I remember the moment I became a
parent. Just after Sarah is born, the doctor hands her to Marcia who is exhausted
and happy with tears in her eyes. I
stare at this miracle with wonder and disbelief. Soon, I grab my 1990’s, middle of the road, 8
mm camera and begin recording memories.
Even today, my memories of that moment roll through my head a somewhat
blurry video montage and I’m not sure if it’s real or Memorex (that’s another
90’s reference, for you youngsters out there).
Immediately, one of the nurses takes
Sarah from Marcia’s arms and places her in a hard plastic and sterile basinet
with a glowing warmer above the mattress. She begins an infant checklist like a pilot
before take-off – checking through each limb and organ with the practiced hand
of a professional who has done this hundreds of times. She places greasy, antibiotic ointment in her
eyes to fight off infection. She checks
her heart with a long stethoscope. She
listens to her lungs as Sarah wails – a new being in a new environment. Then, the nurse picks up a cardboard form
with a carbon sheet placed on top. With
steel-eyed patience, the nurse slowly takes each hand and every finger and
records their print. Finally, she picks
up each foot and makes a carbon copy of each.
Sarah’s very first footprint.
Realizing what she is doing, I
scramble for our long forgotten Winnie the Pooh Baby book packed weeks ago as
we prepared for this moment. I ask her
to use the carbon to mark Sarah’s hands and feet as for us too. Her second.
Then, for just a moment, my stare
turns from Sarah to the black footprint before me. This small foot will grow to carry a young
woman. I wondered in that moment – where
will these feet go? Who will they follow
and who will they lead?
During Sydney’s first year, I loved bath
time – especially afterwards. I would
lay her on a clean blanket on the bed and lather her body with baby lotion. I loved the smell and the touch of her soft,
bathed skin. Ultimately, every day I would
take her feet in my hands, kiss them and pray for them for the places they
would carry her.
These days, with teenage daughters –
a dad’s biggest task is paying for the shoes that go on those feet and picking
those shoes up around the house! I
haven’t stopped praying, though, for where God will take the feet of these two
young women.
Much has changed in parenting since
1997 when Marcia and I became parents – let alone when we were growing up in
the 1970’s. These shifts in parenting
have more to do with who are as parents – the challenges we confront daily in
our identity as parents, than in kids themselves. I’ve been fascinated recently by these shifts
documented by Jennifer Senior in her recent book called All Joy and No Fun: The paradoxof Modern Parenting. In her
introduction to the book she details three key shifts in parents over the last
30-40 years. I’ve renamed these to
better fit our context. These three,
broad shifts have complicated parenting more than most.
1. Parenting Redefined – Parents
today have heightened expectations of what our children will do for us in
providing existential fulfillment and joy. We approach child raising with the same
individuality and ambition as we would any life project. Success in life is now measured by our
success as parents – the success of our children – why shouldn’t it be when we
invest so much of our time and energy into their wellbeing. This isn’t bad – but it is very different
than when we raised. This shift makes it
difficult for parents to determine where the children’s life ends and my life
begin.
2. Work Redefined – Not
only has parenthood been redefined, our work has too. It’s not a secret that women make up a little
less than 50% of the workforce now. With
both mom and dad working – this creates a multitude of daily decisions and
balancing acts to traverse the opportunities and challenges of raising
children. Add to this – with our
connected lives – our work lives never completely end at 5:00 any more. This only make parenting more complicated. I know many of you who are grandparents help
today’s moms and dads to make it through every week – whether it is free child
care or picking up children after school or watching children while parents
travel. Trying to parent with both the
work and parenthood redefined is not easy or simple and causes much anxiety and
questions.
3. Childhood Redefined –
Finally, not only has parenthood and work been redefined – but we have
redefined childhood too. When most of
our parents raised us – children’s lives revolved around their parent’s
lives. Today’s parent’s lives revolve
around their children. Children have
become for many parents the crowning achievement of our lives and we invest our
whole lives to protecting and securing these investments. From the days when children worked the farm
to keep the family going, children have gone from being the employees of the
family to being the bosses. Childhood
has gone from useful to protected.
Parents today pour more capital – both emotional and literal – into our
children’s lives than ever before – investing more hours into our children than
the majority of the women who stayed at home in generations past.
In
our passage today from 1 Peter 2, the lectionary includes several verses of a
larger section which interpreters have come to call the Household Codes. This codes section begins in 18 and continues
to chapter 3:7.
In this section, the writer speaks
to two powerless members of the typical Roman household – the household slave
and the wife. Because the writer
addresses these two roles in society, most interpreters believe the receiving
congregations in Asia Minor – modern day Turkey – would probably have been less
affluent congregations made up primarily with individuals in the bottom rungs
of roman society rather than husbands and managers.
In this world, slaves and wives have
no power to sue, not power to divorce, no power to call the police when they
are mistreated. To understand how these verses
shape us as parents and as Christians in today world – first – we need to see
what these household codes do not mean.
1. First – these verses do not condone
slavery. As someone of you studied in SS
today - v.18-19 speak to Christian who live in slavery with no power – not
Christians who own slaves and have power.
Owning another person is barbaric whether we are talking 1st
century, 19th century or 21st century.
2. Second – these verses do not condemn
an abused wife to stay in an abusive marriage.
Our marriages are not to be lives lived in fear or pain. Too many preachers through the years have
called women to live in fear for their lives because of these
passages. This must stop. Where this is
power to change – we are invited to do so.
So – if the writer is not condoning
slavery or abusive marriages – what is the writer calling us to do? We are called to follow the footsteps of
Jesus.
Whether we are slaves or women or
husbands or children – business owners or politicians – teachers or doctors –
retirees or mothers of young children – this is the good news for us today – we
are called to follow the footsteps of Jesus.
V. 21 says: “For to this you have been called, because Christ also
suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his
steps.”
This
is Today’s Good News:
Following the footsteps of Jesus invites us to live a life of
self-sacrifice in world driven by “me.”
I love this metaphor of following
the steps of Jesus. The Greek word for example in v. 21 literally mean“the
pattern that a child learning to write, traces over.” Jesus’ life is more than just one of many
examples in the world showing us how to live.
Jesus is the rubric, the key, the answer sheet, the model. When we want to know how to be a mom or a
parent or grandparent or boss or high school student or friend - Jesus invites
us to place his life down and then place our lives over it – and then slowly
with lots of practice to trace our lives over his. When we learn his ways and his thoughts and
his life, his life comes through in us.
I never was a very good drawer. The best drawings I ever made came from a
book my mom gave me. It had all of these
wonderful drawing techniques to get from nothing on a page to a penguin or
other animal. I would place my white
sheet of paper over the book, and trace each step of the drawing upon each
other. When I was done, I had a
beautiful drawing. It was not my drawing,
though, it came from the master artist whom I trusted and traced.
Implication:
The world and culture in which we
live is driven most powerfully by our selfish understanding of ourselves. The biggest illustration of this can easily
be found in the 2013 word of the year: selfie!
I can’t stand this word - yet, it definitely defines our present
generation.
The passage in 1 Peter invites all
of us to acknowledge our place in the world – as a slave or a wife or a husband
or a student. From this place, we are
too look at the example of Jesus in the world.
Drawing on the suffering servant passages in Isaiah, Peter describes the
way Jesus responded to the world around him.
“When he was
abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he
entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in
his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for
righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
Jesus had the power of all of heaven
at his fingertips – yet, when it came time to reveal his heavenly father to the
world – he chose the way of the cross, the way of suffering.
When he was abused – he didn’t’
strike back. When he suffered injustly
at the hands of others – he allowed his suffering to speak for him. While he was the king of all kings – he
entrusted himself to others to judge him.
And the man who knew no sin, took up our sins and bore them on the cross
on our behalf.
Jesus did not suffer from a place of
powerless, but from a place of strength.
In the same way that he calls his followers to turn the other cheek and
walk the extra mile, he invites us to a life of revealing the Christ within us
through a life of servant hood in the world.
In 2:16 the writer states it this
way: As servants
of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil.
What is this life that Jesus desires
that we trace our lives after? It is a
life of the cross. “Take up your cross and
follow me,” Jesus told his disciples in the Gospels. This is the vocation to which we have been
called – Peter says – to follow the footsteps of Jesus is to trace the
cruciform life of Jesus in ours. This is
a counter cultural way of living. How do
we do pattern our lives after Jesus in a selfie world?
In our business world, we should be
known more for our industriousness, kindness and loyalty than our assertiveness
and win at all costs.
In our personal lives, a Jesus
traced life may suppress the desire to be noticed – whether it is giving money
so our name will be called out or our desire to make sure everyone knows our
child’s latest successes.
In our family life, a cruciform life
may choose not to litigate and choose to forgive.
In our financial life, a cruciform
life may choose a smaller house or simpler lifestyle.
As parents, grandparents – mothers
and fathers – a cruciform life may be living differently than the latest blogs
or pintrest ideas. It may mean going
without in order to find new values. It
may mean learning to redefine our own selves as parents. It may mean fighting against the culture to
put our children in everything or even blowing up the definitions of work for
us.
As we live our lives – tracing the
life of Jesus in all we do – those defining themselves in our world will come
to see Jesus and the authentic, meaningful values he brings - His
salvation.
Invitation:
In a former life, I once worked as a
snow ski instructor. I would take kids
and adults who had never had anything clamped to their feet and teach them how
to put on the boots and skis. I would
teach them about snow and mountains and fall lines. I would demonstrate to them how to get on and
off a ski lift and how to brake and accelerate and turn.
In the higher learning of skiing
though – just telling people how to change their skiing never works. It required the instructor to train the
muscles to respond to the gravity and acceleration of the mountain. My favorite way to learn and teach was a game
called “Follow my tracks.”
I would ski first and invite the
skier to follow the tracks of my skies in the snow. As I made a slow turn to the left, they were
to keep their skis in my tracks and follow me.
The exercise helped them initiate turns and feel the mountain under
their feet.
Today – Jesus invites us to follow
his tracks so that we may live a life of self-sacrifice in world driven by
“selfies.” You see, Jesus knows how we
can find meaning and purpose and eternal life in the world just as the ski
instructor knows how to get you down the mountain. Jesus also knows that just having this
information in our heads will never change our lives or change the world – it
has to move from our heads to our feet.
Trace this life of self-sacrifice into your life – Jesus tells us. Make my ways – your ways.
These days I have fewer and fewer
hours with my teenage daughters. The
proportion of waking hours parents spend with their children drops from 35% as
elementary students to 14% as teenagers.
Yet – I know that if I have taught my daughters about the One to trace
their lives after – I will no longer need to worry about their own footprints –
I will know the One whose footprints they are following.
When we choose to follow the
footsteps of Jesus – all of the challenges of raising children, living in our
households, going to school, building a business will find a purposeful,
authentic, and joyful way of living.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
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