1/25/59

Scripture: (Read Isaiah 40: 27-31)

A year ago, our church planned to be host to a state-wide rally of Pilgrim Fellowship young folk. Members of our Pilgrim Fellowship had excellent and understanding support from parents and other adult members of this congregation.

It was my responsibility to sit in with the State Pilgrim Fellowship officers as they laid plans for that rally. And it was impressive to see their earnest enthusiasm in planning a program that would bring out the best thinking and most earnest dedication of those who attended. It was their meeting, and they laid the plans and carried them through. They planned the worship services themselves. They chose their leaders and assigned subjects for discussion. They set standards of conduct which they urged all delegates to observe.

As they talked of the theme for their rally, a young high school senior spoke of having read a book titled “I Dare You,” and remarked that he would like to make the feeling of that title the atmosphere of the rally. And so the officers’ group, in agreement with him, set about planning a 3-day program which would dare young folk to think their best and be their best.

We are now entering a week that is marked, on church calendars annually, as Youth Week. And it is interesting to note that the theme for this week, chosen by leaders in the United Christian Youth movement, is “Dare We Live in the Household of God?”

This is the 25th anniversary of the founding of the United Christian Youth movement. And it is significant that young folk themselves have focused their thinking on a venturesome idea. But this is characteristic of the outlook of youth!

It is freshly, exasperatingly, challengingly different from the common viewpoint of many who are approaching old age. Some men and women are fired with the vision and enthusiasm of youth all their lives. But many are not.

Recently I have read the comment of a man who has thought on this theme with some disturbing effect. He is a layman in his church, who undertook to preach a layman’s sermon on a Sunday when his pastor was away. One reason for his action was that he was chairman of the Board of Deacons in his church and felt responsible for the Sunday service of the church. Another reason may have been that in his youth he had planned to enter the ministry and even pointed his education that way for a time. But, for some reason, he had abandoned that plan, and had become a salesman for a manufacturing company.

This man outlined vividly the change that had come over him in the years between his youth and his matured years. When he was a child, he had felt that he had something to say. And as a youth he had planned to say it! The message of the Ten Commandments and of the Christ’s summons to “take up thy cross and follow me” were crystal clear in his mind. And he had intended to live, and to proclaim, this gospel. Where injustice could be seen, he intended to correct it! Where a cause for the right needed support, he intended to push for it. He says that he was incredibly naive, and unbelievably sincere.

But he sorrowfully confesses that when he became a man, he put away this sincerity and enthusiasm as childish things to be left behind. And he lives, he says, with a “low-grade pain in the area of the conscience.” Whereas his youthful heart bled for the oppressed, he now prefers only to keep the oppressed out of his sight. As a youth, he wanted to visit the prisoner in his cell. As a man he only wants the prisoners kept under lock and key. As a youth, he listened for the Word of God to come to him. Now he almost hopes that he will not hear the word lest it be disturbing.

And yet he is troubled by all of this compromising, and by his own observation that his church, and much of organized religion compromises, too. As a man he has, as Paul says, “put away childish things.” [I Corinthians 13: 11]. And yet he feels that he put aside the best that was in him!

However, this earnest man testifies that he still has some of the fight of righteousness left in him! He is not satisfied to be engaged only in small side-line skirmishes. He thinks that religion is not only a pious and comfortable feeling to be nursed with comforting assurances, but that it is an idea -- a provocative, radically transforming idea -- and that it should be, for a man, a way of doing!

This Chicago layman ended his comment, which he was reluctant to call a “sermon,” with the words of Saint Paul: “Keep your heart and minds in Christ Jesus.” [Philippians 4: 7]. And this he commended to all sorts of people, the young and the mature, for a time such as ours.

Our time is one in which is needed a fine combination of the vision and enthusiasm of youth, and the experienced wisdom of maturity. Our time is not unlike the time about which Isaiah wrote, when “even the youths shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted.” [Isaiah 40: 30].

We have seen, and experienced, the cycle of war, depression, more war, uneasy peace, the threat of more depression. We are aware of total destruction as visited upon some of the cities of Europe and some of the cities of Asia before the end of World War II. And we are convinced of the possibility of vastly greater destruction, if mankind be not controlled by something firm and more sane than his whims, fears and hatreds.

If many old men no longer dream dreams or see visions, it is also true that not all of the youth of our land see visions. With the possibility that there could be no tomorrow, some see little meaning in planning for it.

In the last forty short years, we have been forced to grow up as a people -- as a nation. Some of it has been a disillusioning experience; some of it is a sobering and challenging experience. We have not asked for some of the responsibility now thrust upon us. And now, we find our nation in a position of world leadership, burdened by indescribable poverty and boiling in a “revolution of rising expectations.”

And so men have grown old in spirit before their time, and youths grow up before their time. We are faced with the problem of a society “whose ingenuity has outstripped its morality.” And, in this society, young folk are confronted by adult choices and adult temptations before they have the stability for mature decisions.

It is a job, not alone for nuclear scientists and engineers, but for all of thinking society, to find good, productive uses for atomic energy, and for fast-opening space. It may be that the youth of today will undertake these responsibilities earlier than did the generation that precedes them.

Probably none of us realizes how much this business of “being young” has changed! It is said that the high school student of 1940 had something like 20,000 job titles among which to choose, while today, he is confronted with over 42,000!

Is it not astounding how the baby-sitting industry has emerged in just one generation? And have you considered the buying power of youth, how it has mushroomed until today in earnings, allowances, miscellaneous pin money and other accessible resources, teen-agers are estimated to have over 2 billion dollars in disposable income! That is hard for me to believe. But the merchandising world is not unaware of its possibilities!

Granddad could walk 3 miles to school. Occasionally he merited the family horse and buggy for a ride under the moon, or of a Sunday afternoon. Father occasionally borrowed the car for a picnic or a movie date. But today sees some teen-agers with cars of their own. Young men and women have often traveled in many states and across national boundaries. Some spend part of their high school careers or college years in study, travel or service activity overseas.

In a sense, some of us older folk had it easier, being always comparatively close to home, with fathers’ and mothers’ advice readily available and even a lot of the decisions made for us. A lot of the decisions of youth today are made where neither the experience nor the presence of mom or dad can help -- since dad and mom have not been there!

If there should be any moaning over the fact, it is useless, for neither the hands of the clock nor the pages of the calendar can be turned back. We still have the challenge of making the home a new kind of rooting and fellowship -- an association of growing individuals -- boys and girls who are growing, youths and maidens who are growing, and fathers and mothers (even grandfathers and grandmothers) who have not forgotten to grow.

The growing home is the good home of today. The young folk may have some notion of the growth they would like to see in adult behavior. And the adults can readily see how youth needs to grow and with what difficulties and embarrassments it is done -- illustrated by Henry Aldrich stories.

And it is a sobering reflection that the standards and values of a lot of youth today, even of those who make undesirable headlines, are the standards and values accepted by a couple of generations preceding them. If there are some young folk in rebellion, it is a revolution of youth that dates at least as far back as Queen Victoria. At any rate, a lot of today’s youth does not propose to be hypocritical. And if some of their actions and attitudes shock or repel us, we older folk may well reflect on the group mores of our own time, and the effect they may have had on our forbears.

Only we long to see our young folk grow into maturity without making some of the grievous errors and foolish blunders and stupid boneheads which we committed. It would give us considerable satisfaction if we could be assured that they were willing to learn from our mistakes as well as from other, more inspiring, kinds of history.

A lot of mature folk are carried away, in fear and disgust, by headline features of juvenile delinquency and youthful rashness. Some sober observers point out, however, that despite all the furor, only 3% of our youth account for what is called juvenile delinquency. The other 97%, by quirk of statistic or law, by chance or by choice, never turn up in that classification.

We get a long way off the track if we assume that youth is not what it ought to be. It is true that there are some who run afoul of the law and the ethical codes of society -- even of youthful society. It is true, further, that now and then even some young person of excellent family and church background gets into serious trouble with the traffic police or other law enforcement authority. But it behooves us to remember the great preponderance of youth who live by commendable standards, respond to the good challenges of each other, and seek for the vision of a Guiding God.

When worried citizens and harried law enforcement officials ask for, and even get, curfew laws to control a possible 3%, we must remember the affront this presents to the good intentions of the other 97%. For they deserve our understanding and encouragement.

Now what about church young people? Is it true, as Mr. J. Edgar Hoover affirms, that Sunday School pupils do not, generally, get into trouble with the law? There probably is some truth in that observation. And yet, to the degree that it is true, it only reveals more sharply the need for a missionary concern to reach all those children and youth who are not connected with a Sunday School or church. For a church ought to be far more than a self-protection society!

One city church, in an effort to minister more effectively to youth, engaged a young minister to join the church staff for this purpose. They did not put him in charge of the church youth fellowship, nor of a Sunday morning class. Church volunteers cared for those responsibilities. But they kept him free to roam the streets, and visit the juke joints and be wherever young folk gathered in order to be available to youth.

This is one necessity for the church, in serving youth or anyone else -- to reach people where they are. Another necessity is to be willing to be a voice in the wilderness when necessary. Sometimes this involves an admission that older folks have made mistakes, and the admission is necessary in order to help in finding the answers.

On the other hand, I rejoice when I see young folk who, out of their own convictions, resist the pressures of their own group when they feel it necessary to do so. For that is not easy, and it sometimes exacts a heavy price. The church ought to encourage a crusade in a cause rather than lock-step conformity.

That goading, irritating, exasperating, inescapable playwright George Bernard Shaw once remarked that “youth is such a wonderful thing, it’s s shame it’s wasted on the young.” Well, youth is a wonderful thing. And there are a lot of the young who do not propose to waste it. And they have a right to look to home, church, community and nation for the trail markings that they can pursue in good faith.

The admonition in the book of Timothy to “treat younger men as brothers” [I Timothy 5: 1] is good advice and a duty. Let us seek a church fellowship of this sort.

[Prayerful meditation on the front of today’s church calendar]

[Thank God for youth. For Christian youth intent upon the world for which Christ gave his life; for Christian youth aware of the limits of their own wisdom, taking counsel of the experiences of the past, seeking the help which comes from God alone. Thank God for youth who enlist in his cause for the duration of life, trusting the God of all power to give them strength; for those who embrace all human kind within the family circle; accepting the responsibility of building a Christlike world.]

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, January 25, 1959.