May 16, 2004

Rev. Dr. C. DiNovo

EASTER 6: SENIORS SUNDAY

Scriptures: Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5, John 14:23-29

Many of you are familiar with the serenity prayer, is a prayer used in all the 12 Step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and was actually written, we think, nobody knows for sure, by Reinhold Neibuhr who was a great 20^th Century theologian. But I found on the net, of course, seniors version of that prayer and I thought it was cute. So I’m going to share it with you. The original prayer goes like this of course:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference." The seniors’ prayer is this one. "God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the difference." You seniors, you have known this as the House of God and you have never abandoned it. You have heard in this House of God the word of God and you have held fast to it. You have known in this House of God the faith of God and you have never ever forsaken it and we who have yet to be given these gifts of wisdom and faith, we honour you and we love you. And it hasn’t been an easy church to sit in some days. It hasn’t been a comfortable place to sit, but you came anyway and you upheld the faith. It hasn’t been the best of places to be. It has sometimes been difficult, but you’ve come and upheld this place anyway because through all the changes that you have seen in this place, you know and we honour you for this and we love you for this, that this is the House of God.

We live in a culture you know that doesn’t honour and value seniors very much at all. We have a culture that worships youth and youth have their good points, but we might look to others now and then to see how they treat their seniors. When Jong Bok Kim, one of our ordinands this Sunday was here, he told us about what it like to be a senior in Korea. In Korea, if you’re a senior and you walk into a room, everybody stands in honour of you. If you’re a senior in Korea and you speak, everyone listens because they know you have wisdom to share. You speak first before anyone else should speak. Gil and I just came back from Portugal and in Portugal, there is a special place for seniors as well, especially senior women. Mothers and grandmothers hold a special place in that society and many women in Portugal go well on into their 80’s and 90’s running little farms. We went to see one such woman, relative of a relative, and there she was in her late 80’s or early 90’s, she had forgotten, and she was out tending what looked like about half an acre. It was all planted, it was all perfection, it was vineyards and fruit trees and vegetables and she lived alone in a fairly large house that she kept up all by herself. And we said, this is amazing, how do you do all of this? And she said, it’s not as amazing as it looks and we expected her say, well you know my daughter comes and helps or I have some young guys who live in the village who come out and help me plant, but she said, you know some days my back acts up.

We live in a culture that doesn’t see that our seniors have wisdom to share. And I think of wisdom as being that quality in us that manages to predict the future based on past experience. When we were landing coming in from our trip from Europe, we sat up there in the plane and looked down over the 401 and all the highways in the city and we saw these little cars (about this size) and you know from a height, you can predict the future in a sense. Because you can see as the cars drive along the 401 that just up ahead is an accident or traffic snarl. They’re not aware of it yet, but you can see it because you’re a little higher up than they are. Seniors are like that, they can see from their distance in their wisdom a little more than we can, a little farther down the road than we can in terms of what might happen or what might not happen in our lives. Grandparents of course are wonderful because grandparents see in our children qualities we don’t often see. They see them as always lovable, delightful, a pleasure to have around. And sometimes parents find that difficult. But grandparents see from a distance. They know that childhood lasts only a very short time and that all children are delightful and lovable and wonderful. They also see that some of the passions of youth and some of our ideas might not be so wonderful and so beautiful. Not because we’re not passionate about them, not because we don’t believe in them, but because they see a little farther down the road and they can see that because of them, problems might arise and they warn us of that. We don’t like that. But we should honour that, that’s called wisdom.

The greatest gift, however, that you our seniors have given to us is the gift of faith. And that gift of faith is summed up very well in this book of Revelation because that was someone with faith who wrote those words. He wrote of course about the future because what wisdom gives you is an insight into what the future might look like and you folks know the future. I was told once by someone teaching liturgy how to do and how not to do funerals, that it wasn’t a very helpful thing to do at the funeral of an 80 something year old to have said, well it was her time to go, she had lived a good life, she had done everything that there was to do. He suggested this was not particularly helpful or comforting to the 90 year olds that were present there. And I though of that as I’ve done memorials for 80 year olds and 90 year olds, but there is always a future even if you’re 102 year old and the future as evidenced by this writer of Revelation is not of this earth. It never is. There are many, many more years we spend in that world, the world of Revelation than we do in this world, this world on earth. And seniors look to that world and point us to that world and give us the outlines of that world and they are always beautiful and always rewarding.

When I first came to this church, which was almost six years ago, there were very few people in the pews. There are still few, but there are about as twice as many. In fact, three times as many if you count the evening service. But then there were very few and most of them were seniors. I think there were only six children in our Sunday School and now if all our Sunday School comes on a Sunday, we have almost 50. And I think that were it not for those seniors, this church would not have survived. Those seniors, you, kept this church and keep this church alive. You are the ones that made it possible for the younger people that have come since and their children to be welcomed here. That was your doing and you’re not alone. The seniors of every generation have done the same thing for 2,000 years. I had a professor once when talking about evangelism and church growth who said that when he was a preacher, this is a gentleman who is now 100 years old, when he was a preacher in the 20’s or 30’s, he said the church he was in, especially in the inner-city was virtually empty and he said when the troops came back later after the Second World War, he said the church all of a sudden filled up. And of course as students, we wanted to know, well what did he do differently? And he said, we didn’t do anything differently, we just kept coming every Sunday. Seniors let us know that this is not our world, this is God’s world and this is not our church, this is God’s church and it will survive because it is God’s church. You witness to that every Sunday we see your face and every Sunday when you’re not able physically to come anymore, we feel your prayers because your prayers keep us coming back again and again and again.

There have been changes in our church and one of the changes of course, one of the early changes that you have lived through was the ordination of women. In my last two pastoral charges, I was the first woman in both those charges. I was the first woman in my country charge, they weren’t particularly happy but they had no choice. And I was the first woman here and I remember that on that hiring committee were two seniors. Both of them have passed away since then. One was Dick Murray who used to sing in our choir (a tenor) and the other was Margaret Rendle who was the Joan Awrey of her day. Margaret was involved in everything around this church and Margaret was famous for saying that she would never have a woman as minister in this church. And hers was the deciding vote I heard later to hire me. It is to her and you all who have lived through these changes, that’s why we honour you these days. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have seen the advent of the first automobile and then the advent of the Internet in one lifetime. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have lived through more than one world war in one lifetime. Some of you have done that, that is astounding and we have so much to learn from you. Keeping the faith through all of that. You have lived through a change in the Sunday School curriculum which seems like nothing these days to we youngin’s, but was a huge scandal in the church. The church lost thousands of members as they did when they ordained women. You have lived through 1988 when our church decided to ordain gays and lesbians. You lived and stayed faithful through that because you trusted that through all these decisions that the leadership of the United Church of Canada acted in love and faith and you kept faith and love in that church in this church even when it doubted itself you have done all of that and we are grateful.

Finally let me say it again, and this time really listen because you are so honoured and you are so loved. You it was that knew this church as a house of God and never abandoned it. You it was that heard in this house the word of God and held fast to that word and you it was who in this place had the faith in God and passed on that faith in God and never have forsaken it. Not because it was easy, not because it was comfortable, but because you knew it was God’s will and we who are younger, we honour and we love you. And again, I’d just like you to stand up just so that we can see your beautiful faces and I’ll repeat that because I know as we age, I’m getting a little hard of hearing, too. Seniors stand up if you’re able, if you can and the rest of us before we give them another round of applause, let’s pray with them in mind. Let us all pray together.

Dear God,

We give you thanks for those that have gone before,

for those whose faith have kept this church alive,

for those whose faith have kept this faith alive,

for those whose faith have passed on to us the word of God.

In Jesus name, Amen.

And again hear this,

(applause by everyone present)

And now you can be seated, I know it feels good.