Angry Cows and Rocky Trails

“Angry Cows and Rocky Trails”

Hillside Church of Marin, April 29 2012

Good morning! My name is Ryan, and I am the Pastor to Students and Families at Hillside Church, and occasionally I receive the opportunity to teach and share with you all a bit of insight that God has shown me. If you are visiting for the first time this morning, I hope that I am one of many who says to you “Welcome!” We are really glad that you came this morning, and we sincerely hope that you experience Hillside as a community where you can find peace, authenticity, and as we say at HillsideStudents, a place where you can be yourself.

In college, I was a horribly mediocre runner. In fact, some categorized my stride as a waddle, which is highly unflattering. Certainly, I made my fair share of attempts at competitive running only to discover how painfully average I really am. If you translated my running into skiing, I would epitomize the blue square. I am truly average, but I love it.

I attended college in the beautiful Appalachians of West Virginia, and similar to Marin, we had no shortage of trails and backroads to explore. Over my years there, I developed a particular liking for a route that took me onto a one lane dirt road called Farm Hill Rd. It was nestled in a beautiful wide valley with gorgeous green hills rolling along both sides. Cattle on one hill, rising green trees and shrubbery on the other.

The best time to run this route was during dusk while the western sun set over the hills. It was just beautiful. If I paced my run just right, I could return to school just as the final glimmers of twilight disappeared through the trees.

Are your mouths watering yet?

One evening, I laced up, and I headed out to Farm Hill Rd. My pace was on track to return just as the sun set. About two-thirds into my run on Farm Hill Rd, much to my utter surprise, I came face to face with a humongous heifer cow standing dead center in the middle of the road. It had to have weighed 10,000 pounds! It was so big that it stood the whole width of the road.

I stopped immediately. I wouldn’t have stood a chance in a head to head showdown with this massive beast. So, instead I locked eyes with the heifer. I wasn’t giving up without a showdown. I tried to intimidate it. I tried to stare it down, ordering it to move out of my way because every second that went by was one less second of daylight that I had to finish my run.

After a few minutes of attempting to stare down a cow that could care less that it was in my way, it became clear to me that for whatever reason this cow was not going to let me pass.

At this point, I began to feel anxious to finish before sunset. I was too far into the run to turn around and make it home before sunset. Thus, I had only two options. First, I could play the odds and run around the cow, quite honestly taking my life into my own hands not knowing what this beast of nature would do to me. OR, second, I could make swift right hand turn onto a trail that split off from the road and finish my run on a steep rocky path that I had not run personally, but knew through friends that it winded through a ravine, climbed up onto the valley ridge, and dumped out on a road that supposedly ended at my college.

So, what do I do? Do I choose a bout with an angry, territorial cow, or do I turn onto the mysterious, rocky trail that for all I knew would take me out to the middle of nowhere? I stood there face to face with a messy difficult decision that did not have a nice, neat outcome?

Friends, I believe this story illustrates well the plight and challenge of our human experience, right? - the confrontation of difficult life choices that you and I make everyday - some small and benign, while others have become defining moments and hinge points in our lives. And at no point during our lives are these decisions more crucial… than during adolescence - than during our teenage and twenty-something years.

Adolescents face a barrage of daily decisions: Do you face down an angry cow, or take the rocky trail? Do you choose the expensive private school or the lesser expensive public one? Do you live with mom or dad? Do you pledge allegiance to a friendship network who potentially may harm you, abandon you, or guide you down a path of humiliation, or do you stand on the fringes of ‘cool,’ risking social suicide by not participating in certain activities? Do you manifest your love (or what we would call attachment) for this girl or guy by giving your entire body and emotional capacity to this other individual without the bond of commitment for protection and solidarity, or do you wait?

A few days ago at Wyldlife - our Hillside middle school group - the leaders and I engaged in a spontaneous conversation with the students about issues of drug abuse taking place of all places... in middle school... and the difficulties of facing pressure to use drugs… as a sixth grader.

Our conversations at Anthem are no different. High school students talk about the party scene in Southern Marin using phrases like “force of nature” and a “centrifuge sucking you in.”

A few months a ago, I visited my Aunt and Uncle who live in Santa Barbara. They have two young sons - one in third grade and one in sixth. They told me about a conversation they had with my cousin, Evan, the sixth grader. One night he mentioned to my uncle that some of the boys on his middle school water polo team invited him to chill with them on the party circuit. When my uncle asked, Evan - a sixth grader, “What is a party circuit?” He replied by describing an evening consisting of dozens of students moving from house to house, partaking in a different and unique type of activity at each house. You can use your imagination about the activities.

Teenagers live in a world where violence and sex are givens. Research from the last couple of years note that one-tenth of teenage boys and twice as many girls harbor memories of at least one botched suicide attempt. A quarter of all middle and senior high school students will attend school tomorrow fearful for their safety. One in three students over the age of 10 is sexually active; and by age nineteen, 75% of white females, 85% of white males, 83% of African American females, and 96% of African American males will have engaged in sexual intercourse at least once. Most of the girls regret it.

Adolescents face a barrage of daily decisions, and it seems that with each passing generation, the question goes beyond than just angry cows and rocky trails - it is how much bigger and stronger is the cow and more treacherous and rocky is the trail. Make no mistake: the church is confronted with a tall task of soul tending a generation with unprecedented access to the world. For most adolescents, believing in God is not the issue, even our postmodern world believes in God. Believing God matters is an altogether different one. The signature quality is not lawlessness, as it may have been in previous generations, but it is awelessness - it’s apathy - it’s just plain not caring. With so much vying for young people’s finite attention, the responsibility of choosing among endless alternatives is overwhelming, and the path to faith disappears beneath a pile of competing claims on their soul.

And so this morning for the next 20 or so minutes, I want to discuss how our community - Hillside Church - can open our arms wide to embracing adolescents where they are, as they confront angry cows and rocky trails. I want to begin a conversation with you about how we can tackle the seemingly impossible task of serving adolescents. How can what we do here in the auditorium influence the lives of these young people who gather below at the House… and how can what they learn and experience at the House... influence us? I want us to become aware that what we say and do bears a hugely significant impact upon our children, upon our teenagers, and upon our twenty-somethings.

The ways in which you and I work out and form our faith will invariably and inevitably shape the kind of faith of those younger than us. Is this generation the aweless generation because in fact you and I have discipled our young people into an aweless faith? The faith of our young people - their views, thoughts, and understanding about God - functions like a mirror held up in front of us. The faith of our young people is a reflection - albeit a dim one at times, but a reflection nonetheless - of the kind of faith and belief in God that you and I possess. Our young people will grab onto what we believe and how we practice it.

Therefore, it is essential for us to heed Paul’s words in Ephesians chapter 4: “To make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace, recognizing one hope, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all”? What would it look like for Hillside Church and HillsideStudents to collide together and live together as one community, because when we encounter the convergence of adolescent faith and idealism with the maturity and experience of our adult faith, then it is there that we will experience God forming us, shaping us, redeeming us, restoring us, and saving us… together. For the true definition of Student Ministry is not simply ministry with young people, but it is ministry to the Church. Thereby, attending to the faith of adolescents is not just crucial for them, it is essential for the formation of our Christian identity, as well.

In 2005, the largest and most comprehensive study on adolescent spirituality in the United States concluded, and its findings were published in a book titled Almost Christian written by my professor and mentor, Kenda Dean. She served as the lead researcher for the National Study on Youth and Religion. Its aim was to assess the spirituality of teenagers in America. Over 3,500 teenagers were interviewed from churches all across the U.S.

In her book released in 2010, Dean describes the importance of this study. She writes, “[The National Study on Youth and Religion] is significant because it reframes the issues of [student] ministry as issues facing the twenty-first century church as a whole. Since the religious and spiritual choices of American teenagers echo, with astonishing clarity, the religious and spiritual choices of the adults who love them, lackadaisical faith is not young people’s issue, but ours.”

The issues that face student ministry primarily include challenges of reaching out to and discipling teenagers into a the kind of faith on which they can stake their life. In her statement, Dean poses a strong indictment against the American church. Yet, if we take it seriously, honestly acknowledging our strength and weaknesses as a church, and intentionally working through these issues, then we may by the grace of God move forward and disciple our young people into a faith that is anything but lackadaisical. Rather, a faith that is fraught with unending passion, a desire to seek and do justice, and one that places Jesus at the forefront of life, living into the rhythm of community and mission. And as we do, then we begin to live into that kind of faith ourselves.

So, this begs the question from us, what does lackadaisical faith look like among our young people? And how did they come to know and adhere to such faith? Part of what this study reveals is a theological fault line running directly underneath American churches; which is, an adherence to a do-good, feel-good spirituality that has little to do with the God that we read of in the Bible and even less to do with a sacrificial Jesus who died for each one of us and rose again three days later to prove it. By all accounts of our teenagers, it seems that the faith to which many of them adhere clings to an idea of “niceness” and non-committal hospitality. Effectively, a church of nice people doing nice things, yet without a clear sense of call and mission.

One teenager once told me of his thoughts about the church. He said the church is “a warm and welcoming place. People there are nice. There are groups of people that send you get well cards and stuff.”

Another teenager that I served in NJ said about the church where we attended, “Yeah, I think God wants us to be nice. Church is full of nice people, but not a whole lot goes on there.”

I must ask: Is this the kind of God that we follow, whose only expectation for each of us and the church is to be nice? Have we discipled our young people into a kind of faith where only niceness wins out? I can quote research all day, but you and I and the American church witness living research every Sunday when we observe the absence of twenty-somethings not only in this church, but in the American church as a whole. Have we opened our doors for young adults to leave because we have given them a god too limp to hold onto them?

The issue is not whether God wants us to get along. We find biblical precedent all over the New Testament for patterns of community life that value harmony and reconciliation. Brian and Steve even concluded a teaching series titled, “How to Get Along with People You Don’t Like?” It is a big deal. Rather, the issue for our young people is whether that is all there is to Christianity, whether an agreeable decision to get along with our neighbor is the only factor that constitutes Christian identity.

We have received from teenagers exactly what we have asked them for: assent, not conviction; compliance, not faith. Young people invest into religion precisely what they think it is worth - and if they think the church is worthy of benign whatever-ism, then the indictment falls not on them, but to us. It is not just our own personal faith at stake, but it is the faith of the village - of the Hillside tribe. It is the faith of this community of which we all are a part.

It is why we value infant dedications here at Hillside. It asks of us a commitment to walk with the parent through the raising and faith development of the child. A great task bestowed by God to all of us.

This type of faith is founded in God’s accommodation to human culture, not ours - namely God’s choice to become human in Jesus Christ. As G.K. Chesterton, a well-regarded theologian and Pastor, pointed out, “A Christian who has faith must not only be prepared to be a martyr, but to be a fool.” Are we preparing ourselves to disciple young people into a kind of faith that when they confront an angry cow or a rocky trail, they understand with a proper confidence their identity as one rooted in the God who will never let them go? Paul asserts in his first letter to the Corinthians that all of us must become “fools for the sake of Christ” (1 Cor 4:10). Foolish faith comes from the knowledge that we live in God’s embrace, and with that knowledge comes a peculiar kind of courage.

We observe God illustrate this peculiar kind of courage quite well and in a remarkable fashion in the story of Mary. Though this familiar story often only gets read during the Christmas season, I want to discuss it briefly and argue that this story offers profound insight how God considers adolescents and thereby calls our Hillside Church community to open our arms wide to them.

Let’s dive into the book of Luke - the third book of the New Testament and one of several books that records the life and teachings of Jesus. We are going to begin in the first chapter at the 26th verse:

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy [who - just so you know - is Mary’s older cousin, pregnant with John the Baptist], God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Here we observe an interaction taking place. Gabriel is sent directly by God to deliver a message to a young girl - by all estimates probably around 13-15 years old - a teenager. She is a ‘virgin,’ meaning more than just a young woman who has not yet had sex, but primarily meaning that she is uncompromised. In short, she has integrity. God wants someone with integrity to bring God into the world; and so, as the Gospel writer tells us, Gabriel comes to a virgin named Mary.

We also observe in this passage that Gabriel begins as he always begins anytime he gives a message, as God always begins, for it is God’s message, with the affirmation of God’s good creation. “Greetings favored one!” Gabriel proclaims to Mary. “The Lord is with you.” Before Mary hears anything else, Gabriel wants Mary, a teenager, to hear this: She is favored.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases this greeting in The Message, saying, “Good morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, Beautiful inside and out! God be with you!”

Although a teenager, Mary no longer needs to “find” herself. Her identity is a gift, bestowed upon her by God alone. Who am I? Mary may wonder. Who am I? Our teenagers may wonder. Who am I? Some of you may wonder. And God replies, “You are my favored one, beloved and beautiful to me.

Imagine if every teenager, regardless of whether or not they attended Hillside Church or any church for that matter, heard and understood God saying to them, “You are my favored one, beloved and beautiful to me.” Imagine how radically that could change the life of a teenager.

Think about how often you hear from other parents, celebrities, and people in positions of influence: we need to let kid be kids, let them explore, let them sow their wild oats. Instead, we need to encounter our young people in the same way that Gabriel did - in the same way that God did - and call them favored, beloved, and beautiful - walking alongside them to realize their identity in Jesus Christ.

Imagine what we could do together - what we could accomplish - who we could be - how people would regard and interpret our witness in the community! Think about a time yourself when you confronted a crossroads and you had to choose between an angry cow and rocky trails. How did you confront that decision? Were you afraid? Were you alone? Did you have the support of trusted parents or adults standing beside of you as you made that decision? In hindsight, imagine facing those obstacles resting in the sincere hope and confidence of knowing that God said to you, “You are my favored one, beloved and beautiful to me.”

So Gabriel continues, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

Because Mary is beloved by God, because she has found favor in God’s eyes, God has a plan for her, and it is revolutionary: God has just asked a teenager to bring salvation into the world.

One theologian named Fredrick Buechner comments on the story. He writes.

“[Mary] struck the angel Gabriel hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but Gabriel had been entrusted with a message to give her, and he gave it.

He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. “You mustn’t be afraid Mary,” the angel said.

[Yet], as he said it, he only hoped that she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings, he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a [teenage] girl.”

How much do we ask of our teenagers? How much was asked of us? God has no qualms about making the most profound request in human history of a teenager! And the flip side to this coin is that Mary is not naive about this request either. She responds by saying, “How can this be, since I am only a virgin?”

You know, we always read that question at Christmas with a sense of awe and wonder, although from the lips of any other thirteen year old (and most of us, as well) it would have sounded a lot more like, “You want me to do what? Yeah right! How can this be, since I am only a virgin?... How can this be, since I am slow to speak? Said Moses… How can this be, since I am only a young boy? Said David…. How can this be, since I am in recovery? Says some of you... How can this be, since I am divorced?… How can this be, since I am a widow?… How can this be, since I am a new Christian and know so little about God?… How can this be, since I doubt and am not sure what I believe?

This is how most of us greet God’s call to us: Impossible. There’s just no way. Furthermore, this is how many of us approach disicpleship with young people: Impossible. Are we discipling our students into a lackadaisical faith - an impossible faith? or faith in the impossible?

Gabriel replies to Mary with the obvious but overlooked answer to each of us: This is God’s miracle, not ours. Gabriel says,

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” (LK 1:35-37)

The Holy Spirit is more than just a pick-me-up in this story. According to Gabriel, the Holy Spirit, the very power of God, will be sure that credit for this wonder goes to God and no one else.

And so Mary, after “pondering” for how long - minutes, hours, days, we don’t know - says, “Okay, Here am I, the Lord’s servant. May it be according to your will.”

What sets Mary apart from the rest of us is quite simple: She said Yes! Adolescents are also capable of a peculiar kind of courage that only comes from the tight embrace of God. Developmentally, adolescents are capable of extraordinary commitment to someone who believes in them, of ridiculous fidelity to a cause worthy of their attention. God did not choose a teenager to bear salvation to the world by accident… Who else would agree to such a plan? And while the coming of Jesus Christ in a virgin’s womb is the unrepeatable mystery of God, God invites all of us to become Godbearers - persons who by the power of the Holy Spirit smuggle Jesus into the world through our own lives, who by virtue of our own yes to God find ourselves forever and irrevocably changed.

Student ministry is more than just ministry with young people, it is ministry to the church... because it begins with us. It begins with our yes to God to do the impossible in each of us. What is your impossible? Finding healing from a messy end to a relationship? Finding courage to make it through an illness? Finding strength to ask forgiveness? Finding hope that one day your so or daughter will return home?

All of us have impossibles for which we desire resolution. Trust that if God would call a young teenage girl to bear God into the world to save the world, then God can surely do the impossible through you.

So, let me close our discussion this morning by offering three concrete, ultra simple ways that we can begin opening our arms wide to adolescents in our midst. The solution to end the benign whatever-ism response by teenagers toward the church begins with us.

First, meet an adolescent. You gotta meet one. If you see a young person in the hallways, introduce yourself. I can promise you that you will always find one near food. It will probably be awkward, but it is a great first step - and the only way - to begin building a friendship with a young person. Begin with your name the first week. Then, next week, ask them about their activities and their school involvement. Then, the following week, ask about their future plans and what excites them. Soon - and it won’t take long - you will find that you will be excited to attend church to see this young person, and this person will become part of this church because of you. Be courageous! Don’t be afraid to walk with teenagers as they encounter their angry cows and rocky trails.

Second, become aware of the challenges facing adolescents and thereby challenges facing the church. There are a variety of resources available on this subject matter. I recommend two books off the bat that have greatly influenced both my life and this message this morning - both my mentor and professor, Kenda Dean. You have heard me mention one called Almost Christian. The other book that I recommend is titled The Godbearing Life. You can’t go wrong with either of these books, and I’d love to talk with you more about it, if you’d like.

And third, partner with their parents. Most of you are parents here, and some of you have actually gone through the process of raising adolescents. You know more than anyone, certainly more than me, what is required of parents during this process. In my partnership with parents, I have realized that it can be daunting, exciting, confusing, and often lonely. Yet, teenagers on the whole point to their parents as the most significant and influential person in their life, not me, not their peers. Therefore, as a church, as a Christian community, we need to surround our parents of adolescents with all of the support and love that we can possibly muster. If you are an older adult who has already raised up an adolescent into adulthood, then I bet you got a few tricks up your sleeve. Find one of these parents and invite one of them over for a meal. I guarantee that it will make their week. Or, write a simple card of encouragement to keep pressing forward. If you are a younger person with no kids like my wife and me, consider getting involved in the life of an adolescent, as a mentor, HillsideStudent leader, tutor, coach, whatever.

The sky is the limit with ways that we can partner together - live into the words written by Paul in Ephesians chapter 4 to become a united community - and achieve the impossible through a God who loves accomplishing the impossible.

So, Hillside Church, may you become Godbearers. May you realize that your faith yields the faith of the adolescents in our tribe - in our village - and in our Hillside community. And may you come to throw away lackadaisical faith for faith in a God who desires to accomplish the impossible in you and through you.

Let’s pray...