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Connections&
April 2, 2000
Fourth Sunday of Lent
"God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him."
John 3:14-21
The world of Charles M. Schultz
The world is a little less happy a place with the death of Charles M. Schultz and the end of his comic strip Peanuts.
Schultz was a mirthful moralist who brightened our world for nearly half a century with hapless Charlie Brown, tart-tongued Lucy, sage Linus and the rest of the Peanuts crew. A fellow cartoonist said that "the strip and [Schultz] were one. He put his heart and soul into that strip." The cartoonist "reached into the muck of his own soul and came up with diamonds." In his own fears, doubts and anxieties, Schultz found ways of depicting -- for the first time in the comic pages -- love, hope, pain and loss, with laugh-out-loud humor mixed with compassion. All the loves in Peanuts are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost, all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; the football is always pulled away. But in the midst of those disappointments, Schultz's little repertory company discovered the far more important and lasting treasures of life -- joy, hope, decency, gentleness, loyalty, perseverance, and the dignity of the human spirit.
Schultz drew every one of the more than 18,000 Peanuts strip since he began the comic in the 1950's. He and his family agreed that no one else would ever draw Peanuts. Even when he began to experience tremors in his hand, he continued to draw. He decided to end the strip when he was hospitalized for colon cancer and began chemotheraphy last fall.
"Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy& how can I ever forget them," Schultz wrote in the Sunday, February 13, strip-- the last Peanuts strip. The cartoonist was writing for all of us.
CONNECTION: Charles Schultz's creation of Peanuts mirrors the nature of God's relationship with us. God has "drawn" us as an extension of himself -- from the moment of our creation, his life and love are part of our very being. No matter how "crooked" our lines, we are a creation that is loved by its creator with a love so deep and profound that is knows neither beginning nor end. Out of such love, God gives us the gift of his Son, not to condemn us or erase us like bad art, but to restore us to loving relationship with him and with one another. As Charlie Brown and company reflect the gentle spirit of their creator, we have been "drawn" to reflect the Spirit of our Creator: the God of light, the God of peace, the God of joy, the God of forgiveness.
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