Charley Brown says to Lucy, still dispensing sage wisdom for the pre-inflationary price of five cents, "Nobody likes me, Lucy. Everybody hates my guts. Do you see that plane up there, Lucy? It’s a plane full of people going somewhere else. That’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to go somewhere else, somewhere where nobody knows me. Then with new people I could get a fresh start. Do you think that’s what I ought to do, Lucy? Go get a fresh start with new people who don’t know me?!"
And Lucy, herself fresh from yanking away Charley Brown’s football just before, maybe this year, it would be kicked into the stratosphere, and just as adept at yanking away Charley Brown’ a verbal illusions, replies, "Forget it, Charley Brown. Forget it. Once the new people got to know you, you’d be right back where you started from."
The Lucies of this world represent the conventional wisdom: that we will never be accepted. That we will never know enough or be smart enough to be accepted. The Lucies of this world tell us that we are not much and never will be; they know that they know and we don’t.
Lucy is the snob who always has a car more with-it than yours and wears fashions which make your clothes hopelessly dated, because you just don’t get it. Lucy is the man about town, the social butterfly, who is always out having a new and exciting experience, seeing the latest movies, hearing the hippest music, in the know and on the go. The Lucies of this world parade their knowledge, and it really bugs the rest of us who feel as though we can never measure up. The rest of us are Charley Browns, always a day late and a dollar short. We just don’t keep in tune with what’s happening. We don’t know.
One of the ingredients of a healthy life is knowledge. We need, if we are going to live in a healthy way, to know. To know that what we know is worth knowing, and that we are not being deluded by some sort of falsehood. Nothing is more disconcerting than to be with a group of people all of whom know something you don’t know. And until you know what you know and know that it is worth knowing, you will not be healthy. Got that? Until you know what you know and know that it is worth knowing, you will not have a healthy mind. Let me put that positively. A healthy mind knows what it knows and knows that it is valuable; it does not dwell on what it does not know, but uses to the full what it does know.
Have you ever been to the kind of gathering where everyone seems to be talking a foreign language? I have. I’ve been to meetings where I could not keep up, because they were speaking about things which were Greek to me. Meetings where they were talking about things which they assumed that any twit would know, but I didn’t.
I remember being at one such gathering where everyone \vas prattling on about something called neuro-linguistic programming. Neuro-linguistic programming: How does that grab you? An awesome, impressive name, but I didn’t have the foggiest notion what they were talking about. Frankly, it sounded ominous, like creating some sort of Frankenstein monsters. So I got up enough courage to ask the fellow sitting next to me if he could offer a quick and dirty description of this thing, this new knowledge, neuro-linguistic programming. I was rewarded for my efforts with a long stare over the top of his glasses, and an acid comment to the effect that if I didn’t have the background for it, his explanation would do me no good. You don’t know? Well, obviously, you wouldn’t understand! That was pretty intimidating!
But remember: a healthy mind knows what it knows and knows that it is worth knowing. A healthy mind is not intimidated by what it does not yet know.
This morning I want you to see that the message of Christmas is that Christ is our knowledge. Christ is the wisdom of God, and in Him are gathered up all things worth knowing. And, at the same time, I want you to see that whether you be wise or foolish, whether you be learned or ignorant, the wisdom of God is yours, and you will know. You will know and you will be known, you will be fully known, because of Christ.
The apostle Paul, in dealing with the church at Corinth, found himself struggling with people whose self-esteem was very low. They had been gathered together out of the least of the least: slaves and runaways, ex-prostitutes and one-time thieves, beggars and bumpkins, almost all of them. And most of all, they were ignorant; few had anything like what we would call even the basics of an education, and fewer still had any degree of sophistication. Let’s face it. They were the dregs of their society, yet it was they whom the apostle had pulled together as a church, it was they whom he dared to call the Body of Christ.
"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters; not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth." Nonetheless, they were Christ’s people.
And they needed healthy knowledge. They needed to know what they knew and to know that it was valuable and right. What Paul taught them was that in Christ Jesus they knew what was important, and, better yet, because of Him, they knew something better than anyone else knew. They knew His accepting love. Let’s explore this a little.
I
First, Paul tells the Corinthian Christians that, because of Christ, they are not ignorant. They have knowledge. They may not have been to many schools, nor read many books, but they have knowledge. They have been enriched in knowledge so much that they lack nothing that they really need. It is not so much a question as to whether they are sophisticated or educated as this world measures it; but it is that Christ gives them what they need to know, enough to keep them going until there is more. Christ gives us as much knowledge as we need for the here and now.
"In every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind … so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ." You have been enriched; you are not lacking.
The issue with many of us is that we think we don’t know enough, we are not wise enough. We suppose we don’t know enough to be effective. We never quite feel ready for a full-blown life. We hold ourselves back from getting involved with the full richness of life, because we are afraid we don’t know enough to make sense of it. We have not discovered that Christ gives us what we need to know for the needs of the moment.
When I was a seminary student, there were certain people we called professional students. All they wanted to do was to go to school. They were so intimidated by real life, arguing that they didn’t yet know enough, didn’t understand enough. They would prefer to stay in school rather than to get out and use what they had learned. You would find people who would get their master’s and then their doctorate, and then start looking around for extra courses to take even after that. The faculty would have to kind of throw them out of school and make them get out and do. Ready or not, get out there!
Some of us are intimidated by reality. We think we just don’t know enough, so we hang back. We don’t risk anything, we don’t try anything, we don’t experience anything. We are afraid our ignorance will be exposed.
But hear the good news for Christmas Day. When God came in Jesus Christ, he came as a tiny, unschooled infant. He came as a learner. And although today we see that in Him all the wisdom of the ages resided, yet remember that He was the babe of Bethlehem, a little risky thing. He had to learn. And Jesus did increase in wisdom and in stature and in divine and human favor. Jesus did learn and change.
You see, what matters is not the knowledge we don’t have; what matters is what we do with the knowledge we do have. I think it was Mark Twain who noticed that it was not the Bible verses he didn’t understand that gave him trouble. It was the ones he did understand which bothered him.
When God came in Jesus Christ, He came to give us truth, enough truth to provide us with abundant life. It’s just a matter of committing to that truth. Not worrying about the truth we don’t have, but committing to the truth we do have. "You are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait."
II
But there’s another side to this, a deeper side. There’s something else about having a healthy mind. Another and even deeper way in which the child of Bethlehem brings us wisdom.
And that is that in Christ God has chosen our ignorance as the vehicle to carry His wisdom. In Christ, in the tiny, fragile infant, God has chosen and has even hallowed our weakness and our neediness. This awesome fact, that the infinite has become finite, the immortal mortal, the eternal timebound … this awesome fact means that God has taken seriously our limitations, and has even taken them on himself, and all for a reason.
God has become limited as we are limited in order to bring to terms pride and arrogance. When our God wrapped Himself in the frail flesh of the infant Jesus, He chose to become the smallest, most vulnerable, most sheerly human package possible, in order to bring up short those who have forgotten how limited they are.
Paul puts it this way: "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God."
How awesome and yet how right that God should come to us in the guise of the child of Bethlehem! It has been said that Jesus was born in a third-rate province in a dusty, unwanted corner of the Roman Empire; that He never traveled more than a few miles from Hi s home; that He never attended the universities, never marshaled armies, never wrote any books, never gained any wealth, never did any of the things we consider great. But that yet because of this solitary life more good has been done, more change has been wrought, more lives redeemed, than all the armies which ever marched and all the teachers who ever taught. This solitary life, begun in a rude and barren stable. "God chose what is foolish to shame the wise, God chose what is weak to shame the strong ... God chose what is low and despised ... to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God."
No, no one may boast. But all of us may rejoice. For the glory of Christmas is that God has taken on Himself our limitations, all our inadequacies, but has lifted them up into His eternity. God has chosen the least and the lost, the humble and the lonely, to know the things that really matter.
Whether we know or think we know anything, all that counts is that we are fully known in Him. What we know or think we know, know this and know it well: Jesus loves me, this I know, and not only that the Bible tells me so. So also everything about Christmas tells me so. Jesus Christ knows all about my limitations and loves me still. Jesus Christ knows all about my inadequacies and loves me still. Jesus the Christ knows all there is to know and loves us still.
That’s what a healthy mind will know. That’s what is worth knowing. What will you do with so great a knowledge?
I have told before the little story by Stephen Leacock, called The Retroactive Existence of Mr. Juggins. In this story Mr. Juggins is an ardent young man who has found the girl of his dreams and wants to marry her. But the hitch is that Mr. Juggins feels he is not worthy of her, spiritually worthy. His young lady is a serious and diligent Bible student, and Mr. Juggins has barely an indifferent Sunday School student’s knowledge of the Scriptures. And so, in order to be worthy of his lass, Mr. Juggins undertakes the study of the Bible.
He begins by learning the genealogies of Genesis and the laws of Leviticus. From there he moves on to the battles fought by the judges and the pronouncements of the prophets. After that on he goes, still not sure that he has enough knowledge to be worthy of his fair lady, and memorizes the kings of Israel in careful chronological order; but, sad to say, as he is perfecting his recitation of the parallel kings of Judah, from Rehoboam to Zedekiah, word comes that the object of his affections has eloped with some dolt who knew not the difference between Moses and Methuselah!
Knowledge for its own sake is of no particular value. Knowledge sought and gathered because we think we aren’t good enough turns out to be nothing but frustration. But what God gives us in Christ is the knowledge of His own heart, the wisdom of His word made flesh. And it is enough. It is sufficient. We know enough because we are fully known.
