Jesus asks, "To what shall I compare this generation?" We ask ourselves, "What's up with kids today?" It's always been a pastime of the aging generation - ragging on the younger generation and complaining about their lack of this, that or something or other. Consider this quote from a well-known world figure. "The youth of today loves luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders and love to chatter instead of work. Children are now the tyrants...of their households. They contradict their parents, chatter in front of company, gobble up food and tyrannize teachers." ( Those words were spoken by Socrates in 400 B.C.)
The comparing of- and a certain animosity between - generations is nothing new in our world. It has always been thus.Do these words sound at all familiar? "We're just trying to be friendly... We're the young generation and we've got something to say." Or how about "people try to put us down - talkin' 'bout our generation." They could easily be from artists of today such as "The Backstreet Boys" or Ricky Martin. But they're not. That was, respectively, "The Monkees" and "The Who" - my generation, available only on "oldies stations" now!
Today we have the friction that contact causes between the "Builders" (that's mostly our parents), the "Boomers" (most of us here), Generation X - and the new "Millennial kids." To the young, their parents are often stupid and untrustworthy, while their grandparents have a shot at being perceived as good and right. ( The so-called "middle-aged" always seem to wield the power. Youth feels misunderstood... the aging feel unappreciated.) Who can say which one is right? Jesus says, "To what shall I compare this generation?"
NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, however, comes flat-out and tells us who, in his opinion, gets the nod as "The Greatest Generation." In a book by that same title, Brokaw argues that it's the GI Generation, that stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II, that went to work in American factories, that bought bonds to support the war effort - the folks commemorated in the movie, "Saving Private Ryan," that they are the greatest generation. They are the ones, women and men, the living and the dead, who willingly gave their lives, who gave their limbs, who gave up the sweet dreams of childhood for the enduring nightmare of real war - the Big One - that saved the world from Fascism, the war that protected the home of the brave, the land of the free so that we might grow up in safety, democracy and prosperity.
But you know what? They're not the greatest generation. It is difficult not to compare; after all, those people performed innumerable acts of quiet heroism that changed history and, in the process, they became a strong population of people with tenacity forged in the battles of the South Pacific, in Northern Africa and in Europe. When the war ended and they returned home - the ones who did return (and many, many did not) - they had, by virtue of participation in a global war, probably matured beyond their years. When we look at our parents or grandparents or others we know from the "GI Generation," it's hard for our own generational self-esteem not to take a beating. After all...how can you top saving the world from Hitler? We honor those folks, especially on a day like today, July 4th.
But...they are not the greatest generation. Sure, they overcame tremendous obstacles... and that generation changed a lot of things. In fact, they unwittingly carved out more social change than many of their picket-line-walking, peace-marching children.
Compare, for example, the women of those two generations. Women's lib really got started when "Rosie the Riveter" went to work 30 years before anyone thought of calling it Women's Lib. Women serving in fighting units during the Gulf War were a direct and traceable result of women serving in the WAVES and WACS and the front-line nurses of WWII. That generation of women and men came home from the war - armed with higher education, a more worldly sensibility and a new determination. They developed, in this country, a new and strong middle class of mobile, success-oriented families. The social strata which had previously been permanent, segregated and separate, started to mix in a manner unimagined before... creating prosperity, creating new ideas, and, of course, creating some trouble.
But...they are not the greatest generation. So which is? Which generation stands out in distinction? It's a difficult question. Actually, it's not that it's so difficult. It's a bad question. It's the wrong question. Because the greatest generation is not people born between a given set of years, but the people -- any age, at any age, who are reborn. The question is not of generational greatness, but regenerational greatness. "To what shall I compare this generation?" asks Jesus. In utter frustration he bemoans the stubbornness of people's hearts.
He says, "like children sitting around and taunting one another, we played for you and you would not dance; we cried and you would not cry with us." We all know Jesus wept. He also ranted and raved. Jesus was saying, "No matter what I do in the name of God, people find some reason to dismiss me. To ignore me." Woe.. he says. It's a word that our modern computer spell-checkers probably don't even recognize. But Jesus says, "Woe to that generation that tries to trivialize me - to make me irrelevant."
There was, of course, a small portion of the generation to whom Jesus spoke, as there has been in every generation that has followed - a portion who would listen and accept and follow Jesus: who would dance when He played and cry along with Him as well.
That dance between Jesus and a generation of people goes on today. But it's not Generation X, or Boomers, or Builders, or Millennial kids. It's all those and more. It's every person from every generation who submits to regeneration of the heart.
Now the word regeneration is tricky. A literal interpretation means "born again." But I hesitate to go there because that expression has been so mis-used and abused... and many of us here have suffered the abuse that's gone with it.
Let's think of it another way. From a Christian perspective, living without letting Christ direct our lives is like driving a car with its front end out of line. You can stay on the road if you grip the steering wheel with both hands and hang on tightly. Any lapse of attention, though, and you head straight for a ditch. Turning our lives over to Christ is a little like getting a front-end alignment for our hearts. The pull toward the ditch is corrected from the inside. That's not to say that there won't be bumps and potholes ahead that will still try to jar us off the road. Temptations and challenges will always test our alertness to steer a safe and forward course. We can hardly afford to fall asleep at the wheel. But, with Christ, the basic course direction in our internal mechanism can be restored. That's "regeneration."
And those throughout every generation who have followed Christ and given their hearts and lives over to God have experienced that wonderful regeneration. Together, that generation - which includes even us today - serve, strive, grieve and die. They're people who, through faith, conquered kingdoms, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of flames, and faced the edge of the sword. Those who were stoned or hung for their beliefs. People of all generations who have suffered for their faith and for the rights of others and died with words of truth and justice on their lips. People of whom the world was not worthy. People who did not use their faith so much as allow their faith to use them.
They are the Greatest Generation. That's the generation here. The Intergenerational dominion of God; marked not by the year of their birth, but by the call of the Sovereign on their lives. To call one chronological generation "the greatest" immediately diminishes all generations who preceded it and all generations who follow it. It distracts us from the Christian truth that, the Awesome Divine Presence of God, we are but one equal people, a single generation, a human generation.
We're told in 2 Corinthians 5.17 that, "If anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creation; the old has passed away and the new has come." This "regeneration" of which I speak this morning is an act of God within us... worked through the power of the Holy Spirit upon our lives. It involves an enlightening of the mind... a change of the will and a renewed nature. When any of us accept Christ into our lives and turn the control of our lives over to God, that "new creation" miracle occurs.
Several years ago the American Red Cross was gathering supplies, medicine, clothing, and food for the suffering people of Biafra. Inside one of the boxes that showed up at the collecting depot one day was a letter. It said, "We have recently given our lives, in earnest, over to God, and thanks to this change of heart, we now want to help. We won't ever need these again. Can you use them for something?" Inside the box were several Ku Klux Klan hooded white sheets. The sheets were cut down to strips and eventually used to bandage the wounds of black persons in Africa. From symbols of hatred to bandages of love because of "regeneration" - the power of Christ's "new creation." St. Paul said that nothing else matters.
On this, "Independence Day," it's good to recall that in Galatians 5 we read, "it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. The only, thing that counts is faith expressing itself throuph love. " The people of time who have given... or are giving... or will give - themselves over to the power of love and who live to better the world because of their faith in God: these are the "greatest generation."
"To what shall I compare this generation?" Jesus asks. Every generation of people must prove itself and its worth. But our innate worth comes from being children of God. Greatness is not to be found in worldly accomplishment or even heroic efforts... but rather, greatness is living, as Jesus did: trusting and following the direction and power of God.
Amen .
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