Sermon Begins at 23:47
Good Morning St. Andrew’s.
Shock. Anxiety. Horror. Terrible things could happen. Terrible things will happen. Terrible things are happening.
If you listen to me (and give me money), I will make sure that terrible things don’t happen.
This is a series of anxious thoughts, and I’m sure that you came to church today hoping that your priest would take you down this rabbit hole, rather than help to ease your worries.
This is just where my brain went as I began to read Ephesians this week and it began with, “Be careful…”
And I’m moved to preach to you this morning, “be careful?”
A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me what I thought were the two most commonly used words by parents in our generation.
I thought for a little while and guessed a lot of different things.
For your sake, and because I don’t remember them all, I will spare you the total list,
just a few will suffice.
I said, “I love you,” Nope
“you can be anything you want to be,” Nope
“I’m proud of you,” No
“you can do it,” No
Et cetera
After going through far more of these than my friend wanted me to guess, mostly just because I like to torture people who ask me simple questions,
My friend told me that the most common word our generation says to our children are the words, “be careful.”
I thought about it, and I want you to think about it.
Some friends in the neighborhood turned Mel and I onto a book this summer called, the Anxious Generation, by Jonathon Haidt.
The book makes the argument that the rise of smart phones and this sort of “be careful” parenting has led to an increase of anxiety in our children.
To be honest, as I listened to the audiobook, I started to wonder whether it was actually my generation that are the anxious ones.
In any case, I take his point.
How often do we say be careful to our children, especially when they’re really little? Especially in the black community, where every child eventually has to have “the talk.”
And even when we don’t say it, we do things that are the same as saying it.
I can remember, and I don’t know why I did this or who told me that I should do it,
But when Teil was learning how to pull up on things and crawl and stand,
He would sometimes get under the coffee table, just his head.
What would I do as the attentive parent of this child?
Let me pat myself on the back, I didn’t say “be careful you’re going to hit your head.”
But, I did something that basically amounts to the same thing. I would put my hand on the edge of the table above his head.
That way, if he did try to stand up, instead of hitting his head on the table and saying, “ouch” or crying, he hit my nice, soft hand.
Now, you may be thinking, that’s actually really nice, Fr. Chris.
And in a certain way, I think you’re right.
But also, I wonder if this kind of “be careful” parenting style, which is obsessed with shielding a child from all pain, is actually what’s best for our children.
Let me tell you just in my own life (and I’ve seen plenty of other parents do this as well, if that makes me feel better) how this has changed as the boys have gotten older.
Give me an amen, if you’ve seen this too.
I see my boys doing something that I’m sure is going to lead to an accident , and I’m close enough to get involved.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to get the stuffed animal down from the ceiling fan.”
“How did it get there?”
“I was playing soccer with it in my bedroom and, I don’t know, it just got stuck up there after I kicked it.”
“by itself? It got stuck by itself and had nothing to do with you kicking it?”
“yeah”
“okay, but why are you now swinging a baseball bat at your fan?”
“I need to get it down, so that Teil and I can keep playing.”
(you knew it was Arlo before I said that last part, Amen?)
This is usually where I lose it a little bit, or a lot bit depending on how tired I am.
My brain starts thinking about all of the collateral damage that he’s about to do.
His brain is singularly focused on that stuffy.
So, I start running down the list of possible catastrophic outcomes of his choice.
What if you break the fan?
What if you break the fan and the wires touch your metal bat and you get electrocuted?
What if you hit your brother in the head with the bat?
What if you swing and hit yourself in the head?
What if… what if… what if…
Of course this anxiety is all based on my life experience.
I as a child once destroyed a glass light fixture in a neighbor’s bedroom, because we decided to pillow fight, while I was babysitting them.
I did not make any money that night.
I watched a kid on my baseball team, while doing practice swings at the batting cage – using my bat by the way – hit a metal pole that he didn’t see and have the bat ricochet and hit him in the head.
He was not wearing a helmet, because – after all – he wasn’t up to bat yet.
He ended up being fine, just to save you the suspense of me not finishing that story. My bat, however, had a nice big dent in it.
Taking these experiences, I now - as a parent - am trying to spare my kids from having to experience the same things.
But, I wonder, if at the same time, I am teaching them an anxious way of being in the world, and filling them with my own intrusive thoughts.
I wonder how well freedom from pain will serve them later in life.
There’s a spectrum of course, I’m not going to watch them run across the street without looking and let that slide.
For certain, as parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, safe adults during our community youth programs of young black children,
We still live in a society, where “the talk” is an absolute necessity.
We want to protect our children from the most severe things that they can face, but I think all of us know in our hearts and need to realize with our brains one simple truth.
No matter how hard we try, no matter how much anxiety we instill in them, bad things are still going to happen to our kids, and we can’t protect them from everything.
The Virgin Mary knew this from the beginning of Jesus’ life, when the old man Simeon prophesied to her at Jesus’ dedication in the temple, “Behold, this Child is appointed to cause the rise and fall of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed— and a sword will pierce your soul as well.” (Luke 2: 34b-35)
Heck, at the beginning of summer, while we were in “protective parent mode,” Arlo still managed to jump out of a tree and fracture his arm.
And you know what? He’s okay.
(Now, I sat down with him when the bill came in and showed him how much his choice cost, you know that’s right!)
But all in all, he experienced something. (I’ll let you know when and if he learned something from it.)
Ultimately, I wonder if it’s time to be careful about saying and abiding in a life of “be carefuls.”
And that brings me back to where we started with Ephesians.
The first two words, in English, are “be careful,” or are they?
I actually don’t think that they are.
Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that the Apostle Paul was definitely anxious for his people.
We have so many letters of his, because he constantly worried about the fledgling faith of the communities that he started.
He even says in Galatians 4:11, “I am afraid for you/I am anxious for you.”
But he also tells us in Philippians 4:6, “don’t be anxious about anything, but by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”
Or as Bob Marley put it, “don’t worry about a thing, you know that every little thing is gonna be alright.”
Paul was worried about his communities, but he also knew that they had to “work out their own salvation in fear and trembling” in his absence.
He couldn’t always be there for them and do it for them.
Instead of reading this Ephesians passage from a perspective of anxious parenting,
What if we retranslated these first few words?
The first word in this verse is actually just a word that means “pay attention,” Blepete.
The third word, in the Greek, which is the one that is translated as “careful,” is actually a term from Greek philosophy, which has to do with “precision, or exactness.” Akribos
The Greek philosopher Isocrates, who lived in the 5th century BCE, used this term to talk about how some philosophers thought that the highest aim of philosophy was to use their reason to make an “exact” description of the world.
He himself was more interested in the practical lived experiences of the world.
For him philosophy was about seeking wisdom to make life better for the community, not about scientific exactitude.
The writer to the Ephesians takes this philosophical understanding of “exactness or precision” and flips it a little bit.
He is interested in precision, unlike Isocrates.
But, like Isocrates, he is most interested in how his people live and learn.
He is telling the people of Ephesus, be “precise” not about the philosophical underpinnings of reality, but about how you walk through your life.
Be scrupulous, hold yourself to a higher standard.
He tells them to “be wise” sophos, like philosophers who care most about living with integrity.
“Be precise about how you walk through this life;”
but try not to be too anxious, try not to obsess about being so “careful.”
The religious authorities who question Jesus in the Gospel show their anxiety.
When Jesus says that people are supposed to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
They immediately hear the passages from Deuteronomy 12 and Leviticus’ legal codes that warn the people not to “eat blood, or flesh with the blood still in it,” and they think about cannibalism.
Jesus knows this language from their sacrificial rituals and the taboos of eating human flesh.
But he’s not really talking about transgressing these rules, he’s trying to get them to think deeper and live into the mysteries of God;
To be less careful and to lean into how God’s abiding presence shows up in the world;
How God can be trusted despite the danger.
And that’s what I want to leave you with today; this question.
Is God trying to form us into an anxious generation, does God really want for us to be overly “careful?”
Or does God want us to exchange safe for faith?
God knows everything that will befall us, God knew everything that would happen to Jesus, and God doesn’t say “be careful.”
God says “walk precisely” with integrity and wisdom; with faith.
Don’t be afraid, don’t try to cover your fears with alcohol/drunkeness (that could and probably will be a sermon unto itself at some point).
And if all else fails, remember that God gave you music and prayer so that you can focus on the good and not the evil.
With that in mind, I want to end this sermon with a spiritual song.
(Verse 2 from Safe by Antoine Bradford)
The greatest battle fieldIs fighting for your heart
And I will never run away, ay
And when arrows pierce my skin
My blood and sweat in the wind
Your love will always be my price
'Cos if loving you is putting me in danger
Then I don't ever wanna be safe
Cos you have been the greatest gift to me
Apart from amazing grace
And when heaven and earth collide
And finally bring on the end of days
And loving you is putting me in danger
And I don't ever wanna be safe
And I don't ever wanna be safe
Comentarios