C
Advent 1 OL BFC 2015
Isaiah
56:1-7; Luke 1:39-56
November
29, 2015
Charles Koch was the Boy Scout leader
with my father when I was stuck on a badge that I just could not get. Though I tried and tried, the information
would not stay in my head. So I made a
cheat sheet. And when my father asked me
the questions, I thought real hard, pressing my temples in concentration, dropping my head to my feet under the table
where my pre-recorded answers had been carefully placed. Immediately after I beat the odds and secured
the badge, Charles Koch took me aside and said, “Mike, I saw what you did and
that is not who you are. I’m not going
to tell your dad. But you do not need to
cheat like that. Don’t do it again.” In his own gentle admonishment, Charles Koch held me
accountable in a way my parents never could.
Mrs. Stieglitz, a 2nd grade
teacher at the local school who was not my homeroom teacher but one of the
members of my church, sent me a birthday card every year to let me know I was
loved and cared for by people who were not my parents.
My local church pastor, Rev. Kenneth
Roedder, walked into Sunday School class while I slumped in the oversized chair
in the youth room. “Mike,” he said, “I
was so proud of you out there.”
“What?” I said in disbelief. My dad, my high school baseball coach, had
been harangued enough by my mother to put me in a game that he brought me into
two games that week with the bases loaded.
Each time I had given up a grand slam home run. “What?
Rev, I gave up two grand slam home runs out there. Two in the same week!”
“I know, Mike, and I was so proud of
you because after those home runs were hit, you didn’t give up.” That was one of the first days I remember thinking that maybe God
did not think like I thought, that God’s eyes were different than mine. Rev. Roedder told me something my parents
never could.
The Search Institute has been an organization that for the past 50 years
has been listening to young people to determine what makes for their healthy
growth and development. In so doing, The Search Institute has
developed a list of 40 assets that make for a healthy adolescent life. I have made copies of the whole list and
placed it out on the narthex table for you to take home with you if you would
like to reflect on those internal and external assets that can mean so much to
a young person’s life.[1]
I want to reflect on one of the
external assets found in that list because I think it relates what it means to
be church, a community of people who come together out of a strong sense that
our journeys inform one another, feed one another, nurture one another, give
life to one another, even hold one another accountable. I almost used the words “strong belief” but a
shared sense of belief is not what the progressive Christian church is
about. As I shared last week in Adult
Forum, the early Christian Church was not about right or shared belief but
about right or shared practice and action.
Somewhere along the way, a huge shift occurred where the Christian
Church became obsessed about belief over and against action and practice. Ok, long explanation.
The one external asset for a healthy
adolescence I want to focus on is “other adult relationships.” The Search Institute relates that young
people have a better chance for a healthy adolescence if they receive support
from three or more nonparent
adults. My life is certainly a testimony
to this truth. Boy Scout leaders, public
school teachers, my local church pastor and church members all provided support
for me in a way that my parents just could not have done so. Because if part of growing up is necessarily
showing your parents and the world that you are growing into the full
independence and maturity, there is certain advice you just cannot hear,
certain support you just cannot receive, and certain roads you cannot travel
just to prove you are not your parents.
So it is critical that there are a community of voices, a diverse group
of experiences, and several different models of a faithful life so that our
young people might see all the faithful choices that are available to them.
To acknowledge this truth, that we are
not self-made, that in particular a healthy adolescent life requires a
community of people to surround and support us, is such a strongly counter-cultural statement
in a country where we are forever crafting government policy based on the silly
notion that we make it on our own.
And it is found in our Scripture
verse for today. The Bible knows none of
this nonsense about the faithful hero or heroine who makes it on their
own. The young girl, Mary, perhaps 12 or
13 years old, learns by the angel Gabriel that she will conceive a son and give
birth to a promised child. Immediately,
Mary runs with haste to hear the wisdom of her older cousin Elizabeth. Families
in ancient Judaism were probably much more like our Native American sisters and
brothers who have a much more extended understanding of family than the nuclear
one white European immigrant culture has come to define as family. Mary needs help translating the activity of
God in her life. She needs a mentor to
help her translate the meaning of all this in her life. And rather than dismissing Mary’s wild
telling and translation out of hand or telling Mary she is crazy, Elizabeth affirms
Mary’s experience and asks questions herself--so that they might both wonder
together what is happening in their age.
What a gift this is to young people
when they come across a mentor who affirms their experience, who does not
answer all their questions for them, but joins with them in asking questions of
deep meaning in which they both may immerse themselves in wonder, curiosity,
and reflection. Elizabeth asks,
affirming Mary, “Why do I have this honor that the mother of my Lord may come
to visit me?” Immediately, Mary breaks
into a song of liberation, an acknowledgment of how God’s justice breaks
forward in the world when we can affirm the power we see displayed in our young
people. In so doing, Mary is able to
affirm the story of how God has acted in accordance with the truths known by
her ancestors. Elizabeth affirms
Mary. Mary, in return, affirms the
Jewish God of justice, defender of the poor, the lion of Judah, who roars
against the rich.
Harvard Graduate School professor,
Robert Kegan, writes of meaning-making as a lifelong process that begins by
rightly going from one pole of independence to another pole in dependence, back
and forth, growing in depth. This
lifelong process is about a tension between how we are connected, attached, and
included on the one hand and how we are distinct, autonomous, and independent
on the other. Growth only happens in
meaning-making, Kegan believes, from a safe place, what Kegan references as a
place of embeddedness. In these places of embeddedness, a crisis in
meaning can lead to new discovery and growth.
And the ultimate depth in meaning-making is found when a person can hold
being connected in full tension with being independent—a person knows
themselves to be interdependent.[2]
What is meaning-making if not the
journey of an individual in faith, a community of people tied together by
common stories and myths that transcend generations?
As I read the story of Mary of
Nazareth and her older cousin Elizabeth, I see a teenager who is brought to a
crisis in faith by events that call upon her to do something far beyond her
years. As a result, she turns to a
trusted adult and mentor who helps her to understand herself as not only
belonging to a tradition in which she is embedded but also that God would
indeed single her out for a courageous call.
Mary remains with Elizabeth for the first few months of her pregnancy as a safe place for a
young woman living out a courageous call. Where we have missed out in the
telling of this story is not to recognize that all of our young people are
waiting to hear that God calls them to a depth of growth in interdependence and
courage. Mary of Nazareth is the place,
person, and mentor, the place of embeddedness for a son who grows in
interdependence and courage.
Most often, however, as The Search
Institute indicates, adults other
than a teen’s parents are necessary for a healthy adolescence that leads to
their growth in meaning-making. Next
month Kim Harris, Rev. Steve Gordon, and I will begin a new confirmation
program at this church. This program is
based in the assumption that our young people, our teens, need you as mentors
to their meaning-making in this world . . . so that they might be the
courageous people God intends them to be.
What we might find, in bringing the generations together in this way, is
that our teens, in return, might speak courageously in a way that helps us to
move to an even deeper place of meaning-making.
But this task is before all of us
beyond a confirmation process. We should
be seeking ways we can all be mentors or call upon mentors within the faith
community. We are all called to be
church. If the church looks like us and
serves only us every Sunday, then we have fashioned God into our image.
The Search Institute offers
practical ways we all might take action to mentor adolescent youth we see in
our wider communities, in our faith communities. First, swap a CD or an mp3 player with a
teen. Listen to the music together if
you can and share with each other why you enjoy or pick that music. Or . . . find a gourmet goodie buddy. Bake brownies, cookies, or other treats with
a young person as a fun way to spend time with one another. Third, send cards or emails to a young person
you know to mark holidays, birthdays, or other important milestones in their
lives. Fourth, invite a young friend to
till, plant, or tend a garden patch with you as a way of spending time with
them. In this weather, maybe create a
container garden with potted plants. And
the Search Institute recommends that parents and young people actively look for
mentors to help take some pressure off of a very often high pressure life. Maybe it’s someone who shares a passion of
theirs? A colleague? A music teacher? An employer?[3]
This is the challenge of what it
means to be church—that we might provide mentorship and a place of embeddedness
so that every generation might speak courageously of God’s activity in the
world. Our young people face challenges
in the world like no other generation before them. They need us—to let them know that preceding
generations found ways to walk a faithful path, to grow and evolve as the earth
itself faced annihilation, to overcome when violence and war threatened to
divide and destroy us. We might be very
surprised then to turn around and see God acting through them to speak with a
strong voice, getting connected, and moving in the world with courage. May all of our souls magnify the Living God. Amen.
[1]Search Institute, “40 Developmental Assets for
Adolescents,” http://www.search-institute.org/content/40-developmental-assets-adolescents-ages-12-18#.
[2] Robert Kegan,
Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1983).
[3] The Search Institute, “40 Developmental.”
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