Leaning into the Future

In the town of Kirkland Lake, Ontario – the location of the first church I served as a minister - every Monday and Friday, a group of elderly men crowded into the table at the one Chinese food restaurant on the main drag – Government Road West. It was a motley crew of old geezers that gathered there. There’s 86 year old Archie, a retired Chartered Accountant; there’s Al, the 82 year old retired owner of the movie theatre; there’s 90 year old Fred, a Queen’s Counsel attorney retired from his law practice. There’s 79 year old Tom, a retired geologist and now keen amateur prospector.

There were others. There were a dozen in all, if they weren’t sick or visiting great-grandchildren. They ranged in age from 79 to 90, and they gathered twice a week to eat lunch together, to hang out and to talk, and talk, and talk, and argue, and joke, and debate, and talk about everything from politics to business to religion.

Now, have you heard of a movement - it’s sweeping North America. It calls itself “Romeo.” It’s my contention that this lunch meeting in Kirkland Lake may well have been the site where this movement first took hold - Romeo: – R.O.M.E.O. – Retired Old Men Eating Out. One of the members of the group, an 86 year old retired professor from Northern College, said of this aging group of friends, “Not all the guys at the table have all of their marbles, but all the marbles they have, they bring to the table!”

I think there’s something in this scene of a gathering of elderly people that would appeal to the writer of the Gospel of Luke. One of the astonishing things about Luke’s Gospel, in the early chapters, is how he assembles a tableful of elderly people. Characteristic of Luke, it’s not retired old men eating out – he breaks the gender barrier.

There is first of all Elizabeth, the aging daughter of a priestly family – a proud family of ministers. She married a priest herself. Zechariah is in the group. He’s had a long and distinguished career. He’s done well. He’s on the staff at the Temple. He’s not the High Priest, but he’s maybe “the primary associate pastor for senior adult ministry.” Which is altogether appropriate because Luke says he’s getting on in years. There’s 84 year old – Anna - a widow, who since her husband died and the children are grown, has become that familiar sociological type – the Temple lady. She’s down at the church every day, doing what she can – folding bulletins, ironing the linen and keeping the kitchen organized. And then there’s Simeon who drops by the Temple for prayer every now and then. We don’t know how old he is, but we know he’s worried about the consolation of Israel, and his own mortality.

There they are, gathered, all of them - Old Testament characters, who lived long enough to appear in the New Testament. Right in the middle of a story that begins, with the birth of a child and angels singing, “Good news on earth, peace to all,” there are the old people singing the old songs, saying the old creeds, praying the old prayers, and hoping the old dreams and trusting the old promises. I think it’s a theological statement on the part of Luke – that all the newness rests on that which has come before us. Luke gathers a collection of elderly people who sing the old songs and recite the old promises because the new comes out of that.

Recently, I was at a day long meeting, and I was sitting at lunch beside a man I didn’t know. We started up a conversation.

I said, “How are you doing?”

He said, “Well it’s been a tough year …”

He said, “I lost my mother this year. She died after a long illness – three weeks of it in hospice.”

I said, “You know, I can appreciate that, I lost my own mother a few years back, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.”

He looked at me and said, “Then you know how it is. We were there in the hospice – my sisters and me – and you say to your mother, “I love you mom, I love you. Thank you,” but after you say it so many times, you don’t want to say it anymore. It seems to cheapen it.”

He went on, “And yet, the silence in the room can get heavy, and you don’t know what to say. And we were in one of those awkward moments with my mother. We were all of us in her room and there was silence, when suddenly my sister began to sing, “O God our help in ages past.” We’ve all known it since we were children. We all took up the song. We began to sing the old hymn. And then we sang “Amazing Grace,” and “All hail the power of Jesus name” and then every spiritual and every camp song we could remember. And my mother seemed to participate in it as well … and angels and song filled the room”

He concluded, “Suddenly it dawned on me, this is why we learn these hymns.”

You see, we can never anticipate what we’re going to face - the newness that comes at us, but we have a language for it – a vocabulary for it. And after that conversation, I was telling this story to my 38 year old son Paul, who now lives in Calgary – he’s not going to church out there.

But I said to him, “Paul, I’m not putting pressure on you, but I want you to learn those old hymns … because one day, I’m going to be in that hospice or nursing home bed, and you’re going to need to sing them for me.”

Luke gathers a table full of the elderly. And I’d be tempted to leave it at that. Isn’t it great the elderly were there to pronounce the promises! Wouldn’t it be great if young people could appreciate their elders like Luke does. But the most interesting thing about the Gospel of Luke is not the the appearance of the elderly. It’s their disappearance …

They’re all clumped into the first two chapters. Then after chapter 2, they’re gone. It’s as if they got tired, turned off the television and went to bed early. But, of course, for Luke it’s deeper than that. They have turned over the Gospel to 20-year-olds. They have entrusted the whole Gospel story to those who are younger than they are.

I used to think that the hardest thing about Christianity, was standing up for the faith. And we were taught in Youth Group, “The hardest thing to do is stand up for the faith. There’s peer pressure, you’ve got to stand up …”

Yeah, it’s hard to stand up for the faith, but I think now, the hardest thing about the faith is not standing up for it. It’s “leaning into it,and letting go …” To stand up for the faith, you have to believe you’re right. To “lean into the faith and let go” you have to trust, there is a God. And that this God owns the future.

All of these elderly people in Luke had a lot of reasons not to let go. They brought all the marbles they had to the table, but they didn’t have all the marbles. Elizabeth’s ashamed of being barren – she feels incomplete. Zechariah – the minister who sometimes didn’t believe his own prayers. Anna – going to the Temple under the boot of the Roman Empire. Simeon – facing death and wondering if there would ever be any consolation for Israel. The story was not over for them, but they leaned forward into God’s future , and they let go …

Let me tell you a story …

The first funeral I ever performed was just a couple of months after I’d been ordained. That was 40 years ago, and that first funeral, it was for a friend. Carol, a beautiful and lively young woman of 23, recently engaged to be married, was diagnosed with lung cancer. She’d never smoked a day in her life. It was just one of those strange anomalies of the human body. It was an aggressive malignancy, and within a month, she was dead.

When I heard that she was slipping fast, I took a plane from Kirkland Lake back down to Toronto, but, by only a few hours, I didn’t arrive in time. They were all still at the hospital – her parents, her sister, her fiancé Mike. I went to see them. Carol was still lying in the bed. Mike and the family were all very distraught and angry. I sat with them for a while, and finally their own Lutheran pastor arrived, and we sat with them.

Carol’s fiancé Mike was furious. You could feel the anger in his body. He finally, when the Lutheran pastor sat down, vented some of it. He was angry at the hospital. They hadn’t cared enough. The nurses weren’t skillful enough. The doctors hadn’t done enough. The hospital chaplains hadn’t prayed enough. And then Mike stopped, but he wasn’t through.

The Lutheran pastor, much more experienced and wiser than I, said, “Mike, don’t be afraid to be angry at God.”

“No, No, I can’t be angry at God!”

“Mike, said the pastor, “God loves you enough to understand this.”

And with that, it all came out. The rage at a God that would allow such a thing to happen to a beautiful, 23 year old young woman. And then, when it was over, something had changed in the room, he had cursed God and was still alive. Not only that, but a newly minted Presbyterian minister and a Lutheran pastor were holding his hand. He got up and he walked over to Carol’s bed. He took off a cross he had around his neck, and he put it on her body, and then he knelt beside her bed, and gave her up to a God, who could be trusted.

To stand up for the faith, you have to believe you’re right. To “lean into the faith and let go” you have to trust, there is a God. And that this God owns the future …

Do you remember back in 1976 we were all reading Alvin Toffler’s book, “Future Shock.” And one of the things institutions and organizations were doing was holding “futuring conferences.” I attended one of those conferences where a Presbyterian minister I knew was on the discussion panel. Along with this minister, they invited the sociologists and anthropologists and literary critics and political critics to come in and read papers about what we could expect in the future. After the final paper, they asked this Presbyterian minister, if he had anything to offer. He got up and said, “I’ve heard many impressive predictions of the future, but I am a theologian, I have no idea what the future is going to be like, the only thing I know is, it will be in the hands of God.”

Twenty years later that man was retiring from ministry. He told me, as he was cleaning out his office, he found the file folder with all the papers from the “futuring conference.” He said to me, “I read through them again, and said to myself, “I was the only one who was right, it will be in the hands of God.” To stand up for the faith, you have to believe you’re right. To “lean into the faith and let go” you have to trust, there is a God. And that this God owns the future …

And those characters from the Gospel of Luke - Elizabeth and Zechariah and Anna and Simeon, recited the old creeds and sang the old songs and remembered the old promises, and then they leaned forward and let go, and on Easter Sunday morning, everything they had prayed for, had come to pass …