For Kirwan Uniting Church's Keep in Touch pew sheet 29 September 2019

A friend, a few years (not many) younger than I am, thought that I might like to be coached in Millennial patois, the better to be on fleek (you see what I mean) with KUC’s yoot. She’s Lutheran, so reading theol stuff in a funny language comes naturally to her.

Here’s a snap from Exodus 32:  “As he approached the camp and saw the big golden beefpupper and everyone being so basic, Moses was shook and couldn’t even. He yeeted the tablets he was holding at the foot of the mountain. It was a big mood”. And John 3:16: “For God so stanned the world, that he cancelled his best boi, that whosoever” (ed note - ‘whosoever’ looks like baby boomer has crept into the text, better get a form critic onto it) is his mutual should not be ghosted, but be lit AF.”

Now this raises two important points. One is that we do, indeed, need to recognise that the way we “do church”, the language we use, the hierarchy we either aspire to or to which we’re too obsequious, our failure to cherish the natural world, our lack of inclusivity, are baffling and alien to anyone under the age of, say, thirty.  And we should repent of some of those traits, while accepting that Boomers and Gen X are also entitled to understand God’s grace in Christ in our own familiar ways of worship.  The other point comes out in John 3:16 MV (Millennial Version).  It doesn’t matter how we express it, the King James of my childhood, Revised Standard Version of my youth, New International Version from middle-age onwards, or MV’s slang-du-jour. God loves me, loves Gens X, Y, Z and Millennials, so so much that he sent Jesus so that I might have eternal life.  John 3:17, “I didn’t come into the world to be its judge, but to be its Saviour”. (My Millennial language lessons haven’t reached that verse yet).  The French saying is “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”. The more things change, the more it’s the same thing.  So however you want to preach or witness or (better still,) live it, there’s no age discrimination in the need for God’s love nor in its indiscriminate outpouring in Christ. Blessup!