"You, Child..."

"You, Child..."--December 14, 2017

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

     for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.

 He has raised up a mighty savior for us

     in the house of his servant David,

 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets of old,

     that we would be saved from our enemies

     and from the hand of all who hate us.

 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,

     and has remembered his holy covenant,

 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,

     to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,

 might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness

    before him all our days.

 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;

    for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

 to give knowledge of salvation to his people

    by the forgiveness of their sins.

 By the tender mercy of our God,

    the dawn from on high will break upon us,

 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

    to guide our feet into the way of peace." [Luke 1:67-79]

You often hear the advice these days that parents should not try to be their children's friends, which is to say that the job of parents is not to be "liked" or to be "cool" or to be seen as a "peer" of their children, but rather that parents need to own a certain responsibility, authority, and willingness to be the "bad guy" from time to time in the eyes of their kids.

All of that is certainly true.  Good parents know when to tell their kids that the answer is "no," when it is a matter of safety, or principle, or wisdom.  Friends may well not care if you are up all night watching TV and eat only junk food, but parents impose boundaries because their job is not to win a popularity contest but to raise mature, good-natured children to adulthood. So, yes, it is fair to say that parents are not supposed to aim be their children's "friends" in childhood.  The purpose of parenthood is to grow young human beings into mature human beings with solid, good character, and you don't always have to be liked by your kids to do that.

But maybe we need to push even further than that.  Maybe it is also true that the job of parents--and of family more broadly, or even a church family generally--isn't even just keeping children forever safe and protected.  Maybe a part of being a good parent/aunt/uncle/grandparent/mentor/teacher is discovering the right ways to properly endanger children.

Ok, let's stop a minute.  Yes, you read that correctly: it is possible that good child-rearing--at least from a Kingdom perspective--is learning how to rightly endanger the children who are placed in our care.

Now will you grant me a minute to say what I mean?

To live in this world as a follower of Jesus means daring to see the world through a certain lens--to see the world, your life, and also, importantly, the lives of your children if you have them, in the light of the values and priorities of what Jesus calls "the Kingdom of God."  To be a parent (or grandparent, or uncle, or aunt, or adult family-friend, or fellow church member) and a disciple of Jesus at the same time means to commit to dare to see things from the vantage point of Jesus.  So when Jesus says things like, "the last shall be first and the first shall be last," or, "Those who lose their lives will save them," or even, say, "What profit is there for you if you have the world but have lost your soul?" we followers of Jesus are expected to share that conviction... and to let it affect not only our own choices, but the choices we make that influence those who come after us.

This is where things get scary and the stakes get high.

That's because it means recognizing that my choices, my priorities, and my values do not just affect me--they will shape and affect those whose lives I am responsible for guarding and training up.  After all, it's one thing to take your life savings and blow it all on a long-shot horse race or bad roll at the craps table if it's just you who has to live with the consequences.  But it's another thing entirely to take your whole family's nest-egg and kids' college funds and risk them all.  As a society, we might not recommend the first choice but shrug it off as "just how some people live their lives," but we tend to get very very uncomfortable with grown-ups whose foolish choices jeopardize their children's livelihoods or well-being.

But now, let me suggest something I don't think we really want to admit, we disciples of Jesus:  living from a Kingdom perspective will always to some degree look like foolishness and recklessness to others.  I don't mean in nonsensical ways like refusing to have your children vaccinated (there is, after all, a difference between being just a fool and being a damn fool), but I mean that following Jesus and seeing the universe from the perspective we call the Reign of God, or the Kingdom of God, means that we will make choices to value some things that the wider world things are pointless... and that we will also teach our children NOT to value other things that the world thinks are essential.

So, for example, the world says your value as a human being is tied up in the amount of money you have or earn... but the perspective of Jesus sees all people as made in the image of God and in fact announces particular blessing on "the poor," rather than saying "If you're rich, God must really love you!"  

Or, you might notice that we are increasingly living in an age in which the loudest voices seem to care only about whether you "win" or not, and not whether we are actually decent human beings to one another... but when you ask Jesus about the subject, he seems to have very little interest in whether you look like you are "winning" or not, and in fact Jesus seems to have deliberately not taken the path that would have looked like "winning" in the first century.  

The world in which we live seems to care less and less for facts, or for truth as something you can actually pin down and look at, and seems to be much more interested in "looking like you are right" than in actually being correct... and then there is Jesus, who teaches his followers simply to speak the honest truth, to "let your yes be yes and your no be no," rather than trying to spin your words or deny your past comments when they turn out to be wrong.  

And maybe most reckless of all in this world, while the world around us assumes that the best way to be safe is to keep yourself armed and ready to get the bad guys if they show up, Jesus teaches his followers to go out into the world like sheep among wolves and not to return evil for evil, even if the Romans come to arrest you and put you on a cross like Jesus.

To do any one of those things is to look foolish to the eyes of the world--it means risking your money, your reputation, your standing, even your physical safety!  And yet, Jesus calls his followers to see the world through his eyes and to live in all of those ways... all the time!

That's hard enough if it's just me... but even harder, even riskier, even more demanding, is teaching our children to participate in the Kingdom of God the same way.  It's one thing for me to say that I won't retaliate with rage or pettiness if someone attacks me... but it's much harder to teach my son that when someone else goes low, we will go high--because that is what Jesus has taught us... and yet, there it is: Jesus taught us to do this, and to teach our children to do the same.  This is the risk of being a follower of Jesus--we are called not only to stake our own lives on Jesus' way of life, but also to risk our children's futures on it, too.  And that is, quite frankly, scary.  It looks and feels very much like endangering our children, because it means teaching them to live in ways that run counter to the world's "common sense."

All of this comes to mind in this pre-Christmas season because of the words we know as Zechariah's song, a song from the beginning of Luke's gospel in the lead-up to the birth of Jesus, a song that is also very much about preparing for what will happen when the Messiah finally came.  And in this song, we don't just get Zechariah going out on a limb to pin his hopes on the promised Savior, but Zechariah brings his own baby son, John, into the mix.  

"You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High," he says, setting his infant son on a course that commits him to a certain way of life.  John will indeed be the forerunner of the Messiah, but that is a life fraught with risk.  John would become unpopular because of his truth-telling.  He would risk (and give up) all claim to treasure or reputation or comfortable lifestyle by going out into the wilderness.  He would risk his own life when he poked at the scandalous life of the blowhard puppet king Herod.  And he starts on that trajectory, at least in part, because his father Zechariah raised him in a certain way, to see the world through the lens of Kingdom priorities.

This is the risk for us--whether you have children or not, whether you are an aunt or an uncle as well, a grandparent or a neighbor or a Sunday School teacher or a church member who influences the life and faith of children around you: if we dare to take Jesus' way of life seriously, we will risk not only our lives, but the lives of children, too, as we teach them to live the Jesus way of life.

It means not only that we would offer our lives to protect someone else who was in danger... but that would teach our children to do the same.  It means not only that we ourselves commit not to respond to cruelty or hatred with the same, but that we teach our children not to hit back or to resort to pettiness and hate even if they are shown it.  It means not only that we choose for ourselves to go without some of the luxuries or perks of life, but that we raise our children in the same way.  And it means, in sum, that we not only sign ourselves up to be losers in the world's eyes, but that we teach our children to be losers, too.  It means teaching the next generation that there are things more important than money or success or popularity or safety, even if it costs them those things along the way, too.  And that is hard.

In these days, if I am going to prepare, truly and deeply, for Jesus, it will mean listening to Zechariah's song on his own terms, and to hear him speak to his own infant son as a model for how I raise a young man and a young woman in my family.  I hear him say, "You, my child... will go before the Lord," and I know that my calling as well is to teach these children in my world to see life through the lens of the Kingdom, too, even though that will cost them.  It will mean I am sending my children into a world full of bullies, having taught them not to sink to the level of bullies themselves.  It will mean sending them out into a world that is comfortable with lying, having taught them to tell the truth even when it will cost them.  It will mean, perhaps not steering them toward the jobs that will make the most money but would rob them of their souls... and instead teaching them to value what they do for the sake of others, regardless of how well it pays.  It will mean teaching my children--as well as the other children whose paths cross mine in a lifetime--to do risky, potentially painful things like forgiving people who do not deserve it, and loving people who do not love you back, and being lied about without giving into lies back.  And quite often that will risk their comfort, or their safety, or their lives.  It will look like sending them into the path of danger... because it will look like teaching them to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

To prepare for Jesus this Christmas isn't just to teach my kids the words to Christmas carols or train them in the traditions of trimming trees and hanging stockings. It means teaching them the Kingdom way of life, regardless of the costs they will endure while they live their own lives. 

It will mean looking at the children in our own lives and saying to them, "You, my child, will go before the Lord and prepare the way..."

Lord Jesus, give us the courage not only to follow you ourselves, but to teach children to share in this risky, dangerous, costly adventure of being your disciples.