God of Generations

“God of Generations”

            Today we gather as a congregation to celebrate who we are as a family of faith.  We celebrate a generation of people that have had this particular church as their church home for fifty years or more, and we celebrate the next generation of youth that will confirm their faith and officially become a part of this particular church’s membership.  Today is a day where we celebrate various generations of God’s people as we remember the church is created by all of God’s children and each part of the body is valuable.  Whether you have been a member fifty years, one day or somewhere between, this is God’s church and all are equally important.

             I don’t think I will catch anyone off guard when I say this, but when we look around, we are definitely a congregation closer to the fifty year membership side than we are to the one day membership side.  Our body is aging and we have named over and over again that we would like to see our church filled with children once again.  As I pondered who we are as a church and who we are on this specific day, the story of Abraham and Sarah came to mind.   A great spiritual practice is to find scripture passages that speak to where you are in a particular time of your life or a particular situation of your life. 

            So, let’s take a minute to be Abraham and Sarah.  Abraham and Sarah want nothing more than to be parents, but Sarah is barren.  They are devout, faithful people.  They love God, they feel they have listened to God, and yet, they have no offspring.  They wonder how God plans to use them, how this promise God made with them will ever come into being because they are getting old.  And then, messengers come to Abraham to share the good news that the time has finally come for them to have a child.  Now?  Really?  But we are so old!  Sarah is in the background but listening to the conversation and when she hears the news her only response is to laugh.  Who are these men that they bring such preposterous news?  They obviously have no grip on reality.  Sarah and Abraham are too old to have children, end of story. 

            Are we too old to have children?  Are we too tired to engage the next generation?  Are we too set in our traditions and ways to allow a fertile soil of creativity to grow that will engage a younger generation?  Are we making ourselves barren? 

            Sarah and Abraham have accepted their fate in life.  They are too old and have been barren for so long that that is the life they have resigned to accept.  News of any thing else seems impossible and yet God desires to be present with them and calls them to be parents.  Sarah and Abraham could have resisted, they could have just kept laughing and ignored this message that the time had finally come for them to be parents.  But despite all the odds against them, they chose to engage the impossible and became parents. 

            Engaging the impossible changed everything for them.  Once they were husband and wife, now they are mom and dad.  Once they just had to take care of each other, now they have a baby to feed, to protect, to nurture and to love.  Once they moved through life growing older, now they have meaning and purpose and joy and new found energy.  How many grandparents or great grandparents say they love having the grandbaby for a visit.  They can play and spoil them rotten and then give them back to mom and dad.  Well, Abraham and Sarah were the mom and dad, they had to do this on their own. 

            Are we truly ready to engage the impossible?  If we are, we have to be ready for change.  Life cannot be the same if we are going to leave barrenness and become fertile soil for a congregation to grow.  The way is not going to be easy as we have been learning these past few years.  But there is promise.  For Abraham and Sarah, family means everything to them.  As it does to Jesus.  In the second passage today, Jesus’ mother and brother want to speak to him and he responds:   “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” ⁴⁹ And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! ⁵⁰ For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”  We are a spiritual family, together all of us. 

            That was one of the greatest gifts to me as a young person, knowing I had a church family to be a part of.  I had other adults in my life that I could talk with, that mentored me, that were role models of faith and discipleship.  Each generation of the church is essential to the other.  Do we think of ourselves here in this place as grandparents and aunts and uncles to the next generation?  Not just our own family but the full family of faith? 

            A few weeks ago, the youth group watched the Disney movie- Lilo and Stitch.  There were several scenes in this movie that spoke volumes to me.  Lilo is on her bed, crying, and she says to Stitch, her pet alien, that they are a broken family.  See, Lilo has no parents, it’s just her and her sister and the social services want to take her away from her sister.  Abraham and Sarah had no children, Lilo has no parents.  They are both a broken family.  As the movie continues – the Hawaiian word for family is shared and defined – family means no one is left behind.  No one is left behind. 

            As a body of Christ here in this place, are we just a community that gathers to worship or are we a family, a family where no one is left behind?  I share this because just this past week I pulled out my notes from the church growth conference I attended two years ago and these words jumped right out at me:  :  “We live and we die together, the good and bad, we never give up on anybody, we are with them to the very end.” 

            We never give up on anybody, we are with them to the very end.  Can this particular body of faith live into this statement?  Are we ready for the challenge?  Are we ready to be Abraham and Sarah and embrace the next generation that we confirm this day? 

            Today, we welcome three young people into adult membership of the church.  In baptism they have been members of God’s family, but today, they affirm their faith for themselves.   As they become full members of the church, the session of this church is going to work on ways to create fertile soil so the spiritual gifts of these young people as well as the other youth of the church will be given the opportunity to grow and flourish.  For this is not the church of one generation or the other.  This is God’s church and together we are one family where each has a place and a purpose and a ministry in serving our loving Creator.  Today, and next week, and the week after we say yes to new life and new possibilities.  Amen.