Month: December 2017

Michele and I have a Christmas tradition of watching the musical Scrooge every year, usually after Christmas.  If family is with us, they are stuck watching it, too.  In the movie, Scrooge, who is played by Albert Finney, sings a song called “I Hate People.”  I picked up on an unusual phrase in the song years ago: “cretinous wretches.”  Here it is in the context of the song:

Life is full of cretinous wretches
Earning what their sweatiness fetches,
Empty minds whose pettiness stretches
Further than I can see.
Little wonder I hate people,
And I don’t care if they hate me!

 Ebenezer views most people as empty-minded, petty, cretinous wretches.  According to the dictionary, “cretinous” means foolish or stupid.  Most of us would be offended if someone called us a cretinous wretch or a fool.  Yet the Bible has a lot to say about fools:

• Jeremiah 4:22 – For My people are foolish, they know Me not; they are stupid children and have no understanding. They are shrewd to do evil, but to do good they do not know.
• Psalm 53:1 – The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,” They are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; there is no one who does good.
• Romans 1:21 – For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Paul has much to say about fools and foolishness in his first letter to Corinth:

• 1 Corinthians 4:10 – We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are prudent in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are distinguished, but we are without honor.
• 1 Corinthians 1:20-31 – Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than mean, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.”
•  1 Corinthians 1:18 – For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

There seems to be two kinds of foolishness in the Scriptures: the fool who doesn’t believe in God; and the fool who does and follows Him.  The difference in these is a matter of perspective.  The one who does not acknowledge God is seen as a fool by God.  The one who follows God is seen as a fool by the world.  Jesus captured this well on the road to Emmaus as he responded to the ignorance of the two disciples – “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25).  These two travelers were His followers and should have been fairly conversant with the prophets, but they did not understand what had happened at the cross and the tomb.  To be fair, it would be hard to imagine even the most ardent disciple of Jesus grasping the full impact of the events of that weekend at that time.

Christ-followers can be foolish when we ignore God and attempt to live apart from Him.  Unfortunately, much of my life is spent in this kind of foolishness.  But if we are living for and in Christ, we are still fools in the world’s eyes.  I guess we can’t win – we’re always fools to someone.  It is much better, however, to be thought a fool by the world than by God.  Since we haven’t yet glimpsed Heaven, this world is all we know.  But we have to adopt a long-term view, an eternal view, and live as fools in this world so we can live redeemed and restored in the next.

Ebenezer’s story is one of redemption.  At the end of the movie, his song has changed to “I Like People.”  Some probably thought him foolish early in the movie because of his stinginess and sour outlook on life.  Others probably thought him foolish at the end of the movie as he danced like a child and gave away money.  As strange as it sounds, old Ebbie is a role model for we who are redeemed.  We should be living changed lives and we should act foolishly in the world’s eyes.

So, on the very remote chance that someone calls you a cretinous wretch, try to consider it a compliment that you are living as you should.

A portal is opened to another world.  Someone seems irretrievably lost, but a hero enters an evil world to save him.  A life is sacrificed so that others may live.

I watched the first season of the hit Netflix series, Stranger Things, a few weeks ago (I’d give it an 11, by the way).  If you’re familiar with the show, everything in the first paragraph above is part of the story.  If you’re familiar with the gospel, everything in the first paragraph above is part of the story.

Almost every great story, whether it’s a folk tale, book, or movie (even Hallmark Christmas movies), contains elements of the gospel: failure and redemption; selfishness and sacrifice; lost and found.  Stranger Things is a well-told story and all these elements are present.  Of course, there are many things in the series that do not correlate to the gospel and we shouldn’t try to force them.  I think too many pastors and authors try to find the gospel in everything in order to be culturally relevant, and it’s not always there (naturally, this post is excluded).  Without giving away too much about the story-line of the series, we don’t find parallel worlds in the gospel, nor do we find Eggos.

But there are similarities and they start with the Manger.  A new world was opened to us when Jesus came to live among us.  We were given direct access to the Creator and, one day, believers will enter the portal Jesus opened on the cross and live in that better world with him (the other world in Stranger Things is definitely NOT a better world).  It was necessary for Jesus to come to us because we were lost and without hope.  Much like Will in Stranger Things, each of us wanders through an evil and fallen world looking for a way out.  Someone had to enter that evil and fallen world to save Will.  Someone, and it could have only been someone who was fully God and fully man, had to enter our world to save us.

A character in Stranger Things was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so that her (spoiler alert) friends would be saved from certain death.  Sound familiar?  In any true love story sacrifice is required.; it is required in our lives every day if we love someone.  That defines Jesus – he was the ultimate sacrifice because He loved us.  He paid the price that we could not pay, the price that only He could pay.

In John 13:34-35, Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Jesus had not yet made the ultimate sacrifice when he uttered these words, but it was coming the following day.  The disciples did not yet understand the need for a crucified Messiah, much less that is was about to happen.  At the time, to love others as Jesus loved certainly meant the disciples were to show the compassion and care that Jesus had shown them.  But after the cross, these words took on an entirely new meaning.  To love others is to be willing to sacrifice for them, perhaps even to die for them.  This concept was definitely a “stranger thing” than they had heard before, yet it would mark them, and all followers of Jesus, as true disciples.

Manger things include hope, grace, and love.  May these beautiful things fill your Christmas and may others see them in you and know that you truly are a Christ-follower.  And when the turkey and pumpkin pie are gone, and all the cookies have been eaten … have an Eggo.

Last week on consecutive days I attended two completely different events.  One cold overcast afternoon I stood on a hillside in Arlington National Cemetery and honored my brother-in-law as he was buried.  The next evening, I sat in a church fellowship hall in Florida with my special needs brother as we celebrated at his organization’s annual Christmas party.  The first event was somber and dignified; the second was light-hearted and fun.

The burial occurred nearly five months after my brother-in-law died; the waiting list at Arlington is that long, so it was, in a sense, the reopening of a wound.  The ceremony itself helped in treating the wound.  I have attended and conducted several military funerals and I am always moved by the intentional and respectful way the service is conducted.  Jim’s body was borne on a caisson pulled by a team of horses.  An Air Force flight of about 20 service members accompanied the procession.  Of course, there was a three-gun salute and the playing of “Taps.”  The military part of the ceremony ends with a slow and deliberate folding of the flag and presentation of it to a relative, in this case my sister-in-law, with the words, “On behalf of the President of the United States and a grateful nation ….”

The next night we were celebrating with a room full of happy people.  We were treated to a handbell concert by Angelwood clients, some down-home Christmas music by a local trio, pulled pork, banana pudding and a visit from Santa.  It has become a Christmas tradition for us and it is always wonderful to see Bubba’s face light up when he spots us across the room.  Bubba makes it a point to speak to Santa and Santa gives everyone a candy cane.  After chatting with Santa, Bubba went to another table, found his girlfriend, gave her a kiss on the cheek and presented her with the candy cane he had just received from Santa.  Bubba is much more interested in the receiving, rather than the giving, part of the Christmas equation, so I was stunned.  Love  can make us do the unexpected.  We took a picture of the pair and the joy on their faces was beautiful.

I am always fascinated by the juxtapositions life presents us and these two events, so close to one another and both involving family, spoke to me.  Each was a celebration, although the funeral was, of course, tinged with sadness.  Yet in each grace was to be found. In Arlington, we saw the grace of a life well-lived and a husband and father well-loved.  In the church fellowship hall, we saw the grace of simple love and friendship.  We experienced joy in Arlington as we remembered Jim and as the family gathered, ate (of course!) and laughed together.  We experienced joy in Florida as we celebrated with Bubba and as the family gathered, ate (obviously) and laughed together.

His family won’t celebrate Christmas with Jim this year, and that will be hard; we will celebrate with Bubba and that will be fun.  That is symbolic of what so many people experience at Christmas: pain and loneliness for some and joy for others, or some of both for many.  We live in a sometimes painful world and that is to be expected because we live in a fallen world.  Yet Christmas brings the promise of grace and joy to us.  In the midst of pain, we can find joy.

Psalm 126:5 states, “Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting.”  It’s always dangerous to lift a verse out of context, but I think this one works here.  The psalm is one of rejoicing after release from captivity and the verses in the second half of the psalm speak of an unlooked-for harvest which brings joy.  We often shed tears in our heartache, only to find that God ends up blessing us in the sorrow.

Where is the joy to be found in burying Jim?  It is hard to find for us, and I don’t know that my sister-in-law and nephews have found it yet.  But they can know that, as a believer, Jim is living the life the way it was meant to be lived for creatures created in God’s image, and that is incredibly joyful.

The beautiful hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, contains the verse:

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Jesus’ birth was a time of joy.  His death was a time of sorrow, yet also indescribable joy because it offered new life to all who believe, and it happened because of His great love for us.  Sorrow and joy.  Sorrow and love. Funerals and parties.

In times of sorrow, seek the joy the Lord offers.  In times of celebration, embrace the joy.  That’s the wonderful thing about the joy of the Lord – it is consistent and available, whether you’re at a funeral or a party.