Wednesday, December 11, 2002
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 |
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What is it like to walk in another's shoes? Jesus knows ... By JOHN HATCHER Shoes! It's about shoes. My dirty, smelly, already contoured-to-fit-my-feet shoes. The shoes that need polishing, but that only get a promise. The shoes that keep my feet warm in the winter and dry in a summer rain. Shoes and Christmas. You see, Christmas is about the incarnation. That is, Christ in his spiritual state, becoming like one of us in a physical state. The nearest analogy for me would be the condensation found outside a cold glass of pop. From where does the water come? The air! The moisture in the air which cannot be seen becomes water outside the class which we can see. That's something like the incarnation. Now, back to shoes. What's it like to walk in your shoes and my shoes? We experience pain and suffering from severe sickness to crippling grief. We experience want from that of a sandwich by a homeless person to enough to pay a mortgage by a five-figure income family. We experience children who make failed choices to friends who presume on friendships beyond what they can bear. What's it like to walk in our shoes? Well, that's one of the things the incarnation embraces. God through Jesus finds out what it's like to walk in our very own shoes. In addition to our pain and suffering, he also experiences the joys we know: like the party at Matt's home; like the grand reception he received at Zack's home; like the wedding at Cana; like the comfortable times in the home of Martha and Mary. I mean, in walking in our shoes, it wasn't all bad. And your life isn't all that is, all bad. You have so laughed with food in your mouth and shot the food out. You have danced all your troubles away at least once. You have been treated to a room full of friends on your birthday at least once. Indeed, to walk in our shoes isn't all bad. But, there is some bad. Jesus found out what it was like to be run out of town. He knows what it is to be hungry and sleep with a rock for a pillow and the stars as his roof. He knows what it is to be rejected by the crowd and close, intimate friends. There's not a pair of shoes on planet earth that Jesus doesn't know what it feels like to put them on. The incarnation puts Jesus in a situation so he knows what he is talking about when he says, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."(Matthew 11: 28-30). In fact, the application of the incarnation and the pair of shoes focuses on our need to try to feel what it must be like to walk in another's shoes. I believe the planet would be a better place to live. In home life, for instance, if every husband would stop and think what it must be like to walk in his wife's shoes, I believe a flood of compassion and understanding would come. Men, take a moment and think what it must be like every month for your wife just so she can give you children. Think about it. Put her shoes on. Wives, put your husband's size 12 on and think about it would be like to get fired from your job just because the economy has turned south. Parents, put your child's Nikes on and think for a few minutes about all the peer pressure he or she bears up under every day. If Christ walked in our shoes, doesn't it make sense we should at least think what it must be like to walk in someone else's shoes. That's incarnational thinking. The Rev.
Dr. John Hatcher is pastor of |
