Rev Dr Rebecca L. Kiser
Growing
Human Like Jesus
5/12/19 Easter 4C - and Baccalaureate
A friend in Va Beach taught art
history at Virginia Wesleyan College, and was asked by the school chaplain to
take part in what was called the Last Lecture Series. The invitation was to
imagine that this is your last lecture, your last opportunity to tell students
and other professors the major things you’d wish them to hear - what would you
say? My friend chose to share the art
that she loved the most from the artists who she most admired. I enjoyed her lecture and slides.
Well, although I hope this isn’t my
last sermon ever, today feels like an opportunity to share some of my thoughts
and experiences, and my love for education.
I chose this verse from Luke, the apostle who seems to present the most
human Jesus, where he describes how the young Jesus continued to grow as a
well-rounded person - he grew physically, he grew in learning and
understanding, he grew in social skills, and he grew in his spirituality,
his relationship to God. Each of those ways mentioned in this verse
are important for our own development as whole persons.
PHYSICAL Our physical self continues to grow and
mature, going through the changes of our physicality. It is important to care for this body that
carries us and in some way, IS us. Our
physical abilities vary, yet the caring for our health, our eating, our skills,
are important to who we are and who we are becoming.
We all know about physical
development, that children can handle more complex things as the brain develops
in its ordered way. We know about stages
of physical growth, and the bodily changes that happen in our bodies. Things change. We also know about stages of emotional
development, levels of thinking that are possible. Actually, some people develop further than
others in conceptual and interpersonal and emotional intelligences. We know about the multiple intelligence
theory - that some people learn better using their hands and bodies, that some
are musical, that others are more linear and fact based, that others are better
at social cues, and even others on reading the natural environment. Some people are more introverted, and others
more extroverted - its a matter of whether crowds energize you, or if you have
to go home and recharge after being in crowds.
LEARNING As far as growing in learning, I enjoy being
a lifetime learner - there’s always more interesting stuff out there, and it
intrigues me, it draws me. Learning how
to learn is a skill that stays with you, and can be used in any type of
field. Besides our major, there are so
many other areas to know - I keep on running into them. I was a music major, so
I did a lot of learning in that field - yet I’ve grown an interest in biblical
knowledge, languages, psychology, philosophy, pastoting, hospital chaplaincy,
human development, gardening and plants, birds’ names, women’s history, writing
- you get the gist. And I haven’t even
touched higher sciences, much technology, electrical things, and more. College is just a start. But….you gotta start somewhere, and getting
good general education helps in any field we might choose for a
profession.
New discoveries and insights are
happening in almost every field of study.
After all, all those people seeking higher degrees have to writes their
dissertations on something - or, less cynically, we want to know more, push the
envelope, go where no one has gone before, find cures, make a better mousetrap,
figure out how God’s universe works.
SOCIAL
/ EMOTIONAL Social development grows wildly at
college as we are exposed to different people from different backgrounds who
have different ways of doing things. A
major shift is that we start taking more responsibility for our own choices as
far as the friends we hang with and things we do together. Physically, our brains are developing the
skills we need for this in our typical college ages. We’re dealing with profs on our own, people
of other genders, and probably new situations than we’ve run into at home.
SPIRITUALLY Most colleges will not have courses about
growing our spirituality, although I’ve explored some college websites that do
talk about general spirituality and wellness as goals for their students. They won’t necessarily be teaching from a
religious point of view - more from the concept of wholeness and overall
health. College can be a large stressor, and the schools want to try and avoid
burnout or other crises in their students. Spiritually, there will also be a
plethora of choices at most colleges, many opportunities for moral or ethical
decisions. What we have known at home
may feel challenged and questioned.
That’s not bad! Our choices will
become more our own, as we consider alternatives and their value.
People used to say that when their
kids went off to college or university, that they lost their faith and
questioned everything they’d been taught - it ruined them. I think it actually makes us larger persons,
and can be the making of us.
I guess I can kind of see what the
old folks meant - going off to university puts us in a larger circle of people
- different kinds of people, with different ways of thinking and different ways
of doing things. Professors or teaching
assistants love to mess with what we think we know, by exposing us to fields we
never knew existed, and details about them that we never imagined. It can be a bit overwhelming - and it can
also be exciting. There is a lot of
world out there. In respect of our
faith, we may meet people from all kinds of other religious backgrounds, people
who call themselves atheists (no god) and agnostics (I don’t know about god)
and pagans. It can be challenging to
what we thought was the authority of our hometown church and preacher. If there are so many other ways of looking at
the world, how do I know my way is right?
For many, it becomes a time to
question everything. Parents’ choices
might seem staid and old-fashioned, the hometown might seem quaint, the home
church might seem short-sighted.
Its totally natural and normal that
as we emerge as persons, we have our own ideas and think our own thoughts. We are differentiating ourselves from our
parents - even while its also a human skill to learn to live in community and
relationships. There’s a balance in
there somewhere between being who we are and existing as a social person. Different cultures have evolved where the
balance is different. We have to figure
out our own relationship to God, to morals, to what makes us authentic persons
or good persons - what our ethics
are. We are raised a certain way - that
is our parents’ responsibility; as we
mature, however, our choices become our own responsibility. We decide whether we will drink or not or how
much; if we will hook up with various partners easily or build relationships;
we decide whether we will cut class or binge-watch TV or attend class and do
your work. We decide what kind of person we will be, and how we will live - and
we take responsibility for our choices.
Parents - This is normal.
Students - this is normal. And its good - we are being challenged to
think, to question, to figure things out, to try and integrate all this new
stuff into the way we see the world and the way we understand.
I encourage you to ask the big
questions, to question what you’ve been told, to not be afraid to even
rethinking about God - God is big enough to take it. Questioning and asking makes our minds grow,
and, believe it or not, it makes our faith grow. We can wrestle with new ideas and come to
grips with them, and find how faith still speaks and undergirds all that
is.
So its an exciting time in your
lives. Maybe a bit scary, too. Some people have a more difficult time being
on their own than others - even within the same family! Some people are more overwhelmed at all the
choices than others. For some, the transition to being their own person is
rockier than for others, like they throw common sense out the window. Its your journey, and particular to you.
I will tell you personally that I have found God to be up to
any challenge of life so far - God has been up to my angry prayers, my
questioning prayers, my grieving prayers, my loss of boyfriends, my learning
about the complexity of the Bible, ...anything.
God has been up to all the times I’ve felt disillusioned about things I
assumed were true - and by saying I was disillusioned, shows that my
assumptions were illusions. Some of those have been hard to let go.
The one thing that has been the most difficult test of my
faith has been how Christians can be so unthinkingly mean to each other. I first saw it in my home church when I was a
junior or senior in high school, and I lost a lot of respect for the adults at
my church over their anger and bitterness, harsh words and bad behaviors.
Eventually, like years later, I realized that they have not learned, as humans,
to handle their own huge reactions - they can’t
deal with it. I’ve seen it again
in congregations I’ve pastored, and been deeply wounded by certain individuals’
meanness. Its taken me a long time to
recover from some of those hurts. Not
everyone does the hard work on their inner self, which I think is vital to a
Christian testimony - the transforming of our minds, as Paul puts it, putting
on Christ.
Part of what I think of as spiritual development is learning
self-awareness - reading the scriptures about how our words can hurt - well,
they talk about in terms of the tongue, but they mean our speech - and letting
the Spirit of God help me learn to watch my own words. Reading what the
scriptures say about our bodies, and examining the ways I do or don’t care for
this temple that is my person. Recognizing
that other people have feelings, and being able to put myself in their shoes -
that is a great self-learning. The more
I’ve prayed about my own reactions and responses to things that happen to me,
the more I’ve learned about other humans besides myself. I’ve made my decisions, with God’s help, about filtering what pops in my brain before
it gets out of my mouth; I’ve made my own decisions, with God’s help, about
working on my own human development, my own character development. While we all will have our unique blind
spots, I think the most valuable learning of all is learning about our own
hearts and souls. The more we can learn
of ourselves in front of God and in prayer, the better for the whole body of
humanity.
Okay, I’m about at the end of things here.
I hope college is exciting, rich and fun, despite exam
weeks. For those of you graduating from
degree programs and going into work, I hope it is personally fulfilling,
exciting, challenging, and good for humanity and the planet. They are wonderful stages of life.
Parents, support your young adult children in a time we also
know can be precarious, and pray for them as they find their way.
Church, I know we won’t forget these that are coming from
our community and our larger family and into the larger world. Bless them and love them. AMEN.
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