Faith, Hope, and Courage 8/1/48
Scripture: Luke 9: 37-45
Text: Luke 9: 43a; “And they were all amazed at the mighty power of God.”
A great many people are taking vacations at this time of year. Others prefer a winter holiday. In each case the variation from usual routine is a good thing, if wisely used.
I hope that the Rev. Mr. Feldt is going to find strengthening renewal during this month of vacation from the Methodist pulpit. I have, in a measure, during July -- though part of the time had to be used for minor repairs!
Our alternation between work and rest, concentration and relaxation, is essential to our well-being and effective living.
But I want to suggest that we need more -- much more -- than annual vacations to be at our best -- to be what we want and ought to be. For we want to be adequate to life, and often we are not. Sometimes we are quite helpless. I recall a tragic day in my experience as a minister when I was called to a hospital by people who were quite strange to me. A young man, victim of an accident, which was clearly the result of someone’s carelessness and incompetence, lay on the hospital bed, unconscious -- barely breathing. A surgeon had worked quickly, carefully, skillfully, but fruitlessly, over him and had emerged from the surgery with the sorrowful word that there was nothing more that could be done to save the man’s life. He would die, and soon.
One of the relatives wanted me to pray -- and I did so -- partly giving voice to her hysterical, childlike pleadings that God would allow it otherwise; more, beseeching God that this family would have the grace to accept what appeared inevitable.
Even while we spoke, the faint, flickering breathing stopped and the young man’s mortal life became, before our eyes, but a memory.
Others of the family arrived some minutes later. The courage of one was heartening. The despair of another was awful to behold. I offered to pray with them only to receive the short, impatient, strained exclamation of the young man’s father, “Pray! What good will that do?” And I’m not sure it could do him any good in the frame of mind he had right at that moment.
Now I have mentioned this occurrence because it epitomizes the helplessness of man in the face of tragic human need. There come times when we find ourselves quite inadequate to some tragedy which occurs, perhaps unexpectedly. Or some fear plagues us with appalling insistence. I think millions of thinking people have a sense of fearful foreboding over the events of our world today which seem so overwhelming. Where and how shall we find faith, hope and courage for the living of our day ---- personally, and in the world society of which we are an inescapable part?
I invite, and urge, you to look carefully to Jesus. That seems simple and the expression sounds trite. Look to Jesus. But it isn’t trite. It is the simple truth, known to thousands whose experience has tested its grace and truth.
This morning’s lesson about Jesus and about people has its setting at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration. While our Lord and two of his disciples were enwrapped in the peace and glory of heaven itself, the others were at the base of the mountain in the valley. They were surrounded by relentless Scribes and Pharisees and by a great crowd of curious people. Their Master absent, the religious leaders badgered the disciples with taunts and questions.
At this point a father arrived in desperation over his stricken son. He pleaded with these disciples to cure the boy, They, looking at the sick lad, knew that their Master had healed such maladies. One after another they tried, themselves, to do so. They entreated but seemed unheard. They commanded, and naught obeyed. One by one they failed, while the boy continued to writhe in torment, and the crowd grew more and more restless and hostile.
Then the Master himself was seen coming down the hillside where he had been transfigured on the day before. The crowd surged toward him. All must have sensed the power and serenity of his spirit. Each must have seen the peace and the glory on the face of him who had been so tired and so loaded with care. He had been going through a terrible time of decision, for he faced the ordeal of the cross. But now the tension was relaxed, and the glory of God was reflected in his face.
The Bible says that when Moses had come down from Mt. Sinai where he had received the Law of God, the skin of his face shone, and he “wist not that it shone.” How much more true must this have been of the face of Jesus, as he came down from his mountain!
The same distraught father who had pleaded for help from the disciples now besought Jesus: “Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son, for he is mine only child. I besought thy disciples to heal him and they could not. If thou canst do anything have compassion on us and help us.” Mark says that the radiant Jesus replied, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth,” and that the father answered, “I believe, help thou my unbelief.” In a demonstration of the “mighty power of God,” Jesus spoke a word, and the stricken boy was presently released from the power of his malady and made whole.
Here was an unexpected climax. A short time before, anxious and frustrated disciples had stood baffled and defeated in the presence of a jeering crowd. Now the same crowd stood in awe of the “might power of God.” What was this dramatic change from defeat to victory? Was it this: the Lord of those disciples came among them and took his place in their midst.
Two theories have been offered to our time in history as to the manner in which the transformation of our world must be accomplished. One is that man can accomplish the task alone; his wisdom and skill will legislate and engineer or perhaps even force a new world into being.
The Secularist League, meeting in Europe a little over 80 years ago, published a manifesto declaring, “Science has made God unnecessary.” Millions of people since that day have lived on that assumption. Many still do.
But millions more, who have survived two world wars, have experienced a shock of shattering disillusionment over their naive hope of inevitable human progress. The mind of our day has a feeling of being the victim, not the master, of these blind, materialistic forces which human ingenuity has unleashed on the world. And science, without God, appears an abyss into which thinking men dare not gaze.
There is another theory advanced: the idea that God alone will build His Kingdom on earth when and as he pleases. Man must simply be submissive and inactive, waiting for the divine fulfillment. Those extremists who fully believe this, are assured that all our efforts at world betterment are doomed to frustration and failure. Some day God alone will flash forth with all-conquering power from heaven and make his new world.
The final truth is in neither of these two theories. For ages, God has been patiently teaching man that the Kingdom of righteousness will come neither by man’s unaided effort nor by divine proclamation, but through God and man working together in harmony. The soul of man is God. The hands of God are man. The work of God among men requires both the soul and the hands.
Have you noticed that the moods of people are contagious? Pessimism and fear and despair, spread from one to another - sometimes like wildfire. The people of a great city scan the morning paper and turn on the radio. They learn of impeding industrial conflicts, airplane disasters, forest fires, floods, political high-handedness, hunger and misery all over the world. They learn of angry words spoken at the United Nations Assembly. Someone mentions a third World War a few times and people begin to say to themselves, “I don’t see how we can stand it, but maybe it’s coming. We’d better be ready for it!” And they go to work with foreboding in their hearts - a whole city of them.
The mood of faith and hope is catching, too. But it has to be genuine, not just a whistle in the dark. Why isn’t there more of faith and hope? Whence does it come? How may we have it?
Elton Trueblood remarks pertinently that the real “danger of our time consists in the fact that ours is a cut-flower civilization.” Cut flowers may be beautiful for a time, but they are not hardy, they wither and their petals drop soon. Then they die. Always they die because they have been severed from their sustaining roots.
Men cannot live by principles unless their principles have roots in God. Men cannot live sacrificially unless their sacrifice is rooted in the cross of Christ. Men cannot integrate their lives into a community of Brotherhood unless their sense of community is rooted in the Fatherhood of God. Man must be ruled by God - in thought, purpose and action - or the kind of civilization our fathers had, and we grope for, is doomed to the tyranny of a new Dark Age. The choice before us is clear, and the time is short. Either we give our loyalty, and our hands, to the living God as revealed in Jesus, or we shall be claimed by some totalitarian Caesar vaulting into our spiritual vacuum.
The day of victory will dawn for you and for me and for all other people the moment we see Christ coming over the horizon to take his place at the center of our lives. Call upon Christ for help; fill up your life with him; don’t wait for the desperate moments of life like that of the sick boy’s father, but seek the Master now; know his presence and his service daily; let him tackle your moral and spiritual problems with you, and you will find solutions you had not dreamed of, or supposed you could accept -- happy solutions; right solutions.
Faith is energy; faith is force; faith is a creative influence that transforms men and women into Christlikeness. And it issues in action!
Do you believe that the tasks of faith are worthwhile? Then take your place in the ranks of Christian workers in your church. Resolve, right now, that you will be about the Master’s business -- your business -- in this coming season. Make your life count for God, and the day will come when the headless, churchless multitude will find in you and your church the same master whose Kingdom can then come with a suddenness that will be the wonder of all.
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, August 1, 1948 (union service).