The Second Giant Leap
Now The Old Fool invites you to take a second giant leap with him. This time, we leap from the beginning of the Old Testament to the beginning of the New. This giant leap lands us in the middle of events surrounding the birth of Jesus as chronicled by Luke.
Joy and peace to men and women of good will.
The story is too grand to be limited to ordinariness. It must be supported by events that are myth-like, such as the appearance of a heavenly messenger to shepherds at night. This single messenger is joined by a heavenly host. To The Old Fool glory from heaven is not essential to the story.
What matters is the promise of joy to all people on earth and world-wide peace to all who are filled with good will and with whom God is pleased. We have already noted that God had been kind to all, but pleased with no one. This suggests a new possibility.
Could it be that God is treating all humanity as though he were pleased with them?
Though there was a myth-like quality in the simple grandeur of the baby’s birth, there is no mystery in his innocence. He was, after all, but a baby. Thirty years later everyone wondered at the man the baby had grown to be. He is a single male who does not yield to lust, who has no desire for fame, wealth, applause or revenge. It is said simply that he left home and “went about doing good.” According to friend and foe he was a good man who was “a friend of sinners.”
According to the myth, a voice from heaven declared that “this is my son in whom I am well pleased.” Here finally is a man that pleases God by the way he behaves toward the sick and the poor, tax collectors and other outcasts, the women who love him and the men who fear him.
A happy neighborly-friendly friend filled with goodwill
He is so good, so friendly, and so neighborly to everyone who is weak and so fearlessly honest in his indictment of the hypocritical power-brokers of his day that they crucify him. He prays for forgiveness for the soldiers who nail him to the cross. The cross grants forgiveness of sins, but it is our living his life of good will that will save the world. This man of good will towards all points the way to communal peace on earth. It must be said again that in him God was well-pleased.
The next segment of the sermon is a third leap that takes us to the present time and The Old Fool preaches to seniors in his audience..
