In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Christ is born! [Glorify him!]

On this past Wednesday morning, Christmas morning, beloved in the Lord, like most Chicagoans, I suppose, I sat down to read a bit of Plato before breakfast. [Laughter] In the course of the reading, I happened to notice a sentence very appropriate to the feast of the Lord’s Nativity, a famous quotation from the philosopher Protagoras. I share the quotation with you. “Panton chrimaton metron anthropos.” Literally, this means: “A man is the measure of all things.”

We know this saying because it is a quotation. We no longer possess the works of Protagoras, the Athenians having the good sense to burn them. The saying has often been quoted from ancient time to the present. It would appear, however, that not many Greeks after Socrates, at least, agreed with the saying. According to Diogenes Laertius and Cicero, the Athenians burned the books of Protagoras. In general, I’m against book-burning, but we must make some exceptions to every rule. [Laughter]

Because of this, philosophers have long debated exactly what did Protagoras mean by that ambiguous statement? A man, no article: a man is the measure of all things. Often that’s quoted as: “Man is the measure of all things,” but that is clearly not what the Greek says. It would be ho anthropos if it was “man.” I suspect that Protagoras meant something fairly innocent and self-evident, such as: Human beings leave their measurements on everything. The word he does use there is chrima, which means things that we need, things that we use. He’s not talking about ontology.

Human beings do, after all, impose their marks and calculations on reality. If there were no human beings on earth, for instance, would there really be four winds or four directions? How many triangles would be found in the world if human beings had not constructed things in a triangular shape? Nature itself tends to be binary: two of everything—but three, not so much.

If the statement of Protagoras is understood in a metaphysical sense, then the Athenians were certainly prudent to burn his books—if a little hasty. If, on the other hand, his statement should be understood only in a phenomenological sense, then we might perhaps see in Protagoras an early version of Edmund Husserl. This may be too kind an interpretation. It is, though, however, the one I favor, because I have a soft place in my heart for Husserl. Anybody who could, at the same time, have two student assistants, one of them Martin Heidegger, the other St. Edith Stein… There has to be something going for the man.

Anyway, this morning, it’s not my intention to explore what Protagoras actually meant when he declared, “A man is the measure of all things.” I’m not assigned to this parish to explain ancient Greek philosophy, although I remember it like it was yesterday. Instead, this morning I want to suggest three meanings in which the affirmation of Protagoras can be understood. I want to do this in connection with, of course, Christmas.

The two important words in this quotation, I submit, are anthropos, man, and metron, measure. Whatever Protagoras meant, he identified man and measure. What might that equation mean? This morning I want to suggest three possibilities: a political meaning, a psychological meaning, and a theological meaning.

A first possibility is a political meaning. It may be the case that “a man is the measure of all things” is understood in a political sense. This is suggested perhaps by today’s date, December 29. Today is the anniversary of the murder of St. Thomas Becket in the year 1170. Exactly 843 years ago today, if my math is correct, this holy, blissful martyr, the archbishop of Canterbury, was assassinated in his cathedral. Thomas was put to death, we recall, by henchmen of Henry II, Duke of Normandy and King of England.

Henry II represents, I submit, one of the possible meanings of the expression, “a man is the measure of all things.” The year before the assassination of Thomas Becket, Henry II dispatched his forces for the Norman invasion of Ireland. The year after the murder of Becket, Henry himself went to Ireland and solidified his control over Dublin and what is known as the Pale. So the Irish were always, from that point on, outside the Pale. For the first time in history, part of Ireland was ruled from without. This sort of activity, the invasion of a small nation by a large nation, is one of the possible meanings of the saying, “a man is the measure of all things.”

Henry II thought certainly that he was the measure of all things. Henry’s interference in the life of Ireland directly led to nearly a thousand years of tragic history. Ireland has never recovered from Henry II. For centuries, Ireland was a large graveyard dedicated to the proposition that a man is the measure of all things. During most of my own lifetime, the people of Ireland have continued to suffer the consequences of Henry’s initial invasion.

Henry II, however, was a piker beside the invaders of the past two centuries. What does God see when he looks down upon the earth? He sees what Georges Bernanos called “les grands cimetières sous la lune, the big graveyards under the moon.” In the cases like Henry II and more recent invaders and war-mongers, the expression “a man is the measure of all things” takes on the sense of starvation, early death, and immeasurable suffering. Just about 100 years ago, the world had just come out of the 19th century. This was the century that inspired people to believe in progress. Before long, the politicians decided to make progress their political agenda. The political forces of the time: that progress is what government must be about. The results over the next several decades we all know, starting with the Boer War and going right on through—and it’s not over yet. Big nations invading little nations.

That’s one of the possible meanings of “a man is the measure of all things.” That’s a terrible thing as a political principle.

The second possible meaning of “a man is the measure of all things” is psychological. In this case, the saying suggests a state of isolation. When I was teaching college, back in the [Clears throat] ‘60s, all over the campus they had their own expression for this: “Do your own thing.” And they did! They did. The college kids I taught did their own thing. And we notice, we didn’t find them, after several days; they weren’t around. We went over to their apartment, and we found that they had overdosed four days earlier. They had done their own thing. So “do your own thing” is very dangerous. It leads to isolation, in which an individual exists in his own individual world. Truth becomes subjective, goodness becomes subjective, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. How many times this year have I spoken against those three heresies? In fact, the political equivalent of “man” and “measure” has led to a great deal of this psychological understanding of the expression “ours is an age of great isolations.”

An article in Psychology Today calls isolation “a modern plague.” In a comprehensive study by scientists at Duke University four years ago, researchers observed a sharp decline in social connectedness—their word; I wouldn’t use that word—over the next several decades. It is alarming that 25% of Americans have no significant social support at all. 25%: one-quarter of the population has no significant social support at all. Not a single person in whom they can confide. 25%. We’ve got it right there in the Bible: it’s not good for man to be alone. It’s just not good.

Over half of all Americans report having no close confidants or friends outside their immediate family. For 25%, it’s just family. For 25%, there’s nobody. That’s half—half—the country in relative isolation. Chronic depression is at an all-time high, and medication to deal with it a vast industry. Electronic devices have replaced social supports; screens have replaced faces. Chemical addictions fueled by isolation. Each person can now become the man who is the measure of all things. The price, however, his high.

An article in the journal, Leadership, just this past August reports that 40% of all Americans will admit privately that they are lonely. This includes married people. Many families no longer eat together at a common table. I remember when our two children were in school. Somebody from the board of health came around to the school and asked, “How many of you sat at table this morning and had a hot prepared breakfast before you came to school?” Constance and her brother were the only two that raised their hands. When I was a boy, that was normal. It was normal and expected.

Each person can now become that private person who is the measure of all things. The art of conversation is at an historical low. Men and women alike throw themselves into work, charitable exercises, other activities—any excuse not to come home. Children are left with sitters, nannies, and daycare centers. People who juggle their lives often lose complete touch with spouses, children, friends, and those they love. Individuals become so isolated in their day-to-day business they forget to stop, to breathe, to take a moment to spend some time with each other. And parents impose this on their children. And the schools impose this on the children. Children are pushed into isolated, overworked lifestyles by the time they hit elementary school. Between little league, soccer practice, and the drama club, parents have become chauffeurs and families have fallen to pieces.

The idea of driving a child somewhere so he can exercise strikes me as… [Laughter] I thought walking was supposed to be a good exercise! I remember playing some form of ball every day when I was a boy. Some form of ball was played every day. Seasons like this, there was often a snowball! But there was often a baseball or a basketball or a football, and I don’t remember any parent ever driving me someplace to do it! My parents, they were doing other things!

Children grow older and more independent, and they may turn around and say, “Dad, I really don’t like soccer.” You know, I’m from the South, and I don’t know why anybody would like soccer, but that’s not pertinent to the sermon. But then they discover the internet. Chat services promise to let them reach halfway around the world to meet somebody living in a distant country. They don’t know somebody that lives three doors away. Children come home and sit alone in their rooms, tapping at the keyboard, staring at the letters coming up on the screen, or playing—God help us!—video games in solitude. That is so sick! Any other time in world history, we could identify that: that is an illness! We’re so out of touch with our own nature that we do not find companionship. We have no idea how to deal with it, and we invite even more chaos into our daily lives.

Now the proclamation of the Gospel, my brothers and sisters, involves, among other things, the condemnation and description of sin. A&E just learned that this past week, that you’re supposed to describe sin the way it is described in the Bible, the very words, no matter how offensive they are, the very words. Part of the proclamation of the Gospel is the condemnation of sin, and I say it is very bad for men to be alone—and by “men,” I mean human beings—to be alone, and to adopt a lifestyle which leaves them in isolation. What I have just described is sinful. It is destructive. It is not normal. It is the institutionalizing of isolation.

Third, the saying, “a man is the measure of all things,” may be taken to refer to a specific Man. And this consideration must focus our attention on the mystery of the Incarnation. The Man in question is the Man, Ho anthropos, the Archetype of humanity itself, Jesus the Messiah. He came into this world not only to teach us how to live but to become a living principle within our hearts and minds. St. Paul calls Christ a life-giving spirit. He is in fact the Man who is the measure of all things, in the way he lived and by what he taught.

Jesus put us on our guard against political power. By living for his Father and his brothers and sisters, Jesus instructed us in the dangers of social isolation and political idolatry. He calls himself the Vine, describes us as the branches. He encourages us to abide in him, just as it is his dearest wish to abide in us. It is imperative to us as human beings to let Christ take the measure of our lives. For apart from him, we have no life.

If we do abide in him as he invites us, our minds will daily be nourished by the narratives of the four gospels. We will relish and carefully guard the time we give to prayer and attention to God’s word. We will guard that time; we will cherish that time. We’ll make sure we have that time. We will endeavor to regard other people as Christ regards them. It will be the goal of our life together to grow into the perfect Man, the fullness of the mature Christ.

Let there, then, beloved, be no aspect of our lives where he does not reign as Lord. Let there be no dimensions of our thought cut off from the light of his wisdom. Let there be no impulse of our hearts not governed by his Spirit. Let no one we know be deprived of his love and concern, that the presence of Christ be the atmosphere that surrounds us and the very air we breathe. Christ is born. [Glorify him!]