"Tell Another Generation"
As one of your United Methodist campus
ministers at American University, a big part of my job over the summer is to participate
in a series of New Student Orientation sessions. These sessions, held
throughout June and July, are a chance for new students to meet each other, to
learn more about the school, and to meet with advisors for academic planning
and course selection. Each session includes a community involvement fair, where
various student activity groups, such as the United Methodist Protestant
Community, set up tables in one of the main dining areas in order to share
opportunities for student participation. We hand out free candy, give t-shirts
to people who sign up for our newsletter, and answer questions about spiritual
life on campus.
Something that I’ve noticed over a few
summers of these orientation sessions is a phenomenon that I call “Enthusiastic
Parent; Reluctant Student.” What happens is that a parent approaches our table,
very excited to find out that there are Methodists or Christians or whatever on
campus, and asks us a bunch of questions. Meanwhile, their child, the new
student, maintains a cool distance, physically separating themselves from the
*clearly embarrassing* enthusiasm of their parents or at the very least not
making too much eye contact with those of us behind the table. Sometimes,
parents even complain out loud about their child’s reluctance to approach our
table, which, as you might imagine, does not generally succeed at increasing
the student’s level of interest.
I’m not sharing this in order to make
fun of either parent or student – though this common phenomenon does lead to
some genuinely funny moments. But in all of these encounters, I find myself
really feeling for both the parent and the student. Both come into a new
student orientation experiencing a complex web of excitement and anxiety, fear
and hope. I’ve never been a parent, so I can only imagine the mixture of relief
that a beloved child has achieved this milestone, mixed with anxiety about them
being far away from home, mixed with excitement for all that is ahead of them,
mixed, perhaps, with a bit of nostalgia and maybe even the fear of loneliness
or a shift in parental purpose and self-understanding. I have, on the other
hand, been an undergraduate student, and although it was more than a decade ago
that I attended my own college’s new student orientation, I remember very well
the swirling combination of anxiety, fear, relief, excitement, stress – you name
it, I was feeling it.
And there’s something about a religious
life organization table that just brings it all out. This phenomenon doesn’t
happen as much to, say, the rugby club as it does to the religious life groups.
All of those new college jitters get stirred up with the addition of another
level of anxiety – for the parents, the question of whether the beliefs and
values that they’ve tried to instill will remain important once their children
leave home and begin their adult journeys. For the students, the question of how
to claim their own identity, how to be their own person in a new setting free
of the structures and parental influence of their childhoods. Faith, identity,
meaning, purpose – this is deep, complex stuff that can sometimes surface over
something as simple as whether or not they really need one of our free AU
Methodist pens.
And these personal anxieties take form on
top of a groundswell of deeper societal anxiety. Environmental catastrophe,
racism, gun violence, sexual assault on college campuses – this is the stuff of
internet newsfeeds and tense dinner table discussion. Our churches grapple with
cultural changes and narratives of decline. Aging congregations ask, “where are
the young people?”; young adults in the church ask “Why is it so hard for the
church to change?” An older generation wonders whether they have created an
environment unsafe for a younger; a younger generation wonders whether they
have what it takes to change the world left to them by an older. Who is to
blame for the mess we’re in? Who must take responsibility for changing it?
“Hear this, O elders,” declare the opening lines of the book of Joel, “give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.” Joel’s prophetic words are framed, from the very beginning of the book, as part of an intergenerational conversation, a passing on of wisdom and hope and challenge from one age to the next.
“Hear this, O elders,” declare the opening lines of the book of Joel, “give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your ancestors? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.” Joel’s prophetic words are framed, from the very beginning of the book, as part of an intergenerational conversation, a passing on of wisdom and hope and challenge from one age to the next.
We don’t know very much about the person
named Joel. We do know that his is a late entry into the library of prophetic
literature. Many of the Hebrew prophets warn the nation of future exile if they
fail to deal justly and mercifully with the most vulnerable members of society.
Joel, however, writes after the exile
to Babylon and the return to the land of Judah. The crisis to which Joel is
responding is not the encroaching armies of foreign nations, but rather what us
modern folk might think of as a natural disaster: a swarm of locusts has
plagued the land, destroying crops and ruining livelihoods. In the midst of
this ecological catastrophe, Joel calls the leadership of Judah to account for
their unwillingness or inability to share the things of God with the next
generation. “Call a solemn assembly,” Joel cries, “gather the people. Sanctify
the congregation. Assemble the aged, gather the children, even infants at the
breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.”
Leave nobody out, Joel warns. Gather
everyone. Everyone needs to hear what God is up to in the midst of this crisis.
If there’s any way out of this locust-infested-mess, everybody better turn back
and listen to God.
To our 21st century ears,
Joel’s theologizing of disaster can seem strange, even harmful. Surely there
are natural, scientific explanations for a locust and famine. Surely God – who,
as Joel reminds the people, is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love” – surely such a God does not inflict harm on
people, including children, just to prove a point. The God that I believe in,
the Jesus that I follow, does not go around causing natural disasters and
random acts of violence in order to convince us to improve our behavior.
Yet there is something powerful about
Joel’s reminder to seek for the voice of God in the midst of an age of anxiety.
To stop and listen to what we might be called to do together when change is
scary, when disaster strikes, or when violence seems to reign supreme.
“Do not fear,” begins the passage from
Joel that we heard this morning. And in case we missed it, it’s repeated – “Do
not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things! Do
not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are
green, the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.”
Even as environmental
and economic catastrophe rage all around, Joel calls God’s covenant community
back to a hope in the ever-generous abundance of God. “You shall know that I am
in your midst,” God declares. I am with you. I am with you. You are not alone.
And then – and here,
perhaps, we come to understand why Joel has been so insistent that all the people, young and old, have been
gathered to hear this message – we hear the words that have become familiar in
the Christian tradition through the story of Pentecost:
“I
will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, your old folk shall dream dreams, and
your young folk shall see visions.”
For Joel, the culmination of the hope
that he comes to offer the beleaguered and distraught people of God is a vision
of intergenerational inspiration, in which people of all ages and genders – and
we can add of all races, of all language-groups, of all abilities and orientations
and political affiliations and national backgrounds – all find themselves
dreaming anew, imagining anew, speaking out anew about the things of the
Spirit.
In
the midst of ecological crisis, God says, “I will pour out my spirit…on all of you.”
In
the midst of violence caused by deprivation and distrust, God says, “I will
pour out my spirit…on all of you.”
In the midst of massive societal
change, God says: “I will pour out my spirit…on all of you.”
In
the midst of intergenerational anxiety and tension, God says, “I will pour out
my spirit…on all of you, young or old
or anywhere in between. And you will dream new things, and see new things, and
speak new things.”
Now,
it’s a bit strange being a guest preacher in a congregation that I don’t know
very well. I don’t know each of you, and your unique stories and situations. I
don’t know whether some of you are about to send a kid off to college, or if
some of you are going off to college yourselves. I don’t know if some of you
are worried about whether a younger generation is going to carry on the mission
and ministry that you’ve put so much time and effort into cultivating; I don’t
know if some of you are worried that an older generation will never get out of
the way and let you lead.
What
I think I know is this: God’s still got some Spirit waiting to pour out on us.
God’s still got some Spirit waiting to pour out on American University. On
Chevy Chase United Methodist Church. On the church in the U.S. and around the
world. God’s still got some dream-inspiring, vision-inducing,
imagination-provoking Spirit to pour out on all of us.
But
we’ve got to take the time and make the space to receive it. And if sons and
daughters are prophesying, and older people are dreaming dreams, and younger
people are seeing visions – then we darn well better figure out some ways to
share all that with each other.
As
usual, there are no easy guides for how to do this, no quick 3-step solution to
the challenge at hand. Instead, here is one story: last week I attended a big,
raucous Christian festival in North Carolina, called the Wild Goose Festival.
On the last day of the festival, I helped my friend Alicia facilitate a
conversation about growing a new generation of leaders in the church. An
intergenerational group – from 12 years old to 76 – sat together and shared
their first memories of leadership, and the things that make them feel affirmed
or discouraged as leaders. Youth shared their hopes and their fears. Older
adults asked how they could be more supportive, and shared some of their own
feelings of being pushed aside or not listened to.
Of
all the many wonderful things I experienced at that festival – and it was a
wonderful experience – that conversation gave me the most hope. It felt like we
were taking the time to listen to each other’s dreams and visions, to create a
space of sharing and collaboration in the midst of a societal context of
anxiety and fear and division.
We
can create such spaces – here, in our churches, in our communities, in our
families. We can ask questions, we can listen, we can share from a place of
honesty and of Spirit. What it might look like exactly, I can’t tell you for
sure – but we can do it, and we must. Otherwise, we might just miss what it is
that God is pouring out among us.
So
gather the people. Sanctify the congregation. Assemble the aged. Gather the
children, even infants at the breast. Listen for what God has to say: “Do not
fear. Do not fear. I am with you – all of
you – always.”
Amen.
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