"Einstein at the Door"

Mark 1:1-8

Second Sunday in Advent + December 4, 2011

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

In 1899, the Einstein family transferred their son, Albert, from a Catholic school to the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. A gymnasium, by the way, was an elite high school. The teachers in Luitpold, like those of other schools of the same time and place, exercised a ruthless and sometimes brutal discipline over their students. Conformity was the rule. Einstein was miserable there. Over the next six years this quiet, taciturn young man developed an intense hatred for all educational disciplines. Most of his teachers held out scant hope that he would ever achieve anything of significance.

One teacher stood apart from the others. He was the odd one out. He went his own way. He encouraged his pupils to think for themselves. He inspired in his students a passionate interest in the continuing influence of classical culture on contemporary life. His name was Reuss, and Einstein never forgot him.

The teachers’ low estimation of his potential was confirmed in Einstein’s early years. He grew up to be only a second class Swiss patent officer. But from that unpretentious position we know that he launched an intellectual revolution, and the rest is history. Still today, to call someone an “Einstein” is to name them a genius of the highest order.

Many years after he had become famous the world over for his work in experimental physics probing the very secrets of the universe, as well as his important humanitarian witness, Einstein happened again to be in Munich. He decided to call on his former teacher, Reuss, now living in retirement.

Einstein knocked at the door. Reuss opened it and looked at the disheveled man standing before him. The jacket was torn, the trousers baggy, the hair unkempt flying about his face. Einstein introduced himself, but Reuss was unable to remember his name. Convinced that the man before him was a beggar, Reuss fumbled nervously at the door. Einstein quickly terminated the call and hurriedly walked away. We are left to wonder if Reuss ever learned the identity and importance of the famous visitor he once had turned away.

Reuss is more to be pitied than condemned. How many times in your life and mine have we failed to recognize the significance of someone we have met? During seminary days, several of my Black fellow students invited me to go to the Rochester War Memorial auditorium to hear a young preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. He gave a fine sermon and I was among those who greeted him afterward. But I confess to you I didn’t have a clue as to who he was and the incredibly important role he would play in American history. I’ll bet you have had a similar experience in your life. The problem is recognition, isn’t it?

Charles and Mary Lamb were important literary figures in England at about the same time as Dickens. After a dinner party, someone proposed a question: “What would you say or do if a famous person from history walked into the room.” Someone suggested Shakespeare and said he would like to ask him if he wrote all the plays attributed to him. Other famous figures from history or literature were suggested. Then someone asked: “What would we do if Jesus walked into this room.” After a pause someone said they probably all ought to kneel. But then someone else raised the question: “How would we know it was Jesus?” There are no pictures of Jesus painted in his own time despite what you may have heard about the Shroud of Turin.

How would we recognize Jesus? That question has tantalized Christians all through history. In the Middle Ages there was the charming fable of St. Christopher. Do you remember the story? Christopher was a burly giant who had a hut beside a fast-running river. When asked he would carry travelers across the river on his back. On one occasion he carried a small child across on his shoulder, but the child’s weight grew greater and greater and caused Christopher to bow beneath his burden. On the other side of the river, Christopher recognized that the child was none other than Christ carrying the weight of pain and grief and human sin.

These are charming stories but what have they to do with you and me in our twenty-first century world? Simply this, I think. We are challenged to recognize the Christ in every human being: the dirty homeless man who asks for a handout; the woman who has had more children than she can afford to raise and needs help with her family; the alcoholic who may never recover who longs for someone to say they care and mean it; the family who has come to this country illegally, who are living in fear of arrest and deportation, and wonder if anyone will help them find compassionate justice.

The list could go on and on because we will meet Christ in every person who needs us. So this is my challenge to all of us this Christmas 2011: in this wonderful season of giving let’s all find a person or place where we can give something that will make a difference. Perhaps it will be a special gift of money to some charity. Think about it: if we knew we were giving the gift to Jesus, how much would we spend? But our gift to the Christ could also be special personal assistance to someone who needs help. I am absolutely convinced that if we are willing to help those who need us, we will recognize Christ just as he promised: “For as much as you have done it to the least of these you have done it to me.” Now wouldn’t that make for a very Merry Christmas? Amen.

 (I am indebted for the story of Einstein to my colleague Gilbert Friend-Jones.)