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Yesterday I ventured out into the madness to see “The Blind Side” with a good friend—great film. If you have the opportunity, you should see it, let it challenge your way of thinking (both about your die hard fascination with Ole Miss and your views about poverty and how you have accomplished what you have). It was certainly well made, with moments of triumph and joy juxtaposed nearly seamlessly over flashes of terror and sorrow. The thing that stuck with me the most, however, had little to do with football and poverty. No, it wasn’t those themes at all, but rather the curious misquoting of Luke 18 on the stone arch in front of the private school that takes Michael Oher in, Wingate Christian Academy. Did you see it, too? The arch reads “With men this is possible, but with God all things are possible.” Admittedly, there is no Scripture reference on the arch, and were you to run a rather exhaustive search for this quote across translations (as I did), you will not find the text anywhere in the Bible. It could have been a random, non-Scriptural reference, but the contextual overtones are significant and lead me to believe that it was an attempt, though a complete failure, to create the appearance of a Christian school, educating young men and women in the ways of God and the ways of the world. Yet it is not merely a legalistic crusade that Scripture be quoted properly or cited appropriately (MLA please, still not on the APA bandwagon) which has struck a serious chord in my mind—it is the fact that we are living our lives exactly this way, blindly following a humanistic belief that most of what I face in this world I can handle. We attend church, maybe hit a mid-week Bible study, try to pray more frequently and read our Bibles when we remember to take the time. We may even talk the talk with our coworkers and neighbors about the impact Jesus has had on our lives, but at the end of the day we functionally live as if we need Christ only to save us from eternal damnation, and everything else, well, that’s on me. I’ve got it. I’ll take this one. I’ll bear this load. Think about it—problems crop up at work or that major project is now overdue and our response is? Buckle down, work harder, dig in and weather the stress. The kids are out of control as you try to finish that last-minute Christmas shopping and you’re beginning to wonder if maybe you can just leave them at the mall, just for an hour or two, and have a cup of coffee in peace. The car is making that funky noise when you start it up again, but hey, worse come to worse, you’ve got two good legs and can push it off the Interstate. There’s little argument to be had – we have been brought up in a culture that thrives on the bootstrap mentality: if I work hard, grab opportunities as they come along, and look more put together than everyone else, well, then that bigger house or bomb-shell of a wife or a few angelic children will fall out of the sky and my life will be complete. A friend of Leigh Anne Tuohy makes the point ever so poignantly over her soggy, $18 salad—she would still be living on “the other side of town” had she not worked hard enough to escape that life. And yet, just as it was true for Michael Oher, it is not simply a matter of being willing to work hard enough. In fact, the misquoted Scripture from Luke 18, verse 27 reads, “What is impossible with men is possible with God”—something of a different story from the mouth of Christ himself. If you look at the preceding story, Jesus has been approached by a “rich ruler,” who inquires of Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Christ initially points the ruler to the commandments—“do not commit adultery, do not murder”—to which the young man responds, “all these I have kept from my youth”. Note that Christ does not tell the ruler that he can be saved by following the law, and instead turns to the young man and says, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor.” Of course, like I’m certain many of us have done when God has asked us to give up something of great value, the ruler became very sad, “for he was extremely rich”. Maybe that’s just me. Jesus sees the sadness creep into the man’s face and drops a bomb—“it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God”. The crowd, who has been intently listening to this exchange, pipes up at this point and cries out, “then who can be saved?”—if this man, who had followed the law from his youth, keeping the commandments to the letter of the law, cannot be saved, then how can any of us be saved? Surely we are all to be eternally damned! Praise the Lord, though—it was for just this reason that Jesus became the Word Incarnate for “what is impossible with men is possible with God.” As we are sitting on Christmas eve, trying to wrap up the last bit of shopping and gift wrapping, bundling up and praying for a white Christmas, or just generally enjoying the company of family, my desire for each of you is that Christ’s words would weigh heavily on you as we celebrate his coming—“what is impossible with men is possible with God”. Jesus came into this world, having given up his heavenly throne, putting aside the glory that is rightfully and eternally his, to join us in the dust and strife that is our home. He was born in the lowest of circumstances—he, the eternal King and Creator humbled himself so far as to be born to a carpenter in a stable, because a world that would eventually crucify him could not even spare a proper bed. The author of Hebrews writes under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”. This man, who walked with our forefathers for some 30-odd years, who did chores for his mother, celebrated at birthdays and holidays, felt sorrow and anguish with the illness and passing of loved ones, was God, fully divine and fully man. When Paul writes in Romans that the “eternal power and divine nature” of God “have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,” it is those attributes that Christ shows us in bodily form. May we seek to dwell deeply on this truth as we consider that it is this baby whose birth we celebrate on December 25th that was sent here to die on the cross, to be resurrected from the dead to seal the victory over the grave for all those who would believe. I love how Lee Strobel sums up the character of Christ: Colossians 2:9 reads, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” His eternality is confirmed in John 1:1, which declares of Jesus, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” His immutability is shown in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” His sinlessness is seen in John 8:29: “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” Hebrews 1:3 declares Jesus to be the “radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his begin.” Colossians 1:17 says, “In him all things hold together.” In every way, the birth we celebrate is beyond our comprehension. We see a babe in a manager, but in reality we are seeing God in the flesh. How is it possible that the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent Creator could don flesh and walk the earth? Well, “what is impossible with men is possible with God.” He came to make a way, to defeat death on the cross that he might resurrect us from enslavement to our flesh and folly, to bring us into communion with God for all eternity. Just as it was impossible for the rich ruler to get to heaven simply by following the letter of the law, so it is impossible for us to live our lives well under the auspices that Christ is here solely to avert God’s judgment from us. Jesus told his disciples in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (emphasis added). In the cross we do not simply have a commuted sentence or a divine pardon, rather we have the way to a life reconciled to God, as it was intended to be from Genesis 1, with the divine mandate to push back the darkness and join God in his ministry of reconciliation. As Leigh Anne Tuohy was an instrument to push the darkness out of Michael Oher’s life, so each of us who abide in Christ are called to bring light into dark places, to live generously and freely (as the rich ruler was unable to do), and to show love to a world that sees very little real love. So when you clamor to the Christmas tree with loved ones to open presents, or gaze on that nativity scene on your table, or sit down to read the story of the miraculous birth with your babies strewn around you, know how the story ends. Live deeply in these moments, taking in the joy and the happiness that God has graced us with, and ask God to show you how to pass that grace on to those around you, to live hands open having grasped firmly that your treasure is in Christ, where moth and rust cannot destroy. May you have a Merry Christmas and may you know the love of Christ that surpasses all understanding. |
