Of Age

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
03.02.08; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Reading: John 9:1-41

What does it mean to “come of age?”

All around the world, human beings have coming of age rituals, times when people move from their childhood and the hellfire that is adolescence into the joys of being a grownup. This is that moment when you cease being a junior member of society and become an equal among equals. You’re no longer sitting at the kids table. You don’t always have to get the kids meal. While ancient societies usually had one ritual that formally declared you to be an adult, our buffet American culture has a whole bunch of different ways of marking the transition to adulthood.

Take that moment, for example, when you walk out of the front door of the Department of Motor Vehicles with your shiny new license in hand. For the past fifty years, that little card has been a sign of entry into the adult world, and the moment when your parents aren’t sure whether to sigh in relief or begin to pray without ceasing. Usually, it’s a bit of both.

Then there’s your eighteenth birthday, when you become a full-fledged citizen of the United States of America, able to vote and to serve your country. You’re officially adult, one hundred percent a citizen of this great nation, able to do everything that every other adult in the country can do so long as it doesn’t involve beverages that have been fermented.

Then there’s your twenty-first birthday. The less we say about that, the better.

There are so many moments, so many events, so many times that we seem to be transitioning into adulthood. But even with all those events and all those moments, there’s a strange phenomenon creeping through our culture, one that has grown more and more intense as the years have progressed. It seems like we’re not really ever supposed to grow up. If you watch people these days, if you look out at how most of America seems to live, adolescence seems to have developed an almost inescapable gravitational pull. We become teenagers earlier and earlier, and we become adults later and later. Seven year olds try to act like they’re thirteen. Thirty-seven year olds try to act like they’re eighteen.

For some incomprehensible reason, we’ve decided that the most awkward and intense and challenging years of our lives should stick around for as long as possible. Perhaps it’s our compulsive human tendency to cling to youth, or our fear of mortality, or the siren song sung by marketers who know that the longer we stay stuck in that teenage identity crisis the more likely we’ll be to buy stuff to make ourselves feel better.

That can be a challenge, because it means that we struggle to find our identities and our voices...often deep into our adulthood.

In the passage that Mike and I read this morning from John’s Gospel, we hear a story about someone whose whole life had been a struggle, a man who had been born without sight. It’s a striking tale, for several reasons. It’s a healing, of course, a miracle, one of the series of seven signs that Jesus performs in John’s retelling of his story. Like all of the stories that John’s Gospel tells, it’s deeply, personally human. It doesn’t have the grand scale of the Sermon on the Mount, and is instead a deeply intimate portrait of a human being and the communities that respond to his healing. Strangely, though, we never learn this guy’s name.

Here’s another thing you might not immediately notice listening to it...this guy is on his own. He’s been healed, and his whole life is transformed, such a radical change that people who’ve seen him every day aren’t even sure it’s him. But he’s not surrounded by other disciples. He’s not sitting at the feet of Jesus. Jesus is nowhere to be found for most of this story. This is worth noting, because John’s Gospel is all about Jesus and who he is and what he does. If that’s the point of the story, and suddenly Jesus can’t be found...what’s going on? In the entire Gospel of John, in fact, the section from John 9:8 to John 9:35...most of what we heard today...is the longest Jesus-free patch in this Gospel.

He’s on his own.

And he’s not having an easy time of it. It isn’t just that people can’t believe it’s him. It’s that suddenly he’s being challenged by some of the Pharisees. They can’t believe that Jesus has done this thing, even after he tells them himself. So the Pharisees, who are getting increasingly annoyed at how much this Jesus guy is stirring up their world, confront his parents. The parents...well...what do they say? Being a little intimidated, they give as little information as possible, and send their questioners right back to our protagonist, saying “He is of age...ask him!” He’s not a child. He’s old enough to speak for himself.

And they grill him again, and he answers, holding his own against their questioning...in fact, doing so well that they can’t rebut him, and toss him out of the synagogue. Where is Jesus during all of this? He’s moved on...although he returns to tell this man more about who he is and why he’s there.

Through this entire story, we see someone who takes a stand. He faces off against the crowds. He gets grilled twice. And throughout it all, he has the confidence...the simple straight-up strength...to stand on his own and reaffirm what he knows about Jesus and how his experience of Jesus changed his life.

The challenge, of course, is that pretty much anyone with the audacity to call themselves a Christian has to do the same thing. It’s a vital part of being a disciple. While we all have to mutually support one another, we’re also each called to take responsibility for bearing witness to our own lives. Where too often we fall short is in the absence of that witness. We don’t expect to have to do any of the heavy lifting of faith ourselves. We’re more than happy to hear about servant callings and ministries and missions. But we’re less happy with the idea that we have to do some of that ourselves. Isn’t that the pastor’s job? Isn’t that the youth pastor’s job, or anyone else’s job but mine?

At a certain point, yes. If you’re a fledgling in the faith, sure. But I’ve got something to show y’all.

[Text of Sermon Concluded Here...description of what followed is on my primary blog]