Make the Vision Plain: Intergernerational

Make the Vision Plain: Intergenerational

(Jeremiah 31:27-34; 2 Timothy 3:14-17)

10:30 am, Sun, Oct 20, 2013 Windsor UBC, J G White

A little fellow in church service for the first time saw the offering plate being passed. When it came by he piped up: “You don’t need to pay for me, Daddy. I’m under five.”

The new stated vision we are formulating begins by claiming that we, Windsor Baptist, will be an intergenerational community. Look around. We already are. Not that I want you to guess at everyone’s age. But you see various generations. Most of the youngest are elsewhere in the building. We want to remain a congregation of every generation, every age and stage.

God plants and grows faith in people of all ages. Echoing the words in the first chapter of the book, Jeremiah 31:28 says “I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD.” Those were words to Hebrew people millennia ago, and they remain an inspiring promise from history. A promise that still is coming true. God growing spiritual children in every generation of human history.

We could decide to be a fellowship of people of certain age groups and not others. Be a youth and young adult church. Or a church for retirees. But to leave any out is to be incomplete, in our minds and and hearts.

A congregation in a town is like a human family. I happen to be at an early middle-age stage of life. I can go down the valley and visit, along the way, my parents, then my 90 year old grandfather, then my step-daughter and my almost 7 month old grandson. I have a grandson, and still have a grandfather.

So too in our local family of faith. And we want to keep it this way. The promises of Jeremiah’s day get completed in this age of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. We heard also from 2 Timothy 1 - a letter from Apostle Paul to Apostle Timothy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, says Paul to Tim, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

If you are 16, you know your faith was passed on to you not only by the Holy Spirit, but by people of older generations. You who are pushing ninety know that your faithfulness and prayers to the Lord have led to the growth of personal faith in others, younger.

Now is the time of salvation! For people of every age. So we must share visionary focus and be ready. Across the span of our ages. Across the cultural differences among us. Some of us are from West Hants. Some of us like County Music. Some of us went to Acadia. Some of us moved here for work. Some of us were born outside Canada. Some of us don’t yet know what to be when we grow up. Yet despite our diversity we can be a rich family of Faith.

Along with the salvation of people that the Lord works to bring about, God frees people to respond and be responsible. We discover there is no “fate” that traps us in the chain of life’s events. In Christ we shall be free. The real freedom of the individual to live in the forgiveness and love of God was foreseen in the prophecy of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 31:29-30

In those days they shall no longer say:

“The parents have eaten sour grapes,

and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.

Ezekiel 18 says the same this about this proverb. You sin, you are responsible. And your children will be responsible for their own sins, not for yours, and for their own reconciliation with the Lord.

These words came out long before Jesus. Yet they point to the individual freedom from sin and death that Jesus would bring. We know that a person can’t rely on their parents or grandparents to have a right relationship with God for him or her. And today, fewer and fewer people simply follow their parent’s footsteps into churches and into serving the Lord day to day.

The story is told of a young girl who asked her mother in the kitchen why she always turned over cans from the cupboard before opening them with the can opener. “I don’t know” the mother had to admit. “Your grandma always did it; let’s ask her.” Not long after, mother and daughter were with grandmother, who told them why she always turned a can over before opening. “In the old pantry, in the basement, the cans would always get a bit rusty and dusty on top. So, I opened them on the clean end, the bottom.”

We don’t need to do things our certain ways just because we always did. We have hymn boards here with numbers. Why? Well, when there were invented, there were no weekly bulletins. This was the one place to read the hymn numbers. These are actually redundant. We turn the tin can over for no reason, anymore.

The reasons for our methods are sometimes long gone. The personal spiritual needs of each succeeding generation change. The Lord can meet them all. We want people to be free in their spiritual lives to seek and find Jesus in the best ways possible, and serve Him in new and wonderful ways when they are saved. As we talk with one another, across the generations, we learn new things from one another.

So we want to be not just multi-generational, we want to be inter-generational. Various ages knowing one another, seeing the changes, encouraging one another in the Lord.

2 Timothy 3:14b-15a (NIRV) says Don't give up what you are sure of. You know the people you learned it from. You have known the Holy Scriptures ever since you were a little child. “You know the people you learned it from.”

Less and less in Nova Scotia today is faith passed on from parent to child to grandchild. Giving faith in Christ to the next generations a definite challenge. It is a missionary challenge, on our own doorstep, in our neighbourhoods and families.

I’ve shared before the wonderful way Charlie Harvey once asked a question about reaching youth today. Some of you know Charlie and Fran Harvey were long-term Baptist missionaries in Africa. One year, at the Evangelism Conference, Charley Harvey said this. (1:00:12 - 1:03:15)

Despite the challenge, we are the missionaries to those around us here. We want them to know Christ, and the freedom of soul He brings! This mission is for every generation.

God has vision for all generations to know Him. He foresees. Jeremiah 31:27, 34 says The days are surely coming, says the LORD…

No longer shall they teach one another, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, says the LORD.

They shall all know the LORD. Every generation. What a message for today! Is it for today? These 2,500 year old words? Do you not feel the voice of God to us now in these ancient passages? The vision of every one, from the greatest to the smallest, knowing the God who seems so mysterious to so many.

Paul to Timothy said, Don't give up what you are sure of. (2 Timothy 3:14a, NIRV) or, Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. (NRSV) What have you been sure us that God is up to? Sending Himself in Jesus - also a human - to show us the way of life, the way of God’s Kingdom. To die by crucifixion so that the evil in us dies, and we can live free from wrong. To arise after death so we can know life is eternal. To be present with us in this life now, as God the Holy Spirit.

As Charley Harvey said, we know that Jesus can make a tremendous difference in everyone’s life; hold onto that! Even when you’re unsure how to give Jesus to them.

Conclusion Jeremiah 31:34 “...for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” This is what our God does for all people, and this ministry is for all ages and stages of life.

In our Fall edition of Mosaic, from Canadian Baptist Ministries, is a First Nations story, “My People are in Prison.”

An informal group of Christians in the Duncan, region (BC) have banded together to support the leaders of the Cowichan Tribes. Several churches are involved.

Sarah, 82 years old, is one such tribal elder whom they work with. Some of her own children experienced the tragedy of the boarding school abuse we hear about so frequently. Sarah is grieved at the lingering impact as children returned, ashamed and angry at their parents and their culture. Many in turn became abusive and some now pass on their distrust and animosity towards “white” people to the next generation.

There's the parents eating sour grapes and setting the children’s teeth on edge!

But Sarah has been able to deal with the ghosts of her family’s past and has been instrumental in creating initiatives to help others. She was the first one to put into action the Cowichan knitting project — buying wool, washing, carding, dyeing and making the yarn for the traditional sweaters that are so sought after by tourists. Currently she is working with the Catholic sisters, visiting communities, distributing food and other necessities. She also spends a lot of time counselling young people in marriage and family issues.

“My people are in prison. They don’t know who they are,” says Sarah, describing the lostness she sees. Sarah fervently believes that only faith in Christ can heal the trauma in her people. She has become a dear friend to the whites in the local Baptist churches, and is a great help in navigating protocol and cultural issues as they seek to help their First Nations neighbours.

Every age and generation is involved in that story of the Gospel; and at least two cultures.

God plants and grows faith in people; God ‘faith-plants.’

God frees people to know Him and be healed.

God has vision for all; God foresees all generations knowing Him. This is God’s heart.

Today, we are an intergenerational church; let us keep this among our goals, in our vision: for the sake of every generation here among us, and to whom we reach out, with the Gospel.