CHRIST IN THE RAGS OF A BEGGAR
by adam harbinson
I’ve just read the wonderful little book ‘My Lady of the Chimney Corner’ by Alexander Irvine, and was gripped by the line, ‘…love is enough.’ The writer demonstrates a deep understanding of the way in which God relates to people, and the way he wants people to relate to each other. It’s what the apostle John had in mind when he wrote; ‘Live a life of love,’ for if our lives are filled with love, there’s really nothing else we need. Conversely, if we do not have love in our lives, all our scrambling to accumulate ‘things’ is futile, for we’ll never achieve the contentment we hunger.
John Powell, in his book, ‘Why am I Afraid to love?’ says, ‘Whatever else can and should be said about love it is quite evident that true love demands self-forgetfulness’.
Think for a moment of the ‘Love Chapter’; ‘Love is patient and kind, it does not envy, does not boast, it’s not proud, or rude, it’s not self-seeking, not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs’ – each of those definitions requires self-forgetfulness, or humility. And when you realise that humility is the most God-like of all human attributes, then we see just how upside-down our ‘Protestant work ethic’ thinking is.
The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote;
I saw Christ today
At a street corner stand,
In the rags of a beggar he stood
He held ballads in his hand
He was crying out ‘Two a penny
Will anyone buy
The finest ballads ever made
From the stuff of joy’
But the blind and deaf went past
Knowing only there
An uncouth ballad seller
With tail-matted hair
And I whom men call fool
His ballads bought
Found him who the pieties
Have vainly sought
The greatest sadness in life is that while most people are searching for happiness and contentment, they’re looking in the wrong place. Kavanagh was right; he recognised that those things can only be found in his ‘Street Corner Christ,’ his poem tells of ordinary people finding Christ who the pieties have sought in vain, but the truth is most of us rush past Christ in our vain search.
Terrible events unfolded on our TV screens in August 2008 that were too horrible to dwell on. Chris Foster lived a life of luxury in Osbaston House; his £1.2 million mansion, flaunting his collection of classic cars and his pedigree horses. But when everything was about to implode and he couldn’t face life without his gods, he destroyed the lot, including himself, his wife and his daughter. Why? Because he had been completely fooled by the twisted value system of the world he once shared with ordinary people.
But the warped morals of the modern world have infiltrated the hallower cloisters of religion. When John in his first Epistle wrote, ‘Do not love the world or the things of the world…’ he wasn’t referring to wine, women and song, for he defined the world as ‘… the craving of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does.’ That’s what destroys people, but it’s a way of thinking that is all but impossible to dislodge; and they’re as deeply embedded in the church as they are in society.
Jesus is different. The thing about him that attracts people who hunger for truth and meaning, is his utter humility and selflessness, and his challenge to us to reject a greedy, power-crazed and materialistic world to be like him.
|
