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Feel Like Retiring?

Feel Like Retiring?

June 29, 2008

Text: Genesis 12:1-9

Gen 12:1-9

Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the LORD and invoked the name of the LORD. 9 And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

NRSV

When you turn fifty, you get bombarded with invitations to join AARP.

I caved in to the pressure.

I wanted to stop those invitations. I now get showered with offers for medicare supplements and life insurance.

Hmmm. I wonder if Abraham had that problem.

[sit in rocking chair]

Abraham was retired, and he enjoyed rocking on the front porch in the evening. He was seventy-five. That just happened to be the age you could join the senior citizen association back then. As a matter of fact, on the day he turned seventy-five, he received this in the mail.

He was being offered a chance of becoming a charter member of the Palestinian Association of Retired Persons.

I can imagine him sitting in his rocking chair, fingering the raised numbers on his card. “Might be worth joining,” he thought to himself. He could get discounts at local places he planned to frequent now that he had so much time on his hands—places like Jacob’s Pizza Emporium and the Sea of Galilee Golf Course. His wife Sarai and he planned to do some traveling, and the card would be handy at motels. The PARP publication would give him ideas about hobbies he could start, things that would help him pass the time, until he passed away.

Ironically, as he mulled all these great benefits, he heard a clear voice from within:

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

Abraham was confused.

He’d heard that voice from time to time throughout his life. That voice had given him direction, guidance, comfort.

But now, this is something else. The voice is directing him to doing something risky—something downright crazy. Leave the home he’d worked for and fixed up throughout his life? Why, just yesterday he’d had an in-ground pool installed! Leave the friendships and contacts he’d made? Leave his barber, who knew which way to part his hair without having to ask? Leave his trusted doctor and dentist? Even more importantly, leave his honest mechanic???

Yes, this voice that had been so soothing and reassuring throughout his life was now turning strange. If Abraham had been 25 instead of 75, he might have considered it. But now, he’s old. His joints hurt. His eyes are fading. His digestion isn’t as it used to be.

But as he mulled all this over, something struck him. And that realization caused his heart to beat faster, and his eyes widen. He smiled a huge smile, because he realized what that voice was really saying to him:

YOUR FUTURE WILL BE BETTER THAN YOUR PAST!

[get up]

You know, that’s the exact opposite of what many senior citizens believe, isn’t it?

The common senior belief is that tomorrow will never be as good as yesterday. Yesterday—when the body didn’t fail, when the kids were growing up, when the spouse was alive, when the money was coming in…you get the picture.

But what if you lived truly believing that the best days in your life are still ahead of you? What if you lived believing that all your past experiences—good and bad—were preparing you for something better?

I know one thing—you’d be extremely forward looking, and having the time of your life!

I love the attitude Winston Churchill had. Churchill was the famous Prime Minister of England during World War Two. One of the photographers present at his eightieth birthday expressed the hope that he might also photograph the great man on his one-hundredth birthday, twenty years later.

“I don’t see why not, young man,” Churchill replied. “You look reasonably fit to me.”

When you believe your future will be better than your past, you believe that you will outlive those young whipper-snappers. You believe that you will wear out, not rust out, as someone once put it. You believe that as you wear out, you’ll do that with a smile on your face.

Your future WILL be better than your past.

[[Go back to dramatizing Abraham.—sit back down]]

So Abraham felt his heart starting to beat faster. What adventures could God have up God’s sleeve? Children, grand children, great-grandchildren? New, exotic, never-seen-before places?

He shut his eyes, and imagined what he would encounter…and then the smile flickered, and faded.

Where IS God leading him? The last time he checked, there had been only one garden of Eden, and that was no more. Wherever God would lead him, there would be people—in strange lands, with strange customs, speaking strange languages. They might not take too kindly to this stranger with his entourage wandering through their country. What’s more, to get to any of these lands, he’d have to cross a dry, desert-like area called the Negeb. That’s dangerous territory.

So, reality wiped that smile right off Abraham’s face. There’d be hostile people. There’d be a rough terrain. And there’d be Abraham, all seventy-five years of him, equipped only with his PARP card and a bottle of Geritol.

[GET UP FROM ROCKING CHAIR]

THE TEMPTATION IS TO LISTEN TO VOICES OTHER THAN GOD’S.

Abraham HAD to have had serious doubts. He listened to the voice of common sense inside him. No doubt he listened to the voice of his society that said PARP members don’t get up and follow a voice into the wilderness.

Had he lived today, he would have heard society’s voice loud and clear. We live in a culture that celebrates the young, and tolerates—at best—the senior citizen.

Sometimes, society is downright insulting to those with gray hair.

When Mae Koscheski was seventy-three, she was hospitalized. Upon receiving her medical bill some time later, she looked at it closely. She discovered a $70 surcharge. What caught her eye wasn’t the amount, but the description: it was a surcharge for “extreme age.” Now, you can argue whether or not seventy-three is “extreme age”—the older I get, the less extreme it seems. But you can’t argue the fact that society can see senior citizens more as a burden, and they should be surcharged, accordingly.

If you listen long enough to such a biased culture, pretty soon you start believing what they say about you.

In Russia a few years ago, a railway worker accidentally locked himself in a refrigerator car. Unable to escape or to attract attention, he resigned himself to his fate.

As he grew colder, he wrote on the walls of the car the story of his approaching death. “Slowly freezing…half asleep…these may be my last words.”

When the car was opened the man was found dead, but the temperature of the car was only about fifty-six degrees. The freezing mechanism was out of order. There was plenty of fresh air available. There was no physical reason for this man’s death. He had died because he had believed that he would die.

How many senior citizens listen to those voices that say there’s nothing left for them? How many believe those voices and let their spirits die prematurely—when there is no real reason for death?

Abraham could have listened to those voices.

[sit down]

“Yes,” he thought, “it’s a lot easier to just sit here and not take the abuse.

“I can stay right here, in my hometown, where I grew up. I can continue talking with the same people I’ve known all my life. I can do the same thing every day. Go at seven to the McHebrews for my large premium coffee, and talk with other PARP members about the weather, how bad the world is, and how to stretch the shekel.”

So Abraham tried to talk himself out of it. But the more he heard his own voice, the more his own words came back to him as dull, lifeless, listless. Was he going to live the rest of his life talking to the same people, about the same things, at the same time, every day?

God’s voice sounded anything but dull! There was nothing “same old, same old,” about it. God’s voice was different. It was intriguing, fascinating! The lure of God’s words stirred the ashen coals in his heart, and heat and flame jumped to life.

There was no question what he would do. The choice between life in the circular rut, and life free from the deadly mundane, was really no choice at all.

Sure, there would be questioning by some, abuse by others, and doubt along the way. SO WHAT? The chance to let life end sweeter than it began was too tempting.

He determined, right then and there, to obey the voice.

HAPPINESS IS OBEYING THE VOICE.

If you are of the AARP vintage, have you heard the voice? If so, are you obeying it, or are you still just rocking on the front porch?

I’m not retired, and haven’t been through what many of you have been through. What I am told, though, is that often there’s a difficult period of adjustment.

Frank was a typical type-A personality, driven business man. Retirement hit him hard. He had several sessions with a counselor. These are the words of his counselor:

“Toward the end of our time together, Frank seemed to wake up from a drugged sleep…When I saw him a year later, I had to blink to know it was the same man. He had started his own small company, with new projects all around the world. He was vibrant, directed, and nearly always singing. The pivotal difference was that he stopped experiencing himself as the company had defined him, and realized he could define himself.”

–Fast Company, 3/05, p. 89

Frank woke up from his drugged sleep, and started living.

God’s call to Abraham woke him from his drugged sleep.

So many of you have heard God’s voice, and you’re so amazingly energized.

I can’t tell you how impressed I am by the AARP folks in this congregation.

Do you know what some of them have done?

Some started the Keepers’ Program, that you heard about today. Some work on our Care Team. Some volunteer on odd jobs around the church; others volunteer in service organizations in the community. Some begin service projects. Some do truly “out of the box” things—one person in this congregation drove a lawnmower across the United States a few years ago raising consciousness and funds for prostate cancer awareness.

What are these crazy 55+ people doing?

They’re doing nothing more than imitating Abraham. The man who was seventy-five, and God pointed to him and said, “Age doesn’t stop my plans for that person! I have dreams for him yet to be realized! He has wisdom and experience harvested from life—and I can use that!”

So many of you will be my role model, when I hang up my preaching shingle.

Then again, I might not hang it up totally.

Look at this man.

He’s Gordon Cosby. After serving as a military chaplain in WW2, he founded the Church of the Savior in Washington D.C. It became an innovative, legendary church.

Gordon is now eighty-five. He should have retired and started taking it easy twenty years ago, right?

But that’s the last thing on his mind. He still preaches every Sunday. He still makes his daily pastoral rounds in the inner city. And he still asks challenging questions about himself, his church, and his community.

You see, God has so much more left for him to do.

If you have your AARP card, I wonder what God has left for you to do?

[[get out of rocking chair]]

So Abraham got out of the rocking chair, and threw the PARP card in the trash. He went on to do what God had in mind for him to do. In the process, Abraham changed the history of the world.

You’re NEVER too old to change things.

It might not be the world.

But…it might just be…yourself.

Let this prayer, that we pray together, be our benediction:

Help me to believe in beginnings, to make a beginning to be a beginning

So that I may not just grow old,

But grow new each day

To this wild, amazing life

You call me to live

With the passion of Jesus Christ. –Ted Loder