Proper 22 / Pentecost 20 / Ordinary Time 27
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
As Christians, our identity is grounded not in our own accomplishments, but in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Old Testament Lesson
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
The Ten Commandments
This passage includes the Ten Commandments, omitting some commentary on the second commandment (idol-worship) and on the fourth (sabbath-keeping). There is a parallel passage, Deuteronomy 5:1-22. The omissions include some difficult material, such as God's self-description as "jealous," punishing future generations. They also contain some material well worth preaching, including the remarkably thorough understanding of sabbath observance as extending not only to slaves but even to livestock (v. 10). The sabbath regulations are perhaps the world's first social-justice legislation, insuring that neither slaves nor animals may be worked to death. While these commandments are addressed to individuals, always in the background is an overriding concern for the community. Keeping the commandments is what binds God's people together as one. So many of these commandments are worded so negatively that some listeners may find it difficult to receive them. A helpful preaching strategy is to emphasize the positive aspects of obedience to God's law. The prologue states, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." The commandments are grounded in God's love and in our gratitude. What would our lives be like without such elemental laws?
New Testament Lesson
Philippians 3:4b-14
The Gain That Outweighs All Losses
Paul has just been speaking of his religious opponents, whom he describes in derogatory terms as "dogs" (a simple insult), as "evil-workers" (those who think they are living righteously, but reject God's free grace), and as "those who mutilate the flesh" (v. 2). He is referring to circumcision, the rite that sets faithful Jewish men apart from all others -- a rite he himself had undergone and which he, at one time in his life, claimed with pride. Now Paul sees things differently. "It is we who are the circumcision," he asserts, not the traditional Jewish believers (v. 3). In light of what Jesus has accomplished, circumcision has now become a spiritual reality, not a physical one. In the ensuing verses that form our reading for today, Paul goes back over his spiritual resume, reflecting on the meaning of credentials he once held dear, but which mean little to him now (verses 4b-6). Those hard-won gains Paul now considers "as loss because of Christ" (v. 7). Indeed, everything about this human life is as nothing, compared to knowing Christ (v. 8). It matters not to Paul that has had to leave behind everything he once held dear, for in Christ he has gained something far more wonderful (verses 8-11). This passage could provide an occasion for preaching on the human experience of loss, and how Christian faith, while not erasing feelings of loss, can in time render them insignificant.
The Gospel
Matthew 21:33-46
The Parable Of The Wicked Tenants
Having had a confrontation with the chief priests and the scribes that ended in a sort of standoff (verses 23-27), Jesus -- while his opponents are still present -- tells two parables that reveals much about how he views them. The first, the Parable of the Two Sons (last week's gospel lesson), is a simple tale of two disobedient children: One who disobeys his father in word only, the other in deeds (verses 28-32). The implication is that the religious authorities, who pay lip-service to faith but whose lives reveal their unbelief, are worse than the riff-raff who follow Jesus around and who have only recently come to faith. The second -- the lectionary selection for today -- is a parable about a wealthy vineyard-owner who travels to a far-off land, leaving his tenant-farmers in charge of the agricultural operation (v. 33). At harvest-time, he sends one trusted slave after another to collect the proceeds from the sale of the crops, but the tenants beat each messenger and send him back empty-handed (verses 34-36). Finally, the master sends his own son to collect the debt, but him they murder (verses 37-39). What would you expect the vineyard-owner to do, Jesus asks? (v. 40). The answer is obvious: He would return, seeking righteous vengeance. More than that, he would "lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time" (v. 41). Jesus quotes Psalm 118:22-23 ("The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone"), a choice probably motivated by similar Hebrew words for "stone" and "son." Realizing Jesus is talking about them, the religious authorities would have arrested him but cannot, because of the large crowd of his supporters (v. 43).
Preaching Possibilities
In Philippians chapter 3, Paul's sharing the details of his personal identity -- what could be called his spiritual resume. He was "circumcised the eighth day." That means he was no convert to the Jewish faith but was born into it -- and his parents were devout enough to take him to the rabbi on the exact day specified in the law for the rite of circumcision. He was no Johnny-come-lately convert, no sir. Paul goes on to say that he belongs "to the people of Israel." He's not one of those Greeks who hung around the synagogue out of curiosity, then converted. He belongs to "the tribe of Benjamin" -- of all the twelve sons of Jacob, Benjamin was the only one who didn't betray his brother, Joseph. The ancestral lands of the tribe of Benjamin include the holy city of Jerusalem itself. Paul takes pride in the fact that he's "a Hebrew born of Hebrews" -- pure-blooded, in other words.
Well, so much for his ancestry. Next he goes on to describe his accomplishments in life. "As to the law a Pharisee" -- Saul of Tarsus (as he then called himself) was committed not only to the technicalities of God's law, to the letter of it, but also to the spirit of the law. Absolute obedience was the defining characteristic of his life. As for zeal, Saul was "a persecutor of the church." He was a true believer, a fanatic even -- someone who gleefully rounded up those heretics who followed the radical rabbi from Nazareth. As for "righteousness under the law"? Well, nobody was more "blameless" than Saul of Tarsus.
Or so he thought at the time. But then Saul met a certain person on the Damascus Road -- a man whose name he used to curse, a man whose followers he used to hunt down like dogs. This man he met on the road -- that same Jesus of Nazareth -- was a dead man. A dead man who spoke to him. Later on, Saul would learn that this Jesus was no longer dead but had been raised up by God. At the time, all those contradictory thoughts piled up, each one upon the next, until he no longer knew who he was. Through his encounter with Jesus Christ, Saul's life was stripped down to its very foundations and sandblasted clean -- scoured more thoroughly than any hurricane could do.
In the Philippian church, there were certain false leaders who taught that the way of blessing was to go back to one's Jewish roots and to seek salvation through the rituals of the past. These false teachers were very status-conscious. They believed that the longer you'd been around the synagogue, the more pages you'd accumulated in your spiritual resume, the more weight your word ought to carry in the church's decision-making. "We're the old-timers," they would say. "We built this church, we cared for it, we raised our children in it, and we bought the stained glass (see the inscription at the bottom with our grandparents' names?). We are the people who truly matter around here!"
These are the people to whom Paul recites his spiritual resume. "Here it is," he proclaims, waving it in their faces. "This resume is longer and more distinguished, even, than yours. But look," he says, with a wild look in his eye. "Look what I'm about to do with it." Thereupon Paul commences to tear his resume up into little pieces and scatter them to the wind. "It's trash," he says to them. "Garbage -- refuse. I can throw my entire identity away because there's only one thing that matters in my life now: my relationship to Jesus Christ."
There are some today who are worried about identity theft. There are others -- victims of natural disasters -- who must contend, for at least a little while, with identity loss. For Paul, it is far more important to focus on his identity gift: The new life he has received in Jesus.
So what is it that gives you your identity? Your family connections? Your job? Your professional accomplishments? Your grades? Your trophies? Your investment portfolio? Compared to knowing Jesus, Paul is saying, all these things are as nothing. They're worse than nothing, in fact. They're trash. The Greek word Paul uses, here, could be rendered politely by the word, "dung" -- although the true English translation is a word that can't be spoken in polite company.
Why does Paul use such strong language? Because he knows all too well how seductive the prizes and rewards of this world can be. They can become heavy weights that pull us down and impede our spiritual progress.
In another of his letters Paul would write these beloved words, that (judging from what we know of his life story) are autobiographical: "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
We live in a culture that measures a person's "net worth" in dollars and cents, that confuses fame with virtue, and mistakes physical attraction for love. When the most distinguished leaders of our culture want to know us, they ask for our resume, our degrees, our accomplishments. We are taught from a very young age that we must earn our rewards and honors in life -- and that, once we do, they belong to us, taking their place among our most cherished possessions.
It's sobering and even baffling to hear the story of a man like Paul who casts this all away and who regards it as so much rubbish. It's not that Paul despises the things of this world. It's just that he loves Jesus more.
Prayer For The Day
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
His dying crimson, like a robe,
spreads o'er his body on the tree;
then I am dead to all the globe,
and all the globe is dead to me.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
-- Isaac Watts, "When I Survey The Wondrous Cross"
To Illustrate
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there were lots of stories of terrible loss: of family members, of homes (along with the treasured photo albums and family heirlooms they contained), of jobs. Yet there's another sort of loss that some hurricane victims experienced, in those early, chaotic days after the disaster: the loss of identity.
Some of those people who literally came through the waters managed to lose even their identification. There they were, in emergency shelters like the Houston Astrodome, trying to find some way to prove who they really were.
Think of what you would do if you were in that situation. Your wallet or purse -- along with your driver's license, credit cards, and all the rest -- is gone. The last time you saw it, it was on your dresser, back home, and the dresser was floating across your bedroom, as you climbed out the window on your way to the roof. You were winched up into the air by a Coast Guard helicopter, and somebody brought you here, to this shelter. You're all alone. Everyone who knows you, who can vouch for you -- your family, your neighbors, everybody -- has been taken to some other shelter (or, at least, you hope so).
There's a Red Cross worker sitting across a card table from you who wants to help. She's helping you fill out forms that will begin to get you connected to your former life. You have a bank account, you tell her. If you can just get to that money, you can leave the shelter, you can travel, and you can begin to take care of yourself. But with no driver's license, no student or employee ID, and no ATM card -- what is there that connects you to who you really are?
***
Columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, in the New York Times, of a man who had an identity problem after Hurricane Katrina -- although, in his case, the loss of identity was life-threatening. Eugene Johnson was 57 years old at the time, and a diabetic. When he was evacuated from his home in Mississippi, his medicine floated away on the water. He was taking nine prescription medicines, two of them to help preserve his vision. At the time Kristof talked to him, he was sitting in an emergency shelter, slowly going blind. He found a pharmacy that stocked the medication he needed -- but he had no prescription script (and who knows where his doctor was?). Even if he'd had the prescription, he didn't have the $119 the pharmacist needed to fill it.
There was a happy ending to Mr. Johnson's story: a doctor from a charity group examined him, wrote the prescription, and the agency came up with the money -- at least enough for a week or two of the medicine. Yet Mr. Johnson's story is a cautionary tale: The loss of identity can be more than simply inconvenient. It can be deadly.
-- Nicholas Kristof, "A Health Care Disaster," New York Times, September 25, 2005
***
Remember Charles Dickens' famous story, A Christmas Carol? Remember how the ghost of Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley, appears to him one night? Listen to it again, as Charles Dickens describes it: "The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel."
Jacob Marley, like Ebenezer Scrooge, had spent his entire life driving hard bargain after hard bargain, until he'd made himself wealthy in the sort of things the world values. Then Marley died -- and, in the life to come (in the novelist's imagination), he soon realized that the ink in his own cosmic ledger-book was a different color than what he'd expected. What had been clean, crisp, black ink in life became an oozing red in death. Listen again, as Dickens picks up the story a bit later:
" 'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. 'Tell me why?'
'I wear the chain I forged in life,' replied the ghost. 'I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?'
Scrooge trembled more and more.
'Or would you know,' pursued the ghost, 'the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!' "
The ponderous chain of religious respectability that Saul of Tarsus had spent half his life forging, he had the good sense to unwind from around himself and abandon once he met Jesus Christ. Saul gave up his identity and with it even his name. He became someone completely new: Paul, child of God and disciple of Jesus. What he had once been no longer mattered.
***
In Hollywood, California, in the year 1989, another star was added to the renowned "Walk of Fame." The new star was placed near the stars belonging to Julie Andrews and Wayne Newton. The recipient of this star had first been offered the honor decades before, but he had refused to let his name be used -- even though, by that time, millions of people around the world had come to hear him speak. In 1989 he reconsidered, and the name of Billy Graham was inscribed on the sidewalk beside Hollywood Boulevard.
His motivation in accepting the honor was just a bit different from that of the typical celebrity. "I hope it will identify me with the gospel that I preach," he said, accepting the honor. At the unveiling ceremony, Billy Graham advised the curiosity-seekers who had come out to see him: "We should put our eyes on the star which is the Lord."
***
With all the troubles with airline delays these days, there was one man who was growing more and more impatient as he tried to get on the plane. He was on standby and desperately needed to get to a meeting. The attendant spoke into the microphone repeatedly, "Those of you who are waiting, please sit down and we will call you when it is your turn."
However, this man was not one to take no for an answer. He was an executive in this airline, and he needed to get on this airplane. As he approached the counter, the attendant said again into the microphone, "If you are waiting, please take a seat and we will call you when it is your turn."
Evidently, he did not think that this pertained to him and proceeded to talk to the attendant, telling her how important it was for him to be on that airplane. She told him to be seated, and she would call him when it was his turn. Then he pulled the trump card. He said to her in a strong voice, "Do you know who I am?"
With that the exasperated attendant paused, picked up the microphone again and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a man who does not know who he is. Please claim him, put him back in line and I'll talk to him when it's his turn."
-- Scott Suskovic, writing in The Immediate Word, an online resource of CSS Publishing, March 4, 2007
As Christians, our identity is grounded not in our own accomplishments, but in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Old Testament Lesson
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
The Ten Commandments
This passage includes the Ten Commandments, omitting some commentary on the second commandment (idol-worship) and on the fourth (sabbath-keeping). There is a parallel passage, Deuteronomy 5:1-22. The omissions include some difficult material, such as God's self-description as "jealous," punishing future generations. They also contain some material well worth preaching, including the remarkably thorough understanding of sabbath observance as extending not only to slaves but even to livestock (v. 10). The sabbath regulations are perhaps the world's first social-justice legislation, insuring that neither slaves nor animals may be worked to death. While these commandments are addressed to individuals, always in the background is an overriding concern for the community. Keeping the commandments is what binds God's people together as one. So many of these commandments are worded so negatively that some listeners may find it difficult to receive them. A helpful preaching strategy is to emphasize the positive aspects of obedience to God's law. The prologue states, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." The commandments are grounded in God's love and in our gratitude. What would our lives be like without such elemental laws?
New Testament Lesson
Philippians 3:4b-14
The Gain That Outweighs All Losses
Paul has just been speaking of his religious opponents, whom he describes in derogatory terms as "dogs" (a simple insult), as "evil-workers" (those who think they are living righteously, but reject God's free grace), and as "those who mutilate the flesh" (v. 2). He is referring to circumcision, the rite that sets faithful Jewish men apart from all others -- a rite he himself had undergone and which he, at one time in his life, claimed with pride. Now Paul sees things differently. "It is we who are the circumcision," he asserts, not the traditional Jewish believers (v. 3). In light of what Jesus has accomplished, circumcision has now become a spiritual reality, not a physical one. In the ensuing verses that form our reading for today, Paul goes back over his spiritual resume, reflecting on the meaning of credentials he once held dear, but which mean little to him now (verses 4b-6). Those hard-won gains Paul now considers "as loss because of Christ" (v. 7). Indeed, everything about this human life is as nothing, compared to knowing Christ (v. 8). It matters not to Paul that has had to leave behind everything he once held dear, for in Christ he has gained something far more wonderful (verses 8-11). This passage could provide an occasion for preaching on the human experience of loss, and how Christian faith, while not erasing feelings of loss, can in time render them insignificant.
The Gospel
Matthew 21:33-46
The Parable Of The Wicked Tenants
Having had a confrontation with the chief priests and the scribes that ended in a sort of standoff (verses 23-27), Jesus -- while his opponents are still present -- tells two parables that reveals much about how he views them. The first, the Parable of the Two Sons (last week's gospel lesson), is a simple tale of two disobedient children: One who disobeys his father in word only, the other in deeds (verses 28-32). The implication is that the religious authorities, who pay lip-service to faith but whose lives reveal their unbelief, are worse than the riff-raff who follow Jesus around and who have only recently come to faith. The second -- the lectionary selection for today -- is a parable about a wealthy vineyard-owner who travels to a far-off land, leaving his tenant-farmers in charge of the agricultural operation (v. 33). At harvest-time, he sends one trusted slave after another to collect the proceeds from the sale of the crops, but the tenants beat each messenger and send him back empty-handed (verses 34-36). Finally, the master sends his own son to collect the debt, but him they murder (verses 37-39). What would you expect the vineyard-owner to do, Jesus asks? (v. 40). The answer is obvious: He would return, seeking righteous vengeance. More than that, he would "lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time" (v. 41). Jesus quotes Psalm 118:22-23 ("The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone"), a choice probably motivated by similar Hebrew words for "stone" and "son." Realizing Jesus is talking about them, the religious authorities would have arrested him but cannot, because of the large crowd of his supporters (v. 43).
Preaching Possibilities
In Philippians chapter 3, Paul's sharing the details of his personal identity -- what could be called his spiritual resume. He was "circumcised the eighth day." That means he was no convert to the Jewish faith but was born into it -- and his parents were devout enough to take him to the rabbi on the exact day specified in the law for the rite of circumcision. He was no Johnny-come-lately convert, no sir. Paul goes on to say that he belongs "to the people of Israel." He's not one of those Greeks who hung around the synagogue out of curiosity, then converted. He belongs to "the tribe of Benjamin" -- of all the twelve sons of Jacob, Benjamin was the only one who didn't betray his brother, Joseph. The ancestral lands of the tribe of Benjamin include the holy city of Jerusalem itself. Paul takes pride in the fact that he's "a Hebrew born of Hebrews" -- pure-blooded, in other words.
Well, so much for his ancestry. Next he goes on to describe his accomplishments in life. "As to the law a Pharisee" -- Saul of Tarsus (as he then called himself) was committed not only to the technicalities of God's law, to the letter of it, but also to the spirit of the law. Absolute obedience was the defining characteristic of his life. As for zeal, Saul was "a persecutor of the church." He was a true believer, a fanatic even -- someone who gleefully rounded up those heretics who followed the radical rabbi from Nazareth. As for "righteousness under the law"? Well, nobody was more "blameless" than Saul of Tarsus.
Or so he thought at the time. But then Saul met a certain person on the Damascus Road -- a man whose name he used to curse, a man whose followers he used to hunt down like dogs. This man he met on the road -- that same Jesus of Nazareth -- was a dead man. A dead man who spoke to him. Later on, Saul would learn that this Jesus was no longer dead but had been raised up by God. At the time, all those contradictory thoughts piled up, each one upon the next, until he no longer knew who he was. Through his encounter with Jesus Christ, Saul's life was stripped down to its very foundations and sandblasted clean -- scoured more thoroughly than any hurricane could do.
In the Philippian church, there were certain false leaders who taught that the way of blessing was to go back to one's Jewish roots and to seek salvation through the rituals of the past. These false teachers were very status-conscious. They believed that the longer you'd been around the synagogue, the more pages you'd accumulated in your spiritual resume, the more weight your word ought to carry in the church's decision-making. "We're the old-timers," they would say. "We built this church, we cared for it, we raised our children in it, and we bought the stained glass (see the inscription at the bottom with our grandparents' names?). We are the people who truly matter around here!"
These are the people to whom Paul recites his spiritual resume. "Here it is," he proclaims, waving it in their faces. "This resume is longer and more distinguished, even, than yours. But look," he says, with a wild look in his eye. "Look what I'm about to do with it." Thereupon Paul commences to tear his resume up into little pieces and scatter them to the wind. "It's trash," he says to them. "Garbage -- refuse. I can throw my entire identity away because there's only one thing that matters in my life now: my relationship to Jesus Christ."
There are some today who are worried about identity theft. There are others -- victims of natural disasters -- who must contend, for at least a little while, with identity loss. For Paul, it is far more important to focus on his identity gift: The new life he has received in Jesus.
So what is it that gives you your identity? Your family connections? Your job? Your professional accomplishments? Your grades? Your trophies? Your investment portfolio? Compared to knowing Jesus, Paul is saying, all these things are as nothing. They're worse than nothing, in fact. They're trash. The Greek word Paul uses, here, could be rendered politely by the word, "dung" -- although the true English translation is a word that can't be spoken in polite company.
Why does Paul use such strong language? Because he knows all too well how seductive the prizes and rewards of this world can be. They can become heavy weights that pull us down and impede our spiritual progress.
In another of his letters Paul would write these beloved words, that (judging from what we know of his life story) are autobiographical: "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
We live in a culture that measures a person's "net worth" in dollars and cents, that confuses fame with virtue, and mistakes physical attraction for love. When the most distinguished leaders of our culture want to know us, they ask for our resume, our degrees, our accomplishments. We are taught from a very young age that we must earn our rewards and honors in life -- and that, once we do, they belong to us, taking their place among our most cherished possessions.
It's sobering and even baffling to hear the story of a man like Paul who casts this all away and who regards it as so much rubbish. It's not that Paul despises the things of this world. It's just that he loves Jesus more.
Prayer For The Day
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
His dying crimson, like a robe,
spreads o'er his body on the tree;
then I am dead to all the globe,
and all the globe is dead to me.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
-- Isaac Watts, "When I Survey The Wondrous Cross"
To Illustrate
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there were lots of stories of terrible loss: of family members, of homes (along with the treasured photo albums and family heirlooms they contained), of jobs. Yet there's another sort of loss that some hurricane victims experienced, in those early, chaotic days after the disaster: the loss of identity.
Some of those people who literally came through the waters managed to lose even their identification. There they were, in emergency shelters like the Houston Astrodome, trying to find some way to prove who they really were.
Think of what you would do if you were in that situation. Your wallet or purse -- along with your driver's license, credit cards, and all the rest -- is gone. The last time you saw it, it was on your dresser, back home, and the dresser was floating across your bedroom, as you climbed out the window on your way to the roof. You were winched up into the air by a Coast Guard helicopter, and somebody brought you here, to this shelter. You're all alone. Everyone who knows you, who can vouch for you -- your family, your neighbors, everybody -- has been taken to some other shelter (or, at least, you hope so).
There's a Red Cross worker sitting across a card table from you who wants to help. She's helping you fill out forms that will begin to get you connected to your former life. You have a bank account, you tell her. If you can just get to that money, you can leave the shelter, you can travel, and you can begin to take care of yourself. But with no driver's license, no student or employee ID, and no ATM card -- what is there that connects you to who you really are?
***
Columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, in the New York Times, of a man who had an identity problem after Hurricane Katrina -- although, in his case, the loss of identity was life-threatening. Eugene Johnson was 57 years old at the time, and a diabetic. When he was evacuated from his home in Mississippi, his medicine floated away on the water. He was taking nine prescription medicines, two of them to help preserve his vision. At the time Kristof talked to him, he was sitting in an emergency shelter, slowly going blind. He found a pharmacy that stocked the medication he needed -- but he had no prescription script (and who knows where his doctor was?). Even if he'd had the prescription, he didn't have the $119 the pharmacist needed to fill it.
There was a happy ending to Mr. Johnson's story: a doctor from a charity group examined him, wrote the prescription, and the agency came up with the money -- at least enough for a week or two of the medicine. Yet Mr. Johnson's story is a cautionary tale: The loss of identity can be more than simply inconvenient. It can be deadly.
-- Nicholas Kristof, "A Health Care Disaster," New York Times, September 25, 2005
***
Remember Charles Dickens' famous story, A Christmas Carol? Remember how the ghost of Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley, appears to him one night? Listen to it again, as Charles Dickens describes it: "The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel."
Jacob Marley, like Ebenezer Scrooge, had spent his entire life driving hard bargain after hard bargain, until he'd made himself wealthy in the sort of things the world values. Then Marley died -- and, in the life to come (in the novelist's imagination), he soon realized that the ink in his own cosmic ledger-book was a different color than what he'd expected. What had been clean, crisp, black ink in life became an oozing red in death. Listen again, as Dickens picks up the story a bit later:
" 'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. 'Tell me why?'
'I wear the chain I forged in life,' replied the ghost. 'I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?'
Scrooge trembled more and more.
'Or would you know,' pursued the ghost, 'the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!' "
The ponderous chain of religious respectability that Saul of Tarsus had spent half his life forging, he had the good sense to unwind from around himself and abandon once he met Jesus Christ. Saul gave up his identity and with it even his name. He became someone completely new: Paul, child of God and disciple of Jesus. What he had once been no longer mattered.
***
In Hollywood, California, in the year 1989, another star was added to the renowned "Walk of Fame." The new star was placed near the stars belonging to Julie Andrews and Wayne Newton. The recipient of this star had first been offered the honor decades before, but he had refused to let his name be used -- even though, by that time, millions of people around the world had come to hear him speak. In 1989 he reconsidered, and the name of Billy Graham was inscribed on the sidewalk beside Hollywood Boulevard.
His motivation in accepting the honor was just a bit different from that of the typical celebrity. "I hope it will identify me with the gospel that I preach," he said, accepting the honor. At the unveiling ceremony, Billy Graham advised the curiosity-seekers who had come out to see him: "We should put our eyes on the star which is the Lord."
***
With all the troubles with airline delays these days, there was one man who was growing more and more impatient as he tried to get on the plane. He was on standby and desperately needed to get to a meeting. The attendant spoke into the microphone repeatedly, "Those of you who are waiting, please sit down and we will call you when it is your turn."
However, this man was not one to take no for an answer. He was an executive in this airline, and he needed to get on this airplane. As he approached the counter, the attendant said again into the microphone, "If you are waiting, please take a seat and we will call you when it is your turn."
Evidently, he did not think that this pertained to him and proceeded to talk to the attendant, telling her how important it was for him to be on that airplane. She told him to be seated, and she would call him when it was his turn. Then he pulled the trump card. He said to her in a strong voice, "Do you know who I am?"
With that the exasperated attendant paused, picked up the microphone again and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a man who does not know who he is. Please claim him, put him back in line and I'll talk to him when it's his turn."
-- Scott Suskovic, writing in The Immediate Word, an online resource of CSS Publishing, March 4, 2007
