42

"And a little child shall lead them"

Emptiness, part 3. If you have not read parts 1 (Emptiness) and 2 (The Death of Reason), please do so now for the full essay.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a radio show from England that became a series of books, a television show, and a movie. One of the primary and most memorable bits from this popular media phenomenon was the number "42." Geeks and readers around the world grin when this is mentioned, because they know the context.

In the story, an alien race millions of years ago were so fed up with philosophy and its failures that they created a gigantic supercomputer called Deep Thought to which they pose the question their philosophers cannot answer: What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?

This is essentially what philosophy is about, an attempt to understand meaning and purpose, to reconcile the difference between the physical and tangible world with the intangible, spiritual, transcendent world. This computer took seven and a half million years to work out its answer, by which time the people who'd invented it were all dead. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the main characters manage through a series of bizarre adventures to find this supercomputer, and they ask the same question now that it has finished it's immensely complex calculations. With breathless anticipation they wait for this, the most meaningful, important answer everyone across the universe has always needed to know. This will give their lives meaning and significance, this will fill that aching void in their souls, the lack that everyone feels but cannot explain. The answer?

42.

The computer, when confronted, explains that the problem is that the programmers - and the people before him - weren't asking the right question. The answer doesn't make sense to them because they don't understand what the question was to begin with. 42.

THE QUESTION
This is the problem that the philosophers who through the ages stumbled with and ended up finally concluding there's simply no answer: there is no meaning to life, the universe, and everything. In the process, they managed to argue convincingly that in fact nothing matters, nothing really exists, and you should do whatever you want because since there's no meaning or significance, you may as well impose your will upon the universe to do whatever you desire, all the while laughing at the cosmic joke: you know it's all nonsense.

Their problem was they weren't asking the right question. To understand what the question is, what they ought to have been asking, I have to tell a story. Some of this story will be familiar to most of you, some of it to all of you. Yet it is only in the complete telling that it makes sense and in which both the question and the answer can be revealed. So please bear with me, I promise this is worth reading. Just bear in mind, this story has some dark parts and some pretty graphic stuff.

Dorothy Sayers calls this story the most compelling, gripping and exciting drama in the history of mankind. It turned the world upside down, it changed the world's biggest empire in a few generations. It is the gospel.

THE GOSPEL
To tell this whole story, we have to start from the beginning. And by beginning I mean the beginning. Adam and The Woman (later named Eve) in the garden, innocent of sin, walking with God in comfort and ease, living in paradise - literally "God's garden". Neither knew evil, because the world contained none. We don't know exactly how long they were in this state, tending the garden and living in absolute bliss, but eventually Satan tempted Eve, Eve tempted Adam, and Adam weakly agreed. In this moment, mankind fell into sin.

As a brief aside, "sin" means "anything that does not equal God's perfect will," it is literally missing the mark. French archers in the medieval age would compete with a single very small target at long range. if you hit the circle, you got a "bull's eye" as it is today. If you missed the target, you were declared "sin." You missed.

Adam and The Woman then were told the penalty for their rebellion against and disobedience of God: the curse. All of mankind fell under sin and the resulting curse which describes life as we know it today all too well. Every good thing we invent is also used for evil. We come up with vaccines, and make biological weapons. We invent nuclear power, and make atomic bombs. The scalpel is also the switchblade, the dynamite to clear roads is also the bomb that kills hundreds. Even the best things in life we enjoy and embrace we know never quite measure up to what they could be. Why all of us? Because Adam was the representative. He was not only declared to be the "test case" as it were, the one who would by his actions show humanity, but he was the perfect representative: he was the everyman, he did what all of us would have done in that setting and time.

And when I look in the mirror, I know deep down what everyone knows: we aren't living like we should, something deep down inside of us is basically wrong. People don't do bad things because of bad influences. We're bad inside, we're the cause of the bad we do. Sure, we might be tempted by the world, by bad influences, by any number of things. It's just that in the end, we know - when we're honest - that we're to blame. I did that wrong because not only I chose to but at that time I wanted to. Put a sign on a window that says "please do not throw rocks through the glass" and the next day that window will be broken. That's the symbol of our lives; it's the source of the emptiness in us.

That void is a gulf between what we are and what we ought to be. We know we don't measure up, that we don't hit the target. What's worse is that all too often we don't even want to. We're sinners, and what's more, we are sinful by nature, its who we are, deep down. We're born that way, we live that way, we die that way, and not a one of us escapes it.

THE LITTLE GOSPEL
That's pretty dire and depressing, but it's the sad fact of life. Yet in this curse that is punishment for pointless, deliberate rebellion, God also curses Satan, including this line:

"And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel."
Genesis 3:15

This is sometimes called "the little gospel" because it gives a little glimpse of the future: you will live under this curse, but someone is coming who will crush the evil and be slightly wounded in the process. It's why the teaser trailer for The Passion of the Christ was a snake that was stomped on by a sandaled foot. There's a glimpse of hope in the curse, God gives Adam and The Woman a chance

CUTTING COVENANTS
Fast forward to Abram, who later became known as Abraham. Abraham is the father of three of the world's biggest religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. There's a strange event early in Abraham's life that tells the next chapter of this story. Abraham has a vision of God who tells him that his descendants will outnumber the stars in heaven, the sand on the seashore. That he will have a mighty people. Abram believes him but asks how it can be true? God then gives Abram some odd instructions:

So He said to him, "Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." hen he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.

And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him.

Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.
Genesis 15:1-17

OK that’s a little odd, right? What’s with the fires and the vultures and the hacked up animals and all? Clearly Abram understood what happened. Here’s why: in the ancient Middle East, when a big king conquered a little king, he would make a covenant between the two, a sovereignly administered agreement bound in blood. The big king would say what he'd give the little king (protection, roads, commerce, etc) and demand what the little king had to do (pay tribute, fight when called upon, not help his enemies, etc).

The two kings would make the deal by "cutting a covenant;" that’s the term they’d use. And it was literal: they would cut animals in half and lie their halves on either side forming a pathway. Then they’d walk through it, one at a time, with a lit, burning torch.

What this meant was “should I fail to keep my end of this covenant, may I be torn into pieces like these animals and burned like this torch.” With the stinking, fly-attracting bloody mess of animals and guts on the ground plus the crackling, flaming torch, this was a pretty powerful image to remember: keep your side of the bargain.

What Abram saw was a bit different. By the pattern of the old testament, he ought to have walked through that gory path himself, holding a torch: I’ll keep my side. But that’s not what happened. Look again:

And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.

Abram watched the fires go through, he didn’t carry either of them. Then God declared the covenant finished, the deal was done. Abram understood what we’re a bit hazy on without some historical context: God took his gigantic burning oven through the pieces… and he took the torch for Abram. God just told Abram:

“If I do not keep my side of the bargain (like that’s even possible), may this happen to me. And Abram… if you don’t keep your side of the bargain may this also happen to me! God promised he’d keep both sides of the covenant for Abram.

Abram understood what happened and the way he acts (most of the time) from that point on reflects this. Abram understood that if he stumbled, if he messed up, if he broke the deal, God would still keep His end... and further would make Abram's side up. If only he knew what that really meant.

Now we move forward thousands of years, skipping a ton of history that develops this story for the sake of brevity. Through all these thousands of years, the story was bit by bit, in tiny increments revealed: a messiah was coming, a king of kings who would redeem His people, save them from their sins, conquer the evil, defeat it, and through this bring an end to sin and the emptiness.

I am confident, however, that you all know where to find the whole story.

CHRISTMAS
The scene is a teenage girl and a young man walking to a tiny village in a conquered little bywater country in the middle east, significant only by being a crossroads between various kingdoms and continents. The girl is pregnant, and not by her husband. She's riding a donkey because she's really pregnant, the kind that looks like she stuffed a La-Z-Boy under her dress. They're headed to Bethlehem because the local governor has ordered a census for tax purposes and everyone has to go where they were born. Joseph is returning to his home town, but his relatives aren't there any more, so he has nowhere to stay. And because there's so many people coming to town, the little local inn is closed.

It was customary for the towns at the time to have a corral by the inns, a place for horses and camels to be brought to stay while their owners were in the inn. It was not unusual for people to stay there, and as it happened, there was room for one more small family. The time of the year is uncertain, although it seems probably to have been pretty close to spring. Mary has been noting contractions the whole trip to the stables and gives birth to a baby boy, putting him in the manger where the straw is at least softer than the ground. She wraps him in cloth that she brought along, knowing that she was really close to her time and wanting to be prepared.

The baby was an ordinary baby in almost every aspect. He cried, he was hungry, he was covered with blood slime when he was born, with an umbilical cord. He was human. Yet there was more to Him than met the eye, something Shepherds nearby heard about when the sky exploded with angels who could not keep this to themselves any longer. The first angel - Gabriel - pulls the shepherds close and says "you have got to hear this news" and the entire sky erupts with angels singing and praising God. The shepherds are so overwhelmed they abandon their flocks - trusting angels to watch them - and hurry to the place they were told about. The shepherds keep watch over the baby... which as it turns out is pretty appropriate, given their line of work.

This baby wasn't just a human being. The reason the angels were so excited and the shepherds so overwhelmed was because this baby was also God incarnate, the long, long anticipated messiah. Since the fall of man represented by Adam all of creation and history, all of God's people and even the angels themselves looked forward to this instant in time, the most critical and important moment in the history of the universe. It's why historians began dating AD and BC from the birth of Jesus Christ as they knew it. The center of reality, counting down to and from that one bright moment in time.

But why did it matter so much that Jesus be born? Let me put it another way.

Ask yourself a question: assume that Jesus Christ did come for real as God and Man to die for the sins of the world. Why did He come as a baby? Why not show up as an adult, die, and get it over with? Why the 33 years of life? All he taught he could have taught in 3 years or less, what's with all that time growing up? And really, how does that work: God dying nailed to a couple of boards accomplishes what exactly?

42
In a way, that's the question. That's the one you should be asking, because it focuses the meaning and the importance on the proper target. Jesus Christ was born a baby, grew up as a toddler, a little boy, a teenager, and became a man over thirty years of life with almost no mention of a single thing he did. There's a gap that some folk tales and legends are told about, but that are not recorded in the Bible - the only biography of Jesus that exists. He was a human in every way. He hit his thumb with the hammer while helping his carpenter dad, he had to pee, he got hungry. He was human and that's the key.

Look back up at that covenant that God made with Abram: there are two sides, God and man through Abram. The covenant wasn't just with Abram but with Abram "and his seed" as in "his offspring." God kept his side, Abram and the rest of his offspring didn't. They all had to keep their side or the deal is broken. Yet remember, God said he'd keep both sides, he'd keep Abram's side too.

And Jesus is that offspring given singular form, the second representative. Adam represented us all and blew the deal. Jesus represented us all and got the job done right.

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, "And to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "And to your Seed," who is Christ.
Galatians 3:16

We can't do the job, we're sinners. Even at our best, most noble moments of selfless giving, deep down there's that little voice "look at how good I am" the moments of pride, the mixed motives, the grudging effort. Sin isn't just what we do, it's what we are. We sin because we are are sinners, not the other way around. We're born in this state, we cannot keep the covenant.

Yet Christ could. Not only was He God, but He was human - sinlessly so. Jesus Christ is the only human being since the fall that was born without that sin nature. He wasn't corrupted, he wasn't a sinner. For 33 years in every way without any exception or hesitation, in thought, word, and deed, without omission or grudge, Jesus Christ did God's perfect will exactly the way He was supposed to. He never sinned. He fulfilled the covenant, He lived the perfect live God demands that we cannot, and really don't even care to.

Jesus was born a baby so that He would live that life completely, through each stage, without sin. Absolutely perfectly, just like us in every way - but without sin. Yes, that means every way. By keeping this side of the covenant, Jesus Christ kept that promise to Abram all those thousands of years ago in the desert. He was the little torch that went through the bloody path of gore. He kept both sides. Without this, the covenant wasn't complete.

EXCRUCIATING
Yet there was another part to the covenant. We failed to keep our side of the bargain, and God promised that if Abram didn't keep his side, if his offspring didn't, then He would pay that awful price. Long ago, in the law Moses gave, God pointed out that if any man was executed by being nailed to a tree, he was cursed by God. That was a kind of obscure and odd little bit to add to the law, but there you have it.

Jesus Christ was taken by the authorities, beaten and crucified by the Romans at the request of the Pharisees, and died on a tree, on a cross. He was accursed by this terrible death, by God's law. Let me give you a few facts about crucifixion.

First, the cross was more T shaped than t, but there probably was the section above the crossbar that held the plaque in which Pilate mocked the Jews with the inscription

Jesus, King of the Jews

in three languages, to make sure everyone got the point: don't mess with Roman law. The nails were driven through the wrists, part of the hand in ancient language, which would support the weight with its complex network of bones and tendons... and cluster of nerves. As anyone who has had a wrist injury can attest to, this is incredibly painful. The nails through the feet were driven through crossed legs, through the heel, again through a major nerve cluster. At most, someone could live a few days hanging on a cross, depending on how badly the victim had been scourged. This was so incredibly painful an experience that an entirely new word was created to describe it in Latin: excruciating.

Scourging was done with the victim lying on a slanted platform, and would be all across the back of their body, not simply on the back. The whips would often have thorns woven through the fabric or pieces of metal to make the experience that much more horrid.

Crucified people bled quite a bit from their wounds, but it was not usually exsanguination that was the cause of death. The victim, already whipped and forced to walk to their execution carrying a huge wooden bar (the upright section was already at the site), would hang on the cross by the nails, eventually becoming more and more exhausted. Their legs would give up, too tired to keep them up, and they'd hang by their wrists. This position would compress the chest making it very hard to breathe. It was not unlikely that the shoulder or elbow would dislocate from this position and the weight of the body. Pushing back up to breathe would rotate the square nails on their nerves, and shove the victim's flayed back against the rough wood.

The crucified subject can breathe in more easily than out, which causes carbon dioxide to build up in the body which causes increasing pain and blood that carries less and less oxygen. In the tissues surrounding the heart and lungs, liquid begins to build up. If anyone here has had "pleurisy pains" they know what that feels like. Imagine it in more than one location. In this wracking agony and cramping, the victim gasps for breath, and often wine mixed with an herb to dull pain was offered.

Jesus rejected this medicine.

The fluid around the heart constricts it, building up so that the heart beats more sluggishly, resulting in less and less oxygen to the body through blood. Eventually, the victim would finally come to the point that blood loss and pain would make it so they could no longer hold themselves up with their feet to breathe, and they would suffocate to death.

Jesus didn't die this way, though. He was in charge the entire time, if He'd wished, ten legions of angels would have shown up to wipe out Rome and the Pharisees, he could have stepped off the cross whole and unharmed. He didn't, because He was doing His father's will: he was keeping His side of the covenant, representing His people; the personification of the seed of Abraham. Jesus died by divine fiat, he finished his work and died by choice. When the Roman soldiers, at the request of the Jewish leaders, checked the bodies to make sure they died before the next morning, they found him already dead. Jamming a spear into his ribcage and heart, they saw "blood and water:" pericardial fluid and blood. So they didn't break his legs like they did the other prisoners to make them die faster.

HELL
Jesus died on that cross in unspeakable pain, but that wasn't the worst part. It was horrible, sure. That's what The Passion of the Christ tried to show, the physical side, because that's all you can really show in a movie. But there was more going on. When Jesus cried out "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" He wasn't complaining that he'd been expecting rescue, he was pointing out something far more awful that was happening.

The price for failing God, the price for not being perfectly Holy as God is holy - not keeping the covenant - was damnation. Hell isn't the absence of God, as some say. It's the absence of God's mercy and grace. God is very much there: He's there in constant and unending rage and punishment and justice. Hell is forever, it is an eternity of never ending and absolute perfect punishment. The worst moments on earth is paradise compared to hell, and it never ends.

There's a scene in the movie The Crow in which the eponymous hero pulls all the impressions and experiences of his beloved fiancee's struggle to live for 30 hours including time on the operating table. He keeps this inside himself to fuel his rage and revenge until he faces the man responsible and with a touch gives this evil man every single experience of that pain, all the time, all the fear, all the horror, all the desperation, in an instance. The incredible power of that experience, compressed into seconds is too much for the man, who perishes from the stress.

Jesus Christ compressed an infinity of eternal hell's pain into hours on the cross. He experienced the completeness of the curse, every single horror, misery, terror and evil of the curse in a few short hours. All the endless suffering of hell for every single one of God's children, millions throughout all history: Christ endured it all. The pain was a relief compared to this unthinkable experience. The sun its self was hidden away from the sight of it.

Jesus died. He was buried, for real, in a real tomb and really laid there for almost two days (the three days comes from the end of the first, all of the second, and the beginning of the third). Then he slapped death aside with laughable ease, and stepped out of the tomb. It's impressive to bring someone else back to life. Jesus brought himself back to life.

FAIRNESS
All this for what? To satisfy a sadistic deity, to paint an ugly picture? No, to fulfill the covenant.

Without that whole experience - life, death, and resurrection - the job wouldn't be done. If he hadn't lived that perfect life, then the covenant wouldn't be honored. If he hadn't died that sinless death, the covenant's punishment wouldn't be honored. Because both were complete, the covenant's blessings will be honored. You might cry it's unfair that Adam plunged us all into sin and punishment, look at the world, you don't deserve that suffering, you didn't break the deal! Yet Jesus Christ represented too: he kept the covenant for His people, He faced the same things as Adam and rejected them. Just as through Adam sin came into the world, through Christ - the second Adam - salvation did.

EMPTINESS
That emptiness we all know, in the dark hours of the morning, when we gaze into the abyss, that emptiness is life without sGod. That void in your life is God-shaped, it has a meaning. It's what we're like without being in proper relationship with our creator. The 16th century reformers asked a different question than the philosophers. They didn't ask "what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything," they asked "how can a sinful man be made right with a Holy God?" They asked the right question.

The answer is the doing and dying of Jesus Christ. That life I did not and cannot live, Christ lived for me and through Him I've kept the covenant. The death my life so richly and justly deserves, that Hell my sins demand he experienced for me and in my place, so that through him the covenant's demands are met. In Jesus Christ I have life, and hope, and meaning. In Jesus Christ, I am made right with God.

Do I feel that emptiness still? Absolutely, sometimes it's so cold and yawning I think I'm forever lost. Yet through it all I have a cross shaped life raft I'm floating on. I'm kept by God and His love, even when I don't feel it. Through these experiences I become closer to God and more conformed to His will and the likeness of Jesus Christ. I become more and more like him.

The answer isn't religion, it's Jesus. My faith doesn't help me, my actions don't help. It's not the stuff I do or the rituals I complete. Singing hymns and saying prayers, attending church and saying the Apostles Creed, communion and all that are not what makes the difference. Anyone can do that stuff. Anyone can go through the motions. Any one can believe, as the Bible says Satan himself believes Jesus is God and died for the world, and he fears.

It's what God does that matters. What God does in salvation, applying the holiness of Jesus Christ to my life and putting His perfect righteousness to my account. The religious trappings: prayer, singing hymns, and so on, those are responses to what has been done, they are like a drowning victim breathing because he's been resuscitated. His breathing didn't save his life, the resuscitation did: the breathing is the response, the result. Our lives, the way we act is a response to what God has done, not the saving, and not the thing that fills the gap. Not religion, Christ.

Little by little, begrudgingly, struggling, tiny bits of that holiness put to our account are given to Christians as they live, a process called Sanctification. We're lousy at it. We're exhibit A of why people need a savior. We know better and spit in God's face, despite his love and unbelievable sacrifice. Christians are awful at getting better, it's like we don't even try most of the time. Yet the holiness slowly grows, bit by bit. I'm sure all of you know some dear old saint who has lived a long painful life with this struggle. Even they face sin in their lives, just less visibly.

One day, we have the hope of glorification, one day we will go home. One day this fight against sin will end, and we can rest, finally holy, finally complete, finally what we've always been meant to be. Some day we'll know glory in it's fullest and most meaningful extent.

See, paradise isn't sitting on a cloud playing a harp. It's being who you sense you should be, but never achieve. It's everything working exactly as it is supposed to. It's knowing perfect, unending, absolute and unconditional love without fear of betrayal or loss. It's complete end of shame because no one does anything shameful.

Its an end to the emptiness when we finally are reunited, completely, with God, face to face as Adam once was, but this time, its forever. That's the answer to that emptiness, that feeling of loss. It's Jesus Christ, the savior and king of kings. It's the light of the world. That's why the philosophers could never figure it out: it made no rational sense. It was something beyond humanity, beyond our ability to grasp. It was too big for us to work out on our own: God becoming man and being the savior? Unbelievable.

Yet too real to ignore.

Perhaps for some, when you sing the old Christmas carols they might make more sense, such as this rarely sung verse from Hark the Herald Angels Sing:

Come, Desire of nations come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the Woman's conquering Seed,
Bruise in us the Serpent's head.
Adam's likeness now efface:
Stamp Thine image in its place;
Second Adam, from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Glory to the Newborn King.

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