One God                                                                                            2/17/46

 

Scripture:  I John 3: 11-24

 

Text:  Mark 12: 31b;    “ ....thy neighbor as thyself.”

 

Ten years ago, a hatred which has smoldered too long like a hidden fire in some rotted log was being vigorously, fanatically, fanned to flame.  A movement for ruthless domination, first in Germany, and later over Europe with visions of world domination, was feeding itself on large doses of this hatred.  Digging up all the remembrances of irritation, suspicion, anger and resentment which a major population held for the members of a minority group, those who willed themselves to be the “master race” marked the Jews for humiliation, then persecution, then enslavement, slaughter and annihilation.  Hardly anyone believed, at its beginning, the awful depths of degradation to which humanity would be dragged, as the first steps were taken then in this open policy of active hatred.

 

A year later two little boys chanced to attend the same school and were in the same grade in a Pacific island city.  They became good friends, because of some common interests they had, and because they played together a good deal.  They enjoyed reading some of the same things - current news items as well as children’s books.  They liked to practice shooting a basketball.  They devised new games as they played at each others’ homes.  One was light-haired and blue-eyed; the other had dark hair and eyes; it seemed to matter not nor be noticed by either.

 

As Hitler’s “Aryan” myth and anti-Semitic hatred were breathed louder and louder from the other side of the globe, the boys heard of it, but said little to indicate that either heard the sound or noticed that foul stench.

 

There came a day when the blue-eyed boy suggested that they play together on Saturday, since there would be no school.  The brown-eyed boy said, “sorry,” he couldn’t come because he would be in Sabbath school on Saturday.  The blue-eyed boy asked his mother how it could be that his friend went to Sabbath School on Saturday.  He always went on Sunday to his Sunday School.  The mother explained that he attended a Christian Sunday School in one of the Protestant churches where the people always met on Sunday, while his friend attended a Hebrew Sabbath School in a Jewish group that always met on Saturday.

 

The blue eyes widened, but the mouth beneath them said nothing, while the mind behind them turned over something it had not grasped before.  Barry was a Jew!

 

Nothing more was said for a day or two.  Then the lad came to his mother once more with a question.  “Barry is a Jew.  And he’s an awfully nice fellow, Mother.  If Barry is what Jews are like, how can Hitler hate the Jews and treat them so badly?”  His childish mind was already so well made up that he hardly needed his mother’s answer.  From that day on he was, and has remained, an ardent opponent of Hitler, and Nazism, and all their works!

 

Nine years have passed in the lives of those boys.  Each has long since gone his own way.  And each adheres to his own faith.  They live under the flag of a land which assures them that they may worship as they feel they ought - each in his own way, without prejudice or hindrance, or fear or favor among men.

 

But that freedom may not be taken just for granted.  We have seen an unbelievably costly struggle waged in defense of basic freedoms that belong to men of dignity.  The open warfare of that struggle has ended.  But much of the spiritual struggle still goes on.

 

An important part of it lies in the field of tolerance and understanding between people who know they worship One God, though in differing ways.

 

Catholic-dominant Portugal makes it increasingly difficult for Protestant missionaries to work in Portuguese West Africa.  Despite large groups of indigenous Protestant Christians in Latin American countries, certain sources of Catholic propaganda would have us believe that those countries are entirely Catholic and that Protestants should let them alone!  Protestant mistrust of Catholics smolders, and occasionally flares up, in some wild flames like the Ku Klux Klan.

 

In one unpublished public opinion poll taken recently, 7% wanted a persecution campaign of some sort against the Catholic church.  Thirteen percent of the people, polled in the same study, indicated that they would be glad to join a hate campaign against Jews.  Those who pay careful attention to the matter tell us that, despite the military defeat of the Jew-baiting Nazis, anti-Semitism appears to be on the increase in our own country!

 

It is time for Americans of every faith to think!  Can this poisonous growth that has contributed to the moral downfall of a powerful nation and the wrecking of a continent, be allowed to undermine our own land?

 

Because anti-Semitism resulted in Europe not only in barbarous discrimination against Jews, but in similar manner to other peoples as well, and because it seems clear that its results will be similar wherever it becomes rampant, it seems to me that Gentiles - especially conscientious Christians, ought to consider the matter earnestly.  What about some of the things that are commonly said, in earnest or in jest, about Jews?

 

One of the sorest spots in the relation of Christian with  Jew is the assertion that the “Jews killed Christ.”  This ancient fable is one of those half-truths with an intent that is more than half lie.  It ought not to be difficult for any thoughtful person to nail it in its place.  There are facts about it which are very simple to ascertain.

 

The facts are that a handful of influential Jews of some 1900 years ago did conspire against Jesus; that a pagan Gentile Roman governor gave the death sentence and that sentence was executed by pagan, Gentile Roman soldiers.  The facts are that many of Jesus’ fellow countrymen appreciated him and heard him gladly; that the disciples and apostles were Jews; that (with the exception of one Greek doctor) most of the New Testament was written by Jews who had become Christ’s friends, and followers as Christians.

 

To call Jews “Christ-killers” is a cruel twisting of facts.  Some Jews were; more were not.  Some Americans were involved in the death of Abraham Lincoln.  And of course many more were not.  No one goes so far crazy as to refer to all Americans as “Lincoln-killers.”

 

We of the Christian faith may remind ourselves of the fact that many Christians came from pagan Gentile origin.  Some Christians (almost all of the earliest Christians) came from Jewish origin.

 

There is an arresting modern fable that comes out of the recent suffering in Europe.  It has to do with a traditional church in Europe.  The pastor was under orders from the Nazi Gestapo to eliminate all of Jewish blood from his congregation.  Acting under these orders, and by specific command, he announced that all persons present at church that day who had Jewish fathers would leave the church immediately and never come back.  A few got up and left.  Then he announced that all who had Jewish mothers must leave and never come back.  A few more got up and were making their way out when horror struck the rest.  For the figure on the crucifix tore itself loose from the cross and made its way out with the rest of the unfortunates!

 

If we are to control this unreasoning hatred of others which threatens to undermine our free security, we must think carefully of the facts.  One of the facts is that our blessed Lord never repudiated the most basic truths of Jewish belief in God.  He repeatedly reaffirmed those truths. 

 

Another place where a study of facts is in order is the irritated assertion that “Jews control everything in America.”  We Christian people ought to challenge that fable.  A study made not long ago and brought out by Fortune entitled “Jews in America” goes into the matter.  Jews are predominant only in (1) scrap metal dealing, (2) manufacture of clothing, and in (3) textile distribution.  They are prominent in the movie and the radio industries, having pioneered in both.  In the newspaper world, except for the New York Times, they are negligible.  In heavy industries, they are inconspicuous.  In international banking (a favorite field of rumor-building) the seven largest American banking houses granting foreign loans are all Gentile.  Among the wealthiest families of the United States, of the first ten, none are Jewish; among the next fifteen, two are Jewish.

 

The bulk of our Jewish citizens are of the so-called poor and lower middle class.  Facts do not support the contention that “the Jews run things in this country” unless we  nail down the specific things that Jews do run.

 

I.   Christian thinking about Jews must be fact-centered.

 

II.  It will also be individual-centered.  I have observed Jews who were inconsiderate, loud, and offensively aggressive.  I have also known Jews who were considerate, cultured and cooperative -- and some who were retiring.  Probably you have, too.  Certainly Jews have know Gentiles, of all shades in Christian profession, who are aggressive, or cooperative, or retiring.

 

Jesus had something to say to his fellow-Jews on this score.  For example, when his fellow-countrymen of Galilee, or those from Judea, saw someone from Samaria their immediate reaction was “unclean, substandard, pagan.”  All Samaritans were taken for granted as inhospitable, undesirable, and erroneous in their form of worship.  To some extent this also held for all Romans, who were bundled together and labeled “Those Gentile dogs,” in the same fashion in which some moderns refer to all people of German extraction as Nazis.

 

Not so with Jesus of Nazareth.  He always saw before him an individual person.  And he thought in terms not of fixed, unchangeable persons, but of growing, changing persons!  And so he could speak of the faith of a single Roman soldier, or point out the act of a Samaritan to illustrate the “Good Neighbor Policy” of religion.

 

All Jews are not alike.  There are Spanish and Portuguese Jews with high narrow heads; Dutch Jews with blue eyes; curly-haired and straight-haired Jews; Caucasian Jews of Europe, dark-skinned Jews of the Mediterranean, and Oriental Jews of China.  Even their religious expression differs among Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed Judaism!  Politically they are found among both liberal and conservative elements (and incidentally, probably 98% of the American Jewish population never had anything to do with communism!)

 

Gentiles differ in just such diverse fashion, whether Catholic, Protestant or pagan.  And the true Christian, as well as the alert Jew, will judge people by what they are, in fact.

 

If our civilization is even to survive, there has to be a speedy recognition of, and growth in, the brotherhood of man.  People of every nation, race, and religious faith must recognize and practice brotherhood.  We of the Christian faith, in particular, ought to lead in that expression.

 

(1) Citizens of the present world must live together as brothers in the practice of love.  “If a man say, ‘I love God’ and hateth his brother, that man is a liar.”  [I John 4: 20].

 

(2)  Citizens of the world must live together as brethren in the practice of forgiveness.  “Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.”  [I John 3: 15].

 

(3)  Citizens of the present world must live together as brethren in the practice of service to one another.  “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”  [I John 3: 16].

 

An excellent book was prepared less than two years ago by a member of the Oberlin College faculty Dr. Florence Mary Fitch.  Its title is “One God - the Ways We Worship Him.”  In it, by many pictures and in simple readable language, she describes the ways in which Jews, Catholics and Protestants worship the One true God - each in his own way.  I commend it heartily to each of you and to all people of every faith.  Read it with no notion of changing your own beliefs, but to understand better the way in which we people of this country express our faith.

 

“There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.”

 

When “one  came   and   asked him, ‘Which is the first commandment of all?’” Jesus answered by summarizing the law of the Hebrews in two statements for them and for all his followers ever since:

 

“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength; this is the first commandment.  And the second is like unto it, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  There is none other commandments greater than these.”  [Mark 12: 28-31].

 

----------------

 

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 17, 1946.