Scripture: Zechariah 8: 1-8
Preached June 30, 2013
Topics: eschatology, young, old, church, vision
Sermon: The Old and the Young Together
Rev. Mike Abma
Preamble:
To read a minor prophet like Zechariah is always a bit tricky.
Our acquaintance with the minor prophets is limited, so we are always a little disoriented: who is Zechariah, again?
When did he live?
What did he say?
These are good questions to consider before I read our text.
Zechariah and Haggai are the two prophets that lived right when the first exiles returned to Jerusalem from Babylon.
Haggai was a doer – his main message was that the temple needed to be rebuilt.
Zechariah was more a dreamer —
At the beginning, he has visions that called the people to repentance.
At the end, he has oracles, explaining what the new kingdom, under the new Messiah, would look like.
There is a reason John’s Revelation in the New Testament quotes Zechariah more than any other book.
In many ways, John’s revelation is an updated version of Zechariah’s visions and oracles.
But smack-dab in the middle of Zechariah’s book is chapter 8.
Chapter 8 contains 10 blessings.
We are going to read 5 of them, but there are 10 altogether.
These are blessings Jerusalem can experience even now,
even before the full dawn of the messianic age.
This is his vision of the already Jerusalem,
even if it is not yet the final new Jerusalem.
It is especially the third blessing in verses 4-5 that I would like to fill your imagination.
Zechariah 8: 1-8
8The word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying:
2Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath.
3Thus says the Lord: I will return to Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts shall be called the holy mountain.
4Thus says the Lord of hosts: Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of their great age. 5And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.
6Thus says the Lord of hosts: Even though it seems impossible to the remnant of this people in these days, should it also seem impossible to me, says the Lord of hosts?
7Thus says the Lord of hosts: I will save my people from the east country and from the west country; 8and I will bring them to live in Jerusalem. They shall be my people and I will be their God, in faithfulness and in righteousness.
Revelation 21: 1-4
21Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell* with them;
they will be his peoples,*
and God himself will be with them;*
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION — FOREVER YOUNG
While doing some reading for this sermon, I stumbled upon a new TV reality show on a channel we do not get, but which I could watch on my computer.
The show is called Forever Young.
It just aired this spring.
The premise of the show is this:
mix up some under 30 year olds
with some over 70 year olds
and see what happens.
Well, what happens is actually terrible.
All the under 30 years olds are single,
self-absorbed, and….immature.
The show basically seems to be about getting these over 70 year olds
to act like self-absorbed, immature 20 year olds.
I guess it is supposed to be funny.
But I found it all rather sad.
Of course, it is all based on the premise,
the thinking
that the best time of our life is when we are 21 years old – Forever 21!
We hurry up to get there,
then we spend the rest of our lives pretending to stay there.
Take that younger crowd that hurries to get there.
It is no accident that on that show Forever Young,
the younger folk are all single,
all unattached,
all without children.
That is the trend in our society:
marry later,
have children later, if at all.
Why?
Because for many, children spell the beginning of the end.
It is hard to live the illusion of being forever young
when changing a diaper
or driving around a minivan.
So why not delay those things as long as possible.
And even if marriage and children come,
why not keep acting as if we were Forever 21?
Denying the reality of aging seems to kick in early,
and never really slow down.
The older we get,
the more in denial we can become.
I went to the public library the other day simply to snoop around
for books on aging.
I wanted to see what was out there on growing older.
Here is what I found:
The 17 Day Plan to Stop Aging.
You Staying Young: The Owner’s Manual for Extending Your Warranty.
The End of Illness.
All of these books are written by authors called Dr. so and so.
All of these books claim ways to prevent the aging process so that we can stay Forever Young.
All of these books have been New York Times bestsellers for weeks – or so they say.
We live in a society in which the two worst things you can be
are either very young
or very old.
In either category
you cost too much:
too much time,
too much energy,
too many dollars.
Much better being Forever Young.
We are not the first or only culture to feel this way.
The Greeks and Romans were also obsessed with being Forever Young.
They had their myth of Tithonus.
According to this myth,
the lover of Tithonus convinced Zeus to give Tithonus the gift of immortality.
The problem was, she did not ask that he also be given the gift of eternal youthfulness.
So Tithonus is left living and living and living as an old, old man,
who cannot walk, who cannot hear, who cannot see.
His is the worst possible fate: so very old, and left simply wanting his life to end.
Forever Young – that is what he needed.
The fountain of being Forever Young is what the explorer Ponce de Leon supposedly went to Florida to find. And still today, millions of people seem to be looking for it, either in Florida,
or in some diet,
or some pill,
or some exercise program,
or whatever is sold on late night television.
II. ZECHARIAH’S VISION
Perhaps that is why I find this vision in Zechariah so captivating.
Here is Zechariah’s vision of a blessed Jerusalem.
Children are happily playing.
Girls and boys playing hop-scotch on the streets.
And the senior citizens are watching,
leaning on their canes
and watching through their bi-focals or progressive lens.
Here are the vulnerable of society,
of every society
the young and the old.
And there is no danger here for them.
There is a place for them.
They are not confined to some day-care.
They are not cooped up in some facility.
No, they are enjoying one another’s company
in the streets of the city —
a city that is looking more like a park than anything else.
And surprisingly in this vision
there are no strong-armed 21-year old soldiers
no able-minded 21-year old students
no business-minded 21-year old entrepreneurs.
Just these older folk and young folk enjoying one another’s company.
In his most recent book, Should We Live Forever, the philosopher Gilbert Mieander writes that facing our mortality, facing our aging, forces us to be more virtuous than we would otherwise be.
The virtue comes in living to make room for the next generation.
The virtue comes in investing in those we know will replace us.
The virtue comes in living a bit like John the Baptist,
knowing that we will become lesser
as those younger than us will become greater.
Two novels that have had a lasting impression on me over the years are novels about the lack of the wisdom of age,
and about the lack of the promise of youth.
Remember the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. It is a about a group of boys left on an uninhabited island. It has all the promise of a Forever Young Utopia. But things go horribly wrong, partly because there is no one, no one with the wisdom of maturity on that island with them.
Then there is the novel by P.D. James called Children of Men. P.D. James usually writes mystery novels, but in this book, she imagines a future in which babies are no longer being born. In fact, it is an apocalyptic world in which the last baby was born 25 years ago. It is a society in which the youngest person is in their mid-twenties.
It is an extremely sobering book because it paints a picture of a world without a future and without hope.
CHURCH
Part of the reason I am preaching this sermon today is because I knew the Youth Group would be here this morning and leading part of the service.
I knew they would be singing and taking part this morning.
And that is such an important and blessed thing.
In our world,
in our culture
it is becoming more and more rare for the younger and the older
to be doing things together.
Church, the body of Christ, is ideally a place where
the old and the young,
the young middle-aged and the older middle-aged,
the babies and the centenarians,
all come together
to enjoy one another’s company.
To grow in the grace of the Lord.
And to praise the Lord with one voice.
The Church is the place where we together give voice to our shared hope.
I was talking with Jack Roeda, pastor at COS,
after Dottie Seven’s funeral yesterday.
He said to me that at too many funerals
the older people are doing all the singing of the hymns
and the younger people are standing there silently.
Here is the worry:
in our Forever Young culture,
people have the impression that faith is something
we only need to be concerned about
perhaps when we are older,
perhaps when we are retired,
if at all.
But that has never been how it is for God’s people.
We live under the blessing of the Lord
from the moment we are born
to the moment we die;
from the time we are girls and boys playing in the streets
til the time we are leaning on canes watching them play in the streets.
CONCLUSION
I’ve often wondered what age I will be in the New Jerusalem?
I think there is something in us that automatically thinks
will be something like 21 – the prime of our lives.
But I am not so sure about that.
What I am more and more sure of,
however,
is that the only way to prepare for the New Jerusalem
is by creating a culture
a society,
a church
in which there is a place,
for the weak and the strong,
for those in the prime of their life,
and those on the extremities of life.
A central place
for the very young and the very old
and all those in between
so we can all share in the blessings of the Lord.
Amen
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