From one generation to the next

Scripture Lessons: 1 Kings 19: 15-21 and 2 Kings 2: 1-14, OT pages 332-333 Sermon Title: “From one generation to the next” Preached on 6/26/16 I have a collection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons. He was a preacher first, as you know, and as his reputation grew to national prominence he was invited to preach all over the country. One sermon that I listened to last Wednesday is entitled, “A Knock at Midnight,” and in this sermon he characterized the different churches of our nation and their preachers. He said that there are so many in our world who come to the Church in search of hope or love or forgiveness, but the preacher, maybe the preacher is one who freezes up or maybe the preacher is one who burns up. The ones that freeze up are in the dignified churches, says Dr. King. Maybe the preacher there at the dignified church preaches a nice little essay on Sunday, but really he’s afraid to get into the sermon, to really say it like he means it and believes it, which is bad, but on the other hand is the church that burns up. In this kind of church, says Dr. King, and in this church the people have more religion in their hands and feet than they have in their hearts and souls, so maybe in this church the pastor doesn’t prepare a sermon. He doesn’t worry about content. He just relies on the force of his voice. Dr. King said that as the folks at this kind of church go home on Sunday afternoon after worship they say to their neighbors, “You know we had a great service today, and the preacher just preached his sermon,” but then the neighbor asks, “Well what did he say,” “Oh I don’t know, but he preached this morning.” Dr. King saw all kinds of churches, and there are all kinds of churches right here in our community today. There are conservative churches, where the women dress so modestly in long skirts but they must keep quiet because only the men are allowed to speak. There are hell-fire and damnation churches with signs out by the street during the summer saying: “You think it’s hot now?” Then there are these modern storefront churches that don’t look much of anything like churches. You walk in and there’s a Starbucks and a bookstore, and you deposit your children in a wing of the church that looks just like Chucky Cheese, and the preacher stands up in his jeans and he has one of those fancy microphones that wrap around his head like he’s Beyoncé and the band plays and the congregation just sings right along. You know, there’s nothing wrong with that, but we’re not that kind of church – we’re neither that hard-shell traditional church nor are we that modern storefront church, which raises the question that I want to deal with in this sermon: what kind of church are we? There are a lot of interesting qualities that we possess as a Body of Christ. We worship in a 100-year-old building, but unlike most churches who worship in 100-year-old buildings, the majority of our members are much younger than the building. You look around the sanctuary on a lot of Sundays and you’ll see a lot of young families around, which is wonderful, but that’s not all, because we’re not a church just for young families, and that makes us even more unique. We are a church where you are expected to dress up a little bit, where we sing from a hymnal rather than a projector screen, the preacher wears a robe and most people are quiet during the sermon, and all of that says something about who we are, but the phrase I want to start using to describe us is that First Presbyterian Church is a multi-generational congregation. That when you get right down to the qualities that set us apart from the other churches in our community, no one generation is in the majority because we have a cross section of several different ages. Now what does that mean for us? It means that last week we had 77 children enrolled in Vacation Bible School. 77. That’s as high as it’s ever been, and when you compare that to other churches in the region, especially when you compare that to other Presbyterian churches in the region, that’s a great big number that says all kinds of things about our congregation’s youth and vitality, but let me say that in addition to the 77 kids who were running around this place, from our congregation there were more than 50 adult volunteers and so many of them did not have a child enrolled in the program. Now what does that mean? That means that not only are there young people here – young couples, young children, young men and young women who all what to learn more about who they are in the eyes of God – but there are also many people who aren’t as young and who have more experience and who are willing to pass on what they’ve learned to the generation that’s coming up. The theme of Vacation Bible School this year was caves, but the foundation of Vacation Bible School is the same as some of these qualities that I’m saying our congregation possesses: that there is something that children here need to learn and that there are adults here who are willing to teach them. That we are a multi-generational church means that we have both: people who have something that they need to learn and people who are willing to teach them, and ideally not one of us is all the time learning and not one of us is just teaching because we all have things to teach and things to learn but the point that I’m trying to make is that having one congregation made up of several generations puts us in this advantageous position where none of us have to try to figure everything out on our own. Assuming that we all have more to learn and that we all have more to teach, today our Second Scripture Lesson is appropriate, because here in 2nd Kings, on the one hand is the aspiring prophet Elisha and on the other is the knowledgeable and experienced prophet Elijah. Elijah called to Elisha in our 1st Scripture Lesson while he was out plowing the field. Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him, a definitive invitation to become his disciple, but to truly become a prophet as Elijah had been, Elisha must follow behind his teacher to the very end of his road. Our 2nd Scripture Lesson from 2nd Kings describes the time when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind. Elijah knew it of course, and so he said to his student, “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you? Elisha, stay here; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” But Elisha responded, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” When they came to Jericho Elijah said to him, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” But Elisha responded just as he did the first time, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” Elisha is persistent. He is determined to stay with his teacher no matter where he goes, which is a strange thing to do according to the company of prophets, this group of 50 who said to Elisha twice: “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?” I suppose that these 50 in the company of prophets represent plenty of people out in the world today who think that it is better to stick with people their own age. That it is better to stay away from older people because staying young is the thing to do, but I have found that doing so won’t really help me learn all that I need to know. There is so much that I’ve learned from people who are older, and there was a lot that I learned from a man named Jim Hodges. He chaired the committee who interviewed and called me to my last church outside Atlanta, and if you’ve been in my office there’s a picture of Jim’s thumb there on my desk. The story behind the thumb, is that after my first sermon at that church Jim gave me a thumbs up, and every sermon after that he did the same, even if it didn’t deserve a thumbs up, and then, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and lay in his hospital bed dying, he took a picture of his thumb one last time so that I would always know he is cheering me on. Now you receive those kinds of gifts if you can follow the wise all the way to the end – so when Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven, Elisha picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan and there he struck the water just as his teacher had done before, and the waters parted to the one side and to the other and Elisha went over just as his teacher had done. Those 50 prophets in the company who kept telling him to stop and go home, that his teacher had taught him everything he had to teach didn’t know about this kind of wisdom – the wisdom that you only get to learn when you follow behind someone who really knows something. But too many in our culture are out there trying to make their own way in the world even when they don’t need to because they could sit at the feet of teachers who blazed the trail in the generation before. In a place like this one there are those of the generation who remember the Twin Towers falling, and they’re sitting right next to the ones who also remember when Kennedy was assassinated, and they’re both sharing the same sanctuary with some who know where they were the moment they heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. In a place like this one, the one going through a divorce sits by the one who’s seen the light on the other side. The young parent who feels like nothing could be so long as a summer day when one child is crying while the other is falling asleep, while the third flushes the TV remote down the toilet sits right next to the one with an empty nest who reminds the young to enjoy every minute of their young children because it all goes by in the blink of an eye. In a place like this – where one learns from the other as knowledge is passed from one generation to the next – there’s a baby just teething and a 6-year-old losing her two front teeth alongside the teenager in braces who’s next to the 80-year-old with a new partial. But more than that – I’m talking about a church where a young man learning his way in the world receives support from another who already has. A church where the discouraged are encouraged by a generation who said that disappointment would never get them down. A church where the faith is passed from one generation to the next because the ones who know care enough to teach the ones who don’t, and we all gather around the cross of Jesus giving thanks for the truth that sets us free. Elisha stuck the water of the Jordan with the mantle of his teacher saying, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” and as the water was parted to the one side and to the other, Elisha knew that the faith of our Mothers and Fathers had once again been passed from one generation to the next. May it always be so. Amen.