Growing Older - III

Churches and pastors do older people a disservice when they do not challenge them with discipleship. We are not to stop growing in Christ when we reach a certain age; nor are we to cease to be challenged by our pastors and churches; yet many churches have a mentality that vocational retirement means retirement from life in Christ – retirement from evangelism and mission. To feed older people a diet of shuffleboard and bridge and outings to dinner theatres is to treat them as less than adults in Jesus Christ. To segregate older people within a church is to cut them and the church off from the experience of being a family in Christ.

And suffering? How many people, including older people, turn inward when they experience pain and suffering? The answer for elder men and women is often the same answer as for younger men and women – we are to offer our sufferings to Christ for the benefit of others; we are to use our sufferings in intercessory prayer and intercessory living for others.

How many older people in the professing church have yet to come into a relationship with Jesus Christ? Are they not worth ensuring that Jesus Christ is Lord of their lives? Did not Christ die for them?

We don’t need generational theory in the church; we need the New Testament vision of the Body of Christ and the Family of God.

Growing Older - II

We once lived in an area with a significant second-home population. Many of these second-home folks are people with money who worship youth; the problem is that like everyone else they grow old. Many of the women, having money, take facial Botox treatments; the result of which can be facial skin stretched to the point that there is not a line or a wrinkle; the facial appearance is as if the skin is enveloped in plastic wrap; consequently many of the ladies look the same. It is not unusual to meet a husband whose face shows the signs of a life lived with a wife whose face shows no signs at all.

A few years ago on a cruise we had table mates of the same description; the incongruity between husband and wife was pronounced, both facially and in terms of the way they dressed – she fought the opportunity to age gracefully by dressing like a kid.

Of course men are subject to the same vanity and denial of the fact that the death rate in this country is 100% - I don’t think for one minute that women engage in this dance of deception anymore than men do, but I’m using women as an illustration to ask the same question of both men and women who worship youth, “How can we ever know who we are if we deny who we are? How can we know who we might be if we deny who we are, or if we artificially change who we are by attempting to look and act like a younger generation when we are not, in fact, part of a younger generation?”

The plastic face is not simply an outward lack of expression; it is a sign of a lack of inward substantive expression. I suppose, on reflection, we are a society of plastic faces; we are to look the same, speak the same, think the same.

While the world is the world is the world in respect to the worship of youth and the denial of aging and death, what about the professing church? We have our own plastic faces and fixed expressions…and we tend to see them more often than not on Sunday mornings.

Growing Older

I’ve been blessed throughout my life to be around older people. Even today, in my sixties, there are older people in my life whom I cherish. The very presence of older people has been a blessing to me, as has their love, their wisdom, and their grace. Now of course I’ve known older folks who are sour and self-centered, but that is beside the present point.

The Scriptures affirm the wisdom of age, as do some cultures; but not the West, but not North America, but not the United States; but not the American church. The American church worships youth just as society worships youth. I have seen advertisements from churches seeking pastors that would be illegal if they were posted by a business concern for they have age requirements – they exclude older ministers. I have often thought about writing these churches a letter, but what would be the point?

So much for Paul, so much for Moses, so much for a wiser Wesley or Murray or any number of unrecorded faithful men and women who have served in our Lord’s vineyard. It’s okay to read about them, it’s even okay to have them as special speakers, but let’s not seriously consider them for congregational ministry; after all, we need to market our church and we all know that age doesn’t sell.

Well, as long as I’m on pilgrimage here I’ll enjoy the ripe fruit of those older than me and I’ll do what I can to help those younger.

                             

To be continued…

C.S. Lewis and Growing Older

In concluding my thoughts on Lewis’s March 19, 1955 letter to Mary Van Deusen I come to his words:

I am so glad that you are finding (as I do) that life, far from getting dull and empty as one grows older, opens out. It is like being in a house where one keeps on discovering new rooms.

Treasuring friendships, drawing on experience, looking forward to the real Narnia as opposed to these Shadowlands, anticipating reunion with loved ones; a deepening sense of the Father, the Lamb, and the Holy Spirit; a truer appreciation of their mercies, and an ever unfolding discovering of new rooms – this is the season of life I am in and so I resonate with Lewis’s testimony. What Lewis did not know as he wrote this letter is that he had yet to enter one wing of the house with many rooms; the wing of marriage with rooms containing joy/Joy and pain and A Grief Observed.

I find as I grow older that I see the world system more clearly for what it is and that I am more aware of my vanities. I also find that while I see more of the infiltration of the world in the professing church that I am more patient with the people who have bought into it while at the same time seeking not to imbibe the toxicity. Of course, I have to smile and realize that I have often served tainted fare myself and that I no doubt have foreign particles yet within my own heart, soul, and mind. I am sure that it is only when I cross that river that I’ll know complete cleansing – and then my focus won’t be myself in any event, it will be the Lamb and others. The new heaven and the new earth that I most look forward to at times are my own mind and temple – oh for the day when corruption will be swallowed up with life.

To be continued…   

C.S. Lewis: The Sacramental and Transposed Life, Part III

On March 19, 1955 Lewis writes to Mary Van Deusen:

I feel strongly, with you, that there was something more than a physical pleasure in those youthful activities. [Since we are only reading Lewis’s letter to Van Deusen we don’t know what she wrote in her letter to him. We are listening to one end of a phone conversation.] Even now, at my age, do we often have a purely physical pleasure? Well, perhaps a few of the more hopelessly prosaic ones: say, scratching or getting one’s shoes off when one’s feet are tired. I’m sure my meals are not a purely physical pleasure. All the associations of every other time one has had the same food (every rasher of bacon is now 56 years thick with me) come in: and with things like Bread, Wine, Honey, Apples, there are all the echoes of myth, fairy-tale, poetry, & scripture so that the physical pleasure is also imaginative and even spiritual. Every meal can be a kind of lower sacrament. ‘Devastating gratitude’ is a good phrase: but my own experience is rather ‘devastating desire’ – desire for that-of-which-the-present-joy-is-a-reminder. All my life nature and art have been reminding me of something I’ve never seen: saying ‘Look! What does this – and this – remind you of?’

I am so glad that you are finding (as I do) that life, far from getting dull and empty as one grows older, opens out. It is like being in a house where one keeps on discovering new rooms.

Lewis writes: but my own experience is rather ‘devastating desire’ – desire for that-of-which-the-present-joy-is-a-reminder. All my life nature and art have been reminding me of something I’ve never seen: saying ‘Look! What does this – and this – remind you of?’

   

Pascal tells us that we have a sense of longing, a sense of something higher, because we have fallen away from that to which we belong; because we are no longer that which we once were.

What Jeremiah wrote of the earthly Zion is transposed upward and downward regarding the heavenly Zion: How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed! The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street. The precious sons of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold, how are they regarded as earthen pots, the work of a potter’s hands! Lamentations 4:1-2.

Madison Avenue evokes lust for things and debases us in covetous idolatry; we call it marketing and sales and consumerism. God draws us with desire and we traduce the desire and channel it toward lesser things – when oh if we would only follow the desire that God has placed within us to its Headwaters, to the Throne – to that which is above.

C.S. Lewis: The Sacramental and Transposed Life, Part II

On March 19, 1955 Lewis writes to Mary Van Deusen:

I feel strongly, with you, that there was something more than a physical pleasure in those youthful activities. [Since we are only reading Lewis’s letter to Van Deusen we don’t know what she wrote in her letter to him. We are listening to one end of a phone conversation.] Even now, at my age, do we often have a purely physical pleasure? Well, perhaps a few of the more hopelessly prosaic ones: say, scratching or getting one’s shoes off when one’s feet are tired. I’m sure my meals are not a purely physical pleasure. All the associations of every other time one has had the same food (every rasher of bacon is now 56 years thick with me) come in: and with things like Bread, Wine, Honey, Apples, there are all the echoes of myth, fairy-tale, poetry, & scripture so that the physical pleasure is also imaginative and even spiritual. Every meal can be a kind of lower sacrament. ‘Devastating gratitude’ is a good phrase: but my own experience is rather ‘devastating desire’ – desire for that-of-which-the-present-joy-is-a-reminder. All my life nature and art have been reminding me of something I’ve never seen: saying ‘Look! What does this – and this – remind you of?’

I am so glad that you are finding (as I do) that life, far from getting dull and empty as one grows older, opens out. It is like being in a house where one keeps on discovering new rooms.

 Lewis writes of apples and honey and bread and wine and fairy-tales, poetry and scripture. Echoes of higher things. Sacraments all…will we receive them? Our Good Shepherd spreads a Table before us at work, in the neighborhood, with our families, in the Body of Christ…but do our tongues taste, do our eyes see, do our noses smell the fragrance of His Presence? The Scriptures are replete with birds and lambs and lions and bears and mountains and brooks and clouds and rain and honey and wine and bread and trees and flowers and shrubs and herbs; for God mediates His grace and glory and Word through Creation; but do we partake of the Table He has spread for us?

The Table of the Lamb is everywhere; it is in good times and bad; it is spread with those who love us and with those who reject us; everywhere Christ breaks the bread and serves the wine; everywhere and in all things Jesus Christ bids us partake of Him; He bids us join in the koinonia of the Trinity…hand in hand with our brothers and sisters.

Today – will we approach His Table of life in humility and thankfulness and reverence…receiving from His hand the Bread of life that we might be partakers of His Divine nature…so that we in turn might feed those around us?

C.S. Lewis – The Sacramental and Transposed Life I

On March 19, 1955 Lewis writes to Mary Van Deusen:

I feel strongly, with you, that there was something more than a physical pleasure in those youthful activities. [Since we are only reading Lewis’s letter to Van Deusen we don’t know what she wrote in her letter to him. We are listening to one end of a phone conversation.] Even now, at my age, do we often have a purely physical pleasure? Well, perhaps a few of the more hopelessly prosaic ones: say, scratching or getting one’s shoes off when one’s feet are tired. I’m sure my meals are not a purely physical pleasure. All the associations of every other time one has had the same food (every rasher of bacon is now 56 years thick with me) come in: and with things like Bread, Wine, Honey, Apples, there are all the echoes of myth, fairy-tale, poetry, & scripture so that the physical pleasure is also imaginative and even spiritual. Every meal can be a kind of lower sacrament. ‘Devastating gratitude’ is a good phrase: but my own experience is rather ‘devastating desire’ – desire for that-of-which-the-present-joy-is-a-reminder. All my life nature and art have been reminding me of something I’ve never seen: saying ‘Look! What does this – and this – remind you of?’

I am so glad that you are finding (as I do) that life, far from getting dull and empty as one grows older, opens out. It is like being in a house where one keeps on discovering new rooms.

The above reminds me of Chesterton’s contention that the stories we learned in the nursery are the stories that matter.

How is it that we take the beauty and wonder of childhood, of discovery, and entomb these vibrant jewels in the concrete of pragmatism and materialism? Life for the child can be sacramental; the sun and flowers and rippling brooks and frogs and puppies and kittens and turtles beckon our hearts and enliven our minds until these beauties are debased by a closed system which rivets the lead vault of time plus matter plus chance around little souls – attributing all that we delight in to a roll of the dice. The dreams of childhood are turned from their call to the eternal; evil turns the switch on the track and the train is directed downward into a hedonistic and materialistic abyss – and woe to the young one who dares an escape – there are many locks on the doors and guards at the station gates. 

To be continued...