Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. - Romans 12.10, NRSV

This is the season for college applications. Students compete fiercely for a spot in the elite schools that promise them a better chance at a lucrative career. As part of this ordeal, applicants solicit letters of recommendation from influential people whose endorsement can give their case some extra juice.

Rebecca Sabky, former admissions director for Dartmouth College, estimates that in her fifteen years on the job she read over thirty-thousand applications. She has read letters of recommendations from former presidents, celebrities, trustees, and Olympic athletes. None of them impressed her as much as one - the only one she ever received - from a high school janitor.

The applicant hit all the marks the other kids did: high class rank, praise from his teachers, lots of extracurriculars. But it was the custodian’s letter that stood out: He said the kid knew each janitor by name, turned off lights someone had left burning, and straightened up classrooms his classmates had trashed. He showed respect to every kid or adult at the school regardless of their place in the peer pecking order. The admissions committee admitted him by unanimous vote.

“Outdo one another” is a possible translation from Romans 12.10, but the King James has, “in honor preferring one another,” which is also valid. The NASV has “give preference.” Even if “outdo” is the correct translation, it is the same idea: the only competition should be in finding ways to help someone else win. Perhaps the best translation is, “Notice the janitor.”

As we go through our work this week, let’s ask ourselves: If the least powerful people in our world had to write our letter of recommendation to Heaven, would the twenty-four elders around the throne give us a unanimous vote?

For more information on this story, see "Check This Box if You're a Good Person," by Rebecca Sabky

It Is Finished - the Knockout Blow

When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. – John 19.30

On October 30, 1974, George Foreman defended his world heavyweight boxing title against former champ Muhammad Ali. The bout took place in Zaire, Africa. Sports writers dubbed it "The Rumble in the Jungle."

            All the odds favored Foreman: at twenty-four he was in his prime and had a right hand that could punch through the hull of a battleship. He had stopped Joe Frazier in two rounds to win the belt and then defended it by dispatching Ken Norton - the only man besides Frazier ever to beat Ali - in the same fashion. Ali, on the other hand, at thirty-two had been idle for over three years because he resisted the Viet Nam draft. He then fought Frazier for the title and lost decisively.

            The older challenger had one real weapon: He was incredibly quick on his feet and could stay out of Foreman's reach while outscoring him. In the first round, however, Foreman showed that he was ready for this tactic by moving to cut off the ring, forcing Ali to take two steps for the champ's one. If this kept up, the older man would tire and fall prey to Foreman's fearsome punching power.

            But Ali had prepared a secret weapon. In round two, he began to lean on the ropes and cover up. He let the bigger man pound away at his arms and shoulders without scoring any points or doing any real damage. Meanwhile, Ali took every opportunity to shoot quick blows to the face between Foreman's guard, causing the champ's eyes to swell. Then, he began taunting his opponent. "They told me you could punch, George!" he hissed. "They told me you could punch like Joe Louis!" Enraged and inexperienced, Foreman lost his temper and began slugging away, quickly tiring himself without harming his opponent. He began to fade in the jungle heat.

            In the seventh round, Foreman made one last effort. He bulled Ali into the ropes and unleashed a right hand to the ribs that by all the laws of physics should have come out the other side. Instead, Ali rode the force of the punch, sagged back on the ring ropes and bounced onto Foreman's chest, whispering in his ear, "Is that all you got, George?" As Foreman himself later testified, he thought to himself at that moment, "Yeah, that's about it."

            It was: In the eighth round Ali suddenly cut loose with a lightning-fast five punch combination ending in a left hook that brought Foreman's head straight up. Ali tagged this target with a right cross and Foreman crashed to the canvass. He did not fall back with the momentum of the blow, but forward, meaning the lights had all gone out. With a champion's heart he clambered to his feet at the count of nine and the referee waved Ali back in, but after two seconds jumped between the men to declare a TKO.

            THAT is the force of the phrase, “It is finished” in John 19.30. Jesus has taken everything that Satan and Death can dish out. Judas' betrayal, Peter's denial, the Sadducees' mock trials, and the Roman's realpolitik are not his enemy; they are boxing gloves on the fists of the real enemy. In this moment, as Death deals its final blow, Jesus sags back on the bar of his cross, surges upward one final time and cries out using the Greek perfect tense of the verb meaning "to complete." It describes an action done in the past and powerful into the present. He declares that for all time he has taken everything that sin and the penalty of sin has to dish out, faced every charge that the Accuser can bring against humanity, and emptied them of all power. A legitimate paraphrase would be, "Is that all you got, Devil?" To which Satan must eternally reply, "Yep, that's about it." Three days later the knock-out blow of the Resurrection leaves Christ with his hand raised before an eternally defeated foe, but all the real fight goes out of our ancient Enemy in this triumphant moment on Good Friday.

No Free Ride

            Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. – 2 Timothy 15

            Augustine of Hippo had little patience with Christians who claimed to understand the Bible through direct, divine instruction. These exegetes took the bypass that skirted the crowded and complicated infrastructure of reading, writing, and sorting out the competing views of various voices.

            “Everything,” Augustine admitted, “might have been done by an angel, but the standing of the human race would have been devalued if God had seemed unwilling to let men act as the agents of His word to men.” Moreover, Augustine felt, such a system would eliminate the unity of souls that arises from an exchange of ideas. It would be an isolated and uncoordinated body of Christ “if human beings could learn nothing from their fellows.”

            Of course, the tribe of those who claim a direct download from the Divinity has not decreased since Augustine’s day. The Christian faith festers with those who insist that the Holy Spirit plugs directly into the base of their brains like Keanu Reeves’ character in “The Matrix.” I picture such people entering some sort of fugue state, REM cycles sending their eyeballs ricocheting and rotating beneath the lids until, with a gasp, they return to reality and sputter, “Whoa! I know eschatology!”

            Of course, these walking Third Testaments, these charismatic court-reporters of the divine mind, are not hearing directly from God: All kinds of foreign matter slips into the mix. Past preachers – perhaps bad ones; books they have read – probably slender ones; biases they have absorbed – doubtless extensive ones: ignoring other sources does not eliminate these influences; it only renders them invisible and unleashes them to do their work in secret.

            Paul’s word for “study” has less to do with sitting at a desk than with being busy about a task, but the idea is still there. “Rightly dividing” is the idea of cutting a straight road, of handling a thing well. It is evident that, where the Word of God is concerned, the Apostle thought this took honest intellectual work because he also asks his young protégé to bring him “the books, but especially the parchments.” (2 Tim 4.13) That the guy who wrote under direct, divine inspiration wanted to look some stuff up probably argues that even those claim to who read under direct, divine inspiration could stand to do the same.

            Scholarship, sermons, Sunday school – they are all really the same thing: the engagement of Christian believers around the word of God with the humility to recognize that maybe none of us knows as much as all of us. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he reads everyone else’s Bible?” Open a book; sit down in a pew; kneel down in humility by the bedside of an ancient saint with a worn-out, marked up King James Bible. Study hard; cut it straight.