P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

HIDDEN MUSCLE

There's a book here in David's office with a picture on the front that would hardly impress the talent scouts of the World Wrestling Federation or a NordicTrack weightlifters' association. The book is entitled My Brother Joseph — we've mentioned it here on the program before — and it's a biography of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. And to be very frank, the picture on the front shows a rather frail-looking man: glasses, thinning gray hair, a kind of beatific, benign smile. It's just a head shot, but you'd guess from looking and extrapolating that this is a man weighing maybe 155 pounds.

The book is written by a very close friend, Eugene Kennedy, a former priest as well, and the book chronicles Bernardin's career with the Church of Rome and then his tragic death due to pancreatic cancer. The two men knew each other for decades, and at one point Kennedy has this to say about the man with the thinning hair and the quiet smile, the man who admittedly looked pale, like he'd never been on a fishing boat or to a ballpark or a golf course:

"In the next thirty years," he writes, "I would learn at close range, when nobody else was looking, how profoundly MANLY he was in a gentle, nonargumentative style that covered the tensile strength of his character."

Now, what does that expression "tensile strength" mean? We'll define it in a moment, but first note that here was a male being, a shy-appearing priest, who is here described by his best friend as being "(quote) profoundly manly." Behind those glasses was the wisdom of a man; covered up (barely) by those wisps of gray hair was a mind that was tough, strong, enduring, manly. All through this book, Kennedy describes how Cardinal Bernardin had to face difficult challenges within his church; pressures were pushing him this way and that way politically as he tried to help forge church doctrines and policies. He had to know when to be a peacemaker, and when to stand firm, when to draw a hard line and when to bend it. And fellow Christians soon learned that this 155-pound man was just that: a MAN.

You know, I wish all of us could sense how all the pictures we've seen hanging in museums and church foyers portraying Christ don't tell the story of a strong Man either. Friend, Jesus was the most manly Man who ever walked on this earth. I believe it's a complete myth that He was pale or weak or limp in His posture — most of those paintings are absolute fabrications — but even if the Man Jesus Christ HAD been pale, it would not have been a paleness of the heart. Even if He had been weak of muscle — a near impossibility considering that He was a successful carpenter and fisherman, and that He physically knocked over the whole Moneychangers' Trade Mart in the temple and drove out the crooks operating there — there was nothing weak about the character of this unique Man.

Some of you know, if you followed news in the field of religion in the year 1993, that a high-ranking cardinal in the Catholic Church was accused of sexual abuse. The suit alleged that a young seminarian named Steven Cook, now dying with AIDS, had been abused by this priest. And the defendant's name was Joseph Bernardin.
Well, the accusations were absolutely false, but this lawsuit, painfully public in every intimate detail, went forward, taking long months before it was dismissed for a total lack of evidence. And here's where we want to go back to that expression: "tensile strength." Maybe you notice the root word, "tense" or "tension," in there. "Tensile strength." Meaning the kind of strength you demonstrate when there is tension, or literally, a stretching out. When you're pulled almost to the breaking point, stretched into a state of agony, do you snap or do you endure?

Well, this quiet Christian man stayed the course. He did forcefully but kindly maintain his innocence. But he was kind to his accusers; he cooperated as they pressed ahead with their ridiculous questions. In fact, he reached out in a letter to the young man who accused him. Here it is, word for word:

"Dear Steven, Needless to say, I was shocked and hurt by the allegation you made against me. I was shocked because I have never abused anyone in all my life. But as I thought it over, I began to think that you must be suffering a great deal. The idea came to me yesterday morning that it would be a good thing if I visited with you personally. The purpose of the visit would be strictly pastoral — to show my concern and to pray with you. If you are interested in such a visit, please let me know. I will come to you if you wish. Sincerely yours in Christ, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago."

And you know, I read and then reread that letter, and it reminds me of a Friday afternoon where another Man looked very weak and defenseless. I mean, they stripped Jesus of His clothes; they nailed Him down so that He was, to all appearances, powerless. Roman soldiers were everywhere with their spears; hecklers were all around with their sharp words, and there was, apparently, no place He could go to get out of earshot. He wasn't exactly in a position to cover up His ears with His hands; both hands were fastened down with nails to that crossbeam.

And yet this Man, this supposedly defenseless Man, showed what Eugene Kennedy calls "tensile strength." They stretched Him, but Jesus never broke. They cursed Him, but He didn't curse back. They spat in His face; He didn't return the favor. What did He do instead? The unbelievable response — His letter to them, if you please — is found for us in Luke chapter 23, verse 34. They're nailing His hands to the wood; they're stripping away His clothes; they're taking that cross and shoving it hard into the dirt. And here's what Jesus says in prayer:

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

In the Clear Word paraphrase, the prayer reads like this:
"While they were nailing Jesus to the cross, He prayed, ‘Father, forgive these men; they're just carrying out orders. They don't really know what they're doing.'"

You know, friend, the next time you see one of those pasty-white, 97-pound pictures of Jesus, I hope you'll join me in just falling to your knees in awe. Jesus is so indescribably strong here, such a Man — such a Man as this world has never known — that even though He could have come down from that cross, even though He could have just LOOKED at those nails with His eyes and melted them, and melted the guards and the hecklers too, He didn't do it. Instead He had the MANLY, GODLY divine ability to see beyond the nails and the insults. Jesus was right; these poor, stupid soldiers didn't know any better. His mission was so far above what they could comprehend, His raw, incredible manhood was so far above the manhood of anybody on that hill, that He could honestly say to His Father: "Dad . . . You know and I know that these poor wretches just don't get it. Father . . . go ahead and forgive them. I don't hold this against them."

Just like that quiet Catholic Cardinal who looks on the news, or in his own hometown paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, and there's this picture of this young man, Steven Cook. And Steven is screaming at the camera: "Rape! Incest! Abuse!" But Joseph looks up at heaven and says, "Father, we know this young man is a victim too. He's confused. He's dying of AIDS and he's lashing out. He doesn't really know what he's saying. Father, I know You don't hate him, and neither do I. Help me to reach out to him somehow."

Well, friend, the lesson for us is a hard one. Because we look at accusers and our natural impulse is to kill them. And we know that the manly thing to do, considering Jesus' example, is to see that enemy as God does. To look beyond the taunts, the persecution, the nasty e-mails, and see someone God wants to save. But I'll be the first "man" to admit that "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" doesn't look manly or feel manly. "Turn the other cheek," from a Hollywood point of view, isn't as glorious as pulling out an Uzi and emptying it on the punks who flip you off as they drive by. And yet the people of the kingdom are called to live by this higher definition.

Maybe you're in a loveless marriage. Your wife squanders every cent you earn; she jabs away at your manhood with her sharp tongue. And of course, gender-wise, this can run both directions. But what a difficult, nearly impossible thing it is to demonstrate "tensile strength" here, to be a true man. On television, the real men are brilliant in their comebacks, their razor-sharp return volleys — made possible by smart scriptwriters, of course. And a real man, defined by the WGA, the Writers' Guild of America, makes verbal mincemeat of any female soap-opera star who insults his macho manhood. But contrast that with this helpless Man who is nailed to a cross, who chooses by His own power to STAY nailed to the cross, who demonstrates to us the manhood of a closed mouth, a quieted tongue. "They crucified my Lord; and He never said a mumblin' word."
I guess it's true what they say; looks can be deceiving.