Will you please pray with me? Made the words of my mouth and the
meditation of all of our hearts be wholly unacceptable to you, our Rock and
our redeemer. Amen. One of my all time favorite singer songwriters is Paul
Simon of Simon and Garfuncle Fame. On his solo album You're the One,
appears a song entitled simply Old. The lyrics of the final verse read the
human race has walked the earth for two point seven million, and we estimate
the universe at thirteen fourteen billion. When all these numbers tumble into your imagination,
consider that the Lord was there before creation. God is old. We're
not old. God is old. Hearing the prophet Daniel's vision of God as
ancient one who possesses white hair like purable, I can't help but think of
Paul Simon's playful refrain God is old. Throughout our scriptures, many attributes are
assigned to God. God is love, God is just, God is merciful
and slow to anger. How about we add to those holy attributes God is
old. To be clear, I'm not talking about God as a towering white
man with a silver beard. Allah Michelangelo's Sistine chapel depiction, but rather a
God whose presence, being spirit, is broader and more intriguing than a male
our an arc what Daniel, in his reach to describe the indescribable, uses
the term Ancient One or other translations read Ancient of days. The prophet's God
is a graying God, old and full of years. This image must have
been especially good news to Daniel's audience, a traumatized Jewish people who have not
only historically faced threats of annihilation and displacement, but who are currently facing the
terror of Antiochus epiphanis, a tyrant who has desecrated their temple and forbade Jewish
practice. To an oppressed people living under a brutal empire, Daniel's vision points
to a reign in which the just power of the Ancient One prevails. The
one who was there before creation will outlast the foolishness and violence of earthly emperors.
To a world in chaos, the Ancient of Days offers a steady,
sovereign hand, a reminder that God's love stretches from everlasting to everlasting, that
God's vision of peace and justice and wholeness endures because God spans and transcends the
long arc of history. God is Old. Not only is this good news
for the persecuted people of Daniel's day, this is good news for us to
How good to know that amidst the chaos and violence in twenty first century America,
we worship a God who is experienced, who possesses the long view,
who is well practiced at loving, forgiving, and bringing life out of death.
God is Old. Praise be. What better way to celebrate this older
adult Sunday, upon the beginning of Older Americans Month, than by offering up
our thanks and praise to our good and gracious old God, and to give
thanks for all the ways our community is made better and more whole through the
presence and contributions of our older members. What better moment to lift up the
sacredness of oldness and to celebrate the gift of years. No matter where we
fall on the aging journey, Today we pause to celebrate Riverside's elders who offer
steadfast leadership and service to this community. Those veterans of the faith who write
postcards to reclaim our vote, who are mourning, prayer warriors and Climate Crisis
act. The volunteers who support the food pantry and the clothing ministry, those
who write birthday cards and make phone calls, and write cards to the sick
and bereaved. We celebrate our seasoned poets, spiritual memoirists and social justice writers,
our painters and singers and dancers, the greeters and ushers, and communion
preparers and servers, the Memorial Society volunteers, the Steadfast b and p volunteers,
the Tower League members. We give thanks for our prayers and our worshipers,
our Sunday school teachers and small group leaders, our givers and servers,
the archivists and historians, the protesters and agitators, the strong huggers, and
the good advice givers. Our community is made whole and vibrant by the contributions
of so many eddy and wise hearts. And let us not forget the people
who are no longer able to march in protests, or make phone calls or
even lift a spoon to their mouths, who are no less children of the
Almighty than those who are able. They too, are instruments of peace and
healing and gifts to the church. We give thanks for our older members who
live in nursing homes, are in the hospital or at home, because our
faith, our hope is built on nothing less than the risen Christ, and
nothing we can do or not do, can separate us from this love.
Over half of Riverside's membership is over sixty five years old. We are blessed
as a congregation to have a lot of people in our midst with experience at
their back, people who want to live out their days here and share their
gifts. People are joining our church in their later years. They're leading ministries
and sometimes starting new ones, which is a testimony to God's enduring power.
I am so thankful to be part of a church where we strive to resist
pitting the needs of the young against the needs of the old, where we
don't succumb to a scarcity mentality that says if one age cohort thrives, that
must mean that another suffers. Where we celebrate the richness and treasures across a
lifespan. The ministries of the nursery and the ministry of the columbarium are equally
vital. One is not celebrated while the other lamented, but both represent what
it means to be a real community. Thanks be to God, we don't
age into God's love, and we don't age out of it. And yet,
sadly, in our dominant US culture, we're not used to aging and
old being lifted up as good, desirable, or holy. In fact,
more often old is hurled as an insult, and old age is readily lampooned
and belittled. Age is to be hidden, denied, downplayed. It's a
source of shame, not celebration. Almost a third of older people report being
ignored or not taken seriously because of their age. Walk down a birthday card
isle and notice the unrelenting pot shots on old age get barraged by anti aging
products at every turn. Turn on late night talk show, and here the
aged based jokes hurled at our current president and the perverse scrutiny of his old
age. Note the unquestioned negative assumptions about old age and television shows, movies,
and even our most esteemed newspapers. Notice the gendered agism of women newscasters
being fired for their gray hair, or the rarity of older women actors receiving
oscars. And even our beloved Disney movies have fed the negativity as old women
appear as wicked queens, kidnappers of Dalmatian puppies and haggish villains. Agism the
stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination related to old age, aging processes and older
adults. It's common socially condoned type of discrimination in the US, touching each
of us. A few weeks back, I zipped through my neighborhood grocery store,
a store called the Garden of Eden. So I was zipping through the
Garden of Eden, grabbing a few items for dinner, and when I checked
out, the cashier asked me if I received the college student discount. I
let out a little chuckle. Oh no, honey, not by a long
shot. And you know what, I left the grocery store smiling, ear
to ear, a little spring in my step, fancy that I was mistaken
for an undergrad. A few days later, I zipped through the Garden of
Eden again, and when I checked out, a different cashier scanned my items
and she asked me if I received the senior citizen discount taken aback, I
squeaked a polite but perturbed no. And you know what, I did not
leave the grocery store smiling, ear to ear, feeling happy, springing my
step. My face had fallen and I admit I felt a tinge of embarrassment
and mild offense. Why why is being mistaken for older seen as an insult,
but being confused for younger a point of pride. Why is there such
a heavy negative judgment assigned to appearing older, or even appearing the exact age
you are. I work every day to try to reduce this negative age bias,
and yet there it was, staring me right in the face, my
own internalized agism. This is what agism does. It creeps into our spirits,
gets absorbed by us so that we two by the lies that we are
less than. It seeps into our interpersonal relationships manifesting and condescension or stereotyping,
and it finds its ways into our institutions, our policies, our practices,
our priorities. Qualified older workers, especially older women, are routinely pushed out
and kept out of jobs simply based on age bias. Nearly three and five
older workers report age discrimination, which has far reaching negative impacts not only on
the people themselves, but on their families and on the workplaces that miss out
on their contributions. Despite the fact that in New York City, the fastest
rising demographic are people over sixty five. Our mayors proposed twenty twenty four budgets
suggests twelve million in cuts to senior centers and home delivered meals. The aging
advocacy organization Live on New York says these cuts will disproportionately hurt older people of
color, LGBTQ, older adults, and other groups who have been historically excluded
from city services, and these cuts continue a legacy of discrimination in who our
government chooses to prioritize. Agism is so common that it often goes unnoticed,
unnamed, just the way things are. But it's not mild or benign.
It shortens lifespan and threatens our collective quality of life. And for those of
us who are not old yet, it generates a negativity toward and fear of
our own future selves. How dysfunctional is that? But there's good news.
As people of faith committed to justice, we reject all that which diminishes individuals
and communities. We know that the same forces that elevate white, young,
healthy, wealthy, male and straight people are the exact same stifling forces that
discount and devalue non white, old, disabled, poor, queer people.
The injustices interlocke we know that in God's realm, beauty and world have no
qualifying conditions and no expiration date. Because if old is an insult and God
is old, well, then we are insulting God. And let us not
call profane what God has called good. There's resurrection work afoot. Individuals and
groups are charting a more excellent way. Movements such as the Gray Panthers of
New York City, the Conscious Aging Movement, Saging International, the Anti War
Granny Peace Brigade, and Third Act are rejecting agism and rejecting the idea that
generational differences must equal competition and animosity. Climate activists Bill mckibbon and Achaia Winwood,
both in their sixties, found the organization Third Act. Third Act harnesses
the know how, the historical memory, the skills and time, and in
some cases the financial power of older people in order to protect the climate and
to strengthen democracy. McKibben and Winwood recently published in New York Times editorial in
which they highlight the importance of what they call with a wink codure power.
They wrote, what really should scare the corporate and political bad actors is the
prospect of old and young people connecting, because there is real power if we
work across generations. When young activists called for demonstrations outside the fossil friendly big
banks and invited Third Act to join in, Third Act members brought not only
their fierce determination but some good humor to the demonstration. Fossils against fossil fuels,
read one of their banners. We need only look around our own neighborhoods
our own church to know that old is not a liability but a source of
strength, and that cross generational connection and that cross generational connection is not just
a nice idea, but it's actually embedded and foundational to our faith. In
our New Testament passage today, we find an aging Paul addressing his younger friend,
mentee and fellow missionary Timothy, close to death and imprisoned. Paul encourages
Timothy to hold fast to the faith, to rely on the power of God,
and to guard the good treasure entrusted to him. Timothy is well equipped
for the journey, not only because Paul has offered his instruction, but also
because Timothy was taught a sincere faith by his grandmother Lois and his mother Unus.
Timothy's cross generational spiritual lineage is foundational to his development and to the early
Church. We don't know much about grandmother Lois and mother Unus. Unus is
referred to an acts as Timothy's Jewish mother who becomes a believer, and Lois
is likely her mother. There's no mention of their husbands. They stand on
their own two feet as faithful. I imagine they may have been local leaders
of the church, feeding and clothing the widows and orphans, instructing others in
the true faith, and fending off false teachers. I imagine they preached,
and they prayed and worship. Perhaps Paul has met them before, perhaps they
were co laborers with him. Perhaps Paul simply knows them through Timothy's glowing reports.
But one thing is for certain, the mentioning of Lois and Yunus is
no accident. By naming them, Paul marks their importance. Lois is the
only person in the New Testament specifically identified by the term grandmother. There's a
common turn of phrase, especially in advertisement, this isn't your grandmother's fill in
the blank, This isn't your grandmother's salad dressing recipe, or raincoat or dinner
theater, or this isn't your grandmother's tech company. It's meant to be cute,
But what lies behind it is the assumption that whatever is or was your
grandmother's is unquestionably worth setting aside, that it's worse than what we have now,
that it's bad or ugly or uncool, that it's okay to roll our
eyes at whatever was grandmother's. By lifting up Lois, Paul is saying to
Timothy and to us that this is your grandmother's church. Grandmother Lois is every
bit as important and indispensable as young Timothy. Without Lois and Eunice, there
would be no Timothy. One generation is not the church's discarded past. Another
it's vibrant present, another it's hopeful future. Every age cohort is the Church's
present and its hopeful future. We need each other. On a sunny summer
day in twenty twenty one, longtime member Mace Anderson appeared in the doorway of
my office, pressing me you have to come with me now. Mace explained
that scaffolding would go up soon around the church and he wanted me to see
something called the women's porch before it would be obscured. Well, I had
little idea. What is the women's porch, but was possessed of enough sense
to know that when May says go, you go, so going at a
good clip. He led me out of the church's Claire entrance, up the
sidewalk onto the corner of Riverside Drive and one hundred and twenty second Street.
And they're carved into the facade are four women from the Bible and a series
of symbols surrounding these women, intriguing symbols like a peacock to represent their immortality,
a beehive to celebrate their labor, an owl their wisdom, a strawberry
their good works. So who are the four women? The two facing north
are the sisters Mary and Martha. And do you know who is looking across
Riverside Drive, their faces pointing westward, leading us toward a hopeful horizon,
none other than Lois and Unice. Mace shared how important his grandmother had been
to his face and how much this architectural feature of Riverside meant to him.
On this old adult Sunday, I am taken with the fact that an old
woman, a grandmother, one of the earliest disciples, Lois, stands as
a spiritual sentinel etched into our church's very architecture. Right back here at riverside,
her legacy will not be forgotten. She serves as a powerful reminder that
we are only whole as a community when we celebrate and listen to the Lois's
among us. Right behind this very pulpit, she is anchoring us, unmoved
by the whipping winds of the Hudson, pointing us to a God whose steadfast
love endures from generation to generation. Oh what good news. And so we
thank you, Ancient One, for being with us today, Ancient of days,
teach us to celebrate our days, to honor, our aging selves and
our aging church as gifts from you. We pray this in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, One God,
Grandmother of us. All Amen.