THE RUBICON AND THE ATTIC
Until the heart hungers for rich change it'll never come, especially if we’re comfortable at present. If life for us is a prolonged crucifixion how could we not want rich change? If we’re jogging along in a good measure of comfort and contentment we’ll not seek it much; why would we? It's the human condition, is it not, to prefer the "old wine" rather than the "new"?
Steve Weathers, ACU professor of English, several years ago gave a riveting address about kingdom righteousness and in the course of it taught us of the blessing and dangers of being “scribal” in our understanding of God and his word. The scribal tend to want to keep things as traditional as they are, to conserve; and they are a healthy balancing factor when those of us who worship at the altar of the new and the different are at a full gallop toward the presently appealing.
But of course, I'm certain that worshiping the old and viewing all that's new with the deepest suspicion is no better or worse than worshiping the new and despising the old. Wouldn’t you think that’s so? Fear can certainly be healthy but it can be a tyrant as well and if "what we've always believed" had determined the future, God could not have shown himself in and as the crucified Jesus. Still, whether we would keep him from "making everything new" he will do as he sees fit, won't he! Of this we're sure, it isn't the God of "the status quo" who announced in Revelation 21:5, "Behold, I am making everything new!" My new and your new may not be the kind of new we need but we all know his will be. Still, it isn't always easy to know which is his new and which is our own.
I’m neither wise nor pure enough yet to be able to maintain the balance though I think I’m now grown enough to recognize that I lack sufficient maturity to do it. But in a world where fashions and spouses change and are swapped with astonishing speed it is becoming difficult to see the worth of the old—old stuff or people or convictions.
The television program The Antique Roadshow (where Weathers got some of his wisdom and a favorite TV program of my sweet Ethel) allows us to see people coming in droves, streaming from their attics and outhouses, their basements and boxes with their arms full of old, dust-covered stuff that no one has bothered with for years.
“Is it any good? Has it any value?” they ask the experts. They themselves are ignorant but have the good sense and humility to believe that someone else knows better. Out of the depths of his or her experience the expert tells marvelous stories and astonishing truths about the old piece of furniture or fabric, the old painting or piece of twisted glass. The owners who had shoved these items aside in the pursuit of the new, bowing to the culture of novelty, are astonished and now look with new eyes at old realities for which they had had no time. What a wonderful experience that is or must be. Can you imagine them as they hurry back home to tell whoever still doesn't know what they just learned?
At a more serious level a love for the old is not simply—or at least it isn’t always—a sentimental attachment to how things used to be. Sometimes it is a humble recognition of and respect and gratitude for our roots. A heart that knows nothing of that and goes on careering after the new, despising boundaries and borders as if they existed only to be scorned—such a heart is in need of mending.
Jesus speaks of a “Christian” scribe, one that has been “made a disciple” of the kingdom of heaven and instructed concerning it (see Matthew 13:1-53). “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” (13:52)
Don’t you know it must have been horrendously difficult for devout Jews to receive some of the things Jesus and Peter and Paul had to say? At one time or another we've all had difficulty receiving new truth, haven't we. But these three didn’t scorn the old though at times they had difficulty with it—they fully appreciated it and gladly gave it its place in the current development of God’s enterprise.
Not all boundaries are there to forbid us—some of them are challenges, calling us to enter with Jesus and make things new and fresh. Hideyo Noguchi wanted to be a doctor but a severe burn had ruined one of his hands so he turned to research and had already made his name in science and bacteriology before he arrived at the coast of Africa, a boundary and frontier. Beyond it was Yellow Fever that some friends said would take his life if he went there but there were millions that needed deliverance from it so he went and it did take his life at fifty-two.
Crossing some religious frontiers and boundaries only appears to be less dramatic and costly than Noguchi’s laying down his life as a sacrifice or Julius Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon.
Things new and old. Forbidden to us or daring us to be brave?
Hmmm; it’s a challenge, isn’t it? A real challenge!
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