Sermons for the Month
The Generation Lap
DATE: November 28, 1999
SERVICE: Advent I
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
We know all about "The Generation Gap," but how about "The Generation Lap"? This occurs when one age group is overtaken by its more technologically savvy offspring. Today's reading has Paul hoping that each generation of parents will be spiritually "lapped" by their children. First, "The generation gap." Old news. It means that the Builder or GI generation doesn't understand their self-absorbed Boomer children. It means that Boomers wonder what's up with their Gen-Xer kids. And the older Gen-Xers who have children secretly worry about their Millennial Kids' fascination with cyberspace. Preschoolers today can wire a television, VCR and Sony PlayStation, but struggle to tie their shoelaces. Their Gen-Xer parents when they were their age could, well -- play a mean game of Tic-Tac-Toe on this Merlin. Middle-schoolers can help their parents navigate Windows, but, like, don't know what to do when asked to wash windows. High-schoolers spend hours on the Internet, sending e-mail and hanging around chatrooms, and they are never more than a few clicks away from sites full of anarchy or pornography. This is their online world where it is easier to learn how to build bombs than to build relationships. While the hackers of our country are peeking into the Norad, the army, or the FBI, their Boomer parents are often trying to hack into their own computers. The good news is that the vast majority of adolescent online activity ranges from harmless to edifying -- sending instant messages to friends, visiting movie star fan Web sites, doing homework or downloading music. But even if everything on the Internet had the Family Research Council Seal of Approval, we would still have to be concerned about the technological Generation Gap that exists between modern parents and their progeny. Forget the generation gap. It's more than a gap -- it's a lap. A Generation Lap. We've been lapped, Moms and Dads, Grams and Gramps. While we were sitting at our computers, slowly punching in our passwords, trying to go online and check our e-mail, our Buster Babies or Millennial Munchkins have been racing around the cyber-track -- chatting with friends, researching a school paper, and downloading songs -- all at the same time! We've been lapped. We better get used to it. Here's what's happened: A Generation Lap occurs when one generation is overtaken by its more technologically savvy offspring. I remember my Mom complaining about having to dial numbers on the telephone instead of just clicking once and getting an operator that she could talk to. Even I can still remember our first telephone number -- 5020 -- only four digits. Many believe that today's "Internet generation" has an innate, magical relationship with information technologies, one that is completely alien to those who have come before ("Jargon Watch," Wired, April 1999, 72). Try as we might we who grew up without computers in the classroom are just never going to catch up with those who did. But before you parents and grandparents of the Millennial Generation get too depressed, consider this: Getting lapped is good. Very good. How many of us would be comfortable believing that our children should be dumber, less gifted, less spiritual than we are? In today's Scripture lesson, Paul opens his letter by recognizing the "grace of God" that the Corinthian Christians possess, and he notes that they are not lacking in any "spiritual gift." But not wanting them to feel too satisfied with their position on the track, he encourages them to do some more laps. He tells them that Jesus will strengthen them to the end, so that they will be "blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:8). The text is a call for us to continually grow and be spiritually savvy, to maintain the fitness of our faith -- not only for ourselves, but for our children. How many times have you all heard someone say, "I don't need to read the Bible? Been there; done that it Sunday School." While it is great to have a competitive position in the road race of righteousness, it is even greater for the youngest of our kids -- the Millennial Generation, or what some call Generation Y -- to LAP US in our faith. Shouldn't it be the goal of every generation to see its children sprint to new levels of health, happiness, wisdom and spirituality? Now to be sure, lapping our parents in spirituality is never a sure thing. That's why Paul devotes so much time in his letters to spiritual growth, often invoking a racing metaphor. Some would argue that we Baby Boomers not only failed to lap our parents in terms of spiritual faith and maturity, but actually fell far behind. Instead of racing ahead to new positions of faithful service, we stumbled and fell in a false start of "me-centered" spirituality. I read recently where a Florida elementary school sports league is requiring all the parents to take an ethics course before their children will be allowed to play in the league. Who doesn't know about the huge number of my generation that left the church never to return. Some sociologists of religion believe we have one last chance to get them back -- after they retire. But with each new generation there is hope, and there is now some very good evidence that the younger Busters and Millennials -- Generations X and Y -- are now returning to God and are already out front of their Boomer parents. First, the evidence. Baby Boomer Toni Zechentmayer, an antiques restorer in Eugene, Oregon, stopped going to church years ago, and she didn't raise her 14-year-old son Eric with any religion at all. "I didn't want to ram it down his throat like my mom did to me," she says. So this Sunday, while Toni is getting a jump on holiday shopping, where will her son be? In church. A couple of years ago, Eric started attending church with a friend, and now this member of Generation Y walks to church by himself on Sunday mornings and goes to youth group on Wednesday nights, where he is learning to meditate. At home while watching TV, he reads the Bible during commercials. What's going on here? Eric says church makes him feel "more fulfilled." His mother, while supportive, confesses that it's "really bizarre." In response to the complaints of the elementary school girls playing in the Northern Ohio Girls Soccer League this fall, the league president asked all the parents of its players to stop their yelling and bad behavior during the games or be expelled from the sidelines, ordering them to be silent while their children played. We have to hope that our kids don't continue to mimic their parents but transcend them. Or what about the young Texas girl that stood in the press box and valiantly offered a pray before a football game in spite of the protests of parents to the contrary, or the young Colorado girl that confessed her belief in God in the face of a pistol packing classmate. But really, friends, whatever our generational genre -- GI, Builder, Baby Boomer, Gen Xer or Millenial -- we all ought to be tearing up the track of discipleship. Who likes to be lapped? Come on! You're walking, working up a sweat, starting to feel nauseous, huffing and puffing one of the hills of the Metroparks, and nuts if someone doesn't yell "passing on your left" as she runs up the hill ahead of you in those lycra shorts. How does that make you feel? Right. You don't even like being passed on the freeway. On the other hand, Paul argues that lapping is good, but we should still try to one up one another in acts of kindness and in the pursuit of justice. The Generation Lap has begun, but we do not have to stand on the track and eat dust. If we remain spiritually savvy and supportive of our children in their distinctive practice of the faith, then the Christian community will not someday become a "virtual reality without adults." We can each run the race at our own pace and encourage those who are running ahead, knowing that Christ is strengthening every one of us to the end. As the Busters and Millennials take off, we can be thankful that they are lapping us in service to the Lord -- the One who does a new thing in every generation. AMEN