Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Romans 10:5-15

Growing up is tough although we often are not as aware of how tough when we are in the midst of it.  Is it tougher to grow up now than in previous generations?     Many issues today seem more complex than the issues we read about from other eras.  However, there is better understanding about human development and more resources to assist in coping and growing than previous generations had available to them. 
           
I am especially sensitive to what teenagers are expected to come to terms with in their lives between 13 and 21.  Here is a long but not exhaustive list of issues.  They are expected to come to terms to death and dying, sexuality, getting an education, learn to relate to people of the same and opposite sexual orientation, decide on a vocation, learn to drive, become responsible for themselves, self‑reliant, and independent of their parents although recent statistics say that 77% of college graduates return home to live with their parents (NPR, 8-7-08).  These are a few of the weightier issues not to mention the physical growth and adjustment that are involved in these years.  Add to these issues some of the individual pressures that teenagers face.  Some have to deal with serious illness and/or death of one of their parents.  Many have to deal with parents who divorce and remarry, and some experience serious personal injuries from automobile or sports accidents.  There is the pressure of peers and the fear of loneliness.  During the teen years people are expected to come to terms with more issues than any other developmental stage in their lives. Frankly, I am amazed that as many come through the teen years as in tact as do.
           
Of all the longings and wishes I have heard people express, I have never heard anyone say, "I wish I could be a teenager again."  Most people are relieved to have survived the struggles and personal conflicts that occur during those years.  It is not the most popular age to want to repeat. 
          
A major function of a congregation is to help people grow.  Our vision statement states, “A strong community of Christian faith that welcomes and engages all people in personal and spiritual growth.”  That includes teenagers.  The church is a resource center for teenagers.  As a congregation we can provide support and encouragement for teens as they grow toward adulthood. A congregation can continue to underscore importance of young people through emphasis and involvement of young people in the various components of the congregation.  We have been doing just this in recent years.  7th grade Confirmands have the opportunity to assist the Services and Sacraments Board by serving as ushers and the 8th grade Confirmands assist by serving communion.  Some members of Pilgrim Youth Fellowship have volunteered to serve as lectors for our worship services and they are responsible for the entire worship service on Youth Sunday.  We have specific educational and fellowship programs for confirmation and youth that provide a safe environment for interaction, questions, exploration, and relationship building.   
           
Joseph, a part of whose story is one of our texts for today, lived in a different era and a different culture.  However, it is such a well constructed story that I think we can use it as a model to give some special attention to the needs of teenagers for our era and our culture and underscore what is an important part of our ministry as a congregation. We can learn from Joseph some helpful and healthy ways to deal with the changes, fun, and struggles that occur in the lives of teenagers. 

The experiences, fun, and struggles of any teenager must be understood in light of what his or her family situation is like.  Joseph's family made some significant contributions to Joseph and some serious mistakes with him.  Jacob and Rachel were his parents.  Jacob came out of a family that had played favorites.  His dad had favored his twin, Esau, and his mother had favored him.  Jacob had some rough experiences as a result of the favoritism and his desire to be loved and accepted by his father.  But Jacob did not seem to learn much from that experience because he repeated the mistake of his parents by playing favorites with his sons.  As the father of twelve sons, Jacob liked Joseph best and gladly let it be known that he favored the older son of his favorite wife.  He was either oblivious or did not care what this attitude said and did to his other sons or how it affected their relationship with Joseph. 
           
Jacob's favoritism of Joseph was seen and felt by the other sons.  The most blatant illustration was the gift of the coat with long sleeves.  The King James Version translates the passage as a coat of many colors.  But later scholarship has discovered that the meaning of the coat description is that it was a coat of extremities, covering the extremities, a long coat with sleeves.  It was not the kind of coat that one wore to do any work.  By giving the coat to Joseph, Jacob was saying, "You are so special.  I don't want or expect you to do any work.  You just enjoy being special."  Can you feel the blood boil in Joseph's brothers? 
           
Joseph did spend time in the fields with his brothers caring for the family flocks, but he reported to daddy that his brothers were being bad.  Apparently, he was the family informant.  He used his specialness to set himself apart from his brothers and by giving bad reports about them, kept the focus off himself.  You can imagine how his brothers felt about this tattletale brother who wore his Prim‑a‑Donna coat out to the fields, doing no work but carrying negative messages about them back to their father.  They would come in for dinner.  Jacob would rake them over the coals for their activities and Joseph would grin through the whole meal. 
           
Joseph's parents gave him an enormous sense of delight.  One of the vital gifts that parents can give their children is the sense of delight in their being alive.  But there is a second and equally important gift that parents need to give children and that is the comparable gift of the sense of purpose.  Joseph's parents showed delight in him but gave him no sense of purpose.  The result was that Joseph had an extremely inflated opinion of his own importance.  This inflated view of himself is evident in his dreams about his family relationships.  Out of his special treatment and favored position in the family he dreamed that his brothers, his mother, and his father would bow down and worship him.  Joseph was worshiping himself and concluded that all those in his family would worship him.  He saw life revolving around himself.  What he hoped to gain by telling these two dreams to his brothers is a mystery.  Was Joseph so naive as to believe that his brothers would enjoy and agree with his dreams?  Was Joseph so wrapped up in his own specialness and opinion of himself that he was oblivious to the tension in the relationship with his brothers and the animosity that wearing his coat and telling his dreams evoked? Joseph operated with a sense of entitlement.
           
Frederick Buechner points out that every person has three tasks in life:  I have a person to become, I have people to love, and I have work to do.  Joseph was clear that he had a person to become but the tasks of people to love and work to do were lost on him as a teenager.  The seeds for this emotional deformity were planted by his parents who gave him a tremendous sense of delight but no sense of purpose.

The less input that teenagers have about decisions that affect their lives, the more resistant, resentful, and rebellious they will be.  Preparing people to assume responsibility for their lives is a gradual process.  They are greatly under prepared if someone makes all their decisions for them until they are seventeen of eighteen and then say, "Okay, you're on your own."
Teenagers get a lot of negative publicity.  I guess every generation of teens gets more than its share of negative publicity.  There are many reasons.  Some teenagers do some terrible things.  There are those who will stereotype all teenagers as the same.  People who experience oppression and abuse eventually erupt.  During a time of identity struggle often is when the eruption occurs.  On the other hand, a lot of young people journey through the teen years with struggle, agony, stress, and pressure but manage very well.  Nothing much is said about that.   

One of the mistakes often made is that decisions are made and opinions given about teenagers without ever hearing from teenagers.  What do teenagers think about their lives and their needs?  Listen to what some teenagers say about themselves and the perspective that others have of them.   
           
A seventeen year old young man questioned, "Did we invent war and crookedness and corruption?  All this sleaze today‑‑look where it's coming from.  The ones who will tell you about those noisy teenagers and their music and their sex and their drugs, they're the ones you see in the papers, with all their lies and crimes being reported.  [There are] a lot of hypocrites around" (Sojourners, p. 18).
           
Another teenager commented, "A few kids take their lives, and everyone says teenagers are really in trouble‑‑look at those suicide cases, they're an epidemic.  But hundreds, maybe thousands of people take their lives every year.  My dad is a doctor, and he says more doctors take their lives than do lots of other kinds of people; and doctors get into bad drug habits more than others.  Why?  Should we all be asking what is wrong with those doctors?  Is it the music they listen to?  Their sex lives?  If one teenager commits suicide, you pick up the paper and read we're all in trouble, and we're all headed down the tubes, because it's our terrible 'teenage culture,' they'll say, and our wild sex habits, they'll add" (Sojourners, p. 18).

All of us have room for improvement in our lives, adults, teenagers, and children.  It is easier, safer, and less painful to see what is wrong with others, what changes they need to make, to condemn them for their wrongs and mistakes than it is to examine ourselves.  Jesus' instruction was that before we try to get the splinter out of another person's eye, we need to get the two‑by‑ four out of our own.   
           
Joseph was not well prepared for life because the special, favored treatment he received caused him to see himself as one of exaggerated importance.  When this perspective persists unchallenged the person does not make commitments and feels the world owes her a living. He or she begins to live a life of entitlement.  
           
The fortunate teenagers in this world are those whose parents or other significant adults in their lives share their continuous affection and concern, their wish to uphold certain ethical principles and then live them, rather than merely mouthing them.  These are the young people who are able to handle some of the nonsense and craziness of the 21st century.  Thomas Fry observed, "I have never talked with a young person who has not wished to be accepted and loved by his or her parents.  They all need love and acceptance at home as much as in the group." (Lloyd Cory, Quotable Quotations, p. 387)
           
Teenagers need emotional, moral support.  They need the attentive, continuing concern of others.  They need a community of caring individuals who will make up for what they may have lacked growing up.  Nobody's parents can provide all the nurture, guidance, insight, and encouragement that a person needs.  One of the valuable ministries of the church is to be a resource center for emotional, moral, ethical, and faith development through relationships.  May it be known in our community that we at Glenview Community Church know that being a teenager is both fun and frustrating.  May it be known that we care about them.  May it be known that we support them in their growth and development.  May it be known that we desire to be their friends and to travel with them all the way through adolescence into adulthood because they are persons to become, they have people to love, and they have work to do.  May we be about our task as a congregation of helping young people know who they are and who we are.