What Will You Be When Grown Up? December 28, 2008

Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3
Luke 2:22-40

What will you be when you grow up?
It is a question we ask children the moment they begin school, and one we never fully answer. Visiting with a couple who had been married the better part of 55 years, she reported , and I am not done with him yet! It is a burden so severe, that a fifteen year old was heard tearfully explaining, but I don't know what I want to be, so how will I know what College to apply to.

To ease that burden, I would affirm that there are many days when I am not certain what I want to be when ever I finally grow up. The concept behind New Year's Resolutions, is that a whole new year is about to begin, rather than continuing bad habits, continuing for another year as we have been, consciously choose to start life differently. The point is not that New Year's Resolutions are easily broken, even if you fail ten times the first day; the point is that you have a fresh outlook a new goal and hope.

The great tragedy of Christmas, is how quickly we move back to our routine unchanged. As soon as the children came downstairs, we began taking down stockings, as gifts were unwrapped we gathered up the paper, and before kick-off the tree was undecorated, stripped bare and lying beside the road as rubbish. For over four weeks, in the longest darkest nights of the year, we waited and hoped for God to enter in, for Salvation, for God to change the world. And the miracle of Christmas is that God did! Almighty God, who taught spiders to crochet webs, planted the Red Woods, and furrowed the Grand Canyon, whose Finger prints upon Creation are known to us by the lakes right outside our door, and in the beauty of a newborn, God chose to be one with us, to live this life, vulnerable and humble, taking all of life in.

On Christmas Eve, we read the ancient story and imagined how the shepherds felt, having witnessed the Heavenly Host, an entire choir of Angels sharing good news, who then went to Bethlehem and saw what was described as the greatest miracle ever given, in a babe wrapped in swaddling rags, lying in a humble feed trough. ALL of which God did, the question of faith is what do you imagine was the response of people in the days that followed, what did they grow up to be? As shepherds who had seen this awesome wonderful sight, the gift of the Savior, the coming of the Messiah, would you go back to life unchanged? The Christmas story waiting to be told, is not how the Animals at the manger began to talk; not what rhythm and tune the Drummer boy would play for him; not even whether Joseph and the Shepherds built a snowman; or Santa and his reindeer visited the Christ-child; but rather what happened to those Shepherds, and to the Wise-men, after witnessing the birth of the Savior, what did they grow up to be?

From that day forward, all the most common of things, would not seem common to them. If a baby born in a stable of dung, and laid in the trough of cows and donkeys, could be the Anointed Messiah of God, then a Thunder storm and rain would be both God's washing the earth clean of soot and debry as well as planting the Creation with water. Winds that blow throughout the night, would be the Holy Spirit of God brooding over us, deciding how next to motivate and challenge and inspire. The death of loved ones would be seen as something natural and holy, helping us to realize how much we loved them, took them for granted, the true gifts they gave us in inspiration and kindness never boxed.
According to Luke, Mary and Joseph took the Baby to the Temple at Jerusalem that he might be circumcised. Luke serves a wonderful record that otherwise we might have lost, for no other evangelist names what took place. Ironically, parts of the Church, overtime, particularly in the last three decades has been identified with politics and moral conservative-ism; yet what the community rarely addresses are harder topics to discuss of sexual taboos and intimacy, of money and death. This brief section of Luke names all three, though we might easily have missed it. My mother describes that things are far more blatant today; in years gone by, Paul Henried lit two cigarettes and gave one to Betty Davis, and you knew what had taken place. Heathcliff came into the Bridal Chamber, the curtains blew apart with a storm and below the waves crashed upon the rocks, and your mind filled in the rest.

According to the Covenant of Abraham and the Law of Moses, as a male 8 days old, Jesus would be circumcised, to be set apart. And the parents were to offer two sacrifices. First, the sacrifice of a turtle dove, a love bird, for Mary's virginity, that no longer was she a child, having given birth regardless of her age, she was a woman. What a powerful teaching moment. Christmas is far more than a holiday for very little children. Christmas is a time for all of us as families, to talk about life's changes and our family's customs. To talk with Adolescents, as well as Aging Parents, and to mark the changes in this family relationship with a Sacrifice, as something holy. I am not talking about sacrificing Parakeets on the second of the 12 days of Christmas! But giving a gift to Vera House for protection against Domestic Violence. Making a commitment to serve as an adult advisor on Youth Mission Trips, or the Collective's Open Mic Nights, or visiting at the VA Hospital or Van Duyn.

Second in this story from Luke, is recalling the sacrifice of Isaac, as well as the sacrifice of Moses for all the firstborn of Egypt, there was to be lamb, yet if the mother were poor a second turtle dove could be offered. According to Jerome in the Early Church, it was a powerful symbol to the world, that the Mother of Jesus, who was to be called The Lamb of God, was as poor as any common person, and as she offered the offering of the poor for the firstborn so could everyone. When a child is born in our families, life changes, and we need to begin even as young as 8 days old with College Savings Plans, and reading to our children, and changing our schedules/our very lives for their needs.

Third, that we would listen to the voices of our elders. Simeon and Anna each offer wisdom, of what they have been waiting for in life, what the birth of a child, this child means, not only to Simeon and Anna, but to the whole human race and especially to the child's parents. Recently, my father phoned, which inspired what I think is one of our finest Christmas presents. He said, “You know, I have been thinking, and the thing I hope I am remembered for, more than anything else, is having read to your children when they were very small.” At one time, 20 years ago, he had read into a tape recorder Kipling's “The Just So Stories” and Dr. Suess's “Bartholomew and the Ooblick”, which they treasured because different from Mom and Dad, tis was their grandfather reading to them. So we sent him a new Tape recorder and several blank tapes, asking that as he had learned as a child to memorize poems of Browning, Dickinson, Cummings and Longfellow, that he might recite these anew for us.
Salvation comes in many ways, perhaps different for us as children imagining being all grown up, than for adults imagining what may yet be. But the vital element of faith, is not only knowing God and what God might do in our lives, but imagining what we might become because we have seen and believed.