Childhood's End

Who among us has not held a child, perhaps our child, in our arms and wanted to cling to it with all of our might -- with all that we have we want to hold on -- and say I want to protect you from this world -- I would let no harm come your way -- oh for a golden easy and secure road. But it turns out, does it not, that ultimately too much clinging will actually work the child harm -- and us harm.

And it causes me to wonder -- to what do we cling in this life that might, if let free, if released -- show us the way to new roads, that might burst free in abundant life. That might feel like freedom from slavery.

One thing I do wonder about is families. Think about the Old Testament Jewish family. The family into which Jesus was born. To be born the first son was to be the heir. To be born the second son or any daughter was to be forever second. Nothing, not competence, not insight, not fairness, not love could change it. Your spot in this world is fixed. To be a second daughter was to be worth less than the first daughter, to always be second, forever second. Nothing could change it. Is there an element of Jesus breaking free from this here? In today's story? Is Jesus beginning to say, I will not be taking over the family carpentry business -- I am not heir to the usual things.

Is there a facet to our own families today that still works the same way? Our families are sometimes safe and secure places, places where we can come to rest but our families are also filled with messages of who we are and who we must be. Sometimes it is very hard to break free from these messages. Families are not always liberating places.

Young Linda is a bad speller -- we wonder what the problem is -- it must be that she just isn't able to do good schoolwork -- she will never be a teacher or a writer or run the family business. But we reach these conclusions all too quickly. Just maybe Linda can well do all of these things. I once had dinner with the managing partner of a very prestigious and well known law firm. We were eating in a very fancy restaurant when the waitress came to the table (she was probably in her early 60s) and she burst out -- "Jimmy! -- I haven't seen you in 25 years!" James, looked a little embarrassed -- she had no way of knowing what "Jimmy" had become -- to her he was still the awkward little boy "Jimmy." And so I think this question of letting go of our fixed images of the way we think things just have to be is important to the question of families. Families can be more than one thing. And in today's world can look a lot different than the fixed images we carry around in our head.

Perhaps one reason why we have this so very human tendency to keep things fixed -- to "cling" to our children -- is that they are, like the baby Jesus, dangerous to us -- for once set free to fully "become" -- to set a new and uncharted course -- they will change and it might well be that they will come to ask us to change. Our children are dangerous: they are dangerous to our complacency, they are dangerous to our presumptions, they are dangerous to the status quo.

And I think too, of us -- not as parents -- not as adults -- but as children -- as God's children. One's whom God would hold close -- with a tear in the eye, to whom any harm -- any wrong stings like it stings us to see injury to our children -- yet who knows, deep in the heart, for us to be alive -- for us to "be" -- we must be free.

And thus, exactly at the moment when we want to cling to the safe and easy course -- when we yearn for the "safe" life -- we find ourselves, disquieted, uneasy, unsettled. I was with the managing partner of another great law firm a couple of weeks ago. He mentioned his trips to his firm's many offices -- Chicago, Florida, Washington, Detroit, and near the end of our conversation he said -- "I feel insecure." "Even I don't feel secure." And that is the great sentiment that I am hearing just now -- no one, from the worker on the assembly line, to the managing partner of a great law firm -- every one is feeling insecure. And, I wonder -- is this the absence of our creator God that we are feeling -- or is it, perhaps, the presence of our God.

Do you remember the movie "Parenthood"? In this movie Steve Martin is a very caring parent -- he has a son who seems troubled, counseling is suggested. Throughout the movie Steve Martin tries as hard as he can to be a good parent. He works as had as he can at it. When the cowboy he has hired for his son's birthday party fails to show, Steve Martin becomes the cowboy, he ends up losing his promotion at work because of the time he is committing to his family. His security is melting away. Then toward the end of the movie he and his wife are watching the school play -- a skit up on the stage and he is sitting in the audience. His youngest son (who is totally uninhibited) makes a mistake on the stage. One of the other boys immediately corrects him. He does not exactly take the correction well and shortly the entire stage is engulfed with brawling children. As the scene unfolds, Steve Martin suddenly gets the sensation that he is on a roller coaster. He is at the top of the first hill, the shouts of the crowd around him, the music of a carnival in the background, and there is no return now -- like he is going for a ride.

Life is a roller coaster. Do you think we are closer to our purpose as human beings when we find that perfectly secure place in life -- that place in life where we can come to rest -- that place where we can stake out our claim and defend it against all intruders? Or, are we closer to our purpose in life when we are traveling, when we are in motion, when we feel the foundations moving beneath our feet, when almost everything seems in flux, when "The times are a 'changing" as Bob Dylan would say. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said:

"I find the great thing in this life is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the Port of Heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor."

I do not think we will drift or end up at anchor here at East Church if we will put a little trust in the spirit and if each of us will trust the process we are presently undertaking without any preconditions that the result simply must be the result we personally and individually envision. Maybe our greatest act of love will be to let go.

And I wonder too, about our God.

Do we cling to a nice, safe, tidy vision of God, a Jimmy and Tammy Baker God? Do we want God to stay a quiet and sleeping baby? Do we cling to the idea of a God trapped and confined within the walls of our sanctuary? A God that never gets beyond our stained glass windows? It is frightening and unsettling to us to think about a God that is completely serious about breaking forth into the ghettos of this country, who fully intends to enter the streets of poverty around us, who is going to enter every unsafe place you can think of, who will be present rather than absent on Division Avenue, who will not leave the waters of Apartheid and racism undisturbed, who will be present in the face of a homeless alcoholic, who is exactly the opposite of an unmoving and unmovable object -- like some stone idol but instead is always on the move -- always insisting that we change -- who is insisting that we live rather than die. Our God is not a safe God to this world -- our God is a troubling, disturbing God to this world. A God who is not content with the way things are.

This is the direction that the young Jesus is starting to point this morning. Jesus is beginning to point to a God who wants to break through the artificial, enslaving barriers of our life -- a God who transcends what we presently are -- and who guides us to what we can yet be. To use Oliver Wendell Holmes words -- it is now time to set the sail.

Denholm Brash, who was once the editor of Punch Magazine, was camping with a friend in the Pyrenees Mountains. His friend had camped there many times but Brash was not ready for the high winds that come rushing through the divide with dawn. All of a sudden, as the first night came to an end, the tent began to rattle and shake in the shrieking of a 40-mile-an-hour wind and the tent collapsed on the two. Brash began to thrash around, struggling to get free. In the chaos Brash called out, "Is this the end of the world?" "No," replied his friend, "It's not the end of the world; it's just morning in the Pyrenees."

Amen.