Style and Class
Commentary
Stan Wiersma, writing under his pen name “Sietze Buning,” explored the religious roots of being considerate in his collection of folk poetry titled Style and Class (Middleburg Press, 1982). Much of what we display in life, said Sietze Buning, has to do with “style” — we watch how others dress or act, and then we try to imitate those we admire. But “class” is living out of the nobility of your inner character, said Sietze.
He tells this little story to illustrate what he means:
Queen Wilhelmina was entertaining the
Frisian Cattle Breeders’ Association at dinner.
The Frisian farmers didn’t know what to make of their finger bowls.
They drank them down.
The stylish courtiers from the Hague nudged each other,
and pointed and laughed at such lack of style.
Until the queen herself, without a smile, raised her finger bowl and drained it,
obliging all the courtiers to follow suit, without a smile.
Sietze Buning ends with this note of judgment: The courtiers had style, but Queen Wilhelmina had class.
While that makes for good story telling, Sietze Buning takes it one surprising step further. He links style to the wisdom of the world and class to the wisdom of heaven. The former tries to get us to fit in with the right crowd, looking the right way and eating the right foods, while driving the right vehicles. That’s style.
But class — real class — happens to us when we realize that we are children of God. If God is king, we are nobility—princesses and princes in the realm of the great ruler!
Children of the king do not need to prove themselves, nor do they need to flaunt their status. If they have learned well at home the true worth of their lives, they can treat others with courtesy and respect. They can be considerate. It is a religious thing, just as our lectionary passages for today instruct.
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Jeremiah’s name and the often-haranguing tone of his prophecies came into the English language as a unique word in the late 18th century. A “jeremiad” is a diatribe or a rant or a tirade against sin or social ills or some undesired social group. While the term unfortunately stereotypes the good prophet’s larger identity and message, it is hard to deny that this portion of the Bible is one of the most caustic and condemning. Jeremiah’s times were politically, socially, economically and religiously challenging, and the general character of life in Jerusalem was in great disharmony with the covenant lifestyle espoused in the torah.
Jeremiah lived almost a century after Isaiah. By his time, Assyria had long ago destroyed Judah’s northern brother neighbor Israel (722 B.C.). Judah was itself only a tiny community now, limping along with diminishing resources, and constantly tossed around by the bigger nations of its world.
But things were changing rapidly on the international scene. Assyria was being beaten down in 612 B.C. by its eastern bully province, called Babylon. After snapping the backbone of Assyrian forces at Carchemish and wrestling the capital city of Nineveh to the ground, Babylon immediately took over Palestine, the newer name for the old region of Canaan.
Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, many of whom were puppets of Babylon. For decades already, the country had been paying yearly tribute or security bribes to Babylon. Since 606 B.C., Judah had been forced to turn over some of its promising young men for propaganda retraining exile in the capital of the superpower, in anticipation that they would return to rule the nation as regents of Babylon.
For reasons like these, Egypt began to loom large in many minds as the only possible ally strong enough to withstand Babylon’s domination of the region. Even though Israel’s identity had been forged through a divine exit strategy from oppressive Egyptian mastery several centuries before, now a good number of voices were publicly suggesting that the remaining citizens of Jerusalem get out of town before a final Babylonian occupation, and find refuge in the safer haven of Egypt.
Into these times and circumstances Jeremiah was born. From his earliest thoughts he was aware of Yahweh’s special call on his life (1:4-10). This knowledge only made his prophetic ministry more gloomy, for it gave him no out in a game where the deck was stacked against him (chapters 12, 16). So, he brooded through his life, deeply introspective. He fulfilled his role as gadfly to most of the kings who reigned during his adult years, even though it took eminent courage to do so. Although he lived an exemplary personal lifestyle, political officials constantly took offense at his theologically charged political commentaries, and regularly arrested him, treating him very badly. Jeremiah was passionately moral, never allowing compromise as a suitable temporary alternative in the shady waters of international relations, or amid the roiling quicksand of fading religious devotion. He remained pastorally sensitive, especially to the poor and oppressed in Jerusalem, weeping in anguish as families boiled sandals and old leather to find a few nutrients during Babylonian sieges, and especially when he saw mothers willing to cannibalize their dying babies in order to keep their other children alive. Above all, Jeremiah found the grace to be unshakably hopeful. He truly believed, to the very close of his life, that though Babylonian forces would raze Jerusalem and the temple, Yahweh would keep covenant promises, and one day soon restore the fortunes of this wayward partner in the divine missional enterprise.
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
The list of urged moral behaviors at the close of Hebrews is an interesting miscellany. There are general instructions that apply to all in the practices of daily living, group injunctions that nurture deeper community, and specific behaviors which would come to expression in only some individuals because of their focused nature. In summary:
Second, the promise of God through Moses to Israel, now applied to these New Testament strugglers, is further affirmed by way of David’s great testimony found in Psalm 118:6-7. Once again, the quote emerges from a time of struggle (David obviously has gone through a serious period of challenges to his life from enemies) and espouses confidence in God’s ability to carry faithful followers through.
Most significant, however, is a complex allusion to the day of atonement in verses 10-13. The writer of Hebrews used this event of spiritual cleansing in the life of ancient Israel at length in chapters 7-10. Now he injects a stunning interpretation and application of one element of the ceremony’s activities. According to Leviticus 16, two sacrifices were to be offered on the day of atonement. First, a bull was killed and burned. This was the largest animal sacrifice in the whole cadre of Israelite offerings commanded by Yahweh. Although it was intended to cleanse the high priest who officiated throughout the rest of the day’s activities, the high priest himself carried the symbolic weight of the entire nation within his person. Thus, the largest possible sacrifice was made to atone for the largest expression of Israelite collective identity.
Second, a goat was sacrificed. This was one of two goats selected for the day of atonement ceremonies. The other received a transfer of the people’s sins by way of the high priest laying hands on its head. That goat was brought out to the wilderness to die as an unclean reject from the community. This goat, however, continued the cleansing process for the nation as a whole.
But there is a procedural note in Leviticus 16:27 that points to the practicalities of these instructions. The portable altar of burnt offering used to burn these animals in the courtyard of the tabernacle was not very large, and the time needed to incinerate them completely would exceed the general limits of resources available a day. For that reason, “the bull of the sin offering and the goat of the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall be taken outside the camp; their skin and their flesh and their dung shall be consumed in fire” (Leviticus 16:27). Using this image, the writer of Hebrews extrapolates theologically:
Deftly extrapolating and interpolating ceremonial events central to the religious life of Judaism, the author of Hebrews draws one final distinction between the people and rituals of the first covenant expression and the those of God’s true community in this new, second covenant age. Not only is salvation no longer to be sought within the Jewish ceremonial ritual system; these legitimate heirs of all that God promised and intended must actually separate themselves from ongoing expressions of Judaism! Jesus is the way; Judaism is not!
Thus, these Gentiles who converted to Judaism because it attracted them to its deep piety and devout connection with the Creator of all, and who had become fervent followers of Messiah Jesus, revealed in these recent times, were now to withdraw from the very community that originally nurtured their faith! This continued commitment to Jesus, along with its related rejection of any efficacy to be found in the on-going Jewish ceremonial rites, demanded a new and deep division between peoples who had shared common language, lifestyle, religious practices, scriptural learning, and leadership. They had lived together. They had worked together. They had studied together. They had witnessed together. They had eaten together. They had married one another.
But now they must separate.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Corrective eyewear is a physical necessity for many of us. But Jesus indicates that corrective eyewear is also a spiritual necessity for our hearts. As Dr. Karl Menninger once put it, "Attitudes are more important than facts." For that reason, Jesus says that we need glasses that will change our attitudes about each other. We need glasses of the heart that will alter our perceptions. We need corrective lenses of the soul that will make us encourage and build others up, rather than cut them down.
Johan Eriksson learned that lesson well. In 1939, trainloads of Jewish children were piling into Sweden. Because of the changing political climate under Hitler’s European campaign, parents were trying to get their young ones out of Germany. Boys and girls, sometimes only three or four years old, stumbled off boxcars and into culture shock carrying nothing but large tags around each neck, announcing their names, ages, and hometowns.
The Swedes had agreed to take in the children "for the duration of the war." Unfortunately, there were more children than suitable homes, so even Johan Eriksson was called. Johan was a widower, middle‑aged and gruff, and not a likely candidate for foster parenting.
Without comprehending why, young Rolf walked away from the train station next to Johan. The boy was starving at the time and frightened into silence. Every time he heard a noise at Johan’s door, little Rolf would run into a closet and pull coats over his head.
For years Rolf wouldn't smile. He hardly ate. Johan created a Spartan but stable home for Rolf, biding his time until Rolf would be gone and he could get back to his life. Yet Rolf never went back to Germany because no one ever sent for him. His parents perished in the ovens.
So, Johan did his best with a son he never anticipated. When Rolf was in his twenties, Johan managed to get him a job in Stockholm. For a while Rolf struggled along, but he couldn't handle the pressures. "His mind just snapped one day," his employer said, and the local authorities wanted to put him in a mental institution.
Johan set out immediately to rescue his boy. Johan was an old man now, yet he brought Rolf home again to the little city of Amal. For many years Johan nursed Rolf back to health.
Rolf finally got better. He married a wonderful woman. He established a fairly successful business, and even became quite wealthy. All along, though, he knew that his achievements were only possible because of Johan, the big Swede, who took in a nobody, loved him back to life, gave him an identity and hugged away his fears.
When doctors called Johan's children home for a final parting in his dying days, Rolf was the first to arrive. From an orphan’s tragedy, his life had become the story of a dearly loved son.
Johan was a Christian. He found the spiritual corrective eyewear that James prescribes. It gave him the ability to see little Rolf as God saw him, and Rolf began to live that day.
Said Mark Twain, "You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." True! But when you get that new pair of eyeglasses for your soul, everything begins to look different. Jesus would say that it has to do with the light of heaven restoring in us the true ability to see.
Application
Someone has suggested a powerfully illuminating analogy. When a ship is built, he said, each part has a little voice of its own. As seamen walk the passageways on her maiden voyage they can hear the creaking whispers of separate identities: “I’m a rivet!” “I’m a sheet of steel!” “I’m a propeller!” “I’m a beam!” For a while these little voices sing their individual songs, proudly independent and fiercely self-protective.
But then a storm blows in on the high seas and the waves toss, the gales hurl, and the rain beat. If the parts of the ship try to withstand the pummeling independent from one another each would be lost. On the bridge, however, stands the captain. He issues orders that take all of the little voices and bring them together for a larger purpose. By the time the vessel has weathered the storm sailors hear a new and deeper song echoing from stem to stern: “I am a ship!”
It is the captain’s call that creates the deeper identity. So too in our lives, according to Yahweh’s call to Israel through Jeremiah, Jesus’ teachings in his captivating parables, and the concluding exhortation in Hebrews. Minor stars in a world of glamour try to sing siren songs pulling bits and pieces of us from the voyage of our lives. Those who hear the captain’s call are able to sail true and straight.
Alternative Application (Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16)
Some years ago, a major research firm conducted a survey to determine what people would be willing to do for $10 million.1 The results were astounding. 3% would put their children up for adoption. 7% would kill a stranger. 10% would lie in court to set a murderer free. 16% would divorce their spouses. 23% said they would become prostitutes for a week or longer.
Most astonishing was the category at the top of the list. One-fourth of all surveyed said that they would leave their families for $10 million.
Everyone has a selling price at which he or she will step over a line of conduct and allow someone else to dictate the terms of behavior. It might be $10 million, or it might only be one more bottle of wine. It might be a night in the spotlight or a night in bed. In Shusaku Endo’s powerful novel Silence,2 the missionary priest Rodriguez steps over the line when torture exceeds what his soul can bear, and he desecrates an image of Jesus. We all have our selling price.
Our selling price is linked to our identity, as this passage from Hebrews reminds us. The stronger our sense of who we are the higher our selling price and the deeper our character. There are, however, several identities that each of us wears.
The first is the identity we receive from others. We get our looks and temperament from our parents. We garner our tastes and styles from our culture. There is even something mystical about us that we receive as a gift from God, unique to our personalities. In Hebrews 13, this is the meaning of the quotations from Deuteronomy and Psalms. We are linked to the community of Israel that stood at Mount Sinai to receive the divine instructions about life. We are tied, inseparably, to David and other psalmists who believed God was true to God’s promises.
Poet John Masefield understood that when he reflected on how it was that he started writing and rhyming. One day he picked up a volume of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works and was gripped by the art of the lines. Masefield couldn’t put the book down. That night he read until a whole new world opened for him. By the time morning broke, said Masefield, he had finished the entire book, set it down, looked at the dawning day and quietly said, “I too am a poet.” And so, he was.
A second identity we have in life is the one we make. In N. Richard Nash’s captivating drama, The Rainmaker,3 the main character is a con artist who calls himself Starbuck. He travels from town to town during the Dirty 30’s scheming to get people to pay him to bring the rains for their parched fields.
Young Lizzie Curry catches his eye and they spar with building passion. But Lizzie is no fool and she challenges him to come clean with her about his true name. It can’t really be Starbuck, she knows.
Starbuck admits that he was born a “Smith,” but asks, “What kind of name is that for a fellow like me? I needed a name that had the whole sky in it! And the power of a man! Starbuck! Now there’s a name—and it’s mine!”
Lizzie tries to contradict him, telling him he has no right choosing his own name and giving up his family heritage. Yet he will not capitulate quickly. “You’re wrong, Lizzie,” he says. “The name you choose for yourself is more your own name than the name you were born with!”
Starbuck is on to something. Much of what we see in people around is has to do with what they have made of themselves. When an English nobleman named Roberts was having his portrait painted the artist asked him if he would like the lines and creases in his face smoothed over.
“Certainly not!” he objected. “Make sure you put them all in. I earned every single wrinkle on my face!” He was a man who knew the identity he had made.
There is also a third and deeper human identity. It is the identity that transforms us from what we were to what we are becoming. The poet saw a friend clearly when he wrote:
And there were three men went down the road
As down the road went he:
The man they saw, the man he was,
And the man he wanted to be.
The person we each want to be when we find our truest selves in God is larger than either the identity we have received from others or the one we try to create. This is the thought that the writer of Hebrews hopes to encourage in his close association of faith and ethics, of religion and behaviors. Anything that sullies us by trying to define us on terms less than God’s grace limits our best self.
This is why the author of Hebrews focuses on daily behaviors as the expression of meaningful faith. If these theological syllogisms and conclusions are true, they shape how we live and act. Others will know of God only through our lifestyles and moral commitments.
Will Durant, the famous philosopher and historian, was asked for advice by one of his grandchildren. He summarized all his wisdom in “ten commandments.”4 At the heart of them is this advice: “Do not speak while another is speaking. Discuss, do not dispute. Absorb and acknowledge whatever truth you can find in opinions different from your own. Be courteous and considerate to all, especially to those who oppose you.”
We would all like to have friends like that. Certainly, we expect God to treat us that way.
But “considerateness” is more than just thoughtfulness. It is a profound expression of identity rooted in God’s intentions for it. It is also a living testimony that other people are more than brute animals or despised creatures. We and they are important to God. That is why God showers love on us in Jesus. And if we and they are important to God, God’s ways of living ought to shape our testimonies about life, lived or spoken.
1 James Patterson and Peter Kim, The Day America Told the Truth (Prentice Hall, 1991).
2 Shusaku Endo, Silence (Picador Classics, 2016).
3 N. Richard Nash, The Rainmaker. First produced at the Cort Theatre in New York City on October 28, 1954, it ran for 125 performances and was quickly translated into over forty languages. By 1956 it had been produced as a film starring Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn.
4 Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
He tells this little story to illustrate what he means:
Queen Wilhelmina was entertaining the
Frisian Cattle Breeders’ Association at dinner.
The Frisian farmers didn’t know what to make of their finger bowls.
They drank them down.
The stylish courtiers from the Hague nudged each other,
and pointed and laughed at such lack of style.
Until the queen herself, without a smile, raised her finger bowl and drained it,
obliging all the courtiers to follow suit, without a smile.
Sietze Buning ends with this note of judgment: The courtiers had style, but Queen Wilhelmina had class.
While that makes for good story telling, Sietze Buning takes it one surprising step further. He links style to the wisdom of the world and class to the wisdom of heaven. The former tries to get us to fit in with the right crowd, looking the right way and eating the right foods, while driving the right vehicles. That’s style.
But class — real class — happens to us when we realize that we are children of God. If God is king, we are nobility—princesses and princes in the realm of the great ruler!
Children of the king do not need to prove themselves, nor do they need to flaunt their status. If they have learned well at home the true worth of their lives, they can treat others with courtesy and respect. They can be considerate. It is a religious thing, just as our lectionary passages for today instruct.
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Jeremiah’s name and the often-haranguing tone of his prophecies came into the English language as a unique word in the late 18th century. A “jeremiad” is a diatribe or a rant or a tirade against sin or social ills or some undesired social group. While the term unfortunately stereotypes the good prophet’s larger identity and message, it is hard to deny that this portion of the Bible is one of the most caustic and condemning. Jeremiah’s times were politically, socially, economically and religiously challenging, and the general character of life in Jerusalem was in great disharmony with the covenant lifestyle espoused in the torah.
Jeremiah lived almost a century after Isaiah. By his time, Assyria had long ago destroyed Judah’s northern brother neighbor Israel (722 B.C.). Judah was itself only a tiny community now, limping along with diminishing resources, and constantly tossed around by the bigger nations of its world.
But things were changing rapidly on the international scene. Assyria was being beaten down in 612 B.C. by its eastern bully province, called Babylon. After snapping the backbone of Assyrian forces at Carchemish and wrestling the capital city of Nineveh to the ground, Babylon immediately took over Palestine, the newer name for the old region of Canaan.
Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, many of whom were puppets of Babylon. For decades already, the country had been paying yearly tribute or security bribes to Babylon. Since 606 B.C., Judah had been forced to turn over some of its promising young men for propaganda retraining exile in the capital of the superpower, in anticipation that they would return to rule the nation as regents of Babylon.
For reasons like these, Egypt began to loom large in many minds as the only possible ally strong enough to withstand Babylon’s domination of the region. Even though Israel’s identity had been forged through a divine exit strategy from oppressive Egyptian mastery several centuries before, now a good number of voices were publicly suggesting that the remaining citizens of Jerusalem get out of town before a final Babylonian occupation, and find refuge in the safer haven of Egypt.
Into these times and circumstances Jeremiah was born. From his earliest thoughts he was aware of Yahweh’s special call on his life (1:4-10). This knowledge only made his prophetic ministry more gloomy, for it gave him no out in a game where the deck was stacked against him (chapters 12, 16). So, he brooded through his life, deeply introspective. He fulfilled his role as gadfly to most of the kings who reigned during his adult years, even though it took eminent courage to do so. Although he lived an exemplary personal lifestyle, political officials constantly took offense at his theologically charged political commentaries, and regularly arrested him, treating him very badly. Jeremiah was passionately moral, never allowing compromise as a suitable temporary alternative in the shady waters of international relations, or amid the roiling quicksand of fading religious devotion. He remained pastorally sensitive, especially to the poor and oppressed in Jerusalem, weeping in anguish as families boiled sandals and old leather to find a few nutrients during Babylonian sieges, and especially when he saw mothers willing to cannibalize their dying babies in order to keep their other children alive. Above all, Jeremiah found the grace to be unshakably hopeful. He truly believed, to the very close of his life, that though Babylonian forces would raze Jerusalem and the temple, Yahweh would keep covenant promises, and one day soon restore the fortunes of this wayward partner in the divine missional enterprise.
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
The list of urged moral behaviors at the close of Hebrews is an interesting miscellany. There are general instructions that apply to all in the practices of daily living, group injunctions that nurture deeper community, and specific behaviors which would come to expression in only some individuals because of their focused nature. In summary:
- Let mutual love continue.
- Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
- Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
- Let marriage be held in honor by all and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers.
- Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have.
- Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
- Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them.
- Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
- Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with sighing—for that would be harmful to you.
- Pray for us.
Second, the promise of God through Moses to Israel, now applied to these New Testament strugglers, is further affirmed by way of David’s great testimony found in Psalm 118:6-7. Once again, the quote emerges from a time of struggle (David obviously has gone through a serious period of challenges to his life from enemies) and espouses confidence in God’s ability to carry faithful followers through.
Most significant, however, is a complex allusion to the day of atonement in verses 10-13. The writer of Hebrews used this event of spiritual cleansing in the life of ancient Israel at length in chapters 7-10. Now he injects a stunning interpretation and application of one element of the ceremony’s activities. According to Leviticus 16, two sacrifices were to be offered on the day of atonement. First, a bull was killed and burned. This was the largest animal sacrifice in the whole cadre of Israelite offerings commanded by Yahweh. Although it was intended to cleanse the high priest who officiated throughout the rest of the day’s activities, the high priest himself carried the symbolic weight of the entire nation within his person. Thus, the largest possible sacrifice was made to atone for the largest expression of Israelite collective identity.
Second, a goat was sacrificed. This was one of two goats selected for the day of atonement ceremonies. The other received a transfer of the people’s sins by way of the high priest laying hands on its head. That goat was brought out to the wilderness to die as an unclean reject from the community. This goat, however, continued the cleansing process for the nation as a whole.
But there is a procedural note in Leviticus 16:27 that points to the practicalities of these instructions. The portable altar of burnt offering used to burn these animals in the courtyard of the tabernacle was not very large, and the time needed to incinerate them completely would exceed the general limits of resources available a day. For that reason, “the bull of the sin offering and the goat of the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall be taken outside the camp; their skin and their flesh and their dung shall be consumed in fire” (Leviticus 16:27). Using this image, the writer of Hebrews extrapolates theologically:
- Jesus is the new, permanent “day of atonement” sacrifice (see Hebrews 5 and 9)
- Jesus was not sacrificed on the altar of burnt offering in the tabernacle (temple) court; he was sacrificed on a cross outside the camp (city of Jerusalem)!
- So, we need to move away from the tabernacle (temple) sacrifices, and out of the city to the one who offered the only true and eternal sacrifice for us!
- And, by the way, those who continue to offer sacrifices at the altar of burnt offering in the tabernacle (temple) miss all of this, to their own detriment!
Deftly extrapolating and interpolating ceremonial events central to the religious life of Judaism, the author of Hebrews draws one final distinction between the people and rituals of the first covenant expression and the those of God’s true community in this new, second covenant age. Not only is salvation no longer to be sought within the Jewish ceremonial ritual system; these legitimate heirs of all that God promised and intended must actually separate themselves from ongoing expressions of Judaism! Jesus is the way; Judaism is not!
Thus, these Gentiles who converted to Judaism because it attracted them to its deep piety and devout connection with the Creator of all, and who had become fervent followers of Messiah Jesus, revealed in these recent times, were now to withdraw from the very community that originally nurtured their faith! This continued commitment to Jesus, along with its related rejection of any efficacy to be found in the on-going Jewish ceremonial rites, demanded a new and deep division between peoples who had shared common language, lifestyle, religious practices, scriptural learning, and leadership. They had lived together. They had worked together. They had studied together. They had witnessed together. They had eaten together. They had married one another.
But now they must separate.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Corrective eyewear is a physical necessity for many of us. But Jesus indicates that corrective eyewear is also a spiritual necessity for our hearts. As Dr. Karl Menninger once put it, "Attitudes are more important than facts." For that reason, Jesus says that we need glasses that will change our attitudes about each other. We need glasses of the heart that will alter our perceptions. We need corrective lenses of the soul that will make us encourage and build others up, rather than cut them down.
Johan Eriksson learned that lesson well. In 1939, trainloads of Jewish children were piling into Sweden. Because of the changing political climate under Hitler’s European campaign, parents were trying to get their young ones out of Germany. Boys and girls, sometimes only three or four years old, stumbled off boxcars and into culture shock carrying nothing but large tags around each neck, announcing their names, ages, and hometowns.
The Swedes had agreed to take in the children "for the duration of the war." Unfortunately, there were more children than suitable homes, so even Johan Eriksson was called. Johan was a widower, middle‑aged and gruff, and not a likely candidate for foster parenting.
Without comprehending why, young Rolf walked away from the train station next to Johan. The boy was starving at the time and frightened into silence. Every time he heard a noise at Johan’s door, little Rolf would run into a closet and pull coats over his head.
For years Rolf wouldn't smile. He hardly ate. Johan created a Spartan but stable home for Rolf, biding his time until Rolf would be gone and he could get back to his life. Yet Rolf never went back to Germany because no one ever sent for him. His parents perished in the ovens.
So, Johan did his best with a son he never anticipated. When Rolf was in his twenties, Johan managed to get him a job in Stockholm. For a while Rolf struggled along, but he couldn't handle the pressures. "His mind just snapped one day," his employer said, and the local authorities wanted to put him in a mental institution.
Johan set out immediately to rescue his boy. Johan was an old man now, yet he brought Rolf home again to the little city of Amal. For many years Johan nursed Rolf back to health.
Rolf finally got better. He married a wonderful woman. He established a fairly successful business, and even became quite wealthy. All along, though, he knew that his achievements were only possible because of Johan, the big Swede, who took in a nobody, loved him back to life, gave him an identity and hugged away his fears.
When doctors called Johan's children home for a final parting in his dying days, Rolf was the first to arrive. From an orphan’s tragedy, his life had become the story of a dearly loved son.
Johan was a Christian. He found the spiritual corrective eyewear that James prescribes. It gave him the ability to see little Rolf as God saw him, and Rolf began to live that day.
Said Mark Twain, "You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." True! But when you get that new pair of eyeglasses for your soul, everything begins to look different. Jesus would say that it has to do with the light of heaven restoring in us the true ability to see.
Application
Someone has suggested a powerfully illuminating analogy. When a ship is built, he said, each part has a little voice of its own. As seamen walk the passageways on her maiden voyage they can hear the creaking whispers of separate identities: “I’m a rivet!” “I’m a sheet of steel!” “I’m a propeller!” “I’m a beam!” For a while these little voices sing their individual songs, proudly independent and fiercely self-protective.
But then a storm blows in on the high seas and the waves toss, the gales hurl, and the rain beat. If the parts of the ship try to withstand the pummeling independent from one another each would be lost. On the bridge, however, stands the captain. He issues orders that take all of the little voices and bring them together for a larger purpose. By the time the vessel has weathered the storm sailors hear a new and deeper song echoing from stem to stern: “I am a ship!”
It is the captain’s call that creates the deeper identity. So too in our lives, according to Yahweh’s call to Israel through Jeremiah, Jesus’ teachings in his captivating parables, and the concluding exhortation in Hebrews. Minor stars in a world of glamour try to sing siren songs pulling bits and pieces of us from the voyage of our lives. Those who hear the captain’s call are able to sail true and straight.
Alternative Application (Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16)
Some years ago, a major research firm conducted a survey to determine what people would be willing to do for $10 million.1 The results were astounding. 3% would put their children up for adoption. 7% would kill a stranger. 10% would lie in court to set a murderer free. 16% would divorce their spouses. 23% said they would become prostitutes for a week or longer.
Most astonishing was the category at the top of the list. One-fourth of all surveyed said that they would leave their families for $10 million.
Everyone has a selling price at which he or she will step over a line of conduct and allow someone else to dictate the terms of behavior. It might be $10 million, or it might only be one more bottle of wine. It might be a night in the spotlight or a night in bed. In Shusaku Endo’s powerful novel Silence,2 the missionary priest Rodriguez steps over the line when torture exceeds what his soul can bear, and he desecrates an image of Jesus. We all have our selling price.
Our selling price is linked to our identity, as this passage from Hebrews reminds us. The stronger our sense of who we are the higher our selling price and the deeper our character. There are, however, several identities that each of us wears.
The first is the identity we receive from others. We get our looks and temperament from our parents. We garner our tastes and styles from our culture. There is even something mystical about us that we receive as a gift from God, unique to our personalities. In Hebrews 13, this is the meaning of the quotations from Deuteronomy and Psalms. We are linked to the community of Israel that stood at Mount Sinai to receive the divine instructions about life. We are tied, inseparably, to David and other psalmists who believed God was true to God’s promises.
Poet John Masefield understood that when he reflected on how it was that he started writing and rhyming. One day he picked up a volume of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works and was gripped by the art of the lines. Masefield couldn’t put the book down. That night he read until a whole new world opened for him. By the time morning broke, said Masefield, he had finished the entire book, set it down, looked at the dawning day and quietly said, “I too am a poet.” And so, he was.
A second identity we have in life is the one we make. In N. Richard Nash’s captivating drama, The Rainmaker,3 the main character is a con artist who calls himself Starbuck. He travels from town to town during the Dirty 30’s scheming to get people to pay him to bring the rains for their parched fields.
Young Lizzie Curry catches his eye and they spar with building passion. But Lizzie is no fool and she challenges him to come clean with her about his true name. It can’t really be Starbuck, she knows.
Starbuck admits that he was born a “Smith,” but asks, “What kind of name is that for a fellow like me? I needed a name that had the whole sky in it! And the power of a man! Starbuck! Now there’s a name—and it’s mine!”
Lizzie tries to contradict him, telling him he has no right choosing his own name and giving up his family heritage. Yet he will not capitulate quickly. “You’re wrong, Lizzie,” he says. “The name you choose for yourself is more your own name than the name you were born with!”
Starbuck is on to something. Much of what we see in people around is has to do with what they have made of themselves. When an English nobleman named Roberts was having his portrait painted the artist asked him if he would like the lines and creases in his face smoothed over.
“Certainly not!” he objected. “Make sure you put them all in. I earned every single wrinkle on my face!” He was a man who knew the identity he had made.
There is also a third and deeper human identity. It is the identity that transforms us from what we were to what we are becoming. The poet saw a friend clearly when he wrote:
And there were three men went down the road
As down the road went he:
The man they saw, the man he was,
And the man he wanted to be.
The person we each want to be when we find our truest selves in God is larger than either the identity we have received from others or the one we try to create. This is the thought that the writer of Hebrews hopes to encourage in his close association of faith and ethics, of religion and behaviors. Anything that sullies us by trying to define us on terms less than God’s grace limits our best self.
This is why the author of Hebrews focuses on daily behaviors as the expression of meaningful faith. If these theological syllogisms and conclusions are true, they shape how we live and act. Others will know of God only through our lifestyles and moral commitments.
Will Durant, the famous philosopher and historian, was asked for advice by one of his grandchildren. He summarized all his wisdom in “ten commandments.”4 At the heart of them is this advice: “Do not speak while another is speaking. Discuss, do not dispute. Absorb and acknowledge whatever truth you can find in opinions different from your own. Be courteous and considerate to all, especially to those who oppose you.”
We would all like to have friends like that. Certainly, we expect God to treat us that way.
But “considerateness” is more than just thoughtfulness. It is a profound expression of identity rooted in God’s intentions for it. It is also a living testimony that other people are more than brute animals or despised creatures. We and they are important to God. That is why God showers love on us in Jesus. And if we and they are important to God, God’s ways of living ought to shape our testimonies about life, lived or spoken.
1 James Patterson and Peter Kim, The Day America Told the Truth (Prentice Hall, 1991).
2 Shusaku Endo, Silence (Picador Classics, 2016).
3 N. Richard Nash, The Rainmaker. First produced at the Cort Theatre in New York City on October 28, 1954, it ran for 125 performances and was quickly translated into over forty languages. By 1956 it had been produced as a film starring Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn.
4 Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
