A Lenten Journey; The Companion of Our Way    4/19/42

 

            Scripture: Matthew 17: 1-13

            Text: Matthew 17:8;    “They saw no man save Jesus only”

 

We are all much concerned with events in these critical times.  We scan the newspapers with eagerness, with apprehension and hope, and hang on the news as it is spoken to us over the radio hourly.  We find ourselves sometimes a little confused, and often swept along by those particular movements where we can take hold in order to make our efforts count.  We need to keep our aims in the conscious forefront of our minds in order to make the effort of the hour effective, and in order to keep our direction right.  In the midst of this preoccupation, the experience of those three men who were with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration offers us suggestion and food for thought.  We heard the story in this morning’s scripture lesson.

 

Three men went with Jesus to a mountain.  Their experience there was startling. There was brilliance they had not known before; there were clouds; there seemed to be men from the past; there was the voice of God; there were high resolves; there was the voice of duty; there was the presence of the Lord.

 

A mountain-top experience would be good for all of us in several areas of life.

 

I.  Good Christians are greatly concerned about the church in these critical times.  In some parts of the world, it has been said that the church isn’t needed; and indeed that people would be better off without it.  In other quarters, it is held that the church may be useful as an instrument toward the ends of the state.  It is tolerated if it will fall in line.  It is persecuted if it won’t do so.  Norway’s churches are the latest to feel the ruthlessness of this position.

 

We may well be concerned with the strength of the church in these times.  The church needs such an experience as came to the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration.  The church needs this experience because of its importance.  Early in its history, nearly 1800 years ago, a man wrote, “What the soul is to the body, Christians are in the world, for the soul holds the body together, and Christians hold the world together.”

 

Never in recent times has this poor old world so sorely needed holding together.  Far from having learned the arts of cooperative endeavor for the common good, the peoples of the world battle each other to the death for positions of superior power and for survival.  What can the church do about it?  Can the church be to the world what the quaint words of antiquity suggest it should be - that which “holds the world together” - like a soul?  It can be like the soul if it meets some necessary conditions.

 

A divided church can not hold the world together.

 

            “While the nations arm and fight,

            And the people die,

            We debate on ‘Which is right,

            You, or he, or I?’”

 

If there ever was a time when sectarian divisions served a good purpose, the time is past!  The only way in which Christian people can “hold the world together” is by holding themselves together.

 

I have been both chagrined and pleased by a little incident early in my ministry.  A young woman, whose parents were Buddhist, had attended the Christian Sunday School for some years.  She became an active member of the young people’s society of the church.  I think she took the part of the Madonna in a Christmas Nativity pageant one year.  After graduation from a high school in Hawaii, she went to university to prepare for a medical career.  She is now a doctor, rendering service to hundreds of people at Honolulu’s splendid settlement house.

 

While she was studying medicine in Chicago, and I was on vacation for advanced study, I called on her.  While we were eating lunch together on a Sunday in the dining room of her residence hall, she said to me, “Mr. Kingdon, what is our church?  I am attending a Catholic University.  I know we are not Catholic.  I live in an Episcopalian dormitory and have gone to their chapel with some of the girls.  But I feel sure we are not Episcopalian.  I have attended several other churches here in Chicago - Presbyterian and Congregational.  It seemed to me that the worship and customs of the Congregational church were like those of the church at home.  Are we Congregational?”

 

I am chagrined that she had not been given training that would enable her to know with which family of the church she had been connected.  On the other hand, I have always been rather pleased that she had not been trained in sectarian division, and that the church of her childhood had been, to her, simply Christian!

 

Earnest men and women are doing their utmost today to restore power and influence to the church by unifying it.  Plans are made, conferences held, statements adopted.  Progress toward any real unity is pitifully slow.  And yet some real progress has been made.  Some years ago, the majority of Protestant churches in Canada forsook their denominational labels to become the United Church of Canada.  In very recent years the churches of Japan, to meet the threat to their existence, have united into one Church of Christ in that country.  In our own country, we have seen the uniting of the Congregational Churches with those of the Christian denomination.  Several branches of the Methodist Church recently united to form the largest Protestant group in the world.  Conversations of the possibility of union are being carried forward by representatives of the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches.  But the whole process of union and of cooperation is so slow!

 

What is it that we need to draw us together?  This above all else - to recapture the faith of the early Christians, that Christ is everything; that “Christ is all, and in all.”

 

The story goes that on a warm summer evening, while the Pilgrim-conscious Congregationalists in a certain town were singing “Faith of our Fathers,” a Methodist church down the street was singing, “Will there be any stars in my crown?” while the voices of the Baptist folk across the street filled the summer evening air with “No, not one; no, not one.”  It would be a better community if they could all get together on “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord.”

 

If all the differing groups that make up the Christian church of today could adopt the simple and sufficient principle that only that is essential which the Lord Jesus considered important, real spiritual unity would be at hand, and outward unity not far off.  Fellowship with all the children of God, past and present and to come would become increasingly real.

 

The church needs such an experience as came to the three disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration.  There they saw their Master in glory.  With Him were Moses and Elijah, the great leaders of law and prophecy.  How natural was the impulse of one of them when he said “Let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

 

But then, then they looked again, “they saw no man save Jesus only.”  Presently Jesus sent them down to work.

 

We of today see Jesus in the midst of great religious leaders of the past.  With him are Peter, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Knox and the others.  They are splendid men and a power for Christ’s cause.  But in their names we build our separate tabernacles.  If we will all lift our eyes, and see “no man save Jesus only” the great days of Christianity can come.  There is tremendous work to be done.

 

II.  Good Christians are greatly concerned in these critical times with the outcome of the present mortal combat between governments.  The outcome of the war makes a tremendous difference to Christian people in their very freedom to practice their religion.  Our form of government gives us the right to practice Christian principles and freely to offer Christ’s gospel to everyone.  The dictator governments do not allow that right.  Christian people hope for, and confidently expect, a victory which will give us another chance to worship freely and teach the Gospel of Christ freely.  If we are worthy of the chance, we will plan now to take advantage of it.  We will do our utmost to make our church effective here, ministering to its own and reaching out toward the unchurched of the community.  We will plan no let-up; only advance in our missionary interest and support.

 

It may be that after the thunder and fire of war are passed, we may be able to see only Christ standing there bidding us go down and serve all humanity.  While the fires of hatred burn hot, Christian people ought to hold fast their faith, reaching bands of confidence and prayer across the very mouth of hell.

 

One of the inspiring stories from the Orient is the assurance that when an occasional Christian Japanese soldier walks into a Chinese Church, he is welcomed, not as an enemy, but as a fellow worshipper of God in Christ.  Chinese Christians still pray for Japanese Christians.  It would shame us to do less.  The suffering of Christians in Germany, Norway and elsewhere is our sorrow.  Their faith is our faith.  Their hope in God is our hope.

 

The spirit of Christ in hundreds of thousands of hearts is the only hope for a decent and righteous peace at the end of war’s murder and hatred.

 

III.  In the midst of increasing pressure and feverish activity, we need as individual men and women, to open our eyes to the vision of Christ’s three disciples.  We see the cloud and hear the thunder and we are sore afraid.

 

And Jesus comes and touches us, and says, arise, and be not afraid.  If we lift up our eyes we may see no man save Jesus only - and we shall not be afraid.

 

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dates and places delivered:

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, April 19, 1942  [editor’s assignment; original manuscript says April 12, but there is another with that date.]