What's new?
Commentary
Object:
There is something strange about New Year's celebrations, if you think about it. For one thing, the dawn of the year 2012 is based on a mistake. About five centuries after Jesus lived, Denis the Small thought it would be good for the world to mark its years from the Messiah's birth. Using available records he managed to make only two mistakes: he missed the year of Jesus' birth by six and he missed the season by about three months. Jesus was probably born in October of what we call 6 BC and by better reckoning the year of our Lord (this the meaning of the Latin term Anno Domine, which we shorten to AD) 2012 actually began sometime in the fall of 2005!
A second strange thing about our New Year's celebrations is that they have become a world party into which cultures all over the globe join the festivities even though they mark time by vastly different calendars. Only in countries significantly influenced by the Christian religion did time make a year-end move. The most populated nation on earth, China, is in mid-cycle of a vastly different century. Jews and Muslims have no new year or new age to mark last night. A host of other countries and cultures simply ignored their calendars last evening and joined the Christian millennial festivities.
Yet I marvel at the world that breathes with New Year's hope. It is always a promising start to a new age, like in the poet's portrait:
I see the dew glisten as a new day is born
And I hear the birds sing on the wings of the morn
As God wraps up the night and tucks it away
And hands out the sun to herald a new day --
A day yet unblemished by what's gone before,
A chance to begin and start over once more.
(Helen Steiner Rice)
That exuberance reminds me of Winston Churchill at 75. A photographer was summoned to capture his scowling face on film. Honored to be the one for the job, the cameraman attempted to pay Sir Winston a compliment. "I hope," he said, "that I will be able to shoot your picture on your hundredth birthday as well!"
Churchill eyed him closely and finally growled, "I don't see why not, young man; you look reasonably fit and healthy."
We should all be so positive about our futures! Yet too well we know how the days and months ahead will sap from us what Harry Emerson Fosdick called "the power to see it through." Rarely do we lose hope and courage in an hour. Instead, our passions leak away over time like a dripping faucet, and we drain our emotional resources a nickel and a dime at a time. Said the poet:
East and west will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Charles Darwin, who grew up in a devoutly Christian home, wrote in his diaries that he never lost his faith through scientific challenge or intellectual argument. Instead, he said, belief slipped away over time until it didn't really matter any more. His story is rewritten a thousand times each generation by others who have simply "lost" faith and felt their souls flatten.
What can broaden and deepen and empower our souls enough to help us live lives of significance in this new year? Some time ago a friend pointed me to the writings of the great mystic of modern Judaism, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said this: "In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where a man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity."
Everyone looks at one time or another for places like that, especially those who experience the trials of life that James predicts. Yet where would the tested soul find these islands? Heschel went on: "The Sabbath is the island, the port, the place of detachment from the practical and attachment to the spirit." He pictured us in mad motion: "Rushing hither and thither time becomes soiled and degraded." That's why, he said, we need the Sabbath. It is God's gift, allowing us "the opportunity to cleanse time."
The Sabbath is a biblical concept that helps us step out of our own lives in order to see things again from God's perspective. The Sabbath allows us to worship, gaining a harbor for the soul where we can find again our bearings in a sea of lost horizons and wintry winds. It is a powerful thing that this New Year begins on the Christian Sabbath.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
We have all played the game "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It is fun when we are children, but it begins to lose its delight as we grow older and still are not sure that we have chosen well or wisely. Our daughters used to envy grownups because we could do, in their words, "anything you want!" How little they knew of the restrictions that hemmed us in with greater grip than any childhood prison.
Roy Drusky sang of that lost innocence years ago in a reflection he called "Long, Long Texas Road": "I've been up and I've been down," he crooned. "I've worked the fields, I've plowed the ground. I've borne the strain and pressure till I thought I might explode. Now I search for childhood days of model ships and rocket planes, when the days stretched out before me like a long, long Texas road." His refrain was a whimsical reminiscence:
Oh, that long, long Texas road's about a million miles or so...
When you're just a child there ain't no time but now.
Must have lost that long old road seven hundred years ago,
And I'd find it once again if I knew how.
I have often felt, with Drusky, that I have missed something along the way and I would like to retrace my steps now and again in order truly to find myself. Yet, with him, I know that God gives us only one chance to walk through time. We may delight in trying to find something of Peter Pan in our hearts and steal away in daydream moments to Neverland in our playful thoughts. But time marches forward, not back, and age requires of us something that we may not grab hold on willfully.
Still, there is a difference between growing older and growing up. Growing older changes our bodies, while sometimes leaving our personalities underdeveloped and childish. Years ago Dutch pastor Cornelis Gilhuis penned a little book of meditations called Conversations on Growing Older (Eerdmans, 1977) to encourage maturity along with advancing age. He spoke sharply to those who become crotchety and cantankerous in their senior years and gently encouraged the deeper adult expressions of peace and patience and piety. Maturity, he said, does not always pair itself with age.
Mark Twain wrote that when he was fourteen he thought his father was an idiot. "But when I turned 21," he added, "I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in seven years!" Obviously Twain himself had learned a thing or two by that time. One hopes we all will learn such things as time goes by.
The strangest thing about maturity is that it sneaks up on us best when we don't pursue it overmuch. We can do little about age but maturity comes quickest to those who do not wrestle it down. Malcolm Muggeridge said it beautifully in his own reflections on growing old. He told of nights when he found himself in bed, yet somehow suspended between this world and the next, sensing that things glow with the lights of Augustine's City of God. His thoughts in that moment of quiet harmony were not about himself, he said, but rather about how wonderful it was to be alive and to know that all things come together and find their purpose in the hand of God.
This certainly is what the writer of Ecclesiastes had in mind when shuffling poetically through the learning moments of our days. The "times" of life mean little unless they point to meaning beyond time, in the eternity of God. Perhaps, as we begin this new year, we will be sensitive to the times of life and through them connect more fully with the One who holds our times in his hand.
Revelation 21:1-6a
In H.G. Wells' tale "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper," it is November 10, 1931, when Mr. Brownlow returns to his apartment at the end of work and sits down to read his evening paper. As he takes the wrapped bundle in his hands he thinks it feels different than usual. Looking at the address he notices that it was supposed to go to an Evan O'Hara. Still, if he got Mr. O'Hara's newspaper it is likely that this is only a minor mix-up and that Mr. O'Hara is already enjoying Mr. Brownlow's paper over a cup of tea. So Mr. Brownlee unwraps the daily journal and settles in.
Soon, however, he is caught by the strangeness of this paper. The paper is smoother than usual to the touch and the photographs are in color. More significantly, the news itself doesn't seem to make sense, tossing off names of countries he's never heard of, world leaders he can't remember rising to power, and contraptions he's never seen. As he turns again to the front page Mr. Brownlow notes the date: November 10, 1971. Forty years into the future!
He scours the pages with growing interest and amusement. The world is governed by something called a Federal Board. Fashions have changed. Environmental concerns and conservation seem to be top priorities. Mr. Brownlow laughs to himself, sure that this is some elaborate hoax cleverly fobbed off on him. Still, in the middle of the night his nuisance paper troubles him, and he tears out a section to show to his friend in the morning.
When he wakes, however, the cleaning woman has arrived. She threw the paper out with the garbage and now only his scrap remains.
Wells ends his story there, leaving the reader nursing an uneasy speculation. What could have caused the time warp? Is there a Wisdom that transcends time and injects enough prophetic caution into the system to keep us from self-destructing? Does Someone in the universe know what is going on? Are we dabbling at things like rats caught in a mysterious maze while all around us, beyond the light of the stars, a host of giant Presences compare notes and chuckle at our limitations and stupidity? Do they tantalize us in moments like Mr. Brownlow's serendipitous encounter by dangling carrots of prophetic insight before us?
Obviously wisdom is in shorter supply than we might hope. Politicians blow clouds of cryptic absolutes, pleasing all and none. Marriages begin with confident vows, only to end with hollow suggestions that "we made a mistake." My grandpa used to shake his head and say, "We get too soon old and too late smart." Hegel summarized well the plight of the human race: "What experience and history teach us is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history."
Where is wisdom to be found? Will someone drop a "shining path" from the heavens to provide insight rather than bloodshed?
Intelligence can be brittle and harsh. Like Mr. Brownlow's magical newspaper it can tell us information without helping us truly live. Experience, likewise, may be a teacher that turns us more mean and spiteful than gracious and caring.
Only true wisdom is rooted in divine goodness and mercy. It is not as concerned with data as it is with people who can use or abuse that data. It is not as worried about information as it is about how that information warms human hearts. It is not as focused on facts and figures as it is on relationships and healing. This is why the Bible ends not with a list of regulations or a summary doctrinal conclusion but with a vision of life as it is supposed to be and, by the grace of God, will be once again. The revelation of Jesus given to John is not intended to be mined for exact details but instead to serve as a beacon of hope in a world without insight, a place of refuge in a war-torn society, a haven of hope from the stormy seas we sail too long in peril. (Note the very interesting point made in verse 1 that "there was no longer any sea," a clear reference to manner in which the chaotic waters of Genesis 1 and the judging waters of the Genesis flood and the barrier waters of the Red Sea and the impassable waters of the Jordan River and the threatening waters of the Sea of Galilee no longer will have any power to push at us!) If there is a point to life, it must resolve itself from the outside (because we have failed to make heaven on earth), and it must be a gift of glory and grace. So we see heaven, and we believe.
Matthew 25:31-46
One mother tells of a difficult time she was having with her young daughter. They seemed to be going through a testing period, and the girl was doing something wrong nearly every day. The mother would scold and punish, usually with little result. Some days were better than others, but it was a tough time for both of them.
There came a day, however, when things went pretty well. The little girl tried especially hard to be good and to please her mother. That night, after she tucked her daughter in bed, the mother says that she was heading down the stairs when she heard her daughter sobbing into her pillow. Alarmed, the mother went back to the bedroom and asked her daughter what was wrong. Her daughter burst into tears and cried out to her mother, "Haven't I been a little bit good today?"
The mother says, "That question went through me like a knife. I was so quick to correct her when she did wrong, but when she was good I didn't even notice!"
The pain and pleasure of Jesus' rather sharp parable is that many of us live like that. We so often see only what we want to see, and what we want to see is the worst in other people. Because we are quick to judge, we find ourselves judged, even when we are not aware that we are seen or how we are seen. Wrapped up in our worlds of self-sufficiency and self-importance, we become arbiters of all that matters. Unfortunately, in the end, the standards by which we have become smug are the very ones that isolate us from Jesus and his friends.
Some years ago a psychologist named Aldrich published a fascinating article. He had worked in social services, spending most of his time with teenagers who had been arrested for shoplifting or other theft. Aldrich interviewed them to find out how they had come to this. He also talked with the parents, attempting to discover how they had handled the problem from the first time they knew about it.
Over the years he kept records of his interviews, noting that they seemed to separate into two types. One group of teens became repeat offenders and showed up in the criminal justice system again and again. The other was a collection of those who were with him one time and then stayed straight.
He came to the conclusion that there were basically two different ways that parents responded to the initial shoplifting incident. Some parents confronted their children with words like this: "Now we know what you're like! You're a thief! We're going to be watching you now, buddy! Don't think you can get away with this again!"
The other group of parents usually said something like this: "Tom, that wasn't like you at all! We'll have to go back to the store and clear this thing up, but then it's done with, okay? What you did was wrong. You know that it was wrong and we're sure you won't do it again."
Aldrich said that the parents who assumed the worst usually got the worst, and the parents who assumed the best most often got the best.
Much that pretends to be Christian religion seems to have a rather negative view of the human spirit. Although the Bible speaks prophetically in judgment against blatant sinfulness, there are also many passages in scripture that tell of God's delight in his children. More than that, the Fruit of the Spirit, which the apostle Paul says becomes the way of life for someone who is loved by God, is itself "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23). As God looks with tender eyes at us, so we are encouraged to view others with grace. This is surely the intent of Jesus' parable; not that we cower in feelings of inadequacy but that we learn new practices of dealing with others around us in light of God's goodness to us.
Application
The New Year is a marker of promise that we can start over. One writer tells of attending a business conference where awards were being given for outstanding achievements during the past fiscal year. A woman was called to the podium to receive the company's top honor. Clutching her trophy, she beamed out at the crowd of over 3,000 people. Yet in that moment of triumph, she had eyes for only one person. She looked directly at her supervisor, a woman named Joan.
The award-winner told of the difficult times that she had gone through only a few years earlier. She had experienced personal problems and for a time her work had suffered. Some people turned away from her, counting it a liability to be seen with her. Others wrote her off as a loser in the company.
The worst part was that she felt they were right. She had stopped at Joan's desk several times with a letter of resignation in her hand. She knew she was a failure.
But Joan said, "Let's just wait a little bit longer." And Joan said, "Give it one more try." And Joan said, "I never would have hired you if I didn't think you could handle it!"
The woman's voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she softly said, "Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself!"
Isn't that the message of the gospel? Isn't that the story of the Bible? That God believed in us while we were still sinners, while we were still failures, while we were at the point in our lives that we couldn't seem to make it on our own?
Sometimes we need the straightedge of God's law in order to see how bent we are. But sometimes, when the law is a mirror of our great God, it helps us learn to smile at others like he has at us.
An Alternative Application
Matthew 25:31-46. Examinations are rarely fun. They are meant to find out where we are, what we know, and who we are. Sometimes we can bluff our way through. Gertrude Stein happened to be a special favorite of her professor, William James, at Radcliffe College. Unprepared for a test after a night of partying, she boldly wrote, "Dear Professor James, I am so sorry but I do not feel a bit like writing an examination paper on philosophy today."
Her brash honesty and his feelings toward her resulted in a full pardon: she passed anyway! But most times examiners have little mercy. When William Lyon Phelps was a professor of English literature at Yale University, he received a student's test paper shortly before Christmas with this note: "God only knows the answer to this question. Merry Christmas!" Phelps added a line of his own: "God gets an A. You get an F. Happy New Year!"
Our standards rarely match God's assessment of our lives. We're more like the major Canadian corporation that has this official policy: if less than five lawsuits or grievances are filed against it over any single product or service, quality is deemed satisfactory. It's no longer a matter of doing things right but what margin of deficiency will allow for maximum profits.
With God there is no margin of deficiency. God's assessment is always accurate; God's grading is never done on the curve. And despite what may seem to be Jesus' harsh tone, it is our great comfort in this parable. Where there is wickedness and violence, God will not turn a polite smile of social kindness. God examines. God sees. God tests according to absolute standards. And God will mark with profound judgment the final grade.
But shouldn't we then be afraid? We know the failings in our own lives. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander!" we say. Shouldn't we too fear the last report card?
We might, except for one thing. Jesus opens his parable by reminding us that whatever he is going to talk about, it will take place "when the Son of Man comes in his glory." That makes all the difference in the world. You see, the Son of Man came to make certain that all the Fs in our world could be traded for As and failures could become successes. The secret is not in bluffing the Examiner or sliding the grading scale; the secret is in the mercy seat at the heart of heaven on which the official Examiner of human hearts sits.
During the nineteenth century, all Oxford graduates were required to translate a portion of the Greek New Testament aloud. Oscar Wilde was assigned a passage from the passion story of Jesus. His translation was fluent and accurate. Satisfied with his skill, the examiners told him he could stop. But he ignored them and continued to translate. Several times more they tried to call a halt to his reading. Finally he looked up and said, "Oh, do let me go on! I want to see how it ends!"
That's the end that matters: the grades are accurate and the results are posted for all to see. No one emerges innocent. But those who are tired of wickedness can become righteous. And only they will see the great Examiner with no fear.
A second strange thing about our New Year's celebrations is that they have become a world party into which cultures all over the globe join the festivities even though they mark time by vastly different calendars. Only in countries significantly influenced by the Christian religion did time make a year-end move. The most populated nation on earth, China, is in mid-cycle of a vastly different century. Jews and Muslims have no new year or new age to mark last night. A host of other countries and cultures simply ignored their calendars last evening and joined the Christian millennial festivities.
Yet I marvel at the world that breathes with New Year's hope. It is always a promising start to a new age, like in the poet's portrait:
I see the dew glisten as a new day is born
And I hear the birds sing on the wings of the morn
As God wraps up the night and tucks it away
And hands out the sun to herald a new day --
A day yet unblemished by what's gone before,
A chance to begin and start over once more.
(Helen Steiner Rice)
That exuberance reminds me of Winston Churchill at 75. A photographer was summoned to capture his scowling face on film. Honored to be the one for the job, the cameraman attempted to pay Sir Winston a compliment. "I hope," he said, "that I will be able to shoot your picture on your hundredth birthday as well!"
Churchill eyed him closely and finally growled, "I don't see why not, young man; you look reasonably fit and healthy."
We should all be so positive about our futures! Yet too well we know how the days and months ahead will sap from us what Harry Emerson Fosdick called "the power to see it through." Rarely do we lose hope and courage in an hour. Instead, our passions leak away over time like a dripping faucet, and we drain our emotional resources a nickel and a dime at a time. Said the poet:
East and west will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Charles Darwin, who grew up in a devoutly Christian home, wrote in his diaries that he never lost his faith through scientific challenge or intellectual argument. Instead, he said, belief slipped away over time until it didn't really matter any more. His story is rewritten a thousand times each generation by others who have simply "lost" faith and felt their souls flatten.
What can broaden and deepen and empower our souls enough to help us live lives of significance in this new year? Some time ago a friend pointed me to the writings of the great mystic of modern Judaism, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said this: "In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where a man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity."
Everyone looks at one time or another for places like that, especially those who experience the trials of life that James predicts. Yet where would the tested soul find these islands? Heschel went on: "The Sabbath is the island, the port, the place of detachment from the practical and attachment to the spirit." He pictured us in mad motion: "Rushing hither and thither time becomes soiled and degraded." That's why, he said, we need the Sabbath. It is God's gift, allowing us "the opportunity to cleanse time."
The Sabbath is a biblical concept that helps us step out of our own lives in order to see things again from God's perspective. The Sabbath allows us to worship, gaining a harbor for the soul where we can find again our bearings in a sea of lost horizons and wintry winds. It is a powerful thing that this New Year begins on the Christian Sabbath.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
We have all played the game "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It is fun when we are children, but it begins to lose its delight as we grow older and still are not sure that we have chosen well or wisely. Our daughters used to envy grownups because we could do, in their words, "anything you want!" How little they knew of the restrictions that hemmed us in with greater grip than any childhood prison.
Roy Drusky sang of that lost innocence years ago in a reflection he called "Long, Long Texas Road": "I've been up and I've been down," he crooned. "I've worked the fields, I've plowed the ground. I've borne the strain and pressure till I thought I might explode. Now I search for childhood days of model ships and rocket planes, when the days stretched out before me like a long, long Texas road." His refrain was a whimsical reminiscence:
Oh, that long, long Texas road's about a million miles or so...
When you're just a child there ain't no time but now.
Must have lost that long old road seven hundred years ago,
And I'd find it once again if I knew how.
I have often felt, with Drusky, that I have missed something along the way and I would like to retrace my steps now and again in order truly to find myself. Yet, with him, I know that God gives us only one chance to walk through time. We may delight in trying to find something of Peter Pan in our hearts and steal away in daydream moments to Neverland in our playful thoughts. But time marches forward, not back, and age requires of us something that we may not grab hold on willfully.
Still, there is a difference between growing older and growing up. Growing older changes our bodies, while sometimes leaving our personalities underdeveloped and childish. Years ago Dutch pastor Cornelis Gilhuis penned a little book of meditations called Conversations on Growing Older (Eerdmans, 1977) to encourage maturity along with advancing age. He spoke sharply to those who become crotchety and cantankerous in their senior years and gently encouraged the deeper adult expressions of peace and patience and piety. Maturity, he said, does not always pair itself with age.
Mark Twain wrote that when he was fourteen he thought his father was an idiot. "But when I turned 21," he added, "I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in seven years!" Obviously Twain himself had learned a thing or two by that time. One hopes we all will learn such things as time goes by.
The strangest thing about maturity is that it sneaks up on us best when we don't pursue it overmuch. We can do little about age but maturity comes quickest to those who do not wrestle it down. Malcolm Muggeridge said it beautifully in his own reflections on growing old. He told of nights when he found himself in bed, yet somehow suspended between this world and the next, sensing that things glow with the lights of Augustine's City of God. His thoughts in that moment of quiet harmony were not about himself, he said, but rather about how wonderful it was to be alive and to know that all things come together and find their purpose in the hand of God.
This certainly is what the writer of Ecclesiastes had in mind when shuffling poetically through the learning moments of our days. The "times" of life mean little unless they point to meaning beyond time, in the eternity of God. Perhaps, as we begin this new year, we will be sensitive to the times of life and through them connect more fully with the One who holds our times in his hand.
Revelation 21:1-6a
In H.G. Wells' tale "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper," it is November 10, 1931, when Mr. Brownlow returns to his apartment at the end of work and sits down to read his evening paper. As he takes the wrapped bundle in his hands he thinks it feels different than usual. Looking at the address he notices that it was supposed to go to an Evan O'Hara. Still, if he got Mr. O'Hara's newspaper it is likely that this is only a minor mix-up and that Mr. O'Hara is already enjoying Mr. Brownlow's paper over a cup of tea. So Mr. Brownlee unwraps the daily journal and settles in.
Soon, however, he is caught by the strangeness of this paper. The paper is smoother than usual to the touch and the photographs are in color. More significantly, the news itself doesn't seem to make sense, tossing off names of countries he's never heard of, world leaders he can't remember rising to power, and contraptions he's never seen. As he turns again to the front page Mr. Brownlow notes the date: November 10, 1971. Forty years into the future!
He scours the pages with growing interest and amusement. The world is governed by something called a Federal Board. Fashions have changed. Environmental concerns and conservation seem to be top priorities. Mr. Brownlow laughs to himself, sure that this is some elaborate hoax cleverly fobbed off on him. Still, in the middle of the night his nuisance paper troubles him, and he tears out a section to show to his friend in the morning.
When he wakes, however, the cleaning woman has arrived. She threw the paper out with the garbage and now only his scrap remains.
Wells ends his story there, leaving the reader nursing an uneasy speculation. What could have caused the time warp? Is there a Wisdom that transcends time and injects enough prophetic caution into the system to keep us from self-destructing? Does Someone in the universe know what is going on? Are we dabbling at things like rats caught in a mysterious maze while all around us, beyond the light of the stars, a host of giant Presences compare notes and chuckle at our limitations and stupidity? Do they tantalize us in moments like Mr. Brownlow's serendipitous encounter by dangling carrots of prophetic insight before us?
Obviously wisdom is in shorter supply than we might hope. Politicians blow clouds of cryptic absolutes, pleasing all and none. Marriages begin with confident vows, only to end with hollow suggestions that "we made a mistake." My grandpa used to shake his head and say, "We get too soon old and too late smart." Hegel summarized well the plight of the human race: "What experience and history teach us is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history."
Where is wisdom to be found? Will someone drop a "shining path" from the heavens to provide insight rather than bloodshed?
Intelligence can be brittle and harsh. Like Mr. Brownlow's magical newspaper it can tell us information without helping us truly live. Experience, likewise, may be a teacher that turns us more mean and spiteful than gracious and caring.
Only true wisdom is rooted in divine goodness and mercy. It is not as concerned with data as it is with people who can use or abuse that data. It is not as worried about information as it is about how that information warms human hearts. It is not as focused on facts and figures as it is on relationships and healing. This is why the Bible ends not with a list of regulations or a summary doctrinal conclusion but with a vision of life as it is supposed to be and, by the grace of God, will be once again. The revelation of Jesus given to John is not intended to be mined for exact details but instead to serve as a beacon of hope in a world without insight, a place of refuge in a war-torn society, a haven of hope from the stormy seas we sail too long in peril. (Note the very interesting point made in verse 1 that "there was no longer any sea," a clear reference to manner in which the chaotic waters of Genesis 1 and the judging waters of the Genesis flood and the barrier waters of the Red Sea and the impassable waters of the Jordan River and the threatening waters of the Sea of Galilee no longer will have any power to push at us!) If there is a point to life, it must resolve itself from the outside (because we have failed to make heaven on earth), and it must be a gift of glory and grace. So we see heaven, and we believe.
Matthew 25:31-46
One mother tells of a difficult time she was having with her young daughter. They seemed to be going through a testing period, and the girl was doing something wrong nearly every day. The mother would scold and punish, usually with little result. Some days were better than others, but it was a tough time for both of them.
There came a day, however, when things went pretty well. The little girl tried especially hard to be good and to please her mother. That night, after she tucked her daughter in bed, the mother says that she was heading down the stairs when she heard her daughter sobbing into her pillow. Alarmed, the mother went back to the bedroom and asked her daughter what was wrong. Her daughter burst into tears and cried out to her mother, "Haven't I been a little bit good today?"
The mother says, "That question went through me like a knife. I was so quick to correct her when she did wrong, but when she was good I didn't even notice!"
The pain and pleasure of Jesus' rather sharp parable is that many of us live like that. We so often see only what we want to see, and what we want to see is the worst in other people. Because we are quick to judge, we find ourselves judged, even when we are not aware that we are seen or how we are seen. Wrapped up in our worlds of self-sufficiency and self-importance, we become arbiters of all that matters. Unfortunately, in the end, the standards by which we have become smug are the very ones that isolate us from Jesus and his friends.
Some years ago a psychologist named Aldrich published a fascinating article. He had worked in social services, spending most of his time with teenagers who had been arrested for shoplifting or other theft. Aldrich interviewed them to find out how they had come to this. He also talked with the parents, attempting to discover how they had handled the problem from the first time they knew about it.
Over the years he kept records of his interviews, noting that they seemed to separate into two types. One group of teens became repeat offenders and showed up in the criminal justice system again and again. The other was a collection of those who were with him one time and then stayed straight.
He came to the conclusion that there were basically two different ways that parents responded to the initial shoplifting incident. Some parents confronted their children with words like this: "Now we know what you're like! You're a thief! We're going to be watching you now, buddy! Don't think you can get away with this again!"
The other group of parents usually said something like this: "Tom, that wasn't like you at all! We'll have to go back to the store and clear this thing up, but then it's done with, okay? What you did was wrong. You know that it was wrong and we're sure you won't do it again."
Aldrich said that the parents who assumed the worst usually got the worst, and the parents who assumed the best most often got the best.
Much that pretends to be Christian religion seems to have a rather negative view of the human spirit. Although the Bible speaks prophetically in judgment against blatant sinfulness, there are also many passages in scripture that tell of God's delight in his children. More than that, the Fruit of the Spirit, which the apostle Paul says becomes the way of life for someone who is loved by God, is itself "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23). As God looks with tender eyes at us, so we are encouraged to view others with grace. This is surely the intent of Jesus' parable; not that we cower in feelings of inadequacy but that we learn new practices of dealing with others around us in light of God's goodness to us.
Application
The New Year is a marker of promise that we can start over. One writer tells of attending a business conference where awards were being given for outstanding achievements during the past fiscal year. A woman was called to the podium to receive the company's top honor. Clutching her trophy, she beamed out at the crowd of over 3,000 people. Yet in that moment of triumph, she had eyes for only one person. She looked directly at her supervisor, a woman named Joan.
The award-winner told of the difficult times that she had gone through only a few years earlier. She had experienced personal problems and for a time her work had suffered. Some people turned away from her, counting it a liability to be seen with her. Others wrote her off as a loser in the company.
The worst part was that she felt they were right. She had stopped at Joan's desk several times with a letter of resignation in her hand. She knew she was a failure.
But Joan said, "Let's just wait a little bit longer." And Joan said, "Give it one more try." And Joan said, "I never would have hired you if I didn't think you could handle it!"
The woman's voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she softly said, "Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself!"
Isn't that the message of the gospel? Isn't that the story of the Bible? That God believed in us while we were still sinners, while we were still failures, while we were at the point in our lives that we couldn't seem to make it on our own?
Sometimes we need the straightedge of God's law in order to see how bent we are. But sometimes, when the law is a mirror of our great God, it helps us learn to smile at others like he has at us.
An Alternative Application
Matthew 25:31-46. Examinations are rarely fun. They are meant to find out where we are, what we know, and who we are. Sometimes we can bluff our way through. Gertrude Stein happened to be a special favorite of her professor, William James, at Radcliffe College. Unprepared for a test after a night of partying, she boldly wrote, "Dear Professor James, I am so sorry but I do not feel a bit like writing an examination paper on philosophy today."
Her brash honesty and his feelings toward her resulted in a full pardon: she passed anyway! But most times examiners have little mercy. When William Lyon Phelps was a professor of English literature at Yale University, he received a student's test paper shortly before Christmas with this note: "God only knows the answer to this question. Merry Christmas!" Phelps added a line of his own: "God gets an A. You get an F. Happy New Year!"
Our standards rarely match God's assessment of our lives. We're more like the major Canadian corporation that has this official policy: if less than five lawsuits or grievances are filed against it over any single product or service, quality is deemed satisfactory. It's no longer a matter of doing things right but what margin of deficiency will allow for maximum profits.
With God there is no margin of deficiency. God's assessment is always accurate; God's grading is never done on the curve. And despite what may seem to be Jesus' harsh tone, it is our great comfort in this parable. Where there is wickedness and violence, God will not turn a polite smile of social kindness. God examines. God sees. God tests according to absolute standards. And God will mark with profound judgment the final grade.
But shouldn't we then be afraid? We know the failings in our own lives. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander!" we say. Shouldn't we too fear the last report card?
We might, except for one thing. Jesus opens his parable by reminding us that whatever he is going to talk about, it will take place "when the Son of Man comes in his glory." That makes all the difference in the world. You see, the Son of Man came to make certain that all the Fs in our world could be traded for As and failures could become successes. The secret is not in bluffing the Examiner or sliding the grading scale; the secret is in the mercy seat at the heart of heaven on which the official Examiner of human hearts sits.
During the nineteenth century, all Oxford graduates were required to translate a portion of the Greek New Testament aloud. Oscar Wilde was assigned a passage from the passion story of Jesus. His translation was fluent and accurate. Satisfied with his skill, the examiners told him he could stop. But he ignored them and continued to translate. Several times more they tried to call a halt to his reading. Finally he looked up and said, "Oh, do let me go on! I want to see how it ends!"
That's the end that matters: the grades are accurate and the results are posted for all to see. No one emerges innocent. But those who are tired of wickedness can become righteous. And only they will see the great Examiner with no fear.
