The Rev. Shanda M. Mahurin February 16/17, 2008
JESUS SAID: YOU MUST BE BORN ANEW!
Abram (or Abraham as he is usually called) was 75 years old when God told him to leave his home and journey to a new land. God promised, “I will make of you a great nation…” meaning that he and Sarah would finally have a son. Abram believed and set out to go to a new land. He and Sarah traveled, endured and escaped famine, experienced great evil and amazing goodness. Their life between 75 and 100 was quite an adventure. Twenty-five years later they had a son. Abram was 100 years old!! The pace, productivity and purpose of their life took on new intensity and vigor the older they got.
Abram lived in a culture that revered age. Old people were expected to be vital and active. Today, “ageism” or “gerontophobia” (the fear of aging or old people) makes age more a dead end than the gateway to the fullness of life. Yet at we know here in Spring Hill, there are multitudes of older people living full lives. Over and over again, research has shown that age is a poor predictor of health, work satisfaction, family status, interests, needs or even the timing of life events. Yet we persist in the glorifying youth and rarely talk about age without bewailing wrinkles or memory loss or getting ready to die. Why can’t we, especially in the church where spiritual values ought to be the most important, talk about age as the possibility of living more fully, more deeply, and more abundantly than ever before? It’s time for the church to take its cue from Abram and Sarah and lead the way in abandoning self-fulfilling and out-of-date images of aging. Perhaps we could even give them up for Lent this year!
Life expectancy is now approaching 90 and some futurists predict that by the end of this century it will be 120 to 140 years! If this happens, what we now call old age will likely be the longest and most productive period of our lives. No one is ever too old to serve God. At age 67, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay entitled “Old Age.” In it he lamented the way “America is a culture of young men, and too full of work…. for pleasure and tranquility.” He hated the way Americans ignored what he called the “particular benefits” of age, especially the virtue of experience. In youth, he said, life is prone to be “a heap of beginnings” with little result. In youth “every object glitters and attracts.” Elders, he said, are different. “Age sets its house in order, and finishes its works, which to every artist is a supreme pleasure.” (Society and Solitude, 1909) Youth may be a gift of nature, but age is a work of art. Abram and Sarah trusted God to transform their lives into a work of art; why can’t we? Of course, most jokes about aging are funny, especially the collection of “You know you’re old when….” jokes. You know you’re old when:
-the gleam in your eye is from the sun hitting your trifocals
-all the names in your “little black book” end in M.D.
-you get winded playing bridge
-you sit in a rocking chair and you can’t get it going
-you burn the midnight oil at 9 p.m.
-an attractive person goes by and your pacemaker makes the garage door go up
Or, in the words of the great George Burns, “You know you’re getting old when you stoop down to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.”
These jokes are funny because they have truth in them, and I admit there are a lot of things about aging I really don’t like! I do like what the novelist Alice Miller says better: “Staying young is the last thing a person ought to do. Life is so much more interesting, so much more exciting, when you get to know it better. I can hardly wait in the morning to begin to spend these last precious years.” I think God wants us to feel the way Alice Miller does about aging. I think God wants us to wake up every morning with the same zest for life Abram and Sarah felt and the same faith in God’s promises.
God is love! The Gospel today tells us that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Trust in God; you are promised eternal, abundant life. Nicodemus was an old man when he came to Jesus seeking guidance and Jesus told him that he must be born from above, born anew, or born again, depending on your translation. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” Nicodemus asked. Jesus answered, “The wind blows where it chooses…so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Age doesn’t limit God. The Spirit of God is a gift that can be released in us more and more as we grow older. I ask you, would a loving God have created us in such a way that life diminishes? No, God promises us new and abundant life! For those fortunate enough to live to old age, there is exquisite joy in seeing the fruit of a lifetime of sacrifice and love and the deepening of our relationships. Like Abram and Sarah it is time for us to move old age from the geriatric ward to the maternity ward! In God’s maternity ward, we will be born from above, born anew, born again and again in God’s love.
The theologian Henri Nouwen said that when we age we realize that “the many kisses and embraces” we receive each day are “incarnations of the eternal embrace of the Lord himself.” So I invite you to welcome all the kisses and embraces this life may bring for as long as life is yours. As we age to perfection, lets be more like Abram and Sarah and enjoy the eternal embrace of God!! How about—you know you’re old when:
-the gleam in your eye is from the exquisite certainty of
God’s everlasting love
-all the names in your “little black book” are those of people you
really care about, and
-you get winded by the Holy Spirit blowing you into new
and more exciting adventures!
May the blessings of age be yours!!