Luke 21:28a
You know what I've heard ever since 9th grade? That's when I grew from 5'5" to 6'5". What do you think I've heard? "Stand up straight."
After growing another 4 inches in high school, then I really heard it. "Don't stoop!" "Be proud of your height"! I would reply something like, "I can't help but stoop and bend over--I have to talk to all you short people."
Former basketball great Wilt Chamberlain was proud of his height--even arrogant about it. One time, when he was traveling with the 76'ers, he was on an elevator at the hotel. A lady looked up at him and said, "How's the weather up there, Wilt?" He looked down on her, spit on her, and said, "It's raining." Evidently he had heard enough of that weather line.
It's hard to remember to stand up straight. Sometimes I think I am. Then I see a picture of me, and my shoulders are rounded, my neck is bent down, and I'm not straight.
When I was in seminary, some old guy, a retired pastor was visiting the seminary. He was very tall. He struck up a conversation with me and one of the first things he said was, "Stand up straight." He told me I should stick my thumbs out away from my body--that was a trick he used to stand up straight. I was in my early twenties. I didn't need to be told by some old geezer how to keep my thumbs out and stand up straight. Do you know what that looks like—how dweebish it is—walking around with your thumbs out!? Now I'm an old geezer and I still don't stand straight. And I never kept my thumbs out, either.
II
Posture is important, though. Not just standing straight. But what our posture, our body language, is communicating to others.
There’s a lot of posturing going on in our world these days. It doesn’t matter if it's a basketball player dunking on his defenders head then strutting back down the court; or, Russia and Turkey putting troops on each other’s boarders; or one of the Republican candidates at the latest debate trying to appear tough and commanding.
We all do a bit of posturing, don’t we—trying to convey a false impression. Posing is another word for it. Posing and posturing. Trying to impress or mislead others about who we are simply through our posture.
We do that because we all realize how our posture conveys what we are feeling, or how we are feeling about ourselves, about others, or our situation in life. If you pay attention to posture and body language you can discern a lot about other people. The reason you need to pay attention to body language and posture is that we communicate more with our bodies than with our words. The truth is, our bodies never lie even when our words are.
III
I have been directing your attention, this Advent, to Jesus’ Second Coming as contrasted to his First Coming. I talked two weeks ago about the state of the world that Jesus first came into, and the state of the world when he will come again.
At his Second Coming, Jesus says our posture should change. When Jesus comes again we should straighten up, stand up, lift up our heads, rise to our feet. At the first coming, people’s posture was different. Then, people kneeled before the Savior Child. Before this awesome visage of humble power, God in a baby, people could do no other than fall to a kneeling posture.
But when Jesus comes again, it is time to get up. It’s time to get on our feet, straighten up, and lift our faces.
If people are to rise and straighten up when Jesus comes again, what does that tell us about people’s posture before that Second Coming? What truth were people’s bodies and posture conveying before Jesus comes again?
First, they are bent over. Maybe bent over in defeat. Dani Canaan put up a video on her Facebook site this week. It was the last point of the volleyball match between #1 USC and 9th ranked KU. That last point seemed to go on forever. KU won the point and won the match. The difference in posture between the two teams was amazing. The USC team had stunned, blank looks on their faces, with shoulders rolled in. Just standing still. Unable even to talk. They were bent over by defeat. That’s how people look before Jesus will come back—bent over in defeat. Like they were fighting to keep their place in the world and didn’t make it. Feeling like losers.
Imagine a world of people feeling like losers. How many millions of people are feeling bent over. Defeated by life’s harsher circumstances. Hunger. Grief. Oppression. Homelessness. Refugees. Poverty. Addictions. Jobless. Chronic or terminal illness. Victims of terrorists. All bent over and defeated.
Secondly, when Christ comes again, if people are to lift their heads, they must have been going through life with heads down. Facing the ground. Maybe eyes closed. Feeling depressed. Not looking where they were going, especially. Just shuffling along. Putting one foot in front of the other. No sense of mission or purpose in life. Watching their round-toed shoes slowly stepping forward, right, shuffle, left, shuffle, right, shuffle, left, shuffle.
When you are trying to assess someone’s body language while having a conversation, particularly when the other person won’t look you in the eyes, how are you reading that? Especially if they always look down and never look up. What are they saying about how they feel about themselves? Think about a world of people who feel so worthless about themselves, so aimless, so purposeless, they can’t and won’t lift their faces to look at other people in the eye, or look around and see the world.
Imagine the burden it is to carry the feeling that you are not important to anyone. That no one cares. The feeling of being alone. That if you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will. And you’re not even sure if you are up to the task of looking after yourself. Those kinds of feelings keep you looking down, neck bent with the weight of self-resignation or despair. Even humiliation.
IV
Combine those two postures into one body. (Do this.) Bent over. Shoulders hunched and rolled inwards. Neck bent down. Face parallel to the ground. It’s as if their body is boxed in—bent and compressed to fit the space of the box which is called misery. They are in the box and unable to get out, or even want to get out. Unable to free themselves, they are stuck in the cramped box of depression and burden and exhaustion and defeat. Nothing to be proud about. No one proud of them.
One of the words in the Bible for sin literally means to be boxed in. To be compressed, to be squeezed down upon, and totally constricted.
That’s how the world of people is. People may not look like that. We are good at pretending. Look around at people, and pay attention to their bodies; you will see the signs of the betrayal of their seemingly happy words—shoulders slightly rounded, faces down more than looking up, the loss of a lightness to their step. Pay attention; you will see it. God does. And that’s why Christ must come again, to straighten people up, to lift up their faces once and for all.
V
When Christ will come, all people will finally be able to raise up. They will become unbent. The poet, Ranier Maria Rilke, in one of his poems, wrote:
I want to unfold
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded,
there I am a lie…
I like those lines because they describe for me what Christ will do when he comes. Not just in the Second Coming, but also when Jesus comes to us at all times. Jesus will “unfold” us. (Do this.) Jesus will first get us out of the cramped space we have been folded into—that we most likely have folded ourselves into—and release us from those boxes. And then Jesus will begin the slow and amazing process of unfolding us so we can stand up straight again. So we can lift our faces again and look him in the eyes, face-to-face, and never hang our head again.
Because, as the poet Rilke has in his poem, when we are folded up human beings, we are “a lie.” That is, we aren’t who we are. We aren’t who we can and should be in the name of Jesus. Our lives are no where near where they should be when we are folded up. We are living a lie.
Folded up, we have fallen for the lie that this is all we can amount to.
We have fallen for the lie that there is no mission in life to which we can give ourselves to.
We have fallen for the lie that we can be nothing great, nor do great things as God’s human beings.
We have fallen for the lie that Jesus can do nothing with us now that we have allowed ourselves to be folded and boxed.
That is all a lie.
Jesus doesn’t want us to live that lie. That lie must be broken for all human beings who have been bent over, face down, and folded up. That is why Jesus has come and will come again. Now that Jesus has come, and when Jesus comes again, and however many more times Jesus must come until we get it, he is extending us his hand. Once we touch that hand we feel a new backbone forming. We are given a new set of eyes that aren’t afraid to look into another’s eyes. We feel ourselves unfolding, straightening up, face up, standing tall, poised, and ready to live the Jesus life. Brave. Poised. Strong. Confident. Elated, even.
Stand up straight. Raise your heads. Jesus is coming.
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