The man was a former school teacher turned church organist and choir director. He was considerably older than me. The truth is, he could easily have been my father, or perhaps, my grandfather. But unlike my father, he was a bit of a curmudgeon. Though he was a church employee, he held no brief for the Gospel of Christ. Indeed, he thought that Jesus had disqualified Himself from any true consideration as God in the flesh when He told the story of the man who hired workers at all different times during the day and paid them the same wage. As a former dues-paying member of the N.E.A. he thought that was reprehensible. How could someone who claimed to be a man sent from God consider such a thing to be just? In his own words, “Jesus? I don’t think too much of Him.”
It turned out that as I got to know him, he didn’t think too
much of a lot of people. Whether it was his rocky upbringing or some dramatic
trauma in his life, he operated from a position of low esteem and it was
evident in his dour personality.
Over the years I spent some time attempting to break through
his crusty veneer. Often, I found humor to be an effective softening agent. But
a far more effective vehicle turned out to be the power of story.
One time Barb’s mother was visiting, and he found me in my
office at the church hours before the worship service was to begin. He asked,
“What are you doing here?” I replied, “My mother-in-law’s in town and I wanted
to get out of the house.” Now I meant that I wanted to have some alone time to
prepare for worship, but he took it the other way and began to howl with
laughter.
When he settled down a bit I attempted to explain myself,
but he began to pummel me with humorous mother-in-law jokes and anecdotes. As
he took a breath I said, “Let me tell you about my mother-in-law. All through
my Princeton years she typed my papers. (This was before PCs and ubiquitous
word processing tools of today.) I’d write the papers long-hand, with copious
footnotes and citations. Often those papers would extend to 15,000 words or more.
They were written on esoteric topics such as pseudepigraphy or lapsarianism.
Nonetheless, she’d type them on her IBM Selectric, after she had put in a full
day of work as an executive secretary. Though I’d try to give her ample time,
sometimes we were beating the clock. And, for every page typed I’d pay her the
going rate.”
He quieted down and was listening attentively. I thought,
“Now for the punchline.” I said, “And after two years and nearly thirty classes
I had written more than 3,000 pages and she had typed every one of them. But
you know something? When I graduated she came to the ceremony and handed me an
envelope. In it was a check for every single dollar I had ever paid her. Though
she was a widow (I never knew her husband), though he died six-months before he
was eligible for a pension, though he had virtually no savings, she gave all my
money back. That’s my mother-in-law.”
Now I could have used adjectives like: kind, compassionate,
hard-working, selfless, thoughtful, to describe her; but it was this story that
brought tears to his eyes. It was this story that forever altered his view of
me and my mother-in-law. For in that story he saw Jesus. And I knew he saw Him
because I ended by saying, “And Phil, in that way she let me know who Jesus is.
He’s not a God who gyps us, He’s a God who gives us way more than we could ever
imagine. In fact, the most perfect proof of that is the Cross.”
Now you and I can talk about the Cross in academic terms
from now to eternity. You can describe the pain of it. You can talk about the
process of it. You can speak of the magnitude of it. But it is stories like the
one above that move us; that takes us into the gravity of the Cross.
This Sunday the Holy Spirit takes us all the way there in a
message entitled, “Joseph and the Cross.” In it He speaks of the reunion of
Joseph and his brothers and father in Genesis 45 and shows us the meaning of
the Cross. In preparation for Sunday’s message, you may wish to consider the
following:
1. What is the main reason for Joseph’s brothers going down to
Egypt another time?
2. What’s God’s main reason?
3. What is it that brings Joseph to tears and commands all but
his brothers to leave his presence?
4. How does he identify himself to his brothers?
5. How does he demonstrate that he’s forgiven them?
6. How is his description of God’s agenda similar to Paul’s in
Ephesians 2:1-7?
7. Why does he tell them to hurry back to Canaan to get their
father and their families? (See verse 9.)
8. How does Pharaoh prove that he’s all for this plan?
9. Who do Pharaoh and Joseph represent in this story?
10. What is it that convinces Jacob that Joseph is alive and
that Joseph will be life for them?
See you Sunday!
