Given Into Their Care But Not Theirs Alone

Let us sing the new world in this is how it all begins*

Really, Carrie Newcomer, composer and lyricist of this morning’s anthem, preached the only sermon necessary for a Coming of Age Sunday service with those two phrases:

Let us sing the new world in/this is how it all begins.

This is how it all begins, the new world–with three young people coming of age, and a fourth starting his coming of age process. And the beginning of a new world is worthy of being sung into existence with celebration and praise, with drums and harmonies. But we have to start with the old world, the current world.

In his 2004 commencement address at William & Mary, comedian Jon Stewart said:

Let's talk about the real world for a moment. ... I don’t really know [how] to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it.

But here’s the good news. You fix this thing, you’re the next greatest generation, people.

Twenty years have passed, and it’s still too early to judge whether or not the graduates listening to that address, and their peers on all the other campuses, and their peers whose lives took them into the work force or military service instead of college–still too early to judge whether or not the twenty-two year olds of twenty years ago will go down as the next ‘greatest generation’ for having fixed this thing, the world we earlier generations broke. It might still come to pass. It might not.

Unfortunately, it isn’t too soon to say, if the world was broken in 2004, in 2024 it’s pulverized and occasionally the dust bursts into flame. In whatever ways and to whatever degree the world was broken in those early post-9/11 years, in these post-pandemic/post January 6 years…well, I don’t need to list all the ways and the degree to which it has been ground to bits. After all, most of you have lived through these past twenty years, or at least 17 or 18 of them.

I kind of think Jon Stewart might have put a bit too much pressure on those William & Mary grads–suggesting, however much in jest, that they could fix the broken world and thus lay claim to the title of ‘the next greatest generation’. I mean, it took more than a generation of greed, xenophobia, war, racial injustice, hatred, environmental degradation, violence against women, and religious strife to result in the brokenness to which Stewart alluded. How could a single generation possibly, in his words, fix the thing? Even if some of them did graduate from William & Mary.

On the other hand, the next generation to come of age (any of the several ways we define coming of age–confirmation, bar/bat mitzvah, high school graduation, college graduation, enlistment in military service)–the next generation to come of age is the always only group that has ever fixed the world whenever it has been broken, however it has been broken.

Those college graduates of 2004, this spring’s college graduates, and high school grads, and these four youth of this congregation starting or completing their coming of age today: we have no choice but to turn to the world over into their care, these representatives of the next generation. Because we participated in the breaking of the world, and more, because they are the ones who will outlive us, most of them, most of us, and they are the ones whose lives and futures are most shaped by the brokenness of the world, the burning dust of what was ours when we were their age, and so they are the ones who feel the urgency and see the possibilities unswayed by our false memories of what the world was like when it was unbroken–indeed our false memories that the world was ever unbroken.

We turn the care of the world over to Rowan, the youngest in the coming of age class, in a different developmental stage from his brother and the other teens, Rowan who stuck it out anyway.

We turn the care of the world over to Daggy, who is able to say, how Beautiful it is to be aware and to be alive…Isn't life so cool?, not despite her early life in another family, in another country, on another continent, not despite having lived through a pandemic and all that it has been to be a teenager in the 2020s, but because her soul has been informed and continues to be shaped by all those experiences.

We turn the care of the world over to Aiden, whose vision sees this pulverized world and whose heart and intellect nevertheless declare ‘Creativity for the Sake of Everything’.

We turn the care of the world over to Miles, who struggled with his credo and the deadline we imposed upon him but who, no less than his peers, deliberated over his beliefs, wrestling with them until they blessed him and us with the words he read this morning.

We turn the world over to these emerging adults, and we pray that in their care a new world will rise up from the dust and ashes, bearing the mark of Rowan’s youth and perseverance, alight with Daggy’s joy, sculpted in unexpected ways by Aiden’s vision, and made sturdy and resilient through Miles’ deliberation and tenacity.

Yet we give not the care of the world into their hands alone. For there was a time when we were the next generation–poised to be the greatest (or not)–and as Annie Dillard, who wrote this morning’s opening words, points out elsewhere, “[human] generations overlap like shingles”.

We don’t get to turn the world over to the generations coming of age behind us and then bow out of the struggle to repair and rebuild and reimagine. We don’t get to plead that we aren’t good enough, that younger, better, less defiled generation must do what we have not. Because even as Dillard says that the generations that came before us weren’t more pure and innocent, more capable than we are, so too, as bright and full of possibility as they are, neither are the emerging generations.

If each row of shingles were pulled up once the next row was nailed down, the roof would fail in its purpose of keeping the elements out of the house. And if any generation abdicates all responsibility for the care of the world as soon as the next generation comes of age, then we, humanity, fail in our purpose of keeping our Earth and all its societies and inhabitants safe from the elements that would destroy it.

In the end, I have to say Jon Stewart got it wrong after all–not that we didn’t break it–but in suggesting the fixing of it falls to the efforts of some future greatest generation. It’s our job–I tried to rest but couldn’t–it’s our job to teach our children well, and then work alongside them, and eventually, under their direction, to birth the new world. There is not only room at the table for everyone; the table needs everyone, every generation.

This is how it all begins. Let us sing it in all the days of our lives. Amen.

* from Room at the Table by Carrie Newcomer