Something Needs to be Done! 3/3/46
Scripture: Read Luke 13: 1-9
Text: Luke 13: 3b; “.. except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”
A week ago we considered here a few of the facts about atomic fission. Not at the first explosion of an atomic bomb, did we rush in to make a pronouncement on its significance, but a sober six months later. We have taken some time to think it over.
But our sober consideration shows that we do not have unlimited time to consider life in an age of atomic power. On the contrary, time is short -- not because of a scientific discovery but because of the character of man who applies that discovery! Something needs to be done! And that something is an earnest, practical spiritual discipline.
One of the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb, Dr. Harold Urey, has said that, unless we act now, “we shall eat in fear, sleep in fear, live in fear, and die in fear.” He was referring to certain proposed legislation.
Have you ever attended some so-called “Old-fashioned Revival” and heard the speaker try to throw the fear of hell into his listeners by proclaiming the immanence of heaven and the end of life on earth, perhaps ringing the changes on some such text as “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand?” There has been a lot of crude handling of that text, but it is one of the great sayings of Scripture.
Recently, the great contemporary preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, whose “National Vespers” are heard on the American Broadcasting Company [former Blue radio network] each Sunday afternoon at 1:30 o’clock, has preached from a text he said he never though of using until recent events lighted it up: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”
Those words originally came from Jesus, and Dr. Luke remembers them. But now they are taken up and underlined by modern scientists. “Except ye repent, ye shall all perish.”
The Master’s saying was called out by two tragic events in his time. (1) First, Pilate had murdered some Galileans while they were sacrificing in the Temple. (2) Second, a dozen and a half people, probably workmen, were killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed. In both cases, numerous observers apparently had little sympathy for the victims. It was assumed that they were especially wicked sinners whom God punished by permitting their destruction.
That is an old and persistent doctrine. The book of Job was written to disprove it, but it has persisted through the centuries. In spite of Job, and later, Jesus, it is often generally assumed that great disaster implies great guilt; and that when we see a great sufferer, we see a great sinner.
In his impatience with that, Jesus said: “Do you think, because they suffered this, that these Galileans were worse sinners than the rest of the Galileans? I tell you, no; unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen men killed by the fall of the tower at Siloam? Do you think they were worse offenders than the rest of the residents at Jerusalem? I tell you, no; unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”
Now, 1900 years later, men of science and technological skill are mounting hillside rostrum and even pulpit to say the same thing; “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” They are saying it in the awful explosive light of one of their own discoveries. When a single great flash of light, heat and power snuffed out over 100,000 men, women, and children, justifying voices are raised. Is not this the punishment of justice? Nevertheless we are horrified at what we have done through those who represent us. Saying that Japan was guilty, and deserved it, still does not get us around the fact that the mothers and babies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had done nothing to deserve it. They were victims of a force we now all face - titanic and catastrophic power in the hannds of unregenerate mankind. Henceforth, war means just such indiscriminate obliteration of civilian populations for all of us. This is the trend of modern warfare magnified to the point where none of us can miss seeing it.
And it is the scientists who worked on the project who are dinning at us the warning that the two or three explosions that have thus far been set off are only the first dim, tame, intimations of what can happen and will happen in the hands of any but repentant and regenerate men! Can people, will people, “repent” - become people of changed heart - soon enough to survive?
As we look through pages of the history of the Western world civilization, we may discern 4 relationships between science and religion. Dr. Fosdick points them out. (1) First, science was in bondage to organized religion. No scientist might dare to declare any truth he might have discovered, that appeared in conflict with an established dogma of the church. To transgress this limitation was to incur fearful penalties.
(2) However, science at length broke free from dogmatic bondage. Its pioneers won its rightful liberty. This liberty, and what was done with it, shocked the church. It broke down old world views and discredited superstitions and errors. It forced a re-understanding of the Bible. To many it seemed blasphemous; and the antagonism between scientists and churchmen became tense and bitter.
(3) Then, that phase passed for many intelligent people. Too many first-rate scientists remained good Christians; and too many good Christians welcomed the truths demonstrated in science, to hold longer that science was religion’s enemy. But still, religion and science seemed competitors in ways of meeting human need. And when scientific achievement brought one thing after another than man had prayed for - better and more abundant food; more comfort; better engineering, medicine and even psychiatry - was it not science which was meeting man’s need? And the growing, popular feeling that religion is unnecessary and irrelevant, affecting the minds of millions in our time, has put us in a danger far more real than the limitations of bad dogma.
(4) For a fourth phase now appears clearly. Science has put in our hands this new power that chills thoughtful folk around the world - the power to destroy ourselves and our civilization utterly. Science is no longer in bondage to dogma. Science is no longer the enemy of religion. Science is no longer the competitor of religion. Science now preaches like an evangelist: “Repent quickly; choose between heaven and hell; seek the wisdom and character that can control power for man’s good! Repent of your warring, lest you perish utterly. Seek world wide good will, and good faith - quickly, while you may! If you still believe in God, take that belief seriously! How else can you get control of what has been given you?”
Now let us take this appeal of scientists seriously, and personally. Do we find our own city an easy place to handle - ethically and spiritually? The things science can give us have been here, abundantly, and more are in prospect - and we need more. But far more do we need that which goes deeper, further inward; that which is spiritually sustaining; which can control, sustain and direct our life. Imagine your minister stepping out of the pulpit for a moment; and think of Jesus Christ standing near, but at one side, while science stands squarely before you to repeat Jesus’ saying: “A man’s life - his life - consists not in the abundance of the things which he possess.” Indeed it doesn’t! A man’s life consists in his inner rightness of character; his basic faith about what life means; his personal, spiritual resources for controlling living and directing it to good ends. Science itself is saying that today with a fervor I never expected to see from that quarter. And we had better all listen to that gospel!
A navy chaplain, who has been intelligent and sincere in his effort to minister to the needs of men in his unit, puts his finger on one or two exceeding sore sports in our spiritual experience. Turning for comment from the men who are self-disciplined and sincerely trying to act in Christian manner during their Navy duty, he focuses on the appalling failure of a great many to live by any convincing standard of right and wrong. Even more dismaying, he feels, than the overt acts of immorality in the attitude and conduct of some, is the religious indifference on the part of young men whose service records show them to be members of churches! To him the ethical apathy of those whose records show an up-bringing in church-member homes is particularly appalling! When making their own decisions, a distressing number of these young men seem to leave their religious values aside. It is like some surplus gear tossed aside when packing a sea bag for sailing from the USA. You can’t take everything, so worship, and the Golden Rule, and the Christian virtues can be left out.
Now that observation says something stern to us at home in our churches - in this church! Why should any man, who has been reared from childhood in one of our homes, who has attended our Sunday school, who has received some training in the meaning of church membership and joined this or some other church, fail to measure up fully to his responsibility for Christian living during his military service? Or when he enters business? Or while he is on some vacation, or at some school? Why should any young woman reared and trained here or in some neighboring church fail to be really, and practically Christian in thought and deed?
One dreadful enemy of the kind of training that would help these young people to be what they should be is our own adult indifference! Our own lukewarm ineffectiveness!
Even if our Church school classroom techniques of teaching were the latest and best possible (and they are not, for we are by no means near perfect!) the power of a careless home would nullify them.
The too few faithful teachers who prepare for Sunday classes and get to them are considerably canceled by every mother and dad who do not consider the religious training of their children important enough to get out of bed and attend Christian worship on Sunday morning. It is utterly silly for any of us to suppose that the righteousness of religious thinking, of Christian worship, of ethical conduct will be learned by any child or youth unless his professing parents get out and go with him to the place of worship and training.
How important do you suppose it seems to child or youth, taught in the Sunday school, and trained by a pastor in preparation for membership in the Church of Jesus Christ - when he joins his church to find a gathering of 120 or 130 or 150 members - and visitors - out of 500 members, at the accepted hour of worship? “Ye” - we - “are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its savour --- it is good for nothing!” [Matthew 5: 13].
The chaplain says that a lot of Johnnys didn’t come to services last Sunday, because they were never really wed to their own churches at home in never-dying love, honor and faithfulness. If we make our church what it ought to be - and in this day must be - the new Johnnys will want to listen, to worship, to do.
Our time calls - shouts, pleads, yes screams - for people who will put religious perspective, religious training, religious worship in first place with no yielding! What happens in our souls and the souls of people everywhere is the sole salvation of the life of this generation.
This is a day for patience, persistence, great courage, and tremendous good faith. Don’t stay on the side lines! Take hold somewhere, as persons, as citizens, as Christians - on behalf of great and adequate religion.
It is written on the wall in explosive lettering - “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”
To all those who see that, and turn to doing something about it, there stands One who showed forth God to all men saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” [John 14: 6[. It is desperate, high time that we seek that way with our whole being!
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, March 3, 1946.