Wisdom and Maturity 1 Cor 2:1-9

Wisdom and Maturity1 Cor 2:1-9 FCC, Modesto – 10/28/07 We’ve begun talking about where the “young people” are and how to get “them” involved with church.  Many of you have shared with me how influential this church was for you during your teenage and young adult lives.  And I see the wheels begin to move in your heads as you start to imagine how to pass that sort of experience on to another generation. I want to share with you today a short article or devotion written by esteemed theologian and writer, Martin Marty that talks to this. Marty: “Demographers, statisticians, sociologists, and some theologians serve the culture and the religious institutions within it by measuring the stated beliefs and observable religious behavior of citizens. Church attendance is one of the most conspicuous and measurable of these behaviors.  Yes, we know that counting church members and attendees only measures church membership and attendance.  We know, and the social scientists know, that in a time when individualized “spirituality” has its vogue, we are to remember that there are all kinds of ways to be in touch with the transcendent, to be in tune with the infinite, and to reach for the moral life.             “We know that, but by observing other cultures, especially those of Western Europe, we also know that the desertion of the Catholic church in former strongholds such as Ireland and Spain, the emptying of Lutheran churches in historic bastions like Scandinavia and eastern Germany, or the bleak attendance at Anglican or almost all other churches in England, even on Easter morning, changes more than church statistics.  Such cultures can “coast,” for a while, with the memory of a faith that did shape society and culture, for better and for worse.  But as generations pass and distance grows, so do the values which issued from the body of believers gathered in communities called, for example, “the church.”             “”As generations pass.”  A review in the October 16th Christian Century by Brian D. McLaren, a leader in “the emerging church,” of Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow’s important new book After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Sometings are Shaping the Future of American Religion is a potential wake-up signal, an alarm blast.  Those who think that Sightings does not frequently enough isolate and treat that generation might conclude after reading McClaren and Wuthnow that one reason we do not treat the topic often enough is because people aged twenty-one to forty-five are hard to find among church members and regular attendees.             “Wuthnow writes, “If I were a religious leader, I would be troubled by the facts and figures currently describing the lives of young Americans, their involvement in congregations, and their spiritual practice.”  He advises:  Don’t draw conclusions “from where the action is,” but on the basis of “a full consideration of where the action is not.”  He wants religious leaders to do more than strategize how to help congregations survive, but instead to work for their vitality.    “Wuthnow’s main conclusion is that “young adults are marrying later, having fewer children and having them later, moving more often, going to college in higher numbers, living with more immigrant neighbors and therefore more ethnic and religious diversity, and living in the suburbs even more than their baby boomer parents.”   Changes like these (more than TV, the Internet, “secular humanism,” or “relativism”) give rise to the startling trends and statistics that Wuthnow uncovers in interviews.   He finds find that this generation talks about religion more than any other, and that their core beliefs remain stable—except beliefs about how the spiritual life and God-talk are to be related to communal life, worship, and common action.  Wuthnow’s advice?  Have babies, and much more.  McLaren’s advice: “Listen to young adults,” and then reform and act.” And I think today’s scripture gives us some scriptural advice as well. Paul wrote two letters to the church in Corinth.  The first letter is pretty condemning.  It indicates that after Paul had gotten things started and put leaders in place to continue the church, things got pretty rocky.  This is a great story of church dysfunction!  Paul is trying to give some advice and direction to help this new church find its strong footing in order to move ahead.  The second letter praises the accomplishments and is almost a cheerleading letter to tell them how great they are doing. But today’s passage comes from the beginning of that first letter.   Paul writes: “When I came to you, brothers [and sisters], I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.  For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.  My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom [or women’s!], but on God’s power.” Paul has this way of saying – remember, this is what I  did… and implying that the community is not doing likewise. So, what he is saying to them is – “hey!  It is more effective to communicate with humility than to come like a stampeding herd.  It is better to just tell your own story than to talk down to people.  The point is not to persuade people with fancy talk but to let the Holy Spirit have a chance to work. So stop trying to push your take on things down people’s throats!  The Good News is enough by itself.  You just have to be willing to meet people where they are and speak the truth of God as you know it.” I had to chuckle at the next part of this passage… it says: “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature.”… knowing that I was talking about “young people” to a group of folks that might think of themselves as “mature adults”… but, of course, they aren’t talking about age.  After all, Jesus was only 33 when he died and that is only in the middle of the age range that Marty was talking about. No, Paul is talking about people that are mature in their faith. In today’s language that would be the “churched” instead of the “unchurched” or the “de-churched”.  The “Christians” instead of the “spiritual but not religious.”  The people that take discipleship seriously and commit their lives to following Christ.  These are the “mature.” And that “wisdom” Paul is talking about… “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but NOT the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.  No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.  None of the rulers of this age understood it, for it they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” I think this “wisdom” is simply the “good news” that we know of the love of Jesus Christ and the transforming power of the Spirit.   As Paul says, this is not something that our cultural leaders are able to share.  This is what the CHURCH needs to share.   The Young Adults in our community are not in church.  We might see some mega church up the road with young families streaming in and out – but they are actually a very small percentage of the 21-45 year olds in Modesto.  We don’t know these people – we know they are not in our churches, but Marty shared Wuthnow’s conclusions that “young adults are marrying later, having fewer children and having them later, moving more often, going to college in higher numbers, living with more immigrant neighbors and therefore more ethnic and religious diversity, and living in the suburbs even more than their baby boomer parents”.   This generation that I am smack in the middle of – is distrustful of institutional church.  We see the church as a contradiction to the best things we see in the world.  We see televangelists that have extramarital affairs and embezzlement scandals.  We see the clergy sexual misconduct of the Catholic church.  We live on streets with many different ethnicities present but think that the most segregated hour of the week is 11am on Sunday morning.  We see non-profit agencies responding to the social needs in our communties and not the churches.  We all know people who have died of AIDS and cancer or are victims of violence or drugs.  We see the church take a stand on “moral issues” while “Christians” demonstrate hypocrisy in their personal lives.   It is only in the last few years that I began to actually have any true understanding of why Christianity is a communal religion.  I was ordained and serving in ministry before I could accept for myself that being part of a faith community is any better than a personal spirituality.  And unlike many of my contemporaries, I grew up in the church, I knew the best parts of church and was familiar and aware of churches other than the very conservative and fundamentalist variety.  And yet, it still took a long time to accept the community of “church” as an integral part of my personal faith. Wuthnow makes a good point when he says we need to look at where the action is not.  There are generations of people that are not accepting the institutional church – the church as you have always known it – as having value for their lives.  We have some important changing to do because as Paul quotes Isaiah as saying “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”  Even those in our neighborhoods who are not now part of “church”. 

So as we enter this season of discernment  - of listening for God to reveal God’s purpose for this congregation – let us proceed with humility and openness to receive God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom for all ages so that we might be vehicles of this good news for generations to come.