Let Freedom Ring                                                                 4/30/44

 

Scripture:  Acts 22: 17-29

 

It is not my purpose this morning to make an address on patriotism.  There are, however, points at which true patriotism and religious reality seem to touch each other.

 

One of the things that endears to me the national hymn, “My country, ‘Tis of Thee,” is the fact that some of it is a prayer to the Almighty.  All of it is an expression of great appreciation and trust.

 

At this particular time, we might well sing it more often, reminding ourselves of our own love of a land of liberty in which freedom fairly rings from every mountainside ---- freedom to all those who know what to do with it!  It has been bought with many struggles, and countless hours of toil, and at countless instances of risk - all of which make it the more precious.

 

But the state of freedom is causing profound concern to many a philosopher in our day.  Paul E. Scherer suggests that freedom is in a very delicate plight, and that many modern statesmen hardly seem conscious of the fact.

 

The last century has brought about some of the most radical changes in the history of mankind.  The tempo of life has speeded up immeasurably.  We have become dependent on greatly improved machinery.  Industrialization of many countries has changed the mode of livelihood for millions - and introduced conflicts and complexities that are not yet solved.  And warfare returns again and again!

 

Scherer says that man today is laboring under 4 vast slaveries: (1) the slavery of the lost conscience; (2) of the lost neighbor; (3) of the lost God; and (4) of the lost challenge.  Man is offered 4 freedoms: (1) freedom of speech; (2) freedom of religion; (3) freedom from want; and (4) freedom from fear.  He needs 4 more fundamental freedoms found in the Christian gospel!

 

I.  For the last 80 or 90 years, a gnawing skepticism has worked at man’s standards of right and wrong.  There has seemed no point, in the minds of many thinkers, to which one could tie his thought and his living with absolute certainty.

 

Scholars have studied behavior patterns and looked for social maladjustments.  Ordinary folk have just done the best they could in the confusion.  There has been some tension in our souls - but perhaps not much.  We assume we have to be “practical” (whatever that may be); we must look out for ourselves.

 

How could such a point of view have gotten such a hold on a civilization that called itself “Christian?”  And yet it did!  We were not anybody’s neighbor any more.  We merely occupied the apartment next door; we were shareholders in a distant corporation whose other shareholders we did not know, or particularly care about; no Lazarus lay at our gates with body full of sores - he was whisked off to an institution where he became a case number (he is vastly more personal just now to those few business men who serve as emergency helpers in a city hospital); the facts seemed to be that human beings were different - they were black, white, brown, yellow or red; they were Congregational, Evangelical, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Baptist or Roman Catholic; they were Jewish or Gentile; they were British, Dutch, Norwegian, Mexican, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, German or Japanese - different!  The only common denominator seemed to be in the realms of economics and to some extent in politics.  And what did we get? - a flock of “isms” as the solution of man’s problem of how to be a neighbor.  Were was God in Man’s thinking?  Gone, except in some individual lives.

 

In a world of scientific inventions, mass production, gadgets and restless gadding, where was the need for God?  And did not the evolutionary hypothesis suggest that there was some thrust to life that, of its own momentum, would keep it moving up?  Almost everybody believed that for a while.

 

Religion was an annex - all right for those who wanted it; but vast numbers of people who shaped the destinies of a civilization found no real need of, nor use for, God!

 

If anybody paused long enough to meditate in contemplation, he was oppressed with a sense of futility.  Where was his sense of purpose, of direction, of “mission?”  He was insignificant; had no song or sun.  His one tangible goal was comfort.  Did we in this particular country get exercised about the hell brewing on the earth until we could see that our own comfort was alarmingly menaced?

 

II.  In this light, how shall we look at the four freedoms postulated by our administration for ourselves and such others as will work with us?  What about freedom of speech - what does it mean?  To a multitude of school boys it has meant freedom from speeches!  But if one has nothing to say, freedom of speech doesn’t mean anything.  And, too often, we find ourselves ready to give up talking, if we can have back the things that make us comfortable and content.

 

But what of freedom of religion?  For long, agonizing centuries, flesh-and-blood people have paid a costly price for it; spent their comfort, their positions, their very bodies for it, lived in catacombs, suffered exile, braved torture, defied great political power, for it.  What does this precious, invaluable thing mean here in America where we have enjoyed it, as we might have accepted some great bounty of nature?  Half of us seem to regard it as freedom from religion.  Only half of the people in these United States have bothered even to be enrolled in the membership of some church.

 

Our wistful, short-visioned talk about freedom of speech and freedom of religion is partly a symptom of their very lack of essence in the lives of hosts of us.

 

What kind of Utopia do we mean, when we speak of freedom from fear?  Freedom from want?  Do we mean political security?  Do we mean jobs and bread and more?  Are we thinking in terms of affluence and comfort?

 

That is not our real problem!  If we are concerned with nothing beyond these, we are of less than human stature!  That is why hell could break loose with such devastating fury!  A French editorial which appeared when Paris fell nearly 4 years ago, said: “Misfortune doesn’t rise from the dust, it is prepared in the lives of people.”  We might add that triumphs are prepared there, too.

 

When men have lost their conscience, their neighbor, their God, and their aim in living, they can be easily tricked into surrender.  The slavery of this barrenness - dry at the very roots - seems so bad that other slaveries seem lesser and hence acceptable.

 

Can’t we see that the same can be true in London, or Washington, or Tokyo or Berlin?  The only assurance against such disaster is struggle for great, positive freedoms eternally worth struggling for!

 

The Christian gospel stands squarely against the dehumanizing processes that have been operating to our ultimate grief.  The gospel addresses itself beyond the preservation of democracy to safeguarding the very soil and soul out of which democracy grows!  It is concerned with those freedoms which gave our freedom its birth, without which man will be ever less than he should be!

 

Here is a tremendous, immediate concern.  Here in America we are trying, as perhaps never before, to think and to plan our way into the future.  The only mood which really fits us is the sober mood of a more profound commitment than we have heretofore dreamed of.  It is so vital a concern that to betray it now would be to “wear thin the patience of God with this generation.”

 

If we will exercise our Christian faith, we have, over against lost conscience, the keeping of a truth which is not our own, but committed to us.  That truth isn’t merely relative; it is eternal and permanent.  It didn’t grow of itself.  “It is the word and will of God in human hearts, and the pressure of God on the human soul.”  It doesn’t shift with seasons.

 

The freedom out of which democracy grew bears its witness that perfect freedom means willing servitude to God!  It springs to life in such hazardous statements as that of Andrew Melville.  When a Scottish king was going on and on about his “rights,” Melville said: “Thou God’s silly vassal, there are two kings and two kingdoms in the realm of Scotland - King James and King Christ Jesus, Whose subject King James is, and of Whose Kingdom he is not King, nor lord nor head, but a member!”

 

Has our relative freedom from the tyranny of earthly kings and empires bred in us a disregard for the lordship of God?  Where did we get the idea that we could tamper with that bond and win?

 

And what shall we seek over against our lost neighbor? -- The truth that people are people; bone of bone, flesh of flesh, blood of blood; with a bond of brotherhood, born of sonship in God; across every supposed barrier of race, color, culture, nationality, or religious expression!

 

There is one thing that unites us all.  It isn’t a party, and it isn’t an “ism.”  It is God in Christ now reconciling the world unto himself.

 

Jesus Christ himself gave the definition of a neighbor in a simple little story of a good Samaritan, that stands as a holy classic forever, a story that recognizes need and goodness across every  human barrier.  [Luke 10: 29-37].  It must be a terrific thing to pray for ones enemies, as Christ did - and as his followers surely ought - not for their evil; (Christ is forever against it, and ours); but for people; (Christ forever seeks them, and us!)

 

The freedom of mankind is something vastly more than the right to be a number or a name in a census register, it is freedom to be a part of the family of God.  It is more than individual men redeemed by God’s love; it is redemption of individual men and women into a commonwealth of the redeemed.

 

An allegory appears in Robert Searle’s “Tell it to the Padre.”  A man who was interested in anthropology died and started for paradise.  Being a scientist, he thought it would be worthwhile to investigate hell as well.  The privilege was granted; and he did.  When the ebony doors were swung open, he saw before him a vast table spread with more bounteous food than he had ever seen.  Around it sat emaciated, cadaverous folk, staring at the table.  Their arms were bound straight and stiff before them with splints, so that nobody could get his hand to his mouth; and that seemed to be the only way they could have hoped to eat.  It was ghastly and unbearable; so the anthropologist hurried back to the Golden Gate.  “I’ve seen enough,” he said, “I’m ready now.”  So the glittering portals were swung open.  There, what should he see again but a vast table spread with equally bounteous food.  And the people sat around the table with their arms bound stiffly in splints!  But they were sleek and happy folk!  “I don’t understand,” he said; “The circumstances are the same.  But what an eternity of difference in the people!”  “It is all very simple,” said the saint.  “You don’t feed yourself with your arms like that; but you can feed your neighbor.  Up here, you see, we have learned to feed each other.”

 

No man can lose either his conscience or his neighbor when he knows that God is around!  That is why Paul admonishes: “Above all, taking the shield of faith!”  [Ephesians 6: 16].  Over against the slavery of the lost, that is freedom!

 

Where is our hope?  Military victory?  It is merely the renewal of a chance for our generation!  The Atlantic Charter?  It shows definite signs of disintegrating already!  Our only hope is in a radical despair of everything except a re-created humanity.  The last challenge comes back in the words: “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”  We were made for that!

The pivotal freedoms of history, without which there is no true freedom, are God’s Word, His commonwealth, His actions, His summons.  We preserve them not by fighting for them, but by using them!

 

                                    Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 30, 1944