How Free Do You Want To Be?                              10/31/48

 

Scripture:  Matthew 23: 13-32

 

Text:  Matthew 23: 32;  “Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.”

 

Though a great many of us have not known it, the Christian church has, for over a thousand years, celebrated November 1st as All Saints’ Day (Or All Hallows’ Day).  And so, of course, October 31st is All Hallows’ Eve or “Hallowe’en.”  Religiously, it is a time for grateful remembrance of “all the saints who from their labors rest.”  The “ghosts” and “goblins” and “witches” of Hallowe’en are probably only a popularization of the notions of the ignorant and the prankish concerning the real character of those who have continued in immortal life.

 

For Protestants, All Hallows’ Eve, October 31st, is a sort of religious “Independence Day.”  For it was on that date that Martin Luther nailed his famous theses on the church at Wittenberg, challenging anyone to debate who would respond to his position on certain teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic church.  Luther was not the only man who was doing some independent thinking on these matters.  There were others whose minds and consciences called for a change, a reformation of the church at this point.  But Luther’s move constituted the ecclesiastical “shot heard round the world” and it precipitated the Protestant Reformation.  For this reason, October 31st is noted by many churches as “Reformation Day,” and the Sunday nearest it as “Reformation Sunday.”  From that day, and through the days of spiritual struggle that have followed, has issued the freedom we of the Protestant conviction hold so dear.

 

Just as Independence Day, July 4th, is a time for rededication of Americans in the United States to the cause of political freedom, so Reformation Day is a time for rededication of Protestant Christians to the cause of religious freedom.  And neither political freedom nor religious freedom is assured of continuance except by the rededication of freedom-lovers to these causes.

 

The best hope for the continuance of democratic or representative government in these United States is for all freedom-loving people to get to the polls next Tuesday, as well informed as each may be, and vote for the candidates and the propositions on the ballot they believe will best perpetuate our political freedom!

 

The best hope for the continuance of religious freedom here, or any place in the world, is for all freedom-loving people to rededicate themselves to that freedom.  This is not done by a mere live and let live kind of easygoing tolerance, but by a discriminating knowledge of what is involved, and by the constant exercise of that knowledge.

 

On a great day in antiquity, some inspired Jewish teacher told his family or his friends the story of Adam and Eve, walking together in a garden, talking together of the riches and trials of this life.  And they talked directly to God - and He to them, personally, without intermediary, mystery or ceremony.  This meeting between God and His children was simple and direct, the face-to-face relationship of parent and child.

 

But Adam and Eve failed of their high destiny.  They were given God’s guidance, and they disobeyed.  And so they were cast out of the beautiful garden.

 

A sequel of this story is that, sometime later, the notion of the sacredness of the institution took shape in the religious thought of God’s people.  Perhaps they reasoned that the individual is not responsible.  That had been Adam’s excuse for disobedience to the divine law.  “The woman whom you gave to be with me gave me of the [forbidden] fruit.”  And it was also Eve’s excuse: “The serpent beguiled me.”  They and their descendants may have felt that the organized community could discipline the individual in his religious thinking and ethical conduct thus assuring better the high spiritual tone of both the individual and the community.

 

If such had been the case, they furnished ample evidence in themselves to justify their little faith in the individual.  Man throughout the ages has asked God for guidance; has been given it; yet has disobeyed God.

 

So from earliest recorded history of the ideas and experience of mankind, there has been conflict between two extreme positions in religious doctrine.  There are those who have said that the individual soul is the fundamental and sacred unit in God’s Kingdom.  They have vigorously challenged what they considered restrictions in their religious liberty.  They have attested, or protested, their faith in God whom they know and can approach, and by whose guidance they can live.

 

On the other side (and I think a darker side!) there have been those who have proclaimed that the religious institution is the fundamental and sacred unit in the Kingdom of God.  These have felt (and not without some justification) that our sacred heritage is too precious to be left in the care of individual men and women.  They have doubted the ability and the responsibility of the average man in the matters of religious faith and practice.  They have preferred to place these matters in the care of the institution where men and women were trained particularly for the presentation and perpetuation of sacred truth.

 

It was this frame of mind that created not only the authoritarian church, but the patriarchal family within which the father made the laws and saw to it that they were enforced.  It was probably because of the increased power of individuals that the patriarchal family gave way to more democratic family life.  It was the increased emphasis on the sacredness of the individual, and on his responsible action, that produced a revolution against the supremacy of an authoritarian church, as an inviolate and infallible institution, and produced the “gathered company” of believers, in which each is responsible for his own life before God.

 

Man can be free when he will be free. He can be a real person when he wills to be a real person.

 

And, on the other hand, man creates the institutions which enslave him.  I do not deny that man has often refused, and still refuses, to stand on his own feet and to conduct himself like a respectable son of God.  Man is lazy, selfish, mean.  He neglects to worship God in the privacy of his own home and waxes indifferent about joining in public worship.  By his neglect and indifference he invites and encourages by his own default the institution which can take over this responsibility.  In civil life he looks for what the government can do for him by way of comfort and security, rather than what he can do to make his government.

 

Man is sacred all right.  But is he responsible?

 

The future of Protestantism, and of democracy in every area of human endeavor, rests on the active faith that man is sacred, able, and responsible, under God, to manage his own affairs.  Without this faith, democracy cannot survive.

 

The deficiencies of democracy in religion and in government are apparent and alarming.  We would not now in our time be fighting for our lives in our democratic institutions had we not fallen short of the dignity and responsibility which independence requires.  It is not pessimism, but is realism, to say that vast numbers of people, probably a majority of the individuals on this earth, do not want positive democracy -- else they would get it.  They are not seeking personal responsibility.  They beg for security.  Too dull to think, too numb to pray, too lazy to struggle and too timid to face God alone, they want only “freedom” from responsibility.  By this very frame of mind, they invite and too often get soul-less institutional control of their destiny.

 

Do they want to be free?  Do you?  Do you want to be told what to believe?  Do you want someone else to pray for you?  Are you eager to be told when to work, for how much, and for how long?

 

Or do you study, listen to sermons, go to church in personal search for the means of building your own faith?  Do you pray - by yourself, when alone, and for yourself and others when someone else is leading?  Do you volunteer for the work and service you know needs to be done and which you know how to do, or can learn to do?

 

If you want to be told what to believe and do, an authoritarian church and authoritarian government stand quite ready to take you into their institutions and by the slavery of your submissive soul to increase their own power.  If you want freely to think your own thoughts, formulate your own beliefs, direct your own course of action, then be busy -- be very actively busy -- thinking, believing, and acting, in building the free church and the free government of free men.

 

For the while, we here in this room enjoy life under a government that is still largely free, and in the Protestant tradition of a free church.  But do you know that our existence is a rarity?  Despite the temporary crushing of one manifestation of authoritarian government in the outcome of the recent world war, dictatorial government still holds determined sway over vast areas of human existence.  And democratic governments have been tottering and falling from the dry rot of their own individual irresponsibility.

 

As for Protestantism, it alone, to my way of thinking, has the potential for such a day as this.  In the Protestant way alone can be found the breadth, the depth, the experience, the strength to nurture and develop religious democracy, without which civil democracy has no roots.

 

And today, when the whole course of the world is on trial, one half of the nominal Protestants of this country have stayed at home rather than get to their houses of worship.  I say this in full recognition of a good attendance on the part of this congregation today.

 

What shall we do?  Well, I’m not going to tell, either you who are here, or all of the “yous” who are absent, what you must do.  As free souls that is your responsibility, just as my action is my responsibility.  But as for me I will continue to practice and to teach that the Sabbath and every other institution is made for man.  I shall denounce forces and institutions that outrage man’s divine nature.  I shall uphold those that serve man’s needs.  But most of all I shall remember that I am a sacred being, a son of the good and most high God, and will try to behave like it.  I am my own priest and bishop.  I will pray for myself and for others. I will make my testimony as able as possible in favor of the sacredness,  the ability and the responsibility of the individual soul.

 

Will you do likewise?  Pray for yourself and for me and for others.  It is my privilege to minister as I may to you.  But you are your own priest before God.  Will you seek to know and perform His will?  Will you constantly and fearlessly testify, by word and action, to your faith in personal sacredness, ability and responsibility?  If you and I will do this actively and faithfully we can continue our part in building Protestant Christianity and in pouring the feeding elements of life into the hungry roots of democracy.  How free do you want to be?

 

Jesus had painful occasion to speak out frankly, boldly, fearlessly, even severely against an institutionalism in which leaders had gone personally corrupt.  He made it more than plain, it seems to me, that his church is founded on the sincerity, the earnestness,  the godly activity of the people who enter its covenant and fellowship.

 

This is a good time -- an urgent time -- in which to rededicate ourselves to the principles on which Christ’s free church is founded; to remember the saintly souls who have lived in it and for it; and to recognize the goals of true ecumenical Christianity.

 

“Fill ye up, then, the measure of your fathers.”  So be it.  Amen.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 32, 1948.