Uphill Both Ways

“Walking Uphill Both Ways”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

Matthew 24.45-51

Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. But if that wicked slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and he begins to beat his fellow slaves, and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know. He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.   

            America changed after WWII.  It wasn't the war that changed us, nothing as momentous as that.  Big change usually comes in modest ways.  Historians claim the biggest change came from the GI Bill.  In 1946, Congress passed legislation that all those who went to war can now go to college. People did, a lot of people.

            Colleges grew up overnight to accommodate the influx of students.  How the GI Bill changed us was it reshaped how we work. The main occupation of people before the GI Bill was farming, following farming it was trades, and at the very bottom were people who needed a college degree: doctors, lawyers, and ministers.  After the GI Bill the labor force shifted and diversified. 

            So did people's expectations.  You've heard and maybe said, "honey you can be whatever you want to be" or "follow your dreams."  These words were born of the GI Bill.  Before 1946 you followed yourself to the south forty or into family business or into a trade.  You might set off, but rarely to college, a profession. How we worked changed.

            The second change is a bit innocuous, invisible until it doesn't work.  The air-conditioned home.  Before the air conditioner, houses were designed with porches, front porches, where people sat in the cool of the evening because the house was too hot.  Once air conditioning emerged, you didn't need to go outside.  Into this air-conditioned home came the television, then cable, then internet, and now Amazon brings everything.  Air conditioning made our houses closed off, a private world.  We still design homes with a parlor, but it is a kind of a museum exhibit.  This is where people sat in homes when people came to call.  How and where we lived changed.

            The third tectonic shift of post-WWII America is the second car.  The automobile had been around for a generation prior to 1946, but the car was for the husband to get to work.  After 1946 the automobile became a bit more egalitarian.  Now, everybody had their own car, no matter what gender.  This was a huge shift in mobility, but what it really changed was our relationship to food.

            Food shopping instead of food growing became our world.  One old farmer said it best when describing the world before 1946, he said, if we didn't plant it, if we didn't feed it, we didn't eat it.  I saw this in old contracts for pastors.  They got a small salary, a manse, and an acre of land for a garden.  Food wasn't at a supermarket; food was out your back door.  An old map of this church shows that just beyond the manse was a chicken coop.

            After 1946, people didn't can peaches; they bought a can of peaches.  They didn't keep chickens; they bought eggs and bought dressed chickens from the meat counter.  The second automobile made it possible for everyone to shop at a large store with variety instead of the local grocery or bodega for necessities. 

            I saw this shift in my own lifetime with mustards.  When I was a kid, there were two types of mustard: Frenches and the store brand.  By the time I was in high school there was Grey Poupon and the exotic stoneground mustard.  Today, no grocery store worth its salt would have less than two dozen different mustards.  This mustard explosion can be traced to the second automobile.  How we got our food and where changed.

            Realize all of this began nearly 80 years ago.  That means the subtle changes that will remake us again have already begun.  What are they?  Well, hard to say.  What is the modest shift like an act of Congress for education, a machine that pushes cold air, or an addition, what they will be for our future is not clear.  Certainly, cell phones as they are today might be such a shift.  Maybe artificial intelligence.  Mapping the human genome is a possibility.  Hard to say what change will change us the most.

            At Gilgal, the Lord instructed Joshua to set up twelve stones.  The stones, one for each tribe of the Israelites, the stones were set up to beg a question of the next generation, "why are these stones here?"  To this question, the older generation is supposed to tell the story.  We were slaves in Egypt and by the mighty hand of God, we were saved, rescued, brought into this land flowing with milk and honey. To tell that story is why these stones are here.

            If you have read Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy then you know this is a rather tidy version of the story.  We were slaves and now we are free; we lived in misery, but then our lives changed; we became a landed people, of a promised land.  This is a concise retelling, but without the broken parts: the wandering in the desert, the rebellions, and the angry God or the angry Moses.  But the stones of Gilgal were not meant to be a critical understanding, an ironic reading. They were put up to beg the question: why are these here?  From the telling and hearing of the story, the next generation can ask: why are we here; what are we here to be, to do, to make, to believe? The stones were there for the next generation.

            I grew up hearing about the older generations from a grandfather.  He went out of his way to remind me at all times and places that he had it rough, times were hard, life was brutal and harsh, but now it is easy, and people don't realize all they have. You, you are spoiled and selfish and coddled. I was not like him; my life was different.  He was someone whose journey to school, which was a rural schoolhouse during the Depression in the Dakotas, his journey to school was in the snow, barefoot, uphill both ways.  Times were hard.

            Having two other grandfathers around me as well as their friends helped dispel some of the dark romanticism of the one grandfather whose childhood was so harsh.  I have listened to men of his generation describe the same rural walk to school as the glory of their childhood, not the misery.  And knowing my grandfather's life I can see a great deal of his misery was what he made with his hands not the hand he was dealt.

            At the stones of Gilgal, we need to honor the basic story.  We were slaves and by the hand of God we were rescued, saved, brought to freedom.  The older generation needs to tell the story of how, where, who we are.  We need to pass this story on.  But what is really needed, the story that needs to be begged, are the questions to be answered by the next generation.  Why are we here; what are we making; for whom are we toiling?  And most important: What freedom are we finding?

            When we turn to the teaching of Jesus, the question of each generation comes clear.  It is as if each generation is a slave put in charge of a household, entrusted with the master's absence.  We are there to live in freedom, the freedom offered by the trust of the departed master.  What does the slave do with the freedom given to him?  Jesus is making the bold claim, each generation has the opportunity for freedom.  What will you make of it?

            I have been blessed the last two years with the opportunity to teach Confirmation.  And there is no snark in that.  It is a blessing.  The blessing is to go to Gilgal each week.  To walk amidst the stones set up by the generations before us.  To walk in these stones, we talked about the parts of the Bible, the order of worship, creation and evolution; we went to Camp Johnsonburg and the Met.  So, there was nature and art.  We discussed doctrines and dogmas as if they were different backyard birds or types of cutleries.  In the end we worked through the Apostles' Creed and in that we found where our faith could be seen, heard, or not. 

            In one statement of faith by a confirmand I heard an exquisite claim, "heaven is something I just can't understand."  Yes.  Success!  As we made our way from tradition to tradition, sacrament to sacrament, we were setting up the stones at Gilgal once again. And we were creating the place for the Confirmands to ask the question each generation must ask: Why are we here; what are we making; for whom are we toiling?  What freedom are we finding?

            The confirmands will find these questions going forward as they move through the seasons of their life.  If they are lucky, they will remember: our answers about purpose and trust and freedom change through life.  The answers of teen years are different from the answers of our eighties.  Not that one was right and the other wrong.  The question of freedom changes with the demands of the time.

            The teaching of the faithful and unfaithful slave is the question of each generation.  It is how we work, how we live, and how we eat.  Are we faithful to what has been entrusted to us or do we live as if we have no duty, no obligation, no calling beyond ourselves?  What are we making of freedom?  What is our Exodus story to be told at Gilgal? What will we make of life together?

            In their statements of faith almost all the confirmands described the world as broken.  On Tuesday night at their examination, one of the elders asked, what does this brokenness mean?  What does brokenness mean to you?  Myles Bourne stepped up for the class and spoke clearly about the wars and abuse and atrocities that cover the front page of the paper each day.  We live in such brokenness.  He also spoke of how we can change that; effect change on a global scale.  In doing so he spoke of this church and the possibilities we possess.

            Myles' words were the stuff of Gilgal.  These people were enslaved and now they are free.  We have left our Egypt behind to enter the promise land.  Life is broken, but it can be made right.  Tell the generations, freedom is possible. 

            This is the great blessing of confirmation for me.  I get to hear the generations at Gilgal.  Hearing generations beyond one's own is a great gift. 

            But this is also not just Confirmation. This is one of the great gifts of being a church.  Where else can you hear four generations of voices, four generations of vision and wonder, fear and hope, commingled?  We sing together; we pray together; we find what is true together.  This is what makes the church a kind of promise land, a place to find freedom. 

            So, to the confirmands, remember this when Mrs. Leardi calls and asks you to read in worship or do a children's message, or when Jordan asks you to sing or play, we need your voice.  We need your voice as part of the whole, the four generations ever becoming the church.  Your voice is our question born anew: what are the stones here? 

            And to those who are long past the teen years, your voice is so needed.  Not the cantankerous voice of someone who walked uphill both ways, but the honest confession of generations struggling to be free, struggling to answer the questions a second or third time: Why are we here; what are we making; for whom are we toiling?  What freedom are we finding?  If you truly walked uphill both ways to school with my grandfather, there is good news, the kids nowadays have Google maps. But to the confirmands: remember powerful answers to the questions are not found in a Google search.  They are found here in worship, in service, in fellowship.  They are here in our Gilgal.  Amen.