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March 1, 2009
First Friends Meeting
Colossians 2:20 - 3:4
‘Your Life Is Hidden with Christ”
In November, 1863, Abraham Lincoln rode the train from Washington to
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he was to dedicate a battleground
cemetery. The battle of Gettysburg had been the most horrific and
deadly thus far. It also proved to be a turning-point of American
Civil War. Lincoln felt the importance of going there to dedicate
the cemetery, even though the war still raged on and many other
concerns pressed on him as President of an embattled Union.
He used the time on the train to compose his speech, which as many of
you know, he drafted on the back of an envelope. Of course, it
turned out to be one of the great addresses in American history.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is probably the most concise
statement of what the Civil War was about. Because it is one of
the most concise statements about what our country is about –
“conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.” Lincoln studied and reflected deeply
upon the US Constitution. More than that, he also read and
reflected deeply upon the Bible. He brooded on questions of
God’s purposes in history. He was also personally
devastated by the appalling casualties of the war he prosecuted as
President. He struggled with paralyzing depression throughout the
War. And all the while, he read the great tragedies of
Shakespeare. Lincoln understood that America was living through
its greatest tragedy. Not just tragedy in the sense we usually
use the word – to describe terrible calamity and suffering.
More profoundly, tragedy as terrible events that reveal the human
condition at its worst, and in its true greatness.
So as Lincoln rode on that train to Gettysburg, it was not like writing
down a few thoughts in case he won the Oscar for Best President.
No, a great epic of personal and national suffering found its moment of
truth as the pen in his hand hit the surface of that envelope.
The rules of good grammar, the techniques of rhetoric, the demands of
statesmanship and spin -- those were matters Lincoln had mastered long
ago. They were not on his mind in that moment. There was
nothing for Lincoln but the clarity of that moment of truth.
Well, Leah has just read for us another verbal snapshot of the early
Church. This one comes probably from the Church’s second
generation. Church is continuing to grow dramatically. And
as it grows, the Church is made up less of mavericks and walking
paradoxes like the ones we saw in recent weeks, like Paul, Lydia,
Philip or the unnamed slave girl. People are attracted not only
to the message of Christ but by the vibrant life they see among these
Christians. They’re coming and saying, OK, what do I need
to do, to get in on this, to have some of that power in my life?
Well, in one way or another, the answer was, you must die to your life
as you know it now, and rise to new life in Christ.
That’s what Jesus had told his disciples – those who would
save their life will lose it; those who lose their life for my sake
will find it. That’s what the gospel is always about.
Losing ourselves in devotion, in service to others, in
discipleship. And in the process, we find ourselves again.
We’re being remade in the image of Christ.
But the problem is, people always want to work that into some kind of
formula – a creed to repeat, a set of meditation techniques, a
list of moral do’s and don’ts. And water baptism
became that for some Christians by the second generation. It was
a dramatic ritual that symbolized dying and rising to new life in
Christ. But some people came out of the water with only the
symbol, and not the reality. Soon they realized they still
didn’t have it – whatever ‘it’ is. So
what else do I have to do? There must be some other hoops to jump
through, some other instructions to follow, some other beliefs to
mouth. Some decided that, since Jesus was Jewish after all,
you really need to keep observe the laws of Moses. Others
borrowed spiritual techniques and moral codes from other religions and
decided these are essential to being a Christian.
So we hear Paul, or someone writing in his name, address this
problem. Hey, I thought you died to all that when you died with
Christ. Why do you live as if you still belonged to the
world? As if you were still a slave to these systems? All
these systems of belief, all these regimens of diet and morality
– haven’t you noticed that they make you feel
‘spiritual’ for a while, but soon wear off? They
“perish with use.” They’re just human
instructions, with the appearance of wisdom. They’re
“self-imposed piety,” not God’s Spirit working
through your life.
“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are
above, where Christ is,” with God. Go to the next
level. “Set your minds on the things that are
above.” But don’t expect things to be spelled out,
with the ‘t’s crossed and the ‘I’s
dotted. “Your life is hidden with Christ in
God.” This is the great mystery of Christian faith –
even to Christians. Rome thought it could erase this Jesus
problem when it crucified Jesus as a political criminal, a so-called
‘King of the Jews.’ But Rome now had a much bigger
problem, a problem it couldn’t see – Jesus risen from the
dead in the bodies of ordinary-looking men and women. People of
different races, classes, social backgrounds, economic classes.
Christ was hidden in them on earth, even as he was hidden in God in
heaven.
That amazing new life does become visible in some ways. There are
revelatory moments in Christian lives, moments where something
mysteriously beautiful shines through us to others. Paul writes,
“When Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be
revealed with him in glory.” There are those moments.
And those moments point toward some moment in the future when
everything will be much clearer. Clearer to us too. But
those brief, revelatory moments, moments when God’s love shines
through us, there are little flashes of the mystery that is hidden in
us – hidden from us – most of the time.
In recent months, the world lost Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat
for Humanity. He was a one-of-a-kind individual, who founded a
one-of-a-kind organization. Duane Bane and several others in our
Meeting have participated in Habitat for Humanity. I’ve
prayed over them a couple mornings. That’s probably as
handy as I get. Now, I’m sure Millard Fuller had many
likable and impressive qualities that were easy to see. But his
real genius, what led and empowered him to build such a wonderful
organization – that’s a mystery that nobody, probably even
Fuller himself, really understood.
There is genius in each one of us. Genius is not something to be
quantified, like an IQ score. Genius is what is totally original
about us, what cannot be copied by someone else. When we die with
Christ to our old self, part of what we die to is our vain attempts to
copy other people, to fit into the socially acceptable roles that
appealed most to us, or which at least seemed possible for us to
fill. When we rise with Christ to new life, Christ empowers our
genius, our true, original, one-of-a-kind self to emerge. And
yet, that person will remain a mystery to us as much as he or she
remains a mystery to everyone else. Someday, as Paul writes
elsewhere, we will know as we have been known by God. Til then,
we look into a rather dim mirror.
We hardly know what we’re doing in this life. What we
thought was important often doesn’t turn out to be. And the
things we did almost without thinking are often the most
significant. Jesus told his disciples, someday, “when you
have done all that you were ordered to do, will say ‘We’re
worthless servants; we have done only what we ought to have
done!” [Luke 17:10]. I don’t think Jesus meant that
we should go around belittling ourselves. But the fact is, we are
often oblivious to our best moments. We don’t know our true
genius. Our lives are indeed hidden with Christ in God.
This week when Barak Obama spoke before the Houses of Congress, he
introduced a man from the gallery. He was a bank president who
had been awarded a $60 million dollar bonus – one of those acts
of legal robbery we’re finally brave enough to denounce.
But this man said, “I don’t need that.” So he
divided it up among more than 200 of his current employees – and
more than 100 past employees of the bank. Now, this was the first
I’d heard of it. I was glad to see this man lifted up as a
positive example for these troubled times – a one-man stimulus
program. But it’s important to remember, these things start
in obscurity, as acts we barely understand ourselves.
And so it was with Abraham Lincoln that November day at
Gettysburg. The main speech that day was given by some one
else. One Edward Everett, who went on for two hours.
Lincoln’s little talk lasted less than three minutes. One
of those lines from Lincoln’s little talk reads, “The world
will little note nor long remember what we say here.”
Little did he know….
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