Sermon, January 4, 2004
2 Christmas, Year C
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Growing up is Hard
During the holidays I was catching up with some long-time friends who started their family a bit later in life than Kathy and I did. We met their beautiful 12-year old child, who smiled politely and left the grownups as quickly as possible. I couldn't help asking with a bit of mischief: "Is she still your adorable little girl or has she turned into the little monster yet?" Well, she's still their little girl, but it was easy to see the anxiety in her parents' eyes at the anticipation of what they suspect may be a transition in this new year of 2004. Adolescence is on their radar.
Any parent who has experienced or anticipated life with a teenager can empathize with Mary and Joseph in today's readings. "Where are you going, honey?" "I'll just be hanging out with some of my cousins." "Okay, but you know the caravan leaves at three." "I know, I know. Don't worry, Mom. See ya."
Some hours later. "Have you seen him?" "No, I thought you told him it was okay to travel with Elizabeth and Zechariah and John, but he's not with them." "He should have checked in with us by now." Then the frantic search. The imagination going wild with all of the possibilities of what might have happened to him. Finally, the mixture of relief and anger when they find him safe, but preoccupied beyond caring in conversation with some elders in the temple. "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety."
I've sure been through that kind of travail with my kids, but I fear my language was a bit less biblical than Mary's. Verse 51 says "then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them." The Grisham family version would add the phrase, "for the entire time he was grounded."
One of the reasons I treasure this story is that it describes and blesses a necessary but difficult rite of passage that is part of our evolution of consciousness. If we are to mature, each of us must negotiate a critical transition from childhood to adulthood. It is a transition that is not automatically assured by the aging process; and it is difficult.
One of my mentors Thomas Keating describes this as a transition from the "mythic membership" level of consciousness to the "mental egoic" level of consciousness.
Mythic membership is that sense of consciousness that we have when we get most of our identity from the social units we are connected to. It starts when we are between four and eight years old. We adopt with unquestioning loyalty the values of our groups -- our family, our nation, our religion, our social placement. Identification with our important communities gives us a sense of belonging and protection from enemies; we learn about possessions, competition, success and a set of values from our family and other group influences. "Loyalty to family, country, and religion, and gratitude for all the good we have received from them is a virtue, but loyalty is not an absolute value," says Thomas Keating. "[Loyalty] should be enlightened by mental egoic consciousness.1
"...The arrival at the mental egoic stage of consciousness is characterized by basic attitudinal changes ...when the powers of the brain have developed biologically to the point of sustaining abstract thinking, somewhere around twelve to fourteen years of age."2 What are the qualities of the mental egoic level that make it different from the mythic membership level?: [Listen to these carefully.] "A growing sense of equality with other humans, accountability for the care and preservation of the earth, ...and a more mature relationship to God. Respect for others diminishes the drive to dominate and control. Cooperation replaces unbridled competition. Harmony replaces rigid value systems. Negotiating replaces exclusive self-interest or national interests. Living in peace with others becomes a more important value, though not at any price."3 You might summarize them mental egoic consciousness with Jesus' commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Some adults never graduate from mythic membership to mental egoic consciousness. It may be the most important job of humanity, of America right now in its history, to become more fully human; to mature from mythic membership to mental egoic consciousness as a society.
At age twelve, we have this wonderful story of Jesus disappearing from his parents oversight and going to the Temple to ask questions and explore the deeper meanings of life. Believe me, that's what you want your kids to do. Maybe you remember when you began to do that, to question the values and truths you had received from your family and culture. It's necessary and important. And it can be exquisitely uncomfortable.
And yet this transition is a necessary and healthy part of our growing toward maturity. It is only by questioning our inherited values that we can come to a place where we can decide in our own integrity what our values will be. Sometimes they are the same values we were given -- only now they belong to us with a greater authenticity. Often we grow in different directions from our parents. That's apparently what happened to Jesus.
Archeologist Charles Page has made a compelling argument that the religion of Jesus' hometown of Nazareth was probably that of a strict, Hasidic Davidic clan, not unlike some fundamentalist sects in Judaism and Christianity today. Jesus left Nazareth in order to set up his base of ministry from Capernaum, a town known for its liberal interpretations following the School of Hillel.4 That was a change that caused great conflict and misunderstanding among his family, and we have several incidents reflecting that in the Gospels.
"Why were you searching for me?" the adolescent Jesus said to his parents. "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" In a way that phrase speaks of the intuitive spiritual drive that is compelling him beyond the boundaries of family, nation, and religion. Increasingly Jesus will acknowledge a more unitive vision of that house he is drawn toward -- a house in which all humans belong, "every family, language, people, and nation."5 He will acknowledge how difficult a transition this is: "If anyone comes to me without turning his back on his father and mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and sisters, indeed his very self, he cannot be my follower."6 He will touch and heal the outcast lepers and demon-possessed, he will reach across religious and national boundaries to offer compassion to Canaanite, Samaritan, Garasene, and Roman. He will turn over the religious monopolies of the Temple and open the gift of divine forgiveness to all people, transcending the teaching of those he learned from as a boy. Finally he will offer his death as a gift of sacrificial love for all humanity, choosing to die for the good of others, even if they don't deserve it. He is our picture of a fully mature, fully conscious human being.
Growing up is hard. And it is costly. But there is nothing in the world more important and necessary. Do not be afraid. Don't be anxious. God is with you. And God is with your teenager. Accept and acknowledge where you are in that process of maturation, and ask God to lead you into your next step toward wholeness and reunion. Whatever courage and faithfulness you bring to that process of growth will be your contribution to the healing of the world and the evolution of human consciousness into our final hope, which is when all things are healed in the fullness of God.
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1. Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love, p. 36
2. Ibid, p. 42
3. Ibid, p. 43
4. Charles Page, Jesus and the Land
5. Revelation 5:9
6. Luke 14:26, (Thomas Keating's translation)