Gifts of Age
July 18th, 2010
St. David’s United
Rev. Dan Chambers
July 18, 2010
Gifts of Age
Sarah learns she will conceive a child in her old age, and laughs.
Genesis 18:1-15
Do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our
inner nature is being renewed day by day.
II Corinthians 4:16-18
The other day Auntie Jeannie came to visit. Jeannie’s not blood related, but Janet’s known her for about twenty years so as it happens with friends who become over time like family the girls know her as “Auntie” Jeannie. Jeannie, who’s family is Chinese, recently lost her grandmother, the grandmother who was 100 years old, the grandmother Jeannie went to visit and care for everyday for the last eight years.
In preparation of her grandmother’s memorial service, Jeannie put together a video presentation that captured different stages of her grandmother’s life: there she is as a girl in China; there as a young mother with two young children; there surrounded by a gaggle of grandchildren; there in the care facility delighting in the birthday cake that honoured her 100 birthday.
What impressed me most about this video presentation was the way the family honoured this woman who was mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. It seems from this family, anyway, that the Chinese still hold a place of respect for their elders. Even though she was not able to walk or bathe or feed herself anymore; even though she could be demanding and grouchy, she was loved. There she is in that picture laughing with a grandson, there and there and there she’s being embraced, there she regally sits in a place of honour in the photograph, front and center; but mostly the way the family intentionally gathered around her bed for holidays and celebrations communicated “this person is not forgotten; this person is important; this person holds a meaningful place in our family.”
Perhaps I was touched by that because our North American society venerates youth. This comes as no surprise. We celebrate the physical beauty of youth to the point that attractive, middle-aged people feel the need to have a tuck here and a shot of botox there as an attempt to ward-off the visible affects of aging.
We venerate athletes who, with the odd exception of curling (which itself is an odd exception in the world of sport), are usually considered “old” and almost at the age of retirement when they’re thirty. Many athletes peak between the ages of 22 and 28. Yet for many in our society these young athletes are like gods who walk among us.
Our priority to the young is not limited to physical prowess or lithe and nubile bodies. Our society also opens the gates to those who are technologically advanced. And who has the advantage there? The ones who went to university before personal computers were on the scene and Bill Gates was still working from his garage, or the ones who have been on computers since kindergarten?
Certainly, on this score the Christian culture stands in contrast to the dominant North American culture. The church is a place where age has value: age has the possibility of offering gifts that cannot come from anything other than years of living: a certain wisdom from experience, a perspective that appreciates the long-view, a heart that has had time to be mellowed by loss, softened by disappointment, humbled by failure, strengthened by the recognition that we do survive, and enlarged by an empathy that reaches out to others with care. For those who are open to it, age offers the gift of freedom, of no longer caring so much about what others think, of enjoying being who you are. For those able to receive, age offers the gift of courage and the ability to trust.
These are the gifts that might come with age, when we have chosen to live well, have learned from at least a few of our important mistakes, have been humble enough to mature as we age. Even in our senior years, the heart can still be productive. Sarah laughed when she heard she would get pregnant, and sometimes we laugh at the thought that we in our age can still produce, can still create, can still bring to birth new ideas.
We could list now the people who are seniors and doing great work. We could recall the more famous who are still creating at an elderly age: Dave Brubeck played his 14th concert at the Montreal Jazz Festival this summer at the age of 91. Senator Robert Byrd served for 51 years as the longest serving senator in US history; he was married for 69 years, and died while still serving in office at the age of 92. We can still be productive well after the usual age of retirement.
But that’s not the gift of age I’d like to focus on today. Today, the gift of age that I think is quite remarkable is not about productivity at all. In fact, it’s a gift because it’s not at all concerned with accomplishment or achievement or activity or the ability to do. This gift comes from the bare fact of being. An aged person like Jeannie’s grandmother is an individual prized not for what they can accomplish, but simply for their being in the world.
How does the old saying go? “When I celebrated a birthday as a young child, people would be excited because I was one year older. Then when I was a young adult, people would be excited to see what I would become. Then when I had a birthday in my middle-age, people would congratulate me for all I had accomplished. Now, into my eighth decade, people celebrate my birthday simply because they’re surprised I’m still in the world! I don’t have to do anything but exist, and people are impressed.”
The gift of age reminds us that we are not what we have achieved. At the heart of it, we are valued simply as one made in the image of God. Rabbi Abraham Heschel captures it in that simple saying, “Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy.” I don’t think he was speaking to a group in a care facility when he said this, but he might have been.
The gift of age is to bring us into an awareness of this, our original blessing.
A.J. and all babies help us slow down and see this gift of being and the sheer wonder of the world. Our seniors can help us as well.
I remember an afternoon when my mother-in-law and I went for a coffee at a near-by Starbucks. She sat with her back to the door, so she didn’t initially see the mother and baby as they walked in. The child had red hair and blue eyes like saucers. I knew she would flip, so I smiled and nodded for her to look over her shoulder. She turned to see this beautiful child carried in a baby bjorn and Sheila gasped as if she had just seen the queen herself.
She excused herself for a moment and approached the mother and child. I don’t think Sheila even noticed the mum, who had a flash of pink in her hair, a tattoo on her upper arm and piercings that multiplied beyond the earlobe. But I don’t think Sheila even noticed any of this as she briefly nodded a greeting to the mum and then set her eyes on this precious, gorgeous child. All the baby saw was a grandmother beaming at him. He recognized love when he saw it, so he beamed back at Sheila. There they were, the two of them radiating joy in the middle of Starbucks. Their light fell onto the mum, who joined the happy chorus and beamed at the two of them, like a holy trinity radiating peace and good will for all.
Later, in the hospital, when Sheila was discouraged and feeling like her life wasn’t worth a whole lot, I reminded her of that afternoon and the gift she gave that child, the mother, me, and anyone else who had the good fortune to catch this beatific moment. Sheila was so present to the child, the child to her, all past and future collapsed into that exchange.
“Just to be is holy; just to live is a blessing.”
Equating value with productivity may be the hardest thing to get over: it bores deep into our sense of self-worth. Even someone who has attended church all her life can fall into despair when she no longer can care for others or be productive in any recognizable way.
Dear Sybil Fensom had trouble with this. In her nineties, in the care facility, when she lived mostly in bed getting thinner and thinner it seemed by the day, kept alive only by the insistence of a strong heart, she wondered, “Why am I still here? What in the world am I good for?”
Yet it was clear that her family still loved her, her friends still cared for her. She had value because she was still in the world and her very presence meant something. What was she good for? She was good for others.
What are we good for? As with any day of our life, we’re not the ones to judge our value. We usually have no idea the many ways we are valued by others. We have no idea how God is at work in our life in unseen ways, so that even if “our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” I take great hope in that passage and remind myself of it every time I visit someone elderly and bedridden.
The great preacher and social activist, William Sloan Coffin, embodied the hope inherent in this scripture passage. Two occasions come to mind:
The first was when he came as a guest preacher at the church I served in Berkeley. As he was a close friend of the lead minister, Pat deJong, we benefitted from his visits, his preaching and teaching, his humour. During one of his last visits, his feet badly swollen and aching, he rose out of his chair and slowly shuffled to the pulpit. The congregation waited patiently, silently encouraging him forward with each painful step. When at last he reached the pulpit he quipped: “It may take me a while to get here, but once I do, I’m a gazelle!”
The second memory I have of this passage and this man was at the second wedding of my colleague, who, again, was like a daughter to him. As neither she nor her husband had any parents left on this earth, they asked a mentor to be present that day in the role of a beloved parent. Bill Coffin was there as Pat’s parent, and when it came his turn to speak, he slowly rose, balanced carefully on a cane, his feet so swollen now he couldn’t wear shoes but instead wore slippers for padding. These days his head shook a little from age, and pain was a constant companion. But when he spoke, his voice was strong and clear and his words brilliant. There, in his slippers and a shadow of his former, robust self, he concluded with the passage, “Even though our outer natures waste away, we are being inwardly renewed day by day.” He said this with such conviction that he himself was an embodiment of the passage and in that moment we all believed.
We believed that there was something within us that doesn’t fade away with this mortal coil. We believed that even while our physical being weakens, that flesh and bone is not all of who we are and that there is something within us, something unseen but more real than the passing day that not only abides the aging body, but even grows brighter as it turns toward God. Perhaps this gift of age is exactly what Paul meant when he wrote to the Christians in Corinth,
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner-nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
Thanks be to God!
