Occasional Sermons

When I had my first child Hannah, I was surprised to discover that I had been endowed with a lion’s share, a mother lion’s share, of maternal instinct. I was, in particular, fiercely protective. Hannah’s entire first year I never left her, except once with my sister; and then only because she dared me. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I went for a walk. It was a grueling thirty minutes. When I returned, I could tell Hannah had been crying. “What do you expect?” My sister asked me. “You’ve never left her.” But Hannah’s tears were scarcely an inducement for me to leave her again. My maternal instinct did not decrease after Hannah’s first year. If anything, it increased. When Hannah was four years old, my mother suggested that I enroll her in preschool. I looked at her in horror and disbelief as though she had just suggested that I cook and eat her. “Preschool!” I spat. “Those places are breeding grounds for bullies and germs. How could you even suggest such a thing!” “Becca,” my mom said, and she was not one to interfere, “Hannah needs to learn how to get along with her peers and to function in a different environment. Above all she needs to be without your constant oversight.” “How would she know the first thing about motherhood?” I fumed to myself. But I couldn’t quite dismiss my mother’s suggestion, because deep down I knew that she was right. So I signed Hannah up for preschool. On the ride there that first day my anxiety and dread were intense. Things were made worse by the fact that Hannah was shy and sensitive by nature. I walked her to the door of her classroom and was allowed to go no further. Her teacher took her by the hand and led her off. She was trying to be brave, but I could tell she was miserable and terrified. I called to her, in a voice I could hardly recognize as my own, to have fun. Then she turned around, and our eyes met. Profound communication can take place in the meeting of eyes. Recall for instance this scene, “….still another kept insisting, ‘Surely this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean.' But Peter said, ‘Man, I do not know what you are talking about!’ At that moment, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. The Lord turned and looked at him…and he went out weeping.” What was communicated in the meeting of Jesus and Peter’s eyes was their mutual recognition of Peter’s betrayal. What was communicated in the meeting of Hannah’s and my eyes was the mutual recognition that she must now begin to grow up and make her own way in life. I don’t know who it was harder on, Hannah or me. Hannah is an adult now, with a son of her own. She’s still my daughter of course, but I now see her as a woman in her own right. Her ongoing experiences coming of age have broadening her horizons in ways I never could have imagined or orchestrated and made her independent and self-reliant. We went to the park last Sunday. When I saw her interacting with her son, suddenly, out of nowhere, my eyes welled with tears. A child leaving the nest and making her own way in life can be hard on both child and parent, but I think it is harder on the parent. But why is this the case? Why is it hard on either and at all? Any alternative to a child leaving the nest and making her own way in life can only result in a grotesque distortion of the natural course of life. Isn’t it, after all, the very goal of both the child and the parent for the child to leave the nest and make her own way in life? Then why is it hard at all? I guess as life goes on it is hard because it marks the passage of time. Time always seems to be nudging us along faster than we want to go. But initially, it’s hard because there is such a powerful instinct in both parent and child with regard to the child’s security. When the child is very young, if life is not too cruel and harsh, she can create and live for a time in that security. But it can’t stay that way. The child must grow up and make her own way in life, life that is indeed cruel and harsh. That is why it is hard initially. A child growing up and making her own way in life involves, to a degree, leaving her to life. It involves risk to that which it is unthinkable to risk. Familiar realities can sometimes help us to understand realities less familiar. How hard it must have been on Jesus and the disciples for the disciples to come of age. The disciples had left everything behind to follow Jesus. Everything behind. This is nearly impossible to imagine. Try to imagine leaving behind all those things on which you depend – family, home, vocation. But they did. They left everything behind and depended instead upon Jesus. And along the way, they formed a deep attachment to him. How could they not have? Jesus, being the man he was, was a man of tremendous authority and integrity, tremendous power and wisdom – you could even say perfect authority and integrity, perfect power and wisdom. Yet at the same time he was so incredibly human, so incredibly relational, so incredibly vulnerable. They depended upon him, yes, but too they loved him. And Jesus, for his part, loved them back. He indeed looked to them for friendship and support. And too, Jesus was well aware of that to which he would subject them. It’s easy to see why he felt such compassion and tenderness toward them, why he was forbearing of their foibles, he who would deliver those who depended upon him and loved him up to such trials. And so the coming of age of the disciples played out. It is scarcely surprising that when Jesus first announced to them that it was not to be as they thought, that in fact his death was immanent, they reacted to his announcement with denial. But denial, of course, does not change reality. It only evades it. Jesus went to his cross and to his death. But Jesus knew, at least, that he wasn’t leaving them for long. It was just as he had assured them, “In a little while you will no longer see me, but in a little while, you will see me again.” Before the disciples could even have assimilated his death, before their shock could have worn off – Friday afternoon till Sunday morning – he was back among them. He was not the same, to be sure. He was transfigured, just as some of them had seen him on the mountaintop. I’d wager that despite all that his transfiguration portended, they would have preferred him just as he’d been. But at least he was back among them. And this time for forty days. At the end of the forty days he instructed his disciples to go to Jerusalem. They went thinking that Jesus would there at long last inaugurate the kingdom of Israel. But instead, in Jerusalem, he left them again. He ascended into heaven. And this time he left them for good. They would never see him again. He would be with them henceforward, they were soon to discover, only in spirit – the same way that he is with us -- in spirit, a spirit in which we believe, a spirit in which and for which we live, but a spirit which can be so deficient compared to our need for the fullness of him. Why couldn’t he have just stayed? Why couldn’t the disciples have had that much security in this harsh and cruel world? Why couldn’t we? But perhaps Jesus left us with just his spirit precisely so that we could come of age. Perhaps he left us with just his spirit so that we could grow in the conviction of things not seen. Perhaps he left us with just his spirit so that we could struggle to achieve what he taught us was the truth for time and history –the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humankind under the rule of love. Perhaps he left us with just his spirit because he realized that in the course of that struggle we could achieve a maturation for which we were intended. But given this harsh and cruel world, I don’t know who it is harder on, him or us? Probably, as with the parent and child, it is harder on him. And so, when he comes again in glory, when we finally know that eternal security with him he has promised us, let it have been our contribution to have indeed been a people come of age. Amen.