Today we’re going to talk about hair. That’s a universal subject, isn’t? All of us have hair well at least most of us.
A balding man once asked his barber, “Why do you charge me full price for cutting my hair? There’s so little of it.”
“Actually I don’t charge you that much,” said the barber. “But I do have to tack on a finder’s fee.”
A little boy was looking through the family album and asked his mother: “Who’s this guy on the beach with you with all the muscles and curly hair?”
“That’s your father,” said his Mom.
“Then who’s the bald‑headed man who lives with us now?” asked the lad.
One comedian said, “I’m not bald I simply have an exceptionally large part.”
Someone else has said, “Most of us don’t mind silver threads among the gold . . . it’s when the carpet becomes threadbare.”
Thank goodness most men learn to be good sports about hair loss. Of course, as one man said, “Bald spot? No, that’s a solar panel for my brain.”
Or you might like Dolly Parton’s answer when someone asked her, “How do you feel about bald men?”
Dolly said, “I love bald men. Just because you’ve lost your fuzz, don’t mean you ain’t a peach.” (1)
Of course, men have their revenge with blonde jokes. Those jokes are absurd, of course. I.Q. and hair color have absolutely no correlation. But they’re funny and generally harmless.
A woman with, shall we say, light colored hair was driving and got caught in a really bad hailstorm. Her car was covered with dents. The next day she took it to a repair shop.
The shop owner saw the color of her hair, so he decided to have some fun. He told her to go home and blow into the tailpipe really hard, and all the dents would pop out. So she went home, got down on her hands and knees, and started blowing into the car’s tailpipe. Nothing happened. So she blew a little harder, and still nothing happened.
Her roommate who had hair of the same tint saw her, and asked, “What are you doing?”
So she told her how the repairman had instructed her to blow into the tail pipe in order to get all the dents to pop out.
The roommate rolled her eyes and said, “Uh, like hello! You need to roll up the windows first!!” (2)
Again, Dolly Parton, a famous blonde, comes to the rescue. When asked about blonde jokes, she replied, “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb . . . and I also know that I’m not blonde.”
Well, I’ve got good news for you today, regardless of the color of your hair, or even whether you have hair or not. Jesus says we don’t need to worry about our hair.
Jesus and his disciples had finally arrived in Jerusalem. The disciples were admiring the beauty of the Temple one of the great wonders of the ancient world. It was a massive structure a tremendous symbol of national pride. It is said that no sports structure in America today comes close in size and splendor to the Temple at Jerusalem. The smallest stones in the walls of the massive structure weighed 2 to 3 tons. Many of them weighed 50 tons. The Temple was many, many times larger than any building the disciples had ever seen before. They stared at it in amazement.
At this point Jesus makes one of the few specific predictions of his entire ministry. He predicts that this magnificent Temple would one day come falling down. “Not one stone will be left on another;” he said, “every one of them will be thrown down.”
Of course, the Temple did come down in 70 A.D., about forty years after Jesus predicted it would. Titus, a Roman general, with 80,000 men, set siege to Jerusalem. It was a difficult city to take, set on a hill, and defended to the death. When the siege was successful and the city was taken, Titus ordered the whole city and the Temple to be razed to the ground. Josephus, the historian, who was actually there, tells us that 97,000 residents of the city were taken captive and enslaved and that more than one million died. All that remains of the temple now is a portion of a retaining wall, called the western wall or the Wailing Wall. The Wailing Wall, of course, is the most holy prayer spot for present-day Jews. (3)
Those of his followers who were still alive when the Temple fell undoubtedly recalled that Jesus had predicted it would, but at the time he spoke these words, the disciples probably listened in disbelief. The magnificent Temple would come down? Unbelievable! “Teacher,” they asked in evident distress, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”
Jesus had no use for those who were continually looking for signs. He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.”
Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.”
Now I know what some of you are thinking. He could be talking about our time. Friends, he could be talking about any time in recorded history. There have always been wars and rumors of war. There have always been “earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places.” Nothing has changed.
Imagine that you were alive during the Middle Ages. Talk of pestilence! The Black Death, properly called bubonic plague, decimated one-third of Europe’s population. Twenty-five million people died in just under five years between 1347 and 1352. Successive waves of the Black Death followed in the next couple of centuries. People of the time interpreted this as the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse written of in Revelation 6. This horseman was Death who would kill one fourth of humanity by disease. (4)
Jesus could have been talking about any era in history. As Jesus said, “Don’t let people mislead you.” The future has always been uncertain for every generation of humanity. Jesus wanted his disciples to know that things could get very tough.
He wanted them to realize that it could get particularly tough for them. “But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name . . . You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me.”
By this time, the disciples were probably regretting saying anything about the Temple. Then Jesus does a complete reversal.
He speaks these comforting words, “But not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm you will gain life.” That’s the good news about hair. Not a hair of your head will perish.
Jesus is telling his disciples and he is telling us, the future is filled with uncertainties. We could say, Amen to that. We certainly have our uncertainties. Will Social Security run out of money? Some say it already has. That may seem like a trivial concern compared to the persecution that the early Christians faced, thrown into gladiator pits, burned at the stake, crucified. Social Security may not be in the same class with those kinds of torturous deaths, but that doesn’t change the fact that a great many seniors in our land depend upon it. What does the future hold?
Will there be another major terrorist attack? It seems almost certain there will be of some kind. It would be most unlikely that we can stop every single mad bomber, or groups of mad bombers in the world, forever.
When will the stock market take a downward tumble again? Some of you saw your nest egg cut in half in just a few days time not too long ago. Recessions are just as much a part of capitalism as is profit and loss. It’s not a matter of whether it will happen, but when. And will we again be able to prevent falling into a depression?
But even if society is fairly stable for a while, how about on a personal level? What will your next doctor’s report say? Does a tragic automobile accident lay waiting for someone you love? I don’t mean to alarm you, but life is still unpredictable, just as it was in New Testament times. The future is filled with uncertainty.
One man tells about a poster that used to hang in the office of a friend of his. It said, simply, LIFE IS HARD, AND THEN YOU DIE.
Well, there’s no reason to be that pessimistic. Let’s just say life is unpredictable.
But there is another thing to be said. God is with us. In good times and bad, there is Someone who never forgets us nor forsakes us.
When Jesus warned his disciples that they would be persecuted, he made an interesting promise that I left out a few moments ago. He said, “They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. This will result in your being witnesses to them. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.”
When he suggests that they need not “prepare a defense in advance” because he will give them the words to say, he is suggesting that he will be with them and will not abandon them. He is saying that as they stand before a court or a synagogue seeking to persecute them, he will be standing there with them as an advocate, and he will tell them what to say. Now, most of us will never go to court over the fact that we are Christians. But all of us will have adversaries of some kind. All of us will have dark nights of the soul sooner or later. We will have fears, we will have doubts, life will turn against us. What Christ reminds us that whatever kind of situation we find ourselves in, he is with us. We are not alone and God’s grace is sufficient regardless of how difficult life may be. It is vital that we keep our mind fixed on that truth.
Rev. Richard J. Fairchild tells of going swimming as a child in a lake. There was an area of the lake that was set off by buoys. Lifeguards were on duty to watch the children to make sure they were safe. Richard liked to swim behind the buoys that marked out the zone covered by the lifeguards and watch the other kids, the stronger kids, swim from there to a dock that was anchored offshore-and then jump and dive off that dock over and over again.
One day he decided to swim out to that dock. He had never swam that far before. He struck out and got about half-way there and then began to feel tired. He went slower and slower and finally he began to flounder. He went under the water a couple of times, and he was petrified and called out for help but there was too much noise around.
He realized that he was on his own and that he had to make it on his own or drown. So what he did was focus on the dock and take a single stroke, then another. He refused to think about the depth of the water or how tired he was. Instead he kept looking at the dock and how it was coming closer stroke by stroke and finally he made it safely. (5)
In the same way, in times of difficulty we need to keep our gaze fixed on Christ’s promise. In times of distress, he is with us. Life is unpredictable. But God is with us. In good times and bad, there is Someone who never forgets us nor forsakes us. But one thing more needs to be said.
Not a hair of our head will perish. That is Christ’s promise to us. “Not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm you will gain life.”
When Jesus said that not a hair of our head will perish, he did not mean that our body will never suffer. He did not mean that our hair will not fall out. He did not mean that we will be exempt from catastrophes. What he meant was this. Not a hair of our head will forever perish. That is, we will not have taken from us anything that is really important to us. Not forever. We may suffer loss, grievous losses, but all loss is temporary. God’s power is greater than any power that would forever crush us.
A man named John Wilson writes about his father‑in‑law. He says his father-in-law was a lifelong Bible teacher. However, his father-in-law found his faith troubled in his final years. A degenerative nerve disease confined him to bed, impeding him from most of the activities that gave him pleasure.
Meanwhile, his thirty-nine‑year‑old daughter was battling a severe form of diabetes. Financial pressures mounted. During the most severe crisis, his father-in-law composed a Christmas letter and mailed it to others in the family. Many things that he had once taught, he now felt uneasy about. What could he believe with certainty? He came up with these three things. These were the three things he believed regardless of what life may send his way: “Life is difficult. God is merciful. Heaven is sure.” These things he could count on. “Life is difficult. God is merciful. Heaven is sure.” When his daughter died of diabetic complications the very next week after mailing his letter, he clung to those truths ever more fiercely. (6)
What he was saying was that though life sometimes gets tough, ultimately, not a hair on our head will perish. We are in God’s hands. He will not let us fall.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale once told of encountering a hurricane while on a cruise in the Atlantic. After the captain managed to sail around the danger, he and Dr. Peale were visiting with one another.
The captain said he had always lived by a simple philosophy namely that if the sea is smooth, it will get rough; and if it is rough, it will get smooth. He added something worth remembering: “But with a good ship,” the Captain said, “you can always ride it out.” (7)
Our ship is our faith in Christ. With a good ship, you can always ride it out. Life is unpredictable. God is with us. Not a hair on our head will perish. Or in the words of John Wilson’s father-in-law: “Life is difficult. God is merciful. Heaven is sure.”
1. Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business (HarperCollins).
2. Teddi’s Humor, teddi@alohabroadband.com.
3. Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, http://www.jesuswalk.com/lessons/21_5-19.htm.
4. Ibid.
5. The Best Christian Writing 2001 (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2001), pp. 326-327.
6. http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/b-or12smsu.php.
7. Stay Alive All Your Life. Cited by Steve Lambert, http://www.damascusumc.org/Sermons/2006_06_25_SLambert.htm.