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STAYING WITH SUPERMAN

It was a tragic headline when “Superman” fell from his horse and became paralyzed for life. One of Hollywood’s leading men would never climb out of his wheelchair. Coming out of that experience is the story of a wife’s incredible loyalty, and a picture of God’s undying love.

There’s a wonderful story told in actor Christopher Reeve’s memoirs, entitled Still Me . . . and we gratefully discovered it in the Winter 1999 issue of Leadership magazine. You remember that back in May of 1995, this muscular star of four Superman films, a veritable man of steel himself, fell from his show horse, “Eastern Express.” Fans everywhere were stunned to discover that he was going to be paralyzed from the shoulders down — for life. His spinal cord had been severed.

And in the first few days following the riding accident, the actor was deep in the throes of grief. How could he go on living? What future was there for him? He was on a total life-support system, and several times he and his mom frankly talked about just pulling the plug. Of course he could only communicate with whispered gasps and signals, but that was the question he faced. Live or die?

Well, finally he had a moment alone with his wife, Dana.
“I mouthed my first lucid words to her,” he writes. “‘Maybe we should let me go.’”

Here’s how Sherman Lee Burford shares the rest of the story as he sent it in to Leadership:

“But his wife, through tears, persuaded him to fight back, saying, ‘I want you to know that I will be with you for the long haul, no matter what. You’re still you, and I love you.’”

Isn’t that a marvelous story? I’m sure all of you have seen Christopher Reeve on TV since that tragic accident: wheelchair-bound, that little click as he gasps for each breath before speaking into a little microphone pinned to his lapel. It would be easy for an attractive wife to abandon this paraplegic husband and find a new Hollywood leading man to spend time with. After all, they’d only been married for three years, and people in Tinseltown dump their mates for inconveniences a lot smaller than a severed spinal cord. But what a testimony! “I will be with you for the long haul, no matter what. You’re still you, and I love you.”

Speaking of paraplegic victims, in the Bible book of Ephesians, chapter two, we seem to find an entire hospital ward of wounded people here too. In fact, you could say that the people Paul writes to have had their spiritual spinal cords severed. “You’re dead in your trespasses and sins,” the doctor writes. Choosing to live their lives apart from God, separated from the source of energy and life and spiritual understanding, in a sense we’re all wheelchair-bound. Now our physical bodies aren’t paralyzed — in fact, they’re gyrating wildly all over the place. But our souls . . . catatonic paralysis.

And you know, God looks down and sees it. He sees us up on our high horse, and then He sees us fall. He sees the separation happen. He sees the moral paralysis. He sees how His lost children are like Christopher Reeve, having to gasp for oxygen. Getting from one day to the next under great effort with the devil trying to pin us into a wheelchair of apathy.

And then in verse four, we find a heaven-sent message that is almost word-for-word what this courageous wife said to her broken husband back in 1995. Listen to this:

“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us ALIVE in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.”

And you know, I guess we already do know this. We know that God loves us. I’m aware that we say it every single weekday here on the broadcast — that’s 260 reminders a year right there, for you regulars out there. But do we really get a sense of God doing like that Dana Reeve, a loving Partner and Friend, who bends over us in our shattered state . . . and says: “I’m not giving up. I’m not leaving. I’m not finding another Lover. Because I still love YOU. I’m here for the long haul. I’m staying with you right until the miracle moment when things can be like before . . . and then on into eternity”?

We’ve used a couple of great commentaries in preparing for this series, and I appreciate how Francis Foulkes, in the Tyndale set of books, begins his essay for verse four. Bear in mind that the Apostle Paul has just described our woeful state: “dead in sin,” “locked into our transgressions.” “Following the ways of this world.” “Seduced by Satan, ‘the ruler of the kingdom of the air.’” And Paul has also just written — as we studied yesterday — that this is everybody! “All of us also lived among them at one time,” he confesses. We’re in one long row of wheelchairs, or passed out asleep in ICU beds is more like it.

And then Dr. Foulkes comments, beginning in verse four:

“Such was the plight of all mankind. But God broke in.”

Isn’t that beautiful? Listen, friend, God is an intervening God! He can fix a severed spinal cord and He can fix a severed soul; no problem. Dr. Foulkes adds to the thought:

“In strong contrast to the need and sinfulness of man, and meeting that need and sinfulness, there comes the fact of God’s love, and the ACTION that springs from His pity.”

The Adventist commentary for this same passage puts it like this. See what you think:

“God’s love is something more than compassion; it leads to beneficent ACTION and is unchanging.” That’s good news, isn’t it? “God loved us ‘while we were yet sinners’” — that’s Romans 5:8 — “and will never cease to love us.” Just like Dana Reeve, remember? Then they add: “It was this love that motivated His work of salvation. Love is a prime attribute of His character, finding its highest expression in the person of Christ. God has mercy upon us because we are sinners, and He loves us because we are His creatures. His great work for man was not merely an act of benevolence or charitable condescension; it was an act of affection, of love.”

I want to tell you something: that’s some heavy material there. You know, we go around and around, trying to understand the plan of salvation. What does the Cross really accomplish? What really is the science of salvation, the theological meaning of Calvary? Back in chapter one, we spent a couple of days getting tied up in knots about it all. But right here, friend, it’s really pretty simple. Why does God save sinners? Because He loves them so much. Why did He send His own Son to die? Because He loved them so much. Why did He commission the Holy Spirit to come down here and spend the last 2,000 years laboring to win us back to God? Because He loves us so much! That’s all there is to this business of Christianity. God is crazy about His kids; He loves us with a helpless, un-erasable, unconquerable love. He looks down and He sees us in these wheelchairs of spiritual death, and it just moves Him into action. No wonder the Word of God doesn’t say that He is “mercy”; no, friend, He is “RICH in mercy.” And this is more than even “rich”; this is a tidal wave.

I appreciate how that second commentary suggested that God’s work for us wasn’t just “benevolence.” We think of someone putting a quarter into a tip cup. That’s benevolence. But when Dana Reeve leans close to her beloved husband, Chris, this man who is but a shell of his former self, and says to him: “Honey, I will NEVER leave you. Babe, I will NEVER walk out, NEVER quit on you, NEVER give up this reclamation project,” that’s more than benevolence. That is love of the highest order. And even THAT, glorious and admirable as it is, is just a shadow of what God expresses and DOES for you and me and the rest of this lost, crippled race.

I confess that I can’t really fathom the Dana Reeve pledge, let alone God’s. I mean, once you’ve seen Christopher Reeve now on TV, it just feels so sad, so hopeless. It’s so unfixable. Even Superman can’t spin back the globe to before that tragic fall in Culpeper, Virginia, and make things right again. And maybe spiritually things seem equally hopeless for you right now. But notice what the Bible says in verse five, and I want to deliberately choose the King James for this one:

“Even when we were dead in sins, [God] hath QUICKENED us together with Christ.” “Made us alive in Christ” says the NIV.

One commentary points out that the Greek word for “quickened” is suzōopoieō, which basically means “to make alive together.” Then they add this:

“[This word refers] to a change from death to life, a rebirth, a new life. As Christ was QUICKENED from the grave, so man is quickened from spiritual death. It is God’s purpose to bring man into a new sphere, a new relationship in which He is governed by new principles.”

The beautiful thing is this: it can happen for any one of us, right now, today, Wednesday as you’re hearing this program. Friend, you simply say yes to God. That’s all. He’s already done the work: the loving, the “rich in mercy,” the Cross, the sending of the Holy Spirit, the invitation to come home. Everything is already accomplished except for the “yes” that you say to Him and I say to Him.

Why not do it right now?