“If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
And if I attain my golden years, and if I have my retirement fund secure, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
And if I come to three score and ten, or four score and seven, or even more, and if everyone pampers me because I am a senior citizen, but I do not know how to love, I am nothing.
And if I don’t have to get up on Monday morning any more except to travel on the seniors bus to Atlantic City, if I have punched my last time clock, if I have seen that supervisor’s snarling face for the very last time, if I do it all without love, what good is it?
Yea, verily, if my daily companions are a bunch of fellows named Arthur Itis, Ben Gay, and P. T. Bismol; if when I reach down to tie my shoe I wonder if there is anything else I should do while I’m down here; if I sit through more funerals than festivals, more wakes than weddings, if I have to do all that and know neither what it is to love or to be loved, well, then, what’s it all been about, anyway?
Paul’s great hymn to love is kind of unsettling on Senior Adult Sunday. Paul seems to think that love and aging belong together. He seems to think that as we grow older we are called upon to put behind us some things that may have been appropriate in our earlier years, but which are not on target any more. And he links these things to love. It sounds like this:
“Love never ends. But as for prophecies... tongues ... knowledge ... partial [things], [they] will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”
I put an end to childish ways, but love, love never ends. For just a few moments this morning, can I explore with you putting an end to childish ways? Paul gave us our agenda: “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child”. But now, for the sake of love, an end to childish ways.
I
First, “when I was a child, I spoke like a child.”
How does a child speak? A child speaks to ask for things. A child speaks about wanting and wishing. A child says, “Give me.” A child says, “I want.” I stood at the checkout counter the other day, right behind a young father with two preschool children. The drugstore people really know how to market, because right there where you have to stand while they rummage around looking for your prescription, they have strategically placed a stand of cheap toys, each one brightly packaged and placed at the eye level of a four-year-old. And so while Dad was trying to get the medicinal matters straightened out, one of those little boys trotted up with a toy and said, “Dad, can I have this?” Dad, predictably, said, “No.” Ten seconds later, the second little boy brought up another toy, “Dad, I want this.” And again, Dad was comfortable saying a quiet, “No.” So then the attack escalated. Back to first little boy, who found another toy. “Dad, I’ve got to get this one.” This time the negative was expressed a little more firmly by Dad. “I said ‘No’. We’re not getting any of that.” But the battle was not yet finished. Boy No. 2 came rolling back down the aisle with his second choice, and announced, “Dad, I NEED this.” I tell you, when Dad said, “Oh, all right, all right,” and bought the thing, I wanted to scream at him, “Do you know what lesson you are teaching these boys?”
I didn’t do it, of course, and only partly because my courage failed me. I didn’t do it because one incident in a pharmacy is not going to do much one way or another for little fellows whose basic instinct is to speak about wanting things, wishing for things, having things. Children speak about acquisition. Children speak about wanting, getting, taking, accumulating. That’s understandable in a child.
But when we become adults, we need to put an end to childish things. We need to stop speaking like children. We need to drop the language of acquisition and adopt the language of giving. We need to put an end to having and discover sharing. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I spoke about acquiring. But if I am 40 or 50 or 60 or on up there and I am still stuck in acquiring rather than in giving, I need to put an end to that childish thing. And I need to remember that the only thing that never ends is love.
Those of you who have been to our home know that both Margaret and I are book lovers and book acquirers. A rainy weekend afternoon you may find us at the Wheaton Library book sale, happily rummaging through the bargains. The better part of two rooms in our home is filled with books. We acquire books. But a couple of years ago Margaret started suggesting that I had too many books, that I was not really going to use some of them any more, and that I needed to get rid of a number of them. I was shocked! Get rid of my books?! Couldn’t we just give away one of the children instead? True book-lovers do not move anything off their shelves.
Except that that is the language of having, getting, holding, and acquiring. That is the language of childishness, not of maturity. That is the speech of selfishness, not of love. So when, at her urging, I gave about a hundred books on campus ministry and higher education to a seminary, where students preparing for that work could use them, I grew up just a little. It is not in having that real joy comes. It is in giving. It is not in acquiring that spiritual maturity is found. It is in sharing, it is in love. For love never ends. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I spoke about wanting to keep things. But when I became an adult, on the way to senior status, I’d better put an end to childish things and learn to speak about sharing. For love never ends.
II
Second, Paul says, “when I was a child, ... I thought like a child.” “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child.” How does a child think?
A child thinks in small terms. A child thinks of a world roughly his size, a size he can comprehend and manage. A child thinks about small spaces and about short spans of time.
A child has a short attention span. Anybody who has taken a trip in a car with children and has had to listen to the question, “Are we there yet?” fifty-seven times knows what I mean. The concept of hours and hours of waiting just escapes a child’s mind. A child thinks short.
And a child thinks small. Children love to be in tiny places that they can get their minds around. Give them a big backyard to play in, and they will take some old boxes and lumber and make a little playhouse, small enough so that they can create a club with their three best friends and shut everybody else out. Children think small. They create a little comfort zone for themselves. And that’s all right, for a child. That works, for child’s play.
But when we become adults, we need to put an end to childish things. We need to stop thinking like children. We need to expand from thinking about narrow and comfortable, and start thinking broadly, widely. We need to put an end to thinking comfortable in our own little corners and discover a larger world out there, a larger task out there. When I was a child, I thought like a child, I thought about nestling down into a comfort zone. But if I am 40 or 50 or 60 or on up there and I am still stuck in nestling rather than in thinking globally, I’d better put an end to that childish thing. And I need to remember that the only thing that never ends is love.
You see, when I was very small, my entire world was just four houses wide. I could go down this way on my tricycle as far as Jimmy’s house, and up that way to the corner, and that was it. That was my day-to-day world. It was all I could handle, all I needed to know about. The world of busy streets and being out of sight, I didn’t need. As I got older, that world expanded a little. At first I was allowed to go around the corner, which meant that I was out of parental vision for a little while. Felt like freedom for a five-year-old! And then after another year, I was ready to go to school, and that meant a two-block walk and a street to cross. Later Junior High and several blocks, several streets; and senior high and the city bus to ride. And on and on, expanding horizons. But always a my-sized world. A world I could handle in my child’s mind.
But men and women, when we grow up, God calls us not to our-sized worlds, but to God-sized tasks. God calls us not to something comfortable and manageable, but to things that only He can do and which He wants to do through us. God does not call us to think small, or to limit ourselves by what is comfortable and easy and friendly. God calls us to think large; God calls us to think about impacting all kinds of people and all kinds of places. Friends, if you are thinking that your mission in life is just to take care of yourself and your own, and hunker down into a quiet corner, you are still thinking childish things. If you are thinking that your life is like the one pictured by a novelist who says of a character named Edith, “Edith is an island, bordered on the north, south, east, and west by Edith”, then you have some childish things to put away. If your vision or the senior years is limited to a rocking chair on the back porch, then you are thinking like a child. Small. Limited. Comfortable. Because our God calls us to see the farthest reaches of love and to think large thoughts. To think great thoughts. To imagine vast enterprises. Our God calls us to see a whole wide world that He wants to reach with His love.
Some of us as seniors could go on mission to do that God-sized task. I know seniors who have moved to the inner city or who have spent themselves as missionaries in places you never even heard of, because they saw that God’s love is the only thing that never ends. We may need to put an end to childish things, to narrow boundaries and small scopes, and think large thoughts. For the only thing that never ends is love.
III
And finally, “when I was a child, I reasoned like a child.” “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.”
How does a child reason. Something like this: “I’ve done something I was not supposed to do. I did wrong. However, if Mom and Dad don’t find out, I got away with it, and everything is cool. I feel nothing. The only thing I was concerned about was getting caught. I don’t feel guilty, I don’t feel ashamed, I just put one over on the old man.” A child’s reasoning is, “if I didn’t get caught, I have no problems.”
Our son recently celebrated his 34th birthday. He and his sister came over to the house to a little birthday party, and they got to reminiscing about their high school days. What an education his parents got that night! After more than fifteen years, the truth comes out! We learned that this boy skipped out of class repeatedly and hung around the driver education lot where he could fool with the cars. We learned that his sister aided and abetted him and made excuses for him with the teachers. Neither one of them is particularly proud of that now. But when they were children, the only concern they really had was whether anybody would find out. And since we didn’t, at the time, no sweat, no strain. That’s a child’s reasoning. If I did it and got away with it without being punished, everything is copacetic! No problem.
But when we become adults, we need to put an end to childish things. We need to stop reasoning like children. We need to drop the getting over stuff and discover something else. We need to put an end to irresponsible antics and find out about something else. When I was a child, I reasoned like a child, I reasoned that I could get by with wrongdoing. But if I am 40 or 50 or 60 or on up there and I am still stuck in irresponsibility, I need to put an end to that childish thing. And I need to remember that the only thing that never ends is love.
For what I need most of all when I become an adult is to know the truth about myself, and then to experience grace. What I need most of all is to drop the stuff about getting over and find out what it means to be forgiven. I need to know that I cannot put anything over on the Father who pursues me behind and before and will not let me go. I need to see that I cannot sweep under the carpets of a dull conscience or hide under the blanket of a convenient memory all the sin I have committed. I cannot. I cannot continue to be a child who reasons that if you don’t see it, it didn’t happen. I must be an adult, who can face the awful truth about myself. I must be an adult, who can acknowledge that I have sinned and come short of the glory of God, whether anyone has seen it or not. For God has seen it, and against Him, Him only, have I sinned and done this evil in His sight.
What we need, most of all, whether we be eight or eighty, is an experience of grace. What we need, whether we be the most naive child or the most sophisticated senior, is to know that love will not let us go. We can rest our weary souls in Him, and know something that goes beyond all human reasoning. What I want in my life now, as in days gone past and in days yet to come, is to know that my fundamental sin problem has been dealt with. I need to know that the blood of Jesus has paid the price that I could not pay; that though I was sinking deep in sin, blind, unreasoning, warped, and twisted sin, love lifted me. For love never ends.
Like a child I am. I speak about wanting things. But love reaches me and shows me the joy of sharing.
Like a child I am. I think about my little comfort zone. But love reaches me and gives me a God-sized task to do.
Like a child I am. I reason that I can hide my sin. But love, love reaches me and nails it to a cross and commands me to leave it there. For the only thing that will never, never end; the only thing I cannot out-speak, out-think, or out-reason is the never-ending love of God.
