One of my favorite old movies is the 1967 classic Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman and
George Kennedy. It’s a great movie in its own right, but what I really love about it is that it is
infinitely quotable. From “What’d you think that was gonna get you?” to “What we have here is
failure to communicate!” the movie is chalk full of memorable lines. And I love quotable movie
lines. Just ask my wife!

One of the things that makes a quotable movie line memorable is not just the writing, but the truth the line speaks. That is certainly true of Cool Hand Luke. Near the end of the movie, one of the central themes is whether Paul Newman’s character – Lucas Jackson, a man imprisoned for drunkenly cutting the tops off of parking meters – “has his mind right.” After numerous escape attempts, Luke is told by the guards that he has no more chances. His next escape attempt will be one he will not survive. So the guards go about trying to break his spirit, so that he will “get his mind right.”

It’s such a pedestrian phrase, but one that conveys a deep truth. Having your mind right really does make all the difference. At least that’s been my experience. Looking back, it doesn’t matter 
whether I was trying to quit smoking, lose weight, exercise more – plug in whatever habit one
might like to change – if my mind wasn’t right, I was destined to fail. What I mean by that is that
I knew I would fail unless I was convinced in my own mind that I needed to make the change.
That I really wanted to make the change. It didn’t matter how much I needed to do it, how much
someone else wanted me to do it, if I didn’t want to do it -- if my mind wasn’t right – I knew I would not be successful.

I think much the same can be said about our faith. In the first Epistle of Peter, the author writes,
“Therefore, once you have your minds ready for action and you are thinking clearly, place your
hope completely on the grace that will brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” The
directive comes in the midst of a discussion about finding joy in Christ even in the midst of
suffering. I think what Peter is saying is that real transformation through Christ – the kind of
transformation that allows us to rejoice even in the midst of hardship – will not occur until we
surrender to Jesus completely. Until we release the hold over our lives, we are destined to live lives of “functional atheism,” saying we believe one thing, but living as though we don’t.

It may be a good reminder to all of us, particularly this time of year. We are preparing ourselves
to experience the miracle of Emmanuel once again. But to truly experience the Incarnation, we have to have our minds right. We have to surrender ourselves to all of the ways Christ is revealed to us. We have to want to experience Jesus.


Otherwise, Christmas is destined to become just another holiday.

See you Sunday.