Of Value and Worth

Some years ago I met a little boy in Honduras named Carlos. He was an orphan and had been recently brought to El Hogar, a school for orphans and desperately poor children. There were two things I noticed immediately about Carlos.  First, he was a very serious young man. When I spoke to him, I could tell he was measuring me up. He was 6, a first grader, and he was measuring me up! The second thing I noticed was that his left eye looked perpetually inward, so you had to focus on his right eye.

Otherwise, Carlos was doing fine. He did well in school and got along with the other kids. He seemed fine. I’ve known a number of people who had an eye turning a different way so I didn’t think much more about it.

I went back the next year and saw Carlos again. He was still doing well. He didn’t size me up quite as much because he remembered me. And I was happy to see that his left eye was moving in tandem with his right eye. I asked one of the staff about it and they told me he had had surgery to reattach the muscle that controlled his eye.

That’s a nice story, and I bring it up to illustrate a fundamental Christian claim, which is that all of God’s children have value. They have worth. They may be orphaned. They may be desperately poor. They may have physical or mental challenges of various types. They may be in prison or in hospice care. We may not be able to get to them all or be particularly effective when we do get to them, but that is who we are as followers of Jesus Christ.

That is so ingrained in us and in our culture – thanks to Jesus – that we scarcely think it could be any other way. But it didn’t just happen. For all of human history that intrinsic value of human life has been in tension with other views. If our value were based solely on economic productivity or evolutionary progress, we would have no regard for weak, the ill, the physically and mentally challenged, the poor. But we do. 

That is God’s love shining through us. The value of human life.

God’s love for his children had long been a part of Israel’s witness and we hear it in this consolation passage from Jeremiah. The Lord says he will gather his people “…from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor…” (Jeremiah 31:7-14) And he says he will keep them “…as a shepherd a flock.”

Make no mistake. The value of human life does not primarily reside in self-esteem. It does not reside primarily in the impressions or opinions of others. It does not reside primarily in the laws of governments. All of those things do affect us and they are important, but they can and do fail. Self-esteem?   Most of us have been around teenagers or, worse, we’ve had to be one. They are old enough to know they have to do something but most haven’t done anything yet. Often they have this gaping pit of self-doubt, even if everyone around them is encouraging them. What do they really need but to know that they have intrinsic value that doesn’t depend first on them or anyone else but the God who created them.

The value of human life rests primarily – first and absolutely – in God.

It is out of God’s love and value for humanity that we find this child in Bethlehem. The “good shepherd” has indeed arrived, and we quickly learn that he hasn’t just come for Israel. These wise men, magi, from the east have seen a sign and taken to the path it lays before them. When they find him, the pay him homage, which is another way of saying they acknowledged his value, his worth. They worshipped him – worship is a contraction of worth-ship.

They bring gold, a gift for a wise king. They bring frankincense, a fragrant gift for a high priest sharing the word of God. They bring myrrh, which is for anointing at death. This child is a gift from God as king and priest and sacrifice, for it is through sacrifice that he will recover the sheep scattered by the ravages of sin.

Paul says “…he chose us in Christ from before the foundations of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” (Ephesians 1:3-19) He chose us.  He chose you.

That is cause for great joy, a reminder of God’s greatest gift on this 12th day of Christmas. And it comes with a challenge. We’ve got to get on with it.

First, we must make sure we are passing our witness to Jesus Christ on to our children – those in your own family and those in our church family. We must raise them up in it so that they know to the very core of their being how much God loves them, what God has already done for them, and to seek his call on their lives. Parents and grandparents, you have to get them here. Parents and grandparents, you need to also tend to your own faith.

And as we grow in faith, we’ve got to build upon the excellent ways this church shares Jesus with our community. We have a tremendous blessing of opportunity in that our primary social services agency is a Christian ministry eager for our participation. Our partner school, Polk Avenue Elementary eagerly welcomes us. And we have the Thrift Store, and we feed kids, and... and... and...  We do quite a lot. And we are going to be in prayerful discernment as to any new ministries.

And we will do this because God sent his only son into this world to bring the whole world into the knowledge and love of him. That love becomes visible when you see the eye of a desperately poor child cured while he is in a school teaching him daily about Jesus along with his math and reading and science and so on. But such graces, as good as they are, are merely signs pointing to the eternal and unshakeable truth that he loved us first.

AMEN