Sneaky Fitch
2 Corinthians 4:10-11
The play has been around for a while; it's a staple of high school drama departments. It's an old wheeze, but a fun one.
The play is titled The Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch. The plot is relatively simple. The town drunk, one Sneaky Fitch, manages in a comedy of errors to convince all the town that he is dead. Laid out in a coffin, he comes to—and discovers that all the people are afraid of him. After all, he's already died. You can't kill a dead man. Even the local gunslinger is terrified.
The rest I leave to your imagination. Paul makes a similar argument here. If you have already died—in Christ—then death has no real hold on you. Your wounds, which for most people are a source of worry and fear, become the marks of honor. You have suffered for Christ's sake; the physical marks you bear are for the Christian what medals are for the soldier.
In death, too, we carry the death of Christ within us. We are buried with him in baptism. We share his death; we shall share his life eternal. It's the great paradox of the New Testament. If you want to save your life, lose it. If you save it, you lose it.
We are given a gift as Christians: the gift of death. We are dead with Christ; the things of this world no longer have a hold on us. Part and parcel of that gift is our resurrection. We shall be like him; we shall behold him face to face.
That's the time this life will be revealed. Indeed, that's the point. In this world, our wounds for Christ testify to what we know to be true in Christ Jesus. If we suffer with him, we reign with him. We are joint heirs (with Jesus) of the kingdom of God. As he rose, so shall we rise.
In the meanwhile, we must keep on keeping on. Christianity does not allow room for the one whose talent is daydreaming when there is work to be done. Our wounds for Christ—physical or otherwise—are the evidence of his life within us.
A story is told of a missionary, sentenced to a prison term for preaching the Gospel. In prison he was cruelly beaten; his back became a mass of scars. As he was released, the local ruler asked if he had learned his lesson. In reply, he asked permission to go back and start preaching again. The ruler denied him this, saying, "My people are not foolish enough to listen to your words, but they will believe your scars."
Lord, as hard as it may sound, grant that those around us will believe our scars. May we be witnesses to you. :angel:
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