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February
17, 2008 Scripture: Genesis 12:1-4 Sermon: “You’re Never Too Old” Ya know, we are not the spryest gathering of folks there is. We’re not. Call us experienced. Call us wise. Say we’ve been around the block. There are all kinds of ways of making it sound pretty. But, we here at Park Christian Church are not the youngest, most able-bodied people you can find. And, gosh, doesn’t the world seem to revolve around youth and the things that young, good looking folks are all about? Well, not today, my friends. Today we’re not going to be reminded of all the limits that our age brings to us. We get enough of that. I mean, have you ever noticed that the only advertisers on TV that pay attention to us as we age are folks with products for easing the pains in the body, concealing the lines on your face, the grey in your hair, or your investments to get you through to retirement? Other than that, they either poke fun at us as we get older, or they just ignore us. I remember the old Wendy’s commercial with the “where’s the beef” lady. This poor woman had shrunk down so far in her old age that she couldn’t see over the steering wheel. And she went into some fast food joint to order a hamburger, completely unprepared for the modern world with all of its shrinking portions for higher prices. Like the old fuddy duddy that she was, she asked “where’s the beef”? You could use words like “experienced”, “wise”, or what have you. But, the world makes us feel irrelevant, past our prime, like old sticks in the mud most of the time. So, today, we’re going to reclaim our dignity as we all get older day by day. And we’ll do that with a story from the beginning of the Bible. Turn with me to the 12th chapter of Genesis where we’ll read the first four verses. You can find that on page of the Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament in the pew Bible. While you’re finding that, let me reassure you that we’re not going to study the life of Methuselah. He, according to the Bible, lived a total of 969 years, which ought to make any of us feel quite young. And you have to wonder what kind of retirement plan he had! No, today we are going to study a bit of the life of Abraham, the great forefather of the nation of Israel. This is the man that the three prominent monotheistic faiths in all of the world look to as their spiritual ancestor. Many Muslims will tell you that Ibrahim was the very first Muslim, although he lived a very long time before the prophet Mohammed. And Jews and Christians certainly see Abraham as the foundational figure for encountering and understanding God. This is a bit of his life story. Listen for the Word of the Lord… Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Here’s a little secret. The lectionary prescribes that today’s reading from Genesis be from verse 1 of chapter 12 and conclude with verse 4a. Whenever a part of a verse is selected, it is designated with a little “a” or “b”. And if you happened to read the text with me today, you’ll notice that the first part of the verse ends with the sentence that says, “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.” Apparently the lectionary was devised by folks who thought that the little bit at the end of verse 4 wasn’t that important. And that little bit is the sentence that says, “Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed Haran.” How about that? Now, this short selection from the book of Genesis has no doubt been suggested for this day because this is the second Sunday of Lent. And Abram’s obedient faith to the mysterious God who called him to just up and leave all that he’d ever known is held up before us as an example of the kind of faith we are supposed to emulate as we endeavor to follow Jesus Christ more faithfully and more fully. And the truth is that I just preached the essence of every Lenten sermon ever preached on this text—be like Abram. Didn’t even take the whole morning, did it? It’s the part of the story that has gotten short shrift that I think is, really, worth holding up before us. The part that the good, faithful folks who put together our common lectionary chose to omit for reasons unknown—that’s what I want you to hear. Abram was seventy-five years old when all of this occurred in his life. Seventy-five. Now, if I happen to survive into the future on this planet exactly as long as I have already made it, I’ll be seventy-five myself. I am, as our youngest children would say, 37 and a half. There are not a few of you who have already survived beyond that age of 75. Seventy-five. I’ll tell you that at half of Abram’s age, I’m not getting it done like I used to. Oh, I still try. But, my body just doesn’t cooperate like it used to, you know? I can’t figure out why simple things like working in the yard cause me so much pain for days to come. And why can’t I just enjoy a good, delicious meal without seeing its evidence around my waist? And I imagine that this is the point where my friend Scotty Lay says, “oh, boy, you don’t know the half of it.” It’s rule number one with getting older. You and I were not designed to live forever, not physically. Our bodies get older, weaker, more brittle, less energetic. Can’t seem to hear as well. Can’t seem to see as well. We find ourselves holding things with words on them farther and farther away from our eyes. Some of you had to have your neighbor hold the hymnal for you. And we can’t seem to remember things like we used to. Some folks who are only in their 50s and 60s refer to this phenomenon as having, what, senior moments! And when placed next to the models of health and agility that all of those younger pipsqueaks have going for them, we start to understand ourselves as over-the-hill, washed-up, past-our-prime. I hear my dad talking about this quite a bit. He’s a couple of years away from retirement age, but still competing in the high-tech job market of computer programmers. The truth is that folks are reluctant to hire older workers and pay for all of their experience when there are younger prospects with newer skills and energy to work long hours. There is this guy mopping the floor at McDonald’s near my house. Looking at him I’d estimate somewhere around 80 years old. And he’s mopping the floors, cleaning the restrooms. He’s really kind and says “hello” to just about everybody who walks in. I see him every now and again. And I asked him, “how’d you end up mopping the floors? Looks like you should have been promoted to manager after all these years.” “Aw, now, I’m just doing this to stay young. You’ve gotta keep moving or else you’re gonna start stopping. Learned that in the Army. And I could use the extra money, you know.” It’s not an uncommon story. But, I wonder if that’s the only thing folks are willing to let the man do in order to stay moving and keep some money in his pocket. He’s held a rifle on the edge of the demilitarized zone in Korea. A mop just doesn’t seem to make sense. Now, in God’s eyes, this guy is probably just the one to hire for something important. And I want to make sure you notice that. The world may make us feel like we’re not so vital as we get older. But, God seems to have a different set of qualifications. Abram was seventy-five when he departed from Haran. I used to visit with a friend at a previous church just about once a week. He’d stop by the office and bring some tomatoes from the garden or show me some old photographs of the church and the people in the church. Here is so and so when he was just a whippersnapper in kindergarten Sunday School. Now he’s an elder. In Burnie’s back pocket was a little black address book and calendar. It was like the paper predecessor to the Blackberry or the iPhone. And in that little black book was every bit of useful and useless information you could imagine. This man, who was in his 90s, used the first page of his book to record the names of the folks in his family and his life that had died during the year. And the list grew just about every two weeks. That’s something else about getting older. We can outlive a lot of people that are important to us. And that means that we can end up attending more funerals than a preacher. And we can end up grieving. Oh, we can end up grieving. It’s little wonder that researchers have started to link that awful and cruel disease called Alzheimer’s with depression. We live long enough and we lose so much around us. We live longer than our friends. We live longer than our pets. We live longer than our spouses. We live longer sometimes than our children. What pain we carry with us in order to live so long. Abram was seventy-five. He had a couple of brothers along the way. But, he outlived at least one of them. That was God’s choice for impacting the world, Abram. And that’s where his story really sounds like a lot of ours. Having outlived a brother, Abram’s family started to look a little different. Like many of us, he ended up taking care of children that weren’t even his own. He became like a father to his nephew, Lot. That’s what families often end up doing. Live long enough and you’ll probably experience that. We end up taking care of each other in ways that we never expected. We become parents again because somebody has died or because somebody hasn’t been able to be a reliable provider. And we’re family, so we pick up the pieces. We become children again because our own children end up taking care of us just like we used to take care of them. We have to be fed sometimes and bathed sometimes and changed just like we were in diapers. Well, the world might not consider such a situation as ideal. That’s exactly who God called to make an impact on the world. Abram. Abram who was seventy-five years old. Abram who was probably just as agile as any of us who are seventy-five. Abram who was probably beat up emotionally from outliving his brother and a lot of other people. The average life span a few thousand years ago wasn’t even half of what Abram had achieved. Abram, who had to alter his life in order to take care of his nephew like a father. That’s who God saw as the perfect choice. Maybe you’re never too old to make an impact on the world. Maybe God continues to call us to follow throughout our lives, just like Abram. It’s probably harder to hear that. The world around us doesn’t seem to place the kind of value in us that God does. And, let’s face it, our hearing just isn’t as good—even if our ears are bigger. But, maybe God is always calling us to new ways of using our lives to make an impact on the world through our faith. You’re never too old. You never become irrelevant. You are experienced. You are wise. You have been around the block. And all of that means that you, more than anybody, might just be the instrument God needs to use. As far as God is concerned, there’s always a purpose to your beating heart. I’d like to leave you with some words from a great songwriter, Paul Simon. He wrote this wonderful song a few years ago called Old.
Down the decades every
year, summer leaves and my birthday’s here
And all my friends stand up and cheer and say man you’re old
Getting old
Old
Getting old
The human race walked the earth for 2.7 million
And we estimate the universe about 13-14 billion
When all these numbers tumble in your imagination
Consider that the Lord was there before creation
God is old
We’re not old
God is old
He made the mold
Rev. David James Brown Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
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