May 24, 2009:  LOVE DOESN’T LEAVE BLANK SPACES
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; John 17:9-11; 1 John 5:9-13; Psalm 1
Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church

          My mom used to tell me that God made us teenagers so our parents would be glad when we left home.  She wasn’t saying this about me, of course; she meant my younger siblings.  Her words, however, reflect the necessity of a certain amount of tension between parents and children.  After all, if everything was OK, why would anyone grow up?  Today we honor four high school graduates.  Some of them will be going off to school in the fall, some will remain at home as they continue their education.  The most important way we help our children grow up is by giving them both roots and wings—and both come from love.
          You wouldn’t know that today’s sermon title is, “Love Doesn’t Leave Blank Spaces” unless you were the rare individual who consults your newsletter in preparation for worship.  I came up with today’s title back in April, before we decided to honor the graduates today.  Since the newsletter is the only place the sermon titles show up until the sermon gets to the website, there wasn’t much risk of anyone noticing a title change, but I think the title works—“Love Doesn’t Leave Blank Spaces.”  Today the congregation stands with four families who are one step closer to a blank space.  You may have already had the conversation, “Can I have her room when she leaves?”  We stand with these families because, directly or indirectly, we are part of their children’s roots and wings.
          By the way, just because you aren’t graduating doesn’t mean I’m not talking to you.  People don’t stop maturing because they’re old enough to vote.  I had lunch with a colleague who had been to a workshop on brain health.  You know that forgetfulness those of us of a certain age fear is early onset Alzheimer’s?  It turns out this forgetfulness reflects both an enhanced ability to concentrate and a greater awareness of distractions, and hence a need to adjust our thinking and learning strategies.  Our brains pretty much do that without our needing to be conscious of it.  What does benefit from our conscious effort, however, is the maturing of our spiritual selves. 
          This is where roots and wings come in for all of us, not just the graduates.  Are you aware of the stages of faith?  These stages parallel what we think of as the process of growing up.  Just as we progress through stages for language acquisition and cognitive function, through stages of emotional maturity, so we develop as spiritual beings.  Pre-schoolers think in terms of magic and obey what we think of as rules as a matter of trust in the person stating them, but eventually they develop their own ability to understand and make rules.  It is normal and natural for adolescents to become rule-breakers and rule-rejecters.  This can be a disorienting time, but as young adults, we address this by developing the ability to make judgments of right and wrong.  Some folks remain in this place, or return to a rules orientation, but for those willing to negotiate the booby traps of anarchy and relativism, for those able to strike a balance, objectivity and acceptance develop.  Eventually, by integrating life’s lessons, we develop into persons of wisdom. 
The Church has always understood that, by embracing our roots we receive our wings, and by using our wings we discover our roots.  Gregory of Nyssa, a 4th century theologian, articulated this as the Christian life moving from “glory” to “glory.”  He believed humans were created in order to be deified or made one with God, perhaps in  echo of the writer of John’s gospel and epistles.  Gregory believed we were designed to live in one great progression toward God-likeness, by experiencing what we call stages of faith or spiritual growth, much as we experience the stages of human development—moving from magical thinking, through rule-making and rule-breaking, through disorientation to re-orientation and wisdom and sainthood.  We never really “arrive” in this life, Gregory said, but if we are persistent, we constantly grow deeper and deeper into glory, more and more like God.
          What I say to the graduates, I say to us all:  this means both roots and wings.  Roots, meaning tradition and values, remembering who we are and where we come from, embracing what our parents taught us and what we learned in Sunday School.  That’s “roots.”  Wings, meaning making our mark in the world, lifelong reforming and changing and growing.  That’s “wings.”  But they’ve gotta go together, these roots and wings.  Roots without wings is stagnation, not growing up, Peter Pan, not responding to God’s call on our life.  You were put here for a reason.  To not use your wings is to reject God’s wisdom in creating you as who-you-are-in-particular.  Wings without roots, is chaos and anarchy.  It’s what happens to plants when you shoot them with Round Up—they grow so hard and fast, they grow themselves to death without bearing fruit.  It’s living for your self alone, it’s reactive and self righteousness.
          So what do roots and wings have to do with “Love doesn’t leave blank spaces”?  Remember the story in Acts, how the disciples did the sacred casting of lots to fill Judas’ spot, so they’d have a leadership cadre consisting of that magic number twelve?  It’s hard to know whether their impulse to fill Judas’ spot was for grief at his loss or out of a sense of his betrayal, or whether they were responding to a deeply-ingrained religious tradition of numerology.  You remember, the twelve tribes of Israel.  It’s hard to know what was going on in their heads, but it seems as if they knew there was a space and they needed to fill it.  We could explain their reasons as “tradition,” but it could also be love.  This is suggested by the writer of John’s gospel and letters.  He stakes everything on a relationship with God of mutual love.  Love doesn’t leave blank spaces.
          Thinking of you graduates today, I think it’s love at stake here.  Speaking on behalf of this congregation, speaking as people who have been part of giving you roots, when someone grows up and moves on, there’s a hole left.  You have been among us, in worship and fellowship, helping with the kids, becoming friends with us.  Even if you have barely been with us, you have been part of us as we equipped and supported your parents in raising you.  We have invisibly prayed you through childhood and your teen years (you didn’t know that, did you?).  We will continue to pray you through the coming years (that’s our commitment).  Whether you are aware of it or not, we are part of your roots.  As you pass this huge milestone you’ve been working toward almost your entire lives—graduating from high school—we hope you find the wings we’ve been helping you develop.  And we hope your wings bring you back home periodically to roost.
          Let me share some of the best advice I know for persons at any stage of life.  It’s by Rainer Maria Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet:  “I want to beg you to be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  What I say to the graduates, I say to all of us.  Live the questions now.  It’s about roots and wings.