P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

JOSEPH'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

There's a wonderful story from the book Three From Galilee, written by Marjorie Holmes. The little boy Jesus is playing with a couple of His friends, getting dusty and sweaty and swinging from the tree branches just like boys always have. Jesus giggles and plays practical jokes and skins His knees and runs to Mom for a drink of water, etc., etc.
But then there's this one clandestine moment when one of the other boys looks around with a furtive expression on his face. Good — no grownups are around. And he pulls out of his pocket an ugly little rubberized kind of plaything, a doll. Except that this is a little nudie doll, an unclothed, full-figured woman. And as this naughty boy squeezes the doll, it contorts into all sorts of vulgar shapes. It's precisely the kind of toy that boys have snickered over for countless generations.

And they do here too . . . except for one Boy. One citizen of Nazareth doesn't joke; He doesn't laugh. The other boys push this little nudie doll into His hand, but this Boy named Jesus just lets out a cry of anguish. "No!!" He drops the doll in the dirt and runs down the road, almost crying. In fact, He is crying.

Of course, the other boys give Him a Galilean raspberry, a chorus of boos. "Come on, big baby." "Cluck cluck cluck." But one other kid suddenly hushes them up. "Stop it," he says. "Don't bother Him." And then these chilling, wonderful, mysterious four words. "You know He's different."

And here on a Friday I think of those four words — and I want to get down on my knees and repent a million times. "You know He's different." There was and is something very different, very wonderful, very holy about the mind of Jesus Christ. Even when He was a baby, a small boy, a hormone-driven teenager. A young man. A carpenter. A Savior. There has always been something about the mind of Christ that is different from our minds.

And yet, as we have said on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and yesterday, and now again today — we are invited in God's Word to have that kind of mind too. First Corinthians 2:16:

"‘For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?' But we have the mind of Christ."

You and I might have someone hand us that little nudie doll, or flip that hotel TV channel over to SpectraVision's adult after-hours X-rated feature. Does our mind respond as Christ's does? Someone drives nails into our hands — figuratively speaking, of course. Do we respond with the kind of mind Christ has? "Father, forgive them"? A prostitute comes over to us and says a few Mary Magdalene-type words in our ear. She doesn't put perfume on our feet, but she's wearing quite a bit of it. Does our brain respond the way Christ's does?

You know, friend, what we need, frankly speaking, is a miracle. A transplant miracle. Yes, there's the daily process of feasting on God's thoughts, on Jesus' words and deeds and His Magna Carta, His Sermon on the Mount. Not so many pages over from this "mind of Christ" challenge, Paul writes this too, to his friends the Colossians:

"You received Jesus Christ, the Master; now live Him. You're deeply rooted in Him. You're well constructed upon Him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it!"

For just a moment, let me illustrate with a story, a two-sided coin, just how desperately we need the twin miracles of a Holy Spirit-given brain transplant, and also strength for the daily rigors of walking with Jesus, of just plain DOING IT.

Someone here at The Voice of Prophecy, is on the mailing list of a well-known television ministry. And it seems that every month — I mean, just about every month, 12 times a year — their fund-raising letter deals with the topic of the radical homosexual agenda for America. Now, friend, please don't misunderstand me here. Because there are serious reasons for concern in 2001 as we see some of the headlines and the Washington marches. The Bible is very clear about sin and righteousness in this area of life. But these 12 letters a year are filled with hot-button politics, with condemnation, with vitriolic language. And you read the words and you honestly ask: where is the Cross? Where is Jesus? Where is the good news of salvation? Where is there mentioned the promise of our Savior's soon return? Month after month, hell seems to be featured but not heaven, AIDS instead of atonement, degeneracy instead of deliverance. And the words of First Corinthians come back to us: "To have the mind of Christ." But instead of resenting this TV preacher, maybe we should look in the mirror. Do we love sinners as much as Jesus did? Do we reach out to an AIDS patient the way Christ did to lepers? Are we tender and redemptive with sinners, even rebellious ones, the way Jesus was with Judas?
But you know, there's the other side of this same coin. There are people who live with the pain of homosexuality every single day of their lives, and they too long for the miracle of having the mind of Christ. They get on their knees and beg God for this kind of "brain transplant."

Speaking of hot buttons, the 1994 bestseller, Stranger at the Gate, is written by gay activist Mel White, who for years was ghostwriter for some of the very media ministries that are the most active today in opposing what is called the "Christian gay" movement. And the issues swirling about this pain-filled autobiography are too complicated to get into today; that's for sure. But let me simply share, without commenting, on the confession of Mr. White.

"From the beginning," he writes, "I had only same-sex desires and fantasies. I didn't plan it. I didn't choose it. I didn't desire it. And no one forced it on me. I wasn't recruited, raped, or abused. No one is to blame. The truth is, from the beginning up to this day, homosexual thoughts and desires have been as much a part of my life as was my heart beating or my lungs taking in air."

And he writes about his almost herculean effort to leave homosexuality behind. He had a wife and two beautiful children. A Christian career. So much was at stake. But his mind was simply filled, possessed, taken over, consumed, with these alien thoughts and desires. He tried electroshock treatments. Psychiatric counseling. Endless prayer. Even exorcism. And nothing seemed to work. Tragically, he determined in the end that he felt he had no choice but suicide . . . or surrender to what he decided was his unavoidable destiny.

Again I say, it's too complicated to sort out here in just a moment of radio airtime. But what a haunting cry for this miracle: to have the mind of Christ. To receive that transplant, that new identity. Yes, we need that miracle; we pray for the stunning success of overnight transformation. But sometimes a new mind, a brain transplant, happens only by the slow, laborious, day-by-day struggle up the hill of human existence. How many of us who haven't experienced that climb for ourselves can dare to throw very big rocks at the others?
Someone just sent us the most touching book, entitled My Brother Joseph. This quiet, Christ-like Catholic priest, Joseph Bernardin, was the archbishop of Chicago. Some of you probably remember how he was accused in 1993 of sexually abusing a young man who had once been his seminary student. The charge was completely false, and the accuser eventually recanted the entire thing . . . but it was an agonizing 15 months before Cardinal Bernardin was cleared. And then — who can understand these things — just about a year later a lab report came to him from his doctor, Warren Furey, with this diagnosis: pancreatic cancer. He had at most five years to live. Actually, it turned out to be barely over one year, and Chicago bade farewell to its beloved archbishop on November 14, 1996.

What does this have to do with having the "mind of Christ"? This priest forgave his accuser; he remained faithful in the valley of the shadow of death. And in closing for the week I want to read you just a paragraph from his diary which is inscribed in his own handwriting inside the front cover of this exceptional book:

"I must always keep my eyes focused on Jesus. He must be the center of my life. I must ‘let go' so He can work in and through me. I must visualize the Jesus with whom I am intimately united, with whom I am in love (I must not be afraid to say this) as a real friend, a manly person who — even though He is God's Son — shares all the human feelings I experience: joy, sorrow, doubt, anxiety, etc., one who will give me strength and support, one who understands and loves me despite my sins and weaknesses; one who will embrace me and give me comfort and a sense of security if I let Him. In short, I must TRUST Him completely. If I do I have nothing to fear — regardless of the pain and frustration of the present moment."

And then he adds this later entry:

"If the union with Jesus is to be deeply rooted, stable, then it must be nourished constantly by prayer. I am thinking not only of such things as the . . . Eucharist and rosary, but the need of acknowledging the presence of Jesus in my life at all times, on a continual basis; and communicating with Him uniformly and frequently. Friendship cannot be sustained without continual presence and communication."