Where is the Beloved Community?                                    9/19/48

 

Scripture:  II Corinthians 5: 14-21

 

Text:  II Corinthians 5: 17a;  “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

 

When one has the leisure to do so, it is illuminating to look back, with inquiring frame of mind, over old newspapers and magazines.  A man who had to give an address on Independence Day decided to take a quick look back among old newspapers of more than a century ago.  He picked out a Concord newspaper of July 4, 1845.  It reported that he weather was fair; that an aged woman had been burned to death in Malone, NY; and somewhere in Mississippi, five persons had been murdered in cold blood.  That and the remainder of the news was much as one might read today.

 

Editorials of leading newspapers of the day were somewhat pessimistic in tone.  Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune mourned that American had let the principles of independence languish.  Its editorial said that “a few men are wanted, able to think and act upon principles of eternal value.”  A Massachusetts editorial remarked that that state must be redeemed.  “The memory of her renown still lives, but the fire has gone out.”

 

One hears such statements of pessimism in other times.  More than 30 years ago, at the onset of World War I, I was present at a village observance of Memorial Day -- always called Decoration Day in that community.  An aged GAR veteran who “couldn’t speak for sour apples” and who ordinarily never tried to, got up, mopped his eyes, and remarked that he guessed: “The young men today ain’t as patriotic as they used to be,” else they’d enlist faster in the army!

 

One can not readily find weather reports for the first century of the Christian era.  But one can find editorial expression on the state of man that does not differ greatly from that of 1845 in the USA; or of 1917; or of 1948 for that matter.  John of Ephesus was writing anxiously to the church in Sardis and saying: “You have the name of being alive, but you are dead.  Awake and strengthen what remains.”  He was telling Christians of the first era that “the fire has gone out.”  And he was pleading for repentance and wakefulness as alternatives to doom.

 

Some of the editorial mood of 1948 only echoes the yesterdays of years and centuries ago.  One says, “modern man is obsolete” because, through the centuries, he has changed everything but himself.  And an editorial comment appeared in Life magazine that “the thing for us to fear today is not the atom, but the nature of man, lest he lose either his conscience or his humility before the inherent mysteries of things.”

 

Our difficulty lies in the fact that the fires of the spirit are thoroughly sprinkled by the showers, the rains, the deluge, of human desires.  We are enslaved by our own desires -- and voices clamor on every side endeavoring to create within us further desires -- desires which others desire us to desire.  And the things which we want, as well as those we have, enslave us in relentless tyranny.  Our scientific genius obscures our spiritual needs.  Our personal interests even dictate many of our convictions.  Our passion for the moral virtues is obscured by our material and social wants.

 

Many of us in this room have played “King of the Castle” at some time in childhood or youth.  It may be that we drew a circle on the ground and tried with might and main to see which of us could hold the circle against all comers.  When I was in grade school this game was played by seeing who could throw everyone else off the little plank porch or doorstep of the township school, and keep them off.  Swimmers may try seeing who can be king of the raft.

 

In our time we have played “King of the Castle” or “King of the Raft” on a world scale.  And often the game loses all its good nature, ending in heated conflict.  Broken homes suggest too much of the “King of the Castle” idea in domestic life.  Business interests and labor interests contend for the castle in industry.  The races trade blows without quarter in the game.  Nations have been struggling to the death for the castle and still spar menacingly.

 

When we played the games as youngsters, we could quit it and part good friends.  But in the world as we see it now, the contestants part only with an armistice or under an armed truce.  Names are called; new weapons created; each is watchful that whoever is the “somebody” gets hauled off the “castle” and made a “nobody,” while some other “nobody” tries to be the “somebody.”

 

The resolution of our conflicts is not going to be found in ordinary compromises and conferences.  Merely to make a “deal” is often no solution at all --- it often only adds new fuel to the fire.  Witness the bitter results of some of the political deals of World War II.  Discussions and compromises are usually necessary in getting parties of widely differing points of view together in common understanding and accord.  But the thing that makes a successful compromise is not the “deal,” but the spirit in which two or more sides get together.

 

The birth of our nation occurred in discussion and compromise.  It could have failed entirely, and was failing, as the several colonies refused to give up their own view points, prejudices, and interests.  It was when Franklin suggested that they pray before God during their sessions, that the colonial representatives were able to enter into the agreements necessary to arrive at common ground and to form the spiritual basis for the new nation.  Our nation was born not only in the ideas of men’s minds, but in the guidance received by men literally on their knees.

 

The “beloved community” at home, in the nation, over the world, in industry, among the races -- everywhere, waits only on men and women who have gotten out of the way of themselves and out of God’s way.  Robert Frost has put his finger on a basic need in his invitation

                                                --- “to a one-man revolution,

                                    The only revolution that is coming.”

 

It is a revolution involving the dethronement of ourselves and the installing of a king worthy to be king.  If any kind of saving revolution occurs in our world --- abroad, on our shores, in our homes --- it will be the revolution that begins in our hearts with Christ as king of our castle.  Said Paul, “If a man be in Christ, he is a new creation.”  And such a new creation is used of God for the furtherance of the beloved community.

 

Churches have their crusades for bigger programs, more generous giving, more members --- all of which things ought to be apparent in a healthy church.  I believe that the Presbyterian Church now talks of enlisting a million new members in that communion.  One of its ministers says soberly that if this talk means merely enrolling another million self-centered individuals, he is not interested.  A million self-possessed men, women and children joining a church merely clutter it up with more “dead timber.”  The inertia of our churches today is caused and measured by the multitudes for whom church membership seems no different from joining another club or fraternity, with no thought of re-centering their lives on Christ in an inner, personal revolution.

 

The church will be on the road to redemptive power when we members depose our stubborn selves and let Christ reign over our lives.  It is quite beyond our power to lead others to a re-centering of their lives until our own lives have found their center in Christ.

 

Henry Thoreau remarked in conversation with Ralph Waldo Emerson: “When a man is standing in his own way, everything gets in his way.”  He might have added, deeper yet, that “when a man is standing in his own way” he is in God’s way, too!

 

And when a man who has responsibility for leadership in his community or nation, stands in his own way, he is in his country’s way as well.  The problem of all of us it that of getting ourselves out of the way -- that is, in a position of service and self-effacement -- so that God can use us.  Jesus put the matter profoundly when he said: “He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”

 

Our ability to meet the staggering needs of the world -- the hunger, the spiritual poverty, the moral depravity -- depends on our ability to get our selves out of the way in giving ourselves and our resource for God.

 

Our capacity for adventure, for daring, for risk in dealing with the struggle for power in the world, is contingent on the extent to which we loose or lose our lives in Christ’s cause.  Our support for the missions of Christ’s’ church is not held back by our poverty but by our self-concern.  But “if a man be in Christ” -- his soul and his substance in Christ -- “he is a new creature.”

 

Have you watched a neighborhood boy re-centered in his first experience of being in love?  “Old things are passed away” and all things become new!  The tousled hair gets “grooming and grease.”  Neck and ears usually scrubbed only under protest get scoured with willing and meticulous care.  Manners, long regarded as a troublesome concern of adults and a nuisance to comfortable eating, take on new significance.  Life centers not on the old center -- “what do I care” -- but on the new center, “What does Clara care?”  The boy has been changed, not because he suddenly decided of his own will to be different, but because the love of Clara constrains him!  I’m told that there is a similar effect on a girl when some boy becomes the center of her attention and affection.

 

When people of any age or walk of life lose their selfish concerns in the insistent question: “What can I do to please my Lord?”, the answer comes: “Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye do it unto me.”  And we grow out of self into the service of God.  The love of Christ constrains us!

 

When a man and a maid stand in the presence of God and promise before Him and human witnesses to love each other, renewing that pledge daily with the quality of their lives, they build a lasting home.  Each gives of self to the other in the common joys and tasks of the home.  When two people marry with the thought of what each is to get out of this arrangement, their home is already a failure.  For a home is not capitalized selfishness, but the loving and generous giving of its members to each other and together to their world.

 

So it is, essentially, in the world of local communities and of nations, of economic groups and of races.  And our time for the discovery and practice of this truth is running out fast.  This is God’s hour, and our day to be His instrument of redemption.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 19, 1948.