Remember the telescoping spyglass that Jack Sparrow used in The Pirates of the Cairbbean? There is a wide cylinder in which a narrower cylinder rests, in which a yet narrower cylinder rests, and perhaps a couple more. I think our view of reality is likewise telescoping. We live in the narrow end and view our world through the lens of immediate experience. But we and our experiences are contained within a family circle, and our family circle exists within a community, and our community exists within a nation, and our nation exists within a world.
Most of our attention is given to the nearest circles of reality: ourselves, our family, and our immediate community; and that is normal and good. But it is important to remember that we are part of something bigger, and that something bigger is part of something bigger still.
Think again of the telescoping spyglass and how its widest cylinder contains all the others in their entirety. It is that way with us, where the widest circle is not our nation, our world, or even our cosmos. The widest circle, containing all others, is our God. He is, in the language of the apostle, “All in all” (1 Cor. 15:29).
We do ourselves injury when we fail to see that all things exist within the rule and love of our God. This includes the good and beautiful things we enjoy, the hard things we endure, and even the grievous things we must bear. Though we live within all these things, they exist within the encompassing scope of the gracious God’s good intent.
When we fail to believe this, many things disturb our peace and cast doubt on our security. Instead of being an opportunity to know God, life becomes an irritation and a threat. We question whether God loves us, whether we’ll be okay, whether we are enough. We fill our vision with the enemies that threaten us and the griefs that might overtake us, but we do not pan out wide enough to see the heavenly Father within whose will these things exist and must serve our good.
In Luke’s Christmas story, we read that “Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.” Did the emperor’s decree, one wonders, disturb St. Joseph’s peace? Things were already so difficult. Before he got married, his betrothed had become pregnant under mysterious circumstances and had remained long away from home. And now this accursed international census, instituted by the Emperor Augustus, had come to Israel.
There are various purposes for a census, but one is universal: effective taxation. Apparently, the Divine Caesar needed to do something about his cash flow. Posting troops around the world was expensive then, just as it is now. It is hard to plan a budget when you don’t know how much revenue to expect. And you won’t know how much to expect unless you identify your sources of revenue; hence, the census.
In Israel, unlike in the provinces, people were required to return to their ancestral homes to be registered in the census. Had I been Joseph, I fear I would have complained: complained about the emperor, the situation, the time off work, and pretty much everything else.
Perhaps Joseph, good man that he was, did not complain. Perhaps he saw that he, and his circumstances, and his work, and even his loathsome emperor were within the good God’s good intent. Whatever may be the case, Joseph traveled to his ancestral home; he went to Bethlehem. Luke tells us that he did this because he belonged to the house and line of David. And he took Mary with him.
Why he took Mary is not exactly clear. In other regions of the Empire, only landowners were required to register. Perhaps Mary, who was also from David’s line, was an only child and had inherited property from her parents. Or perhaps Joseph took her along to get her out of Nazareth because of what people there were saying about her. Whatever his reasons, Joseph took Mary with him, though she was “expecting a” (or, as the King James translated, was “great with”) “child.”
When they arrived in Bethlehem, they could not find housing. Whether this was because there were no vacancies or because family members, who were expected – obliged, really – to take them in, had heard that Mary was carrying someone else’s baby and refused, we do not know. But poor Joseph was forced to house his family in a stable, which in all probability was a cave that shepherds used for shelter in inclement weather.
But all these immediate realities were contained in the larger reality of God’s good will, like the telescoping brass cylinders in Jack Sparrow’s spyglass. In other words, even the most difficult experiences fit into and serve God’s loving purpose. This is wonderfully exemplified in the Christmas story.
Joseph and Mary, wracked by gossip and forced to make a long and expensive trip, find their way to Bethlehem. They arrive in “the town of David” before the baby is born, and so fulfill a 700-year-old prophecy: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2).
Because they can find no lodging, they must resort to a place that Bethlehem’s shepherds know well. And so, the shepherds to whom the angel announced the birth of Israel’s savior know where to look for a “baby wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a manger.”
Joseph, living in the narrow end of our telescoping reality and viewing the world through his immediate experiences, probably could not see these things. But God could see perfectly how all these things would work together to advance the salvation of the world.
An hour or two ago, I left the hospital after reading the Christmas story to a man and his wife and praying with them. The man has been in the hospital for 18 days. Each time that it looks like he will be able to leave, something happens to extend his stay. Yesterday or the day before, he developed a pulmonary embolism. His wife has grown discouraged.
Why read the Christmas story to people in that situation? Because they too are living in the narrow end of our telescoping reality and viewing the world through their immediate experiences. But their experiences, just like those of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, are contained within the good and perfect will of God. And that is also where our experiences, good and bad, easy and hard, are located.
Have you listened to the radio at all lately? On some stations it’s all Christmas, all the time – a veritable cacophony of Christmas carols; a musical bedlam. If some of our contemporary Christmas music had played in Bethlehem on that first Christmas night, I’m pretty there would have been room in the inn for the holy family.
Did you know that there is a historical connection between Bethlehem and Bedlam? In the year 1247, a London bishop opened a monastery known as the Priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem. Among other things, the priory provided a place to stay for the homeless poor, and its friars collected alms to be used for their care. For many years, perhaps more than a century, the people living and working at the Priory wore a star of Bethlehem for identification.
Then in 1370, the British government took control of the priory and eventually turned it into the first hospital in the western world to care for the mentally insane. Most of the people committed to Bethlehem Hospital had either murdered or tried to murder someone, and many were uncontrollably violent. All the hospital’s inmates were chained to iron rings in the walls. If they weren’t mentally ill when they entered the hospital, they were before they left.
By the late fourteenth century, it was increasingly common for people to spell the name of the hospital differently, as Bethlem rather than Bethlehem. Sometime after that, hospital officials began charging an admittance fee for people who wanted to tour the hospital to see the inmates, the way people go to zoos to see the animals. By that time, Bethlem had been further slurred into bedlam, which came to stand for a scene of madness, uproar and confusion.
Isn’t it strange that a place built for hospitality and peace, a place named Bethlehem after the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, should become a byword for a place of madness, uproar and confusion?
Or is it strange? Christmas, the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace is now for many people a time of madness, uproar and confusion. On Black Friday (talk about a name!) the stores play carols announcing “peace on earth, good will to men” while crazed shoppers push and shove and step on one another in a frenzy to spend money they don’t have for things they don’t need to give to people they don’t love. It’s bedlam all over again.
Indeed, the world always sits on a razor’s edge between Bethlehem and Bedlam, heaven and hell, peace and uproar. Whatever your Christmas season has been like so far, tonight I want to invite you to leave Bedlam and come to Bethlehem. Step out of the chaos of covetousness and into the composure of faith. Come to Bethlehem and see him whose birth the angels sing. Come, adore on bended knee Christ the Lord, the newborn king.
Ancient peoples (as well as some moderns) believed that there are “thin places” on earth where the natural and supernatural meet, where heaven and earth intersect. They imagined that the otherwise impenetrable barrier between the physical and spiritual worlds is permeable in these places. Tianmen Mountain in China is one, so is the Lempuyang Temple in Bali, and the Drombeg Stone Circle in Ireland.
I don’t know if thin places really exist, but if they do, Bethlehem may be one of them. This place where the mother of the patriarchs was buried (going on 4,000 years ago), where David the King of Israel was born (3,000 years ago), and to which wise men from the East traveled (2,000 years ago) has been the site of remarkable things, but none so important as the birth of Jesus.
Karen and I were in Bethlehem for one afternoon about ten years ago. To get there, we had to pass through a security wall, and it was not at all permeable. The barrier between heaven and earth may be thin at Bethlehem, but the barrier between Israel and Palestine is not. Once we got through the checkpoint and onto the Palestinian side, we saw signs and graffiti, even novelty t-shirts, threatening Israel and demanding liberation. 2,000 years after the birth of Jesus, Bethlehem is not a place of peace.
But do you know what? Things were not very different 2,000 years ago. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, people there cursed the government and dreamed of liberation. In fact, the reason (on strictly human grounds) that Jesus was born in Bethlehem rather than somewhere else was an imperial decree that sent nationals back to their ancestral homes for the purpose of conducting a census.
Why did the emperor want a census? Because the data collected would guide his people in imposing the taxes that would fund the military government’s occupation of Israel and pay foreign troops to patrol her cities. You can imagine the resentment that inspired. When a census was taken in the next decade, that resentment boiled over into a major revolt that launched the Zealot resistance movement. The Bethlehem into which Jesus was born was not a place of “deep and dreamless sleep,” despite the carol’s lyrics. It was Bedlam.
Bethlehem’s location did not make it a place of peace, nor did the supposedly permeable nature of spiritual reality there. What made Bethlehem a place of peace was the presence of the Prince of Peace. Jesus turns Bedlam into Bethlehem, chaos into peace. Or say rather that we can experience peace in the midst of chaos, and calm even at the crossroads of Bedlam if he is with us.
And that’s a message we need to hear today. Many of us reside in a Bedlam zip-code. Our homes have a Bedlam address. Our lives are busy, noisy, hurried, and confused. You may remember that when the Son of God arrived in Bedlam, there was no room in the inn. When he comes to us now, he finds things haven’t changed much. There is no room in our hearts. We are too busy, especially – ironically – at Christmas. Our minds are occupied. Our doors are closed. There is no vacancy.
And so, there is no peace. But the Son of God has never gone looking for a place of peace to enter—if that were the case, he would not have gone to Bethlehem. (And for that matter, he would never have come to this rebellious planet at all.) No, he looks for a person who will trust him, a person to whom and through whom he can bring peace. Personal peace and trust in God go together.
It’s striking how often the biblical writers connect the two. For example: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:50). Or how about this: “…since we have been justified through faith, we have peace…” (Romans 5:1). Or this, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him…” (Romans 15:13). Or this, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me” (John 14:1). Or this, “When I am afraid, I will trust in you” (Psalm 56:3). Or better yet: “…in God I trust; I will not be afraid” (Psalm 56:11). Or this, “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid” (Isaiah 12:2). Or this, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” (Isaiah 26:3).
You see, the Prince of Peace entered a world of bedlam to free its inhabitants and bring them peace. But he cannot lead us there unless we trust him. Trust him: in his life and his death, in his wisdom and his word. You can say, “Peace! Peace!” but there will be no peace without the Prince of Peace.
Jesus once grieved over the city of Jerusalem and its people with these words: “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:42). What would have brought them peace? The same thing that can bring us peace: the Prince of Peace.
On the night of his birth, in the hills outside Bethlehem, the angel said to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Then all of heaven seemed to burst into song. The angel was joined by a host (the word means “army”) of angel peace-keepers who said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among people with whom he is pleased!” And with whom is he pleased? He is pleased with those who love the One he loves: his Son Jesus Christ; and to them he gives his peace.
Jesus is the Peace-maker between God and us, and between us and one another. He is the one who unites Jews and Gentiles, whites and blacks, rich and poor, for he is our peace. He is the one who gives peace in chaos: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:27). He is the one who brings us peace in our anxiety: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).
When our lives are in chaos, we often make the mistake of looking for peace when we ought to be calling to Jesus. We try to escape the chaos in distraction, but when the distraction ends, the chaos remains. Don’t look for peace; that leads to addiction. Look for the Peace-maker. Don’t simply try to get control of your life; try to give control of your life to him. Christmas will come and go, but give your life to Christ, and he will come and stay.
I started by speaking of “thin places,” where heaven and earth meet, but the barrier between heaven and earth is not permeable in a place; it is permeable in a person: Jesus. It is in a manger that heaven and earth meet and kiss. And it is at a cross that the gate of heaven opens.
Watch this sermon on 1 John 4:7-16, which one of the most insightful passages ever written on love. At the beginning of the sermon, we had a problem with the audio in our stream (though I can be heard), and it was quickly resolved. though it was quickly resolved. Alternately, you can read the sermon ms. below. It will not track perfectly with what I actually said, but all the important stuff is there.
1 John 4:7-16: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”
Verse 7: “Dear friends, let us love one another…” or it could be translated, we should love one another, “for” – here’s the reason – “love comes from God.” It is the best of his gifts. When we think of God’s gifts, we usually think of the gifts God gives to us, but the Apostle John was also thinking of the gift God gives through us: love. God enjoys giving his love through others: it allows him to get more people involved—and God loves a party!
It is possible for you to miss out on God’s gift in one of two ways. First, you can miss out because you’re so focused on his gift to you that you don’t recognize when he wants to give through you. And second, you can miss God’s gift to you because he sends it through me, and you fail to recognize that it is his gift.
For example, today, it is my privilege to be the person through whom God delivers a gift to you: his word. But because it comes through an ordinary guy like me, you might not recognize it as his gift. Getting to deliver one of God’s gifts of love does not make a person special, but it does make a person blessed. And receiving such a gift as from God also makes a person blessed.
Still verse 7: “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” Now it’s not everyone who does a loving thing that knows God, but everyone who is loving – the word is really a present participle, which signifies ongoing action. The love John is talking about is more than a one-time act of affection or sympathy. Some people are affectionate or sympathetic because of their personality or the way they were raised, and that is a tremendous advantage; but it is not what John has in mind. The love he is talking about is more than affection, or sympathy, or desire.
Follow John’s line of reasoning: We should love because (1) love comes from God and because (2) we come from God (or as he puts it, we have been born of God). A very wooden translation from the original language goes like this: “Love from God is and the one loving from God has been born.” John is thinking of people whom God has brought to new life through faith in Jesus Christ. Such people (spiritually speaking) are born with the love gene. It is their nature to love. They may not be in touch with their true nature, and things can and do get in the way of that nature, but people who share God’s life share God’s love.
The way this sentence begins emphasizes that fact. In the original language, “Dear friends” is simply “beloved.” It is the beloved person who can be the loving person. The person who is loved by God can love like God because he shares God’s love. Loving each other is enormously important, but it is always secondary to, and contingent upon, receiving love from God. If we are not receiving love from God, loving others will always be an imposition, a duty, and unreachable ideal.
Your ability to love others – spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, friend-friends, strangers, enemies, and even God himself – is dependent upon your ability to receive love from God. Do you know that God loves you, not just in the abstract as biblical datum, but in your experience? I was a pastor for some time before that truth finally traveled from my head to my heart: God loves me. It was a revelation from God’s Spirit, and it makes a huge difference.
Now look at verse 8: “Whoever does not love” (again, it is a present participle: the one not loving) “does not know God, because God is love.” You can’t know a person, including God, merely by studying him. To really know a person, you need to see what he sees, sense what he feels, and esteem what he values.
If you really want to know a guy who is all about fishing, you need to fish. You need to know what it’s like to be on a wilderness lake as the sun is coming up and a foggy mist rises from water that is warmer than air. You need to know that the fisherman is a treasure hunter and feel the excitement of believing that buried treasure lies at the end of the next cast. You need to experience the fisherman’s aesthetic pleasure in seeing a light rain transform a lake’s glassy surface into an intricate lace pattern.
You will not know the fisherman through gene mapping. You will not know him because you read his credit report. You will not know him by learning his job title at the factory or at the office. To borrow John’s language: “Whoever does not fish cannot know the fisherman, because the fisherman is fish.”
I know that’s a stretch, but it puts us on the right track. You want to know – really know – the skydiver? Jump out of an airplane. You want to know – really know – the mother? Have a baby. You want to know – really know – the investor? Sell you house and cars and put the money into the stock market. Do you want to know – really know – God? There is only one way: You must love. You cannot stand on the outside of love – protecting and defending yourself – and ever know God. He lives in a different world. His mind works in a different way. He values different things.
You may say, “But I do know God. He takes care of me. He provides for my needs.” But because he cares for you does not mean that you know him in any way more meaningful than the golden retriever knows the owner who feeds him. But what if the golden retriever could change, could grow, could begin to understand his owner’s concerns, longings, hopes, pleasures? But for that he would need a different kind of life.
It is the same with us. We need a different kind of life, one that changes us, opens us up to new realities that we could not know before. We need God’s kind of life: not biological but spiritual; not temporal but eternal. That is the kind of life that God shares with those who believe in his Son. And the heartbeat of that life is love. Without that kind life, that kind of love, you cannot know that kind of God, the God who is love.
Now, it is true that God is love, but don’t turn that around and say that “Love is God.” Turn love into a god, and it will become a demon that will terrorize you. But that is precisely what western culture has done: It has deified what it calls love – desire – and that love has been our demon. But exalt the Lord as God, and love will be your delight.
Here’s the point: we don’t get to define love. God does. But when he defines love, he doesn’t spell it out in ink in a dictionary; he spells it out in blood on a cross. Look at verses 9-10: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world” (that’s Christmas) “that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (That’s Good Friday.)
God doesn’t define love in terms of affection or desire but in terms of giving. Love does not mean “never having to say you’re sorry”—one of the silliest lines ever written. Loves means giving yourself to meet another’s need.
And are we ever needy! John describes that need in terms of sin – the thing that separates us both from God and from the person we hope to become. It’s killing us. Sin has multiple stems – lust, greed, envy, anger, pride, gluttony – and a million branches, but only one root: the dogged determination to be one’s own god. Sin is not simply a moral violation; it is rebellion; and the sinner is a rebel.
And we are trapped in our rebellion; stuck in our sin. It is the primary human disorder, a spiritual cancer that consumes us from the inside, and we cannot do a thing about it. We cannot cure ourselves. Only God can do that, but sin has made us allergic to God—the only one who can help us.
That is why God became flesh and dwelled among us. It is why God gave his only begotten Son, as the Bible’s most famous verse puts it, so that we would not perish but have everlasting life. Love is all about giving: giving oneself to meet another’s need. That is what happened at Bethlehem, which we celebrate at Christmas. That is what happened at Calvary, which we celebrate on Good Friday. That is what happened in Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Pentecost.
But John wants us to do more than celebrate. He wants us, verse 11, to imitate: to give ourselves – not just our advice or our money or our time, but ourselves – to one another. I can give money without giving myself, but money without love is a hand-out. I can give advice without giving myself, but advice without love is interference. Loyalty without love is servitude. Righteousness without love is legalism. St. Paul captured this perfectly when he wrote, “If I give all I possess to the poor … but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). True love differs from lust and affection, but also from philanthropy and patronage because love gives itself, not just its resources. And that is exactly what God did in Christ.
But how can anyone give himself? If he does that, won’t he lose himself? That’s what we fear. And the plain truth is, I can’t give myself away any more than I can pull myself up by my own bootstraps. The only way for me to give myself to someone else is for someone else to give himself to me. I need to receive another’s life before I can give my own away.
And that describes perfectly the dynamic of Christian love. God loves me, I love you, you love someone else; but it all starts with God, comes from God, and is God giving himself away – principally through his Son, and then through you and me. That’s why Jesus told his disciples, “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).
We are afraid to give ourselves away, afraid that we will lose ourselves. But we needn’t be. My “self” is not some static reality that I might foolishly give away a little at a time until there is none left. My true self come to me from God, which is why Paul can say that our life is hidden with Christ in God, and tells us that we are even now seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly places. My true self is released to me as I dare to trust God and give myself away.
Jesus told us this again and again, in a variety of ways: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit” (John 12:24). “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:33). “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25). We find our true self in giving ourselves away; that is, we find ourselves when we love.
Look at verse 12, and see how this works: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete {or, as the King James has it, is perfected} in us.”
Here is one of the most unexpected things in this entire letter: God’s love is made complete or is perfected when we love each other. Does that mean God’s love incomplete – imperfect – when we don’t love each other? Think of it this way. Running through the true Church, which is comprised of all those who have faith in God’s Son Jesus, is a gigantic circuit that transverses time and space, like electrical wiring running through a house—or, better yet, a temple. God is constructing a vast, living temple (made out of us) where he can be seen, known, and loved, but the construction phase won’t be complete until all of his people are conductors of his love.
Right now, if one of us fails to love, there is an open circuit, a broken connection. But when the circuit is completed and we are confirmed in love, the Church of his love will light up the universe like noonday, and God will become visible in his beauty and glory. This is why John says, “no one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” If we love each other the light of love shines and God is revealed. No amount of good preaching, exciting programming, or professional-quality music can ever make up for love.
God made fish for water. He formed them so that they could move easily in water, gave them gills so that they could draw in oxygen from water. A fish out of water loses itself, its fishness. It can only be itself in water. Without water, it can only die.
Suppose your tropical fish grew tired of its glass prison cell. One day, it was able to jump out of the aquarium onto your living room floor. Here, it was finally “free.” And here, it quickly died, because fish are made for water.
If a fish can only be itself in water, what is the element in which a human can truly be himself or herself? To put the question differently, what is it we were made for? The Anglican scholar John Stott answered that question this way: “… according to Scripture the answer is love. Human beings are made for love because God is love. When he created us in his own image, he gave us the capacity to love and to be loved. So, human beings find their destiny in loving God and in loving their neighbors.”[1] And not only do they find their destiny; they find themselves, as God destined them to be.
Are you ready to find yourself? Are you ready to become part of the circuit that lit the night sky over Bethlehem, that illuminates God with the light of love? The way to become part of that circuit is to confess (the word acknowledges in verse 15 is the ordinary Greek word for confesses) Jesus. Acknowledge his rule, receive his forgiveness, sign up to be an instrument of his love.
Then the God who is love will live in you and you will find your life – the life you’ve always wanted – in him. But that life only flows into us as it is able to flow through us in love. So let me close where we began: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.”
[1] John Stott, “Freedom,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 102.
In a post from last week, I wrote about the Coming Invasion, which the Bible variously describes as The Coming, The Second Coming, The Appearance, and His Return. It will be the inaugurating event of the Palingenesis (Genesis Again), the Project Earth restart. But if there is a return, a second coming, there must also have been a first coming, a prior invasion.
There was. Two billion people or so will commemorate that invasion in the Celebration known as the Yuletide, Noel, the Feast of the Nativity, and Christmas. It is important to understand that Christmas, like D-Day, is the anniversary of an invasion. Bethlehem was the landing site, a bridgehead behind enemy lines in the long war that ravages the earth. Our leader (the one we call The Captain, the Prince, the King) entered enemy territory in the most daring rescue attempt ever made.
A reader may object, “But Christmas is about the birth of a baby!” That is precisely why it was the most daring rescue effort ever attempted. The Captain came into enemy territory unarmed, as a helpless baby. He was not disguised as a helpless baby; he was a helpless baby. This is what the theologians called Mysterium Incarnationis, the “Mystery of the Incarnation.”
The Captain came not only to do something about our situation, but to do something within our situation; not just within our geography but within our humanity. He came to neutralize the enemy’s most devastating weapon: death itself. The author of Hebrews writes: “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil),and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Christmas is the anniversary of the secret invasion that was at the heart of history’s greatest rescue mission. The world has had its share of infiltrators: names like Nathan Hale, Aldrich Ames, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg come to mind. They infiltrated armies, state departments, and intelligence communities. But there has never been an infiltration so complete as the one performed in “Operation Bethlehem.” For this was an infiltration of our race, our biological make-up even, by one whose secret entrance into our world came through the Virgin’s womb!
The invasion that God’s people had long expected came; but the hosts of heaven sang, they did not make war. The King of Heaven did not thunder, he cried, cried like a baby, was a baby; but at that cry the gates of hell shook.
The mystery of Christmas is not that the conqueror comes or that there will be no end of the increase of his government and of his peace. The mystery is not that he will rule the kingdom from David’s throne, but that he will conquer men’s hearts from a manger in a stable and a cross on a hill. That there is a savior in the City of David was not a mystery; that he was wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a feeding trough is ineffable mystery. That he comes to rule is expected; that he allows men and women to choose whether he will rule them, that is the mystery. John tells us that “he came unto his own, but his own received him not.” He did not come with irresistible force but with grace and love.
We can read the Christmas story and miss all this, even though the hints are there. The angels who chant “Glory to God” and “Peace on Earth” are described as a “host,” that is, an army. The enemy counter with a quick strike intended to trap and kill the infiltrator but he escapes and will yet “save his people.” In the revolution he brings, rulers will be “brought down from their thrones” and God’s people “delivered from the hand of [their] enemies.”
Once we have seen this, we cannot go back and make this a simple story of an unwed mother, a needy couple, and hard-hearted townspeople. The skies did not burst into praise at the birth of a baby but at the birth of a savior. The pivotal phase of the cosmic battle happened two thousand years ago. Its final phase is set to commence.
Last Saturday, I posted a piece I titled, The Coming Invasion. In the article, I pictured humans as squatters who refuse to recognize God’s ownership of the earth. The article itself was adapted from another piece I started years ago and never finished. It sat in my files with the title Unused.
Interestingly, before the article was posted on Saturday on WordPress and Substack, I was forced to deal with squatters. I walked over to California Road Missionary Church, where I serve as pastor, and found an RV in our parking lot, with an extension cord plugged into an outlet on our building.
I went out and knocked on the driver’s side door, but there was no answer besides a chorus of barking dogs. I took a picture of the vehicle, then walked around it, and came to the “entrance door.” There I found a hand-written sign in the window: “Sorry about the inconvenience… My key broke in the ignition and now the entire get-up is broken. I got someone coming in the AM to fix it and I’ll be gone. Sorry also about my dog…My female is in heat and he don’t handle it the best but his [sic] OK. LOL.” Below the sign was a name and a cell phone number. I promptly texted the phone, but did not promptly receive an answer.
That was on a Wednesday. Later in the day, I saw the man (I’ll call him “B”) who had come to fix it. He said nothing about the ignition, but told me the fuel filter was probably plugged, and he didn’t know where it was located on the vehicle. We conversed for a few minutes and, before I went inside, I politely told him that the vehicle would need to be moved since we had a meeting that evening and it was sitting sideways across parking spaces near our handicap parking. He assured me he would take care of it, even if he “had to tow it with [his] truck.”
(I should pause to say that B’s truck was a late model pickup, banged in on one side, with a window that had been shattered. B told me that he lived out of this truck, though I once found him sleeping in the RV. The RV was in worse shape than the truck. Its roof was overlaid with loose-fitting tarps, and at least one window was covered with cardboard, and the entire vehicle looked as if it were falling apart.)
When evening came, there was no one at the RV except the dogs, three of them, all German Shepherds or mixed breed German Shepherds. People coming to the meeting had to find new parking places, away from the handicap spots. After the meeting, I met the owner of the RV (whom I’ll call “T”), when she came to get water from one of our outside spigots. We invited her in, and I got water for her from the sink, while she used the church restroom. Before we parted, I kindly told her that the RV would need to be moved. She assured me that “B” didn’t know what he was doing, but her brother would come the next day with the right parts and fix it.
But on the next day, as far as I know, no one came. I saw no one for most of the day, though someone had let the dogs out – there was dog manure everywhere. I also notice a bucket of what I took to be human excrement. (I don’t think you can train German Shepherds to go in a bucket.)
I texted T and heard back from her that she had been in the hospital with preeclampsia. (T is 8-months pregnant.) I texted the following two days, and did not hear back at all. Was T having the baby? Was she ill? I saw B, but he said nothing about T except that she needed to stop lollygagging and get the RV moved. (“Lollygagging” was my G-rated version of what he really said.)
On Saturday, I told B the RV must be moved. I texted the same thing to T, but didn’t hear back. On Sunday morning, I came to church, and there was the RV. I knocked on the door and was answered by the dogs, but there were no humans present. Just dogs and dog poop.
After church, I texted T: “T, you haven’t been responding to my tests and I don’t know what is happening with you and I have been worried. I don’t know if you are at a friend’s like before, in the hospital, or in the RV. I told B yesterday that I would need to contact the police if the RV was still here on Sunday. I expect them to take the dogs to the shelter and impound the vehicle. I will call them after church services today.”
That text elicited four responses, including a plea not to “call the cops.” I gave T until Tuesday. I was away on Monday, but when I came to church on Tuesday morning, the RV was still there. B came in the late morning and told me the RV would be gone in five minutes. It was still there 90 minutes later. When I came out of the office to speak with someone in the lobby, the RV finally pulled away.
I feel badly for T and B. Their lives are a mess, and their future seems bleak. They are living in squalor and are determined to continue living that way. Though I gave them bags of food and my wife and I suggested options to them, they seemed completely uninterested in making any changes.
I see myself in T and B. There was a time when I lived in God’s world as if I owned it, using his resources without acknowledgment, and often making a mess of things. I gave too little thought to the Owner and what He might expect of me. Even after I came to acknowledge him as “Lord,” I have often been remiss in expressing gratitude to him. But I am hardly the only one. There is a whole world of people living in the same way, yet God “is patient toward [us], not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance”—that is, to a life-transforming change of mind.
I can live in a million-dollar home (I’ve never even owned a home), drive expensive cars (I drive a late-model Honda), and eat in Michelin-starred restaurants (Applebee’s is more like it), and still be a squatter. I didn’t make this world, and I don’t own it. It is God’s creation, and he retains ownership. It is only right to acknowledge that.
I usually post a video of the previous week’s sermon sometime midweek, but we had audio issues in the stream, so I am posting the manuscript for the sermon. It will not coincide perfectly with what was actually said, but it will be close. The Third Sunday of Advent theme is joy, and in this message, we see why we cannot do without joy – or at least we cannot do well without joy.
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. (Romans 14:17-19)
The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace (we thought about that last week), and joy (which we’ll think about today). In God’s kingdom – which is to say, where God rules –– there is righteousness, peace, and joy. Righteousness is right relationships, with God and others. Right relationships are normal in the kingdom of God, but they are not normal in the kingdoms of the world. What do you think? Are right – and by that, I mean just, kind, merciful and, above all, loving – relationships the norm in your workplace? What about your school? What about Washington, D.C. or Beijing or Moscow or Jerusalem?
Last week we saw that the kingdom is peace. Once relationships have been righted, peace has a chance to grow. And peace does grow; it is not a static thing. It is not merely the absence of conflict. It is a positive wholeness and health between people and God and people and people.
Then the kingdom is joy, and when we come to joy, we are near to the heart of the kingdom. Joy sings from its citadels. It is one of the shared resources of heaven, like air or water. Heaven is serious about its joy. But we, I think, are not yet as joyful as God intends us to be.
Imagine this: You’ve just got to heaven, and you should be happy, but you’re worried about what God is going to say to you. You’re afraid he will bring up that thing you’ve kept hidden all these years. Or that 20-year grudge you refused to let go of. Or your first marriage – that didn’t end well. Or the lies. Or …
You find yourself standing before the throne, and the great God, the Glorious Father, is saying: “I am grieved…” and you think, “I knew it: It’s that grudge. I should have done something about that years ago. Or maybe the lies.” But what he says is: “My child … why were you not more joyful?”
And you say, “What? I mean, Almighty and glorious God, Lord of heaven and earth, creator of all things visible and invisible … what? I thought you were going to ask me about the grudge or about my first marriage. Or that time I cheated on a math test in the 11th grade – you knew about that, right?”
And he will say: “Child, I know all, and we will talk about those things. But first, you must tell me why you were not more joyful. Do you have any explanation for that? Because, if you had just been more joyful, the grudge, the divorce, the cheating never would have happened.”
St. Thomas Aquinas said: “Man cannot live without joy; therefore, when he is deprived of true spiritual joys, it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.” Joy is not a luxury; it is a necessity. We need to be joyful.
I sometimes think we approach the Christian life from the wrong direction. Instead of being eager to do the right thing, we focus on not doing the wrong thing. We hope to escape punishment, when God wants us to strive to enter joy. We are passionate about avoiding shame, but indifferent about entering glory.
It is good that we don’t want to sin. God doesn’t want us to sin either, but he understands that joy is the best protection against sin. He designed it that way. That’s why Paul told the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord, and then added: “It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you” (Philippians 3:1) If you’re constantly giving in to temptation, the surprising reality is this: you’re not as joyful as God intends you to be.
At times, the church’s message to outsiders seems to be: “Accept Jesus or go to hell.” It’s not that that is untrue, but it is like trying to sell a Ferrari with the tagline: “It’s better than the bus.” We have great news to share! There would be fewer atheists if Christians were more joyful. Churches would be full if the people in them had joy. A church can have doctrinal correctness, moral rectitude, and political clout but if its people lack joy, it won’t have appeal.
My first point is a simple one, though you may not have thought of it before: God wants you to be more joyful. God himself is the most joyful being in the entire universe, and he wants his children to share his joy. What did Paul tell God’s people? “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:1) What did he say was the motive for his ministry? “I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith” (Philippians 1:25). That should be on every pastor’s job description: “Help our church be more joyful.” To the Corinthians he wrote, “…we work with you for your joy” (2 Corinthians 1:24). He wanted his friends to know the joy of belonging to Jesus in the Kingdom of God.
The idea that God is a cosmic killjoy who doesn’t want anyone to be happy is absolute heresy. When our heavenly Father requires us to give up a pleasure, it is only because it is keeping us from a greater pleasure, from all joy. As C. S. Lewis put it, “Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us…”[1]
You think God is disappointed in you because you are not spiritual enough, not gentle enough, not holy enough, or whatever. “Disappointed” is the wrong word to use. Someone who doesn’t know the future can be disappointed, but God knows the end from the very beginning. He has never been disappointed; not once. But he has been grieved, and when you and I live joyless lives, he is grieved. Your heavenly Father wants you to be joyful. That’s my first point.
My second point is this: Joy is not a state of mind you or I can work up. It comes from outside us, from a bigger world. If we are closed to that bigger world, we will not have joy.
Our most important connection to that world is through the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection is the link that connects us to the bigger world where God rules, where death has been defeated, evil routed, and joy unspeakable flashes with glory. It is a world of rich possibilities, one to which we cannot yet go but that has come to us through the Spirit of Jesus.
If we close the windows and doors of our soul; if we shut ourselves up in our own ambitions, hurts, failures, or even successes, the winds of joy will not blow through. We may have success or failure, pleasure or pain, but we will not have joy. The way of joy is not in; it’s out.
Joy comes from outside and invites us to come out too—to come out and play: to come out of ourselves, our troubles, and even our successes. We are never further from joy than when we are most occupied with ourselves – our health, our feelings, our relationships, our reputation. When we forget about ourselves, even for a moment, joy becomes possible. This is true in any activity – skiing, dancing, playing a game, falling in love, or offering a prayer. Remember what Jesus said: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25).
When the winds of joy blow over you and joy begins to seep into you, the quickest way to lose it is to turn inward, to think: “I am having a spiritual experience. This is happening to me.” Joy comes from without. Focus in and it will vanish.
Because joy comes from without, we can have joy even in trouble, even in grief. There is nothing contradictory about being in grief and having joy because joy does not originate in you. It comes to you from outside, from the larger world, where the God of joy exercises his perfect rule.
Because that is true, you can even “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials…” (James 1:2, NKJV). You can count it all joy because you know, outside you and your problem, the great God is at work. He will make this trial and every trial serve your good, if you belong to Jesus. And he will use what you’re going through to make you something you could never otherwise be, to “produce perseverance … so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:4).
On the eve of Jesus’s crucifixion, a few hours before his arrest, he told his disciples that he wanted his joy to be in them. A little later, he prayed to his Father “that they may have the full measure of my joy within them” (John 17:13). What is Jesus’s joy that he wants his people to have? I believe Jesus’s joy is his Father and the kingdom he rules. His Father is good, loving, unstoppable, unbeatable, glorious, joyful, and wise. And his kingdom is good, just, peaceful, blessed, beautiful and glorious. His perfect rule has reached this rebellious speck of dust we call earth through Jesus, and nothing can stop it. And this God, by the grace of our Lord Jesus, is our Father! Open the window and let that air blow through! Or close it, and breathe the stale air of your own problem-filled life.
So, joy comes from outside. There is no sense in trying to work it up because joy is not in you. Remember what the author of Hebrews said about Jesus: “Who for the joy set before him…” Before him. It was out there, because out there is under the control of the all-powerful, all-ruling God. Joy doesn’t come from you but to you; it is always a gift.
And that brings us to my third point: Joy is strength. The joy that comes from out there enables a person to do what he or she would otherwise find impossible. “Who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.” According to the author of Hebrews, Jesus did not endure the cross through sheer determination, nor through personal strength, nor even through genuine holiness. He endured it through joy!
We fault ourselves for not being spiritual enough when the real problem is that we are not joyful enough. “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). If you close yourself up in the small chamber of your illness or difficult marriage or broken relationship until your world is no bigger than your problem, you will be weak, and you will get weaker. But if you come out of yourself into the joy of the Lord, you will be strong.
So, first point: You are probably not joyful enough. God wants you to be joyful. Second point: Joy originates from outside, not inside. Third point: Joy is strength. Joy enables us to do hard things. Fourth point: Faith is necessary for joy.
It is necessary, but there is not a one-to-one correspondence between faith and joy. It is not: if you trust, you will be joyful. In fact, the moments when you are most aware of the need to trust God are often the most trying moments in your life. But a life of trust, even if it is filled with hardship, is the kind of life in which joy comes often to visit. It may be that the before end of such a life, joy will come to stay, as it did for the Pilgrim William Bradford. During his final days, according to his famous contemporary, Cotton Mather, “The God of heaven so filled his mind with ineffable consolations that he seemed … wrapped up unto the unutterable entertainments of paradise.”[2] Joy had come to stay.
Faith opens the doors and windows to God’s larger world. Faith connects us to the kingdom of peace, to the resurrection that overthrows death, and to the God who makes all things work together for good. Faith is our connection to the outside, where the winds of joy continually blow. St. Paul writes: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). “…fill you with all joy…as you trust in him.”
When you are in the middle of some tough situation; when you are discouraged and ready to give up; when the walls are closing in and your world has shrunk to the dimensions of your problems; trusting God at that moment opens a window into the larger world. It doesn’t force your problems out, but it does invite God and his rule in. It allows the winds of joy from another world to blow through your life.
But you must trust God, this God, who is making all things new. You must believe in, trust in, rely on the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the path to joy.
But there are also paths away from joy. You can choose not to trust. You can say to yourself and others, “Nothing’s ever going to change, and nobody cares—not even God. I’m on my own.”
Do you know what that is? Sheer unbelief. It is a rejection of the gospel and of the God who announces it. Christ is standing outside, where the winds of joy blow, knocking, and you are ignoring him, locking him out and yourself in with your problems. Faith does not cast your problems out; it opens the door for God to come in. Faith is not a tool to get your way, but an invitation for God to join you.
Another way to lose joy, or at least miss out on it, is to stuff yourself with joy substitutes. Joy substitutes are the junk food of the spiritual life: distractions like food and video games and TV. Remember when you were a kid and you reached for a cookie and your mom said, “No, you don’t. You’ll ruin your appetite, and supper’s almost ready.” It’s not that cookies are bad, nor are food and video games and TV bad. But use any of those things as a substitute for joy, and you’ll miss out on joy.
We can have joy – Jesus’s joy – because we have a God who loves us, a savior who died for us, and a glorious future awaiting us. Besides that, our present circumstances, even the hard ones, must serve God’s good purpose for us. We can experience joy more and more frequently as we trust our God.
Let me close with a story Brennan Manning told about a guy name Ed Farrell from Detroit. Ed planned a two-week vacation to Ireland to coincide with his favorite uncle’s 80th birthday. When the big day arrived, Ed and his uncle got up before dawn, dressed in silence, and went for a walk along the shores of Lake Killarney. When the sun first peered over the horizon, Ed’s uncle stopped walking and just watched it rise for the next 20 minutes. All that time, neither he nor Ed said a single word. Then, suddenly, the old man began to skip along the shoreline, his face radiant with joy.
When Ed caught up with him, he said: “Uncle Seamus, you look very happy. Do you want to tell me why?”
With tears running down his cheeks, Uncle Seamus said: “Yes, lad. You see, the Father is fond of me. Ah, me Father is so very fond of me.”[3]
Children: your father is fond of you. He is so very fond of you. He wants you to have joy. Trust him. Open the windows and let the winds of joy blow.
[1] The Weight of Glory, “The Weight of Glory” (1941), chap. 1, para. 1, pp.3-4.
[2] Adapted from Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower (Penguin Books, 2007), page 189
[3] Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness (Harper San Francisco, 2002), pp. 25-26
(“God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does.” – C. S. Lewis, Beyond Personality)
Imagine you are a German living in Berlin in 1943. The car plant at which you’ve worked for 12 years has been repurposed to produce Panzer tanks. Each day, you make weapons of destruction. Each night, you go home to your family and try not to think about the war. You go on picnics, review your children’s schoolwork, and try to be a good parent.
Two years from now, the Soviets will surround the city, east and west. They will pound it with artillery. The Fuhrer will take his own life. On May 2, German commanders will surrender to the Americans. It was, despite the propaganda, inevitable.
When the Americans drop their bombs, and the Soviets march into your city, your neighborhood, your factory, you can reassure yourself that you are a good person, a loving parent, and a faithful spouse – which might be true – but it doesn’t change the fact that you are on the wrong side. You may receive clemency. You may be granted amnesty. But you can’t go on doing what your doing – making tanks – as if nothing has happened.
Earth, like Berlin in 1945, is going to be invaded. It is called the second coming. All of us (Jews, Hindus, Christians, Muslims, atheists, Westerners, Easterners, young and old) assume that we are on the right side. But we have misunderstood our situation.
Imagine that an alien race makes war on the earth. Their forces land in the United States and no one can resist them. On their sweep of your city, they come to your house to take you away. But you say, “But … but … I am a Republican. I go to church. I give to the United Way.”
And they say, “I don’t care if you are a Republican, a church-goer, or a philanthropist. You are on the wrong side.”
Because we look at this backwards, we come to the wrong conclusion. Humanity – not this or that part of it, not religious or irreligious, gays or straights, Democrats or Republicans, but humanity itself – is on the wrong side. We were born on the wrong side – the losing side – and we don’t even know it.
We listen to the propaganda. We take for granted that we are the good guys and don’t even consider what God thinks or says. We leave him out of the picture. Or if we bring him in – as many people do – it is to be our supporter.
Imagine that you’ve invited a family into your home because the parents lost their jobs and were being evicted in the middle of winter, with no place to go. You tell them the house is theirs to use, right down to the food in the refrigerator. You’re going to be spending four months in Florida and that should give them plenty of time to find jobs and look for housing.
When you come back from Florida, your key no longer works because their is no longer a keyhole. Your “guests” have installed a keyless entry system. So, you knock; but no one comes to the door. You try calling, but your call goes straight to voicemail. The next time you call, it doesn’t even do that. They have told themselves that the house is theirs so often that they have come to believe their own lie. They’ve also told their friends the house is theirs, and they believe it too.
You send letters, entreating them to talk to you. You try reason, display patience, extend the deadline, but they act like you don’t exist. At some point, for the sake of truth, for the sake of the neighborhood, even for the sake of their squatter souls, you will take back what is rightfully yours. When you do, they may say, “But I am a Republican!” Or, “I give to United Way!” Or even, “But I go to church!” Maybe so, but they are on the wrong side.
If they will acknowledge your ownership of the house, their relationship with you might be restored even now because you are merciful and kind. But if they continue to disregard you and yours, this simply cannot end well for them.
When humans stopped acknowledging God’s ownership of the planet, they became squatters. When they refused to submit to his rule, they became rebels. At some point, for the sake of truth, for the sake of the neighborhood (humans are not the only ones living in the neighborhood), and for the sake of our own souls, God will take back what is rightfully his. It won’t matter then if we are Republicans or Democrats, churchgoers, or charity benefactors, if we are on the wrong side.
The good news (the gospel) declares that, even though we have acted like God doesn’t exist, even though we have used the planet that belongs to him as if it were ours to do with as we please, even though we have misused the people who live on it as though they were not the heavenly Father’s people, the relationship can be restored. It is not too late. Forgiveness has been extended. God is more merciful and kinder than we can imagine.
When we realize that we have been looking at this backwards, when what is really happening finally becomes clear to us, it becomes possible to adjust our lives to a reality – the reality – of a world in which God is not only active but is the axis around which all things revolve. But this needs to happen before the invasion begins; afterwards, it will be too late.
In this second Sunday of Advent sermon, we learn that peace is not a thing you get, but a thing you make – or rather, a thing you weave. This is important and good news for anyone who longs for peace. The foundational text is Romans 14:17-19.
It simply isn’t possible to build a peaceful, joyful life on unrighteousness, which is to say, on wrong relationships—ones characterized by unforgiveness, resentment, guilt, pride, and deceit. If we try to skip over right relationships and go directly to peace, we will fail. Every time.
Tweet
Below is an article I published through Gannett a number of years ago. It is slightly amended and I’ve added a couple of pictures. The one of Jesse Owens and Luz Long taking a victory lap arm and arm is priceless.
You have a tell.
The “social psychologist James Pennebaker spent years researching the significance of our use of words. With a team of grad students, he developed a sophisticated software program that analyzes what our words say about us. Pennebaker claims that the words we generate over a lifetime are like “fingerprints.” Even small words – what he calls “stealth words,” like pronouns (I, you, we, they) and prepositions (to, for, over) – “broadcast the kind of people we are.”
No wonder Jesus said “that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Words not only reveal who people are, they have the power to change who people become, for good or evil. In a letter to believers scattered in the Diaspora, St. James makes the point that little words can have giant effects. The entire course of a person’s life can be changed by a few words from a parent or even a friend.
Sometimes the effect is good. In the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, three years prior to the start of the Second World War, the African American star Jesse Owens seemed a sure bet to win the long jump. The previous year, he had set three world records in one day.
As he walked to the long jump pit, he saw a tall, blue-eyed, blond German taking practice jumps in the 26-foot range. Owens was worried: the Nazis were determined to prove Aryan “superiority,” and they intended to do so by beating Jesse Owens.
On his first attempt, Owens was so nervous he went several inches beyond the takeoff line before he jumped. That left him even more rattled and he fouled on the second jump, too. He was one foul away from being eliminated and he was a wreck.
That’s when the tall German approached Owens and introduced himself as Luz Long. Long, the archetype of Aryan superiority, stood there chatting with a black man in view of the entire stadium.
What Long said to Owens was this: since you only need 23 feet 5 1/2 inches to qualify, why don’t you make a mark several inches before the takeoff board and jump from there, just to play it safe? Owens took his advice and easily qualified. In the finals, he set an Olympic record and earned the second of four gold medals he would win in Berlin. And the first person to congratulate him – in full view of Adolf Hitler – was Luz Long. He took a victory lap around the stadium with Owens, arm in arm.
Owens never got the chance to see Long again: he was killed in the war. But he later said, “You could melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be plating on the 24-carat friendship I felt for Luz Long.”
Words have great power to do good but they also have great destructive power. St. James writes: “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”
According to James, the whole course of a person’s life can be set on fire by a word. In pastoral ministry, I’ve met adults who were burned as children by words like “stupid” and “lazy” who have never fully recovered from their injuries.
After describing the destructive power of words, St. James proceeds to make a surprising and disturbing claim: people are incapable of taming their own tongues. If that is true, where does that leave us? Are we doomed to inflict the damage on others that has been inflicted on us?
That is not what James had in mind at all. He had learned from Jesus that what comes out of our mouths cannot be controlled by “taming the tongue” but only by changing the heart. This, he had also learned from Jesus, is possible. Heart-change happens in an apprentice-like relationship to Jesus, among people who are aware of God’s presence and confident of his willingness to help.
 | salooper57 on Look Four Ways Before Crossing… |
 | egarardcflrrcom on Look Four Ways Before Crossing… |
| salooper57 on The Christmas Day Invasio… |
 | Larry Bishop on The Christmas Day Invasio… |
 | Cosima Diamond on Can Erika Kirk Really Forgive… |
| salooper57 on Look Four Ways Before Crossing… |
| egarardcflrrcom on Look Four Ways Before Crossing… |
| salooper57 on The Christmas Day Invasio… |
| Larry Bishop on The Christmas Day Invasio… |
| Cosima Diamond on Can Erika Kirk Really Forgive… |
| salooper57 on Look Four Ways Before Crossing… |
| egarardcflrrcom on Look Four Ways Before Crossing… |
| salooper57 on The Christmas Day Invasio… |
| Larry Bishop on The Christmas Day Invasio… |
| Cosima Diamond on Can Erika Kirk Really Forgive… |
The Way Home 
Leave a comment