Multiplied Might                                                                     11/15/42

 

Scripture:  Isaiah 6: 1-8

 

Text:  Isaiah 6: 8     “Who will go for us ..... Here am I, send me.”

 

Our attention is centered, every day that passes, on the grim business of winning a war.  We await with great eagerness every bit of news from the fighting fronts in many parts of the world, where our boys and men (and some of our women) are struggling that we may be assured of our liberties - and others of theirs.  Our hopes and our prayers go with them day by day, even hour by hour.

 

As a people, we accept our rationings willingly; we attend our duties cheerfully; we respond to unusual demands upon our time and energies and resources in order that our representatives at the fighting fronts may be supplied and supported.  With everyone doing his part in the great effort, our individual strength, utterly inadequate in the face of our combined opponents, is multiplied into a power that we expect to see mightier than they.  It is in this multiplication of our hopes, our efforts and our enthusiasm that we base our expectation of a military victory over predatory governments.

 

Important as is the war effort to the kind of world we are determined to maintain, there are other matters of importance, as well, that must not be neglected.  It is our business as Christian folk to remember them.

 

One of the splendid things about our ally, China, is the leadership of China’s Christian generalissimo, Chiang Kai Shek, who has made it a matter of government policy to resist the aggressor with all China’s might, and at the same time to build a new China!  I want to suggest this morning that we Christian Americans must do certain important things in addition to prosecuting a war.  The war must go on!  And at the same time we must be concerned with other constructive building.

 

It is my deep conviction that the Christian Church must get on with its war against evil, its promotion of right, its message of salvation, its practice of brotherhood.  The most careful and conscientious of Christian leaders have been telling us over and over again, in recent years, that the gathering and breaking of this storm on our world is due to our failures, our shortcomings and our sins; that the scourge of war should bring us to profound repentance and rededication.

 

I heard a splendid Christian man (an elderly minister) say, four or five months ago, that he tired of being told that he must “repent.”  He didn’t feel sorry at all, because he did not think his sins had brought on this war.  All his life, he said, he had worked for Christian brotherhood, a better world, the salvation of people.  He had no regrets and nothing for which to repent.  He was sincere, and he was right - but only partly right.

 

There are many in the church who probably feel that way.  And yet we can not so easily escape the sterner judgments of the Almighty.

 

When I was ordained to the ministry, together with three other young men, Professor Arthur Holt gave us the charge.  Among other pieces of splendid Christian advice was this.  He said, in effect, “You will be sharing in the privileges and honors of a splendid calling.  You will also share in its shortcomings and in the failures of some.  Wherever a Christian minister brings honor to the cause of Christ, honor will be brought to all of you.  Wherever a minister goes wrong, dishonor will come upon all of you.  You cannot escape it.  If you are to be a member of the ministry, you must accept this willingly.  Do not try to escape it, but bear it like a man and do all in your power to honor the calling.”

 

Isn’t it true?  All Germans are having to bear some of the scourge of Nazism.  No Italian can say “Fascism has never affected me” and still be an Italian.  Because of the military ambition of men who have since seized her leadership, all Japan has had to become used to the Nazi frown; and common people, naturally peace-loving, polite, and cheerful, have become infected with the arrogance and ruthlessness which are that part of Western civilization they ought not to have adopted.

 

Because of the air of superiority and domination of Tory Britons, other British have been disliked and mistrusted by great areas of the world’s population.  Because some Americans have been greedy, materialistic, crude or careless, all Americans are believed by some to be so.

 

In a very vital sense all of the people of the world must take the inescapable consequence of the misdeeds of all evil doers.  The sin of a lynching is a shame to all decent people everywhere.  The fact that dominant white nations around the peace table after the last World War prevented a clause recognizing racial equality, thus perpetuating the implication on the part of white men that all men of color are inferior, has borne disastrous fruit.  Believe me, it will produce more such fruit if we persist in it!

 

The only escape man has from his own sins, or the sins of the world, is in God.  Because men everywhere forgot God, evil has come to have its day.  But God is goodness.  If a man find salvation in God, is he not sent right back into the world to bear its evil and to struggle for righteousness, truth, justice, love?

 

The strength of Christianity is in its sharing.  Those who have themselves received the gospel and felt its transforming power, wish to share it with others - to invite their neighbors into the fellowship and pray for their welfare; to extend the invitation to the ends of the earth wherever others need the gospel.

 

The extended hand of Christian people is represented in that movement which we call missions.  Missions are as deeply imbedded in the gospel as are the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes.  They are as essential to the growth of our Christian spirit as are prayer, worship, forgiveness.  They are the practical fruits of whatever religion is in us.  Christianity is an active religion.  “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”   [John 14: 15].  “Who is my neighbor?”  [Luke 10: 29-37].  Jesus taught that my neighbor is anyone who has a need that I can help relieve.  “By their fruits ye shall know them.”  [Matthew 7: 20].  It is fair that the spirit of our hearts shall be judged by our actions.  “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.”  [Mark 16: 15].  There is urgency and action in the word.

 

Missions are an outreach and a continuation of the ministry of reconciling men to the wisdom and the goodness of God, who has Himself given to us.

 

There are false and mistaken notions of missions.  Plenty of people, far too many, have thought of missions as something carried on by more or less queer people; something that seems related to the church (at least one hears a good deal about it in that connection); something constantly begging for more (never less) from the churches.  This never was the meaning of missions.  And it is not now.

 

Missions are a vital part of the gospel of Jesus.  They are a part of the plan and purpose of God for saving the world from the evils that fill the life of man with fear, enslavement and tragedy.  The appeal of missions is not to the unwilling, but to all those who, because they themselves love life, want to share it with others.  The appeal of missions is not a tax on the reluctant, but a presentation of opportunity to serve, to those who like to relieve needs.

 

In missions, people do together what they could not accomplish separately and alone.  In acting together, Christian people pool their strength and multiply their might.  This is what they do:  they send forth well-trained men and women across barriers of class, color, nation and race; into areas of underprivilege, of tension and thwarted aspirations; among people hungering for freedom and fulfillment.  There, the missionaries are representatives of the Gospel and of the Church of Christ (our representatives and God’s); they heal the body, they enlighten the mind, they set free the spirit and enrich the life of multitudes of people.

 

Wendell Wilkie, in two or three sentences of his report to the American people, paid high honor to the good will created everywhere by the missionaries.  Not every American knows what he now knows.  Thank God for all who do.

 

Do you know that the missionary movement is a mighty movement?  A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference in Moline, Illinois, where we were informed of a number of things that are of interest to all Christian folk.  We were told that there are at work in the Pacific and Asiatic area now more than a thousand missionaries of the various branches and denominations of the Christian Church.  Our own denomination has, in various parts of the world, east and west, about 365 missionaries.  Two thirds of these are at work at their posts now.  Of the other one third, some are on regular furlough, a few on sick leave, and some are, or course, withdrawn from war areas until such time as they can be sent back.  The splendid work goes on from Alaska to Africa, from China to Chile.

 

Even in areas where the missionary staff has had to be reduced or withdrawn, native Christians carry on.  Do you know that the Christians of Japan are now, in the midst of war, carrying on a nation-wide evangelistic campaign among the people of their nation, and that they are doing it in spite of the worst military dictatorship on earth (except that of Germany)?  Do you know that Toshisba University has a capacity enrollment of 6,000 students, and Kobe college for women an enrollment of 750?  These colleges were founded by missionary initiative and now operate independently under Christian auspices.  The Christian forces of Japan are at work, and though we can not now have any fellowship with them nor even send them aid, let us not desert these Christians in our hearts.  For here is the hope of that misguided and misruled nation.  German-trained militarists got control for the time being, but Christianity, planted there by missions, goes on!

 

Do you know that, with all of their terrible sufferings, dangers and privations, the people of England have kept their missionary giving to nearly pre-war levels?  It dropped only 3.8% from 1938 to 1939, and only a little over 1% from 1939 to 1940.  England raises 2 million pounds for missions.

 

Do you know that a million dollars has been raised for the support of orphaned missions (that is, missions cut off by war from support from the churches of their mother countries)?  And do you know that $75,000 of this came from the young, poverty-ridden churches of war-devastated China?

 

I tell you the missionary outreach of the Christian Church is a tremendously vital and worthwhile effort and it brings Christian pride to everyone who has a hand in it through the giving of time, study, substance or prayers.

 

This is “men and missions” Sunday.  That is why I have made this report on this particular day - because hundreds of other churches are doing the same thing today, and there is strength even in thinking together, as there is in praying and giving together.

 

Our Christianity is not a local, or class, or national religion.  it is for all of the peoples of the world.  Separated by tremendous barriers of geography, of class, of race, of language, of traditions, the churches of the whole world have a unity in God and in the Christ he has given us.  It is the Church’s place, not so much to advise the world how to govern itself but to give the world a revelation of what Christian fellowship can do.

 

Insofar as the church realizes its own nature and mission, and is in fact, in spirit, in deed what its Lord desires it to be, it cannot but increase in the world the amount of basic trust and commitment of human beings across the boundaries of nations. 

 

The church has a limitless opportunity through the years to come, to make the peace that need not again be interrupted.

 

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dates and places delivered:

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, November 15, 1942