A Time to Laugh

From Romans 8:29-39:

29-30 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: 

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

I Corinthians 7:23-24:

All of you, slave and free both, were once held hostage in a sinful society. Then a huge sum was paid out for your ransom. So please don’t, out of old habit, slip back into being or doing what everyone else tells you. Friends, stay where you were called to be. God is there. Hold the high ground with him at your side.

2 Corinthians 4: 

Since God has so generously let us in on what he is doing, we’re not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times. We refuse to wear masks and play games. We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes. And we don’t twist God’s Word to suit ourselves. Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open, the whole truth on display, so that those who want to can see and judge for themselves in the presence of God.

If our Message is obscure to anyone, it’s not because we’re holding back in any way. No, it’s because these other people are looking or going the wrong way and refuse to give it serious attention. All they have eyes for is the fashionable god of darkness. They think he can give them what they want, and that they won’t have to bother believing a Truth they can’t see. They’re stone-blind to the dayspring brightness of the Message that shines with Christ, who gives us the best picture of God we’ll ever get.

Remember, our Message is not about ourselves; we’re proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you. It started when God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful.

If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!

We’re not keeping this quiet, not on your life. Just like the psalmist who wrote, “I believed it, so I said it,” we say what we believe. And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive. Every detail works to your advantage and to God’s glory: more and more grace, more and more people, more and more praise!

So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.

Shammah son of Agee the Hararite was the third of the Three. The Philistines had mustered for battle at Lehi, where there was a field full of lentils. Israel fled before the Philistines, but Shammah took his stand at the center of the field, successfully defended it, and routed the Philistines. Another great victory for God!

2 Samuel 23:11-12

Let us bring them [our children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Great will be the reward in store for us, for if artists who make statues and paint portraits of kings are held in high esteem, will not God bless ten thousand times more those who reveal and beautify His royal image (for man is the image of God)?

Apparently this metaphor of parent as artist permeates Chrysostom’s homilies on parenting. Combining this with the Eastern Orthodox interpretation of the Fall as inheritance of mortality, not total inability, we get a fuller portrait, if you will, of the child. Sin, for the Eastern Orthodox, is something learned from an inartistic parent — a broad stroke of paint or a overly deep cut in the clay. What Vigen Guroian simply appreciates in this Orthodox orator is really setting up both parent and child for failure. It’s all about the parent and not enough about God.

So Chrysostom sees the child as a product of (in)artistic parenting. To play with that metaphor, then, the child is a parent’s creation to be owned, displayed, and preserved (rather than nurtured, taught, and protected). The work is the wholly the parents’ with God-given resources. Chrysostom’s child sounds pretty much like Ovid’s Pygmalion. Are we parents just a more common Henry Higgins?

And who sticks around to play with the kids while the other two sourpusses can only flare their nostrils in disgust? According to Judith M. Gundry-Volf, hands down the Rabbis. She compares the ancient near-Eastern attitudes toward children, and I’m a tad flabbergasted that the Graeco-Roman ways sound so familar.

To the Greek, a child was weak and deficient. He couldn’t talk, think, or take care of himself. The child was simply an underdeveloped human, a social drain. The child in Greece and Rome was equal to the slave, occupying the lowest rung of the cultural ladder. Cicero, too, commented that childhood, “the thing itself cannot be praised, only its potential.” Childhood wasn’t a time to be admired and relished, but simply endured.

And so their brutal practices toward the child make sense. In Rome, the father had complete and entire authority over the child’s life. He could capriciously decide to recognize and raise it or “cast it out.” Sometimes ne’er-do-wells would pick up these newborns and raise them as slaves or worse. Think of the brutal killings in Egypt and under Herod’s reign. These crimes cut especially deep into the Hebrew soul. Gundry-Volf points out that the practice of casting out newborns was so prominent in the Near East, that everyone at the time was surprised that the Jews didn’t do it.

For the Jews, the child participated in God’s Promise. “Children were thus members of God’s covenant with Israel–in rabbinic teaching, even those still in the womb–and it was expected that they would assume covenantal responsibilities” (35). Now there are stories in Hellenic culture about generous souls that take in these foundlings. But there’s one major difference between those legends and what Mark describes in his Gospel:

While Plutarch and Diodorus depict memorable or legendary women as taking children into their arms and as exemplary in this respect for other women, Mark depicts Jesus, a man, taking a little child into his arms as an example for his male disciples in particular, and all disciples in general.. . . . Jesus thus redefines the service of children as a sign of greatness for all disciples. What appeared to be an undistinguished activity–care for children, belonging to the domain of women, similarly marginalized people–becomes a prime way for all disciples to demonstrate the greatness that corresponds to the reign of God (44).

So for Christ, the child was not just the recipient of God’s blessing, not just the model for the kingdom, but also His representatives of mercy! Gundry-Volf wonders if it’s because children were not expected to keep the Law in the least that Christ features their faith alone. They just enjoy their friendship with Christ without pretense or expectation.

While the Greeks and Romans hear children’s words as silly, Christ hears praise to God and from God in their words. While the Greeks and Romans see children as inadequate, Paul sees them as holy. In Colossians and Ephesians, both, children are fellow members of the Church, deserving of respect and kindness.

When the Greeks and Romans look at a child, they see, at best, disposable property and, at worst, a burden. But Paul sees a fellow Christian. And Christ sees a perfect believer, unencumbered by social mores and legal burdens.

Call it Turkey Day the Sequel. Or Try-It-Again-Tryptophan. Or Serendipitous Holiday. We declared this first Thursday of February our Thankgiving II. Using the free collect-six-coupons bird, old stuffing lurking under the Tastee-Os, just-happened-to-have carrots, and a jar of Vlasics, we cooked up quite a feast. It just so happened that Old Man Winter treated us with snow, sleet, and now freezing rain, so we were socked in the house afraid of the riding-the-brake South Carolinian drivers. Like any proper holiday, school was cancelled.

It’s a no-pressure event. It’s okay to gnaw on a wing while stirring the carrots. It’s okay to plop the bird on a red Christmas cookie platter. It’s okay to wear sweats and footie jammies. It’s okay to have barely combed our hair. It was a Surprise Poultry Party after all.

And now for that post-meal coma to begin. A perfect day to give thanks.