We all like name-dropping, don’t we? To be able to casually mention the celebrity that we have met, the sportsman that we are related to, the media figure that we knew at school, somehow increases our prestige, bolsters our standing. We bask in the reflected glory! We swell with pride when we are able to demonstrate our superiority to others.
Well, I can play that game too. I am an all-rounder – I try to cover most areas. So you have sporting connections? I was at school with a famous England cricketer, and a current England rugby player is an old boy of my school as well. Maybe you had thought of the arts: for instance, literature. I once had lunch with a novelist who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Or maybe music? A young cellist once played for us during an art lesson – she went on to become one of the most famous cellists in the world. Perhaps your interest is in politics: I once had the privilege of dressing the chairman of a national retailer in Virtual Reality kit, who went on to become a peer of the realm. And once I shared a railway platform with just one other person as I waited for a train – that was Enoch Powell. Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing after all.
The thing is, how do these encounters, these brushes with fame, enhance me? Do I share their illustrious reputations? Am I a better cricketer for my close proximity to the aforementioned star? No, not at all. He never knew who I was! Am I a better writer for my meal with the novelist? Sadly no, it did not rub off. He never remembered me. Oh that I could have been a musician like that girl! But I still struggle to play anything: my first concert will have to be postponed again until after I depart. Will I make a mark on the national political stage? No-one is listening, it’s no use. Somehow the shine just won’t be transferred.
Paul the apostle was once driven to boasting of his past as well. He was confronted with a group of people who were so proud of their religious heritage. They had it all, they thought: who was this upstart heretic? You can read of Paul’s ‘boasting’ in his second letter to the Corinthians, chapters 11 & 12, and Philippians 3:4-6.
Unlike me, he did have reason to be proud – in terms of his status, background, education, and experience. But he only mentions these things in order to dismiss them. If we continue reading in that passage in Philippians, he says: ‘But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…’ He dismissed all these advantages, indeed was prepared to sacrifice his life, in order to be identified with a penniless Jew who was brutally executed by the Romans as a criminal.
That is where I stand too. All those trifles I was so proud of are of no worth. But knowing Christ, knowing the one who held no status, wrote and composed nothing, and won no competition, is the most wonderful thing in the world. Because Christ is truly glorious, the maker and ruler of all things – and unlike those people I mentioned, He stooped down to call me to His side – to call me, personally, and own me as His adopted child. It is His reflected glory that I share, and the more I become like Him in His humility, the more of His glory is seen.
Who am I? You don’t need to know that. Just look at Jesus.
