Reflection: Enter the Young

“Enter the Young”

Raven Creek Presbyterian Church

November 24, 2024

10:15 AM

Genesis 13: 8-13

⁸Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred. ⁹Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.”

¹⁰Lot looked about him, and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before the Lord had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. ¹¹So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward; thus they separated from each other. ¹²Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the Plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom. ¹³Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

Abraham  and Lot.  Here’s a telling tale.  Uncle and nephew standing on the hill deciding which land they will go into.  Over there on the left the lush, fertile valley of cities and farms.  Off to the right the highlands, rugged and rough.  Uncle Abe letting nephew Lot choose which way he wanted to take his people and his wealth.  Lot looks right.  Lot looks left.  It’s a no-brainer.  He chooses the lush left and takes his people down into the soft living, easy living, where in a matter of years they are completely assimiliated, decadent, corrupted by the easy life.  Unlike Uncle Abraham who takes his people into the highlands, the rougher country that created a tougher  people, resilient, hardened, weathered by the wilderness, strong in spirit and character, the way God defines strength. 

Lot has chosen his portion.  Down into the lush valley he goes. The cushy life, easy life.  I, Abraham, shall take my pioneer people into the highlands, the rugged lands.  Lot is for the rich life and his invevitable corruption and destruction.  Lot lives for the past.  We march into the future.  We march into the frontiers yet to be explored.  We see the mountains, the challenging land.  We have work to do.  We must hew out out living.  No room for the lazy or entitled.  No room for those who think themselves better than others.  This land, this frontier requires morality and merit.  I, Abraham, shall be happier as pioneer than domesticated. 

Maybe we too have received the better portion.  Maybe there is virtue in the wilderness. 

A tough land makes for a tough people and our God needs tough people.

What am I thankful for this holiday?  For the struggles.  I am thankful they make us rely on God and each other. They free us from our self-centredness and desire to dominate. 

Thankful we have a choice between being like Lot and taking the easy way out or like Abraham taking on the wilderness and difficulties.  Facing the hardship of personal and social responsibility.  Which makes us  thankful for the Church of Jesus Chrsit.   We are pioneers still.   It’s about the message, not the messengers. 

Never known an institution yet to cure a sin-sick soul.  If we get our souls right, the rest can follow. 

Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people…

~~~

In the theatre of history, with God as our audience, when has the church, through those who bore the burden of the call, been at its best?

Thankful when we too didn’t take the easy way out, Lot’s way, and refused to obscure the light, refusing to accept darkness by saying “No” when tempted to become the handmaiden of the state or look to the state to be our savior. 

Thankful when we, refusing to be moles or mice, fought for the great ends of the church:  1) the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; 2) the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; 3) the maintenance of divine worship; 4)  the preservation of the truth; 5)  the promotion of social righteousness; 6) and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. 

I admit I have squandered time preoccupied with the lesser ends of filling pews, meeting budgets, maintaining the building, forgetting too often how these temporal institutional tasks are supposed to serve her universal great ends.  It’s instructive that the Spanish word, ‘preocupar,’ means, ‘to worry.’

History offers sufficient examples of our faithlessness, our Lot-like compromising of morals for expediency, our sin of being afraid.

As John Knox, the father of Scottish Presbyterianism, prayed in his prayer of confession:  “sin ponishes sin.”  God has no need to punish.  We punish ourselves, along with innocents.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr reminds us how it is easier for us to sin in a crowd than individually.  He also proclaimed how Christians follow a Jesus who himself put no trust in the enduring institutions and traditions of his society.  So why should we?   We complain about the price of eggs but eagerly go into debt for a new cell phone.  Compare that to our pilgrims.

Thus we are thankful to be light-bearers, for Jesus warns: “…and this is judgment that the light has come into the world, and people love darkness rather than the light”   We are to shine, to lift our lamp, rather than try to manipulate the end result, for we are reminded how the “ends are pre-existent in the means,” [saith Martin Luther King, Jr.].

We are reminded how in the night, the presence of the Lord went on before our freed Hebrew ancestors to show them the way in a pillar of fire.  So it is whenever the darkness overwhelms and we journey through a wilderness. 

It is in dark hours, the church shines best. 

Thankful whenever Christ’s Church proclaimed the gospel in the face of repressive religion, amidst oppressive and hateful empires.  

Thankful when we refuse to abuse the Bible to deny persons their dignity, their birthright of humanity, replacing divine righteousness with our vain opinion of rightness.  When the local congregation cares for each other, holds each other accountable to Jesus. 

Thankful whenever it proclaimed the gospel in the face of corrupt state religion such as in the Reformation. 

Thankful when the fire of Reformed Theology inspired the words of the Declaration of Independence, reminding us of inalienable rights and the duty of a worthy leader, and what to do when leaders break their fidelity to God and the people.

Thankful when it proclaimed the gospel in the Abolitionist cause.   When it proclaimed the gospel against the Weimer Republic and the Third Reich despite the established church replacing the cross with the satanic swastika, even unto martyrdom.  Ask Bonhoeffer. Who won?  Hitler, Mussolini?  Or Bonhoeffer?   My father’s generation knew what to do with Nazi’s. 

Thankful when the Presbyterians proclaimed the gospel against Joseph McCarthy and his cruel shadow. 

Thankful when the church marched and proclaimed the gospel in the Civil Rights movement.  

Thankful when we have a a culture worth living and dying for.  It keeps us young. 

Thankful when the church received the perfect love that casts out fear and answered the call to be morally responsible and participate in God’s great redemptive work. 

In dark hours, the church shines best.   Thanks be to God.  Those ageless pilgrims are watching us. 

Listen please:  Hebrews 12: 1-2

12Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ²looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Pioneer – archegon – leader, chief, founder, author – used only four tines in the New Testament  –  referring to the head of family or clan, leader who goes on ahead, pioneering the way of salvation.  God in Jesus goes on before (the suffering and experience of death) to secure the unknown future for the rest of us.

Will we follow?  That’s the question.  A good question as we celebrate Thanksgiving Day.   Will we follow?

President Lincoln declared a number of thanksgivings, for example in April 1862, and July 1863 after Gettysburg. Two months later Lady's Book magazine editor Sarah Hale wrote a letter to Lincoln urging him to proclaim a national day of Thanksgiving reflecting the traditional holiday. Lincoln soon issued a declaration asking that the blessings bestowed upon the country "be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people"

[Interesting note:  Lincoln, though he regularly worshipped at Presbyterian churches, never was Baptised, never became a member of a church.]

…and inviting Americans at home and abroad "to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."

Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a Federal Holiday on the last Thursday of November.  Why Thursday?  So no religious group could claim the day for themselves.

~~~

Thanksgiving.   What ‘s new to learn about Thanksgiving?  Well, it isn’t that the passenger list on the Mayflower consisted of only 102 pilgrims, plus the 30 member crew, all under the command of Captain Christopher Jones.

It isn’t that the voyage from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, New England was a difficult 66 day crossing, with heavy winds and rains, and lots of seasickness.

And it isn’t that the Pilgrms thought they were going to Virginia but they goofed and ended up much farther north.  

What we learn new was how young most of the pilgrims were.

Only 4 were 50 years or older, the rest were in the 20's and 30's.  And even more interesting was how 34 of the pilgrim passengers were children = 1/3 of all the passengers were children. 

That number got added to with the birth of Oceanus Hopkins in transit.

Then there was Peregrine White, who was the first child born to the Pilgrims in the New World, actually while at anchor in Cape Cod.  His parents, William and Susanna White, had boarded the Mayflower with Peregrine’s older brother, Resolved.   Peregrine’s birthday, in 1620, took place sometime right about now.   His name, like the falcon, means "one who journeys to foreign lands.”  Peregrine is the French word for ‘’Pilgrim.’   A wonderful hint about us…

They were all so young.

They also included some young rascals. 

There’s one story of a little boy causing all sorts of mischief one day.  He even threw a burning squib (that is a small explosive device) right near the gunpowder keg and nearly blew the ship up.  This Mayflower Dennis the Menace almost ruined our Thanksgiving, not to mention the birth of the United States. 

What did these young pilgrims first build upon arrival?  A common house for use as a church first and a fort if needed. 

And what happened to those 103 Pilgrims?  We’ve heard the story before.  The hunger and the sickness, and how during the winter the parents sacrificed for their children.  That is what parents do:  they sacrifice for their children.  But what did that mean?  And what might we have not thought about this story?

It made the average age of the colonists even younger. 

One-half of them were left alive by spring.  Four entire families were wiped out.  Only three married couples were left.  The parents sacrificed for their children.   They sacrificed because they wanted to hand down their civilization yes, but more so, they prayed and hoped their children would claim for themselves a culture worth living and dying for. 

~~~

Now our turn.  We’ve been entrusted with a great and good gift from these young pilgrims.  It’s the way it should be.  The young look forward to what can be.  The old, well, too often they look back on what was and want it to be that way again.  As if it ever will be. 

There was a elder at Grove who for years complained to me that in his day the elders wore white gloves and tails when serving communion.  Right….

It is time for thanksgiving, thanksgiving requiring courage and sacrifice.

Thankful for the youthful hunger for something better.