Isaiah 51:1-8
Hebrews 12:1-11

Like you, I fulfill several roles in life.  Being a husband, a father, a minister, a friend, a supervisor, and a teacher are most of the roles I have and each has expectations.  Ranking these roles and expectations is a major task for me.  Which is most important right now?  What should I do next?  How should I use my time today?
 
I can tell you that the second toughest job I have ever had has been being a parent to our children.  Perhaps you wonder what the toughest job I have ever had is. Without question it’s being married to Peggy.  And she will tell you that the toughest job she ever had has been being married to me.          
           
Our culture suggests that in the two most intimate areas of our lives, marriage and parenting, we ought never ask for help or suggest to anyone that we have any reservations or questions about our abilities in either of these areas.  It is assumed that knowing what to do in marriage and as parents will come naturally.  What we are most likely to do naturally in both instances is what our parents did.  Somewhere the idea developed that rearing a family was all instinct and intent.  We behave as if we can be effective parents simply because we have the glands for it, or want to be a parent and go through the acts of conception and birth. Being a parent probably is the most complicated job in the world and most of us act as if we can all be great parents simply by going through the motions and taking the label. 
           
However, if we are honest with ourselves and each other, we probably are a lot more like Charlie Shedd.  Charlie was a Presbyterian minister.  He wrote that "How to Raise Your Children" was the title of one of his finest speeches.  It had unity, order, and movement.  It electrified, edified, and specified!  It grabbed them quick and held them fast with humor, pathos, and drama!
           
He gave the speech all over the Midwest.  They paid him a handsome fee and groups were glad to get him.  With high hopes people came to hear Charlie Shedd.
           
"Then," Charlie said, "We had a child."
           
But Charlie kept on trying.  He changed his title to "Some Suggestions to Parents" and charged on.  Then they had two more children, and he altered his speech again.  This time it came out, "Feeble Hints to Fellow Strugglers."  Charlie noted that the more experience he had at being a father, the less dogmatic was his presentation, the fewer people attended, and the less the honorarium.
           
The more experience I have gained as a parent, the more confident I have become that some of the best teachers for fathers and mothers are their children.  If we will listen to our children, hear and accept their feelings, listen to their excitement and fears, receive their gifts and care for their needs, we will make tremendous contributions to life. 
           
Of course, this raises a question.  What contributions can we make to our children?  What can we give them?  Can we give them too much? 
           
No two parents can meet all the needs of their children.  In our culture with an increasing number of single parents, surely we recognize that no one parent can meet all the needs of her children.  We affirm that during the baptism of a child, committing ourselves as a congregation to help with the rearing of the child that is being baptized.    
             
Through the years the church has provided resources for families and been a network of support to families regardless of the constellation of the families--whether traditional nuclear family, extended family, single family, blended family. 
           
Throughout our congregation’s history we have been a network of support to people who are involved in the parenting enterprise.  We continue that today.  Nearly all of us are involved at some level with children.  What can we give to our children?  What do our children need?  They don't need more gadgets.  We can give our children too many things, but we cannot give them too much of ourselves. I have two gift ideas to suggest that all of us seek to give to children.  These are gifts that children need: roots and wings.  
           
Alex Haley heightened awareness and increased sensitivity to the importance of our heritage through his monumental work, Roots.  Earlier generations gained an understanding of family heritage and ancestry through a kind of family osmosis.  Families remained in the same general location generation after generation.  Extended family became a tribe.  In such settings, it was easy for family stories to be passed from one generation to another. 
           
During the latter half of the 20th century radical changes occurred in family relationships.  Perhaps mobility contributed as much to these changes as any single factor.  The difference from my childhood to that of our children may be typical.
           
Members of five generations of my family were living when I was born.  For the first two years of my life, I had twelve grandparents, great grandparents, and great, great grandparents living.  These twelve grandparents lived within a thirty‑mile radius of my home.   
           
Our children have known three great grandparents and four grandparents, but they never lived closer than five hundred miles to those grandparents.  Mobility has affected all of us and had its impact on our understanding of family roots and heritage.
           
When our children were younger, a bedtime routine often included singing and reading a story.  At some point as they got a little older and I got tired of reading stories, Peggy and I began telling our children stories about events and things we did when we were children.  This approach helped them understand something of what life was like when we were younger.  They discovered that many things were similar and many things were different to life for them.  The stories we told were part of the oral tradition of our families and they became a part of the root system for the lives of our children.  During those years of storytelling when the grandparents would visit us, Peggy and I took a break from the storytelling and persuaded our parents to do what we had been doing.  Our parents expanded and enlarged the oral tradition of our family and the root system of our children's lives. Our daughter and grandson visited us a couple of weeks ago.  When Carter, our two and a half year old grandson,  goes to bed he likes to have a book or two read to him and he likes to have a song sung.  So as I was putting him to bed on Saturday evening I sang a song that he likes; interesting it is one of the songs I often sang at bedtime to each of our children, “Home On the Range.”
           
Reflecting over what Peggy and I did as parents, I realize that storytelling was not a new idea.  Actually, this process has taken place for thousands of years.  A similar process provided the information contained in the Bible.  What we now have written in the Bible once was oral tradition, stories told around the campfires, in the tents, later in homes, the Temple, and synagogues of the Hebrew people.  Because of the value of these stories to the lives of those who told them and to the lives of those who heard them, people began to write down the stories to preserve them and make them available to future generations.
           
Helping children in knowing their roots, is one of the most significant gifts we can give to children.  Isaiah wrote, "Think of the rock from which you came, the quarry from which you were cut" (Is. 51:1).  The Scriptures are filled with stories of the Hebrew people.  These stories helped each generation to know from where and through what their ancestors had come.  These stories were a significant part of the root system of the children of Israel.
           
Our human roots are a network of emotional, spiritual, and familial connections that fulfill the same functions as the root system of any plant.  A root system provides nourishment and support for the plant.  When we gain a better understanding of our human roots, we find support, nourishment, and resources from which we draw encouragement and discover direction for the living of our lives.  As we explore our human roots, we discover how the stories of our ancestors intersect with the biblical stories.  These intersections are excellent places for us to stop, look, and listen.  From these intersections we learn where we are and gain insight about the path we should choose on the journey.
           
To illustrate, permit me to share two brief examples from my root system.  My paternal grandfather was a significant person in my life.  He seemed to be interested in every dimension of my life.  He brought me the lambs to bottle feed when their mothers died giving birth.  He was driving the tractor when I caught my leg between the fender and wheel and broke it.  He took me on my first hunting trip.  As a Christmas present he gave me my first gun and made my grandmother mad because he gave me all kinds of hand signals to help me guess what was wrapped in the box.  Grandpa Roberts demonstrated and modeled for me what healthy faith is although neither he nor I were conscious at the time that was what he was doing.  The church was a constant source of strength and encouragement to him and he gave of his energy to serve through the church.  He served as a deacon and a Sunday school teacher.  He taught a couples' class long before having a couples' class was accepted practice.  He was a popular Sunday school teacher with young couples because he was willing to let his human qualities show, and he was eager to point out how the stories of Scripture had implication in the stories of contemporary people.  Most of the stories he told had a trace of humor in them.  He seemed to know that a spoonful of humor helps the message go down and the meaning be remembered.
           
The other family member I want to tell you about was popularly known as Uncle Billy Cooper.  He was my great, great, great-grandfather.  I only know him through oral tradition.  He was a Baptist preacher in Wayne County, Kentucky during the Civil War.     As the tensions of the Civil War mounted, people chose sides.  Although Kentucky was a border state, that did not keep citizens from choosing sides.  The Civil War burned to a white hot frenzy and people in Wayne County decided they could settle the war on the streets of Monticello.  It was Uncle Billy Cooper who stood between the Blue and the Grey and called for people on both sides to be peacemakers as Jesus had instructed and to beat their guns into plows for the cultivation of the land.  Through his efforts the people of Wayne County did not declare war on each other.             
           
I find nourishment, support, and encouragement from these two people who are a part of my familial and spiritual roots.  I suspect there are people in your family history who are just as significant in your lives.  I urge you to become more aware of the contributions they have made to you and then share those contributions with children as you relate with them.  One of the lasting and valuable gifts we can give to children is roots. 
           
The author of the letter to the Hebrews suggested that our religious ancestors form a great cloud of witnesses.  Their primary function according to the author is to encourage those who come after them to grow, develop, and lean into the future.  One of the purposes of our religious ancestors is to help us develop wings so we can move out as competent servants of God in our generation.
           
Perhaps you know how an eagle teaches her young to fly.  When the eaglets have developed enough to fly, the mother takes them on her back and glides high in the air away from the nest.  In a quick maneuver, she drops out from under the young and forces them to try their own wings.  She watches closely and if one is not quite able to fly, she swoops under and catches it on her back.  This process is continued until all the eaglets can fly.  Then, it isn't long before they are using the wings they've been given to move away from the nest and be on their own. 
           
We adults are to relate to children in a similar way.  One of the most important gifts we can give to children is to help them develop their wings, their ability to perform tasks for themselves.  This is an involved process that has many stages of development.  For example, those who have primary care responsibility for an infant help nurture and nourish him along by giving him milk, then baby food, then solid food, helping him learn to feed himself.  As the child develops, her world expands to include a neighbor, then classmates in pre-school, and then children in school that her parents do not know and may not meet. 
           
The task of adults in children's lives is to help children learn how to make decisions, how to relate to other people, to develop emotionally, socially, mentally, and spiritually.  Such an endeavor involves risk taking and mistake making but we are involved in the growth and development of a human being.   
           
We need to evaluate continually the freedom that children have and how we can grant them more freedom to roam and grow.  We need to monitor how they manage and cope with freedom.  When there is too much freedom children mismanage.  We need to help them draw the boundaries more clearly and to stay within them.  As they manage their freedom better, then, we need to allow them more freedom.  Jesus' comment is fitting here, "To the one who has much, give him more." 
           
Naturally, there will be mistakes.  We need to examine those with children and help them and us learn from them.  We also need to help children develop the eagerness and capacity to forgive.  Maybe we need to learn this from children.  We need to keep clearly in our minds what it has meant to us in our development when care and love have been shown to us by those who have forgiven us.  Perhaps this is most tangibly expressed by a woman who was paying tribute to her father at a ceremony where he was receiving an award.  She asked him to remember back to the time when she was sixteen.  She had wrecked her mother's new car.   After her dad had arrived at the scene, made certain she was okay, and the tow truck had left with her mom's car, he gave her the keys to his car.  She said, "Words cannot tell you what that did for my self esteem at that moment.  With grace like that from my father, it wasn’t hard for me to understand God's love."
           
As we assist children in coping with freedom and developing more freedom, we are aiding them in developing their imaginations and abilities to dream.  It is through dreams they are able to imagine how situations in life can be different and better.  It is through dreams that people are able to imagine the things that make for peace.  It is the development of imaginations that causes people to envision situations where prejudice is pushed out of life, where people can be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin.
           
When children are discouraged from developing their wings, they become restricted, constrained, frightened, and imprisoned.  They do not take risks.  They seek only safe avenues.  Their creativity dries up.  When they are fifty or sixty years old, they discover they died at fifteen or twenty-five or thirty. 
           
To have dreams and imaginations is to develop the ability to lean into the future and discover who and where the source of hope is.  When people have hope, they are energized to cope with whatever they are up against. They are eager and willing to examine their roots and learn from their pasts.  This fuels their imaginations enabling them to dream dreams and see visions of a better way to live. They sprout wings and fly. 
         
I am indebted to a number of people who at different times and stages of my life gave me the gifts of roots and wings.  These two gifts are priceless.  They last a lifetime and they are two gifts that keep on giving. 
           
Every one of us relates with children in some way.  We often want to give them gifts.  I urge you to begin today exploring ways that you can give roots and wings to the children with whom you relate.  No gifts are more needed or more valuable for children than roots and wings.  They are gifts they need and they are gifts that keep on giving.  Let us give children what they need, roots and wings.