Setting the Example (Lookout Kid) (1 Timothy 4:4-12)

Here is my manuscript for the sermon that I preached on Sunday, June 12 at Woodmont Christian Church’s Bridge service. This is not exactly what I said but it is the gist.

Last week, I was at Bethany Hills with our high schoolers and students from other Disciples congregations in Tennessee. It was a wonderful seven days; honestly the best I have had over there. However, It did not give me ample time to write a sermon. It’s hard to do that when everything is damp all the time from the humidity, everything smells like Cheetos and bug spray, there are ridiculous songs about fish being played from Bluetooth speakers, and you keep catching the most random snippets of conversations. Plus given the choice, it’s just better to be with people.

I told this to Christi Williams when she was picking up her two children from camp on Friday and she said with matter-of-a-fact confidence, “Just tell four stories from camp and say, ‘Amen.’” So this sermon is how my sleep-deprived mind takes some experiences from this past week, run it through the filter of today’s scripture passage and a recent song from one of my favorite bands, and see what it can say to us about faith and leadership.

Let me set the stage with that verse and that song. In 1 Timothy 4:4-12, the writer, which could be Paul or it could be someone writing in Paul’s name, is encouraging a young minister. There is a reminder that everything created by God is good and a reminder about how utterly important it is to train oneself in godliness; one should not neglect taking care of themselves spiritually just like they shouldn’t neglect their physical or mental health. The writer reminds the reader that this training can be difficult. It can be a toil and a struggle, yet we set our hope on Jesus.

Then we come to verse 12, which has been printed on the t-shirts of ten thousand youth groups: “Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” I am going to talk about this verse in the context of the youth I have been with in this last week, but this is not a verse for just the young. It is a verse for everybody. For the writer of 1 Timothy 4:12 could have just as easily said, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are not a minister, you’re a woman, because of your race, because of your socio-economic status, because of your past.”

The key to the verse and the lesson for all of us is the second part. No matter who we are, where we come from, whatever way one might look down upon us, it is the responsibility of every Christian to set the example for following Jesus. If you hear nothing else today, hear that: as Christians let us show the world what it means to live a life in which our actions and words demonstrate our love, faith, and purity.

That verse is why I’m going to tell these stories and the song is going to be my framing device. This is not the first time I have mentioned the band Arcade Fire in a sermon, it will likely not be the last. They came out with a new album in May. Now May is a very pensive, nostalgic, “reflecting deeply on life” month for me. My birthday is in May, my wife’s birthday is in May. Our oldest son’s birthday is in May and I have a practice for both of my boys of writing them letters on their birthday about who they were in that year and our hopes for them.

May also includes Youth Sunday when our students take the very bold step of leading this congregation in worship and I get to witness how much they have grown. We hear sermons from our graduating seniors and now that I have been here for six years and have known those students for so long, that day has become an even more meaningful, difficult, and beautiful. So in the midst of all those emotions, one of my favorite bands comes out with a song written for the lead singer’s son about his hopes for the kid as he grows up. I have listened to it a lot in the last month. So there are four main verses in the song “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)” and they are going to frame these four stories from camp just as Christi Williams recommended. It is going to work? We’re going to find out together.

Lookout kid, trust your heart
You don’t have to play the part they wrote for you
Just be true
There are things that you could do
That no one else on earth could ever do
But I can’t teach you, I can’t teach it to you

There are times when things go off script and students show you something that you never would have thought to teach them. On Tuesday night, lightning forced our post-worship activity plans inside for the second day in a row. Our only option was to watch a movie on the big screen of the Great Room at the Lodge. Initially, it was announced that we were watching The Sound of Music.

Then we realized how long it takes for the movie to go from Julie Andrews telling us that the hills are alive to the end credits; it’s nearly three hours and Thanos doesn’t even show up in the movie. Not wanting to go to bed incredibly late, we had to choose another movie. And there was this overwhelming groundswell of support for Teen Beach Movie. I don’t know if you have ever heard of Teen Beach Movie. I certainly had not before Tuesday to my students’ abject horror even though it is a tween-geared Disney Channel Original Movie that came out when I was 30 years old.

But Sam, the camp’s director, had seen it and did not like the movie at all. We offered up alternatives yet their pleading for Teen Beach Movie persisted. So he said that if they could give a compelling speech that connected Teen Beach Movie to the theme of the week then they could watch it. And then I said, “It’s a musical, so we’re going to need a musical number also. You have five minutes.”

The whole camp—over two dozen high schoolers—coalesced in the center of the room. It was like watching a high performance machine at work. If government officials could tackle problems with a fraction of the focus I saw that night, we would be living in a utopia right now. Excited ideas were flying around the room, YouTube videos were being accessed, and change was coming to Bethany Hills.

Five minutes goes by. Taylor, one of our seniors, gives the speech and talks about how the movie deals with being true to yourself, not conforming to what society expects of you, and rejecting stereotypes. A guy from another church chimed in about the male co-star, “Plus Ross Lynch is hot” to the laughter of everybody in the room. I’m going to be honest: no offense to the Ross Lynch, but he was at best the fourth most attractive dude in the movie. Yet the rest of the argument was pretty compelling. And then they did a song with choreography from the movie.

It was amazing. The community at camp this week was phenomenal and I think that moment was one of the things that galvanized them. They followed their passion and it drew in even kids who didn’t care about the movie at all. We accidentally stumbled upon something that we did not intend: our campers in being true to themselves and following their passion created a moment in which everyone came together for a common purpose.

To be a leader in faith, to set the example in love, we have to be embrace who God created us to be. The writer of 1 Timothy declares that everything that God created is good and that includes you and me. To be an example in faith, we do not have to play the part that was written for us. God wants us with our quirks and our passions. When Jesus was reinstating Peter after the resurrection, Peter asked about another disciple John and Jesus responded, “What is that to you? Follow me.” I want you, just be true, and live out your faith in a way the world has never seen before. It can build hope, goodness, or as we saw at camp, love and community in ways that surprise us.

Lookout kid, trust your mind
But you can’t trust it every time
You know it plays tricks on you
And it don’t give a darn if you are happy
Or you’re sad
But if you’ve lost it, don’t feel bad
‘Cause it’s alright to be sad

Each night, worship was planned and led by different groups of students. On Tuesday morning, I gave the devotional which was about Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi. At the beginning of that story, Naomi is bluntly honest about the struggle in her life. I talked about how it was important to be honest about our struggles; to be like Naomi and not put on a mask that pretends everything is okay. We also need to be like Ruth and lovingly support others in their difficulty. And I actually quoted that line from the song I just read with the reminder that it is okay for them to be sad and to struggle.

That night in worship, two of our students got up and shared stories about some challenges that they have faced. Being vulnerable in front of a crowd is hard for everyone, but I think those of us who have passed through the crucible of adolescence remember how terrifying showing your true self can be when you’re a teenager. I was totally blown away by their honesty as they opened the door for other students who struggled to feel less alone. It was one of those moments when the room got smaller and we were all drawn in to the story of sadness and hope. Their stories ministered to me and it ministered to others in that room.

We often think of leaders as these people who have it all together. We want stories of success, five ways in which we can live our best lives, and three ways to have a happy family. Those are great things to which we can aspire, but life is also filled with those moments when things are sad, when they don’t go right. And if we want to lead people in faith, then we have show them not just how we live an abundant life in Christ, but also how we can find hope when life beats us up. Those two young women demonstrated what leaders and ministers look like. To set an example in faith, means to be honest about life whether we are happy or sad or somewhere in between.

Lookout kid, trust your body
You can dance, and you can shake
Things will break, you make mistakes
You lose your friends, again and again
‘Cause nothing is ever perfect
No one’s perfect
Let me say it again: no one’s perfect

There’s a tradition where one night, the guys and girls of camp serenade one another. This tradition requires nightly rehearsal; partly because it’s a lot of work to get a group of people to sound good singing together and partly because all of these serenade songs were either written before the Jimmy Carter administration or way before the Jimmy Carter administration. Your average high school guy doesn’t know most of these songs and that put us at disadvantage. We would have a better shot with songs that at least sniffed this century and I know that for a fact because during rehearsals, we broke into “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys and we sounded pretty decent. Alas, camp, like the opening to Fiddler on the Roof, has a big emphasis on tradition.

So we do not sound perfect or even remotely close to perfect. The melodies of some of the songs are tough to hook into if you’re not a regular singer. We had to learn the words and were mumbling “Edelweiss” all week long. But we settled on a strategy: we were not perfect, but we were going to give all our human energy to be loud. Was the first verse of “Brown Eyed Girl” a bit of a car crash? Yes, but when we got to the “Shalalala” part, those guys jumped in unison and belted those shalalalas with amplified glee. Or take the chorus of “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling.” When we hit “But, baby, baby I know it,” these guys yelled it to the heavens.

Again, this was a galvanizing act of community. No one’s perfect and our singing certainly wasn’t. Yet by throwing themselves into those songs with everything they had, those guys formed a bond. They could have heard themselves singing and tapped out or just mumbled through the serenade. They could have called each other out for their imperfections. Instead they united with all of their heart and shook and danced and sang and often yelled and it was a serenade to remember.

No one’s perfect and Jesus told us imperfect people to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He knows we’re not going to get it completely right but he wants us to go for it wholeheartedly. To set an example in faith is to put ourselves out there. To risk looking foolish. To not follow Jesus halfway, but to give our entire being to it. When a leader follows God in that way, it can be contagious. Others will join in. It’s not perfect, because no one’s perfect. But it is pretty amazing what God can do with the willing imperfect person.

Lookout kid, trust your soul
It ain’t hard to rock n’ roll
You know how to move your hips
And you know God is cool with it
Some people want the rock without the roll
But we all know, there’s no God without soul

Win Butler, the lead singer of Arcade Fire, is talking about rock n’ roll here and not the church. Rock n’ roll as the music that frees us is a trope that has existed in that genre as long as it has existed. I am not going to talk about rock n’ roll being the key to Christian leadership. I am a white dad in his late 30s and I do not know how to move dance and move my hips thank you very much. But that line “We all know, there’s no God without soul” has hounded me ever since I first heard that song.

On the final night of camp, the graduating seniors lead worship. The passage that they selected for that service was from Romans 5, where Paul writes about how suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. And these students who saw their high school experience turned upside down by a worldwide pandemic shared how that camp and their youth groups and God carried them through. You could tell that it was personal. You could tell by the tears, by the conviction in their voices, and by the solemn hush of the other students as the campfire crackled. Those students believed deep within their souls that something about God, that place, and that community changed them deeply.

I have heard at camps my whole life—whether it be Bethany Hills or Panama City Beach or the hills of Kentucky or the mountains of Guatemala—why can’t life be more like this? Why does it feel sometimes in our regular, everyday lives like there is no soul and therefore no God? And I think it comes down sometimes to what we’re attending to. When we are at camp, we are enveloped in the love of community. We daily take communion. We think deeply about being our authentic selves and encouraging others. It’s kind of like a spiritual Disney World and there’s always a letdown when we leave a magical place like that. But the truth is God does not live exclusively at Bethany Hills just like Jesus pointed out that the Jerusalem Temple was not the only place to worship the Almighty. They are special places to be sure. Yet God is with us everywhere we go. God lives in our soul.

So we have to tend to our soul every day, everywhere we go. It is not always going to feel as special as it does around a campfire in Middle Tennessee or in a beautiful chapel on Sunday morning; though you’ll be surprised how much it can. The leader in faith, the person who sets an example in love and purity recognizes that there is no God without soul and that means you and I must everyday try to follow Jesus in a way that only we can, through good and sad times, with our entire imperfect being. The love of God is always with us. We just need to recognize it each day. Before we leave Bethany Hills, we sing Thom Schuyler’s song “Take a Little with You When You Go.” May we take God’s love with us in our souls from this place and everywhere we go. Amen.