Previous 2002 Sermons
May 12, 2002
Text: Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
As With A Mother’s Embrace
Just about a year ago, best-selling horror and suspense writer Stephen King gave the commencement address at Vassar College. His remarks, titled Scaring You to Action, included this question:
"What will you do? Well, I'll tell you one thing you're not going to do, and that's take it with you. I'm worth I don't exactly know how many millions of dollars--I'm still in the Third World compared to Bill Gates, but on the whole I'm doing OK--and a couple of years ago I found out what "you can't take it with you" means. I found out while I was lying in the ditch at the side of a country road, covered with mud and blood and with the tibia of my right leg poking out the side of my jeans like the branch of a tree taken down in a thunderstorm. I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you're lying in the ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard.
We all know that life is ephemeral, but on that particular day and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life's simple backstage truths. We come in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we're just as broke. Warren Buffett? Going to go out broke. Bill Gates? Going to go out broke. Tom Hanks? Going out broke. Steve King? Broke. Not a crying dime. And how long in between? How long have you got to be in the chips? "I'm aware of the time passin' by, they say in the end it's the blink of an eye." That's how long. Just the blink of an eye.
Yet for a short period—-let's say 40 years, but the merest blink in the larger course of things—-you and your contemporaries will wield enormous power: the power of the economy, the power of the hugest military-industrial complex in the history of the world, the power of the American society you will create in your own image. Of all the power which will shortly come into your hands--gradually at first, but then with a speed that will take your breath away--the greatest is undoubtedly the power of …"
King, of course, didn’t stop there. He went on to fill in the blank, which became the real focus of his speech. But I want to stop there to give us all the space to consider what belongs there as "the greatest power" in our lives, and who – or what – helps us figure it out. In the mid-19th century, William Ross Wallace asserted that "the hand which rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world." I think he’s on to something. Those who nurture us and form us – especially at an early age – ultimately shape the character of the culture we live in; the kind of world we inhabit.
So, on this Mother’s Day, 2002 who is rocking the cradle? I don’t mean in the literal sense – as if to turn this into some already tired attack on working parents who farm out their children to be raised by others. While the considerations I want to invite are ultimately local – to be considered household by household, they are also congregational – and ultimately cultural. The truth is that that formative cradle motion is propelled by all kinds of forces. And it isn’t just confined to childhood. Our cradles are rocked by influential forces throughout our lives – some of which are obvious, like families and churches and schools, but many of which we scarcely are aware.
Consider a few simple statistics. Studies calculate that the average American child will have spent between 19,000 and 24,000 hours in school if he or she does not drop out before completing high school. That represents the equivalent of between 2.1 and 2.7 full years of one’s life. By contrast, nearly thirteen years of an average American’s life (75-year lifespan) will be spent watching television – three full years of which will have been commercials (See Budde… 65). According to one calculation, "more U.S. households have televisions than have flush toilets" (ibid 66). And of course television isn’t the only hand. There are newspapers, radios, billboards and computers. It has been estimated that we "Americans are exposed to ads, logos, brand identifiers, jingles, and other forms of corporate symbolic expressions at the rate of sixteen thousand per day" (ibid).
So whose hand is rocking the cradle?
But one doesn’t need to statistics to get the point. Do a time and attention audit of your own. Think about your week – and the weeks of your children. Who has your ear – your time, and therefore your mind? How much time, for example, is spent intentionally engaging and nourishing the development of your faith? How much time is spent watching TV, listening to the radio, surfing the web, reading billboards or newspaper ads; how much time is spent reading or watching the news; how much time is spent thumbing through catalogues?
Consider this: If you spend three hours each week in Sunday school and worship, that adds up to less than 1.5 years over the course of your lifetime. Let’s say you augment that conscious attention to your faith by spending 30 minutes a day each of the other six days of the week in prayer or devotional reading. You have upped your total to just over 2.5 years of intentional faith development over the course of your life – comparable to the time you will have invested in formal education, but still well-short of simply the volume of commercials you will have watched.
Whose hand is rocking the cradle? What messages are we hearing as we mature? Whose stories are forming us – shaping our values, our ambitions, our passions? People of faith have always recognized the critical importance of formation, understanding that there are no second-generation Christians. If the church is to survive, we have known, it will only be through the living faith of each generation, nurtured and shaped by the one before it.
As Michael Budde and Robert Brimley point out in their recent startling book, Christianity Incorporated, "There is nothing natural or innate about being a Christian (or a Jew, or a surgeon, or a stamp collector). Being a Christian is an identity that one acquires from others -–a set of dispositions, affections, and practices that are learned from persons already formed by the narratives, songs, and traditions of the faith (Budde… 75).
What, then, are the stories that are playing the formative role in our culture – with our kids and each other? Through what stories are we being shaped? Are they the stories of Moses, of Joshua, of David, Elijah, David & Esther; the stories of Mary and Elizabeth, Jesus and Paul. Or are they the stories of Bill Gates, Ray Krock, Kenneth Lay, Ruppert Murdoch? They aren’t the same; they bend us in different ways. Whose stories – which stories – form us, and more importantly our children? For it is those stories – hearing them, reflecting on them, testing out their implications – that makes the impression. It isn’t simply memorizing dogmas or facts. As Budde and Brimley go on to conclude, "The need is not simply for knowledge about Christianity, but knowing how to think, feel, and desire as someone formed by and fluent in the stories, symbols, and exemplars of the Christian drama" (ibid 77)
What are the stories, and who is telling them? It isn’t easy work – anytime, but especially today – in the face of all the competition. If we are going to exert some new attention toward this critical work, it will take strength – to turn off the TV from time to time; to create intentional moments for telling stories and being together in different ways; to say "no" with more conviction and "yes" only when it’s right, not merely when it’s easier. It will take deep conviction and – what may be the hardest of all – it will take a willingness to take a less traveled road.
It will take, in other words, a renewed investment in "mothering." I’m not talking about "motherhood" – which is, essentially a biological function that can be accomplished cavalierly, thoughtlessly, and even by surrogates. I’m talking, rather, about the verb "mothering" – a responsibility not restricted to females that connotes care, nurture, protection, encouragement, and formation. We get all warm and gooey when talking about the nurturing role of mothers – the tender caresses and embraces of the soft-hearted mother; the unconditionally loving and ever-forgiving "sponsor" who sees in her children no wrong. But we too often neglect that other, equally critical task that is incumbent on those who would deliver to the world healthy, responsible, individuated offspring: the harder, more splintery fencework of formation.
It is the kind of work that gardeners have learned to invest in their tomatoes, but parents too often forget to invest in their kids. To be sure, tomatoes have been growing forever – with or without human help, as perhaps can be said about children. But who knows any more how long ago it was that some farmer first discovered that tomato plants need an elevating frame. Left to their tender and spindly selves – if simply nurtured with water and sunlight and an occasional feeding – they bend and eventually lay over onto the ground where they are easily trampled and their fruit easily rots. But if they are guided – if some strengthening and shaping and lifting form is used along with some simple tie-strings to hold them in place, the plant grows erect and the tasty fruit flourishes in such numbers as to supply the whole neighborhood. It would be easier to just let them grow like they want – easier for the gardener and easier for the plant – but the results are puny and sadly lacking. The encouragement of good fruit – like the encouragement of good people – takes intentional and guiding formation.
Those are the kind of qualities I hear the Psalmist ascribe to God: compassionate encourager, nurturer, strength and defender who responds boldly to enemies – a designation that is left ambiguous enough to include "forces" of any description, inside of us as well as around us, that work in opposition to the purposes of God. It is, suggests the Psalmist, that kind of mothering embrace that holds us both now and in eternity. Might it be that kind of mothering embrace that all of us could stand to practice – one that holds, lifts, and thoughtfully, carefully sees to the shape our children in life and children in faith are taking?
