The themes and questions raised by Kenda Creasy Dean's Almost Christian are being engaged by youth, their parents and parish churches. How do we faithfully form people to be friends and followers of Jesus Christ? And, to ask the same question with a theological twist: how does Jesus form us to be his friends and followers? To this end there are a variety of programs and resources for Christian formation, including Journey to Adulthood (J2A). The following sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter was preached by the Rev. Dr. Deborah Meister, rector of Christ Church in New Brunswick, NJ, on the occasion of a Rite 13 liturgy of J2A and the renewal of wedding vows.
This is a great day for us at Christ Church. Today we celebrate what God is doing in the lives of our young members: their creativity, their intelligence, their desire to help others and their burgeoning power to do so. So often, changes pass us by unnoticed: we look up from our hurried lives and find that buds have become leaves, children have become adolescents, relationships have changed, and we are standing on land that only looks familiar, but is wholly new.
So, today we take time to notice: Ashlinn, Darby, Evan, Alex, Taylor, Audrey, Camryn, Becca, Matt, and Joanna, you are becoming teenagers. (If you are a bit afraid of this, don’t worry -- your parents are much more frightened!) You are joining that group which advertisers love, parents fear, and everybody else wants to throw rocks at. Strangers will now expect you be rude, arrogant, flaky, and uncooperative, wandering around in packs, texting one another constantly and drowning out the world with an i-Pod attached to your ears at all times. (I’m a bit concerned that you are not wearing one right now!) When I was a teenager, I suddenly noticed that people reacted to me with suspicion. I was followed in stores to ensure that I was not shop-lifting, seated apart from others in restaurants in case my friends and I began to behave badly, greeted with alarm when we tried to sing Christmas carols at neighbors’ homes. While I was still in high school, the press announced our fate: we were destined to be the first generation who achieved less than our parents. I remember gaping. We hadn’t even started yet, and already they were acting as if the game were over. Stadium closed! Go home!
Do not listen to these voices. Listen, instead, to the voice of your God, who spoke through the prophet Jeremiah: “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” (Jer 31:3) When your friends treat you badly, when your classmates are mean, when people are pressuring you to do things which you believe are wrong, when you can’t figure out who you are or what you want to do with your life, hold onto this truth: God loves you, and always will. It doesn’t matter if you’re perfect. (You won’t be.) It doesn’t matter if you’re good-looking. (God sees your heart.) It doesn’t matter if your friends think you are cool. God loves you, even when you don’t love yourself. God sees what is good in you even when you cannot. God sees the promise in you, even when you cannot feel it. God gives his grace to you, not because you don’t need it, but because we all do.
St. Peter writes, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner.” (I Peter 2:7) He is speaking, of course, about Jesus, who was rejected, crucified, and buried in a stranger’s grave, but who is still the very key to God’s plan to redeem creation. But he is also speaking of you, and of all of us. You see, Peter knows that, when things in our world challenge the way we like to do things, we often become hostile, circle our wagons, and turn away. But in God’s world, the challenge is exactly the thing we needed to hear.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is sitting with his friends at the Last Supper, trying to reassure them that it is going to be all right. And he says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life...If you know me, you will know my Father also.” (John 14: 6-7) It is a ringing statement, one of the most-loved verses in the Christian Scripture. And so we often fail to notice what comes next: Philip, one of Jesus’ friends, looks at Jesus and says, “Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” (John 14:8) Show me. It is the challenge which you teenagers often throw at our adult lives. You say that this is true, but I’m not a kid any more; show me. You pay lip service to these values and you say that this would be good for our family, for our country, for the world; show me. You say that such-and-such is a good way to live, but you often don’t do it; show me. You ask questions which force us to examine our assumptions, test our choices, and hold us accountable for our ideals. So does Jesus. You ask us to go beyond easy assumptions, familiar custom, and half-baked pieties; so does Jesus. You push our buttons, test our patience, and bring us face-to-face with our own shortcomings; so does Jesus. You see, it is only by asking the hard questions, of ourselves, our world, and our God, that we are able to learn and grow.
The other day, I was reading a book by a woman who was speaking about her life. She said that she had always been difficult -- the kind of child who cried over the least thing, the kind of teenager who flew off the handle all the time, the kind of grown-up who was always convinced, even when she was doing well, that she was just a fraud. But each time she failed, each time she disappointed herself, each time she was worried or frightened or angry, she took her concerns to Jesus. Lord, fix me. Lord, help me. Lord, do in me what you will. Lord, make me yours. And so the very pieces of herself which she most wanted to reject became the very places at which she turned herself over to God to become holy. Mistake by mistake, fall by fall, she stitched herself firmly to God, embracing her very frailty as the path by which God could make her whole. We Christians call it “grace”: the power God gives us to come to God, not only in spite of our weaknesses, but even through them.
When Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” he meant that he is our best model of how to be a human being. If we listen to his teachings, if we wrestle with what he says, then we will be on a path that is true. But Jesus is also the way; he shows us how to live our lives. That’s what Philip was demanding: Show us God. Show us that this stuff you have been teaching is real. And what Jesus shows us is that God chose to be a real human being -- not a fake one, not a person with a big facade, not a person who never got angry or sad or confused, not a person who was never frightened or alone -- but a real one: a flesh-and-blood person who worked and traveled and laughed and learned and suffered and was lonely and ate with strangers and with his friends and did the best he could in a world which was not perfect -- not any more than it is today. And that means we are free to be real human beings, not just holy poseurs -- real people living real lives wrapped in the real and living love of Jesus.
This is the mystery of God: that even when we are “rejected by mortals”, even when we wish we could reject our selves, still we remain “chosen and precious in God’s sight.” (I Pet 2:4) I urge you to wrap that around yourselves as you enter your teenage years, because this world in which you are becoming adults is kind of shaky right now. We seem to have survived yesterday’s prediction of Judgment Day, but big changes are happening around us. In recent months, storms and earthquakes have come smashing into people’s lives, changing them forever. Whole countries are experiencing revolutions, with the mixture they bring of hope and danger. Here at home, our economy continues to struggle, and many are looking for work. Some of you are hearing about this in the news; for others of you, this is part of your family’s own daily struggle. You are learning to be faithful in difficult times.
And yet, “God loves you with an everlasting love.” God is not faithful to us just when everything is going well; God’s faithfulness is also there for when we really need it. And we need to be there for one another as well. A few minutes after I bless each one of you, you are going to witness two people, Kathy and Chris Brennan, as they renew their wedding vows. They have been married for twenty years today, and that means they have faced real challenges as well as wonderful times. Each day for those twenty years, whether they were happy together or fighting or confused or making difficult decisions about where to live and what kinds of work to do, they have chosen to stay together and be there for one another. In this, they show us the love of God: that God’s love is not a matter of passion which comes and goes, but of God’s eternal decision to stay with us, no matter what.
St. Luke gives us the only portrait we have of Jesus as a boy; some of you may remember it from your first lesson in Rite 13, two years ago. Jesus is twelve years old, and his parents take him up to the Temple to celebrate the Passover, as they did every year. When the festival had ended, Mary and Joseph went home, but, when they had traveled for a day, they noticed that Jesus was not with him. (Honey! I lost the Christ Child!) Frantic with worry, they searched among all the travelers, then retraced their steps to Jerusalem. After three days (Three days! Parents, don’t do this with your teenagers!), they found him sitting in the Temple, talking with the teachers. Surely, Mary and Joseph did not expect this kind of independence from their son. Surely, the teachers in the Temple did not expect to learn from a twelve-year-old boy. But Jesus replied, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Did you not know, he is asking, that I must ask questions that matter, seek real truths, learn what God I wish to serve, what purpose I wish to pursue in my life, and dwell in that house forever?
These are the questions our lives are meant to answer. Seek them with all your heart. For Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; if you ask his questions, you will have life, and live it richly. Amen.
1 Ruth Burrows, Before the Living God.
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