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Some thirty years ago, two young clergy
couples were sharing a Sunday night supper of pizza. Serving
our first small churches, perpetually broke, a shared pizza
constituted a night out for Beth and Gil Miller and Judy and
Jack, each of us with a pair of toddler sons. We were
talking and laughing about our parents, what they did and
their eccentricities. Finally, we looked at our little kids
and someone said, “I wonder what they will say about
us?” Three decades have passed—all four of our sons are now
adults, and two of the four have toddlers of their own. And
I still wonder, “What do they say about us?”
The lives we live before our children, in
home and family, in church and community; few things will
shape the future quite like the examples we set before our
children.
I think maybe that was how John felt when
he was writing these three short letters, letters which read
like love letters:
I John He continually
refers to the readers as his beloved children. “See,” he
writes, “what love the Father has shown us, that we have
been called Children of God, and that is not just what we
are called, but what we really are.”
II John It is written
to the “elect lady,” the “Beloved Lady.” We don’t know just
who the recipient was. Perhaps he was using the feminine
image for the congregation. Perhaps she was one of the
pastors of one of the early churches, one of the first
generation of clergywomen. For this day, Mother’s Day, I
like to think he was writing to his wife, or his sister, or
maybe even his mother as he writes about their children and
their nieces and nephews.
III John Written to an
intimate friend he calls his beloved Gaius, thankful that
his children follow in the truth, as well.
Whether written to home and family or
church and congregation, can we hear them as love letters
from the apostle, love letters to all of our children?
And one way to put the question is to look ahead and ask,
“What will they say about us?”
1. I hope they will say we “walked in the truth.”
I hope they will say that things like
honesty, integrity, and respect for others mattered; that
convictions, values and beliefs mattered in our home. Our
children need to learn the meaning of truth—truth about the
world, the truth about themselves, the truth about Jesus
Christ.
This is
the overarching theme of John’s second letter:
To the elect lady and her children, whom
I love in the truth. I was overjoyed to find that some of
your children walk in the truth. (II John 1-2)
He says many deceivers have gone out in
the world—and we know that’s the truth—many deceivers who
would lead our children into paths of self-destruction. In
the face of that kind of deception, he tells the Elect Lady
it is important for her children to learn integrity and
honesty, values and principles, the ways of truth.
“Desperate Housewives” might make good entertainment,
but it’s not a good model for motherhood, neighborhood or
parenthood. Fidelity matters. Honesty matters. Integrity
matters. Walking in the truth matters.
When our boys were growing up, we always
told them that in our family there were certain things that
were just part of our home, being Harnishes. Let me give you
some simple examples:
For one, we went to church.
Other families didn’t, but we did. We
tithed income and we taught them to tithe their allowances.
Other families don’t, but in our house, that’s just what we
do. And I always told them it wasn’t because I was the
preacher! Grandpa Harnish was an auto parts salesman, and
Grandpa Stone was a dentist, and they tithed and went to
church—this is just who we are and what we do in our
family.
For another, I wanted them to know
that in our family, we cared about other people and we
wouldn’t tolerate bigotry and prejudice.
Long before Don Imus and shock jocks, we
wanted our kids to know that some jokes just weren’t funny
in our house and there were some names we simply didn’t use.
It wasn’t that way with some of my extended family, and when
one of my uncles would turn the air blue with his language
and let loose with some of his racial epitaphs, we’d say to
our kids, “Now doesn’t that sound stupid? Here’s why we
don’t use those words.”
I hope
my children, our children, will say “we walked in
the truth.”
2. Second, I hope they will say we “talked face to face.”
One of
the powerful little images comes at the end of John’s
letter:
Although
I have much to write you, I would rather not use paper and
ink; instead I hope to come to you and talk with you face to
face. (II John 12)
In the Greek, it is literally
mouth-to-mouth, heart-to-heart, person-to-person,
face-to-face. I hope our children will say we talked—often
and a lot!
Several years ago in a Time
magazine editorial, Roger Rosenblatt wrote: “Between parent
and child there is no monster like silence. It grows even
faster than children.” (Roger Rosenblatt, “The Freedom of
the Damned,” Time Magazine, Oct. 6, 1986)
Parents, it’s so basic, so simple. We
need to talk with our children…and with the TV turned off!
See, I am old enough to remember the introduction of the TV
into our home. I remember that large wooden box that looked
like a communion table in the corner. It was amazing. And I
remember those ads which would show the family all gathering
around the TV, ready to watch Ed Sullivan. Then, in
response, we created TV trays and TV dinners so we could
share the meal around the flickering blue screen. It was
part, I am sure, of the demise of the traditional family
dinner, but at least we were doing it together! Today, in
the day of individual iPods and Blackberries, TV monitors
and computer screens in every room, family members scatter
to their private cocoons, and then we wonder why we have
nothing left to say to each other “face-to-face.” A
Detroit News headline describes the result: “Social
Connections Unravel as Home Gadgets Multiply.” Author Tom
Long writes:
Proliferation of technology increases
isolation, affects mental health and character.
Entertainment has greatly influenced the separation within
the house-hold. It has caused us to become more isolated, to
become strangers in the same household.
(Detroit News, Sept. 21, 2003)
We need to get in touch with our
children’s lives—to hear their feelings and frustrations and
fears, to share their jumbled joys and sorrows, their
thoughts and their emotions, talking, face-to-face.
3. I hope they will say that we laughed often.
John’s intimate letter builds to this
conclusion: “I hope to come to you and talk with you face to
face, so that our joy may be complete.” (II John 12) Full
joy, satisfying joy, overwhelming joy, joy that is complete.
I hope they will say we had fun…that we laughed often!!
Now you need to understand where I come
from. I am born of sturdy Pennsylvania Dutch, that is German
stock—Hornbaughs, Radakers, Harnishes all the way back.
There was a bit of jovial Irish thrown in—the Alexanders—but
that wasn’t enough to compensate for the strain of terminal
seriousness that runs in my veins. My parents were part of
what Tom Brokaw calls “The Greatest Generation,” and they
were. They returned from World War II, they saved the world,
and they were ready to make up for lost time. They worked
hard with a commitment to duty and loyalty. They had seen
the disaster of war and were set on creating a new and
better world for their children, and they did just that. But
often, it wasn’t a lot of fun. The only poem I remember my
dad ever quoting says:
Life is real, life is earnest, and the
grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art to dust returnest was not
spoken of the soul.
I
have come to believe that life is much too important to be
taken so seriously!
I have tried to lighten up, to handle
life with a lighter touch; to laugh with my children, to
discover the joy, and try to make sure our joy was full to
overflowing; complete joy.
Both of my grandfathers were stoic,
serious men. Frankly, I don’t remember doing anything alone
with either one of them (and that’s something I intend to do
differently as well). Through the remains of an old 8 mm
movie (silent of course), I do remember a family birthday
party. Both my grandmother and my cousin Janet had the same
birthday, February 2—in western Pennsylvania just twenty
miles from Punxsutawney,
that’s Groundhog Day. In the jumpy images of that old movie,
I see all the family gathered in my uncle’s modest farmhouse
around a plain kitchen table. And there, at the end of the
table, let the record show my grandfather laughing! Life had
been tough for him. Hardscrabble farming and mining coal
held his family together. His sons had to go to work early
to help make the payments on their ten acres. He lost a son
and my original grandmother during the Second World War, and
as he aged, smoking and coal mining combined to give him bad
lungs. But here he is, surrounded by his family, laughing.
I hope our lives will be filled with joy;
that we will laugh a lot. Joy in our families and homes, joy
in our life together as the family of God, the fulfillment
of Christ’s promise that his joy would be in us and our joy
made complete. (John 15:11, 16:24)
4. I hope they will say they were
loved.
I hope they will know—know without a
shadow of a doubt—that they are loved by us and loved by God
with an unending, unfailing love; know it deep in their
bones, because we showed them and because we told them.
John’s eloquent instruction is so simple and so profound:
Beloved, let us love one another, for
love is of God, and he who loves is born of God, for God is
love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us,
that God sent his only Son to be the expiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also
ought to love one another. If we love one another, God
abides in us and his love is perfected in us. We love,
because he first loved us.
(I John 4:7-11)
See, I grew up in a day and family when
we kids knew we were loved—that was taken for granted, but
it wasn’t necessarily said. I don’t remember my dad telling
me he loved me until he was dying with cancer, and I
determined then and there that I would not wait that long to
tell my sons that I love them. We have to keep telling them
and showing them that they are loved by God and loved by us,
because, you see, they get so many other messages:
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messages of the
consumer culture, that they are really nothing more than
what they buy
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messages of violence
and fear and brutality, hatred, prejudice and war
Do you realize that by the time the
typical TV-watching child reaches adulthood, they will have
seen one million commercials and over 200,000
violent acts? (Tom Ehrich, “To Help Children, Turn Off
the Computer,” United Methodist Reporter, Aug. 26,
2005)
To counteract that wave of negative
messages, I would suggest they need to hear at least one
million words of love and see at least 200,000 acts of
compassion and caring. Our children need to know that they
are loved; loved by us and loved by God.
What will they say about us?
Well, the years have passed since we
first asked the question. The Miller boys and Harnish
brothers are all grown and scattered now with homes of their
own, so I suppose you could ask them for yourself. And if
you do, I hope they will say:
We lived the truth,
we talked face to face,
our joy was complete,
and they knew they were loved.
For all of our children, our children by
birth or by baptism, may it be so in this place, may it be
so in our homes and families. Amen.
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