Written on April 4, 2008

[For the April 13, 2008 lectionary: Psalm 23, John 10:1-10]

"BTY (HUH?)" by Larry Patten

I will be attending a celebration tonight.

Along with a friend (also a fellow season ticket holder), I’ll go to the annual awards banquet for the Fresno State women’s basketball team.

I mention this because I get to brag about these athletes; in the forty-three years of the university’s women’s basketball program, they were the first ever to receive a bid to play in the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament. Brag, brag! As someone who watched these women play, lose, bond, struggle, win, and then win and win again, I have good reason for pride and I’m looking forward to the festivities.

Of course, attending these festivities will remind me that I’m a semi-old gray-bearded coot while the student-athletes are young, vibrant, “Generation Y,” iPod-using, Internet-has-always-been-around kids.

I’m over halfway to a hundred years old. Several of the Fresno State starting five won’t hit the end of their second decade for at least another year!

So, beyond the bragging, the age and generational difference also confronts me with how musty and out-of-date the Bible seems. There’s a leap, eh? And this “leap” has nothing to do with shooting a jump shot or grabbing a rebound. Stay with me, here.

This week I was reading John 10:1-10 about Jesus saying that he was like the gatekeeper of the sheep. Huh?

There is about a two-generation difference between the Fresno State wonder women and me. They IM using phrases like LOL; I don’t. They listen to who-knows-what music and I’ll still play a John Denver song or laugh out loud about long-ago eight track tapes. Huh?

The Bible was written a loooooong time ago and it uses pre-industrial, agrarian images. When we read it, we can barely connect to that world. Simply, the Bible is a tough read as each new generation arrives. How many people have experienced gatekeepers for sheep, shepherds, lilies of the fields, or mustard seeds?

Who, today, would consider walking between Jerusalem and Jericho (17 miles) . . . not for exercise but simply to visit a friend or relative? Can we understand the power of NOT hiding a candle flame under a bushel basket (a what?) when, with the flick of a finger, we can turn on our house lights?

And yet, I’m glad we twenty-first century types are confronted by a first-century way of life. Yes, I love the Bible because it inspires my spiritual life. The story of the so-called “Prodigal Son” or Isaiah’s “the people who walked in darkness” (Isaiah 9:2-7) use easily understood words that rattle my soul and remind me of renewed life.

But the first-century images, practically speaking, can help us to remember our literal roots, our connection to the earth.

Recently I was invited to preach at the first church I served (which, BTW, the year I started there was before “Generation Y” was born). How great to see “old” friends and share a few embarrassing stories in my sermon! In that church, loooooong before my beard was gray, I worked with the youth.

Once I took those city kids to the Heifer Project farm for a faithful field trip. We cleaned out barns, planted seeds, and herded sheep. I know that people in the twenty-first century world still clean, plant, and herd. But not many! Most folks, I would guess, have never seen a real egg laid by a real chicken. Whoa!

I will always remember watching the youth watch the Heifer Project sheep getting sheared. After herding the sheep into a pen, we witnessed a professional shearer clip the wool. Sheep after sheep, with swift and confident moves, he positioned an animal on the ground and deftly performed the ancient chore. The sheep were helpless, completely in his control.

“The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep,” Jesus proclaimed in John 10:2. “The Lord is my shepherd,” the Psalmist declared in Psalm 23. Maybe, for a moment, the kids I worked with looooong ago, practically and literally understood scripture. The trusting relationship between the shepherd and his or her sheep is vibrant and real.

I hope we never lose ourselves so completely in our virtual world that we forget the real and relevant creation around us.

When I celebrate with the Fresno State wonder women, I’ll probably try to talk to a few of them. Maybe they’ll put up with me. After all, I am a season-ticket holder. They will have to be polite for at least a bit.

But one thing I’ll say to any of players I get a chance to speak with is, “Thanks!” It was a fun season of basketball. I enjoyed shouting encouragement and even suffering the disappointment of defeat. And I know, “Baby Boomer” or “Y” generation, first or twenty-first century, the language of “thanks” is always the same.

Some things are literally never old.

in Peace,

Larry