Higher Hearts, Affections, Plans and Purposes                11/6/49

 

Scripture:  Psalm 121

 

In many services of public worship, there is a moment when the minister says to the people, “Lift up your hearts,” and they answer, “We lift them up unto the Lord.”  We have used these words for several years in our Holy Thursday communion service.  Occasionally we sing a hymn which begins with the same aspiring words.  In the Latin, this expression is reduced to just two words: “Sursum Corda”  -- Up hearts!

 

When troops are about to pass a reviewing stand, one may hear the command, “Eyes Right,” as each column passed the commanding presence of the reviewing officer.  When the “Sursum Corda” - “Up Hearts” - is used in a service of worship, it is a direct reminder to the worshippers to do honor to the deity whom we worship.  It is fairly easy to turn our “eyes right” upon command.  Is it as simple as that to lift up the heart in the gratitude and devotion which are due our God?  How is it done?

 

I read recently three suggestions in the words of Walter Marshall Horton as to how we may effectively lift our heart before God while attending public worship.

 

1)  “First, disentangle your hearts from the many things that distract them, and lift them up to some high place where great things can be distinguished from small, as if through God’s eyes.”

 

There is a religious fascination about high places.  Jesus prayed on the hill, or mountain.  Many temples and shrines are located on the brow of a hill.  But the heart may be lifted in imagination without leaving the spot where we now are.

 

I should like to read to you a bit of dialogue written by a church member in Michigan and published in the church calendar of the First Congregational Church of Pontiac, Michigan.

 

“My God and I”

 

“I:  Now look, God, I am busy; haven’t time to talk here very long.  I have six kids, a husband, and a house and yard; also the church and PTA jobs needing my hands nudge me as I kneel here.  So please, I’m asking for more time and strength to work; and hurry, please, if you don’t mind.

 

God:  Relax.  Just come up here beside me on the moon.  It has a comfy hollow spot tonight.  That’s right, just let your feet swing out into space, and lay your cheek down on your arm.  This cloud will fit your back.  All set?  Now look down at the world.  That canyon there.  That ant down in the bottom rolling grains of sand against the side reminds me of some of you, imagining that you alone must build a buttress for the mile high cliffs of time with all the little works you can perform.

 

I:  But all the sands of time are running out!  I must get back to work ----

 

God:  Not yet.  Lie back.  Of course the sands of time are running, but not out, not exactly - only down to the bottom half of my eternal hour glass.  When necessary I will flip it over, make it run the other way.  You see the whole of time is in my hand and all it does is trickle back and forth.  It doesn’t vanish.

 

I:  I can picture that, but can you show me time as mountains rather than as shifting grains of sand?  Can you explain humanity in time like that?

 

God:  Look down at the earth.  That peak below you is the moment now.

 

I:  Yes, I can see.  But all the people seem to be around that center mountain.  Back, and way in front, I can’t see anybody anywhere.

 

God:  I’m sure you didn’t think to see a human creature, far back in the mountains of the past.

 

I:  Oh, no!  It never worried me to realize that man is a very recent comer to the earth.  But I feel panicky when I look down the smoky range of the future and see no one anywhere.

 

God:  No one?

 

I:  Well, only you; of course I see that you are everywhere.  The future and the past alike are full of you.

 

God:  And you, as part of me.  Now look again.  I think you realize, this time, that all those folks close huddled ‘round the peak of now are shapes, transparencies; and drifting through and ’round them is the me you saw enveloping the hills.

 

I:  Oh!  Then the part of them and me that’s one with you spreads over all eternity.  It doesn’t make a terrific difference then if people-shapes survive on earth forever, any more that that there were no people-shapes a billion years ago except that - well, man is your best creation yet.  So ---- Well ----.

 

God:  A little bit conceited, aren’t you now?  See all those stars?

 

I:  Not all of them, I guess.

 

God:  Well, do you really think, in all that territory I have there, that nothing better than the human race can be?  Just wait until you shed that awkward flesh and travel everywhere with me.  I’ll show you something really good.

 

I:  But if that’s true, what is the use of keeping on this body?  Wouldn’t it be best to rid myself of it right now?

 

God:  Oh no!  You keep that body and take care of it the very best you can.  I love each thing I make, regardless of its permanence.  A dandelion, while it lasts, is as lovely as a diamond.  Which of all your babies would you kill because it must die anyway someday?  No, you hop down again from moon to earth and do your work the very best you can.  Just quit your worrying about time and strength to get it done.  You understand now that, since I am a part of you and everyone is part of me, everyone on earth is part of you.  The work your body fails of time and strength to finish will be taken up and done by other folks who are the rest of you.  Here come your children home from school for lunch, I see.  Why don’t you make them pancakes?  There’s no rush.  So long.”

 

You notice, in this flight of fancy, that the mother was tempted to quit her body and remain permanently on the moon with God -- just as the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration wanted to set up three tents and camp there forever.  God never permits that.  In every act of worship there is not only an ascending, when we lift up our hearts by throwing off distracting things for a little while.  But there is surely a descending at the end which brings us down to earth amid children and pancakes and the PTA and next year’s budget.  But instead of being troubled and fussy about it, like Martha, we can handle these matters more serenely, like Mary, for having seen them in better proportion as through God’s eyes.  [Luke 10: 38-42].

 

2)  The second direction is this:  “Disentangle your affections from the little tin gods that lure them on the level where you live, and ‘set your affections on things above’ where they belong.”

 

A young lady in college wrote in a paper for the class in religion that she didn’t need to believe in God because she was engaged to be married, and her whole universe revolved adequately around the man she loved.  One trembles for such a one.  The fellow may or may not make her a good husband.  But no man has yet lived but lacks a number of important qualifications for the role of deity.  To idolize one’s fiancé, wife or husband, is to make of that one a little tin god and be led straight into disillusionment and suffering.

 

There is a large place in the divine scheme for earthly affections.  We owe affection to our family, friends, our profession. our native land.  But we can place these affections better upon descending to the earthy from having set our affections supremely on God.

 

The way in which divinely lifted affections can be expressed toward those we love is admirably illustrated in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s lines to her husband, Robert Browning:

 

            How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

                        I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

            My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

                        For the end of Being and ideal Grace.

            I love thee to the level of every day’s

                        Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

            I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

                        I love thee purely, as men turn from Praise.

            I love thee with the passion put to use

                        In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

            I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

                        With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath,

            Smiles tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

                        I shall but love thee better after death.

 

Saint Augustine -- in “Confessions” -- when young, loved a friend to the point of idolatry.  Friend died.  Augustine -- fairly torn in two -- whole world darkened - sun disappeared from his sky. -- Paying penalty for making a tin god out of his friend.  As he grew older, and learned to love God supremely, he found a new and better way of loving his friends: “Blessed is he who loveth Thee, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thy sake.”

 

National affections, so lifted up and purified, become not idolatrous rivals of the divine, but sacraments of things above.

 

3)  The third direction: “Disentangle your plans and purposes from the low aims that tend to abort them, and lift them up to God’s holy will for judgment and renewal.”

 

While in school this past summer, I had for a cabin mate, until he was called home by the critical illness of his wife, a Congregational minister named Fred Wangelin.  He is minister to a community of people in the Missouri Ozarks who are quite poor, some ignorant and heavily prejudiced, and some morally and culturally backward.  Wangelin, now an elderly man, but active and vigorous, was recently given a special citation by the Congregational Conference of Missouri for meritorious service in his Ozark parish.  He has had his enemies.  Some of them set fire to his house one night.  A neighbor who saw the flames broke a pane of glass and got Mr. and Mrs. Wangelin out, clad only in their night clothes, barely in time to save their lives.  But the smoke had not yet gone from the ruins when the first load of lumber for a new home was hauled into the yard by a church member.  For many had come to love this minister who preached in a good suit on Sunday and called in overalls and with hands conversant at manual labor during the week.

 

Asked why he gave his vigorous years to such a hard field - Fred replied that it was a field where a lot could be done that he could do.  He got his inspiration for going to such a place from reading a life of John Frederick Oberlin.

 

Oberlin, the man for whom Oberlin College is named - was a remarkable Alsatian pastor in Europe.  While young -- drew up a formal resolution consecrating himself and all his powers to the service of God’s holy will. -- That was nothing unusual (Missionary teacher in Hawaii had done before leaving New England) in the age of Pietism.

 

The unusual thing about John Frederick Oberlin was that he countersigned it at various intervals, regularly renewing his efforts to implement his resolution in his daily living.

 

When he first deeded himself over to God’s will -- was doubtful as to how God willed him to use his talents (he had very considerable talents!)

 

A home missionary persuaded him - he was marked out for service in the Vosges Mountains.  Friends and family cried out -- a waste of distinguished talents!  But he was persuaded God wanted him to do the hard thing.  That was the peak of his ascending devotion - the lifting up of his head in self-dedication.

 

His descending was into that needy field.  There God gave him back all his talents - (like he gave back to Albert Schweitzer in Africa all his talents of music and philosophy, as well as medical proficiency in equatorial Africa).

 

Oberlin used -- knowledge of botany, practical inventive ability, educational genius, to transform a backward mountain community into a tremendous demonstration of applied Christianity.  By burying himself in a little spot, he exerted an influence that became felt around the globe!

 

One day late in life -- visitor and Oberlin walked to a point on mountainside where whole parish could be seen in perspective ... Roads - Oberlin plan and pickaxe, trees along rooad still visible today, planted by Oberlin and his parishioners --- Aim of well-being --- smiling valley due to years of wise and patient ministration.  Visitor said -- “Pastor Oberlin, you must be a very happy man.”  (Moment of silence) then -- “Oui, mon ami!  I am a very happy man.”

 

I could wish nothing better for any of us who are here in this room this morning than that we might fashion such a career as to enable us one day to see our life as Oberlin saw his.  If that happens to us it will be because we have consecrated ourselves to something splendid and have oft renewed that fundamental resolution.

 

Church spire (on way to Green Bay last Sunday).  Such seems to say, “Lift up your hearts.”  Strange thing to say to us creatures whose bodies are formed of the dust of the earth.  But inhabiting the earthy formation is the spirit which the Bible says is in the image of God!  We are born to lift our hearts, affections, aims and purposes to God.  Then hang them illumined by His purposes, to descend again to earth’s level to serve our fellows in the name of God.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, November 6, 1949.