Feeling Fine

 

“Well,” said the woman , “I don’t know what happened.  I felt fine.” 

The eighty-something year old woman was laying in a hospital bed.  Machines beeped, nurses scurried, tubes dripped all around her.  She was there because she’d taken a fall on the sidewalk outside of her home.  Her legs had simply given out under her.  And she was baffled.  After all, she felt fine.

Later that day, the shroud of mystery surrounding the fall was removed.  The doctor came in and rattled off a long list of ailments afflicting the old widow.  I can no longer remember them all, but somewhere on the list was a virus in her bloodstream, pnuemonia, dibitating diabetes, and a pair of kidneys that could hardly function without the help of machines.  She was hardly fine.  No matter how she felt.

Human beings, it would appear, have an incredible ability to adapt.  We can get used to almost anything.  Our bodies can be filled with cripplying diseas and yet we can insist that we are fine.  The standards we set for ourselves can be remarkably low. 

At the center of the Christian message is the good news that Jesus saves.  But sometimes, it’s hard to believe that we are people who are in need of saving.  Me?  Really?  But I feel fine.  I don’t cheat on my wife or look at dirty pictures on the internet.  I never tell lies (or at least, not big ones).  I give money to the church.  I’m a nice guy (most of the time).  Humble too.   Why would somebody like me need a savior? 

 And then I remember my old friend in the hospital.  And I think:  Maybe my standards are a little low, too.  Maybe there is a terrible sickness in my soul–a sicknesess that I’ve grown so accustomed to living with that I no longer notice it is there.  Maybe I’m grading myself on a curve–and the curve is being set by a bunch of people who are also anything but fine. 

In an oft quoted line from Isaiah 64:6, the prophet laments the human condition.  All of our righteous acts are like filthy rags, he says.  Its a rather grim assessment.  But it seems to me that within this statement their is a hope that human beings have the potential to be more than we ever imagined.  If even our best works are like a pile of old shop rags, what might we be like if we were being the people that God made us to be?  In his famous sermon, The Weight of Glory, CS Lewis said that if we were to see each other as God made us to be–living up to the glory of God rather than falling short of it–we would be strongly tempted to worship one another.  We would be so much more than “just fine”!

But of course, right now, we are not.  We are people in need of a savior.  And in Jesus Christ, that is exactly what we get.

Endings and Beginnings

This week I’ll be talking about our longing for our “home” in the New Creation (Isaiah 11)–a home that will be “set in order” for us when Jesus comes again. One of the thoughts I had kicking around in the back of my mind while I wrote the sermon came from something Eugene Peterson once wrote about atheists (and I may have commented on here before).

Peterson observes that many atheists are what he refers to as “Atheists of Compassion.” They look around the world, see all the war and cancer and genocide and hypocrisy and other monstrosities that human beings are capable of, and conclude that there is no god worth believing in who would allow so much evil.* So their atheism, their refusal to believe in god/God, stems from their compassion for this world.

Peterson notes that in some ways, these atheists are our allies. As Christians, we too ought to be appalled by the brokenness of the creation. Our hearts ought to be just as broken (or more so) than that of a good atheists. So we agree there. We can call ourselves allies in our compassion for those who suffer in this world.

Of course, there are differences too. Namely, hope. We believe that there is a way “out” of this madness–a solution that will not come from the perfect political system or better policies or improved technology or a little more information or right thinking. We believe that one day, God himself will come again in the person of Jesus Christ and he will set all this right again. We believe that, because of his love for this world, God will not toss it in his divine dumpster, but instead will lovingly restore it to (and even beyond) it’s prefallen glory. That’s one of the reasons we long for his coming–because we love this world enough to want him to redeem it.

Here is how Lewis Smedes describes what will happen when Jesus comes again:

“C.S. Lewis said somewhere that when God comes back to earth it will be like having the author of a play called on stage after the final performance; the play is over, he takes his bow, the players leave, and the theater is swallowed in darkness. I do not much care for the metaphor. I believe that the Author of the play will appear on stage not after the final performance, but before the first curtain rises. The players have been turning rehearsals into nasty fights about who gets the best lines and the prime spot on the billboard; [they've been wrecking the set]; the play has become a disaster, doomed before it gets off the ground. it is then that the Author shows up, his original script in hand and with the power to change self-seeking egos into self-giving artists. The theater is bathed in gentle light, the curtain rises, and the play begins a triumphant and endless run. Not the ending, but the new beginning–this is what I hope for.” (172).

What we long for when Christ comes again is not the day he will whisk us away from this mess, then destroy the world and toss it on the cosmic scrap heat. No, we long for the time when he will renew all things. We long for God’s restoration of the world he loves (and we ought to love). We long for the time when we can experience the joys and comforts of home.

It’s something to think about in the midst of our advent longing. Does our longing for his coming stem out of a disregard–even a disdain–for this world that God made? Or does it grow out of our love and compassion for it? Do we look at all the brokenness around us and just want to “fly away” and “be done with it all”? Or do we look at all the brokenness around us and hope that Jesus will come again and finally fix it–make it the way it’s supposed to be? Do we sit around with our heads in the sand and wait for the sweet by-and-by? Or do we join Him in his big redemption project, even while we wait?

*This is the “problem of evil” argument. It’s compelling, but it raises its own questions. For example: How do you measure evil, and at what point do you say there’s “too much” evil. Or more significantly, what do you do with all the good in the world? (I call this the “problem of good”). Who gets the credit for that?