Whether or not whipping boys really existed is up for debate, although there are several recorded incidents where whipping boys may have been part of a royal household. The expression, “whipping boy,” has this back story: princes did not go the regular school, but, rather, were educated in their homes by private tutors. As we can imagine the little princes were not always angels, and the tutor might be required to exercise a little discipline, mostly in the form of corporal punishment, a slap or spanking or, as was commonly practiced, a whipping with a willow branch or some equivalent instrument. Being that his prodigy was of royal lineage and from a family of significant power, the tutor might be hesitant to administer the appropriate punishment. The story goes that the tutor ask that young boys of the prince’s age be invited to join in the classroom and befriend him. If the prince did something wrong or did not apply himself to his studies, instead of punishing the prince himself, the tutor would administer a whipping to one of the friends. Hopefully, in seeing his friend suffer, the prince would realize the error of his ways and learn to behave. The unfortunate friend was called the “whipping boy.” Again, it is uncertain how common this practice was, although there are records of others being punished by proxy in place of the prince, including incidents in France, England, and China.

I’m sure I am not alone when I think about how this system could break down. What if the prince is an entitled little imp and revels in the pain of others? Pity his “friends,” for they would receive multiple beatings. Or what if the prince is a bit of a loner and has not become close to his chosen friends? The beating would not arouse the appropriate emotional response in the prince. What if the prince hated school and didn’t apply himself? The whipping boys would become quite familiar with the willow switch.

For the system to work (and perhaps the reason that it wasn’t used all that often was because it didn’t work) a couple of factors had to be in play: the prince must be of the compassionate sort, and he would have to have cared for his friends. If the prince was not, the whole system would fail, and the whipping boys, although they would have received a privileged education, would not have appreciated the role assigned to them.

We have adopted the term, “whipping boy,” often to refer to someone who is punished for something they did not do. or, sometimes, we use it to refer to someone who is the constant object of bullying in the school yard even though they have done nothing to invite the abuse. To be a whipping boy is to receive undeserved punishment. I wonder if there were any boys who welcomed the invitation to become friends of the prince where whipping boys were employed to discipline the prince.

Some have compared Jesus to a whipping boy. He acts in proxy for us when he takes the punishment of the cross. But to what effect? Can Jesus be compared to a whipping boy? It is appropriate to think of him in this way?

Remember the purpose of the beating: it was to move the prince to behave. In the 2004 movie, The Passion of the Christ, the beating of Jesus lasts for a long time. People complained about the gruesomeness of the scene, but it did evoke a visceral (very physical) response. Many were horrified by the depravity of humanity that allowed some to so cruelly torture another human being. I don’t recall if the movie stated either implicitly or explicitly that Jesus was suffering for our sins, but even if it did, would it move anyone to better behaviour? Does Jesus’ suffering result in better behaviour on our behalf? Is Jesus’ suffering meant to cause us to behave better?

Perhaps some who watched the movie were moved to say, “He suffered for me, so I should behave better.” But is that why Jesus suffered on our behalf? Did he suffer the beatings and the crucifixion so that we would be moved to compassion and behave better? I think that that misses the whole point of Jesus’ suffering and death.

Jesus was not our whipping boy. True, he stood in our place and bore our sins, but he didn’t do that so we, out of compassion, would work a little harder at avoiding sin. Jesus’ death was much greater than that, for in his death, he actually took away our sin. Not only did he take the punishment that we deserve, he also took away God’s memory of our sin, at least figuratively speaking. God doesn’t remember our sins anymore, meaning that he will never go back to them and remind us of them again. When forgiven, they are also forgotten.

Watching the beating, as it was depicted in the movie, might give us pause and make us consider what we do. But that was not the goal of Jesus’ death. His goal was to free us from our sin, not to make us behave more appropriately. He did not come to this world to become our whipping boy, suffering so that we could behave. He came to this earth to bring forgiveness.

One of the hallmarks of the Reformed tradition is that our good behaviour is not an act of contrition (sorry, Jesus, that we caused your suffering and we won’t do it again), but as an act of gratitude (thank you for taking my sin and its punishment on yourself). Jesus did not suffer and die so that we would learn to behave. He suffered and died so that would be forgiven and as a response to that forgiveness, we would gratefully serve him.

I don’t think Jesus could be called a whipping boy, although some have done so. He didn’t suffer to move us to better behaviour. He suffered so that we could be forgiven, and, hopefully, that may move us toward gratitude so that we serve and obey him. It is because we are forgiven that we are moved to good behaviour, and forgiveness is a much more powerful motivator than watching someone suffer on our behalf.

In the past few months I have met people who have come to Canada from a number of places in the world. A man from Pakistan prepared and sold me my lunch. Someone from the Philippines tried to sell me a vehicle. I have been spending some time mudding drywall with a man from Ukraine. I bought some plywood from a man whose roots are in the Netherlands. I enjoy talking with people where they come from, for they often have interesting stories about what brought them to Canada.

Often, when we talk about places of origin, we refer to them as our being the place where we are rooted. In that case, my roots are in the Netherlands, and I could also say that they are in Ontario. Our roots tell us and others where we come from, or so we say.

But, as we know, roots do not actually speak of our origins. A seed may be the origin of a plant, but the roots rarely are. Roots are as much part of the plant as is the stem and the flower and the fruit. For a plant, roots gather nourishment and stability for the plant, but, technically speaking, they do not reveal our origins, even though we use the word in that way.

If we use that definition, I would have to say that my roots are in Alberta. My life is here, and the nourishment and stability for my life are here, not in Ontario or Holland. I am rooted in Alberta, even if I am a transplant. As a transplanted person, my roots may not be firmly rooted in Alberta, but I suspect that will change the longer I am here. In time I might even be considered an Albertan, although considering how it seems that some Albertans are slow to accept people “from away,” I might not live long enough for that to happen. (The people of the Maritime provinces are equally slow in their acceptance of “come-from-aways,” as they call transplants.)

Instead of using the term “roots” to talk about our origins, it might be more helpful to use the term “origin” for that purpose and instead use the term, “root,” to talk about that which gathers nourishment and provides stability. Thinking of things that way helps us understand what Paul means when we ought to be rooted in Christ (Colossians 2:7). Instead of thinking of Jesus Christ as being the one who originates us (although he does that as well), we are encouraged to think of Jesus being the one who provides us with nourishment and stability that we need to live. He is the soil that wraps around our roots and provides us what we need for all of life.

When we think of our roots in that way, we are encouraged to consider what it is that we are rooted in. We are presented with many different options as to where we may want to sink our roots, and we want to look for the best one. As any farmer knows, the soil that surrounds the roots must be fertile, and it must be of the right texture to grasp hold of the roots so that the plant does not fall over. Both of these are essential if a plant is going to grow and thrive and produce a crop.

Poor soil will not produce healthy plants. Most often we think of physical nutrients, things like money and health and housing and clothes, and most of us perceive that we get these through our own efforts, by working hard so that we can have what we need to live. Of course, it is somewhat of an illusion to think that what we have comes from our own efforts. In reality, if God, through Christ, is the soil in which we are rooted, he is the one who supplies us with health so that we can work, with stores so that we can buy food, and an appropriate supply system so that the shelves of our stores remained stocked. We are beneficiaries of these important things, and we cannot say that we have obtained them ourselves. Christ makes our blessings available to us, and the greatest blessing, of course, is our salvation. If he did not make that available to us, we would remain spiritually dead. God is the source of all that we need for life (nutrients), both physically and spiritually, and we cannot live without him. Jesus Christ is the soil which supplies nutrients both for our physical and spiritual lives.

The soil supplies nutrients for the roots, but it also gives stability to the plant. Anyone who has pulled weeds from their garden in the summer time knows how difficult it is to dislodge the roots. The soil grabs onto the roots and it won’t let them go. From time to time, however the soil does not do its job. A tree may appear to be thriving in the soil, but its stability and longevity is nothing but an illusion, for when a high wind blows against it, its roots dislodge and it topples over and dies. We might compare the wind to the trials of life. Unless our roots are held tight by something, there will come a time when we will not be able to withstand the pressure. Some things in life might topple us over: a broken relationship, the diagnosis of cancer, the death of a loved one, and certainly death itself is impossible to withstand. Unless something is holding our roots tightly, we will not survive the storm.

Thus, I am obligated to ask, “Where are my roots?” I am not rooted in Ontario or the Netherlands although I could say that those places are my origins. I should not even be rooted in Alberta as the place which keeps me alive and stable. Only Christ truly supplies what we need for life and he is the one who will sustain us as we face the challenges and trials of life, including the greatest trial, our own deaths. If we are rooted in Christ, we can be sure that he will hold onto us come what may, and he will provide us with the nutrients to remain vibrant and healthy and strong. Being rooted in Christ means that we know who sustains our lives and who provides us the strength to face the winds that are sure to come.

About a year ago I became interested in making wooden gears in my workshop. I was hoping to design and build a wooden clock, and while I haven’t begun, it is still on the backburner. Wooden clocks have multiple gears, and there are two ways to make gears out of wood. The first way is to print out a sheet of paper with a gear on it, paste that paper to a piece of wood and cut it out with a scroll saw. Depending on the size of the gear and the number of teeth, it can be a tedious task, and it takes a great deal of accuracy, for if you accidentally make the tooth of the gear too small or too large, it won’t mesh with another gear. The second way is to develop a jig that enables one to cut the teeth of a gear using a table or band saw. It’s quicker and more accurate. I came across a YouTube video with someone doing that, but no explanation was given. I knew that if I were going to develop such a jig, I would have to understand how gears are designed.

I initially thought the concept couldn’t be too hard, but the more I studied the geometry of a gear, the more I became aware that there was a lot to know. The shape of the tooth determines how well the gear will mesh with another, and I was introduced to the concept of the involute of a circle. The literature said that the gear which followed the involute of a circle was the best shape of a gear. I almost stopped reading because I had no idea what they were talking about. But I persisted, and I found some further definitions and I realized that I needed to understand a whole lot of other terms: pitch, root, reference, addendum, dedendum, and something called the module. These terms were confusing me, and I found I had to do more and more reading. Thankfully I have access to the Internet (how did we survive without it?), and I gradually I gained a basic understanding of how an involute gear is designed. I also became convinced that the guy who posted the YouTube video of himself cutting an involute gear on the table saw was an absolute genius. I still haven’t figured out how to build the jig to cut gears on my table saw, but sometime I may be able to do so.

If the above paragraphs confused you, you are probably not alone. I am sure that if I talked to some qualified people in a machine shop, they would not be confused because they use this kind of language all the time. But for me, a beginning, my head was spinning. I do know, however, if I would immerse myself in the field of involute gears, I would soon become able to converse with the pros.

When in seminary, our professors warned us that we need to watch the language we use from the pulpit. They were not talking about bad language, but, rather, something they called Christian-speak. While in seminary we threw around words like justification, sanctification, predestination, and the like, always knowing what they meant. For those who have been in the church for years, perhaps these words are quite familiar, and they can define them quite readily. However, the seminary professors warned us, a lot of people are not entirely familiar with these words, and if we were going to use them from the pulpit, we need to define them clearly and often or else people will get confused. Our professors went on to say that we not only had to be careful about the language we used, but when we referred to biblical stories, we had to assume that not everyone in the congregation would know what we were talking about, and we would have to give a bit of background. So, if we happened to mention Abraham or David or Paul or James (we could assume that people would have a pretty good idea of who Jesus is), we should tell a little bit about them as we referred to them.

I can imagine that someone who did not grow up in the church or to whom one’s parents did not read the familiar Bible stories when they were young, would have the same level of confusion as I did when I was first introduced to the idea of involute gears. I do try to be careful to explain theological terms and introduce people from the Bible as I refer to them so that I do not cause undo confusion among those who may not have had access to these words and persons. After all, a sermon should be clear to all, not just to those who have years of experience in the faith.

Of course, as we spend time reading our Bibles and learning the concepts from the Bible (theology), we will grow more familiar with names and terms, and we will become confused less quickly. That being said, there is something else that is equally important and that is putting what we know into practice. I might know exactly how an involute gear works, but if I don’t ever figure out how to design and create one, that knowledge is virtually useless. In the same way, if we know the Bible forward and backward, and if we can correctly define all the biblical terms but never incorporate them into our lives, what is the point?

I said at the beginning that there are two ways to make gears for a wooden clock. The second was to understand how a gear works and then develop a way of making that gear. The other way is to find a pattern, paste it to a block of wood and then cut it out. This method also results in a gear, and most people who build wooden clocks use this method. In other words, they may not have the faintest idea as to what all those terms mean but they take what they do know, and they put it to good use. I’m not saying that we should use this as an excuse not to learn the stories of the Bible or not seek to be able to define biblical words. Knowing these things deepens our appreciation for God and his work. However, we do not need to wait until we know everything to be a faithful Christian, for we can be faithful even if we know a little.

Jesus spoke highly of the faith of a child. Pasting a picture of a gear on a piece of wood and cutting it out is what a child would do. They simply trust that the one who designed the gear knew what they were doing, and they follow the lines with the saw. Perhaps what Jesus wanted to impress upon us when he talked about the faith of a child was that while we should learn and grow in knowledge, we should also be like children and simply put into practice what we do know. Living faithfully doesn’t mean that we have to know everything. It simply means that we put into practice everything we know. While some of us might have a better understanding than others, all of us can put into practice what we believe, often with the exact same results.

In Acts 6 we read that the Hellenistic Jews complained to the apostles because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. (The Greek name for Greece is Hellas or Hellada.) Hellenistic Jews were Jews who spoke Greek and who had adopted more of the Greek customs and culture than had the Hebraic Jews who spoke Aramaic, a language more closely associated to Hebrew. Many of the Hellenistic Jews had migrated to Jerusalem over the years to be close to the temple, and they had formed their own community, and some of them had become Christians. Because the early Christians had pooled a significant portion of their possessions, they also relied on mutual support and could draw from the pot if needed. Hellenistic widows, because they were more likely to have migrated to Jerusalem with their husbands earlier in life, were often left without familial support structures and thus were reliant on the gracious donations of the Christian community. For some reason, they were being overlooked in the distribution of food, and they were starving.

The apostles, who were quite busy with leading the church in spiritual matters, decided to appoint seven Hellenistic men to ensure that the needy in the Christian community, in particular the Greek-speaking widows, had the care that they required. And, thus, it seems that the office of deacon was born. Deacons were to look after the physical needs of those who did not have resources to support themselves.

Among these early deacons was a man named Stephen. Not only did he have the kind of compassionate heart required of a deacon, but he also was an accomplished speaker. When he was arrested on trumped up charges of blasphemy, Stephen gave a lengthy speech (sermon) in which he accused the Jewish leadership of ignoring God’s Word spoken through the apostles just as the leaders of God’s people had ignored God’s Word spoken through the prophets centuries earlier. He so enraged the Jewish leaders that they took him outside the city and stoned him to death.

The Christian church has long recognized Stephen’s commitment to the Lord and his compassion for the poor, and centuries ago established one day every year to recognize him and celebrate his life. St. Stephen’s Day is celebrated on December 26, the day after Christmas. St. Stephen’s Day became a day when those who were rich blessed the poor with gifts of food, clothing, and money. It was also a day when employers gave their employees a bonus as a way of recognizing their faithful service.

Thus, Boxing Day was born. Although the origin of the word, “boxing,” is not certain, it appears that it was called that because alms boxes were placed in churches to collect donations for the poor. Boxing Day, thus, was a time when those who had received gifts on Christmas (the greatest gift being Jesus) blessed others from the blessings they had received. Boxing day became a day for intentional charity.

Scarcely anything of that history remains today, for Boxing Day, recently a holiday used by many to visit family and friends, has become a day when retailers open their stores so that people who have already received gifts can acquire more possessions. Boxing Day has been usurped by the retail world for the sake of profit, and people use the opportunity to buy things for themselves. Rarely, if ever, is Boxing Day thought of as a day when we intentionally give of our blessings so that others can be blessed.

Boxing Day (now Boxing Week) has become a retail event closing a month-long season that began on Black Friday. Black Friday, an American event which has spilled over into Canada, was developed by retailers to begin the Christmas shopping season. Black Friday falls on the day after American Thanksgiving, a day when people give thanks to God for his provision of physical blessing. Like Boxing Day, Black Friday is also a day when people who are full of God’s blessings are urged to acquire a little more for themselves. Similar in nature these two events, Black Friday and Boxing Day reveal the true heart of western culture. We are only too happy to forget the needs of others as we seek more for ourselves. When the economic growth is the mark if a healthy world, we should not be surprised that this has happened.

My mother used to tell how, in Holland, they would attend church on Boxing Day. I have always wondered what the pastor would have to say after having preached two services on Christmas Day (yes, she and her family attended those as well), but I think that I now know. I suspect that the pastor would take the opportunity to prepare a sermon that would encourage the congregation to engage in acts of intentional Christian charity. And, perhaps, he might use the story of Stephen, the committed, compassionate, godly man who gave his life as a martyr as he followed Jesus.