The News Is Good                                                                9/16/45

 

Scripture:  II Corinthians 2: 1-12

 

Text:  II Corinthians 2: 9b;  “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

 

A garrulous little man, bubbling over with solicitous earnestness sat in the seat of a railway car beside Bishop Gore.  He wasted no time in pleasantry or in getting even slightly acquainted.  With characteristic zeal, he proceeded directly to the point which evidently occupied his own mind most of the time.  Looking directly at the Bishop, he said:  “My friend, have you had the second blessing?”  Bishop Gore’s eyes must have twinkled a little as he replied, “No, I haven’t.  I’ve had the first blessing, the third blessing, the fourth, fifth and sixth.  But I never got the second.”

 

Many of us are a little irritated if someone asks, in effect, “Have you been converted?”  Sometimes the word is avoided and the inquirer will ask: “Have you been saved?”  It sounds like some sort of “patter.”  It may sound like an intrusion, where the inquirer has no business.  Perhaps out of place.  Somewhat embarrassing.  Do intelligent people have to be subjected to old-fashioned revival methods?

 

Let me say very bluntly that I, for one, do not care for those methods.  Many of us feel that one may acquire Christian faith and character in the same way he may become a musician - by gradual education.  In fact we prefer that method, but if we do, we have to work at it as a musician does at his art.  There are churches which profess the belief that the Grace of God is first given in baptism.  It is confirmed in the rite of confirmation; it is increased and strengthened through Christian home and church.  This is essentially the method of Christian nurture championed, not by a Lutheran theologian nor by an Episcopalian or Catholic bishop, but by a Congregational minister of the last century - Horace Bushnell.  Of course it is impotent and deadly if one believes in some automatic transformation at baptism.  But baptism and, in those churches which practice it, confirmation, may and should be expressions of a genuine religious faith in the process of growing.

 

But let none of us brush aside lightly the core of the matter which inheres in the word “conversion.”  Let no one suppose that conversion has not been for multitudes a profound and lasting experience.

 

I remember being startled when Dr. Ozora S. Davis, while lecturing one day to a group of more or less sophisticated theological students, referred quite in passing to his own conversion as a young man.  Whatever our theories about conversion versus Christian nurture, the fact remained that Ozora Davis had been for years a radiant man!

 

Conversion has changed lives - not only the lives of drunkards and loafers at some Salvation Army Rescue Mission, but lives of thousands of respectable and competent people like Wilfred Grenfel, giving them a new mind-set and setting their lives at a different, and better, level.

 

The secret of old-fashioned conversion, or of effective Christian nurture, is not in any hypnotic spell or self-delusion.  It is deeper.  Whitfield, Wesley and Moody made appeals that changed lives.  The secret of their power was in uncovering at least two sources of all great living - repentance and gratitude.

 

The genuine revivalist may have approached people by way of the sentimental.  But, after all, that is something everyone can understand.  And the good news is for everyone.  Selective Service has again uncovered a startling amount of illiteracy and poor education in various parts of our nation.  And even the highly educated are more swayed by their feelings than they like to admit.  So there is no point in condemning emotional approaches as such.  In fact it might be better for you and me if we were not so unruffled, it we were capable of deep sorrow for disgraceful use of life and if we were moved by profound gratitude that the mercy of God does not cease to fall, like rain, upon the parched earth.

 

If we avoid revival meetings, we would better still sound in church and conscience the note of contrition and the prayer of thanksgiving!  For this, look much farther back than 18th century revivalism.  Look to the 1st century in which Paul cries, “We preach Christ and him crucified.”  This preaching puts into bold relief two things.

 

(1)  It reminds us that men and women are capable of treating the best as if it were the worst.  They can choose Barabbas and send Jesus to crucifixion.  [Matthew 27: 21].  They can be utterly blind even to their own welfare.

 

(2)  It reminds us, too, that there is a goodness, so unbelievably good, that it will suffer the worst that can be done to it without surrender - a courage that can hold out to the worst imaginable end.

                                    Love so amazing, so divine

                                    Demands my soul, my life, my all.

 

I hope that I have not aroused the expectation on the part of anyone, by the wording of this morning’s sermon theme, that I would become a news commentator for this hour.  While we should be keenly aware of the events of our day, it is my purpose that this pulpit, like any worthy pulpit, shall be a relay station for the eternal “Good News” - the gospel of Christ.  And like the news of the moment with its cheer and its sorrow, its good and evil, the Gospel ranges in alternative from “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me” to “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift!”  Penitence and gratitude.

 

Put it in 1945.  Herman F. Reissig, in a sermon on “Gratitude and Repentance,” much of which I pass on to you today, suggests that one might almost conclude that, from gratitude and repentance, we have descended to complacency and grousing.  “Gratitude,” he says, “is a shout; complacency is a yawn.  Gratitude sings; complacency snores.  Gratitude evokes action; complacency twiddles its thumbs.  Gratitude sends men out to battle; complacency consents to all kinds of evil.  Gratitude spurs us on to a better tomorrow; complacency dreams of the good old days. ------ Are we nearer to a leaping, creative gratitude or to a smug and lifeless complacency?”

 

And what of repentance?  Do we replace it with grousing?  There is no lack today of grousing.  “How we fret and chafe and croak” ------ over policies of government and over rationing and its abolition -- over the difficulty in getting a good beefsteak and our fear of radicals or reactionaries.  A certain newspaper editor was once described in this sentence: “He is a vast formless sorrow, hot on the trail of an excuse for gloom.”

 

“Repentance,” in the New Testament sense, is “goodly sorrow; grousing is unproductive complaining.  Repentance is the real, disturbed by the ideal; grousing is a dull discontent.  Repentance is a humble resolve to do better; grousing is a private grudge.   Repentance is the offspring of gratitude; grousing is the child of thanklessness.”

 

If any church, and its membership, merely strains, where it ought to be strong, it needs a revival in the graces of gratitude and repentance.

 

Consider three areas of modern life.  (1)  There was recently a delightful occasion in one of our homes upon celebration of a golden wedding anniversary.  And we have all rejoiced with Mr. and Mrs. Parks. There is a story of an anniversary celebrated by another couple who had been married only half as long.  On their 25th anniversary, instead of the family coming to them, they went to the family in another town where those sons and a daughter, all married, lived.  What a reunion they had; sons, daughter, daughters-in-law, son-in-law, and four grandchildren! Of course there was a family dinner, and all sat around the table for some time just visiting and getting up to date on family news.  Next morning father and sons went crab-hunting while mother had another long chat with daughter.  The children brought gifts.  After 2 days father and mother went home again with a song in their hearts.

 

A young girl used to worry over the lack of any display of affection between her parents, such as that seen sometimes torridly displayed on the movie screen.  This until one stormy night when rain flooded their neighborhood and the river rose fast.  The children were put in the upstairs rooms and told to stay there, while father and mother went out into the storm.  The little girl sat with her nose glued to a window pane.  In a flash of lightning, she saw her father and mother together more than knee deep in water, carrying young chickens to safety.  In that moment, she understood that their affection was in no need of other display; they knew that they belonged together.

 

Married happiness is not always vocal, but it can sometimes become so in poetry or plainest prose.  On a front porch, a couple, married many years, sits at twilight.  He whittles a stick and she knits.  After long silence, he says (most unusual for him) “Do you know, Sarah, you have meant so much to me that some-times it’s almost more’n I can stand not to tell you about it.”

 

Thank the Heavenly Father for good homes!  The half-hearted effort of some to make a go of marriage, tossing it shortly back on the counter; the social and parental irresponsibility; the lack of personal discipline in some marriages stand out in shocking contrast to all that ought to send people to their spiritual knees in repentance for neglect, and in gratitude for blessing!

 

(2)  Consider now the place and promise of our country.  Our forefathers in this land were not ethereal saints nor unregenerate sinners.  They were determined on a course of common right.  A little group signed a compact on the Mayflower - “In the name of God, Amen,” and vowed the enactment of “just and equal laws.”  No complacency there - there was grand work to be done and they were about it.

 

The Declaration of Independence spoke of “self-evident” truths - among them that “all men are created equal.”  The people put teeth in that declaration with a Bill of Rights.

 

Americans; think and give thanks!  The very rocks would sing were we to forget, in complacency and grousing.  But penitence goes with thanksgiving.  In this land of the Bill of Rights, there are race riots; there is anti-Semitic agitation; voices are heard now and then demanding deportation of all whose ancestry is that of the “most decorated unit in the US Army” - a unit of Americans of Japanese ancestry.  Penitence and gratitude!  These ought to fire Americans to righteous action - a mighty revival of the true American spirit.

 

(3)  Consider once more the march of education and science.  Who can, and not be grateful?  Do any of us wish to live in the “good old days” of surgery without antisepsis or anesthetic?  of slavery for the masses? of education for a handful of the privileged? of execution for non-existent witchcraft? of high infant mortality, and helplessness against plagues?  All of us would say: “Thank God for the progress we have made.”  “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

 

But - to your knees - O sons of a righteous God: for man has blackened cities with explosive death.  “Results excellent.”  And the devil stirs a sense of false righteousness in the heart of the victors to make them feel as angels of the wrath of God sent to punish the wicked.

 

It is tragedy that mankind must so snarl its opportunities for constructive living as to have to resort to sheer destruction to defend what is right.  And no one escapes the condemnation - no one.  No one may be cool in the face of human suffering or neglectful of his duties as a citizen of nation and world and then excuse either his country or himself.

 

Out of deep gratitude for the blessings of science and art, of religion and education, of favored homes and country, and out of real penitence for the use we have not always made of our blessings, - may there come a resolve, humble and mighty, to build, at whatever cost, a world fit for the sons and daughters of God.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 16, 1945.