My father-in-law had an irritating habit of trying to identify and pigeonhole people. If you mentioned to him the name of someone he didn’t know, he would invariably ask, "Who is he?" "Who is he?" The question, "Who is he?", I soon learned, really meant, "Where did he come from, who are his parents, and, most of all, where did he go to school?" You see, if we were talking about a minister, the question quickly became, “Is he one of our men?”, meaning, “Is he a graduate of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?”
The greatest sin a minister could commit, in his mind, was to have gone to the wrong school, the wrong school being any other than our school. "Adrian Arnold. Who is he? Is he one of our men?" “Well, no, he attended Southeastern Seminary.” “Oh".
We all need and use various points of reference to try to identify people. We all use various ways to lift up individual lives out of obscurity, out of the mass, and try to make sense of them. And in one way or another, in fact, we are also trying to answer for ourselves the "who is he" or "who is she" question. We are struggling to realize our identities and to see how we can emerge from nobodiness into somebodiness, as Dr. King put it. From nobodiness into somebodiness. From obscurity to memory. We don’t want our lives to be hidden.
And yet most lives are hidden. Most lives are lived in obscurity, never recognized outside of a small circle of family and friends. Even lives of great ability, of genius proportions, are often unsung, unknown, and soon forgotten.
The poet Thomas Gray in his "Elegy Written In a Country Churchyard" speaks of this: "FulI many a gem of purest ray serene/ The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
Have you ever thought about the millions of people who live in obscurity? Does it ever cross your mind how many people live and die w1thout anyone noticing them or remembering them when they are gone? Why, the great bulk of the world’s people have lived and died with not so much as a gravestone to mark that passage. Their lives are hidden.
I think of primitive tribesmen, living in little villages along the banks of some great river, scarcely discovered by the outside world. Remote, unknown except to a handful of their fellow tribesmen. And I wonder where the meaning is in that. A life like that seems hidden, doesn’t it? It seems wasted.
One student of the middle ages has commented that before transportation and communication became as easy as they are now, the average person living in some medieval community might never have known more than about 100 people in his entire lifetime! Think of that! This morning in this congregation of maybe 200 persons you are already in touch with twice as many people as the average person in the middle ages! They were obscure! They lived hidden lives.
I think, too, at this time of the year, when the Jewish community is remembering the holocaust and the six million who were gobbled up by Nazism ... I think of the anonymity, the depersonalization they suffered. These people were considered non-persons. Their only identity was that they were Jewish; that’s all that mattered to Nazi racism. That they had names and families and professions and emotions did not count. They were Jewish and therefore were to be exterminated. Their lives were hidden. Wasted. Where’s the meaning in that? Small wonder that the new Holocaust Museum which is about to open will list name after name after name, an attempt not to be hidden any longer.
No one wants his life to be hidden. Everyone wants his Iife to mean something, to be precious to someone. Everyone wants his life to matter. Everyone wants to be somebody, not nobody. And yet our lives are hidden.
"Who is he? Is he one of our men?" How may we overcome the hiddenness of our lives? How may we emerge from obscurity and find meaning? How can we manage it so that we will be remembered after we are gone? Your life is hidden; what can you do about it?
There are several possible answers. Let’s examine several paths we might take in order to prevent our lives from being hidden.
I
One path that some people take to rescue themselves from obscurity is the material path. The material path, accumulating things, making things. It’s easy to point to something material and say, “I did that" and let that be our monument.
If it didn’t hit so close to home, I would tell you that some folks theorize that pastors work so hard at constructing or renovating church buildings so that they can leave behind a personal monument, preferably with their names on the cornerstone! I say, I think I’d better not even mention that!
The material path to keep your life from being hidden. Some people attempt to be remembered for their wealth, how much they accumulated, how they used it. Collecting wealth is a very popular way of looking for meaning and trying to emerge from hiddenness.
And of course there is a measure of truth in that. We do remember the rich and powerful names. We do recognize names like Ford and Rockefeller. These lives do not seem to be hidden lives. These names are remembered.
But did you know that wealth satisfies very few people? Were you aware that some of the unhappiest people on the face of the earth were members of these great families? The number of suicides, broken marriages, failed careers, and rebellious children in these families tells us that if it’s wealth you choose, you may pay a very high price for coming out of hiding. Who really wants to be remembered as reclusive, withdrawn, morbidly unhappy, threatened, and self-destructive! Wow! I think I’d rather be poor and hidden happy than rich and well-known miserable, wouldn’t you?
I knew one person who was trying her best to save every dime so that she could pass it on to her family. She would not even spend a few hundred dollars on a piece of equipment that would have helped her stay alive, because she wanted to pass every red cent on to her son. Well I couldn’t help noticing that within a few weeks after her death, son had splurged it all on cars and sporting equipment and goodness knows what else. But mom was trying to be remembered, trying to keep her life from being hidden, accumulating that wealth. It just didn’t work.
The Lord Jesus says that one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses. Material things will not make a life worth remembering. The material path doesn’t work. The way of amassing things does not make us somebodies instead of nobodies. Accumulate all you will; your life will still be hidden.
II
So let’s try another approach. Let’s try something else. If the material path is not a path to rescue our lives from their hiddenness; if just using material things does not build real and lasting monuments, maybe we could try the influence path. The way of influencing and teaching somebody else. Maybe our lives would not be so hidden if we were to concentrate on influencing others.
And this is fine. Many people do this. Most of us who are parents like to think we have left something of ourselves behind in our children. In fact, in some cultures, one of the reasons people have so many children is that they literally believe that the only kind of life after death they will get is life through their children.
And even if we do not have children, we hope that we will have made some impact on somebody along the way. A lot of us would hope that our lives would be lifted up from hiding just because we have taught someone, shaped someone, influenced someone.
Indeed there is nothing sadder than seeing someone die alone. Nothing more pathetic than coming to the end of the way with few to care, few to take notice. On occasion I’ve done funeral services attended by as few as three or four people, all of whom seem to be there out of duty more than out of love or respect. It would be a terrible thing to live life out and have made no impact on anybody. That certainly would hide anyone’s life.
And yet that’s not enough either. It’s not enough for someone to remember us for a few years. It’s not enough because they will not remember us perfectly or completely. They will not have understood us accurately. They will remember only what they want to remember; and, worse yet, they may well remember only what we would rather they did not remember. They just won’t really know us.
I am astounded, sometimes, at how little we understand one another. In fact, I am frightened by how little time we take, even with those closest to us, truly to listen to them, truly to discern who they are and what their lives are all about. It seems that most of us are too busy, too preoccupied and, probably, too self-centered to probe to the depths of anyone else.
To tell you the truth as I see it, even within marriages, even within the relationship of parent and child, I see people growing apart, passing like ships in the night, occupying the same household, but drifting more and more away from understanding one another.
I’m saying that it you are depending only on your influence, only on the way others around you will remember you, your life is still hidden. Your life is still hidden because it will never be fully understood, it will never be properly appreciated.
Let me confess to you part of my ministerial method. When it comes time for me to do a funeral, I look for the significant themes in the life of the person who has died. I think about some of the things they have given themselves to, and then try to find a Scripture which will interpret that life. The task is to let the Scripture tell the truth and speak good news to the sorrowing.
Well, the problem is that no such simple method can capture the whole person. No one verse of Scripture, however profound, can interpret the complexity of anyone human life. No one speech can tell the whole truth. No one is fully able to remember and understand the labyrinth that is another’s mind.
No, if you are depending solely on your influence and your reputation to lift you out of obscurity, your life is still hidden.
III
There remains one other possibility. There is still another choice as to what to do about our hidden lives. Rejecting materialism because it ends up making us unhappy as well as forgotten; going beyond building a reputation and cultivating an influence, as fine as that may be, because we will never be fully understood, there is another choice.
The apostle Paul said to the Christians at Colossae, "If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Your life is hidden with Christ in God. Now what have we been saying? Your life is hidden? Yes, of course. But what if your life is not just hidden but is hidden with Christ in God? What if in the very heart of eternity there is a perfect memory of you? What if in the mind of God, the infinite mind of God, you are known, you are remembered, you are understood?
"Your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory."
My friends, I am saying this morning that the only perfect memory is God’s memory. The only complete knowledge is God’s knowledge. And the only way my life or yours will be rescued from total obscurity is that it be hidden in Christ and then revealed by Him when He comes again.
Oh, listen to it. "Your life is hidden with Christ in God." Your life is protected by Christ, it is cherished by Christ. To Christ you are a somebody, not a nobody. To Christ you are fully known and fully embraced. Your Iife is hidden with Christ in God.
But then this, "When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory." Can you believe that the day is yet going to come when the victory of our God will be realized? There’s a great day a-comlng, don’t you know? There’s a great day a-coming ... its date I do not have. Its picture I cannot draw. But it is a day on which the victory of the risen Christ will be complete.
It is a day on which every wrong will be put right. It is a day on which every injustice will be punished, and every mercy rewarded. It is a day on which the wounds of the oppressed will be healed and the heel of the oppressor will be wounded. It is a day on which every obscure and hidden soul that was faithful to Christ will be given due respect and glory, and a day on which every proud and haughty soul that avoided Christ will feel the pain of separation. It’s a great day a-comlng.
What day is It? It’s a day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill be made low. It’s a day on which the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain, and all flesh shall see it together.
It is a day on which your Iife, once hldden with Christ in God, will find perfect understanding and will be revealed.
If your life is hidden today, but is not hidden with Christ, then you have nothing. You may have wealth and power, but it will crumble. You may have built more stately mansl0ns, but they will be destroyed. If your life is hidden but is not hidden with Christ, you have nothing.
Or you may have a fine reputation and citations hanging from wall to wall, you may have the accolades of your children and the praises of the community, but these things are imperfect. They do not fully know you. They will never completely dlscern you. If your life is h1dden but is not hidden with Christ, you have nothing.
But "if you have been raised with Christ ... set your mind on things that are above ... for you have d1ed, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. And when that day comes... when Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory."
Thomas Gray closed his Elegy: "No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode; There they alike in trembling hope repose, The bosom of his Father and his God."
