Candlemass 1999 | Luke 2:21-32

*Preached at Grace North Church 2/7/99*

Growing up, I wasn't given a lot of positive messages about myself from my church, or for that matter, from the culture at large. Instead, I was told that I was a sinner, that at my core I was corrupt, that there was nothing I could do to redeem myself. Now that may seem like good theology to some, but it is dreadful psychology, no matter how you slice it. I remember as a very young boy being so overcome with a sense of my own shamefulness and sin that I could not sleep for fear of hell. My mother took me to see my pastor, who showed me some bible verses that said that God would not abandon us, but it was too little too late. The message had been received, loud and clear: I was a worthless degenerate in the sight of God, and not much better in the sight of my parents. In addition to these theological truths, I had the misfortune of being born with a double-helping of creativity, which in a repressed fundamentalist universe, is not necessarily a positive thing. It's very difficult to color within the lines, and coloring outside the lines, emotionally, theologically, or socially, was strictly verboten.

Once I wrote a short story about a wacky hockey team. And why were they wacky? Because they were drunk all the time. Now of course, I had never known a drunk person, and only knew the stereotypes from sitcoms, but my efforts were instantly condemned by my mother who felt that such a literary subject was not appropriate for a third grader. Even now, after nearly twenty years I must admit that a part of me is still smarting from the condemnation and shame I felt around that incident.

These are minor events culled from what seemed to me to be an interminable childhood, throughout which I felt a good deal of guilt and despair. The messages I was given: that my creativity was bad, that my feelings were bad, and worst of all that my very soul was bad to the core, have left deep scars that even now, after nearly 20 years of psychotherapy and hard work, have yet to be alleviated.

It is this trauma, I believe, which is partly to blame for my own reticence to have children. I feel so personally marred that I am terrified of inflicting such psychological damage upon another human being. So terrified in fact, that I am even loath to try. I know I will make different mistakes than my parents did, but they will be mistakes nonetheless, and I quail at the thought of it.

A significant degree of healing came to me several years ago when I began working at Creation Spirituality magazine. There I met a man who was to be my friend, mentor, and confident, as well as my boss, Dan Turner. Those of you who have been fortunate enough to meet him know what an amazingly gentle and wise presence Dan is. A laicized Roman Catholic priest, he spent most of his working life as an advocate for juvenile offenders for the Chicago youth authority. Dan is a person who believes in young people.

When he retired and came west with his wife Elizabeth to edit the magazine, he and I found we had much in common: a passion for peace and justice, a fascination with mystical theology, and a very compatible if idiosyncratic sense of humor. But the greatest thing about our working together was transformation that occurred in me. Robert Bly in his film A Gathering of Men, said, "If a younger man is not being admired by an older man, he is being hurt." Dan admired me, and said so, to anyone who cared to listen. He praised my writing, my creativity, and even my outrageousness. Far from being threatened by the way I pushed the boundaries, he relished in it, and told me so. Dan Turner gave me the greatest gift one human being can give another. Genuine admiration.

Not the kind of admiration that people have for pop stars or others who are so far removed that we cannot see their faults, but the kind of admiration that saw me for who I really was, warts and all, and still said, "you are a gift from God."

It transformed me utterly. There is no price you can put on that kind of gift. Dan believed in me and loved me, and because of that, it made it easier to believe in myself, and to love myself as well.

I have had to ask myself since then, what would have happened if I had had that kind of mirroring as a child? What if my parents had not been terrified of my creativity? What if they had not felt threatened by my feelings, and not tried to shut me down? What if I had been told from childhood that I was a good gift from God, and did not enter this world with a hopelessly damning stain upon my soul? What kind of self-fulfilling prophesy might have been set in motion if I had gotten the message loud and clear from my very birth that I was "a light unto all nations, and the hope of my people?"

This is of course, the very message Jesus receives in our reading today. Far from believing in a theology which told them their child was stained from birth, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple not to wash away his sin in baptism, but because the Mosaic law stated that every first-born son was "holy unto God" and belonged to God? The reason they had to go to the temple was because Jesus was God's property, God's holy Son, as was every first born son. They had to offer God a token pair of turtledoves in exchange for him, so that they could take him home and keep him! What an amazing theology! And what a drastic change from our own!

But that is not the end of the story, of course. Once they get there, they meet Simeon, who, upon seeing Jesus, begins to utter prophesies about him, saying that Jesus is the salvation whom God has prepared for all peoples; that he is a light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of his people, Israel.

Now you have to imagine what Mary and Joseph have got to be making of this. They're probably thinking "Yikes! We better treat this kid good!" I'll be willing to wager that Jesus did not grow up being told he was sinful, that his thirst for knowledge or novelty was evil, or that his soul was corrupt. Instead, we was treated as if he was the hope and promise of the world, and no doubt he was even told that, as well. What kind of effect might that have on a child? What kind of self-esteem would such a message engender? What kind of self-fulfilling prophesy might Simeon and Anna set in motion? How might the lives of our own children have been different if they were told they were good in their core, that they were a light unto the nations, that they were the hope of the world? What kind of self-fulfilling prophesies might be set into motion then?

Instead, I fear my own generation is languishing under another self-fulfilling prophesy, one that is not nearly so hopeful. We have given ourselves the name "Generation X, which stems from our own sense of a lack of identity. While our parents were mostly "hippies" driven to save the Earth from the ravages of environmental catastrophe and war; and their parents saved the world from fascism, we work at McDonalds.

In their groundbreaking work on Generations in America William Straus and Neil Howe describe the 60s and 70s as

an awakening era that seemed euphoric to young adults [but] was, to [their children], a nightmare of self-immersed parents, disintegrating homes, schools with conflicting missions, confused leaders, a culture shifting from G to R ratings, new public-health dangers, and a "Me Decade" economy that tipped toward the organized old and away form the voiceless young. "Grow up fast" was the adult message. That they did, graduating early to "young adult" realism in literature and film, and turning into what American Demographics magazine has termed "proto-adults" in their early teens At every phase of life, [Generation-Xers] have encountered a world of more punishing consequence than anything their [Adaptive] or [Idealist] elders ever knew (Generations, p. 321).

As a result, my generation has grown up cynical in the extreme, reckless, pragmatic, unsentimental, and highly dubious about our future. Since more than 50% of us are from broken homes, we are understandably intolerant of authority figures, and regard adults as essentially being out of control and irresponsible.

We are the first generation to be brought up under the threat of complete nuclear annihilation, and the despair we feel is no affectation, but real. While older generations shake their heads as we burn out on drugs, self-destruct through sexually transmitted diseases, and in many other ways fail to realize our potential, I have to ask the question, "Why?" What philosophies and theologies led us to consider ourselves worthless at our core? What lack of trust led us to consider adults and their institutions hypocritical and ultimately untrustworthy? What lack of hope in us left us bereft of hope? What self-fulfilling prophesies were declared in the early 60s which are now ravaging the collective psyche of an entire generation? And how do we help Generation X to heal?

We need Dans and Simeons. We need elders who see us for what we are, and love us in spite of our warts. Elders who see the potential in us, who can believe in us, even if they don't completely understand us. Elders who will pronounce upon our heads that here indeed is "a light unto the nations" and "the hope of our people." Most of us have never heard those words in our lives. We should not wait another minute to hear them now.

This is not a sermon that blames parents for how their children have turned out. This is a sermon about young people asking "why?" Why were we never told we were good by our churches? Why were we born into a world in which we have to live in fear of complete annihilation? Why are we not admired and extolled for the gifts we bring to this planet?

Instead we have grown up cynical and suspicious, and it is not for no reason. When we were children we believed what we were told. Now we no longer believe. When we were children we trusted. Now we do not trust. It is a hopeless and pitiable way to live.

But I do not believe it is too late. I myself have known what it is like to have an older man admire me. I know what it is like to feel the ache of hopelessness subside. I know what it is like to trust an older man, and to not have that trust betrayed. I pray to God that my peers could know the same. I pray to God that the babies in our midst might grow up with the belief that they are the very image of God, pure in their souls, and the hope of all peoples.

How long has it been since you have told a younger person, "I am proud of you." How long has it been since you have said, "I believe in you?" How long has it been since you have looked a child in the eye and said, "You are a light to the entire world?" And what could it hurt? They might just believe you, they might just find that one of the many tears in their old-before-their-time souls can heal. They might gain some hope. They might pass it on to others.

Let us pray.

O God who longs to heal our wounds,
You who chose the first born to be holy unto you
You who showed us the hope of the nations in the eyes of a child
Help us to have hope in our own time
Help us to encourage a generation who is hurt and hurting
To shine and bring light to the world
Help us to see the promise in every child
That Simeon saw in Jesus on that day so many years ago.
And just as importantly, help us to say that we see it,
To believe in our children, so that they will grow up believing in themselves,
For we ask this in the name of the one who believed in us, even Jesus Christ, Amen.