November 28, 1999
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
The Generation Gap
Worshipping jointly on the last Sunday of each month gives us the opportunity to see the different generations in our church. We have the Builder or GI generation that doesn’t understand their self-absorbed Boomer children. And being a Boomer myself, I find myself wondering what’s up with the Gen-Xers? We have two of them. And the older Gen-Xers who have children secretly worry about their Millennial Kids’ fascination with cyberspace.
Preschoolers today can wire a television, VCR and Sony playstation together, but struggle to tie their shoelaces. Their Gen-Xer parents when they were their age could, well–play a mean game of Asteroid or Pac-Man.
Middler-schoolers can help their parents navigate Windows 98, but don’t know what to do when you asked them to wash windows.
High-schoolers spend hours on the internet, sending e-mail and hanging around chatrooms, and are never more than a few clicks away from sites of anarchy and pornography. This is their online world where it is easier to learn how to build a bomb than to build relationships. While the hackers of our country are peeking into the top secrets of the Army and the FBI, we who are Boomer parents are often trying to hack into our own computers. We would say, “What happened to that document?”
What we are seeing is that the technological advances that the younger generation is familiar with are creating not a Generation Gap, but a “Generation Lap.” Our children know so much more about computers than we do that we have been lapped. And for children and families who are from lower economic communities and therefore unable to even own a computer, they are being further lapped by those who are more affluent.
We the Baby Boomers have been lapped —all of us who are Sojourners and Semanons when our children are more technologically savvy than we are. Many believe that the “Net Generation” has an innate, magical relationship with information technologies that is alien to those who have come before. And those who are growing up without computers in the classroom, tragically, will probably never catch up with those who did.
Now before we get all excited and depressed about lagging behind, being lapped is good. Very good.
Remain Spiritually Savvy
In today’s Scripture lesson, Paul opens his letter to the Corinthians by recognizing the “grace of God” in the Corinthian Christians. They are not lacking in any spiritual gifts. But not wanting them to be too satisfied with their position on the track, Paul seems to encourage them to do some more laps. He tells them that Jesus will strengthen them to the end, so that they will be “blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
According to Paul, the Corinthian Christians have been enriched in speech and knowledge of every kind—just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among them. So the lesson today is a call for us to be spiritually savvy, and to maintain the fitness of our faith—not only for ourselves, but also for our children.
Since I have been serving this church, I have noticed something very remarkable. It seems to me that not only have the younger generation lapped us in the technological knowledge field, the Gen-Xers have lapped us in the spiritual area as well. The younger generation spends more time at Bible study. They make time in their busy school week to attend campus prayer meetings and to study together as young Christians. Feeling God’s presence close to their hearts, they want to deepen their faith and orient their lives around Christ.
In my previous ministry with high school youth, I have seen more and more young people yearning and seeking for Christian communities in which to belong. Some would argue that Baby Boomers not only failed to lap their parents in terms of spiritual faith maturity, but they are actually falling behind their faith in comparison with their own children. Instead of racing ahead to new positions of faithful service, we may have stumbled and fallen in the false starts of a “lite” diet discipleship.
Here’s a true story from Newsweek.
Sometimes parents lead their children to God. But just as often it’s the other way around.
Tim and Terry live in Washington, D.C. Although they were both baptized, they had fallen away from the church when they met in 1990. After having two children, Tim says, “I felt there was something missing that would keep us connected as a family.” What they found, Tim sees as “divine intervention.” When they moved to a bigger house, their real estate broker mentioned that there was a good Christian school nearby. So they decided to enroll the kids. Michael was in the first grade.
According to Tim, their son, Michael began teaching them things about the Christian faith. Terry said, “He wasn’t preaching. It had just become part of his day, and it affected the rest of us. If I said something like, ‘Oh God, ‘ Michael would say, ‘You’re only supposed to say God when you are praying.”
Soon Tim decided to attend church and an adult Sunday school class. On the night before Easter, all seven of this family—parents and teens stood at the altar to be baptized.
Now they all attend church together and always says grace before meals, even when people come for dinner.
Terry says, “Sometimes our friends kind of look at us surprised, but we say, ‘Hold hands. It’s okay. Let’s pray.’”
And it is.
Rather than to be dismayed over the feeling that our children and young people are lapping us in our spiritual life, we should be happy. Shouldn’t it be our goal for every generation to see its children sprint to new levels of health, happiness, wisdom and spirituality?
Yes! When my father who was in the GI generation wanted us to get a good education and go to college, he wanted me to lap him in how much he knew. When my mother was able to save up enough money so that we can have a down payment on our first house, she wanted us to lap her in a nicer house. When I gave my life to Jesus to become a Christian, my parents didn’t object to all the days that I spent volunteering at church because they expected that I would lap them in their faith.
And we now want the same for our own children. We want them to have more education than we have, a more comfortable home then we have, and for them to grow stronger in their Christian faith than perhaps we have now.
Maintain Our Faith Fitness
However, lapping is never a sure thing. That’s why Paul devotes so much time in his letters to spiritual growth, often invoking a racing metaphor. Paul said to Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
For future generations to have a stronger faith, we still need to do our part to grow in our faith. All the generations ought to be tearing up the track. It’s okay to have a competitive position in the road race of righteousness. You’re jogging, working up a sweat, starting to feel sick, when someone sprints by you—effortlessly—for the second time. How does that make you feel? Awful, right? We don’t even like being passed on the freeway.
Paul argues that lapping is good, but we should still make a second effort in acts of kindness and in the pursuit of justice. And what might that look like?
Before every race, we first need to stretch our muscles and joints to get all the stiffness out. This means that we have to review what we know already. Instead of just expecting that our muscles will carry us through, we need to massage them and get them ready for the race. Our faith is like that. We need to take what we have learned already and understand our faith in different ways in different situations. We can build upon the insights that we know already with new ones.
Way before a race, we are mindful of the kinds of food that we eat. It’s true that we are what we eat. Maintaining a regular diet of Bible study and prayer life leads to spiritual nourishment that will withstand the long journey of carrying our faith witness. Just like
the Olympic marathon runner’s physical stamina to carry the torch for a long time, we need the nourishment of spiritual food to carry our faith throughout all of our days. We can’t do it without this regular diet of God’s food.
Before the race, we know that we have had many days of practices. We have practiced our breathing, getting off the starting blocks quickly, our strides, our final kicks to finish strong. Again, our faith is like this. We need to practice our faith everyday. We practice reading the Bible. We practice praying. We practice sharing our testimonies. We even practice at unexpected times when we are down and out and discover that we need God more than anything else in the world. It’s like the times in life when all of us will lose a race.
I used to run track when I was in high school. With my short legs, I was not a star runner. When I ran the 600 in those days, it was about three times around the track. I can remember being lapped by the faster runners. Again, it was very embarrassing.
But when we run as a track team, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been lapped or come in dead last. We all do our part to finish the race. And when we see that some have been lapped or are coming in last, we wait at the finished line for them.
Active Waiting
The season of Advent is a time of waiting. Today we are still waiting for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. But Paul said that while we are waiting, we are not lacking any spiritual gifts. We are equipped for the wait.
When a slugger hits a grand slam, all the other runners after tagging home plate wait until the home run hitter crosses the plate. They give each other high fives to congratulate each other. It didn’t matter whether the runners on the bases got there from hitting a line drive or drew a walk or got hit by a wild pitch. The point is that they all eventually crossed home plate. At the end, they waited for each other before going to the dugout.
During this Advent season, we too are waiting for something. Paul speaks about waiting for the appearance of Christ as Lord and king in verse 7 in today’s lesson. You know, there’s passive waiting and active waiting.
There was an incident when Joy and I were out doing some Christmas shopping. We parked the car in basically the same area of the mall garage so that we can find the car later. We walked through Sears. Now if you are like us, we don’t necessarily like to shop together. We usually split up, especially when we are trying to shop for each other. This was one of those times. So we said, we would meet an hour from now at the entrance. You can see the problem coming. After an hour, I was waiting at the entrance where we came into Sears from the garage. Joy was waiting at the entrance of Sears in the mall. We both stood at our different places passively waiting for the other one to show up. We could have waited there until the store closed that night. But after fifteen minutes have gone by, we realized that staying where we were will not get us back together again. We
can’t just passively wait. We needed to get up and actively look for each other. It’s active waiting.
As a church community, there are times that we may need to wait for each other. Some of us may have gone ahead and perhaps even have lapped others. There are some of us who are just coming in and may be dead last. But according to Paul, we have been given many spiritual gifts in speech and knowledge of every kind and that Lord Jesus Christ has strengthened us to the end. We are not to be protective of our gifts but we are to use them in the service of Christ. We use our gifts with each other—the Millenial Kids, Gen-Xers, the Boomers, the Builders. From all the different generations, we are able to share our gifts actively and faithfully as we wait for the time of Christ’s coming.
It may feel like the Gen-Xers have lapped the Boomers in their spiritual faith and maturity, but we must also remember to learn how to wait for each other. Those who may have been lapped or have come in dead last, are happy for those who have gone ahead. We pray that we can also learn how to wait for each other. When we learn how to wait for each other, we learn how to also wait for the Lord. We learn to actively help each other grow in the faith, waiting unceasingly as Jesus waits for us unceasingly to know him as our Lord and Savior.
Christmas is as Christmas Does
Remember the great runner of a few years ago, Forrest Gump? I loved that movie especially when he was running across the whole country to the west coast and then back again. Many started to run with him. One of the sayings Mama Gump said to Forrest was, “Stupid is as stupid does.” In a 1939 poem, the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton first wrote, “Christmas is as Christmas does.” Merton and Mama Gump were on to something. They knew what spiritually minded people across time and cultures have known: we become what we do.
This is a very simple notion. Mama Gump knows that if we act in a stupid way, then we develop the habits of acting like a stupid person—and we become stupid people. Our behavior can shape our minds and hearts.
Although we may not feel like patient people, if we act like patient people we develop the habits of acting patiently—and we become patient people. Or if we act generously, whether we feel particularly generous or not, we develop the habit of acting generously—and we become generous people.
So although we may not feel like we are spiritually centered people, if we act like spiritual people we develop the habits of acting spiritual—and we become spiritual people of God. What we choose to do shapes the person we become.
In the beginning of this Advent/Christmas season as we await the birth of our Lord to welcome the new millennium, let us who have been enriched in speech and knowledge, choose Jesus Christ, King of kings, Lord of lords, Son of God!
Let us pray.
Almighty God, surely you are the God of all generations. Come into our world today with the message of hope and understanding that all of your children will know you. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, we pray. Amen.