The goal was to memorize the 18 geometry theorems. At first daunting, but once the teacher had shown how they were derived and how to use them, illustrating each on the chalkboard at the front, it became a fun adventure. In a short while, they were all logically lodged in my brain’s math section. I’ve been told once something is committed to memory, that information remains forever. What I wasn’t told is, without use, the information fades like a photograph left in the sun, making the formulas more and more difficult to find. So, those theorems are still in their places somewhere, but while I greatly appreciate the clear examples given by my teacher, the intervening decades have done their nefarious work, leaving me to search through drawer after file drawer with no success, not a theorem in sight.
Jesus’ life, too, was a clear example to his disciples of a Kingdom lifestyle, a way of living completely in sync with kingdom values. More than parables, more than healings and authority over wind and waves, he consistently demonstrated a level of unflappability that stupefied his students. In confrontations with Jewish religious scholars looking to trap him, he remained cool, trapping them at their own game. The guilty adulteress thrown down in front of him by accusing fingers gave him opportunity to pivot attention away from her and highlight the men’s thinly disguised sinfulness, shaming them into an embarrassed slinking away (can you imagine the tender look in Jesus’ eyes as he peered deep into their hearts?).
But there was more to his lifestyle, more that was on silent display. There had to be something more that allowed Jesus to persevere, to see no reason to retaliate, to love and heal and restore (i.e. the adulteress). In the garden the night of his arrest, when he prayed, asking if ‘there was any other way,’ he quickly removed all hesitation by praying ‘nevertheless, not my will but yours.’ Again, that something more. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews reveals it: for the joy of picturing mankind’s salvation, Jesus chose to vanquish the shame of the cross and its humiliating manner of being put to death in full, naked, public display. JOY. Not looking at his circumstances, but seeing far beyond to an accomplished, holy mission. In bequeathing us his joy, we, too, have that power to look beyond our circumstances to our finished race and the Father’s, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Looking forward to seeing all you joy-gifted saints tomorrow 10 AM, 3 PM UK. PD
