O is for
Old
Next time students will be graduating it will be in the Year 2000. Some of you will be serving as their commencement speakers or baccalaureate preachers. I can see it now. You will begin your address by greeting them: "So you are the Class of 2000." The moment you say only that much, some precocious child in a back pew, some little sister, will be startled by what you've just said. She will lean over and whisper to her father, "Class of 2000 -- are there that many graduating tonight"? Her father will shake his head reassuringly, No. "Then why 2000," the little girl persists. "2000 what?" The father thinks for a moment and then whispers back, "2000 years, 2000 years old." "Wow," the child exclaims, "Who is 2000 years old?" The father realizes what he has gotten himself into, and he whispers back, "Better ask your mother."
If you should turn out to be the mother in question, What would you answer the child? Who is it who is 2000 years old, give or take a few years? Who from among all those who have gone before is so important that you would date your whole life, your whole world, from the time he or she lived? The child's question comes down to this, Whose bi-millennium is it anyway? I suspect that the mother simply will say, "That's how old Jesus Christ is." With that answer the child is just about to let out another, a second Wow, just about but not quite. Suddenly she hesitates. She suppresses the Wow. Her expression turns to a frown. Why? More on that in a moment. First, let us interject, if the child had gone through with the next Wow, she would have had good reason, don't you think? After all, two thousand years is a long time. For anyone to live that long -- anyone like us, and Jesus is like us -- is a pretty ripe old age. Granted, the mother could say what she did, that Jesus Christ is still living after 2000 years, only on faith. She is not saying only that two millennia ago Jesus lived and died. That much anyone could have said, even the little girl's father. The mother, however, is a believer. She takes it as a given that this same Jesus who died was in turn raised from the dead and therefore, ever since, keeps adding years to his life. Isn't that enough for another Wow?
Then why did the girl stifle her Wow? What gave her pause? Why the sudden frown? Listen. She nuzzles up to her mom's ear and, with just a touch of embarrassment asks, "But isn't Jesus just as old as God? Isn't Jesus God, too? Why did he start so late?"
