January is the time of year when it seems everyone receiving an award for something. Either you receive an Emmy award for music, or you receive an Oscar for movies, or you go to the All-Star game at hockey. It is a time of the year when we celebrate those who do well. We watch the Super Bowl. We watch the Australian Open (yay, Genie!). And, as James Merritt said in his wonderful book 52 Weeks with Jesus, this is the time when we play a game called GOAT. GOAT stands for “The Greatest of All Time”. It’s a game we play around the water cooler and the breakfast table just for fun – nothing objective about it! Who’s the greatest of all time in each of the respective areas? Who is the greatest quarterback in the history of the NFL? Is it Brady? Is it Manning? Is it Montana? Everyone will debate somebody! Who was the greatest of all time?
I was listening to two commentators at the Australian Open this week having this very debate on air between them. Is Serena Williams the greatest of all time? Is Roger Federer the greatest of all time? Or is it Rod Laver or is it Steffi Graf or s it Martina Navratilova? On and on they went. There was even a discussion about who is the greatest hockey team of all time: the 1960s Leafs, the 70’s Canadiens, the 80s Oilers. One thing we know for sure, it is not the 2015 Maple Leafs! We debate who is the greatest actor or actress of all time: is it Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, Gregory Peck, Sir Laurence Olivier, or Dustin Hoffman? There will always be debate as to who the greatest of all time is in almost every category of life. It is just fun talking about it! But of course, you can rarely resolve it! You never really know who the greatest of all time is.
It is even more fun to ask this question: What qualities do the greatest of all time possess? What sets them apart? I have been thinking about this last week, as Merritt’s book prompted me to do. I think there are a couple of features, it doesn’t matter what area of life you are talking about, that define the greatest of all time. It is their strength and longevity. By strength I mean they are strong, they are committed, they are steadfast, and they are dedicated to what they do. You don’t get anywhere without dedication and strength. You can accomplish nothing without steadfastness. There is a need to be strong. Likewise, longevity. It is not on the basis of one movie that someone is deemed great or one great Stanley Cup win or one great Australian Open or one great song that you are remembered. Chances are that if you are in the pantheon of the great, you have longevity. You have been able to do great things over a long period of time.
The Apostle Paul, in writing today’s passage from that magnificent opening part of First Corinthians, uses a word to describe that strength, "bebaios.” This is a Greek word that means: to be strong, steadfast, firm. It is a strong word. The passage I preached on at the beginning of Advent, recalls the moment when Paul begins his letter to the Corinthian Church in the home of Gaius. This marvellous passage is one to encourage the saints in their walk with God. There is a line that jumps out to us today, “He has made us strong to the end.” Notice the phraseology. Who has made us strong to the end? God has! It is not that those disciples and those early Christians had some sort of innate strength, but rather the strength they were given was a God-given gift. It enabled them to be strong in the midst of a pagan culture. It allowed them to be firm in their commitment to the things that are right and just and pure. It made them resolute and steadfast in not pulling away, despite persecution and temptation, from the gift that they had received in Jesus Christ. They were strong, strong in faith, and strong to the end.
Their strength wasn’t only temporary; it wasn’t just only in the moment; it was for all time. It is because of this I want us to ask ourselves: “What does it mean to live strong? What does it mean to be strong in the things that matter most?” I think deep down each and every one of us really does want to be great in faith. We want to be strong in what we believe. We want to be steadfast despite all the things that come our way in life. We want that strength. Yet, there is within The New Testament a great paradox. The Apostle Paul says that when we are often at our weakest, God is at his strongest within us. When we are struggling, when we don’t seem to have much, God is actually doing great things for us and in us. After all, it is the Cross of Christ, Christ’s greatest moment of weakness becoming his greatest moment of strength. Soren Kierkegaard said, “This is the paradox of the Christian life that we are at our strongest when we are at our weakest.” At a moment where our abilities and our own character and our own strength seem insufficient for the task of living a good life, it is then that God gives us the strength to do it. The strength is not ours; it never was ours. It is a gift, and it is a gift that God gives us.
I thought about that when I recounted a discussion that I had not long ago with somebody about the relationship between the Bible and slavery. They made a quick quip, “Why does the Bible, even the New Testament, promote and support slavery?” I thought about that for a moment and I went back and I read all the text, particularly Paul that talked about slavery. Sure enough, there are passages there that talk about slaves and slavery, but in no case is slavery condoned or promoted or advocated. Despite those who will read a text where Paul says, “Slaves be obedient to your masters” they don’t read it in context. What is around it is Paul saying to the masters, “You must treat your slaves with righteousness and justice, and without favouritism.” He says to the slaves, “You should live as free people in Christ.”
The more I delved into this whole notion of slavery, the more it became apparent to me that we miss so much about it. One of the components that we forget is when Paul is talking to slaves he is talking to Christian slaves, those who already feel free in Christ, those who have a sense of belonging in the Church and a community of believers. We are talking about people who are already Christians, who are slaves. This isn’t a matter of slaves being forced into anything; this is slaves who are being freed by the Gospel. It is a powerful message to those who are the masters that they now have to treat even those who are a class of people established under Roman law with respect, when in fact slaves were often treated abysmally and unjustly.
What is also significant is that Paul was trying to save these Christian slaves. The problem is that if they left their masters because they were free in Christ, they would end up either being persecuted by their masters or left to live in penury on the streets as beggars. The New Testament sociology understands there was this group of people called slaves, and Christianity actually, if anything lifted them above their status and they were strong.
Thinking about that, I was reading a biography that has moved me beyond anything I have read in years. It is the story of a man called Anthony Ashley Cooper. He is better known in history as the Earl of Shaftsbury. If you are not familiar with the Earl of Shaftsbury, let me tell you about him. He was the great social reformer of England in the nineteenth century. Born in 1801, dying in 1885, Shaftsbury was born in privilege and wealth. He was born in the home of the Earl of Shaftsbury. He went to the finest school in Chiswick. He went to the great public school Harrow, and eventually on to Oxford. He grew up with all the privilege of nobility.
His life was expected to be that of an Earl and to do what Earls do. He was supposed to serve the status quo. But this Earl of Shaftsbury was different. At the age of 25, he decided to run for Parliament as an ordinary Member of Parliament. He did so because of what he saw going on around him. Shaftsbury, you see, was a devout Christian. He read his Bible. He was faithful. He looked at society and something changed him. One day, as a Member of Parliament, he read about something that had happened in a mine. Some children had been lowered on a cart down into a mine and someone had let go of the ropes and they were crushed and killed. Lord Shaftsbury decided that he would go down the mine and see what these children did down there. He was horrified! Children were being used as coal miners. In little hovels and holes, these little boys of eight years old would climb. They would push the carts from the coal pit out to the shafts because grown men couldn’t get to where these little boys could go. These little boys had stunted growth, their lungs were filled with coal, and they died of cancer. These little boys died and no one knew who they were, and no one cared if they lived or died; they were simply an instrument of an industry.
Lord Shaftsbury concluded this is unrighteousness. He then started to explore the state of children in other parts of the United Kingdom. He went up to Manchester, to my home area, where children were working fifteen hours a day in mills and then they would go to bed in boxes filled with straw, and repeat the process again the next day, and the next. Their whole lives consisted of working in the mills, never educated, never given any hope of freedom, not a choice, just a cog in the wheel, lying in boxes at night. People didn’t even know they existed, because they were up so early in the morning and in bed so late at night from their work that people never even saw them on the streets. He got them in their rags to get out into the streets of Manchester and let people see that they actually existed. He set a demonstration with young boys in the street.
The Earl of Shaftsbury, privileged above privilege, looked at the state of these children. He looked at children who were being used to sweep chimneys, little lads forced at very young ages to climb up through the chimneys to clean them out. Their lungs became toxic and they would die at an early age and like those in the mines, they would never fully develop. There was a Bill passed that he sponsored called The Climbing Boy Act. This Act was passed, but was not enforced for thirty-five years, because the rich and the privileged who wanted the chimneys in their homes cleaned cheaply refused to tell people that they were hiring these little lads. Thirty-five years later, finally Shaftsbury added some teeth to the law and it was prohibited, and proper chimney sweeping began.
He looked at people who were paupers and lunatics. He saw that their bodies were being carried around in bags and thrown into cemeteries on the banks of the Thames. These cemeteries would collapse because there was no structure to them, and these dead bodies would end up in the Thames, and people would get cholera and diphtheria. These paupers, when alive, would be put in asylums and sleep five on top of each other in rooms no bigger than this pulpit right here. Lord Shaftsbury said, “I gave my whole life because I knew that even the lunatics and the paupers are loved by Jesus Christ.” He was made fun of and derided. Cartoons had pictures of him alongside the lunatics in the asylum, implying that he was also a lunatic.
His whole life was dedicated to the education of children and the ragged school union that allowed children who had no justice in place to be free. Asked why he did this, he said, “I believe that humanity is sinful, but I believe in justification by faith alone. If I believe in justification by faith alone, then I believe that every single child of God has been justified by Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and it is for Him that I do this for them.”
Lord Shaftsbury died on October 8, 1885. His biographer, Georgina Battiscombe, describes him as follows:
Although he was offered a burial at Westminster Abbey, Shaftsbury wished to be buried at the modest St. Giles. A funeral service was held in Westminster Abbey during the early morning of October 8th despite what his wishes were, and the streets along the route form Grosvenor Square to Westminster Abbey were thronged with poor people: costermongers, flower girls, bootblacks, crossing sweepers, factory workers, children, and workers who waited for hours to see Shaftsbury’s coffin as it passed by. Due to his constant advocacy for the better treatment of the working classes, Shaftsbury became known as ‘The poor man’s Earl’.
Be strong in the things that matter and you can change the world! Be strong in the things of the faith, and you can be like Shaftsbury. People like this are needed today all over the world: Christians who are strong in the things that matter.
There is also the need for longevity. Paul says, “I want you to be strong to the end.” It is not just a one-time thing. It is not just here and now; it is until the end. Jesus did that in his ministry, strong to the end. He gave his life on the Cross, and said, “Father, into your hands I commit my soul.” Strong to the end! My rugby coach in Cape Town always said the same thing to the whole team. I have said it once before here. He said, “Stirling, there is only one way to play the game and that is to finish strong. It doesn’t matter how you begin a game; it matters where you are at the end of it. You play to the end.” Longevity means being faithful to the end. Oh, it is easy to be tempted with other things that come along that might seem so much more important. There might be other things in life that somehow get our attention. There might be temptations of sin; wealth or power, dishonesty or corruption, but if you are strong in the faith, you can endure them.
The story of The Thresher, a nuclear submarine, is fascinating and telling. The Thresher was an American submarine in the nuclear era that had actually sailed through the ice of the North Pole. It was a strong, strong submarine! The Captain had always been warned that if you went to a certain depth you could be in danger, but he felt that it was invincible. So he took this submarine to a depth that the pressure was too great, so-much-so that it imploded. The actual submarine was destroyed. It was never fully found. There were remnants and that was it! Total destruction – by simple pressure under the water! As one commentator said, “Isn’t it interesting that at that depth there are fish swimming around? How do those fish survive where a nuclear submarine collapses?” It is because the pressure within the fish is equal to the pressure on the outside. That is how they survive. I think we are just like that submarine or just like that fish. We have pressures upon our lives. We have things that tempt and move us. We have things that cause us not to strong, but if we are filled with the strength and the power of God then we are able to withstand and do the right thing, the good thing, the honourable thing. When we have Christ’s strength within us, we are strong to the end.
After I had finished reading the work on Lord Shaftsbury, I thought of an incident from my childhood. It was an incident or an occasion when I was a very young boy. My family knew a lady in our church who made it her mission in life to offer her services, free of charge, to walk children either by hand or in a pram or a stroller just to give mothers a break. Many of you are mothers, and you know what it is like. It is just lovely to have someone you trust to take your child for a little while so you can relax, be at peace, and have some time off. Well, this elderly lady who was in her nineties and in retirement for thirty years had walked virtually all the little children of the town that we were in, and I was one of them. She was affectionately known as Aunt Maggie.
Aunt Maggie was special, she was a very devout Christian and a Deacon in our church. She had been a product of child labour in Lancashire in the late nineteenth century. She had worked as a child in the mills, worked all her life, from eight years old until the time she was sixty-five at the same job in a mill in a town, and lived in a two room home. She had no pension. They didn’t give them pensions. She only had the State pension to live on, and her whole life had been lived working in the mills. Then after she finished working, she decided that she would dedicate her whole life to children. She had none of her own, she had no family, she was – to use that word – a “spinster”. My gosh, was she an awesome one!
For thirty years she walked and she cared for and she loved the children of our town, and I was one of them. Talking after her death to my father, I didn’t realize that Aunt Maggie had described herself to my father, who was a minister, as one of “Shaftsbury’s children,” someone who was eventually saved, because of his ministry. You see, strength in longevity! The power of doing the right thing for God, at the right time – forever!
Paul is right. God will keep you strong to the end. Aunt Maggie knew that, and may God bless her soul! Amen.