Look for the Clues
Look for the Clues
Matthew 18:1-5
So, pretty much every culture from ancient times has recognized that there is a really important transition that happens in a human being’s life when we move from childhood to adulthood. Usually, folks locate this time at age 12 or 13 or 14. It’s the time when we move from having our world be defined by our families and the incidental contact we have with the rest of the world to the time when our world is the contact we have with others and our family time becomes more incidental. We begin to think for ourselves, although at first, sometimes, that means we think for ourselves just long enough to find someone else to do our thinking for us. (Sadly, letting the group tell us who we should be is something that stays with many people well past their teenage years!)
Cultures develop rituals for marking this passage. If you’re Jewish, you have a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah. If you are a member of some Native American tribes, you go out on your own into the wilderness for a vision quest. If you are a member of some African tribes, you tie vines to your ankles and throw yourself off platforms, coming dangerously close to the ground as you fall. Or, if you’re part of the Union Church, you come to church and then meet Tracy in the youth lounge for questions and discussions of what matters while your parents hang around upstairs well past coffee hour. (Gosh…doesn’t that sound pretty nice, right about now?) So, you don’t get a big party but you also don’t have to starve in the wilderness or plummet from a platform. You just need to tell us that this faith journey that you’ve been on is a journey that you want to continue. In the end, confirmation is an affirmation that being here in this church family and being with us as we try to discern what it means to be faithful people, is where you want to be.
In that spirit, I would like to give you five things to consider for that journey. They are points to ponder for today. Mostly, though, I hope that they are thoughts that you will carry with you as you make your way through your days. Then, I hope maybe you’ll pull them out and do a little inventory of how you are doing along the way.
In our text this morning, we heard the first point. It may sound a bit contradictory but as we stand here today and think about you all moving into young adulthood, I’d like you to not forget to be like a child. When Jesus is asked, “Who is the greatest?” his answer is very straightforward. Jesus calls a child to come to him. He wraps his arms around that child and says, “Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” I assume that this must have caught all the grown-ups who were present completely off guard. After all, our job is to grow up. Why would we want to be like a child?
Jesus goes on to explain that we should aspire to be humble like a child. This seems particularly appropriate since it was an adult that asked about who is the greatest in the first place. I think Jesus’ point was that being the greatest wouldn’t really cross a child’s mind. Instead, they tend to think pretty highly of the people around them. (I remember when I was young and I was sure my father was Superman strong!) What a child wants is to be included and be loved. What a child is so ready to do is love that other person right back. If we are ever going to recognize God’s presence in this world, which is what Jesus is trying to get us to do when he talks about the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, then we have to be humble and open like a child, not all full of ourselves and closed off like an adult can be.
Children are full of other wonderful things, too. They are full of questions and eager to learn. They are capable of feeling awe over the smallest things. (I remember when my daughter spent two hours mostly looking at the pebbles on the path at the Botanic Gardens, marveling at each one. We never actually made it to the gardens.) Children laugh with their whole bodies and feel things with their whole hearts. Children are open and undefended which is why we all worry about our children. They are willing to trust and boy, sooner or later, that will lead to a world of hurt and the temptation to never trust again.
Of course, being like a child doesn’t mean that we should be childish. When impulses rule our lives, we are being childish. When we don’t have the ability to use our words but have to act out whatever we are feeling, we are stuck in a childish way of being. When the most important question is, “What’s in it for me?” childishness rules the day. Of course, a little child being childish and throwing a tantrum in the checkout line at the grocery store is understandable but hardly charming. Clearly, though, a childish adult throwing a tantrum—for whatever reason—is an embarrassment to us all. The apostle Paul puts it this way, “When I was a child, I spoke like child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; When I became an adult, I left childish things behind.
So, if your first job is to become like a child, your second job is to refuse to be childish. Can you learn how to think highly of others and be open to love and awe and all the amazing things in this life without being someone who is dominated by childish impulses? Can you be someone who feels things powerfully and also be someone who learns how to manage those feelings? Can you grow and become more mature without thinking that just means being jaded? Can you become an adult who refuses to throw tantrums?
As you do the dance of becoming a young adult who can be child-like without being childish (dance like their’s no tomorrow; laugh until your sides hurt; learn something about being your own person with your own goals and plans), you will enter another arena. As a child, we spend a lot of time doing whatever other people tell us to do…or not…and there are rewards or punishments for doing or not doing those things. To put it more bluntly, other people tell us what to do. Part of becoming a young adult who is child-like but not childish is becoming a person who takes responsibility for making our own choices. We can seek advice from others. Their opinions and wisdom can matter a lot to us. However, in the end, we make and we own our own choices. We learn how to think those choices through. Then, we learn how to live with our choices, Then, we learn from our mistakes. This is what adults do (understanding that not everyone who has grown older has necessarily done the work of becoming a full fledged adult.)
In order to make my own choices, I have to learn to care and not to care. This is really hard work! It’s also my third point. When it feels like everyone else seems to care so much about things that don’t matter, it is a really hard thing to walk a different path. And when no on seems to care about someone or something, it can be pretty lonely to feel like the only person who does. The deal is, though, that if I’m going to own my own choices then I have to let go of caring what everyone else is doing and, instead, make the best choice that I see. Suddenly, I care less about what kind of jeans I’m wearing or what kind of car I’m driving. Suddenly, I care more about the kid in my class whom everyone else refuses to even see. That is precisely the moment when life gets so much more interesting! I discover that I don’t have to be like everyone else!
Of course, the challenge is that not everyone else has to be like me, either. This is my fourth point. Trust me when I tell you that it is a genuine shock to realize that other people feel differently than I do and think differently than I do and make different choices and it’s not because they’re messed up! Other people see things that I miss. Other people have had different experiences than me. If (and this is a big “if,) if I can let go of convincing them to be me and instead just listen, I might learn a few things. In fact, I might start to learn enough that it will begin to dawn on me that I just might want to devote myself to something far more interesting and meaningful than myself. When I really love, when I really listen, when I really care, I have a shot at discovering that the best question in life is not what’s in it for me but is instead the question, “How can I help?”
I suspect that everyone of you young people have already had this experience. You offered to help your mom or your dad or your sister or your brother with something without being asked. You took a minute in the middle of a game at school to treat the person you were competing against as a genuine human being. You recognized that your teacher could use a hand and you offered your’s to them. You saw a need in your community and did something to make a difference. No matter the circumstances, you did something like this and what exploded inside of you was an intensely good feeling. You think, “Wow, that felt so good! Maybe doing things like this is why I’m here! Maybe I want to do that more!” It’s no accident that doing something for someone else feels so good. I think that’s God’s way of letting us know that we’re on the right path.
All of which leads me to my final point which I will put bluntly: Look for the clues! We’ve all had days when we decided even before we were out of bed that nothing interesting was going to happen today. We grunt and we groan. We mention to the world in general that we’re bored. We float along on auto-pilot and pretty much miss everything that happens. We think to ourselves, “Whatever…”
Or, we wake up. We stay open to the possibility of being surprised. Of course, the real key is to stay open not to the giant surprises that are so overwhelming that we couldn’t possibly miss them. The truth is that some of the most amazing surprises of this life come in small packages. When I walk in the prairie and pay attention, there are new things to see every day: frogs and snakes and hawks and dragonflies that come in every shape and color. When I walk through the rest of life there are new things, too: seeing someone and realizing how much that I’ve missed them; receiving a thoughtful, kind act from someone else; realizing that I have a chance to offer someone else a thoughtful, kind act myself.
To put things slightly differently, life is full of clues about how amazing life us, about the chance we have to add to the amazement, and of how God is woven into every moment along the way. We can look for those clues or we can blow right past them. If we practice being awake and aware, if we look and then we look again because we know that God is in here somewhere, we will lead a deeper, richer, more meaningful life. We will learn to squeeze the life out of life, itself.
Be like a child—humble, open, and full of awe. Learn how not to be childish, refusing to be yet another adult who throws tantrums. Learn to care about things that are worth caring about. Learn to let go of the others. Make your life be about something more than you. Finally, look for the clues, clues about how amazing the gift of life is and how present God is, too. May God bless you all!