New Notes In Religion                                                          11/3/46

 

Scripture:  Matthew 7: 7-20.

 

Text:  Matthew 7: 14a;  “...strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.”

 

Evan Shearman has used the expression, “New Notes In Religion.”  I want to comment a bit on what those words seem to suggest.  For one thing they sound as though Religion is being set as it were to a new score of music with new notes, or harmonics, appearing.  In a passing sense this is true.  A short generation ago, humanism was having a great flare, and man’s devotion was focused, by some, on his own achievements, greatness, and potentiality.  Man has been sufficiently humbled by experiences of recent years to make it clear that he belongs on no marble pedestal of divinity, but rather on the sinner’s bench of repentance.

 

But this is as old as the good news itself.  The proclamation of the “New” sometimes means a refreshed, reinvigorated discovery of the old - that which is morally permanent in the world of increased knowledge, skills, and dangers.

 

(1)  We Christian folk of today need to know, and sound, “the note of a God who is holy.”

 

Over in England, the Bishop of Rochester said to the annual assembly of the Church of England, “The Church is infected with the spirit of self-sufficient humanism.  Today we confront a new phenomenon.  A generation has lost God and the whole spiritual dimension of life.  After a second world war in one generation, half the people of England are worse than heathens in that they believe in nothing, not even in themselves.  And the church has lost its vision, vitality and spiritual authority because it has succumbed to spiritual anemia.”  The bishop sounds pessimistic, but he speaks some truth.

 

Could we insert the words “United States of America” for “England” and make a similar observation?  We could.  Only half of the people of our country are accounted members of any church, Protestant, Catholic or Jewish.  And among those who are accounted members are hosts of people who are members in name only; who attend worship irregularly, seldom, or never, coasting along on what principles of religion and morals they learned briefly as children, rather than renewing and building their spiritual perceptions to keep pace with their material development.

 

America, too, needs the note of a God who is holy.  Even those who have sustained a continued belief in God, have in recent years thought of God as Comrade, Friend, Father of Love, available whenever we need Him; and that is right.  Only it is not enough.

 

For God is also the Father of righteousness, whose consistency resides in the highest moral principles.  There is such a thing as the wrath as well as the love of God, and people who flout the moral laws of right and wrong come under that wrath.

 

As an awareness of the holiness of God comes over one, he becomes smaller in his own sight, “whittled down to size” by his own sense of guilt and insufficiency, like the great prophet Isaiah crying, “Woe is me, I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips.”  [Isaiah 6: 5].

 

The fear of the Lord, which is not cowardice but is akin to awe, moving on to reverence, is the beginning of the wisdom we need desperately to keep us in control of our modern knowledge.  We need to know that God is holy.

 

(2)  The Church needs to sound the note of a way that is narrow.  This is not new, but it is new to many who have assumed that all ways have become forever broad.  Centuries ago, Jesus said what he still says today: “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.”  The word is spelled s-t-r-a-i-t, not s-t-r-a-i-g-h-t.   And it means narrow.  Yet there is no great press around the strait gate.  Those who walk the way that is narrow are called upon to sacrifice.  And sacrifice is not so much giving up of something as it is the setting apart for holy purpose of something we might not have used that way without Christian convictions.  It is not the leaving behind, but the generous, sharing use of time, talent, substance, skill.

 

(3)  Christian people of the church must sound the note of a faith that is contagious.  Could you set down your Christian convictions in writing?

 

We Congregational folk are sometimes asked what we believe.  Because we are not a church of an authoritative creed, we are sometimes seemingly backed into a corner by others who can recite from memory their creeds.

 

We are free from the tyranny of an imposed creed.  We are free to form our own creed - and that is what each one of us should do.  Do you believe in God?  What have you found God to be like in your experience?  Do you believe in the Church as a fellowship of Christian believers in God?  Do you believe in Christ?  Do you believe in the reality of sin and in the reality of forgiveness?  Do you find that what you believe makes a difference in the way you act?  Try setting down the answers to questions like these this afternoon into a creed of your own which you can change and improve with the testing of days to come because you are free to throw the light of experience on your own faith!  That kind of faith is contagious.  It will kindle your devotion to a living gospel at home and abroad with a kind of missionary zeal.

 

(4)  Christian folk of the church must sound the note of joy that endures.  No Christian has a right to be an advertisement for misery.  The writer of the book of Hebrews characterized our Lord as one “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  [Hebrews 12: 2].

 

We have committed to us an over-plus which Christ gives us to master success or failure, sickness or health, pleasure or grief.  We should lay hold on it so surely that others may see it in our countenances.

 

Our religion is singable.  It finds joyful expression in the great hymns of the church, in some of the so-called gospel songs, in whatever expresses a sincere joy.  Jesus’ followers sang a hymn on the very night of his betrayal, and his followers have been singing ever since!  Let folks around us be aware of the joy there is in Christianity!

 

These notes then, though old, are ever new in religion, because they are always renewable:  (1)  The conviction that God is holy;  (2)  that the right way is narrow and defined;  (3) faith is contagious;  (4)  joy is unquenchably a part of religion living.

 

Sound out the notes of a new symphony, O Christian people!

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, November 3, 1946