Half a Christian                                                                                  9/20/42

 

Scripture: Mark 9: 2-13

 

The Christian spirit is the greatest known force for remaking the world into a place of righteousness, of human brotherhood.  All of the peoples of the world might live together in confidence and trust, in friendly understanding, if they were to claim Christ for their own.  I verily believe this statement.  And so do you, and so do millions of other worshippers gathered in their churches and chapels and temples and cathedrals and wayside missions today.  Having said this, we are immediately confronted with the persistent question, “Well, with nearly two thousand years to do the job, why then hasn’t the world been made a place of delightful universal human fellowship?  Why this war and all of this violence and death;  why do we have lust and greed and crime on earth?”

 

A ready answer that leaps to the lips of some is that “Christianity has never been really tried!”  An arresting thought, is it not?  One that tempts us to climb on the cynics bandwagon and say, “Surely!  Because man forgot God or never knew him.”

 

But, like many another statement, it is only a half truth.  For the spirit of Christ has been tried by a host of followers of the Galileean Master, with varying degrees of faithfulness and consistency.  And much progress has been made in the direction of a Christian social order, even if it is all set back and endangered for the time being.

 

We are witnessing tragic failure, in our time, which makes all the more evident the desperate need of people - all mankind - for a more faithful discovery of, and adherence to, “the mind of Christ.”  Granted, then, that we fall far short of an ideal Christian order in both personal life and group life, what is the reason for such a lack?

 

The poet, Swinburne, puts it vividly when he writes in one unpleasant, arresting line, “For tender minds he served up half a Christ.”  That line suggests a short-coming in the interpreters of Christ.  For it is the tempted practice of both individuals and Christian groups to “dilute the teachings of Christ for popular consumption.”  In our hard-headed and perverse ways of acting, we would often find the pure spirit of Christ a searing blast upon our conscience.  We find it easier to choose the part of Christ if it is not made too difficult.

 

Peter was one of the first to dilute the whole Christ.  He was on the mount of transfiguration, and while there, he had a vision of his Lord in all his radiant beauty, purity and strength.  He was filled with awe and wonder at the power and purpose of Jesus as he now saw it.  He was intoxicated by it and would have “drunk in” more of it.  He was prone to forget that even spiritual ecstasy has to be temperate and controlled if it is not to be needlessly wasted.  He wanted to stay on top of a mountain, build a tabernacle, enshrine forever the holy vision and dwell in its light.  The valley seemed far away and unattractive; why lose the beautiful in the ugly and mundane?  Why go down to the sordid human round again when there was such freshness here?

 

Would it not be better to stay on the mountain top?  For a moment, the possibility of a tabernacle had become more real than the bruised, bewildered, broken, strife-filled people in the world.  And the Master had to lead him down the mountainside again to where people needed the help of these buoyant hearts, transformed into action.  Jesus even charged Peter and the other two to say nothing about their experience with him on the mountain.  There are some experiences given by God only to the inner recesses of the human soul, which are so precious, so holy, so utterly personal that they may not be shared with anyone else.  Others may know of these experiences, or guess at them, only by the effect seen in one’s actions and attitudes.

 

The experience of Christ is a soul-stirring experience.  But one who seeks only the vision is no more than half a Christian.  For there is also the grueling experience of wrestling with evil, with sickness of body and mind.  We have to live in the ordinary world.  Our visions are made truly our own when we bring them with us in a mighty struggle to make our world better in the holier light!

 

It is dangerously easy to be no more than half Christian in many a sense.  When minds are shaken with fear, sore with selfishness, puffed with pride, laden with overlooked and unrepented sins, it is easy to seek mild medicine in a palatable tonic of half-Christianity.  We are all prone to “find what we look for,” rather than to accept objective reality.  Kings have “discovered” so-called divine rights.  Nations have seen “manifest destiny.”  A diluted solution of Christianity inspired the Kaiser in Germany and condemned him in America.  What might happen to our estimates if we could, and dared, see the full light of Christ shining on the whole picture of our lives?

 

We are half Christian in our tension between idols and ideals.  Idol-worship - pagan denial of the true God - is essentially self-worship.  One sets up that which he desires in wood, stone, or gold, in power, magic or superstition, and worships at the shrines of projected self.  The heart of true religion is dedication to an ideal beyond one’s self.  It is not always easy to distinguish between the two, unless one is firm.

 

            (Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.   Mr. Pliable sets out with Christian toward the celestial city. Slough of despond.

            City of Destruction looks good and he returns.)

 

Peter was bitten by the subtle bug of half-reality when he tried to persuade Jesus not to go to Jerusalem.  He had not yet learned the possible power of a life willing to go all the way even at tremendous sacrifice.

 

We see a great church lending itself to a policy of half-Christianity today when after giving full approval to fascism in Spain to save its corporate existence there; we see no move to plead mercy for the thousands upon thousands who seem doomed to execution now that that horrible struggle is over.

 

John Wesley came upon the scene in England at a time when the Church of England had apparently accepted the subtle and damning attitude that half the population was worthless.  The theory of social caste was accepted.  But Wesley was not satisfied with that view.  It was half Christianity - or less!  And he went after the common people; miners, who didn’t want him; soldiers, who didn’t know him; prisoners, who had no friend; the aged, the unemployed, and the outcast; in the shops, on the fields.  The gospel, all of the gospel, is for all people everywhere!       (missions today)

 

Jesus faced the problem of compromise or completion.  A few days before his capture and crucifixion, some men from a Greek city came to see him.  The Greeks were a people religiously hungry, and appreciative. (gods  -  Paul’s experience)

(1 or 2 scholars feel that these Greek visitors offered Jesus a professorship.) but (Gethsemane)

 

But Jesus went all the way  - to bitterness and triumph!

 

            A cause for thought:  “The black sheep have vigor!”

 

                        (Hitler; Mussolini;  others like them)

 

The “sheep”, of whatever lighter color, had better be strong, not only with the sword, but more surely with the shield of what is right.

 

            Men who went all the way:                1)  Jesus   2)  Socrates  3) Luther   4)  Wesley   

                        A host of humbler folk - just as fully Christian.

 

            Who will dare to quit being a half-Christian and follow in their train?

 

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dates and places delivered:

 

            Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, April 30, 1938  AM

            Wisconsin Rapids, September 20, 1942

            W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, October 1, 1942