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HARK — AND THEN WHAT MESSAGE? #4

GIVING UP YOUR SENATE SEAT

There was kind of a bittersweet moment that happened toward the end of a very long Tuesday evening 4 years ago, last November 5th. Election Night, of course, here in the U.S., and as Republican candidate Bob Dole came down to the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. to concede, you just knew that his delightful sense of humor was still going to show through.

And sure enough — he said to the very enthusiastic crowd waiting for him: "After so many years in politics, I just now realized that I'm going to get up tomorrow morning and not have anything to do!" After so many MONTHS of campaigning and being in different hotel rooms night after night after night, after literally hundreds of days of what they call being on the rubber-chicken dinner circuit — all those speeches to make and hands to shake — and after that unbelievable 96-hour marathon, traveling 10,534 miles through 20 states, Bob Dole could sleep in late the next morning.

But it really goes beyond that. For 35 years Senator Dole had been one of the most influential men in the world. Senate Majority LEADER: THE leading legislator in Congress, in the SENATE, the UPPER chamber, it's called. Things didn't happen unless Bob Dole made them happen; he had the power to put through a bill or hold it up. But on Wednesday morning, November SIX, all that power was laid aside. It was over, and Citizen Dole of Russell, Kansas, literally entered a new kind of world.

Here during Christmas Week, we've been getting a special blessing from taking a closer look at one of the world's favorite carols. It's entitled "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing," written by Charles Wesley. Which, as we mentioned Monday, started out as a ten-stanza masterpiece. But as it appears in most Christian hymnals today, Verse Two goes like this:

"Christ, by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord. In the manger born a King, While adoring angels sing."

And it makes us stop and think about what Jesus Christ had BEFORE He descended to this earth to be born in a manger. "Christ, by HIGHEST HEAVEN adored." Friend, up in heaven Christ ruled over the universe! The Bible talks about how He was AND IS worshiped by a HUGE throng, beyond counting. In Revelation, John describes the gathering this way:

"Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand." [That's a hundred MILLION, by the way.] "In a loud voice they sang: ‘Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.'"

Now see, THAT'S the kind of treatment Jesus Christ was used to receiving both BEFORE and AFTER His trip down to this dirty little spot in the universe. He was adored and worshiped and praised and glorified on a nonstop basis. He occupied a throne. And then . . . He came down and was born in a manger, with mud on the floor and the smell of cows and pigs thick in the Judean air.

Now, the Charles Wesley hymn goes on to say that even in that manger, Jesus was a king. Adoring angels still sang to this new Baby, because they KNEW He was a king. But listen, the rest of the world didn't know! The human race didn't think He was a king! Some of Jesus' own relatives, His friends, even His disciples didn't seem to have much clue about the kingship of Jesus. And especially the NEIGHBORS of Joseph and Mary, this teenaged girl — they simply assumed that here was another illegitimate baby, one more dust-covered boy born in the town of ill repute and born under very questionable circumstances. There was nothing royal about Jesus as far as Nazareth was concerned.

In the book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey writes:

"Nine months of awkward explanations, the lingering scent of scandal — it seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for His entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism. I am impressed that when the Son of God became a human being He played by the rules, HARSH rules: small towns do not treat kindly young boys who grow up with questionable paternity."

A bit later he adds this:

"Queen Elizabeth II recently visited the United States, and reporters delighted in spelling out the logistics involved: her four THOUSAND pounds of luggage included two suits for every occasion, a mourning outfit in case someone died, forty pints of plasma, and white kid leather toilet seat covers. She brought along her own hairdresser, two valets, and a host of other attendants. A brief visit of royalty to a foreign country can easily cost twenty MILLION dollars. In meek contrast, God's visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn King but a feed trough."

Now we have to ask: why? Why make such a journey? Why be willing to become NOTHING, to leave a throne and power and influence, and become a helpless Baby in a straw-filled feeding trough? That's the question we should all think about at Christmas, shouldn't we? And of course, we must travel from Christmas over to EASTER to discover the answer. Christ came at Christmas to get to Easter, didn't He? He came here to be with us — Immanuel, "God with us" — and then to rescue us.

"Mild He lays His glory by," writes Wesley. "Born that man no more may die."

Going back to our Election Night motif for a moment . . . why did these politicians run for so many miserable months? Just to get that presidential salary of $200,000 a year? Just to live in the White House or ride in that navy-blue limousine? I don't think so. Dole and Clinton and Perot made that hard journey, risking the NOTHING that might be at the end of the trip, so that they might SERVE. Because they loved their country; they loved their fellow Americans. They wanted to serve.

And the same poignant WHY can be applied to Christ. Why? What a monumental LAYING ASIDE of power . . . and for WHAT? In the book of Philippians, I think Paul provides the most compelling answer we can ever consider. Here it is:

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature GOD" — He was GOD — "did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself NOTHING, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He HUMBLED Himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!"

You know, I read that . . . and "I scarce can take it in," as the old Christian hymn says. Anytime you get a Christmas present, the tag usually has a FROM and a TO on it. And when you think about where Jesus came FROM, and what He left behind there, and then what He came TO, and what kind of reception He got HERE — well, it certainly is quite a Christmas present, isn't it?
But you know, I'm so thankful here on the day AFTER Christmas that there's also a day AFTER Calvary. There's a conclusion beyond the NOTHING that Jesus Christ came down here to be. Let's pick up the story as the Apostle Paul tells it, right after the phrase "death on a cross!"

"Therefore God exalted Him to the HIGHEST place and gave Him the name that is ABOVE every name, that at the name of JESUS every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

I'll tell you something. I can't wait to get to heaven and participate in that. To bow before Jesus and confess with my tongue and with my heart that He's my Lord. Sure, we can do that today and all through 1997. But to join with that ten-million-voice angel choir in lifting Jesus back UP to the position He deserves . . . well, friend, I don't want to miss that experience. Paul's going to be there, and Charles Wesley's going to be there, and I want to be there too.

I read back through the skimpy biographical sketches we have here in the office about John and Charles Wesley. Such talented men! John, as we've mentioned, was a brilliant Bible student and pastor: the founder of the Methodist Church. Forty thousand sermons preached. Charles Wesley: 6,500 hymns composed, many of them masterpieces sung all around the world. A son and a grandson, both top-flight, well-known musicians. Here was a family, here especially were two men who could have taken that talent, that DRIVE — John Wesley traveled five thousand miles a year preaching, and this was in horse-and-buggy days — and gone into the world with their abilities. These guys could have made their mark in the SECULAR marketplace; they could very likely have made millions in entertainment, the theater, maybe politics.

But no. They laid aside POWER; they turned away from the fleeting moment of fame. Instead they served Christ, the Christ of CALVARY. And one day they'll be in the choir with the rest of us on that sea of glass.