I’ve brought cupcakes!”

Every Sunday at the end of our time together, I ask the children, “And what do we always say?” and they respond, “There’s always room in the circle!” But recently when I asked the same old question, I got this heretofore unheard announcement: “My mother’s going to have a baby!”

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Over time, is human society moving in the right direction, or not? This is a question that can be debated endlessly, with strong cases arguing yes, and strong cases arguing no. To some degree both are true.

There is a whole host of evidence that could be pointed to both positively and negatively, but I would like to point to just one on either side.

On the positive side, generally speaking, society has moved away from the point of view expressed in the old axiom: “Children should be seen but not heard,” which implied that obedience and conformity were the most important attributes — that children’s value lay exclusively in the fact that if they managed to survive, they would one day be able to contribute to the serious world of adult work and commerce.

Jesus was one of the great pioneers in turning back this notion. When his disciples, buying into this common assumption tried to turn away the children who were spontaneously drawn to Jesus, Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.”

That’s the positive.

Here’s the negative. Even as we celebrate this weekend the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the lessening of the racial segregation that he fought against, triumphantly symbolized this coming week by the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, there is another kind of segregation that has grown in recent decades, by which I mean generational segregation.

Most children spend most of their time with other children, supervised by a token adult or two. Teenagers hang with teenagers, adults with adults, senior citizens with other senior citizens, and the truly old and the dying, confined with others who are in a similar stage in life.

This trend is related to the decline in influence of the extended, multi-generational family, which in the past meant daily contact by children with a variety of adults including elderly adults — grandparents, great uncles and aunts. Nowadays many children view the elderly like they do animals at the zoo — creatures you come in contact with only when you go out of your way to see them in their restricted habitats — not someone you share life with routinely.

These days when we speak of a “family” we’re generally referring to the nuclear family — at best two parents with children but oftentimes just one parent. Where once upon a time it was understood that “it takes a village to raise a child”, nowadays the responsibility too often falls exclusively on these one or two stressed out parents.

This trend is reflected in the direction that churches are moving. People who study congregational life tell us that small churches are dying out; that it is the big, “mega-church” that is flourishing in the modern age. One of the secrets to mega-churches is that they indulge this societal drift towards generational segregation: They offer great programs for children of every age, and programs for teenagers, and for young single adults, and young married adults, and middle aged folk and single again folk and retired folks, but the one thing that is often missing in these big, mega-churches is the opportunity for all the generations to be together, to find their place in the circle of Jesus’ love together. And that is unfortunate. And whereas our little church doesn’t have the resources to offer that great multitude of programs, what we do offer is the opportunity for a child to be a part of a loving, multi-generational family.

You may know that in the United Methodist liturgy of baptism there is no place given specifically for “god parents”, though I think it is fine for parents to designate godparents for their children. The reason we don’t have godparents per se is because when we baptize a child, the entire church family takes vows that make all of us in a sense godparents and uncles and aunts and cousins.

We all took a sacred vow this morning on behalf of baby Shane that states:

“With God’s help we will proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. We will surround these persons with a community of love and forgiveness, that they may grow in their service to others. We will pray for them, that they may be true disciples what walk in the way that leads to life.”

Practiced faithfully, these vows do away with the practice of generational segregation. The child now belongs to all of us. Baby Shane has received this day a whole host of aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles.

You may have noticed that the story we heard from the Bible this morning involves an interaction between a child and an older person.

One thing to pay attention to is that this relationship between the boy Samuel and the aging priest Eli is that it is a two-way street. Eli along with the majority of adults of his day had lost contact with God, and Samuel helps him re-connect.

But the boy Samuel needs the old man Eli to help interpret the voice he is hearing. Without Eli’s guidance, Samuel might just disregard the voice he heard as merely an odd dream.

The same is true for us. Children need us to protect them and teach them and guide them, that part seems obvious. But we need children too more than we often admit, because the natural tendency for us adults is to become stuck — indeed, dead before our time — losing contact with our capacity for wonder and awe — our connection to the holy.

Last Sunday we held our bi-monthly Administrative Council meeting after worship. We met back in last classroom up the hallway, the far corner of the church. We had just gotten under way, focusing on the Treasurer’s Report, when suddenly little Maggie Letsch, age 3 burst into the room, followed by a couple of older girls. She hadn’t known we were back there, and when she took one look at the group of about ten adults sitting around the table, looking so serious, she laughed. “Wow!!!!!” she said. And then, “What are you guys doing here?”

We all chuckled, and a quick explanation was given to her that we were holding a meeting, and the bigger girls quickly ushered little Maggie out of the room so we could get on with the business of our meeting.

It was, however, one of the best moments we’ve ever had in Administrative Council. What a peculiar sight we must have been to 3 year old Maggie. If our eyes and ears and hearts were open like hers, we too just might respond with a big time “Wow!!” Like Jacob of old, awaking from his sleep in a barren place, and declaring, “this is truly the doorway to heaven, and I did not know it!”

And then the question that followed Maggie‘s simple expression of awe, which can be taken both on the mundane level: “What are you guys doing here?” but also, on a deeper level, a question asked to us by God through the lips of Maggie: “What are you guys doing here?” Alive. Now.

A sermon preached on Sunday, January 4, 2009 based upon Matthew 2:1 – 11, entitled “The Quest to Find One’s Soul”.

Sometimes, I find it helpful think in terms of getting in touch with “one’s soul,” rather than getting in touch “with God.” The reason for this is that it is easy for God to become a mere abstraction, a concept, referring to something “out there“, “far away.”

Jesus said, “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world, but to lose his or her soul?” pointing to the fact that it is easy to lose contact with one’s soul. Religion, at its best, assists people in becoming fully human with souls in tact, or as John Wesley put it, having our hearts strangely warmed.

It is quite possible, however to lose your soul while clinging to some abstract concept of God. Unfortunately, religious institutions often come to embody this sort of fraudulence — clinging to their power and to rigid doctrines, closing itself off to the Holy Spirit that moves like the wind.

The soul, like God is tough to define. The poet Mary Oliver wrote, “Nobody know what the soul is, it comes and goes like the wind over the water.” “Soul” involves our most authentic, truest self. In our common language we may speak of a person appearing “fake”, while another strikes as trustworthy — the real deal, referencing that quality of soul. Our truest self is who God created us to be. The perpetual temptation in this world is to be somebody other than who we truly are, and in doing so, to lose our soul.

The soul involves the capacity within us to sense God’s presence or absence. Soul gives life its depth; without soulfulness, we are doomed to live superficially. You can gain the whole world, as Jesus said, accumulate enormous wealth and power and success but nonetheless live a shallow, meaningless life.

In this great old story we heard from Matthew’s Gospel, we find two depictions of distinctly different relationships to the soul. On the positive side there are the magi, or wise men. They are often referred to “kings”, which they weren’t, though they were definitely upper class. While the mass of people in this world were constrained to eak out a living by back breaking labor, the magi had the leisure wealth brings to devote themselves to study.

“This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know,”

says Mary Oliver, “that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness.” The magi were unusually attentive. They paid attention. Outwardly, they noticed something beyond themselves that others overlooked — the rising of a new star in the sky.

They were also attentive to their inner life, and in particular, the peculiar longing that arose within them to follow the star; a holy emptiness that required that they set forth on a great journey — one that would be long and hard and often take them way out of their “comfort zone.” It would be an inherently humbling expedition, bringing these refined men with their exalted thoughts “down to earth,“ both literally and figuratively — sleeping for nights on end on the ground, standing shoulder to shoulder with all of humanity struggling to survive.

The other relationship to the soul depicted in our story is that of King Herod, who has clearly lost his soul. Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” and what is true for a mere rich man is all the more true for a king. Herod has become totally identified with his position in life — his status as king with all the power and privilege that goes with it. If he were asked the question, “who are you apart from being ‘the king‘”? he would have no answer.

And so it is striking that Herod’s response to the news brought by the magi that a new king has been born is pure and simple terror. Now, on one level, it seems absurd for Herod to be so afraid — terrified, essentially of a baby, of all things. And if he could somehow recognize the absurdity of his fear, there would be hope for him. But on another level, his fear makes perfect sense. If in his mind his life doesn’t exist apart from being the king, then the news of a baby born to take his place threatens him with absolute oblivion.

Well, what to do with his fear? What are we to do with our fear? There seems to me two basic possibilities. First, do that which Herod did: focus immediately on removing the object that evokes the fear. Through whatever means it takes, do away with the baby. Kill the child, and presumably the fear will go away. This leads Herod into deception, manipulation, cruelty — all of which are further signs of the loss of the soul. He becomes the consummate faker; pretending to the magi to be a fellow pilgrim who wants only to pay homage to the new born king.

An interesting detail of the story is that not only Herod, but “all of Jerusalem” reacts with fear to the news of the new born king. Why would this be so? The “Jerusalem” being referred to here is the whole institution that has aligned itself underneath Herod; all those who find their station and identity through their allegiance to Herod.

We are accustomed to thinking of there being some sort of separation of religion and state, but in Herod‘s day, there was no separation — the religious, political and economic systems were all tied up together, and Herod sat at the top of it all. The religious institution is threatened by the birth of the holy child; it pretends to assist people in making contact with God, but in actuality, it is devoted to avoiding contact with God.

So, the knee jerk reaction of Herod to his fear is the common one: the fear is intolerable, and so the apparent source of our fear must disappear. There are two ways to do this: One, flee from the object of fear, sometimes a sensible thing to do. But the other way to make it go, as Herod tries to do with the baby.

But what if the fear itself isn’t the enemy it first appears to be? What if the fear is in fact a message from the soul, asking once again for us to pay attention. That instead of either fleeing or fighting, we become still and listen. What might the fear be saying to us, if only we had ears to listen?

A lot of fear has been generated in the present global economic crisis, understandably so, and our first reaction would be to wish it all away. What we wouldn’t give for a magic wand to wave that would make prosperity instantly return? But the economic crisis that we are experiencing is directly related to a crisis in values that needs attending to. Something has been terribly wrong with the way we have been living as a society, the places we’ve put our trust, the things we have viewed as important.

To listen to our fear, to explore it, is to be led into questions that as a society we have large extent avoided. This are soulful questions: What really is important in life? What do I really need? What can be trusted?

Fear often has something to say about pride. Herod was a very prideful man, and his pride was a large part of what was blocking access to his soul. We already noticed how in order to embark on their journey, the magi had to surrender their pride.

When pride has a hold of us, we cling to an image of ourselves as self-sufficient, invulnerable. To be human however is to recognize the truth that we are indeed dependent — on other people — on the mysterious grace of God that runs the universe. It is to recognize the truth that we really are vulnerable — that we are in this thing called life with every other human being, and in truth, we are no better than any body else.

A mysterious thing happens when we face our fears directly: we discover that they are not so overwhelming after all. We were afraid that in facing our fear we would be demolished, that all that would be left would be the fear. But we find it isn’t so. We can be afraid, and yet not “be” our fear. We are in God’s hands, and although that doesn’t mean nothing bad can ever happen, on the deepest level, we sense we will be all right.

Sometimes perfectionism gets in the way of contacting our souls. We want to make an offering of our lives, but perfectionism keeps us from giving freely. A bit of a poem by Leonard Cohen caught my ear this week:

“Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in every thing. That’s how the light get through.”