"Growing Old Grace-Fully"
The power of age.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Text: Genesis 21:1-7
At a church growth conference a few months ago, I heard two men talking about a particular congregation. The two men, as I listened to them (and they began to include me in the conversation), deeply upset me. Rarely does a conversation of that kind generate within me a desire to preach on a topic, but so powerful was the imagery that they had in their minds and cast into mine that I felt almost compelled to talk about it today.
The two men were talking about a church in this city (and I am hoping and praying that it wasn't my own - in fact, I'm sure it wasn't) and one of them said to the other: "Do you know the problem with that church? When I went in the back aisle, all I could see filling the pews were grey-hairs."
The other one said: "Yes, isn't that a shame. What a tragedy!"
I wanted to pipe up and say: "Where would you want those grey-hairs to be, Mount Pleasant Cemetery?"
The comment was the sense in which those who have grey hair are somehow of less value or import than those who do not. The implication was that the church which has people with grey hair is dying, rather than the fact that it was a church full of people with grey hair.
The image that we often have of people with grey hair in our society is not good. It is not healthy at all.
George Strong, a former minister from Ottawa, wrote a beautiful book entitled: Spiritual Care Among the Very Elderly. In it, he pointed out that in Roget's Thesaurus, of the 20 synonyms that are used for older age or for seniors, 11 of them are belittling; that of the 26 adjectives that describe people who are older, 14 of them are uncomplimentary. He concluded, after having looked at the thesaurus and re-examining the meaning of those words in the dictionary, that there is an implication that as one gets older one's life diminishes; one's value, one's importance, one's contribution seems to evaporate and go away.
I love something that an older gentleman told me. He said: "You know, Andrew, I have realized something. It seems to me that the only time that even advertisers in our community take us seriously is when they're trying to sell burial plots to us." He said: "Where is the recognition that we have, even with our grey hair and in our declining years, still much to contribute, much to give, much to be?"
I think he is right. I think that our society often has a very negative view of growing old and of old age. Maybe our rush towards perennial youth, maybe our rush towards covering up our age, which has become almost a source of fanaticism in our society, actually reflects this reality as we think that with declining years there is in fact declining life. It is not always true.
Those baby-boomers who have been so youth-driven, who have driven marketing and advertising, who have promoted their own cause are going to have a wake-up call very, very soon.
I was reading something in the Stats Canada health report on aging. The statistics are really quite amazing. In 1995, in this country alone, there were 3.5 million seniors and they made up 12 per cent of our population. By the year 2016, seniors will make up 16 per cent of our population and, get this, in the year 2041 seniors will make up 23 per cent - nearly a quarter of our whole society! And God willing, I will be one of those statistics. I will be doggedly, and fiercely, and fervently pro-senior citizens in the year 2041, just as I think all of us should be right now.
You see, the fact is we are a society that is not only growing in numbers, but is also getting older and the image that we have of seniors will come and be visited upon all of us at some point in our lives, God willing.
And so I want to look this morning with a fresh view about seniors: I want to look at it theologically; I want to look at it biblically; and I want to look at it spiritually. The reason is I think the Christian Gospel has something profound to contribute to our society's image of the seniors, or the aged, or the elderly.
A classic example is the passage that we just heard from the Book of Genesis. Here is a story that is rife with senior citizens or older people making a great contribution to God's witness in God's world. The story is one of several narratives that deal with the promises that God makes. God makes a number of promises to Israel, a covenant with Israel. The covenant is very powerful, and one of the keys within it is the call of Abraham and Sarah. Many of you know the story early on in the Book of Genesis where God calls Abraham and Sarah to move from the safety of their home and towards creating, eventually a people calling themselves Israel.
But there is a wonderful moment just before today's passage. It is where God promises Abraham and Sarah that they will give birth within the year to a son and that, through that son, God's promises, God's covenant, will be fulfilled. You can read it if you want to later, in Genesis 18:1-15.
Now, the catch to this whole story, of course, is the age of Abraham and Sarah. They are very old and they laugh at this visitation from God, a visitation from actually (and I think this is interesting in Trinitarian terms) three men. These three beings that come to Abraham and Sarah, Abraham calls The Lord. (Just a thought.)
As this presentation is made Sarah laughs out loud at God. She mocks God. She belittles God: "Are you out of your mind? There is no way that I'm going to be able to give birth to a child."
I can imagine what was in their minds. At a time when people are nearing the end of being grandparents, the thought of having to bring a child up, a little baby, was almost too much for Sarah and Abraham to bear, let alone the sheer physical, biological reality that her clock has so ticked that all the wires within it had already sprung. I mean, it was not good for Sarah. She was saying: "How is it possible that I can do this?" She laughs, and she mocks, and she belittles God.
But look at the story. Even though she belittles and mocks God, within 12 months she gives birth to a child. The language is so poetic and so powerful because Abraham says: "And you, O God, have made me laugh and all who hear me are laughing with me." The name Isaac, the son that Sarah gave birth to, means to laugh and this time not to laugh at God, not to mock God, but to laugh with the sheer joy that God was able to do in Abraham and Sarah what they believed nature had not allowed them to do. And of course the purpose is that through Isaac, then through Jacob, and then through the history of those who were born of their seed came the fulfilment of God's promise: that the world might know that God is Lord, all because of God using Abraham and Sarah, even in their declining years, to do miraculous things.
This is a story, then, that shows people with grey hair are still useful, valuable and precious in the sight of God.
This story reveals to us a distinction that I sometimes doubt society gets but the Bible makes over and over again: a distinction between, on the one hand, getting old and on the other hand, aging. Getting old is something that we all do, no matter who we are. It is a timely thing. It is chronological. It is biological. It is physical. Every one of us gets old at exactly the same speed. As time passes our age goes with us. No-one can stop it. No-one can reverse it. It is a fact of life. We all get older. But, my friends, we very often age at very different rates.
There are people that I know who are in their 70s and their 80s who are so young of mind, so open to new ideas, so full of promise, so full of passion that they make people in their 30s seem positively sedentary. There are people who, as they get older, find that even though their bodies might decline with age (again a thing that is bound to happen to all of us), their minds, their hearts, their spirits are rejuvenated. We are finding more and more now that people who have a strong personal faith in a living God in fact age at a better rate than those who don't. Because they have a purpose to live, they have a source of strength and fellowship. They have a passion for living. They have a relationship with a vibrant and living God. They know that even though in society's eyes they might not be as productive as they ought to have been or as they were some time ago, nevertheless within the Kingdom of God they are still valuable in the eyes of God.
That is why Abraham and Sarah, despite their declining years, were nevertheless, because of their faith, useful and valuable in the sight of God.
Oh, there will always be people who have other views of getting old. There will always be those who think that because time is so inevitable, we have to age along with it and hasten our demise as soon as possible.
I was reading a poem recently by Dylan Thomas. Many of you might have heard this, but it summarizes it beautifully:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
That's the negative view. But then there are the beautiful words of Robert Browning:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: See all, nor be afraid!"
Isn't that a great line? "The last of life, for which the first was made." We think in our society the exact opposite. We think the beginning, the first part of life, is the time when we are at our most vital and our most productive and our most passionate. It doesn't have to be that way and it certainly isn't that way if we believe that God goes with us through our entire life.
But there is also a sense in which the value of life is revealed in this magnificent story of Abraham and Sarah. The world laughed at Abraham and Sarah in the same way that Abraham and Sarah laughed at themselves. They thought that they were a joke. They thought that they were an anachronism. The world often looks at the Abrahams and Sarahs with disdain, or certainly with a coy look, wondering where their minds are. The fact is, the Bible makes it abundantly clear, that people with grey hair are precious in the eyes of the Lord - they are disciples.
The writer of Proverbs says: "Preserve and respect people with grey hair." Over and over again there is this refrain, both in Proverbs and also in the words of Jesus, that you honour your mother and your father. And anyone who does not honour the generation that has gone before, the writer of Proverbs said, should be eaten by vultures. In other words, even people with grey hair are to be respected and valued.
One of the reasons I think it is so important is reflected in something that I was reading a little while ago by Neil Postman of New York University. He is talking about education and the need for young people to be able to listen to generations who have gone before, and the need for young generations not just to think that they are the only ones who know the truth, or the only ones who have access to information. There is the need for the oral tradition of time to be passed on from one generation to the next.
We don't do that very well in our society. We often don't listen to people with grey hair and the wisdom and the years that they have had and the experience that they possess. In fact, there is an arrogance to what Kenneth Hamilton calls "the perennially new" that always sees only that which is immediate and new as being of value, and that which is old as worthy of being discarded.
In some ways, African societies do it a lot better than we do in terms of listening to their elders and those who have gone before. When I went to a congregation that was out in one of the townships outside Grahamstown, I had only been there about three days and I was pretty much full of myself. I had just graduated from university and I had just written my first article in a theological magazine and I was feeling that I had a great deal of information to disseminate to these poor people and that they would be very wise to listen to every word that I had to say.
And so I went in to that congregation and I was taken to my office, if you can call it such, and I was taken to one side by one of the elders of the congregation. He said: "Mr. Stirling, can I give you a little bit of advice about the first person that you should visit?"
I said: "By all means. I am always willing to listen. You tell me who I should go and visit."
He said: "Well there is an elder in our congregation. He is the oldest member of our church and I think that if you want to survive here, because I've been watching you for the last two days, it would be very wise if you were to spend some time with him."
So I got in a little bakkie as they call it, a little truck, and we drove miles out into the country. We pulled over into an old cottage outside a farmhouse and I went in to this man, who I doubt had left this room for maybe eight or nine years, well into his 90s. He warmly welcomed me and he said: "Do you know, young man, you are the 27th minister that I have been able to see in this congregation over the years?"
All I could think of was: I think the 28th will be coming very soon. This was not an auspicious beginning.
Then he took me to one side and he told the story of the church and the people who had come and gone, of some of the preachers that they had had, of some of the elders, of some of the great weddings and some of the magnificent funerals. He reminded me that I was coming in with young ideas and he wanted me to share them. He said: "But you must always remember, young man, they're young ideas but they are in the context of old ideas that have been around 'way, 'way before you were born."
You know, I went back many times and I thought of those pieces of information he had given me, of the people I met and I knew their stories. I knew their traditions. I knew what was in their hearts. Neil Postman was right. There is a need for the young to listen to the old for no other reason, perhaps, than to realize who and what we are, what our role is and where we have come from, lest we be foolish.
I am always pleased to say that here at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, without blowing our own horn, we take that tradition very seriously. We do it in many ways through our Homecoming Communion. We do it through the Festival of Flowers, through Stephen Ministry, through pastoral care, by providing access to our building (although we can always improve that). We go to seniors' homes and give services and provide spiritual care to the elderly. In many ways, this congregation, through our radio ministry, reaches people who cannot get our of their homes.
This is a ministry to people with grey hair and it makes our church powerful and it makes it meaningful. Anyone who thinks that that is anything less than a wonderful ministry should look at Abraham and Sarah.
But there is one last thing. That is that seniors and people with grey hair have much to contribute to the life of our church.
Our beloved Dr. Barry Day said to me this morning: "I suppose you're going to start using me now as an example, are you?"
I said: "No, I'll never mention that!"
But it's amazing if you think of the Christian church and the people with grey hair who have made such a contribution. Even people outside the church in their so-called "declining years" have had such a powerful effect: Immanuel Kant wrote most of his works when he was in his 70s. Goethe wrote Faust when he was in his 80s. Michelangelo and Monet were often at their greatest in their 80s. Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote Crossing the Bar when he was 83 and John Glenn went into space at 75. Anyone who thinks that people in their "declining years" cannot make a profound contribution clearly has not read history, and really hasn't read the Bible.
No, in fact the opposite is true. Those who have been given the health and the strength (and I always realize there is that caveat) have still so much to offer and so much to give.
Just recently it was the anniversary of the death of my grandfather, who was such a wonderful old man. I have mentioned to you before the times when my grandfather would take me to one side and talk to me. I consider it one of the great privileges of my life that I was able to sit on his knee and listen and learn. Many times things have come back to me that he said, but I always remember that he would take me for a walk with two of his old friends.
I think among the three of them they had six artificial hips. They would take me for a walk in the park and they would sit me down as a little boy on the bench. I would complain that my legs were aching and they would look at me with disdain. My grandfather, more than anything else in his life, wanted me to listen to his friends who had gone through the Depression, who had had furniture taken from their houses because of the means test, who had lived with the indignity of lining up in soup kitchens in Manchester. One of them had lost a son in the Second World War. One had lost a wife to a disease early on, and had to bring up their children alone.
He wanted me to listen. He wanted me to have compassion. He wanted me to remember what I had heard so that if I ever encountered it again, I would understand and I would be wise.
You see, in his declining years, he and his friends had so much to offer and what they offered was a vision. It was a vision of Abraham and Sarah that the promise of God's Kingdom, the promise of God's reign is God's alone. Regardless of our age and regardless of what state we might be in, still we can bear witness to truth.
Every time I encounter a senior at a difficult moment in his life, I ask myself what kind of a society I want to be in, what kind of a church do I want to be in when I reach that age?
I want to be in a church that not only recognizes my age but also my wisdom. I want to be in a church that recognizes not only my existence but also my value. I want a church that not only sees my past but also my future. I want a church that is based on faith and faith alone, and if it is filled with grey hair, to God be the Glory. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.