This Time for Sure

December 02, 2007

First Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 24:36-44
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

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Maybe because I’m closely related to two of them, or maybe because we have an ever-increasing number of them showing up in church, I have been reading a bit about the so-called “Millennials,” those who have been born since about 1980 or so. In other words, today’s 20-somethings.

So, for instance, Chris Barnard’s world is pretty typical for a 25 -year-old single guy with a college diploma, a job, and no landline. He earned a sociology degree three years ago and moved back in with his parents, working as a temp as he tried to figure out his next step in life. One of those temp jobs became permanent, so he moved to the city, lives with two roommates and keeps in frequent touch with friends and family. “That’s not to say I’m dependent upon them,” he says of his parents. “They did all they could to foster my independence. It’s of my own accord that I keep in touch with them and let them know what’s going on.” [1]

Demographers, sociologists and management consultants say this is a particularly interesting generation to watch. So for instance, compared with those growing up forty years earlier, a much smaller percentage have finished school, left home, gotten married, had a child or reached financial independence. Nearly twice as many had done so in the early 1960’s compared with today.

On the other hand, there are nearly twice as many college freshmen as there were in 1970, even though they now often take more than four years to finish. In fact, only 37% of today’s first-time freshmen at four-year schools finish their degrees in four years.

Of course, you have heard about the growing number of the so-called “boomerang kids” who move back home. They like family, and have close relationships with their parents – dramatically so compared to their parents’ generation. 90% declare they are close to their mothers and another 65% claim the same for their fathers. I well remember the chant on my college campus to “Trust no one over the age of 30.”

The Millennials are sociable, optimistic, well-educated, collaborative, open-minded, and achievement oriented. They are arriving to the workplace with higher expectations than any generation before them – and they’re so well-connected that, if an employer doesn’t match those expectations, they can tell thousands of their cohorts with one click of the mouse, and do.

Older generations sometimes find them arrogant in their insistence in having work that matters to them and structured to their liking as opposed to providing just decent pay. They don’t wait around long for change. They vote with their feet and they don’t mind voting until they find just the right fit for their high expectations.

This seemingly indulged attitude was fostered by the messages they grew up with which include these:

1. Be smart – you are special. They’ve been catered to since they were tiny. Think Nickelodeon, Baby Gap and Sports Illustrated for Kids.

2. Leave no one behind. They were taught to be inclusive and tolerant of other races, religions and sexual orientations.

3. Connect 24/7. They learned to be interdependent – on family, friends and teachers. More Millennials say they can live without the television than the computer. Many prefer chatting on line to talking on the phone. They are the most technologically connected generation.

4. Achieve now! Some parents hired private agents to line up the right college; others got started choosing the right pre-school while the child was still in the womb… (Christ Church knows something about this…)

5. Serve your community. Fifty percent of high school students reported volunteering in their communities, many of their schools requiring community service for graduation. On one Roper Survey, when Millennials were asked for the major cause of problems in the U.S. they answered selfishness . [2] (I find that rather refreshing…)

Interestingly, while they are indifferent to institutions, say the institutional structure of the church for instance, they are more likely to yearn for spiritual depth as opposed to breadth. In other words, a space like this that evokes mystery, ritual and connection to things that really matter has appeal, so long as they sense an underlying integrity and a deep commitment to developing robust bonds of authentic community.

Of course, all this stereotyping doesn’t necessarily tell us much about a given individual, but still, as a whole, this generation strikes many who have been paying attention as refreshing, maybe even impressive, although only time will tell. One adolescent psychologist who has spent a number of years researching this generation, and author of Parenting the Millennial Generation, gushes that there is a good chance they will “rise to the occasion and show courage, character, determination, innovation and vision in ways that really make the country a better place…” [3]

And I think to myself, we can only hope that is the case. Truth is, I’ve never been very impressed with my generation, unless we could say in our parenting of the next, perhaps. Civil Rights, Vietnam, and Rock and Roll defined our context. The sturm und drang of our youthful zealotry has brought forth a very mixed result. We thought we were breaking out from under the yoke of the prior generation’s cramped attitudes. Although, in retrospect, that generation surely had greatness, as Tom Brokaw has eloquently observed. Their profound sacrifices assured the future of our vital, if fractious, national life and democratic values. My generation doesn’t know much about sacrifice I don’t think.

Our parents and grandparents weren’t perfect, the Boomers certainly weren’t perfect, and the generations we’ve spawned won’t be perfect either, the ones we’ve tagged GenX and Millennial. Of course no generation exists independently of the others. There is always something of a fiction to breaking them apart so as to analyze the components of the larger human system. Are we any smarter in the main for our analysis of the pieces? I’m not certain. Maybe. Probably for managing and marketing purposes.

The fact is, we’re all mixed up in here. The so-called “greatest generation,” the Boomers, the GenXers and the Millennials, and those that we’re brewing up on our fifth and sixth floors even as we speak. But in this grand room we rehearse some very old traditions and listen to some very ancient words, together. Words like these: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths…He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more…let us walk in the light of the Lord!” [4]

All generations together in this space hear the same poetry, and I’m thinking it doesn’t matter especially which generation each of us represents in the hearing – these words written 3,000 years ago to another ancient generation still ring vibrantly – as brightly as our bells. They reference the same geography of Jerusalem that we know today. Hard to understand how this ancient city would still be found at the epicenter of global unrest with the nations of the world still gathered in agitated expectancy for some new thing to spring forth, something like swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks, for instance.

What does it take for any generation to determine how to turn the engines of war into the engines of prosperity and peace? The question has haunted humanity for millennia, including the Millennials, as well it should. Isaiah proclaims the answer lies in listening to God, which sort of begs the question of just who has been listening, doesn’t it?

Then some hundreds of years and countless generations after the time of Isaiah the Apostle Paul writes to his friends that the one who loves another has listened to God and fulfilled the law, that God’s intentions are summed up like this: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He goes on to say that his friends know what time it is, that it is time to wake from sleep…”the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light…” [5]

The imagery of light again. And as these weeks of Advent unfold all current generations will hear it over and over and over. One of our hymns will have us sing “I want to walk as a child of the light…” And I wonder if we’ll mean it this time, for sure.

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[1] Sharon Jayson, “The ‘millenials’ come of age,” USA Today, 6/29/06
[2] http://www.generationsatwork.com/articles/millenials.htm
[3] Jayson, Ibid.
[4] Isaiah 2:3ff
[5] Romans 13:8ff

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