Brown's Daily Word 3-31-09

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord for the way He brings fullness out of emptiness, life our of death, and victory out of defeat. Jesus, our Lord, said in Matthew, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (8:35). One of the great New Testament Scholars was Dr William Barclay. I was given one of his commentaries on the Gospel according to Matthew by Joyce Thomas during my high school days. Joyce Thomas had a great heart for Jesus and a great zeal to tell the old story of His redeeming love. The last time I had English tea with Joyce Thomas was in her house in England in 1992.
In one of his writings Dr Barclay told about a 4th Century Christian named Telemachus, who decided that the only way to protect himself from the corruption of the world and to serve God was to become a hermit and live in the desert. One day as he rose from his knees it dawned on him that if he wanted to serve God he must serve people. By staying in the desert he was not serving God, and the cities were full of people who needed help. Thus he set out for Rome, then the greatest city in the world. By this time the terrible persecutions of the first 3 centuries were over, and Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Emperor was a Christian, and so were most of the people, at least nominally. As strange as it sounds, calling yourself a Christian in 4th Century Rome was the politically correct thing to do, if you wanted the favor of the Emperor! Telemachus arrived in Rome at a time when Stilicho, the Roman general, had gained a mighty victory over the Goths. So to Stilicho there was granted a Roman "triumph" with processions, celebrations, and games in the Coliseum, with the young Emperor Honorius by his side. Though Rome was supposedly a Christian city one thing still lingered from its terrible past. That is, there were still the bloody games in the Coliseum. Christians were no longer thrown to the lions, but those captured in war still had to fight and kill each other in front of the Roman citizens, who roared with blood-lust as the gladiators fought. Telemachus went to the Coliseum where there were 80,000 people. As he entered, the chariot races were ending. There was tension in the crowd as the gladiators prepared to fight. Into the arena they came with their greeting, "Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!" The fight was on, and Telemachus was appalled. Men for whom Christ had died were killing each other to amuse a supposedly Christian population. He leaped down into the arena and stepped between the gladiators, and for a moment they stopped fighting. "Let the games go on," roared the crowd. The gladiators pushed the old man in the hermit’s robe aside. Again he came between them. The crowd began to hurl stones at him. They urged the gladiators to kill him and get him out of the way, and then the commander of the games gave an order. A gladiator’s sword fell, and Telemachus lay dead. Suddenly the crowd was silent - shocked that a holy man should have been killed in such a way. Quite suddenly there was a mass realization of what the killing really was. Historians tell us that the games in Rome ended abruptly that day, never to begin again. Telemachus, by his death, had ended them. One historian (Gibbon) wrote of him, "His death was more useful to mankind than his life." By losing his life he had done more than he could have ever done by living a life of lonely devotion out in the desert. Cross-bearing is not an accident that happens to us, or something unavoidable that we must face. Cross-bearing is an act of love that we freely choose. It is a task we undertake, a price that we pay, out of love. St Paul wrote, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). The disciple of Jesus receives with a grateful heart the wonderful forgiveness of God, achieved through His own Son Jesus' death on the cross. Then the disciple of Jesus voluntarily takes up his or her cross. In doing so we find life in all its rich fullness, now and always!
In Christ,
Brown


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld3D4oOzx8o