Much has been made in the popular press in recent years of so-called \u201chelicopter parents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Never heard of them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, they of course have nothing to do with flying machines. The term refers instead to parents who seem to \u201chover\u201d over their children constantly, making many of life\u2019s decisions for them \u2013 sometimes giving them no room to make their own mistakes or, for that matter, to soar on their own to heights which the parents themselves might never have dreamed possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether this is a recent phenomenon or has always been a part of the parental and societal impulse to protect children we can leave to the experts to decide. Far too many parents are blamed \u2013 or take responsibility upon themselves \u2013 for developments in their children\u2019s lives that are more or less out of their control anyway, no matter how much they hover. Even under the best of circumstances, parenting is not an exact science and probably never will be. In every generation, there are sure to be a lot of parents who quite understandably want their children to be like those of Garrison Keillor\u2019s mythic Lake Wobegone \u2013 \u201cabove average, every last one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In our gospel text today, the people of the \u201cthe entire hill country of Judea\u201d ponder the birth and naming of the child John \u2013 hovering closely over him and his parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah. \u201cWhat then will this child become?\u201d they ask in amazement mixed perhaps with some confusion. It is a question of course that parents and family members have asked for millennia at the birth of every child, whether in ancient Judea or contemporary New Jersey or Nebraska. For the birth of any child is a reaffirmation of life itself and its mystery. No one can hold a small child and not wonder \u2013 perhaps sometimes even fear for \u2013 what the future has in store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There may not have been helicopters in the ancient Holy Land but, it seems, parents and relatives do not much change over time either. It is perhaps reassuring to learn from scripture that a child\u2019s birth could stir an entire community and get them thinking and involved. Sometimes, it does indeed take a village \u2013 or an \u201centire hill country\u201d \u2013 to raise a child. And Zechariah\u2019s words are a profound declaration of one parent\u2019s faith as he, \u201cfilled with the Holy Spirit,\u201d begins to speak in prophecy to his own son. \u201cYou, my child,\u201d he says tenderly and perhaps even with a parent\u2019s pride, \u201cshall be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat then will this child become?\u201d This is the answer. This is what John will become. As we know well from our Christian perspective, he will become the last of the great prophets, the one to baptize our Lord and prepare his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in some larger sense, the infant John \u2013 and every child \u2013 is already a \u201cprophet of the Most High\u201d because every child is paradoxically an image of the loving Father who sent to us not only John, but his very own Son Jesus, whose ministry John will grow to affirm. After all, \u201cthe child is father to the man,\u201d as the poet Wordsworth reminded us. The Father knows well that only a child is truly capable of calling us back to the simplicity and fullness of divine love. John did not need to grow to manhood to prepare the Lord\u2019s way. And the Lord did not need to hover. The child himself prepares the Lord\u2019s way; and it is from John, and every child, that we must learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet sadly, it is exactly the child that our world today too often forgets. We read with horror of the abuse of children in our own country and elsewhere. Their images haunt us in scenes of famine and war in faraway lands, situations from which not even the most obsessive helicopter parent could rescue them. On the other hand, in some quarters of our contemporary consumer society, children seem to have become little more than nonessential commodities \u2013 neither profit centers nor revenue enhancers \u2013 perhaps at best parental status symbols and fashion accessories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All children are in themselves signs of the abundance and bounty of a loving God. Zechariah knew this instinctively. It is a lesson that each generation of children teaches us anew. That is, if we are willing to understand. Our gospel text today ends ominously enough with John \u201cin the wilderness,\u201d surely not a place Zechariah \u2013 much less any self-respecting helicopter parent \u2013 could ever have wished his child to be. There was to be no Ivy League for John, no high-paying job in software development or finance. But what John learned in the wasteland, he proclaimed at the Jordan. And it is the most valuable lesson of all. It is the very thing Zechariah foresaw at John\u2019s birth: that the Lord \u201chas looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is a lesson learned from the child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sermon was written by Frank Heged\u00fcs<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Much has been made in the popular press in recent years of so-called \u201chelicopter parents.\u201d Never heard of them? Well, they of course have nothing to do with flying machines. The term refers instead to parents who seem to \u201chover\u201d over their children constantly, making many of life\u2019s decisions for them \u2013 sometimes giving them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":201212,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43,52,33,3],"tags":[164],"class_list":["post-511090","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons","category-sermons-that-work","category-the-season-after-pentecost","category-worship-and-prayer-menu","tag-nativity-of-st-john-the-baptist"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":43,"label":"Sermons"},{"value":52,"label":"Sermons That Work"},{"value":33,"label":"The Season After Pentecost"},{"value":3,"label":"worship_and_prayer_menu"}],"post_tag":[{"value":164,"label":"Nativity of St. John the Baptist"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":[],"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sermon"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3475787,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511090\/revisions\/3475787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}