PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

December 17, 2023

INCARNATION

In Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mystery Not Quite Dead Enough John Bell Shattuck makes the following observation.  “Sometimes I think it might be a good plan for us (public officials) to take over the armed forces for a period, say a month, and let the generals and admirals take over the Capital for the same period.  No doubt we would all learn something.” (Not Quite Dead Enough, Bantam Books, p. 100)

In Rex Stout’s The League Of Frightened Men Andrew Hibbard, an instructor of psychology at Columbia University, goes into hiding because he is afraid Paul Chapin wants to kill him.  When Nero Wolfe uncovers Hibbard’s concealment and allows him to return to normal life, Andrew comments: “This is a relief.  The whiskey is too, of course, but I was referring particularly to this opportunity to become articulate again.  No; I am further than ever from a deity in the stratosphere, but much closer to my fellow man.  I have a confession to make, Mr. Wolfe, and it might as well be to you as anyone.  I have learned more in these eleven days masquerading as a roughneck than in all the previous forty-three years of my existence (The League Of Frightened Men, Bantam Books, p. 191).”

The poem Judge Softly by Mary Torrans Lathrap (1838-1895) begins, “Pray, don’t find fault with the man that limps, or stumbles along the road.  Unless you have worn the moccasins he wears, or stumbled beneath the same load.”  John Bell Shattuck suggested that it would be a good idea if politicians, generals, and admirals take the first of Lathrap’s suggestions to walk a mile in the other person’ moccasins.  Andrew Hibbard took the second suggestion by taking upon himself the load of the displaced.

It would do all of us well to pause before we criticize or judge others to spend some time putting ourselves in their place, to see the world from their perspective, to experience life as they experience it.  For in the same way that we judge others we are judged.  Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.  For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get (Matthew 7:1-2).”

One might say that the first Christmas God came to earth to walk in our moccasins.  He came to experience life as we know it. Paul puts it this way.  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross (Philippians 2:5-8).”  Since God was incarnate in Jesus, He was able to walk in our shoes.

The Christian doctrine of the incarnation says that God assumed a human form and became a man in the person of Jesus Christ who is the second person of the Trinity.  In addition, the church has affirmed that Jesus has two natures: human and divine.   Thus, at Christmas we are reminded that God cared enough about each of us that in the person of Jesus He humbled himself to walk in our shoes as well so that we might have a glimpse of His eternal love.  Rex Stout in Not Quite Dead Enough  and The League of Frightened Men gives us some idea of what it means for Jesus to walk in our shoes.

(Comments may be sent to davdh15503@embarqmail.com.)