How Do We Grow Faithful People?
By Pastoral Intern Jennie Valentine and Nicole Lamarche
For the season of Lent, we will be exploring questions that you have always wanted to ask God. Now first let me say that even though your questions to God are being answered by Nicole and by me, we are under no illusion that we are God or that we have more access to these answers than any of you. And our responses to these questions are just one way in which we might think about these questions. We hope that this sermon series will invite more questions, conversation, inquiry and reflection from each and every one of you.
As we sorted through the questions that you asked about God, one of them stood out for both of us. It came from our secretary Judy and it is about our children. With the world changing so quickly and many of you feeling overwhelmed and often even frightened with the prospect of raising healthy, happy children, it is important to ask together what it means for us to support each other in the most important job in the world. The question is: With all that there is to teach our children, what are the main things we need to share with them? And more succinctly, how do we grow faithful people?
It’s dry and dusty and hot in the Southwestern desert. It’s lonely; nobody lives there because it’s dry and dusty and hot. The pilgrims prepare for months to enter the desert. They strengthen their bodies; they spend long periods of time without much water to prepare their bodies for the inevitable thirst; they study; they pray; they pray; and they pray. They pray in retreat for weeks before they walk the 100 miles in the desert. A new community, gathered from different parishes, each bringing their sacred intent to the shrine in El Santuario walks for days in the heat. They take on a new spiritual identity as they set out on the journey. Along the way, they sing. This is what they sing:
“Go through the world, shout to the people,
That the love of God never ends,
Neither the voice of God is ever lost.”
The Chimayo pilgrims make a “visible, public expression of commitment to the faith while suspending his or her everyday life patterns to pursue a vision of God’s future.” To thank God for the love they have received from God, they rearrange their lives.
What does a person need to become a faithful person? Nicole and I started out talking about what children need to become faithful adults, but in our discussion we realized that everyone, young or old, new to the faith or an experienced church-goer, needs a little help, a little reminder, some basics to help us become and remain faithful. We talked about that some last week when we questioned whether we can be Christians alone. We need other people to help us stay on the path. We are still in Lent, on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem with Jesus as he approaches the political unrest and fear that accompanies the government’s discomfort and distrust of the message that he is carrying. What’s the message? God’s love. God’s love is steadfast. God’s love is unconditional. The psalmist states it right in the Psalm 63: “Your steadfast love is better than life.”
The Chimayo pilgrims know that, and they can’t help but respond in kind. Like the Chimayos, when we see the many blessings that God has bestowed on us, the gift of life, the gift of family, the gift of the natural world, the gift of human and divine love, we cannot help but respond in kind. To be faithful people, we have to be able to see the love of God so that we can respond in kind.
Have you ever seen someone just sitting somewhere with a goofy grin on their face? You see them sitting there with that big smile and you wonder, “What’s up with them?” What do they know? And if you ask them, and they share something really great with you, you can’t help but smile back. It’s contagious! That’s how God’s love is. It’s contagious. It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up in it’s glowing.
When you walk away from that person, you have the memory of their smile, the good news they shared, and it fuels you to share that good feeling with others. The love of God is contagious, and it will change your behavior, and when you tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, word gets around pretty quick, and more and more people are walking along in the deserts of their lives singing “That the love of God never ends, Neither the voice of God is ever lost.”
The Great Commandment to “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself” is the way to be faithful to God. We just need to direct other’s attention to the center ring so that notice the love of God available, respond in kind, and share it with others. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, then, is to share that love of God in everything we do.
The Chimayo pilgrimage is another clue to what we need as faithful people. We need Spiritual Practices. We need ways that will intentionally train us, prepare us for the spiritual trek through life, which at times will be a desert and at times will be a rainforest. That’s what spiritual practices do. Strengthen our spiritual muscles so that we can complete our own pilgrimage closer to God every day.
There are TONS of spiritual practices. Pilgrimage is just one. We all engage in behaviors and activities that we don’t realize are actually spiritual practices. It’s how we do them that makes them spiritual. What are some of them? Honoring the body: your body is temple. A temple is where God resides – Jesus was going to Jerusalem, the place where the temple was. That’s why Jerusalem was such a big city – everyone wanted to be close to God, and according to the Ancient Israelites, God was in the temple. We need to take care of our temples so that God’s house will be a fit (and I don’t just mean physically fit), appropriate dwelling place for the Most High One. How many of us try to get some type of regular exercise, or make healthy choices in our diets, or sleep the recommended amount? Often during Lent people make changes to their lifestyle that will allow them to be healthier. For the life of me, though, I can’t imagine why giving up chocolate would be good in God’s eyes!
Hospitality is another practice. It is a tangible way for us to live out the Great Commandment. Household economics, learning to say yes and no at the proper times, keeping Sabbath, testimony, sharing, forgiveness, healing, and singing are all ways that we live out the steadfast love of God. They are outlined in the book Practicing Our Faith edited by Dorothy Butler Bass. There are two other related books in this series. One is for teens and one is for young adults. I will leave these books in Bruce Hall for you to take a look at – who knows, it might spark some interest in your own intentional pilgrimage!
The study of spiritual practices is a big topic, and one small Sunday cannot do it justice. I have barely touched on it here. But keep in mind that spiritual practice is the fertilizer that we put around the tree of our faith so that it will grow strong and tall, reaching toward God will many branches. As with the fig tree in our scripture today, we need to dig around our faith, put a little manure on it, and water it carefully so that we can grow into faithful people.
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Next week, we will baptize another child, Mya. Many people adore baptisms, just for the sheer blessing of watching our children receive the water of life, but when we baptize a child, every single one of us promises to join in the lifelong journey of raising a child in the Christian life. It is not just a beautiful ritual, it is a covenant promise we make with the family and the child. If we expect to find fruit in our vineyard, we must tend to it day and day out.
As Jeremy and I start to think about having children, I can’t help but to flash back to the myriad memories that I hold from my own childhood. I remember the countless moments where I sat frustrated or in tears and said that thing that I have learned nearly every kid says, which is, “I will never do this to my kids.” As an adult I know that most of those times, are occasions in which whatever punishment or discipline I was receiving, was commensurate with my behavior, but it’s funny what particular moments I remember. I am sure that my mom was doing everything in her power to raise spectacular human beings, but like most parents, I know that she wasn’t entirely clear how much we were taking in. You see that is the reason the question about how to raise our children, is essential for all of us. Whether you have already raised your kids and are moving on to what I have heard is the sheer joy of being a grandparent or whether you are just getting started in the ministry of parenting, it is clear to me that we have no idea when or exactly what our children absorb.
I remember a time when my brother and I sat in the back of our accidentally hip, but battered Audi. If my memory serves me well, my mom started to drive over the speed limit, which is something she never did. And my brother, being a typical boy who noticed everything, delighted in every opportunity to point out the ways in which other people failed to follow what he learned were the rules. He noticed the old dial roaring up and when it passed that number that he had seen in big black letters on the road sign, he couldn’t wait to belt it out, “Mom, you’re speeding!” Now, my mom is one of those rule followers, one of those people who will go to great lengths to ensure that she is doing the right thing. This meant that my brother had only a few occasions in which his pronouncements could be made. But, my mom with a tiny bit of hesitation looked up in the rearview mirror and said, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Thinking about this now makes me laugh because it is the kind of sentiment that is so enticing as a parent, the kind of thing we all want to say as we are cursing at the annoying driver in front of us or failing to pick up trash on the beach or any everyday behavior that our children see. But, “Do as I say, not as I do,” is something like a tempting illusion. There is so much we don’t know about childhood development. There is a lot we don’t understand when it comes to the best ways to nurture our children, but we do know one thing for absolute certain. And that is that our children learn how to be, our children and grandchildren learn who we are and what we care about, by watching us. We cannot tell them to unlearn what they see us doing and not to imitate it because this is the very best way to teach them how to live.
It sounds oversimplified and it is certainly not the only way that children learn, but watching how we live and how we spend our time is the primary way that we communicate what we value as human beings and as followers of Jesus Christ.
One of the questions that I am asked every once in a while goes something like this, “Is it okay to make my kids go to church?” Or “Can I force my kids to participate in church life?” These are actually really good questions because they get at how we form faithful hearts, without alienating our children in the process. And typically when such a question is asked, there is fear in the one who is asking- fear about being viewed as mean or controlling, fear that the child will ultimately dislike church if they are asked to go even when they don’t want to. But, what I have come to understand is that there is such a short time in which parents have the ability to make an impression. Parents have just eighteen years or less in which to seal on the hearts of our children what it is that really matters in life. Children watch hours and hours of television everyday and are surrounded by competing and enticing invitations to happiness and asking our children to join us once a week as we remember what is the center of our life, is not controlling or mean, in fact I would say, it is something we owe them. It is something we offer to them as a gift, if we expect them to bear fruit for Christ.
If we don’t take seriously our role in introducing our children to the Gospel, if we don’t take charge of the commitment we made in baptism, to teach our children that they are beloved of God, that things are not, in spite of the millions of commercials, what make us happy, that it is our job to be Christ’s hands in the world to care for those who are in need; if we don’t teach our faith to our children by inviting them to join us as we follow Christ, who will? It is not the job of the world to tell them that they belong to God, it is our job, an occupation that comes with being a fellow member of the Body of Christ.
The other piece of this dilemma that I have observed is about empowering our children to make this faith their own. Typically, when I am engaged in pre-marital counseling with a couple or I find myself in the midst of a discussion about how best to raise a child in light of the diverse faith context in which we live, inevitably, I will hear, “We plan to let our children choose which faith they will live.” I understand that such a plan is grounded in the intention to empower children to create a special and unique relationship with God and frequently this idea is a reaction against a terrible and forceful religious childhood. And yet, we cannot expect our children to grow in faith as adults or to feel empowered to seek a relationship with God if they don’t know where to begin. Parents sometimes confuse raising children who can choose a tradition with raising their children without any tradition at all.
While I do think that it is possible to raise wonderful human beings without immersing them in the Church, nine times out of ten when you ask a kid on Sunday morning, as he is savoring the warmth of his pajamas, while still under the covers, “Good morning sweetheart, would you like to go to church? It is your choice?” The answer is almost always, “No.”
It is an idea with good intentions, but I have begun to see what happens with this philosophy and frequently it does not do what the parents intended. In fact it often creates a situation in which the children are not only not informed enough to choose the way in which they will seek God, but they have no connection to the communal nature of faith and little sense of the point or power of the Church. The piece of information missing from this logic of not “forcing” children to go to church, is that in order for children or adolescents or young adults to be able to choose, they have to know something about what they are choosing from. I have heard from some parents who took this approach and when their children have chosen not to be a part of any church or any community of faith at all, they are shocked. But this would be like telling our children that we want them to arrive at a certain destination, but without directions, resources or a map and then finding ourselves surprised when they are lost and confused. It is not realistic to expect our children to feel comfortable in a place they never got to know for themselves. We can’t expect our children to find their way back to us as adults, if they never fell in love with God here in the first place. We can’t be surprised when our children don’t see this place as a home, when we haven’t given them time to grow a home in God in their hearts.
As our scripture tells us, if we want our children to bear godly fruit, if we want them to learn to imitate Christ, then we must also strive to do this for ourselves. And if we want our children to love God in this place, if we want to truly be faithful to what we promised when we baptized them in the name of Christ, then asking them to join us here is simply part of our faithfulness to God, part of our commitment of bearing fruit in the name of God. If we expect to find fruit in our vineyard, we must tend to it day and day out, seeking to grow faithful people for the God we know in Jesus Christ. May it be so. Amen.
Marini, Stephen A. Sacred Songs in America. (Chicago: University of Illinois, 2003.) Pg. 56.