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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "Of Our Fathers and Mothers in the Faith." The scripture reading of the morning is 1st Timothy chapter 5. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 1. "Do not rebuke an older man but exhort him

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as you would a father. Treat younger men like brothers, older women like mothers, younger women like sisters in all purity. Honor widows who are real widows. If a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn their religious duty to their own family and make some return to their parents, for this is acceptable in

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the sight of God. She who is a real widow and is left all alone has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, whereas she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command this so that they may be without reproach. If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially

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for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. I would like to talk with you this morning of a very important matter and I

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would ask that we base our thinking upon these words written to the young minister Timothy. "In the family of God's people, let older men and women be treated with respect and loving concern." Now I believe all of us are astute enough to know that we have growing problems with the elderly in our society

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today. Five statistics might make the case. Every 20 seconds an American becomes 65 years of age. There are more people in America who are over 65 than the entire population of Canada. There are today 30,000 Americans that are a hundred years old or older and it is estimated that by the turn of the

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century in just nine years there will be 200,000 Americans who are 100 or 100 plus. The age group from 85 to 100 is the fastest growing age group in our society. In fact, it is growing at a rate six times greater than its nearest competing age group and one out of every three working men and women in our

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country today are actively involved in the support of the elderly. But our problem with the age is not simply a matter of numbers. We have developed a kind of tendency to disparage those who are older. We're part of a society that idolizes youth. All the commercials on television tell us how to get rid of our

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wrinkles or how to get our hair replaced or how to tone up our bodies. The only time you see an older person on television is when she says, "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up." The motto of our society sometimes seems to be to live a long life and die young. Even our humor is oftentimes pointed at older

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people. Did you hear about the two older people who went out together and she was all excited because of the gleam in his eye until she discovered it was a short circuit in his hearing aid? Did you hear about the two older folks who went to the drive-in movie together and she had to slap him three times just to make

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sure he was alive? There are a lot of jokes of that kind and you have heard them too. But perhaps more profoundly, we have a tendency to treat the aged as if they are somehow handicapped and I mean by that that they are more different from us than they are like us. Business rejects them when they get to be 70

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years of age. We all have a tendency to treat them like children. Yes dear, no dear. If a 30 year old woman walks into a room with a spot on her dress we think nothing of it. If an 80 year old woman walks into a room with a spot on her dress we begin to wonder if she's starting to deteriorate. If an older

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person has an automobile accident and they are generally very safe drivers but if they have an automobile accident they run a far greater risk of losing their licenses than any of those who are younger. And surprisingly enough even in the medical world there is this tendency to disparage the elderly. How many times

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an older person will go in and the doctor will say well you can begin to expect this kind of thing when you reach your age. Now doctors know that 85% of the illnesses in our country are to be found in only 15% of our people. Illness is not essentially chronological, it's physiological. But they forget that and

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as a result they create I think a lot of the atrogenic crippling. A young person walks in with a set of symptoms and receives some medication. An older person walks in with those same symptoms and receives, well you've got to expect those things when you reach your age. Shouldn't geriatrics be a major field of study for

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every physician in a day and age like this? But I don't want to appear to be pointing the finger only at others for this same kind of disparagement exists within the church. Not a week goes by that I don't receive at least one telephone call from a representative of a pulpit committee somewhere seeking a

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new pastor for their church and they want to know if I have any names to suggest. And they always give me a brief description of what they're looking for and invariably in that description come words like these, "We're looking for someone young who can draw young people." Now that implies in the first place that

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an older person cannot draw young people. It implies in the second place that when a person reaches the prime of his or her ministry, they're no longer desired. And in any case, why is it that we are so anxious to draw the youth into the church and not equally concerned with drawing those elderly persons who are

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not yet of the fold of Christ? We build all of our new congregations in suburbs because that is where most of the young people and their children live. We see all older people as if they are the same, as if they're no longer growing, as if they have somehow stagnated. I shall never forget a young Nigerian boy saying

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to me in Africa after discussing the way the elderly are treated in our society, he said, "You know, the great goal of every Nigerian's life is to become old because it is when you become old that you are truly respected and admired." Whatever words one uses to describe it, even the church is failing to honor our

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mothers and fathers in the faith. And the fact is that these people have a great deal to offer. In the first place, they have much free time. They are also at a place in life where they can risk more than a younger family can risk. They are usually out from under corporate pressure. They're no longer controlled

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by ambition. The family has usually gone on to care for its own responsibilities and so they no longer have that burden. And they've reached that place where they can leave the things they don't want to do to the younger and focus precisely on the things that they want to do. And I have discovered that with

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many older people, that is to think more deeply about life, there is, you know, what is called an end-of-the-game perspective. You know how it is at the end of a game, any kind of game. You can look back over it and see the right moves and the wrong moves. You couldn't tell at that moment in the game exactly what was right or

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wrong, but as you look back, you can see these things. Well, older people have that perspective from which they can look back. Many of them read. Many of them discuss these issues. Many of them philosophize. My friends, it's the coming of the night that truly reveals the stars. Don't ever say that older people

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cannot change. Remember, please, that they are preparing right now for the greatest change they will ever know. Think of what the elderly have done. Gladstone became Prime Minister of England when he was 83. Wesley still preached regularly when he was 88. Michelangelo painted his magnificent masterpiece, The Last

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Judgment, when he was 66. Colonel Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken after he was retired. Tennyson wrote Crossing the Bar when he was 80 years of age. Norman Vincent Peale still preaches regularly at 93 years of age. Orville Redenbacher didn't start his popcorn business until late in life, and today it's the biggest

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popcorn business in the world. I know a church where older people gather every Monday morning. They're called the Monday Morning Marvels, and they go around and do repair jobs in the church and help in cleaning the church, and as a result save that congregation a great deal of money. I know the church where the elderly

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people have their own prayer chain, and they are so experienced at prayer that the power of that chain is something beautiful to behold. I know congregations where older people do most of the telephoning for the church because they know a great number of people and also because they've lived long enough to be

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able to handle just about anything that is said to them in response over the phone. I know of churches in which older people are helping younger people learn how to get jobs or to become entrepreneurs. I remember the church I served in California. We had an older couple in every elementary Sunday school

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classroom. Why? Because many of those youngsters only got to see their grandparents who lived back east at Christmas time. They didn't have much opportunity to associate with the older, and so we had an older couple, silver hair, in every elementary classroom so that those youngsters could learn about

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the beauties of age. I remember asking a hundred-year-old man, "Do you think you're going to miss the next hundred years?" And he looked at me with a huge smile and a wink and said, "Sonny, don't be too sure I'm going to miss the next hundred years. I'm a lot stronger now than I was when I started my first hundred years." What I'm

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suggesting to you is that when it comes to the elderly, those of us who are younger have a rare privilege. First, we can care for those who have cared for us. I remember when my father was taken to the hospital with a heart attack and he became somewhat confused in the intensive care unit, and I was there with

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him and managed to calm him and get him moved to a room where he would be more comfortable. And then my mother, who was coming, arrived and and I, after saying goodbye to dad, left, and as I was walking across the parking lot to my automobile, it suddenly hit me that the one who always cared for me now had to

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be cared for by me. And you know, it felt good to know that I could do something for the one who had done so much for me, and it is one of the sadnesses of my life that my father died very shortly thereafter and I didn't have as much time to care for him as I would have liked to have had. Our denomination has developed

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facilities for older people that are unequaled in this country, and they work very hard at creating within these facilities an atmosphere which I can only describe by using a word from another language, "querencia." Querencia is from the Spanish verb "querer," which means "to desire," and querencia refers to a

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place, a home, an institution, a living environment which one desires to be a part of, that one comes to love, and where one feels loved and lifted up and encouraged. We must never let our homes for older people isolate these people from life. They are not to be killed off by being separated, but instead given

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every opportunity to be a part of life as it continues to be. And my friends, we ought to be in opposition to any disparagement of the elderly that happens in our nation or in the church. When we see it on the media, when we hear about it in the world of business or industry, when we go into the voting

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booth to cast our ballot, we need to remember our older people and to vote in terms of what is best for them. In the beginning of the school year this year here in Pittsburgh, on the very first day a teacher of fourth grade youngsters was asking the kids to stand up, give their names, and then to say what they wanted

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to be when they grew up, and they were going around the class doing very well when the principal came into the room to see how things were going, and the teacher was bothered by this because the very next student who was the stand-in to stand up was a youngster who oftentimes did not express himself very well. He was

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behind much of the class and she kind of wished that the principal would have heard one of the earlier ones, but she was fair and so she called on this boy and he stood up, gave his name, and then said, "And when I get older, I want to take care of older people." That's a beautiful idea, especially in the mind of one so

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young, and I might say to you young people who are thinking about what area of occupation you will enter, you might very seriously think of becoming involved in the service of the older because there are going to be more and more of them, and there will be more and more to do to make life the full and

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rich experience they deserve it to be. We must be agents of compassion. Mnuchin, the Chinese philosopher, said that there is a certain amount of compassion in all of us, and I suppose that's true. Even a murderer sometimes reaches down to scratch the ears of his pet dog. But you see, it's not really

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important that there be some feeling of compassion within us. If that compassion does not work itself out, it is noted in Scripture that Jesus, seeing the multitudes, had compassion upon them. Now, it is noted not because he simply had some inner feeling, but because he set about serving them in every way that he

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could. Compassion is a kind of preliminary emotion. It's an attention getter, but it must be followed by action. To have sympathy for the rabbit in the trap and not to release from his foolishness. I'm not speaking of talking a good game, but of playing it. In the realm of biological science, there is a

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term "symbiosis," and symbiosis is when two or more organisms, living organisms, live together. Now, there are three kinds of symbiosis. The first is parasitic. In this relationship, one of the organisms benefits at the expense of the other. This is what happens, for example, with a tick or a leech or a tapeworm. The second

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kind of symbiotic relationship is what is called "comalism." And comalism means a relationship in which one benefits from the other, but the other is not hurt by that benefit. If you've been to Africa, you have seen what they call cattle birds or cattle egrets, who ride along on

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the backs of rhinoceri and water buffaloes. And as these big beasts walk through the brush, they scare up insects, and the birds devour the insects. The birds don't do anything for the big animals, but the animals do help the birds. That's comensalism. The third kind of symbiotic relationship is mutualism,

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and mutualism is where each benefits from the other. And the simplest illustration I can think of is lichen, that beautiful green moss-like substance that you see on the sides of rocks and trees in the deep woods. It's made up of algae, which provides food, and fungus, which provides water. And together they

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produce that beautiful green. God grant that the church will relate to older people always in a mutualistic way. They have given to us life. They have many times given to us our faith. They are still giving to us in a multitude of ways, and our task is to show our gratitude. I know there are various ways

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of looking at age. One can look at it philosophically, like Jack Benny, who said age is a matter of mind. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. You can look at it sarcastically, like Bob Hope, who said you can tell you're old when the candles cost more than the cake. You can look at it evasively, like the couple who were

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stopped for speeding on a California freeway, and when the policeman asked them why they were speeding, they said, "We're trying to escape from leisure world." You can look at it shrewdly, as Agatha Christie, the great mystery writer, who said that she married an archaeologist so that the older she became, the

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more interested in her he would be. Or one can look at it responsibly, like the 105 year old woman in Indiana, who said in the early part of this year that she was now ready to die, for she had successfully gotten all of her children into nursing homes. Well, these ways might have something to say to us, but the

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scriptures are far more specific, and the Word of God written says to us, "In the family of God's people, let older men and women be treated with respect and loving concern, even as we treat our sisters and our brothers." And it is to that Word that we must, for our souls' sake, bend our knees.

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[silence] ...even as we treat our sisters and our brothers. And it is to that Word that we must, for our souls' sake, bend our knees. [silence]