FRONTIERS OF ADULTHOOD: AGE

I Kings 1:28-37

Preached at Belmont Baptist Church of Broomall on November 7, 2010

I hope you have seen in the past several weeks how the Bible speaks about the issues we face in life. Let me confess right now that I have not perfectly handled every issue of life. Even now as I attempt to tackle the issue of aging, I have been struggling…perhaps because of what I am dealing with around my mother, and perhaps because of what I am beginning to face about myself. During my ministry, I have attempted to relate to and support older adults in every congregation I have served because I know that it can become a difficult period in life. Rather than speak out of experience, though, I want to share with you what I see in this scripture.

In looking at David’s last years, we see that some writers have left very idealistic accounts picturing him as a vital person who knows all that is going on and still very much in control. Our scripture passage this morning shows us a different picture. At the beginning of the chapter, we see a person weak with age and not fully aware of what is going on. His oldest living son takes advantage of his father’s weakness and proclaims himself the new king—not fearing any retaliation from his father. However, Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan know what is going on. So they go to David to see if he will straighten out this mess before he dies. David ordered his closest advisors to crown Solomon and proclaim him as the new King.

Is there anything special about being a senior adult? Is this a time of strength or weakness? Is this a time of sharing life and experience to help the generations that follow…or is this a time of uselessness? Is this a time of giving or is it simply a time of loss? Many times I hear senior adults share how they are loosing their memory, their energy, and their friends. It is like the poem that begins: “Just a line to say I’m living, that I’m not among the dead/though I’m getting more forgetful and more mixed up in the head./For sometimes I can’t remember when I stand at foot of the stairs, whether I must go up for something or have just come down from there.” So there are challenges to aging. Let me put the challenges in my own words: I believe the three challenges for senior adults are a sense of peace and satisfaction about their worth, their past, and their future.

What about the sense of peace and satisfaction about our worth? In every church, I have found women whom I would call “Marthas.” These women served the church by cooking in the kitchen or cleaning up or serving meals or whatever. More often than not, when these women are no longer able to serve, they feel worthless. It is a painful reality when we can no longer do what we have done…either for others or for ourselves…because many people get their sense of worth through what they do.

I have tried to share with these women that our true worth does not depend upon what we do or cannot do. The question is: how will we stand before God someday? We cannot stand before God on the basis of what we have done—even if it is church work. We stand before God on the basis of what God has done and not what we have done ourselves. We need to settle this early in our lives as Christians and then live by grace. This is the best preparation for a positive self-understanding, especially when we come to the point where we are no longer able to do. Our ultimate satisfaction, our ultimate peace about our worth comes from knowing that God loves us—and not because of what we can do. In our passage, David is no longer able to do but has to rely upon others to be the people of action that he once was. Yet he is still a person of worth.

Secondly, as we age, we need to come to a sense of peace and satisfaction about the past. We need to develop and maintain the belief that life is not simply blind fate but is lived under divine destiny. It is a belief that God is working in all things for good. Senior adults should have a greater sense of this than anyone. They have perspective on life. They have been through good times and bad times, times of blessing and times of disaster, sweet times and bittersweet times. Senior adults have the wisdom to know that life has both kinds of experiences and that the difficulties develop values and character in ways that times of ease do not.

David had that sense. He knew that God worked for good in his disastrous affair with Bathsheba. As much as we might want to sidestep and forget our painful mistakes, we need to claim them and believe that God works in all things for good. After all, God’s goodness and his wisdom are greater than our own. So, at the end of life, we can look back on our days and be at peace with our past, realizing that God was there all along. In realizing this, David took steps to establish Solomon (a son of Bathsheba) as King even while he was alive. He could step aside knowing that God had worked for good in his past.

The third issue of aging is coming to a sense of peace about our future. Specifically, we must come to terms with our own death. Reuel Howe was a renowned minister and author. He wrote about a visit he made to an old friend who was nearing death. The man was aware of his condition and said, “You know, I am amazed at how all this is working out. I had always wondered what it was going to be like to die. But lo and behold, it is not all that unusual. Death has turned out to be an old acquaintance in different garb. For years now, I have undergone experiences like this. I had to let go of something that I had in order to get something I did not have. It turns out I have died a thousand deaths across the years, and in all of this I have learned something: every exit is also an entrance! There is always a new life on the other side. Death is an exit but at the same time it is also an entrance.”

This man is right. The Bible has a word for this: HOPE. The last challenge of life is not so different from what we have faced again and again. David was at peace knowing that he had faced this last challenge in his life—letting go of his throne in order to enter into God’s kingdom in peace. In a way, he was dying to his power and privilege. But instead of being sad, he had hope for the future—not just for the nation of Israel but also for himself. How I wish that it can be written of us as it was written of David in I Chronicles: “He died in good old age, full of days.” The time to begin preparing for our ending is now…in the ordinary details of living and dying each and every day. When we do, we will not live in fear…fear of the loss…fear of change…fear of the unknown. Instead we will live in hope of what we will gain by faith.

It is so easy when you are young to never think about aging. And even in the prime of life, we get so caught up in living that we fail to realize that we are aging each and every day. Now whether you are young or middle aged or senior citizen, what is most important is to live now as we want our future to be. Now is the time to live by grace…to know that our worth does not depend upon what we can do for ourselves or others. Now is the time to believe that God is present in all of life and that God works for good in all things. And now is the time for hope…to know that life is full of exits and entrances, of loosing some things in order to gain something else…and that the last exit will provide an entrance into something more wonderful than we can ever imagine.

These are the keys to real living—not just for old age but for all of life. If you have these keys for good living, you will have the keys for aging as well.