The World’s Greatest Need 11/17/46
Scripture: Psalm 139: 1-12
Text: Psalm 139: 7; “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”
1) Three years ago, while attending our Great Midwest Regional Meeting on Missions, held that year in Columbus, Ohio, I was one of those who were overnight guests in the home of a distinguished professor at the University of Ohio. The Professor was much interested in trees and, as a sort of hobby, owned a flourishing apple orchard some miles from the city. One thing in nature saddened him, however. He pointed to an elm tree in his block that was stricken with a tree disease. He said that the elm disease had taken many of the trees in the neighborhood and would probably kill all of their elms. Indeed, he speculated that it seemed quite possible that the elms of all the nation might be wiped out if no discovery were made whereby the new disease could be checked. It seems that the disease which attacked these beautiful shade trees of our land came from across the seas.
2) During World War I a virulent type of Spanish Influenza broke out in devastated Europe and quickly spread over the globe. The casualties to the people of our country, civilian and military alike, overshadowed the casualties of the battlefield.
3) American leaders now responsible for temporary government in vanquished enemy lands are struggling to prevent any total economic collapse in those countries, for they are sure that such collapse would be disastrous not only for people there, but for the people of this and every other land. People who live abroad occasionally express a fervent hope that American enterprise will be so conducted as to avoid another severe depression. For they are sure that an American depression would be disastrous for them as well.
In whatever specialized area of life one has the interest to look, the truth becomes steadily more apparent that what affects a part of the world’s population, has its effect on all the world’s population. Sometimes the effect is mild, sometimes violent, but it is inescapable. We are driven to the knowledge that there is no secure prosperity for anyone until there is world prosperity; no permanent peace for anyone until there is world peace; no health, education, general welfare that is sure without worldwide health, education or general welfare.
Mr. Wilkie’s two-word title, put on the front of the book he wrote after earth-encircling travel, “One World,” has been adopted in much of our thinking as an expression of inescapable truth.
The troubles of the world are our troubles; the hopes of the world are our hopes; the dangers of the world are our dangers. And what goes on among us is of vital concern to every other nation of people.
So generally is this coming to be realized that a new “word of the hour” has been in recent current use - “global.” Like any other “latest expression,” this word “global” may be used until it becomes trite with repetition, before we escape from it to some other fad of vocabulary. But the truth behind the word is no longer escapable.
Much of what comes to mind when we think of our interdependence with all other peoples, is disturbing; some of it even alarming. The vast chasm between what European communists mean when they talk about “democracy” and what most people of Britain or the United States mean by “democracy” is appalling. Can bridges of understanding be built, or even improvised, to span that chasm lest some torrent of conflict bring untold disaster?
Over us all hangs the threat of unimaginable chaos and collapse for the world we know, if the nations of the world should again resort to war with its latest weapons.
And yet -- evil is not alone “global.” Good is also global. If the materialistic ideologies of the world threaten us all with suffering or extinction, the opposite is also true. There is a “balm in Gilead;” there is a gospel of light and hope, given to men of good will and tested in human life through the centuries. To violate it, and ignore it, means disaster to all. To know, accept, and live it means hope for all.
In the past generation, Dean Edward Increase Bosworth of Oberlin said: “If the principles of Jesus were torn out of the heavens, they would spring up out of the earth.” That is, Jesus’ way is inevitable, indispensable, the ultimate fire of life.
1) If we did not have the kind of God and Father we have come to know, we would have to search for him in every nook and corner of space and experience. 2) If we did not have Jesus as our Lord, we would be miserable or blinded searchers for the name whereby we might be saved. 3) If we had no Bible, with its incomparable light and truth, we should be in inexpressible darkness and confusion until we could find the blessed story of a divine love. 4) If we did not have the church, then we would have to begin at once the labor, sacrifice, and struggle to build the beloved community, the household of God without which our spirits starve.
Indeed we must make all of these more vividly our own. Our conviction that there is a Father of our spirits, in God, must be faithfully fanned as a fire by our prayers, by our worship and consecration. We must rise beyond our ignorance and doubt into the light of trust in the life and the way of Christ. It is our only true hope!
We take our Bible too much for granted. We must read it, ponder it, return repeatedly to it -- for out of it comes the Word of Life. We take a human sort of pride in the repeated news that the Bible is the world’s best seller. Rather let it be our genuine purpose that it be the most faithfully read book!
Now that there is in Japan a wider freedom for Christian thought and preaching than for a decade or more, Japanese Christian leaders are seeking a half million whole Bibles, and millions of Testaments, to put into the hands of their countrymen. They are convinced that this will be a major contribution to the possible Christianization of hosts of Japanese people. They know that the need is urgent. I hope we do too! But no Oriental needs the Bible more than any Occidental. It is for all of us, to read and use.
The Church must be constantly built; not in wood and stone, essential as these are for the housing of congregations; but the church must be continually built in loyal, working, fellowship. Let’s put more personal meaning into the hymn:
“I love thy kingdom, Lord,
the house of thine abode;
The church our blest Redeemer saved,
with his own precious blood.”
Wendell Wilkie wrote “One World.” Clarence Tucker Craig wrote with even deeper spiritual insight, “One God - One World.” It will never be truly “One World” until all peoples become convinced that they are children of one God and hence brethren in one family of divine spiritual purpose!
After the long journey in man’s thinking to monotheism, what a tragedy that men are still so far from unity. Christian folk, at least, have outgrown the paganism of a divided God, but not entirely the paganism of a divided humanity. May not one paganism be as bad as another?
The message and mission of the Church (believe it!) is more important than the best that the Big Four, or the United Nations, can hope to accomplish. The men who make our desperately important international decisions have feet of clay which they cannot fully extricate from the mire of compromise, tradition, and certain expediencies. Nor probably could we if we were in their shoes!
Beyond the hope of what they may accomplish in our behalf is the hope of what men of God have accomplished and can yet do in our behalf. Peter, just out of prison, and further threatened, said: “We must obey God rather than man.”
Wesley, with churches doors locked in his face and taunted with being a “priest without a parish” remarked realistically, “The world is my parish.” -- The immortal words ascribed to Luther: “Here I stand! God helping me, I can do no other.”
These and hosts of others like them in spiritual stature, are the men who point us toward our greatest hope.
Two years ago, in August 1944, in a summer lodge high up in the Rocky mountains, a group of people sat by an open fire and chatted of many things. But none could forget that our armies were then moving toward Paris. In the circle was a brilliant woman whose husband was a newspaper correspondent in Paris. She felt anxiety for his welfare. She spoke freely of the things that would not and could not, in her judgment, bring lasting peace. Someone asked her, “What do you think will bring permanent world peace?” She hesitated long enough so that the questioner wondered if she had heard. Then she spoke with measured words: “Perhaps I should not say what I think, since I am not a member of the Christian church, but I wish we had the courage to try Christianity.”
It is easy to say, and has been said, that Christianity has never really been tried beyond a limited individual scale. It is not altogether true, but it has enough truth to sting.
But make no mistake about it, if Christianity is tried on a world scale, the problems of organization will be the easier to solve.
The World’s Greatest Need is not the proper organization of the nations and peoples of the world. The World’s Greatest Need is the Unifying spirit of Children of God. In that spirit the organization could be perfected without difficulty.
The world needs Christian people who believe their religion so sincerely that they will gather faithfully, regularly, worshipfully, teachably, in their own churches, helping to make the community of the beloved. The world needs Christian laymen who take the missions and the mission of the church in dead earnest and who will give time, substance, and intelligent interest to the cause of spreading swiftly the Christian gospel.
The world needs the consecrated living of every Christian in the struggle for peaceable, righteous, just, living for all. There is no true hope save in this: One is Our Father, and all we are brethren.
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Dates and places delivered:
Wisconsin Rapids, November 17, 1946