The Park Road Pulpit

“A policeman,” says Gordon, and Ariana answers next, “a teacher.” Jordan wants to be “a karate man,” and D.J., who is good looking and obviously secure with his masculinity, even at the tender age of four, has his sights set on being “a cheerleader.” Though he can’t tell me why, Damien will be “a space man,” and, since she doesn’t know that she already is one, Asha is planning to be “a princess.” Colin, like many of us, “hasn’t decided yet.”

Behind the next red door of our Child Development Center, the children gather around, just as anxiously, to answer my question, their eyes aglow with the wide-eyed hope of an unbounded tomorrow. “Somebody has to be a dentist,” John says. “So you’re going to be a dentist?” I say. “That’s great, John” – “No.” He interrupts. “Not me – I’m going to be a bulldozer man.” (John wants to “push around sand” he tells me – just not in somebody’s mouth!) Kendall wants to be “a cowgirl,” so she can just ride horses – all the time.

From behind Kendall, I hear a quiet voice, “I’m going to be a vegenarian.” “A vegenarian,” I repeat, quizzically. “Great!? Because… you like broccoli?” I ask, cautiously, “No!” says beautiful little Julia Ferrante, behind those dark, brown eyes – “because I like horses, too!” (The light goes on in my head – how could I not have understood. Not a vegetarian – Julia is going to be a horse doctor when she grows up – a vegenarian.)

I’m sitting in one of those little kindergarten chairs, loving my job, taking notes as fast as I can write, chuckling inside when I hear the next voice. Obviously the product of materialistic and hedonistic parenting, this poor child, who should, even now, especially in a Child Development Center of a Baptist church, be receiving the nurture and education that would lead him to choose a life that would allow for service to the poor and the needy, this poor child has obviously already begun to heed the secular call of a liberal world and not the expectations of Jesus, this poor, misguided child cries out, “I’m going to be a rock star – so I can make a lot of money!” And then, to his father’s great dismay, Bennett dances off, air guitar, in hand, playing “to beat the band.”

The ancient Phoenician commercial capital of Zeraphath must have been a beautiful city. It rested well, on the coast of the sparkling Mediterranean Sea. It prospered well, from the trade of its active ships. But all of Phoenicia was pagan territory. Home to worshippers of the Canaanite God, Baal. The infamous Queen Jezebel had made her god and her country a target for the prophets of Israel.

I have imagined her as old, but she probably was not. Only unfortunate. Unfortunate, due to life’s arbitrary nature, that she found herself without a husband. And in her day, no matter your ability or your work ethic, no matter even your deceased husband’s prior status in a prosperous city, if there were no man of his family to take you as his possession – when your husband died, the next day you awoke, dis-possessed, of material resources, of status, of personal pride. To say “poor widow,” would have been redundant, for to be a widow was always to be poor. To be a widow was to be an outcast. To be a widow in that world was to find yourself helpless and without hope.

The miracles, recorded as Elijah’s story, are metaphors, lessons of learning, tales of children growing up at the hand of a God of Grace and Abundance. At the hand of a widow, herself just scraping by in a time of deep famine and in a land of a pagan god – amid great scarcity, at the hands of those who were thought the enemies of “our God,” the prophet receives his sustenance. It is a subversive message. A message that runs counter to established, conventional religious thought. It is the message that “God’s universal love reaches beyond the boundaries of nationality, ethnicity, and even religious affiliation.”[1]

In the wilderness… in a time of drought… in the unreasonable request of one who claimed to speak for God… in the remarkable faith of one who supposedly knew no God…

The eyes of two very different children were opened to the gracious, life-giving work of God, in their very midst.[2]

Why is it, when asked, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” we are taught to answer by naming a vocation? A vocation is what we’re going to do, to earn a living. But, what you’re going to be when you grow up is something much greater than a space man, a veterinarian, a rock ‘n roll star.

Speaking as a father for a moment let me tell you that I honestly do not care what my boys do when they grow up, even if it means playing loud, rebellious music! I do care, deeply, though, that they grow up. That they mature. That they come to recognize who they really are in this world, and what is really lasting, and how they can contribute to that.

Speaking as a pastor, I will tell you the same thing about this community that I have come so to love. I do not care what we do when we grow up. How long, for example, will we continue to do “Room in the Inn” for the homeless? It is a great program, but I don’t know. Will we buy this property on Hough Road and begin a ministry of hospitality there? I can’t tell you. Will our mission interests take us to Cuba, again, or even into more remote locales? It matters not.

I do care, deeply, however, that we grow up -- and that we grow up, together.

And how will we know that we are grown? We will not. We will never know that we are grown, because maturity never lets anyone rest on the laurels of anything they have simply done. But growing up does come. It comes, humbly, to those who learn to see. Not to those who learn to see what is -- but to those who learn to see what might be.

Back in the CDC, there’s beautiful, dark-skinned, dark-eyed Teavian. No practical money making schemes for her. No pragmatic planning for the future in her mind. No, Teavian is not thinking of what she’ll do when she grows up. And she answers well. “What are you going to be when you grow up?” Without a hesitation, she says, “I’m going to be s Unicorn.”

[1] Choon-Leong Seow, New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. III, p.130.

[2] Just prior to this story of the widow, we read that Elijah has pronounced a divine sentence of drought on the pagan land, and that God has sent him into the wilderness, east of Jordan. Elijah is fed by wild ravens, which were ritually unclean according to ancient Israelite law. But in this time of drought, God’s prophet (charged to keep the ritual law) is fed in the desert (foreign territory), by that which was considered unacceptable to God. If we are willing to place ourselves in “foreign territory,” to step beyond our own comfort zone, and if we are truly open to God – we will never go hungry.