Most of God’s creatures are in some sort of cage. Animals that appear to run wild are not all that free; they have migratory patterns and other restraints on where they can go. They are caged, even when that cage is not visible. And what that cage does to their courage!
The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, are generally permitted to roam at will; but there are aviaries where birds are caged and aquariums where fish are contained. In such places caged creatures at first try to escape, but then calm down and become docile. It looks as though their courage is gone.
The same with land creatures. If the elephants of India get off the reservation, they are driven back, lest they become dangerous. If the herds of wildebeest sweeping across the Serengeti in east Africa stray from their traditional migration paths, they become fresh meat for predators. There seems to be safety in numbers and peace living within restraints. Being caged appears to diminish courage.
But every now and again, an animal defies that rule and finds the courage to get past its restraints and do whatever it wants to do. Every now and then, some creature goes beyond the confines of its cage and becomes a courageous champion of its own ways.
A few months ago at the National Zoo a tiger, thought to be well caged and supposed to have settled in to its routine, was apparently taunted and teased by several young men. They thought they were safe, but they went too far. That great cat summoned up its courage, acted out its tigerness, and jumped the barrier. The result for these young men was disastrous. A sad moment; but what those fellows did not see was that even the most sophisticated of cages may not be enough to hold back a courageous cat. A tiger is what it is, a wild animal, and deep down in its instincts it knows what one of our poets has said, “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” The creature summoned up the courage to act like what it is.
By contrast, however, I point you to Chloe. Chloe is my little dog. Chloe is a cross between Pekinese and poodle, called therefore a peekapoo. A breed called peekapoo just sounds tame and timid. And generally she is. Generally this 15-year-old smallish dog is quiet and seems happy with her cage, which is our house. She very seldom spends time outside that house. However, let a neighbor walk his dog, and Chloe’s personality changes. As the neighbor and his huge hound walk by outside, Chloe barks belligerently from within the house. She sounds off inside the windows. Now I cannot understand dog language, but it sounds like a taunt of defiance to me. Something like, “Arf, arf, you think you are so big. Arf, arf, you’re not so smart.” One of our neighbors raises a breed called Bouvier de Flandres, and those things are giants! When one of them is trotted down the street, has caged courage.
But guess what? When we put Miss Chloe on a leash and take her out, and one of those monsters is on the street, she is strangely quiet. She barks not at all. In fact, if one of those colossal canines so much as makes a move in her direction, she bolts for the house and wants to go back into her cage. The courage she exhibits so powerfully inside the cage is absent from the street. What happened to her caged courage?
Most of God’s creatures are in some sort of cage. Those that appear to run wild are not all that free. They are caged, even when that cage is not visible. And what that cage does to their courage! For every now and again, an animal defies that rule and finds the courage to get past its restraints and do whatever it wants to do. Every now and then, some creature goes beyond the confines of its cage and becomes a courageous champion of its own ways. But much of the time it is a victim of caged courage.
I wonder if we human beings are in the same situation. I wonder if we too are in cages that we hardly even notice, sometimes cages that we ourselves make – and we just do not summon the courage to get out of them and be what we were intended to be. I wonder whether we too are chained and have made peace with our chains, no longer even trying to get beyond the confines. Are we slaves in chains to difficult circumstances? Or are we God’s creatures, born free, but having lost our courage?
Last week we visited the Apostle Paul, chained in a Roman prison. We found that chains or not, the purposes of God will be accomplished. We learned that Paul’s spirit was not bound and that his imprisonment had actually become, for him, an opportunity for God’s work to go forward. Today we take a closer look at the same circumstance: Paul, in a Roman prison, caged. But Paul, having the courage to be who he was. Paul in Rome, writing to the church at Philippi, with caged courage. For in this passage Paul will teach us who we are, though the circumstances of life be difficult. He will proclaim, “To me to live is Christ; to die is gain.” Would you repeat that with me? “To me to live is Christ; to die is gain”. My pastor of some years back used to read it this way, “To live is Christ; to die is more Christ.” There is the secret of caged courage. There is the difference between the tiger leaping from his den and little Chloe barking in the safety of our house.
I
First, notice that in these confining circumstances, Paul rediscovered who he was. He clarified his own identity. He did not lose his calling, he did not back off from his mission. Paul continued to be Paul, prison or not. Paul continued to consider himself the apostle to the nations, chains or no chains. The first step in releasing your caged courage, courage that will break the chains of your circumstances, is to clarify your own heart and strengthen your own identity.
I’m sure most of you remember the basics of Paul’s story. You remember that once he was a self-appointed prosecutor, running down Christians and trying to stop what he thought was a pernicious cult. But you also remember the Damascus Road – the blinding light, the voice that called, his response to Christ. And you know that after some time to absorb all this, Paul declared himself on a mission to preach Christ to all nations. That became who he was and what he was about.
In order to accomplish that mission, Paul had to summon up his courage. He had to endure the suspicion of others in the early church; he had to struggle against the displeasure of Jewish leaders and Roman officials alike. There is even evidence that he had to contend with his own physical ills. The circumstances that confronted Paul were daunting indeed. But here is the point: Paul never forgot who he was. Paul never stopped being Paul. Paul never backed off from what God had given him to do. If we are going release our caged courage; if we are going to live beyond the chains of our circumstances, we must first of all know who we are and what we are about.
Paul knew. Paul knew that in every circumstance he was a messenger of the Gospel. Paul knew that no matter what else you might do to him, if he were to retain his identity, it would be as a witness for Christ. So, “to live is Christ.” That’s all there is, there ain’t no more. Christ. Christ in the morning, Christ at noon, Christ at night. Just Christ. “For to me to live is Christ.” And if you were to tell him, as indeed they did a couple of years later, that he would be executed, he would have responded, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.” He was who he was; his courage came from knowing that. He broke the chains of his circumstances with caged courage released.
Joni Eareckson was a fresh-faced teenager, right out of high school in 1967, when she broke her back in a diving accident in the Chesapeake Bay. No amount of surgery or treatment could do anything, and she was left a quadriplegic, without use of either her legs or her arms. You would think that that would be the end of Joni; what active teen could accept the cage of a dysfunctional body? But Joni Eareckson identified who she was. Joni claimed Christ as her own, and claimed a mission. During two years of rehabilitation, Joni learned to paint with a brush clenched in her teeth, and produced art that became world famous. Joni has now written more than thirty books, she leads conferences on empowering disabled persons, she just keeps on going. Hers is caged courage released, based on her knowing who she is and what she is about. To her to live is Christ, and to die would be more Christ.
Your cage may be neither a broken body nor a prison cell. But your cage may be any number of things. It may be a poor education, so that you think you can never succeed at much of anything. But if you know who you are and what you are about, Christ can empower you for success. In the church I served as pastor, we had people who had not graduated from high school serving right alongside our PhD’s and MD’s and fiddle-dee-dees, and it made no difference. They knew who they were and what they were about. Caged courage released.
It may be that you are caged by debt and financial struggle. It may be that there is always more month than money, always more demands for the shallow pockets. But do you know that years ago, I discovered one thing that helped me clarify who I am and what I am about? Do you know that long before I started teaching and preaching about tithing, I practiced tithing as a boy, and it reinforced in my mind who I am? I got a whole dollar in allowance every week. That seems like nothing to kids today, but in 1948 or so I could parlay that into candy bars, comic books, and balsa wood airplanes; but after a couple of days I would have nothing left for anything else. I finally found that if I tithed first, dropping in my dime at church, then something happened inside that meant I didn’t even want the candy bar and I could do with last week’s model airplane. You see, even when you are caged and chained financially, there is a way to build up your caged courage; invest faithfully in the Kingdom and soon you will know who you are, and you will say, with Paul, “To me to live is Christ.”
I do not know what cages you. I am learning what cages me. But I am finding that my caged courage is being released as I grow older, for today I understand who I am as I did not when I was twenty or forty or sixty; and today I understand what I am about more clearly than ever I have. If there is in me any courage at all, if I am in any way more tiger than peekapoo, it is because “To me to live is Christ; and to die is gain.”
II
But in addition to clarifying who we are and what we are about, if we would break the chains and live beyond our circumstances, we must also put into perspective the people who surround us. If we would break the chains and release our caged courage, we must understand our relationships and see them as opportunities rather than as obstacles.
How many times have I heard people say that what holds us back is “them.” You know, “them”. Them that holds the power, them that calls the shots, them that doesn’t like us, them that is prejudiced against us. A whole lot of us go around explaining our lack of courage and our failure to accomplish in terms of “them”. Other people hold us back; other people chain us. We are afraid of the “thems” in our lives, and our courage fails us. It’s caged.
A couple in the church I once pastored came one day to ask for help. Their marriage had deteriorated to the point where they were not even speaking to one another. The husband was bar-hopping after work because, he said, he was afraid to go home and listen to all her complaints. She, on the other hand, had become tired of arguing; they argued about money, they argued about the children, they argued about where to go on vacation. Lord, they even argued about my sermons! Sort of a bad news, good news proposition: the bad news is that I had added to their arguments, the good news is that they were listening. I said, “They were listening.” Hello? Hello?! Well, the wife’s strategy had become one of saying nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even, “Hi, how was your day?” Not even, “What would you like for dinner?” Just silence; absolute, groaning silence. She said she was afraid to speak on any subject, so she shut up entirely. So what did we have here? Two people manacled in marriage, chained to one another, caged in silence because each was afraid of the other and neither was committed to understanding the other. Without the courage even to come home and talk or to open up over the dinner table, neither had committed to grasping who the other was.
By contrast, listen to Paul, clamped in prison and troubled by rumors that this one and that one were running him down. He has a perspective on those who want to make his circumstances even more miserable. “Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way …”
What a perspective! What a way to look at the people who want to hold us down! What does it matter that we have some folks for us and some folks against us? Christ is proclaimed in every way. What does it matter that we can connect with some and others seem dead set against us? We can still be who we are and love them and trust Christ to do something in them.
What does it matter if the supervisor does not like you? Can you first understand him and all the pressures he faces, and then offer him what you know about life? What does it matter if that spouse is always upset about something and does not communicate? Can we first think about him, about her, and what we have done that has brought this mess about? And can we then swallow our pride, deal with our fears, and unleash our caged courage to seek forgiveness? What does it matter if our pride is injured in the process?
What does it matter if we take a stand against crude behavior, worried that our reputation as “one of the guys” is at stake? What does it matter if we unchain our tongues and witness to someone we know will lash out at us? What does it matter if we take the good news to someone who will think we are fanatics? What does it matter if we die a little inside because someone laughs us off or thinks we are not “cool”? We have told the truth, we have opened our hearts, we have uncaged our courage. What does it matter? Christ is proclaimed and “to live is Christ, to die is gain.” .
Most of God’s creatures are in some sort of cage. Those that appear to run wild are not all that free. They are caged, even when that cage is not visible. And what that cage does to their courage! For every now and again, an animal defies that rule and finds the courage to get past its restraints and do whatever it wants to do. Every now and then, some creature goes beyond the confines of its cage and becomes a courageous champion of its own ways.
If we first clarify who we are and what we are about, and then if we take the time to understand our relationships, we will break the chains of circumstance. We may not break open the cages in which we live, but we will unleash courage. And like the tiger leaping from his cage, we will find freedom; we will not have to be Chloe the peekapoo, loud and long in the safe spots but cowering in fear in the real world.
The poet T. S. Eliot says it for me: Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger … To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk Among whispers
Oh, approach this table with courage. For here is Christ the tiger, leaping across time and space and death and doubt, for you. Approach this table with your courage uncaged and released, for here is bread and wine, to be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk among whispers. Approach this table with courage, for we are becoming in Christ far more than our weak wills and forbidden fears would ever permit. Let it be whispered the secret of how the chains of circumstance are broken, “To me to live is Christ, to die is gain.”
