“The Child Grew,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 12/28/14
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https://heartoftherockies.org/wp-content/uploads/_file_mp3/718466-68231ac5.mp3“The Child Grew”
A sermon preached at
Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Fort Collins, CO
by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair
December 28, 2014
We pick up the story where we left off on Christmas Eve. The angels have returned to heaven after visiting the shepherds. The shepherds have returned to their fields, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.
Eight days pass, and Jesus is circumcised, per Jewish tradition.
And now it’s time for Jesus to be presented in the Temple, along with his parents making a sacrifice for his purification, in keeping with Jewish law. After a woman gives birth to a boy, she is considered “impure” for 7 days. She is unable to have physical contact with anyone else—otherwise, they too will be impure. Anything she touches is impure too.
After that time, she is considered partially impure for another 33 days, at which time she presents herself at the Temple for purification.[1] We fast-forward then, 40 days, from that first Christmas, as we read from Luke’s gospel.
READ LUKE 2:22-40
It’s been a long 40 days. The baby they never would’ve expected, yet the whole world has anticipated, has been born. They’ve traveled from Nazareth to Jerusalem to Bethlehem back to Jerusalem, and not in the family minivan. With a newborn.
I’ve heard that this parenting thing can be exhausting. Sleepless nights to thread together non-stop days. Being responsible for the well-being of another human being while having no idea how to take care of yourself.
Oh, and this wee human being just happens to be the savior of the world, so no pressure there.
My friend Sarah Lund, a fabulous fellow young clergy woman who has written courageously about mental illness in her family, posted on her blog yesterday about her experience of being a new mother:
The physical and emotional exhaustion of giving birth (as healthy and fabulous as it was) knocked me for a loop. Insomnia set in. A symptom of mental illness, insomnia, like a massive weather system, moved all its drama into my head.
I could not sleep because I was so anxious about my baby. Was he hungry? Was he poopy? Was he feeling loved enough? Was he gaining enough weight? Was he going to die from a high fever or SIDS? Was he going to die from an allergic reaction to his immunizations? Was he going to fall off the bed?
Insomnia made my irrational thinking worse. I wanted to be the one caring for my child 158% of the time. No one else could touch my baby. Not even daddy was mommy enough.[2]
I’d have to imagine that even Mary, mother of God, wasn’t immune to such emotions. Thankfully, she wasn’t alone.
My friend Sarah called up her sister-in-law in Minnesota, offering to pay her airfare if she’d come help with everything else –scrubbing the kitchen floors, vacuuming the carpets, walking the dog, cooking hearty meals, washing loads of laundry – so she could take care of the baby.
Mary and Joseph weren’t alone either. When they showed up at the temple, Jesus in tow, they discovered Simeon and Anna.
Simeon, who had been waiting literally his whole life to see the Messiah. Anna, whose faithful worship kept her at the temple day and night. Older, wiser souls. Spiritual grandparents to Jesus whose presence reminded Mary and Joseph that life in a community of faith is a communal one. An inter-generational one.
One of the images I love most from the congregation I served in southwest Missouri was this one. That’s Imogene, who was planning her 100th birthday party a year out when I arrived in Republic, and who was 101 when this photo was taken during Heritage Sunday, the day on which the 140th anniversary of the congregation was celebrated. She’s holding 6-week-old Kaiden, who was born 101 years and two days after Imogene.
Imogene could remember back almost all of those 101 years, to when she was 2 years old. A story that she loved to tell from her childhood was one when the preacher came calling to their home. Imogene knew he was coming to talk to their mother about getting the kids baptized, and Imogene wanted to have no part of it. As soon as the preacher came through the front door, she flew out the back door, scrambling into the yard so quickly that she managed to clip her chin on the clothesline and disrupted the preacher’s visit with her tears and bloodied chin.
I can’t help but think of Imogene and Kaiden when I think of Simeon and Jesus. How different Imogene’s life would be from Kaiden’s, just based on the sheer amount of time and technology that had come to pass between them. And yet how valuable their lives would be to one another, one offering hope and promise and joy for the moment and for moments yet to come; the other offering wisdom and patience and enduring faithfulness.
This is one of the greatest gifts of church, isn’t it? That all ages and abilities and affects live in community with one another, learning and growing in relationship with one another and God. These kinds of relationships are sometimes messy, often times vulnerable, and can be altogether beautiful.
It’s risky, this kind of community. Community that values young and old. Community that honors what it tried and true, without being afraid of trying something new. Community that doesn’t shy away from holding different ideas and opinions from one another and, collectively, from the rest of the world.
There’s no real account of Jesus’ “growing up” years. The next encounter with him after this dedication in the Temple is two verses later when he is 12 years old and speaking with religious leaders in the Temple while his parents assume he’s somewhere in their group of travelers.
If we were to fill in the blanks, it seems safe to say that the faith community was a significant part of Jesus’ spiritual formation. I guess one could argue that Jesus doesn’t really need spiritual formation, per se. What with actually being God and all. My hunch is, though, that the time he spent with his parents learning and growing in faith mattered.
Fast-forward two millennia. There’s no shortage of articles about young people and the church. Google it. You’ll be overwhelmed. Everyone and their mother have ideas about why young people are leaving the church. And, as it turns out, it’s mothers (and fathers) that have a pretty huge impact on young people and the church.
The National Study of Youth and Religion, underway since 2001, has discovered that, despite the seemingly widespread belief that eventually children stop listening to their parents and start listening to their peers, this simply is not true. (Even if you feel like your results may vary.)
The study has shown that, “Even when stacked up against their friends and other adults, parents continually show up as one of the central determining factors in shaping young peoples’ lives. This pattern is never more true than with their religious lives.”
And it turns out that what parents say is less important than what they do. (So much for the whole, “Do as I say, not as I do?” thing, huh?) Parents who think religion is very important and who go to worship services very frequently are much more likely to produce teens and young adults who are highly religious.
Let’s define religiousness in this context: the term is used here to capture how people live out their life of faith in concrete ways, primarily, in this case, through church participation. Parents’ religiousness essentially sets a cap on how religious the child is going to be, even after that child turns into a young adult. In other words, teens can’t “out-religious” their parents.
You might be saying, “Well, is being religious really the goal? Isn’t it about discipleship? Isn’t following after Jesus the most important thing?” Yes. And – would you agree that participating in the life of the church fosters that life of discipleship?
You might be saying, “I don’t have kids.” Or, “I don’t plan to have kids.” Or, “My co-parent doesn’t do church.” Or, “My kids are already grown.” Before you totally write this off as, “So what?” consider this:
The adult modeling this life of faith doesn’t have to be a young person’s parents. Relationships with other adults from a teen’s congregation can have a similar effect. In the study, teens were asked how many adults they felt they could turn to if they needed support and how many such adults were a part of a religious congregation they attended. As the number of those religious supportive adults increased, so did the chances that teens would maintain or increase their participation in a life of faith into young adulthood.
Some of the adults teens looked to were church staff – pastors or youth directors. But most often? Most often, these supportive adults were in informal relationships that the teen formed with adults in their congregation. Extended family, across generations (grandparents being one of the most prominent), were essential, while others were simply adults in the congregation who had taken time to develop meaningful relationships with the young person. Let me say that again: Others were simply adults in the congregation who had taken time to develop meaningful relationships with the young person.
The key in all of these relationships across generations is that it’s not all about explicit religious teaching or training. It’s about providing a blueprint of what it means to be a person of faith, which teens can then follow when they become young adults.[3]
Anna and her fasting and praying. Simeon and his righteous and devout lifestyle. They, along with others Jesus no doubt encountered in this growing up years, modeled faith in God.
How are we modeling that faith for one another, and especially with and for our young people?
I’ll start with a few…
- I love that our middle school and high school youth are encouraged to regularly serve and lead in worship, not just on Youth Sunday.
- I love that we have a Property Team that moves into action, even during a very full time of year, and creates nursery space that bigger, brighter, and better for our littlest ones.
- I love that we’re a congregation that partners with Laurel Elementary, to be a consistent, adult presence with these students.
- I love that our Outreach Team creates opportunities for us to support kids who have been abused and neglected through the ministry and mission of the Tennyson Center.
- I love that we have children’s ministry leaders who invite our kids to tell the Christmas story, reminding them of what a gift they are to our congregation and explaining to them just how important what they are doing in participating in the Christmas pageant is.
- I love that we have children’s church leaders who take the time to learn our kids’ names and tell them how loved they are here.
- I love when I hear about families like the Mitchells, who don’t have any blood relatives in the area, call people in this congregation their son Daniel’s grandparents.
- I love that we’re exploring what partnership with the Boys and Girls Club and the Child Advocacy Center might look like when it comes to the 11 acres of land we sit on here.
- I love when I hear adults here say things like, “I hope we always listen to our young people, and don’t do things to stand in the way of what they think is important.”
What would you add to that list?
This week, we welcome our new pastor, J-P. J-P has primary responsibility for ministry with our young people, along with other pastoral and preaching responsibilities, and yet one of the things that Search Team loved most about J-P is his commitment to training and equipping other adults to become a network of support for our young people. He knows that it’s not up to him to be everything to every one of our young people. It’s up to all of us. Thanks, Simeon and Anna, for modeling that kind of interest and care for us.
[1] See Leviticus 12.
[2] Sarah Griffith Lund. Accessed at http://sarahgriffithlund.com/2014/12/27/hard-rock-mommas/.
[3] Quoted and paraphrased extensively from Kyle C. Longest in The Power of Parents on the Path to Faith. Published by Ministry Matters on April 29, 2013. Read full article here.