Hilton Head Island, SC – December 29, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 25:1-8; Proverbs 3:1-12; I Corinthians 13:4-13
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. – I Corinthians 13:11 (RSV)
Babies require a great deal of attention. Left to fend entirely for themselves, babies would perish in a few days or weeks. They simply can’t make it on their own. They are not aware of that, but we are. And so parents, especially mothers, spend many hours of every day taking care of infants, who need a great deal of care.
Following infancy is what we all know as “the Terrible Twos.” This is when very young children start to realize that they are individuals, and that they have individual needs, but particularly individual desires. Two-year-old children want what they want when they want it, and they do not hesitate to let us know what their desires, indeed their non-negotiable demands, are.
Most young children in the Terrible Twos are not “into” socialization. They are dimly aware that other people exist, including people of their own age, but they don’t really interact much with them, nor are they delighted with their existence. If anything, other people, particularly age peers, are an aggravating annoyance. Only as children get older, say from ages three through six, do they truly begin to understand that they, individually, are not the center of the universe, and that other people of all ages also inhabit the planet along with them. That is when children start to learn social skills and to absorb ethical teachings and to appreciate other people, if indeed they properly absorb any of those things.
Adolescence is when most of us acquire the basis for behavior which we presumably shall exhibit for the rest of our lives. If we were “good kids,” we are likely to be “good adults.” But if we were rotten-apple adolescents, we shall probably be rotten-apple adults. And in any case, most adolescents, whether good or not so good, can be consciously or subconsciously merciless at making fun of other adolescents. Sadly, it goes with the age range.
It is my experience as an unusually long-of-tooth preacher that few people who attend church regularly are so insufficiently human as to be reckoned thoroughly bad hombres. That is, not many self-professed Christians or Jews or any other religious people usually illustrate atrocious behavior. There are vexing personalities among church-goers, to be sure, but of course there’s nobody like that among us. In other congregations, maybe; but here, no. I suspect a few human beings are truly incapable of properly behaving themselves, but happily they are quite rare. Furthermore, probably no one is able with great specificity to say why anyone is like that. Is it nature or nurture which renders really bad hombres to be really bad hombres? We could debate that forever, and never come to unanimous agreement.
I do want strongly to suggest this, however: God created the human race with the capacity to follow His commandments and to live together in peace and harmony with one another. I am not talking in this sermon about how we should behave as nations and cultures and societies, but rather how we should behave with one another as individuals. God intended us to co-exist without seeking to harm or take advantage of others, and He created us with the ability to manage to do that.
The question is this: Do we actually do it? Does the socialization of our youth lead into a peaceable kingdom in our adulthood? Does our behavior improve with age? Should it?
In general, we give more latitude to children and youth for bad behavior than we give to adults. You probably agree with me that is as it should be. Young people are learning to choose right from wrong, we presume, but adults ought to be held accountable for having learned it. In most of the various states of this country, the age of accountability or responsibility is somewhere between fourteen and eighteen. After that citizens are considered adults by the courts.
Psalm 25 was our responsive reading for today. David is said to be the writer of this particular Psalm. In it David pleaded with God, “Remember not the sins of my youth, or my transgressions; according to thy steadfast love remember me, for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord!” If human parents are likely to overlook the mistakes of their children, how much more will God do that, David hopes. There is and ought to be a double standard for bad behavior, and it depends on the age of the offender when the offenses were committed. Two-year-olds absolutely cannot be held fully accountable for whacking other two-year-olds. But if twenty-year-olds smite one another with fists or clubs, or especially with firearms, it is and should be considered an entirely different matter. Implicitly, we are convinced behavior should improve with age.
Nobody knows who wrote the Book of Proverbs. It used to be thought that King Solomon wrote it, if only because that is what it says in verse one of the first chapter: “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.” However, few contemporary scholars suppose that Solomon composed all or even many of the Proverbs, and that whoever compiled this book simply wrote down many folk sayings from many centuries of Jewish tradition, ascribing all of the Proverbs to Solomon.
Often in the Proverbs the text is addressed to an unknown individual of an unknown age who is identified only as “my son.” That phrase is found once in each of the first two chapters, and three times in the third chapter, from which came our third reading for the morning. It is typical biblical male chauvinism that the phrase “my daughter” is never used, because no proverb composers were going to waste their precious time giving advice to any female offspring. If that were to happen at all, it would be their mothers who would do the advising. Would that it were otherwise, and that daughters were then valued as much as sons, but alas, it wasn’t so.
Anyway, in the 3rd chapter of Proverbs it says, “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments” (3:1). What parent has not said that to herself or himself with respect to their children of whatever age? “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight” (v. 5). Wisdom regarding behavior has accumulated over the centuries, so we ought never to suppose we can always figure out what to do all by ourselves. Nor should we even try. “Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil” (v. 7). I doubt that the ancient Hebrews thought much about sociopaths, but sociopaths are the people who are wise in their own eyes, and make up their own rules for themselves. As far they are concerned, the rest of us can go hang by our thumbs, and they will do whatever they will do. The person who currently is in the international news more than anyone else is a classic sociopath, but far too few people seem to recognize that.
“My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” (vs. 11&12) Young children chafe under the heavy guiding hands of their parents, and teenagers are the most put off by parental disciplinary action. Sociopaths particularly resent reproof. As much as we all need it, discipline is hard to endure. And once we think we have incorporated right behavior and action into our lives, we don’t want any reminders that inevitably we shall fall off the wagon every now and again.
Our second reading this morning comes from one of the best known chapters in the entire New Testament, the 13th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Throughout the entire chapter, Paul was talking about the Greek word agape, which was translated in the King James Bible as “charity” and in the Revised Standard Version as “love.” I won’t take time to explain the background of why Paul wrote this particular chapter. But suffice it to say it is one of the most poetic and memorable portions of scripture about anything anywhere in the whole Bible.
The kind of love the apostle extolled is the kind everyone should have for everybody. It is not familial or erotic or even friendship love of which he writes, but rather the sort everyone should exhibit toward everyone. In other words, it is loving behavior which Paul is urging us to exhibit. Agape love is not something we feel; it is something we do. If we are to love others, it means we need to be patient and kind, to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. We ought never to be jealous, boastful, arrogant, rude, irritable, or resentful. It is Christian love, says Paul, which transforms the world into what God wants it to be.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” Would that all of us honestly could say that of ourselves.
True Christian love is not easy. It tests us to our very limits. It is not our nature to be loving toward everyone in every instance. We are inclined to let ourselves off easy, to say that the reason we don’t do what we should is because the other person makes it impossible for us to do it. I’m OK, but he or she is not OK. Therein lies the whole problem, don’t you see.
What do we expect of ourselves, and what does God expect of us? If we are spiritually immature, we are likely to excuse our unloving and bad behavior. But if we have attained even a minimal degree of spiritual maturity, we know we can’t come up with any legitimate excuses when we hurt others, or are irritable, resentful, arrogant, or jealous.
In our over-medicated culture, we may kid ourselves into thinking that the proper pharmaceutical discovery can turn us into the beings God wants us to be. A New Yorker cartoon shows a man saying to another man, presumably his psychiatrist, “Why should I settle for good self-esteem when, with the right medication, I could have great self-esteem?”
All of us are capable of feeling right and doing right, but almost always it happens because, internally, we decide to do the right, and not because some external force or substance makes us do the right.
Speaking of substances, there is one type of physiological substance which may account directly or indirectly for at least half of the bad behavior of the human race. I speak of male hormones, and specifically of testosterone. Were it not for testosterone, there wouldn’t even be a human race, or any other species of animals either. Nevertheless, down through the ages testosterone has created countless examples of machismo gone absolutely amuck. Virtually every war ever waged was the result at least in part of too much testosterone coursing through the capillaries of too many intemperate male leaders who refused to follow the advice of the Proverbs or of I Corinthians 13. And certainly every rape, spouse-beating or child molestation by males to some degree involves uncontrolled and poorly managed male hormones.
Many years ago, someone in The Chapel Without Walls congregation introduced me to the comic strip Pickles, which is published every Sunday through Friday in The Island Packet. (A great local sadness is that there is no longer a Saturday print edition of The Packet. Given the tenuous state of print news, it was perhaps inevitable.) Anyway, Pickles is primarily about an elderly couple, though for the past several years their young grandson Nelson has also become a Pickles mainstay. I deduce that means the cartoonist now has a grandchild or grandchildren. If you are not a Pickles person, I urge you to become one, particularly if you are older than 65. You’ll be amazed at what you will learn about yourself and other Pickles people.
Both the grandfather and grandmother are loveably irascible old ducks. They tend with almost daily regularity to get under the skin of the other. Earl tends to ignore Gladys when he doesn’t agree with what she is saying, or he pretends not to hear her when he disagrees with her observations or her dictates. She delights in finding fault with his quirks and eccentricities, of which there is an inexhaustible supply. The Pickles pair, in other words, remind me of me. If the truth is told, they remind me of two or three of you as well.
Should behavior improve with age? As far as God is concerned, it surely should. We are all human, and therefore we shall continue to make mistakes and to hurt others and to commit both minor and perhaps major sins. Nevertheless, envy, greed, malice, anger, impatience, spitefulness, irritability and the like should diminish as we get older. They really should. And if they don’t, it means we have matured far too little. Proper behavior is the fruit of increasing maturity. Let me repeat it: Proper behavior is the fruit of increasing maturity. If we aren’t doing what we know we should do, it means we have deliberately thwarted our own spiritual and behavioral maturation. And we continue to engage in what David called “the sins of my youth.”
The old Pennsylvania Dutch saying declares, “Ve grow too soon old und too late schmart.” But it does not have to be that way. Growing older should make us smarter in many ways. That is what wisdom is all about. Old age also should improve our behavior, unless it has us so firmly in its aged grip that we truly can no longer control our behavior.
We are at the end of an old year and the beginning of a new year. So here is a question: Can misbehaving old dogs learn better, and more mature, new tricks?
Here is another question: what is the essence of this sermon? I can express it in two short words: Grow Up! If we continue to mistreat others, it means we have chosen to remain children in our bad behavior, supposing that therefore it somehow can be excused. But it can’t. “Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be,” said Robert Browning. He might also have said, “Grow up along with me; the best is yet to be.” As we grow older, we need to grow out of bad old habits and to grow up into good new ones. Grow up. As we age, it’s the way God wants us to go.