Homeless man a reminder of Christ's life

I was sitting at a traffic light in my old truck next to the Ballard Bridge rocking out with my sons recently. To our left was a homeless man with a hand-written sign asking for money that also read "Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and May God Bless You."

It dawned on me that not only was his sign about Jesus, but that his life was, in some ways, like Jesus' life. The happy New Year he was wishing passers-by is 2006 anno Domini (in the year of the Lord) and contrasts with the years before the birth of Jesus Christ (B.C). Isn't it curious that in all of human history, it was the brief life of a homeless man that was chosen as a reference point for time?

Jesus was born in a small town to a poor, unmarried teen mother. He was adopted by Joseph, a simple carpenter, and spent the first 30 years of his life in obscurity swinging a hammer with his dad.

Around the age of 30 he began a public ministry that included preaching, healing the sick, feeding the poor and befriending people who were marginalized because they were considered sexually immoral, alcoholics and thieves. His ministry spanned only three short years before he was put to death for declaring himself to be God. He died by shameful crucifixion like tens of thousands of people had before him.

Curiously, his résumé is rather simple. He never traveled more than a few hundred miles from home. He never held a political office, never wrote a book, never married, never attended college, never visited a big city and he died both homeless and poor.

Yet, he is the most famous person in all of human history. More songs have been sung about him, artwork done about him and books written about him than about anyone who has ever lived. Furthermore, billions of people from the nations of the earth worship him as God.

No army, nation, or person has changed human history to the degree that Jesus, the homeless man, has. In his book "What if Jesus Had Never Been Born," Dr. James Kennedy explores some of the ways that Jesus has forever changed history.

Had Jesus not been born, the value of human life would be diminished. In the ancient world, child sacrifice and abandonment were common, and it was Jesus who not only taught and demonstrated the love of children, but his own adoption by Joseph set a precedent that Christians emulated in adopting discarded children. Jesus also elevated the dignity of women by befriending and teaching women as God's image-bearers, equal in worth to men — a revolutionary concept in his day when women were denigrated as mere property.

Jesus the great physician set an example of healing in his ministry that carried over into the establishing of Christian hospitals in an effort to provide medical care for all. For example, the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 decreed that a hospital be established wherever there was a church to ensure that people had both body and soul cared for. Today many hospitals continue to denote their heritage by retaining names connected to Christian saints and denominations.

Jesus the teacher demonstrated a love for literacy that has greatly benefited the entire world. Many of the world's languages were first put in writing by missionaries, the first printing press was invented by a Christian, and for the first few hundred years of our nation's history, essentially all education was private and Christian. Additionally, nearly every one of the first 123 American colleges and universities had Christian origins.

If Jesus had never been born, the world would indeed be considerably different. It is truly amazing to consider what a difference one homeless man who lived some two millennia ago has made in all our lives as we enter the year of the Lord 2006.

Pastor Mark Driscoll is founder of the nondenominational Mars Hill Church in Ballard. He and four other columnists — the Rev. Patrick J. Howell, Rabbi Mark S. Glickman, the Rev. Patricia L. Hunter and Aziz Junejo — take turns writing for the Faith & Values page. Readers may send feedback to faithpage@seattletimes.com