Humanity in Adolescence

By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

9-19-06

Crestwood UCC

I almost called this sermon The Church in Adolescence because our Ephesians text is written to a very young church in Ephesus, probably less than 30 years old, and they were still trying to figure out how to be the church.  Later on it will be apparent why I called it Humanity in Adolescence.  But first, let’s talk about adolescence, which has one more letter “c” in it than the bulletin says.

Adolescence refers to that time in a young person’s life when they are no longer children, but they don’t quite possess the maturity of full adulthood.  There’s really no magic age at which this stage ends for young persons, some are still adolescent at 21.  And parenting adolescents is not easy just as the Apostle Paul’s job, trying to lead the young church at Ephesus, was not easy.  Parenting adolescents is a lot like driving on an icy South Dakota road.

You know how it is when you reach an intersection that you didn’t expect to be icy, and as you begin to brake, you suddenly realize just how very slick it is.  You can try pumping your breaks ever so gently, and then when you start to s-l-i-d-e, you can sometimes steer gently in an effort to correct it…but sometimes you realize that you are just going to have to slide through it because there is no way you are going to be able to control what’s happening. ..you’ve got to just ride it out and slide through that intersection hoping to God there’s nothing coming on either side that’s going to hit you! 

My own kids are now 21 and 31—one in college and the other one having finished degrees at Harvard and Stanford, and well into a career she is self-designing as she goes, developing non-profits that do good—she might be described as a venture capitalist for good.  As I thought this week about parenting them through adolescence, and even through their 20’s now, another analogy came to mind—that of bowling.

I’ll demonstrate:  When one bowls, it’s important to have a good beginning, a solid form—you know, you need to hold the ball correctly, and start with the best stance so your feet will go in the right direction, and give you the best possible delivery on that ball.  And with all those preparations, then you are ready to move out and send that ball rolling down the alley, knowing you’ve done everything you could to make it roll straight toward its goal. But then, invariably, we do something totally stupid, that does not a bit of good—you know what it is, something like this—[wave hands to the left as if it will help move the ball over, away from the gutter].  We try desperately to keep it out of the gutter if it’s veering too far to the right or left!  But that ball is out of our hands!   We can no more control it than we can control our adolescent children, but we so want to try, don’t we?   We worry about our young adult children, and sometimes we try to push them this way or that, and it usually does about as much good as waving our hands at a bowling ball!  They are out of our hands.  They are out of our control.

The writer of Ephesians, who may have been Paul, was giving advice to the young church at Ephesus.  He says they must no longer be children tossed to and fro by every idea, that they need to work at living the best lives they can, with honesty and integrity, without anger or vengefulness, so they will grow to be Christ’s body.  But Paul knew that the future of this church was out of his control, out of his hands.  I get the sense from reading the whole letter to the Ephesians, that he knew that the future was out of all of their hands, and the best thing they could do was to imitate the love of God as a community.

It is much the same today.  We want so much to forge a peace in the Middle East, but much of what happens is out of our hands.  We want to feed all the hungry children of the world, but no matter how much of our resources we send to Church World Service and the like, this is largely out of our hands.  Like parenting kids in their 20’s, we can hope that the way we have live our lives will affect our children and the world in a positive way, but the future is really out of our control, isn’t it.

That’s why it is so important to place our ultimate trust in God, and to have hope, because even though what happens is out of OUR hands, it is not out of God’s hands.  It may be out of our hands but it must not be out of our hope.  Hope for the day when God will have God’s way with the world, and all God’s children will be fed, and will live in peace. 

Sometimes when I get discouraged, it helps me to do two things…the first is to look to the Bible for stories of God’s entering life when people were tempted to give in to despair.  Our Psalmist reminds us that there are so many times when God’s goodness inspires our renewed hope—when people do act kindly, when they forgive one another, when they sacrifice their own well-being for the sake of another.  There are times when true goodness is demonstrated, when loyalty and noble behavior show us what we are meant to be.  When the sheer joy of existence reminds us that this is God’s world, and God will have God’s way with it, in God’s own good time.

The second thing that helps me be hopeful is to remind myself that humanity is itself barely entering adolescence.  Look at the age of the world—estimated to be over 4 and a half BILLION years old.  And yet, scientists estimate that human beings probably only entered the scene about 6 MILLION years ago.  Relative to the age of the planet, we are only in humanity’s childhood stage, if you compare our age to the age of the earth, or to how long humanity might exist.  If you see humanity as being in its childhood, or adolescence, why then we don’t appear to be doing all that badly.  Humanity has a lot to learn, a lot of mistakes yet to make. 

But take hope. Even though much of the warring and madness of the world is out of our control, it is never out of God’s.  Even though much of what happens in the world is out of our hands, it is never out of God’s hands, and so it should never be outside of our hope.  Hope for the day when all God’s children will be fed, safe and loved.  Hope for a world where true peace exists.  Hope for the kind of community Paul spoke of.  That is our fervent hope for the world on this World Communion Sunday.  Amen.