What docs it mean to be Free?

II Corinthians 3:1-6; 12-18
Rev. Jolm i. Buchanan
January 19, 1969

What does it mean to be free? There is no more important question
than that today, or in any age; and the answer depends entirely on who it is
who is doing the answering.

A young Marxist might say that to be free means to be rid of capi-
talism and the whole free-enterprise system. An African might define frecdon
in terms of the absence of the white man's presence,his institutions and his
money. ‘The American ghetto dweller might talk about freedom from the police
or slum lords. ‘The middle class merchant might define it as freedom to iale
a profit: a real estate man — to sell or not to sell to whom he pleasos.
Certainly the Trustees of Purdue University and the Purdue Peace Union differ
when it comes to articulating what it means to be free. So would a plant
Manager and union steward. So would we all because to this question , as to
all others, each of us brings his own personal freight, vested interestz,
commitments and operating assumptions.

ind yet, you and I, ought to be able to express some fundamental
unaninity, no matter who we are, or what our vested interests happen to be.
Because you and I have voluntarily chosen to place ourselves under’ the dis—’
cipline of discipleship to Jesus Christ, and that discipleship may, in fact,
be understood almost entirely in terms of freedom.

The question of what it means to be free might be merely philo~
sophical, just an entertaining round of intellectual gymnastics, except for
the fact that it is being asked today by all sorts of people and groups
of people. The Black Power advocate as well aS ‘the member of the John Dirch
Socicty; the student revolutionary and young republican: the devout Christian
who throws over the Church and his brother who stays in the church — all are
asking - "What does it really mean to be free?"

The disturbing thing is that we don't really seem to know, anc.
that fact makes the quest doubly important. We are inclined sometimes to
look comm our social noses at those involved in the quest. Too often we ~
dismiss on individual and the question he is asking because of his attire,
or hig beard or the length of his hair. And to the degree we do this, uc
exhibit our of lack of freedom - our own captivity to certain styles and
forms. The quest is on — and we need to be part of it.

What does it mean to be free? One thing it doesn't mean is tho
complete absence of responsibility in the form of basic rules and regulations.
It does not mean to do whatever you feel like doing whenever you feel like
doing it. Absolute, philosophic freedom is called anarchy - which in Pact
has proven to be synonymous with chaos.

It is interesting that there are those who seriously propose’ ‘dita
as a worldng definition of freedom. To effectively espouse their cause, toy
have on international organization of anarchists, which of course can havcnno
ruleg or regulations. They met last year in Rome and spent three days arguing
and fighting among themeslves ebout who would be the leader. Anarchy just
doesn't work. The assumption that men live in some predictable relationship
with cach other rules out totally any form of absolute freedom. Walter Lipp—
man said it well in his little book, Preface to Morals - "We have come to see
that Iuxley was right when he said that a man's worst difficultires begin
when he is able to do as he likes."

———————

-3-

that, very briefly, is theNew Testament on Freedom. And fron that
point we can begin to answer, from a Christian vantage, the question ‘“jIhat
does it mean to be free?"

I would begin with the church itself. When I say the Church, I
mean, of course, the universal Christian Church in all its expressions. Dut
let us not be guilty of excluding from that mystical universal body the
Church as we know it best - here in the life of this congregation. If the
gospel is a word of freedom, then the church ought to be supremely the
one institution in society where men are free. Collectively free — the
Church jtself ought to be free withinsociety to be itself. But it igs
not, and if you think it is, you're not thinking very well.

On the contrary, the Church has allowed itself to become captive
to the culture in which it find itself: that culture being overwhelmingly
white and middle class. In his excellent book the Suburban Captivity of
the Churches; Gibson Winter discusses the exodus of main-line Protestantisn
from the Ghettoes, and then issues a very ominous warning. The Church in
North Africa, he points out, lived for several hundred years. And thon it
disappeared without a trace. "This collapse can certainly be attributed
in part to the expansion of Islam; however, the core of the problem was
the identification of North African Christianity with the upper social
Classes. The Churches became centers of upper—class culture; consequently
they lacked widespread support among the people. When Islam swept across
North Africa it erased Christianity. Where Christianity has become identified
with upper class elites, it has lacked a substantial base in the workin; F
population and has been unable to weather social change." »;(p.50)

It happened a thousand year ago, because Christianity in the
Church was captive to one class. It happened in Cuba, and today is
heppening all over Latin America. ‘The Church is go completely identified
with and dependent upon the wealthy land-owning class that it has become
almost totally estranged from the great mass of people.

Can it happen here? I would suggest that it already . has. ‘the
Church is not free to be itself - conssequently it has very little to say to
anyone but white, middle class people. The ghettoes just. aren't listening
any more.

Where, .or instance, did we ever get the idea that the success of
@ church could be measured in terms of its statistical and financial
size? Ue got the idea, of course, from American middle class culture, which
puts @ great premium on statistical and financial strength. That cultural
value — has become an ecclesiastical goal, and to the degree the Church
reaches for it, it is just as much a captive as it would be if the govern—
ment forcibly closed all its doors.

In Jesus Christ the church is free. I+ is free to be the kind
of institution he called it to be - loving, serving, helping, healing.

It doesn't have to worry about survival ~ God will take care of that. 14
has to worry only about being what Christ called it to bee» If only we

could understand that about ourselves: if only we could see that we are
callec together not to be successful ~ but to be faithful - if only we could
exercise the freedom God gives us.

Uhat does it mean to be free? We began with that question, and
now I would pose it personally. What does it (or could it) mean to you and
me to be free? ‘

You know, I think somewhere in the back of our minds we know, or
at least we have some image - some hint. I think our over-reaction to <tc

What Iver Happened to Authority
Mark 1:14-22
Janaury 26, 1969

tt seems that we are spending more and more time recantly reminiscing
about the "good old days". And the topic of these nostalgic reminiscences
seens always to have something to do with authority. As we look back ~— even
to the recent past ~ we recall a feeling of safety, security and stability.
Authority was respected. Children obeyed their parents; students obeyed
their teachers; the people respected the police and the courts; the world
respected America; and everybody respected the church.

Of course, there is a certain favorable distortion that takes place
whenever we engage in this kind of reminiscence. Things were never cuite
that simple. And yet there can be no denying that we are, today, in a new
situation, and that authority is, in fact, under siege from several quarters.
Now before we look more deeply le+ me hasten to add that this siege of
authority may not be nearly so ominous as it appears. The radical right would
have us equate the questioning of aithority with the death throes of the
Republic. I would merely suggest at this point that quite the revorse nay
be truco; that it is a healthy, albcit painful, exercise for authority to
be questioned with the result that tric authority is finally established
and false authority unceremoniously thrown to the wind.

Im any case, this is where we ere. At no time in our history has
constituted civil authority in the form of government, law enforcement
agencies and the judicial structure beon less sure of itself,
less effective, or commanced less resneot. In the cities, on the campuses,
authority has yet to be established notwithstanding modern weaponry,
Nations] Guard invasions, police dogs and the strong talk of Governor
Reagan. It just hasn't worked. In fact, it appears that efforts in this
direction serve only to increase the ever-widening gap between those who
exercise authority and those who question the right to its legitimate
excercise.

Parents, since the days of Socrates, have bemoaned the disrespect of
children toward authority, In this sense the generation gap is rather old-
hat. dnd yet, here too, we are dealing with something new. This is different.
The old gap has noticeably widened. And, in fact, parental authority is not
what it used to be.

Probably the most significant illustration of the authority
crisis in which we find ourselves, however, has to do with the church.
lor a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church has been synonomous with
authority. The Church had and exercised a commonly accepted authority over
the lives, beliefs and behavior of its members. In relationship to the
world about it, the church claimed for itself a certain divinely ordained
authority to act, to influence and to wield power. That, too, has passed.
The liberal Protestant journal "The Christian Century" several months ago
was strongly critical of Pore Paul's encyclical on birth control, taling
it to task for its lack of realism and its failure to speak to the necds
of people and at the same time the mest importent single problem facing
the whole world. But in the very next issue, "The Century" called attontion
to the fact that thereally sicrificent thing about the Incyclical was
that priests were openly criticizing it, and Reman Catholics were openly
and consciously ignoring it. That is +e say, ecclosiastical authority
simply isn't what it used to be. Anc the Caristian Century was quick to
see that all churchly authority ‘“s at tha cane impasse. That is, it's
crumbling fast. What there was of the old authority, is no more, and sorie

——

authority of Jesus was contrasted.

Of course we read back into the New Testament our own belicfs and veelings
about Jesus. To see ~ twenty centuries later - He is the divine Son of God.

For us that is the base of his authority: He is Lord of all: He had all the
truth of God on His side. But His first century listeners certainly didn't
know that or belitve it. To them he wag just an itinerant teacher fron tho city
of ljazarcth. :

vo understand the full significance of this remarkable contrast, then,
wo must note that he had no religious credentials: the scribes did. Itc had no
ecclosiastical status: the scribes did. He had no power of influence with the
establishment: the scribes did. And yet he had authority; and the scribes did
not.

Why?

Jesus spoke from experience: that's why. The scribes based their teaching
and judgements on tradition. Jesus spoke out of the context of life itsclf.
When He taught E>» told stories people could understand; situations in which his
listonors had been involved. He posed questions they had asked and gavo answers
that were realistic. That is to say Jesus, was relevant: His teachings mot
poople where they were because they were coming from one who knew what life
was like for the common man. Jesus had this authority. But there was more.

It was an authority of love: deep, compassionate, personal corccrm for
people. They knew his reputation. He had defied tradition by stooping to lift
&@ prostitute from the gutter: He had compassion for the adultress, the leper,
the tex collector, the riff raff. The scribes did not. Or if they did, their
fcllings were well desguised in the costume of respectable peity. So he had
authority: when He talked about a man's social responsibility for his neighbor
the people knew exactly what he meant because he was living it daily. ‘To use
the cliche, "he practiced what He preached" and so He «had authority.

Minally, there was an authenticity about Him when He spoke. ‘hore was
nothing pompous or presumptious here. People responded because this was a
goniune man. George Arthor Buttrick has put it well: "People listened to Jesus,
and then said, That is what I have always known deep down, even though I have
no words to say it" (I.B. P336, Vol. VII) That's a perceptive commont. Every
so often it happens to me. Someone will put into words a feeling, an wnder-
standing, that is inside me, but which I've never been able to articulatc. And
when that happens, the person who makes it happen suddenly has authority for me.

there, is more, of course, Jesus had that quality «so much in the nows at
election time called charisma. He spoke - and a spark was kindled: people
listened. You can't put it down — but some men have it, and others do not.
But mainly His authority was based on his life experience, His leve and Ilis
hones authenticity. And it was for this that people were astonished.

-liow, it seems to me that this little exercise ought to be helping us with
our om concerns about authority. I+ seems to me that we ought to learn here
that parental authority based on either coercion or tradition isn't going to
bo very effective. To put it even more bluntly, if we expect childrcon to res-
our outhority 1)because we will punich them if they don't, or 2)because we are
parents and children ought to obey parents - are in for a rude awakoning. It
docsn't work - at least for long.

-And yet that is an extremely difficult lesson to learn. We wish it were
the other way. It would be so mich simpler if our homes could operate on the
samc basis as Marine "Boot Camp". But the homes in which I've observed real
authority ~ effective authority - are the homes in which love is so genuine
anyone can feel it; when parents honestly attempt to participate in the
thought —worlds of their children: where judicial decisions are not handed
down ccoremoniously, but gently, in love, and out of a mutual participation in

ul

What liver Happened to Authority
Marl 1:1—22
Janaury 26, 1969

It seems that we are spending more and more time recuntly reminiscing
about the "good old days". And the topic of these nostalgic reminiscences
seens always to have something to do with authority. As we look back ~ even
to the recent past - we recall a feeling of safety, security and stability.
Authority was respected. Children obeyed their parents; students obeyed
their teachers; the people respected the police and the courts; the world
respected America; and everybody respected the church.

Of course, there is a certain favorable distortion that takes place
whenever we engage in this kind of reminiscence. Things were never cuiic
that simple. And yet there can be no denying that we are, today, in ao new
situation, and that authority is, in fact, under siege from several quarters.
Now before we look more deeply let mo hasten to add that this siege of
authority may not be nearly so cminous as it erpears- The radical right would
have uc equate the questioning of aithority with the death throes of the
Republic. I would merely suggest 2+ this point that quite the reverse nay
be truc; that it is a healthy, alvcit prinful, exercise for authority to
be questioned with the result thal teie suthcrity is finally established

and false authority unceremoniously thrown te the wind,

In any case, this is whers we ere. At ao tine in our history has
constituted civil authority in ihe form of government, law enforcement
agencies and the judicial structure been less sure of itself,

less effective, or commanded less razpeot. In the cities, on the campuses,
authority has yet to be established notwithstanding modern weaponry,
National Guard invasions, police dogs and the strong talk of Governor
Reagan. It just hasn't worked. In fact, it appears that efforts in this
direction serve only to increase tne ever-widening gap between those who
exercise authority and those who question the right to its legitimate
exercise.

Parents, since the days of Socrates, have bemoaned the disrespect of
children toward authority. In this sense the generation gap is rathor old-
hat. And yet, here too, we are dealing with something new. This is different.
The old gap has noticeably widened. And, in fact, parental authority is not
what it used to be.

Probably the most significant illustration of the authority
crisis in which we find ourselves, however, has to do with the church.

For a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church has been synonomous with
authority. The Church had and exercissd a commonly accepted authority over
the lives, beliefs and behavior of iis members. In relationship to the
world cbout it, the church claimed for itself a certain divinely ordained
authority to act, to influence and to wield power. That, too, has passed.
The liberal Protestant journal "The Christian Century" several months ago
was otrongly critical of Feope Paui's encyclical on birth control, talking

it to task for its lack of realism ond its failure to speak to the needs

of people and at the same time the mest important single problem facing

the whole world. But in the very next issue, “The Century” called attention
to the fact that thereally sicuificént tainge about the Bneyclical was

that priests were openiy criticizing it. and Roman Catholics were openly
and consciously ignoring it. That is i> say, ecclesiastical authority
simply isn't what it used to be, And the CUhvistien Century was quick to
see that all churchly authority ia ot the came impasse. That ia, it's
crumbling fast. What there was o° t1¢ old authority, is mo more, and sorie

-3-

authority of Jesus was contrasted.

Of course we read back into the New Testament our own belicfs and feelings
about Josus. To see — twenty centuries later — He is the divine Son of God.

For us that is the base of his authority: He is Lord of all: He had all the
truth of God on His side. But His first century listeners certainly didn't

know that or belitve it. To them he was just an itinerant teacher from the city
of liazare th, ‘

vo understand the full significance of this remarkable contrast, then,
wo must note that he had no religious credentials: the scribes did. [fc had no
ecclesiastical status: the scribes did. He had no power of influence with the
establishment: the scribes did. And yet he had authority; and the scribes did
not.

Vy?

Jesus spoke from experience: that's why. The scribes based thoir teaching
and judgements on tradition. Jesus spoke out of the context of life itsclf.
When Iie taught E> told stories people could understand; situations in which his
listoncrs had been involved. He posed questions they had asked and gave answers
that were realistic. That is to say Jesus, was relevant: His teachings net
people where they were because they were coming from one who knew what life
was like for the common man. Jesus had this authority. But there was nore.

It was an authority of love: deep, compassionate, personal cor.ccrn for
people. They knew his reputation. He had defied tradition by stooping to lift
& prostitute from the gutter: He had compassion for the adultress, the loper,
the tax collector, the riff raff. The scribes did not. Or if they did, their
fellings were well desguised in the costume of respectable peity. So he had
authority: when He talked about a man's social responsibility for his neighbor
the people knew exactly what he meant because he was living it daily. ‘Jo use
the cliche, "he practiced what He preached" and so He «had authority.

Vinally, there was an authenticity about Him when He spoke. ‘There was
nothing pompous or presumptious here. People responded because this was a
gcniune man. George Arther Buttrick has put it well: "People listonod to Jesus,
end then said, That is what I have always known deep down, even though I have
no words to say it" (I.B. P336, Vol. VII) That's a perceptive commont. lvery
so oftcn it happens to me. Someone will put into words a feeling, an wnder-
standing, that is inside me, but which I've never been able to articulate. And
when that happens, the person who makes it happen suddenly has authority for me.

there, is more, of course, Jesus had that quality «so much in the nows at
election time called charisma. He spoke - and a spark was kindled: pcople
listened. You can't put it down — but some men have it, and others do not.
But mainly His authority was based on his life experience, His leve and Tis
honest authenticity. And it was for this that people were astonished.

liow, it seems to me that this little exercise ought to be helping us with
our om concerns about authority. I+ seems to me that we ought to lear here
that parental authority based on either coercion or tradition isn't going to
be very offective. To put it even more bluntly, if we expect children to res-
our authority 1)because we will punish thom if they don't, or 2)becausc we are
parcnvs and children ought to obey parents - are in for a rude awakoning. I+
doesn't work - at least for long.

find yet that is an extremely difficult lesson to learn. We wish it were
the other way. It would be so much simpler if our homes could operate on the
same basis as Marine "Boot Camp". But the homes in which I've observed real
authority ~ effective authority - are the homes in which love is so genuine
anyone cun feel it; when parents honestly attempt to participate in the
thought -worlds of their children: where judicial decisions are not handed
dowm coremoniously, but gently, in love, and out of a mutual participation in

Prom Water to Wine
Jom 2:1-11
Pebruary 2, 1969
John Ii. Buchanan

Of all the situations in which Jesus is portrayed by the Gospel writers,
the wedding at Cana is perhaps the most provocative - and one of the nost
unlikely. Of all the miracles, or mighty deeds, related in the iow wJtestament,
this transformation of water into wine is, by far, the strangest and the most
difficult for the moder reader.

' Everybody has problems with this one. At a base level very fow of
us are totally comfortable with this whole matter of the "miraculous" in the
liew Sestament. It doesn't correspond with our experience or our undorotanding
of the laws of nature. And yet most of us are sensitive enough to sec that it
makes no more sense to categorically deny that the miracles happoned than it
does to blindly and unthinkingly accept them as recorded. We have cone to a
lind of modus vivendi with the healing mircles. These we can fit into our
pettorns of thinking, and if we don't understand at least we have a "fcel"
for their significance. Not so here. This is different - in a fmdonental
way. This - to use Time Magazine's favorite cliche, "boggles the mind."

One of the ordinary ways of discussing the miracles is to focus on
their significance. In a matter of healing, for instance, it is not too
difficult to relate the miracle to Jesus' compassion and concern; his re-
conciling work among men. But you can't use this method here. ‘The only person
helped in this instance was the host who apparently hadn't preparcd for this
nony guests. The only affliction relieved was his anxiety and embarrassment at
running out of wine. All in all - a relatively trivial matter for Cod Incarnate
%O concern himself with.

And if you think we logical Presbyterians have difficulty horc, imagine
what it mast be like for the good ladies of the W. C. T. U. People don't
ccolebrate a wedding by quaffing great quantities of unfermented srcpo juice.
They drank wine — and they drank wine because it added gaity and scsi to the
occasion. When they ran out Jesus didn't just provide another sip for the
celecbrants - he provided somewhere between 120 and 180 gallons. That's a lot
of wine — and it's all a bit much for the W. C. T. U.

We all have problems with this incident and so we are inclined to
ignore it, to pretend it isn't there — which is precisely what I've done in my
ministry until now.

Now, let's take another and deeper look. The wedding involved a family
which apparently was on intimate terms with the family of our Lord. Thoy were
invited guests, but beyond that, Mary seems to have been acquainted with the
servants and they with her. When she gave an: order, they listened. lUedding
cclebrations of the day were quite extensive, sometimes lasting ac long as
a week. The fact that the wine ran out shortly after Jesus and hic party arrived
indicates that the celebration mist have been several days old. tihen the wine
vas gone, Mary instructed the servants to fill six stone jars, acwolly large
crocks used by good Jews for ceremonial washing, with water. Thios done, they
took a sample to the steward - who was a kindof Maitre de and Toestmastor.

By the time he tasted it - it was wine, — good wine. The custom was to serve
the best wine first — and the fact that this was better than any drunic this
fav was a matter of some surprise to the steward. He commented on this fact
and the Gospel writer concludes the account with the observation: ‘This, the
first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana of Galilee, and manifested his clory:
and his disciples believed in him."

Some scholars make much out of the fact that the account docs not
actually say that Jesus turned the water into wine - only that the ucter becam e
wince. An interesting observation, the significance of which elucos me.

—j—

2 “yorldly" Christ, that is; a man without the neurotic dichotomy botirecen
the holy and the secular that characterizes other "religious" mon. I think
the story is significant because it portrays an immensely appealing Christ
who wont out of his way to share in the great joy of one of his foicnds.

How often have you done likewise? We well understand Jocus Christ
as "the man of sorrows". All of us have experienced the comfort in o time
of grief that comes from knowing our Lord mows our predicament anc chares
it with us. Most of us, moved by this authentic comfort, have tricd,
in some way, to communicate it to and share it with someone else. Dut how
about when a friend experiences great joy? Is there anything about our
faith that has to do with this?

I think there is: and I think we don't know much about it.
illic torically we Christians have always felt a little guilty about hoving
a good times The Church, down through the years, has allowed the pover of
Coc to operate within it in times of adversity! but in good times wo ar
inclined +o feel we mist be doing somethitig Wrongs And so We come across
+o the world as a pompous institution, staid; boring; morose: and ow’ worship
experience, which initially was a celebration of thé Resurrection,
has become an ordeal to be endured,

This runs deeply in the collective Christian conscience, and I firmly
believe we miss the relevance of the Gospel when we get caught in i+.

Our Lord was one who knew the beauty of human joy. He woo one
who Inew the importance of sharing - not only the low points, the dazl: valleys
of human experience - but also the mountain-tops. And so he went to &
wedding feast, and he celebrated. That ought to tell us = too = that he
shares our sortows and disappointments = but also our victories; that
loughter is as blessed astears: that the good times of life are full of the
very Grace of God.

Second, and not unrelated to the first meaning - is the foé4 that
tho celebration he graced was a wedding. I believe the presence of Jesus
Christ at the wedding feast in Cana is significant for an understanding
of marriage. The event is invoked in every Christian wedding. ie renenber
that his ministry began at such an event. We remember that marriage is a
roligious covenant, not just a legal contract, and that Jesus Christ is
presont even in the most intimate relationships between @ man and 2 woman.

Third, and perhaps tmost important, this incident means that the work
Jesus Christ came to do among men can be understood primarily as “«rens-
formation". At the wedding the old wine was gone, and Jesus transforned
uater into something even better than the old. Whether or not the author
intended it, this is exactly what he did with the religion of Judaisn.

On one occasion he even referred to the religion of the Pharisees as old
wine — and suggested that the container - the skin — would brea if the
now wine of the Gospel were poured in.

The affect of Jesus Christ, for those who followed him, was
troncforming. ile changed their institutions: in the place of the dead
lette: of the law he gave them the grace of living in freedom and
cosponsibility. And out of the old Israel came the new. To those
iho believed he gave new life - new lives; to broken man, immoral non,
poor men, hated men — he gave new life.

We don't know much about the "transforming" Lord. You and I have the

The Problem of Religion Bethany Presbytcrian Church
John 2:12-—22 John M. Buchanan, liinister

February 9, 1969

Whether we like it or not, the fact remains that a great deal of the
content of the New Testament has to do with conflict. Because we don't like
it - conflict in general, and conflict in the church specifically - wo condition
ourselves to ignore it, cover it up, hide it; furiously trying to convince
ouxselves that all things religious must be serene and peaceful. We do so,
of course, only at the risk of fundamentally altering the New Testamont —

@ project we are willing to undertake for the grand cause of avoiding conflict.

Whether we like it or not, the conflict that runs through the Cospel
narrative, is largely between Jesus and religion; that is, institutional re-
ligion in the form of the established power structure of first century Judaism.
What is worse, Jesus, himself precipitated the conflict. The Pharisccs and
Sadducees didn't go to him looking for trouble. Quite the reverse is ‘ono.

Ie brought it to them: he was the aggressor: he threw down the kind of arrogant
ultimatum they could not ignore.

The incident itself is very familiar. In Matthew, Mark and LUke
it occurs during the last week of his life, just prior to his arrest and
crucifixion. In John — the account read this morning - the incident is at
the boginning of his public ministry. Jesus went to Jerusalem for ‘the
Passover celebration, and when he arrived at the Temple he discovered a very
bisarve scene. The outer court was filled with the clamour of the market
place. Money changers competed with hawkers of sacrificial birds. Bulls,
lambs, pigeons were for sale. His vresponse was immediate. Fashioning a
whip from some cords, he forcefully, violently ejected the entrepenours
from their place of business, overturning their tables in the process.

We con only imagine the chaos; animals running loose, salesmen scurrying
after their stock and rolling coins; we can only imagine the initial
suxprise which must immediately have become resentment and their hatred.

That is the incident I would like to have us think about thic morning.
And while the rough details are still in your mind, and before we look at it
more closely, I would direct your attention back to the present tense — our
situation: the problem of religion today.

One part of the problem is that we are nearing the saturation
point. In his excellent study, "The New Shape of American Religion",

Hartin Marty documents the fantastic rise in religious interest in this
nation since World War II. The evidence is all about us. We can't ovort
get the Cotton Bowl game underway without a public tip of the hat in the
direction of heaven. People who would never think of reading the Bible

to their children, or setting a foot inside the Church, raise their voices
in pious protest because the Supreme Court has said that the states can't
sponsor Bible reading and prayer as part of public education.

There is a continuing interest in religion in our culture. It
seoms that about half of thepersonalities on the Joe Pyne Show are in some
way related to religion. As a topic of discussion, religion is a tricd and
true method of captivating an audience.

Religion continues to be very acceptable. The plaque in the
Narthex symbolizing the Barmen Confession is testimony to the fact that
in the not-too-distant-past, Chritian faith was not at all acceptable
to the political power structure in one culture, at least. But in Ancrica,
besides being a father and a veteran, a prospective politician can do no
better for himself than salt his oratory with Biblical quotes.

oa te

Low let's return to the New Testament. As I mentioned before, “1c
author of the fourth Gospel placed the incident of the cleansing of ‘he
Temple at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. The other threo Cospols
pliacc it at the end. It is apparent, then, that the Gospel of John, written
perhaps seventy years after the fact, uses this event to preface the story
of Jesus Christ. This sets the stage. This conflict-situation introduces
what is to follow. The reader is warned, here, to look for the conflict as
it keene emerging throughout the story.

Listorians have shed some very helpful light on what was going on “tat
day ai the Temple. (The following information from Wm. Barclay, Tho iind of
Jesus, Ch. 19, p. 187-192)

livery adult, male Jew had to pay an annual Temple tax of half a
shelel. To put that into perspective, it amounted to almost two days‘
wages. ‘he tax could be paid at ‘certain times and places, but one mon un
before the Passover it could be paid only at the Temple itself.

nen he came to the Temple to pay his half-shekel, he found a sorics of
courts. ‘The first was the Court of the Gentiles into which men of all nations
wore volcome. It was here that booths were set up to collect the tax. Dut
the toss could be paid only in a certain type of coin--one with no image. And
60 there were other booths at which m oney changers exchanged whatevan
currency the person had into the appropriate coins. For this service, the
monoy changers were paid a fee. Part of the job, also, was to decide the
legitimate value of the coins they were exchanging; and many an argument trans—
pived over the silver scales-—-—which were the tools of their trade.

liowy in all probability a man who had come to Jerusalem to pay hic
Temple Yax would want to make some special thank offering while he was
there. Yhis appropriate act of worship was done by animal sacrifice. If
he brovghthis own lamb or pigeons——they had to be inspected for blomisios.
Tho inspectors charged a fee. Of course, he could avoid all> that and cinply
buy on conimal which was already inspected, and which was conveniently You
sale in this same court of the Gentiles.

It looked like a noisy carnival and sounds, for all the world, not
unlike some Christmas Bazaars I've had the misfortune of attending. 0
usvel, the people who got hurt byit all were the poor—the ones who
couldn't afford a lamb to eat, let alone slaughter sacrificially. Dur
worst ox all-—-it was this--this display of economic exploitation that had
been dtamped on the minds of a whole people as religion. That's what
religion is——that's what it can become.

inter the conflict. Jesus didn't like what he saw, and in sheer
rightcous, virile indignation, cleansed the Court of the Gentiles by
ejecting everyone involved. And if you like your religion soft and -casy,
if you think the phrase "peace and unity of the Church’ means that no ono
is svpposed to rock the boat; if you can picture Jesus with little childczen
on his lap—-but not with a whip in his hend—~you re going to have trouble
with the rest of what I have to say. .

Jirst--Christianity is not, and can never become--religion in the conse
thai I've used the word. Roger Smith said it well: "Christianity as a
faith is always in conflict with Christianity as a religion, and thevo is an
imporient—I should be inclined to say the most important-—-sense in w.ricu
Chricticn faith includes within itself the permanent protest againc’t iim
om xeligious forms and expressions." ("A Theological Perspective of tho
Seculax McCormick Quarterly, Nove. 1964)

BELIEF AND UNBELIEF
Mark 9:14~31
February 23, 1969
Communion Meditation

It's a difficult time in which to believe. That is one of the new
realities of the 1960's. Religion continues to be popular. But in this rapidly
changing, revolutionary age when nothing stays the same very long, authentic belief,
in the traditional sense is becoming a very difficult task.

Some men greet other men with the question. "What do you know for
sure?" and today the honest answer to that is "Not really very much" There are,
in fact, very few absolutes. The more we learn about the world, about man, the
less we seem to know that is absolutely and irreversibly true.

In the next.several weeks, I am going to be talking about what we can
believe, but this morning I want to focus on the difficulty inherent in the act
of believing itself. And I would begin with the assertion that one of the new
realities with which everyone of us has to cope is that it is a very difficult
time in which to believe.

Our time is very secular, and although that is not a bad state of affairs,
it does have a great deal to do with this matter of believing. Let me explain.

The word secular, contrary to some of the things you may have read, does not

mean decadent, godless, paganism. The word refers rather, to an evolutionary
process by which mankind has slowly come to assume more and more of the res—
ponsibility for its own destiny and welfare. The process, we are told, is now
culminating in our time.. Dietrich Bonhoeffer described it as "Man coming of age";
and Leslie Newbigin describes the new, secular man as follows: "Today he knows how
to control the powers of his environment. He does not pray to be delivered from
disease or from draught; he gets himself inoculated or he builds irrigation works."
(p. 31, Honest Religion for Secular Man)

That rather simple analogy defines quite adequately what we mean when we
use the word "secular". Man is in charge; no longer is it possible to blame fate
or evil spirits or God for the conditions in which men live; rather the respon=-
sibility is ours. In this sense, secularism is a good thing: when men acknowledge
their responsibility for their own welfare, good things begin to happen. Dams are
built, vaccines are developed, better methods of farming are cultivated and organs
are transplanted.

It needs also to be noted that secularism is one of the goals for which
Christian missionaries have struggled in other cultures. For instance, in India,
the caste system, the untouchables, the practice of Temple prostitution were all
based on religious assumptions and convictions. And not until the religious
assumptions were either decimated - or at least removed from a position of power
could India begin to cope with the very real problems of hunger and disease and
poverty — conditions actually perpetuated by religion.

In our culture, some people oppose blood transfusions on religious
grounds. Fortunately ~- in this area we are totally secular - and make our
decisions on the basis of human need and the solving of an immediate crisis. That
is secularism in its best sense.

Nevertheless it is difficult to believe in a secular age. If man, not
God, is calling the shots, what does pyevor mean? What about worship and all the
other traditional forms of piety? Why bother? These are just a few of the problems
raised by secularism - snd it adds up te a difficult time in which to believe,

There ave other rencons, cf courses. It's a busy world . harboring
a knowledge explosicn that makes the Fuoyclopedia Britannica obsolete before the
ink is dry.

And the snd result is 2 feeling of schizophrenia on the part of many
Christians. For six kdays a week a man lives in a busy, totally secular world.

And then on Sunday, he is confronted with ancient creeds, vague concepts, rituals
that have lost their meaning. And if he is able to believe at all - it is a well
insulated believing that begins as he comes through the doors of his Church and
ends as he goes out through them one hour later.

adic

believe and what we find we cannot believe.

I can't improve on the way Frederick Buechner puts it in his book, The
Mognificent Defeat (p. 35) - so I will use his words: "There is something in me
that recoils a little at speaking so childishly and directly. . . I am saying just
this: go to him the way the father of the sick boy did and ask him. Pray to him,
is what I am saying. In whatever words you have. And ifthe little voice that is
inside all of us. . . says 'But I don't believe, I don't believe’ don't worry
too much. Just keep on anyway. ‘Lord, I believe: help my unbelief', is the
best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough."

There is a lot of that believing-unbelieving father in everyone of us.
Let's acknowledge it - let's confess it - let's bring that along with us as we
come to the Lord's table.

This is the first Sunday in Lent, and we begin today to follow our Lord
as he walked slowly to his death. The importance of that death is that it was for
you and for me, for all those who have gone before us and all those who have come
after us. It was for us ~ and nothing about us, our belief or unbelief, alters
that fact. We begin our following at his table-— at the place where he calls us
to be - in followship with him. That is the incredibly good news of the Christian
faith.

Lord, we believe: help our unbelief. Amen.

‘
a
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~

f

I Believe ... The Father Almighty
Mark 14;32-d42
March 9, 1969

Once a week, every Sunday, we stand together and confess our common faith
in the words of the Apostles' Creed. We say "I believe in God the Father Almighty”
Many of us have done it for years with monotonous regularity and one of the by-
products of this ritualistic regularity has been a loss of whatever the words once
were intended to mean. That is, what was once a meaningful ritual has become a
meaningless procedure with no connection whatever with the realities of our daily
living. What does it mean to confess belief in 2 God who is an Almighty Father?

n one evening last week I was involved in two experiences - just an hour

one of which strongly confirmed ond witnessed to the Almighty Fatherhood of
God; the™other one of which seemed to utterly and totally destroy it. Let me
explain. Before I left home for an 8:00 o'clock meeting, I attended to one of the
pleasant duties of my own fatherhood - the bedtime ritual of two sleepy little boys.
They had made small prayer books in their Church School Cl ss, and part of the ritual
is to get those books out and say the prayer which they valida memorized. One
of them concludes scmething like this, ". . » and God will watch and care for me.
Thank you God. Amen.” It's a mighty affirmation which I believe more deeply in
that moment than at any cther time, Two sleepy little boys, clean, well fed,
content, secure. As they say their prayers it's not difficult 2 all to believe
in God the Father Alm yhty.

But the evening wes not over. As I left the meeting on the South Side,

a young boy about seven years old darted out into the street and was hit by a
passing car. I was the first cne to him. Crumpled, motionless in the unnecessary
filth of South Third Strect, dirty clothes - as I leaned over him I saw the two
at home: "And God will.wetch and care for me. Thank you, God." What about this
one? Thanks for wna His uncaring mother had be ordered by the police to
accompany him to the hospital in the ambulance. Ge God an Almighty Father only
to clean ite, middle class boys? at about this little boy?

That, I believe, is the issug}contained in the rote, weekly affirmation.
"IT believe in God the Father Almighty." {ina I think every one of us has confronted
that issue at some time, in some form in our own lives. Perhaps the war in Viet
Nam, perhaps the millions of starving children in the world, perhaps the premature
loss of someone very dear, perhaps the endless succession of monotonous days,
devoid of joy ond grace - leading nowhere. What does it mean - in the mid of
life's torrible ambiguities - to believe in a God who is an Almighty rotnoged

The whole idea that God can be described as a father - in terms 0
fatherhood ~ is 4 uniquely Christian contribution. It is not necessarily logical;
it is not the natural conclusion of a man who observes the world and other men and
attempts to articulate a theology. The Greeks tried that and came up with a whole
group of gods that acted pretty much like men. A typical Greek god was Prometheus —-
perhaps you know the story. Men had not yet discovered fire and without it were
living in cold, damp discomfort. Prometheus, however, was a sympathetic god and
decided to steal fire from the realm of heaven and give it to men. This he did,
to the chagrin of Zeus, the father of all tho gods. As punishment for his ill-
advised behavior Zeus clunined ~cometheus to a rock in the middle of the ocean,
and arranged for two vultures to tesr out his liver which would grow again only
to be torn out, over and over

The gods of the Grecks acted like men, quarrelling among themselves,
arbitrarily punishing and rewarding mortals according to the whim of the
moment. For the most part they were withdrawn from and totally indifferent to
the affairs of humanity.

Greek philosopny, on the other hand, conceived of God as an abstract
idea. Plato, one of the greatest thinkers of all times, broke through the poly-
theism of his countrymen and taught that the ultimate reality of the unverse
wos a unity. There was one god, but the great philosopher could press his cage
no further than identifying God with the highest good. God rcm-ined an abstraction.

It is in the Old Testament, our own Judaic heritage that the word Father
is whispered as the appropraite description of God. In the middle of the Pentateuch

=
+ another way, the Almighty Fatherhood of God is not a mechanical powor
that works to protect his children from harm. Rather it is a relationship that is
broken by nothing: an intimate loving fatherhood that was with Jesus as he faced his
cross - and which accompanies you and me and little boys hit by cars and grown men
dying of cancer. It is a fatherhood of relationship that weeps when we weep — a
love that is injured when we are hurt - a presence that laughs when we have reason
for joy. It is a power far more profound than the mechanical arranging of events
to protect and shield us. Gethsemane teaches us that

(What does it moan to call God Father? It means all of that and much more.
It means for instance, that we are all brothers - not only by creation, but beer?
of our common father's love for ug.) Here the doctrine takes on its inevi table mor
implications. (You can't call God father and hate another man, no matter who he esd
The beautiful simplicity of that imperative was seen clearly by the early Christians
One of them wrote," If a man says he loves God and hates his brother, he is a liar."
(John 4:20) It's as simple as that, and yet Christians seem unanimously intent
on ignoring it. Inercdibly there geome to be no relationship between "I believe
in God the Father" and the worst_form of bigotry ond racial prejudice. In fact,
the latter negates the former. Piers is no belief in God the father that does
not include a new relationship with my neighbor,)

{ine dignity and worth of the individual, so threatened today and at many
times in history, is defended ultimately here — here where we affirm the fatherhood
of God,| Leslie Newbigin tells how Adolf Hitler sent men to the famous Bethel
Hspital to inform Pastor Bodelschwingh, its director, that the State could no longer
afford to maintain hundreds of epileptics who were useless to society and only
constituted a drain on scarce resources, and that orders had been issued to have
them destroyed. Bodelschwingh confronted them in his room at the entrance to the
hospital and fought a spiritual battle which eventually sent them away without
having done what they were sent to do. He had no other weapon for that battle than
the ‘a ue affirmation that these were men and women made in the image of God.."

~ Of course, “there were “ni liione for whom the battle was lost - but here
is the final bastion. Here is the only final rationale for the still radical
idea that evory man is a person of dignity and worth and individuality. That's
what it means to believe in a Father God.
There is much more, so much in fact, that it is presumptuous to attempt
to cover it in one sermon. Forgiveness, love - these are words that have meaning for
the Christian who believes in God the Father. Acceptance, comfort, ultimate ec~

\There is one final idea, however, without which any work on God's fathers. -
could not stand. That is, our Father God seeks us out until he find us; thatkis
power over us is not mechanical coercion -— but the power of an eternal love:
that this love - this fatherhood is Almighty.) It is an idea expressed in the
parable of the Shepherd who seeks the one lost sheep wntil he finds it: or the
widow looking for .thcone lost coin. It is echoed in the beautiful 139th
Psalm, part of which we read together this morning. :"Whither shall I go from
thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into
heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If TI
take the wings of the morning, ond dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even
there shal] thy hand lend me, and thy right hand shall hold me."

Cine Father seeks us ~ in mny ways. He seeks us because he loves us and
his Almightiness means that the search knows no end. Not even death separates us
from the pursuing love of Gox We The Confession of 1967 reads: "God's sovereign
love is a mystery boycnd the vonch of man's mind." | St. Augustine, centuries /
ago, observed: "God loves cach one of us as if there was only one of us to
love." Jesus said simply, "Father".

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1

Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
Matthew 21:1-14

March 30, 1969

Rev. John M. Buchanan

High up in the Swiss Alps, picturesque Lake Lucerne sits at the base of Mt.
Pilatus. According to legend, when the mists and fog extend from the water all the
way up the mountain the ghost of Pontius Pilate may be seen, washing his hands
over and over, monmning -— "What shall I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?"

Did you ever wonder why, of oll the people historically associated with Jesus,
of all the heroic saints who lived with him and died for him, the name of Pontius
Pilate is the only one, besides Mary his mother, immortanlized in the Apostles'
Creed? Pilate - the pathetic puppet governor — guilty of allowing the most monstrous
crime history has ever seen.

Why Pilate? Why not Peter or John? Why not Andrew or §T. Paul? Pilate's
name is in the Creed because it places the life and person of Jesus Christ squarely
in history. It is there to guard against the idea of a transcendent Christ about
which it is exceedingly ensy to forget that he was a man. The name Pontius Pilate,
mentioned regularly in the text of the Creed, is a reminder that Jesus was a man;
that his life and ministry occurred at a certain time, in a certain place. But
more than that, Pilate is a symbol of the power structure of the world - which
when confronted with the absolute love and absolute integrity of Jesus Christ could
do none other than consent to his crucifixion. He is the symbol of the way men
dealt with Jesus 2,000 years ago, and the way they have been dealing with him
ever since - washing his hands, desperately trying to avoid making a decision
about him.

We have been thinking about the meaning and relevance of the ancient
Apostles' Crecd. Today we come to the phrase "Suffered under Pontius Pilate."

We come to it now also because on this day the final, symbolic confrontation
between the two mon - Jesus and Pilate - the two opposing forces, if you will,
set in motion.

There were, it is estimated, more than two million pilgrims crowding into
the city of Jerusalem during the week before the Passover. Many of them were
from Galilee: from the towns and villages Jesus had visited. These people heard
that he was coming into the city and decided to meet him. When they went outside
of the city gates to accompany him they were greeted by 2 strange and thrilling
sight. He was riding on the back of an ass - something he rarely did, something
uncharacteristic and unnecessary because he was travelling just from Bethany, about
a mile and a half away. Immediately they recognized what they were seeing: “Lo,
your king comes to you, humbly and lowly, and riding on an ass." The prophet
Zechariah had promised that centuries before, and they could not help but believe
what they were secing. It was actually happening. He was coming. This one —- this
Lord ~ was coming in to the historic city of David, the city of the Tumple with
its rich heritage - in the precise way the Messinh was supposed to come. And s0
they tore the clothes from their backs, and the branches from the trees and laid
them in his path, cheering, yelling "Now save us! Hosanna! Hosanna!"

The accounts differ at this point, but Matthew's Gospel relates that
Jesus went directly to the Temple and there forcibly and violently ejected the
money changers and the salesmen of sacrificial animals, Then he taught and
healed. Apparently he entcred the city every day and left again in the evening.
But on this, the first day in the week of the Passover he set in motion the forces
that would destroy him five days later. It was sone thing to go from town to
town in Galilee, teaching and healing among its rolling hills and gontle people.

It wos another thing altogether to ride right into the historic capital of the
nation with a2 noisy mob clamouring something about him being a King.

If it was the most crucial week in the brief life of Jesus Christ, we might
assume that it was the most miserable weck in the pathetic life of the Roman
Governor, Pontius Pilate. All he wanted was a measure of tranquility - a Passover

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Third, the myth that he represented just one more religious cult: that his
was a philosophic concept that could be accepted, rejected or ignored was finally
and totally eliminated. His deliberate manner of coming into the city forced
everyone to decide. There could be no neutrality after Palm Sunday. Por those
who preferred to remain on the fence, like Pontius Pilate, were terribly guilty
of collaborating in his doath. He left no room for the comfortable myth of
neutrality.

This day destroyed all those myths - but somehow they still oxist. Somehow,
through the grossost kind of self deception religious people insist on embracing
the myths that died on Palm Sunday.

We are still hung up on a definition of Christian evangelism as the saving
of a lot of individual souls. Even though our Lord moved beyond this and came to
the city - we would like to insist that the faithfulness of a denomination or a
congregation can be measured in terms of the number of names on its roll.

Even though he bravely marched into the maelstrom of 211 that is worldly
and political ond secular, the myth that religion and politics, religion and
economics, religion and socinl problems do not mix, still enjoys vigorous health.
In 1964 the Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax-exempt status of an organization
called the "Fellowship of Reconciliation" with the public rationale: "The pursuit
of peace, disarmamont and the reconciliation of nations is not a religious but
a political activity." (Christian Century, March 20, 1963, p.357) That is
prophetic. That, in a real sense, , ttells it like it still is."

Because Jesus Christ chose to confront Jerusalem, the fact that poonlbut are
dying in Viet Nam, and childron starving in Biafra, and little ones retarded
because of malnutrition in this nation, and adults languishing in hopeless despair
in the rotting ghettocs across the land - is a religious problem. Or the fact .
that a whole community adamantly refuses to acknowledge its own racism ~- or that
people can't find jobs or homes — or others who genuinoly care - is a religious
problom.

Even though Jesus Christ consciously and deliberately forced every
individual in the city of Jerusalem to make a decision about him - the myth is
still very much alive that neutrality about things religious is still possible.

Not very many people are overtly hostile toward Christianity and the church
today, in the same way that Pilate was not opposed to Jesus Christ. But about
half the people belong to the church and about half that numbor participate: and
that means that at least three quarters of the people of this nation and this
comm unity are still trying to play the game of neutrality. But it can't be
played. Jesus Christ has made it impossible. Pontius Pilate tried and is
remembered ctcrnally as the man with the blood of the Son of God on his hands.

Legend has it that the ghost of Pontius Pilate hovers over Lake LUcerne,
washing his hands and moaning, “What shall I do with Jesus who is called the
Christ?" By indecision — by tragic, unnecessary, impossible neutrality — Pilate
had him crucificd.

On this day we remember that our Lord came to the city of Jerusalem and for
one fleeting moment of time was grected as the King. Let us not forget the
eternal significance of that sojourn. Let us not forget that the myths were laid
to rest and that neutrality crucified him.

Let us acknowledge that the significance of this day is that Jesus Christ
comes into the midst of our common life - and right inte your life and mine. Let us
acknowledge that there is nothing in our common life - nor any area of our individual
lives that does not have to do with him. Let us acknowledge that he has made
our safe, blase neutrality quite impossible.

Let us sing our “hosannas" and remember that on this day he "Suffered
under Pontius Pilate."

Amen.

3 RE ae

"The Third Day He Rose Again From the Dead"
Matthew 27:62 ~ 28:10

April 6, 1969

Rev. John M. Buchanan

The President of the United States was there; DeGaulle, Thieu, Trudeau,

U Thant; wealth and power, the Secret Service and the Marine Corps Bank; Cadillac
limousines dispensing captains of finance and industry; even the Gothic sanctuary of

the National Cathedral spoke of grandeur and might. And in the midst of it all - in

the midst of this unique concentration of what men perceive as powerful, death, in

stark, brute reality, wrote the final page in the story of a beloved man's life.

The contrast was striking. There was nothing in all the world these men, and the power
they represented, could do about the last terrible foe.

There was , of course, a majesty and dignity to all of it - as there always is
when a great man dies. And yet lirs. Eisenhower felt the same feelings, no more, no
less, than millions upon millions of other widows; the same oppressive, helpless
weakness best expressed by an inaudible sigh.

And in the midst of it all, a man in a black robe stood and in a straightforward,
unadorned manner, read the words - the most glorious — the most optimistic - the most
hopeful words words in the vocabulary of man. . . "I am the resurrection and the life:
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth
and believeth in me shall never die,"

That is very much the manner in which the New Testament presented the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is all very straightforward, without hesitation or
awkward embarrassment. The New Testament doesn't argue about it or plead for its
truth. I+ doesn't mumble, as if the resurrection could be tacked on to the end of
Jesus' life, to be accepted or ignored depending on how the individual feels about
these things. It simply announces it: "Now is Christ risen from the dead. Who can
separate us from the love of God. Not life, not death, not anything. I am the resurrection
and the life."

In the midst of the sophisticated pomp of a state funeral the words were read-
in the same way that the words are articulated in the midst of all humanity: "The
third day he rose again." But for most contemporary Christians it is not enough:
there must be more.

We are, I believe, very much like those chief priests and pharisees who
went to Pilate after the crucifixion and requested measures to secure the tomb. They
were, the scripture said, afraid that his disciples would steal the body and then tell
the people that he had risen. They were afraid of that, to be sure. But don't you
think their words belie their real fear? Don't you think they were omore than a
little afraid that he might rise up from that grave. Don't you think, underneath it all,
they were desparately afraid of that and that what the New Testament is describing
here is a group of frightened men wanting to do everything possible to protect
themselves from that kind of miracle. .

I think we are like that. Of course, the stakes are a little different.

And yet we continue to insist on a life made safe from miracles. We continue to
insist on rational explanations for everything in order to shut out the possibility
of a miracle.

And so on this day all the traditional "explanations: of the resurrection
are dragged out and placed on parade. "It's the language of poetry - but it really
didn't happen. Jesus' teaching are immortal and will live forever. His loving spirit
was resurrected in the lives of his disciples and he lives in people who call him
Lord." Or - "he was drugged by thewine they gave him to drink, or in a coma from
his wounds, or unconscious from pain, and in the coolness of the tomb he revived."

All the so-called "proofs" of the resurrection are discussed today and the
effect of them is to make the event understandable and to protect us from a miracle.
It's a little like discovering that you're sitting om a bomb, and acting immediately
+o defuse it. The bomb is still there, but now you may go about your business without

+

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find, I believe, you and I know something about it because we have experienced
it, too. Truth and goodness and honesty seem very weak - almost helpless in the face
of life's brute realities. The world seems to smile indulgently at the totally honest
man: unselfishness and sacrifice are not honored so much as they are exploited.
4nd so we grow cynical and call it "being realistic."

Or perhaps we've lost someone very dear to us: someone who meant all the world
+o us: someone for whom we, lived to please and to love. And suddenly nothing makes
sense any more. Life has no meaning.

Or perhaps we've committed ourselves to some noble cause -- equal rights, or
the relicf of poverty -.,and time and time again seen our cause sacrificed because
of expediency. Perhaps we've disédvered’ that the policies of our government, or ri
the motives of our elected representatives are not . blessed with a pristine purity,
but rather reflect econoric and political convenience. And so we throw up our hands
in despair. "What's the usei"

We are, of course, treading very anes on the most important, most profound
question ever asket: "What kind of a world is it? Who will win the battle?" - c

The message of L-ster is that the good aaa gentle man rose up from his grave.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the gloricusly good news that no matter who is
winning today's skirmish, ‘tho decireive battle has already been won. There is an
ultimate integrity and justice anc goodness in God's creation and nothing can prevent
its ultimate victory. Not comm-nrism or fascism -- or the rampant nihilism of our own
day: not cancer or hearé disease ox tragiv airplane crashes: not racism or bigotry

or vested interests. Nothine. Jesuc Christ is alive -- the battle is won. The universe
is good - and things do make sonse -- life is worth living no matter what is going on
at the moment.

From his prison cell in Nasi Germany, facing certain execution, Dietrich
“Bonhoeffer wrote to his parents: "We need not the ars moriendi, the art of dying,
but the resurrection of Christ to invigorate and cleanse the world today... what

a tremendoug difference it would make if a few people really believed and acted upon
‘that. To live in the light of the resurrection - that is the meaning of Easter."
(y 154, Letters and Papers from Prison) ti
hat is the first direction. The second is that in a very personal sense
we may know thet life is the victor over death. Death did not hold Jesus Christ.
He got up and walked away. Celebrating that fact, St. Paul wrote ‘some of the es
happicst words I know. Te the Romans he poced the question: "Who shall separate us a
from the love of God?" and answered -- ‘Nothing -- nothing in life, not even death."
Writing to the Corinthians he concluded a lengthy dissertation on the resurrection ieee’
Witla theses good words: “0 death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"
Thove words stand a one: hut I think Georze Frederick Handel best understood then :
when he put them to music in his fancus oratorio, "The Messiah". The melody is
lilting, almost giddy. ‘he question is asked olrout mockingly. He caught the essence ae
of the resurrection: and that is that the sting and cvictory of the grave are simply Be
no more.
We mourn the ceath of others - our own loved ones — Dwight Eisenhower; we
mourn a little every tiie we aro confronted with anyone's death, because we are reminded —
of our own. From tim? imm-norial men have been afraid. The strongest instinct . re
within ue is to deny and fear snd battlo against death. . i.
Dylan Thomas said it well: ees
"Do not go gentle into *he night :
Rage, rage against the dimming of tha light..." ee

Fe

me

Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead?
luke 24:1-11
April 13, 1969

In the middle of the Baster narrative a very important question
is asked. ‘Three women went to the tomb in the early hours of the first day of
the week. They went there to anoint the body - but also to do what people have
always done on their periodico pilgrimages to a cemetery — to reminisce, to mourn
a little, to shut themselves off from the reality of the present and linger a
while in the pleasant memories of the past. And in the middle of this intimately
personal and intensely private experience a rather rude question was posed — "Why
do you seek the living among the dead?"

That question, of course, had a direct bearing on the event we celebrated
one week ago. Jesus Christ was not there. The question was not rhetorical - it
meant nothing other than the words express, "Why are you looking for him here?

He is alive, not dead." We celebrated that affirmation: we celebrated the reality
of the resurrection and the sanctuary was full. But I think the question itself
has broader significance and it seemed to me to be appropriate this week to

take a longer look at it.

"Why do you seek the living among the dead?" Or, "Why do we look
for meaning and purpose in that which is gone and past?" We learn, of course,
from history. We are only what we have become over the years. Only a very foolish
man disregards history or experience as the first school master. But isn't it true
that for some reason we get stuck in our own past: that we keep dwelling in it;
perhaps pretending that present reality doesn't exist?

The older I get, and to many of you that's not very old, the more aware
I become of the many, many people who make their lives a living hell because they
refuse to admit that the past is gone. The more people I meet the more I am
aware that one of the most common maladies of modern man is an almost neurotic
refusal to live in the present: — yesterday - or tomorrow — but not today.

Sometimes it appears to very simple. I live in a neighborhood where
many of the people are temporary transplants - home is somewhere far away:
Lafayette is a brief stop over on the way to somewhere else. ind I'm continually
appalled at the degree of unhappiness created by this situation. Nothing is right:
if only we were somewhere else: some of it is homesickness, of course; but much
of it is simply a refusal to come to grips with the present.

Perhaps the problem is age. Most of us spent the first 30 years
of our lives wishing we were older. I can vividly remember the agonizing years
in school wanting nothing so much as to be out, and mature and earning & living.
For several years the reality of life is something in the distant future and what—
ever is done now is done only in anticipation of that great tomorrow. And then
a funny thing happens. Somewhere between 30 and 40 reality takes its definition,
no longer from the future, but the past. Anticipation turns into nostalgia. We
wish we were young again: if only we could go back and re-live those yoars of
carefree freedom. And life slips by, slowly, while we refuse to live it. One
of the more popular samplers that used to decorate the walls of innumerable
homes read: "Yesterday is dead, leave it. Tomorrow may never come: don't worry.
Today is here; live it." There is an immense amount of wisdom in that little
cliche.

For others the problem is a marriage which hasn't been all that the
initial hopes held out; or a job that hasn't delivered on the initial promises,
or any one of a hundred situations - the reality of which can easily be disguised
by living in the past.

Grief, too, takes its toll. There is a very natural process through
which evory grieving individual mast travel. Shock, numbness, copious tears,
bitterness, depression, hostility ~- and finally gradually normality. But many
don't make it all the way through, refusing to deal with the reality of today,
preferring to spend the rest of their days at station five of the grief process,
and ultimately to die of a broken heart.

*

that number participate. That is, Protestantism is maintaining one church for
every 75 people ~ a luxury the church simply cannot afford. And yet every effort
to meet the reality honestly is met with furious opposition - a good example of
which recently made the local newspaper several weeks before Easter. People
just don't want to admit that we live in a now world ~ a new mentality -— that
the past is dead and gone.

Of all the institutions in society the church is too often the least
open to a new idea = to the fresh air of honest realism. Ministers who would
do something new - make some changes ~ know that the road ahead will be difficult
and perhaps impossible. It almost seems as if people want the church to protect
them from the unsettling changes going on in the world all about them. And
it is my proposition that the church can ill afford to waste any more time
pretending that it's still 1910.

The irony of all of this is that faith rightly understood, is a
dynamic, living thing. Christian faith is anything but static. And yet the
rubrics of the Christian religion can themselves take the place of faith. The
forms of religion can become the occasion for seeking the living among the dead.

In the book I cited earlier, Leslie Newbigin points out that the forms
of religion can be used as a means of protection from exposure to the Living
God who calls men to live out their faith in the changing patterns of the world.
Men, that is to say, seek isolation in religion from everything about life
that is threatening and unsettling. That is not only tragic, it is the grossest
misunderstanding of the whole matter of Christian faith.

A good pattern for the church, and the man of faith, is, I belicve,
clearly laid out in the account read this morming from the ninth chapter of
the Book of Numbers. In that passage the people of Israel are making their way
through the wilderness and the greatest temptation is to pick a spot and
settle down and begin to live in the past. So the instructions are given: the
symbols of God's presence - the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night
are moving. And the Tabernacle, thetent of meeting between God and man, has to
be moved so that God's people can follow him through the wilderness. The
temptation to settle down must be resisted.

That is a wise word for the church and the Christian today. Newbigin
puts it this way: "We must be ready for surprises, be constantly aware that the
God who is so revealed is also hidden; that a lifetime is not enough to fathom
the depths of his being. We mst, to use the Biblical imagery, be pilgrims,
always ready to move on... To know God, the living God, means to live in the
constant expectancy of what is new, yet in the constant certainty that nothi:
which happens can contradict the reality of what has been revealed." (p.94,97

In the life of this congregation, and in our personal lives, we need
to understand that the basis of our faith -— the love of God in Jesus Christ -
is secure and neverchanging. But the world is in a state of flux — and God
calls us corporately and individually to accept the newness and challenge of
each morning rather than retreating into the dead realities of the past.

After all, the risen Jesus Christ didn't stay in the garden. He
"went ahead of them into Galilee." To stay there — to remain by the Tomb =
seeking the living among the dead -— would have been to miss him - and to
waste a lot of time.

Life is like that — and so is Christian faith.

Amen.

Se anal eeey OM LTT a a9 to

™

en - : P

Living the Abundant Life
April 27, 1969

John 10:1-10

Rev. John MN. Buchanan

To the objective observer of the American culture there are two all—per-
vading motifs which define life in 1969. The first is affluence. The second is a
kind of rumbling unrest that occasionally boils over in overt protest or revolt.
The congregation of this church is a good illustration of the first motif. Every-
one here got out of bed this morning and put a foot down on the floor of a house
he is able to own or rent. We will eat, before this day is over, more protein
than the majority of the people of the world will be able to find this week. We
dressed nicely and rode in automobiles to a well appointed place of worship.
Most of us will spend the rest of this day entertaining ourselves. We are a good
example of the meaning of the word affluence.

Meanwhile, across the river, the rumbling unrest has expressed itself,
and the issue about which the unrest has coalesced is an increase in tuition fee
at a university which we, the affluent, support with our taxes.

Increasingly, these two motifs define what life is about in 1969.

Affluence is a very relative idea. The story is told of the University
Preshman who came home for a weekend. His father sat down with him after dinner
and asked: "Son, how are things going?" To which the young intellectual responded:
“relative to what?" Affluence is like that. It's relative; and because it is
relative, it's a bit difficult, for those of us who are directly involved in it,
to talk meaningfully <>out it. To see what it means we need to step out of our
individual situations and try to get the “overview": to put things in a kind
of total perspective.

One thing is certain: it is a new phenomenon. Now, to be sure, America
has always produced its wealthy elite. But general affluence, as that word is
currently used, began with the Second World War. Ever since that event, the
Gross National Product of this nation has been in a steady spiral. Wages and cost
of living have responded to each other in the battle for balance so that nobody
seems to be getting ahead of the system. But the whole economy continues the
climb. Everyone has more, and responsible economists are saying there is no reason
why the direction ever has to be reversed.

It's easier, of course, to talk in terms of the visible results of
affluence than it is to discuss its theory. We are comfortable. Machines do for
us almost all the work our parents did for themselves. One of the standing
joes in our household has to do with the process of washing clothes. That used
to be an exhausting, all day job. Monday was washday and nothing else much
mattered on that day. Today we carry the clothes to the machine, add the magic
.’credients and push the buttons. Simple things define affluence. Ice cream
used to be a pay-day treat. Today it is a standard item in every freezer and in
the mental economy of children occupies a position just a few grades above
asparagus and sweet potatoes. From morning to night - from night to morning -
we are ministered to by a fantastic collection of machines that cool the air,
cook our food, wash the dishes, transport us to work, entertain us and wake us
up again. . And the word for it all is comfort.

Along with the comfort and convenience affluence has produced for the
average family, an inercasing amount of leisure time. We are free not to be
concerned about matters that totally occupied our parents: free to pursue pleasure
in television, movies, records, books - or simply in adding more gadgets to our
households.

With time on our hands we are free to seek new sensations — in vacations,
in alcohol — even in drugs.

But affluence hag had other results as well. For one thing, people are
probably more bored than at any other time and place in history. Whereas before
the energies of men were totally absorbed in providing food and shelter, today
we are free to fill our time as we see fit. And so — boredom: days and nights
filled with the trivia of Beverly Hillbillies and giveaway bonanzas.

Eye ES Se ers

hag

ew i ne

Jesus was talking to a group of Pharisees — the spiritual, and
political leaders of Israel. They were the establishment, and they were very
threatened by what he was doing — and specifically by his implication that
they were blind.

They — the Pharisees - had defined the "good life". For them it was a
matter of obedience to the law. It was a closed system, rigid and inflexible.
The best a man could do was wrapped up in dietary regulations and sacrifical
prescriptions. And on this religious base a whole way of life was constructed.
Of course, it excluded a lot of people: the sinners who simply didn't care
about legalistic morality: the unclean - who by birth or disease were not fit
to associate with the holy men: the poor- who were too busy scratching out a
living to afford the luxury of institutional religion.

It's strange how institutional religion seems always to perpetuate
that pattern. Throughout the history of this nation Christianity has had the
unfortunate image of a legalistic, dull affair, far more concerned with what a
man refrains from doing or the kinds of people he avoids contacting than the
quality of the life he lives. We are saddled with that image - and one
gets the distinct improssion that the Pharisees would be more than comfortable
with the life of the average American congregation. :

In any case, it was these men to whom Jesus was talking, and he held
up before them an unforgettable image. He portrayed himself as a shepherd - and
then quickly - as the door to the sheepfold. The mixed metaphor would have
posed no problem because a shepherd slept in the doorway of the fold for obvious
reasons. He led them in -— and he led them out. He was the way.

The Pharisees, Jesus was saying, wore like the thieves who climb over
the walls of the fold and rob the sheep of their liberty - their lives. They
are the imposters - they are the ones who are guilty of misleading the flock.

He concluded with another comparison. The thief comes only to destroy.
"I come that they might have life, and have it abundantly." Not a narrow,
regimented life within a closed system of religious rules - but abundant
life, full, complete, exhilarating, adventurous living. There is quite a
difference.

Jesus, the Shepherd, offered men two things. The door to the fold
opens both ways. He offered men the saving, redeeming love of God. That's what
the fold is - the security of God's grace. He confirmed for men the idea that
"The Lord is my shepherd" — that "even in the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." In his life he expressed the truth
that God's love surrounds each individual - that nothing in life, not even
death, can separate a man from that love. The shepherd knows each one of his
sheep by name; when one is lost he goes out to find it - and will lay down
his life for it. Jesus the shepherd offers the comfort we call "salvation."

But the sh pherd leads the sheep out too: out to grassy meadows and
running brooks. He leads out to liberty and fulfillment and life.

One commentator puts it this way: "A fold is good for security, but too
mach security is worse than too little. . . a fold that is never opened wide
becomes a cemetery; as a mind that never ventures into the wide universe that
environs us will speedily decay and die." (Major, Manson and Wright, p- 820)

In these turmoiled times, living the abundant life begins when we are
able to identify what we are talking about. It begins when we can seriously
ask the kinds of questions raised for us by the campus radical. It continues
as we learn that our affluence, by itself, means very little; as we become
free to use and enjoy the results of affluence for our own welfare - and the
abundant life of all.

Pa

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. “Pdi stovering Your Calling ican Ls

John 15:12-17
Rev. John M.Buchanan

"You did not choose me: I chose you. I appointed you to go on and
bear fruit, fruit that shall last..." (NEB)

That verse is a real enigma. The words were spoken by Jesus, to his
disciples - twelve common men, fishermen, tradesmen, farmers — who were
responsible for implementing what he had started. I would guess that they were
as puzzled by the words as we are. How could they accept this kind of respon=
sibility? How could they be bearers of enduring fruit when their first obligation
was to provide an existence for their wives and children?

The words of Jesus are an enigma on a very practical level because,
in fact, we all can't drop what we are doing and become ministers or missionaries.
Someone has to "mind the shop". We are part of a very complex civilization -
the wheels of which would come to a grinding halt the minute every church member
decided to pull out and take on some full-time ecclesiastical task. That's one
aspect of the problem — we all can't bear fruit - if by fruit- we mean the
carrying out of certain well-defined religious responsibilities. But what if
Jesus didn't mean for all men to abandon secular work? What if all jobs rare
religious? That might make a difference.

The words of Jesus are an enigma, in the second place, because
historically we have seen the tragic results that occurred when men interpreted
them in the narrowest, most literalistic fashion.

By the time of the middle ages men had been conditioned to define the
word "Vocation" solely in terms of the priesthood. All human enterprise could
be ranked on a pyramidic scale, and at the top was the holy vocation of serving God
as a,priest. Prom there is was all downhill. The tragic results of this ideology
were an irrational elevation of the clergy and a destructive debilitation of the
laity. It meant that the clergy became the Church - and because the church so
dominated the entire culture in the middle ages - it meant that all work - other
than . the work of the priesthood was stained with the worldly mark of secularity.

In a sense, we still haven't gotten over that. We still take some
comfort in believing that ministers, alone, are called by God to their labors;and
if a man doesn't feel in his heart that God wants him to be a minister, it
doesn't really matter what he does with his life. We still persist in erroneously
defining "calling" - as working for the Church. We still elevate the clergy
and debilitate the laity so that no public meeting can get off the ground without
a clerical invocation, even though the room may be filled with churchmen; and so
that in the church the priesthood of all believers remains a giant myth, because
the minister is painfully aware that he's going to have to plead with his people
for a crumb of their spare time, and that often if a job is to be done, it's
simply easier to do it himself. We perpetuate the heresy of the middle ages in
many ways - for instance by expecting a minister to labor for the satisfaction
derived - and everybody else in society, for the amount of money earned.

This, perhaps, takes us too far afield; but let it be understood
that the words of Jesus about calling men will never really be understood so long
as we relegate them to those whom the church calls its ministers. In that context
the words remain an enigma, and a rather harmless one at that — because someone
else is heeding them in our stead.

In the third place these words are puzzling because we're not very
comfortable any more with individual piety. We aren't at all comfortable with
the suggestion that God has a concern —- a plan — a purpose - for every individual
life. We refuse to sce a relationship between our faith and our work because we've
arifted from that most basic theological understanding that God's love is
miraculously intimate and his fatherhood terribly real. And it's a little
difficult to understand what there is left, once these under—pinnings are pulled
away.

It may seem like a long way from a discussion of daily work, but we
really have to begin with some basic theology. And when everything is reduced
and distilled we are driven way back to the prototype experience of one man. His

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~ that our individual tasks really mattered at all.

There are like problems with overy industry - every job - every chore,
no matter how important or humble - and the need is immense and urgent to
recover what our culture has lost.

I believe the Church, and its Gospel, has the means of recovery.;

I believe it is in a rebirth of the idea of vocation. I believe it is found in
the call of God to serve him - using the words of Theodore Gill: "Whoever,
wherever we are, whatever we do, we are ministers of God."

But how? <- that's a fine cliche with the ring of orthodoxy to it.
But how? Every life is different: every job is difforent - and the observer
is going to vary. But I would suggest some broad guidelines.

First, no matter what the task is, it provides the opportunity for
basic honesty. That is a sermon topic in and of itself, but did you ever
realize how many decisions are made in the workaday world that assume
basic dishonesty? I gr-wup in a town where every other house was curiously
the same color as the box cars on the Pennsylvania Railroad. At Ford, I had to
open my lunch bucket every day as I left - so that the guard could see whether
or not I was stealing a tool. And Congressman Mendel Rivors - just stole 36,000
of our money to send his secretaries on a European vacation. I think we could
stand a little basic honesty and I would suggest that we might find the be-
ginnings of a vocation at that point.

Second, no job is without a certain moral responsibility. A pro-
fessional person daily excrcises his right to be morally responsible — or ir-
responsible. In the areas of law, medicine and education the decisions are clear.
But they are there for everyone of us, no matter what we do. The laborer can give
the company eight hours work for eight hours pay - or less. The mechanic, upon
whom I am totally dependent, can charge me the same amount for a good job - or a
poor job. And I won't know the difference. There isa moral imperative inherent
in every job and I would suggest our vocation is to exercise it.

Third, and most important of all, every job involves other people,
and we have the opportunity - in our work - of affirming their personhood and
thus loving them; or treating them as objects and thus denying their humanity.
It doesn't matter what we do, others are involved — and we can see them as
customers, consumers, employers, employees, competitors, - or as persons. I
think God calls us to the vocation of affirming the dignity and common humanity
of all -— and that the framework of our jobs is perhaps the most critical area
for this vocation to be lived.

Finally, God calls everyone of us to become the best, the freest
people we can become. He calls us to partnership with him in the continuous
process of creation. And the great thing about work, in this context, is that
it is all we have. Work is all we can bring. We have been given our talents,
our intelligence, our creativity. We have been given the natural resources with
which to work. All we really have to offor God in the partnership is our labor -
our toil.

In the final analysis, then,k our work becomes our offering:
our jobs become the enterprise of responding to our creator. No matter what we
do, that is our vocation; that is our calling. And there is none holier,

Amen.

She VYocusian of farenthood

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Parenthood = being a motarey, or a father, ie 4 vocation, and it focurser
on the related institutions of the familoy and the home. In this context, two

general observations are in order.

riret, the Home ~ ag an institution, isn't what it used to be. a jor

factorr of life in the 2Oth century are responpible — mobility - and the

.

growth and sophistication of public inetitutione. While we were in Parhville
several weeks aco we toured the Hermitage — indrew Jackson's hmmertead. Jackson
bought the property ag a young man, built the buildings and farmed the fibldre,

It wat hie home for the entireiu of hie life. Many of his relatives and denrert
friends lived there with him. Children were born, educated, reared, married

number of people ~ buried in the g¢found of what was truly a home. The Hermi tare

the Home or Homestead.
) ie gone now — and the type of culture in which it flourished idithe

probably never rer

at itself. ‘Today mobility im the word. e've been in
Lafayette for 2) years, and already we've the only original repidents left on
our block. his doesn't need documented - partichlarly in this congregation -
where every springtime bringer the logs of many people te have learned to

know and love. Mobility, simply etated, has fundamentally altered the ine titution
of the home,

In addition the traditional fimetions of the home are now done by very
sophisticated public institwtions. The school, the church, and the scout troop -
together do tor a child what were once the cohesive taske of the home. In fact
our liver get so deeply involved with these other institutions that the hosie
becomes little more than a sleeping place for severnl individuale. “ne observer

notes that, ‘! home ceases to be a home when moet of the members are about to

leave it." (1. Trueblood, Your Other Vocation, p. 87) ‘And that statement

defines most of the houeeholde 1 know, including my am.

iy liret concern, therefore, is that we make a concertdd effort to
re-esteblicnh our priorities. Our families are our first and most important
responsibility. 4nd yet, to live out of that conviction is no eary thing to
do. We live in a culture that operates with ea difrerent set of asrumptione.

All of us imiow someone who works terribly hard at this job+ under the premise

that this is the way to provide for a family — and the
ee P

families become the victimes rather than the benefactors.

neveral year ago, obtune Megazine revealed in an article the fact

several large corporations in this country do not give major responsibklity

to happily married men for the sipple reagon taat this kind of man will insict

on reserving both time and ener: for a commi tment ot stands ahead of the

company. .hal's the King of cuiture in which we live + a culture that

gross irresponsibility in our primary tack, under the euise of success and

BeCcuri sy.

80 much ac those we have brought into the world - that if we fail here nothing

= cal

the same again. THechnology has changed the rules of the game. Takkr which once
took ali day, every day, are now done in minuter by pushin er a button or plugging

lence. Thus, the home

“a

to feelings of ineecurity sbout her role ag the pusher of many buttons.
growing problem today is the young college educated wife, Fluent in

french, conversant in Cninese uietory and baroque music, whose time is consumed

in changing diapere. ur culture has held out before her the image of

‘a

emancipated womanhood and she has been led to believe that her contribution

to society must be made in some profession. ilton GYrueblood put it this way:

mal we
"Tt is assumed that a person needs rigorous preparation in order to be a
successiul architect, but the guidance of human liver is apparently thoupht to
be on a different intellectual level.” (Ibid p. &9)
I had the privikedge last year of addressing a conference of Senior Cirl
scouts wio had spent several dayr disevesing, with experts, every vocation open
to them except the one most of them are going to spend the next twenty or
there is iittle significance in cleaning, cooking and changing diapers. ‘nd
I think it's time for responsible voices to didsent.
than the vocation of homemaking and motherhood. ‘the youns mother in fructrated
supper can vest assured that she's doing something more eipnificant than her husband

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Boome ef, ine ering ' muet serve ac comforter , counsellor rr irbpiter <— and mos?
men wouldn't chan, jobs wi them for all the money on the

Me point is that mothers asn see thie - and live out of the self estee!
that attaches to their role; or they can choose not to see it, be frustrated

and not bring to their task the kind of sensitive intellieence it needs.
Phytlis icSinley, the poetees laureate of the common housewife hae summarised

it well: “ rom the raw materiale of four walle and a roof, a shelter over ovr

heads, we will have mule a home by force of our own pereonalities. ie

warmed, ciccred ond sustained tne head of that house, turned progeny into a
family. 6 will have learned 2 dozen skills and enjoyed the fruit of those

skills. sor us the baby will have taken the first séep, repeated hie first word

woe
we will have heard the school child call “Mommy As soon ac he pute a foot inmide
the door; not so much to have - reply as to be aesured that he is safe, life ie

ordinary, and that we are there. We will have been raise@ to 2 @iray eminence

as final suthority, diepeneer of ujuelice, necessary Presence. ' husband, no
matter how willingly he giver nimeel? to the role of houreholder or paren t,

never approaches such triumphe. What more can one ask of a proferrion? Cod,

as I said, suet love housewiver. It is time we also learned to love our

selves." ( Sixpence in |

T mur } ™ ane « +3
Now, there are ot

be said, of covrre. | homemaker hne
responsibility to engage herself outside her home. She is free to serve her
community - to pursue her interests. In fact, a very crucial time comer in
every woman's life when the children are fone and 2 terrible freedom sete in.
An amazing amount of emotional probleme and divorces occu t precisely that
phint. So it becomes a matter of responsibidity not to narrow the field go much
that 2 perron chrivels and dies,

out of 2 clearly defined Patriarchal society. In a rence, the pendulum ha:

of reasons, is not the father at all = but the mother. I woul pe that or
?
might understand that together we are parents -— equal ly responsible { the

vocation of homemaking and parenthood.

We are, paycholpiete tell us, the most signigicant individuals in the lives
of our children. hat they become is going to depend, gnan frightenin; degree,
upon our relationship with them. Boy babies begin to learn what it meane to be

men - as soon an they are born: ~ because teste have shown that fatherns

whi

handle tieir infant sons in an entirely different manner than they cuddle

their daughters. We nedd to understand that. we need to know that we are
totally transparent to our children — that what we do, or don't do with them ie
a powerful factor in their developing personalities. ‘4 child's atbituder

about sex are going to reflect the manner in which the subjecttwar handled

at home. [i he is made to feel ashamed of his sexuality - that his body is
something to be hidden and ignored: hif he learns that his questions embarnare his

parents ani are suidiously diverted — he's going to carry into adulthood a

certain attitude about sexuality thet may never be corrected.

if he hears hie father refer to those niggers ar that dirty Jew - he's
learning. if ne hears Ais parents exp esrin hatred for a noi hbor =~ he's

learning. If he ob

in simple, LY ys. If youx child anewere the phone and you
gave your breath when you feel called to deliver a lecture on hones ty.
¢ need to be : inded, i Lily, ‘that oui lationshin wi our

reminded that our parenthood is the most diffbeult o° all voeationn.

And we need to be reminded that our ability to be effective parents
depends in large meagure on our relationship with each other ae hurhondes ane
wives.

ote Poul writing to the Uphesians had some very straightforward words here.

Ang perliaps it is no accident that he remained a bachelor. As I mentioned before

he spoke frem a culture that was clearly patriarchal. “Vivee -— be subject to

your husbands.” That culture is no more. But his understanding of the relation-

ship between men and women in the home was firmly grounded in the realistic

Fanl ‘told it like

e fume condition, “hat is, wt.
“hatte where it bering. Wh

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appraies: oa. the
ceed isa one another.”
Sin, mud they we: talking about

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bat be mennt :

human eine

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ana sige ce Le a ee ee a ES
nor a 4 an! ‘ « 1 car 3 a) cre a

¥Yocawhin..
Bh Cal ud. eA a . ae elo RO DOL “
Lid Pes ee iv iad Wehbe ‘ »
my he Sy eld Mac yg Raa Pe or CATE h ua
WE Gl i tee oe ude oo lhaeche of deadte saad rrneac.

4
iia

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wiv ives anc hk
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Jeaun Uasies

a! de

Love is A Many Splendored Thing
I John 4:13-21

Nay 18, 1969

Rev. John M. Buchanan

The trouble with trying to preach a sermon from a passage like
that (I John 4:13-21) is that it is literally loaded with theological and
ethical freight. There is a lot here - far more than can be articulated in one
sermon. And so, as I worked through the text this week, I chose three ideas to
discuss ~ three separate statements about the word "love". Each says some thing
different about love — and yet they are bound together by the fact that they each
begin with the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

The three statements are these:

~ God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and
God abides in him.

- There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

— We love, because he first loved us.

Three statements - one strictly theological regarding the nature
of God; and two containing very contemporary psychological and ethical relevance.
Let's examine them more closely.

First, God is love. That means that when you talk about God,
love is where you start. I+ means that love is not just one of many divine
attributes, but the very essence of the divine. God is love. And everything
else that is said about him is defined by the fact that essentially his nature
is love. For instance, if we say that God is powerful, we need to understand
that we are not talking abou raw, naked power — but powerful love. If we say
that God is just - we need to understand that we're talking about a loving justice.
God is love -— and the final definition of that love - that God - is a lonely
cross standing on a hill outside Jerusalem.

That love, the author of this little letter was saying, is the
primal reality in the universe. Men have always looked into the darkness and
wondered what is there. Some have felt a fareless power; some have felt an
arbitrary fate; others have felt nothing. “Love is there", says this writer.
Love is the final reality. And furthermore, a man who loves deeply is participating
in the fundamental nature of things.

One commentator suggests that. . . "All deep human love strikes
down somewhere into the divine, though it may strike darkly and with a dim feeling
after Him who is not far from anyone." (Findlay in I, B) I think everyone of
us has felt something like that, even though we are not able to find the words
to express it.

A parent stands beside the crib of his sleeping child and feels
something so powerful within him that he knows it is of God. A husband, a
wife, feels sheer amazement at the fact that this one matters most in all the
world. A Christian at Communion hears the words he has been listening to for
years, and suddenly they are filled with meaning. These people — these friends
and strangers; these ones I have worked with and argued with - these and all
who have gone before - are one — and are given a unity by the very love of God.

To love is to drink deeply of the water of life. To love deeply
is to do what you were created to do: it is to participate in the very essence
of being a man.

God is love. That is the first statement and it undergirds
all that follows. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."

For the author and the readers of the letter this statement had
a dual relevance. They were gripped by two very real fears: the fear of judgment
and the fear of persecution. In the first instance they fully expected the end
of the age within their own life time. And naturally, there was more than a little
fear involved with their anticipation of that event. But love casts out fear. Your
judge is God and he is love, and he loves you and there is nothing to fear.

In the second instance, the era of Roman persecution was just
beginning. The handwriting was on the wall. Very soon it would be dangerous

me

what we do in the world - on all three sides our mutual fear has become the
midwife of hatred. JI think the greatest irony of our age is that we are

spending nearly 80 billion dollars a year to soothe our fears and it's not

working, and furthermore it's never going to work. Currently we are debating the
relative merits of the A. B. M. Safeguard System, a system that will cost billions
and billions of dollars with absolutely no assurance of efficiency whenever it

is completed. But we'll probably do it anyway -— because we're afraid -— and

we've been conditioned to cope with our fear by making the other side even more
afraid than we are.

On a more modest level, we find ourselves on the long end of a
growing generation gap ~ because we're afraid of what the campus radical is and
what he is saying.

We find ourselves hating the homosexual because we fear the
threat he poses to our own manhood or womanhood.

Most immediate of all, we find ourselves in a brand new racial
climate - and this time we're afraid. It is one of the interesting anecdotes
of our history that racial hatred has increased whenever the white man discovered
he had some reason to be afraid. There was no need for the Ku Klux Klan so long
as the black man was property. But a free black .man —- a free black man whoge
mother was brought here in a ship, and whose father was the plantation owner-
is something else again.

Thus fear -— and then hatred. For two hundred years Southern
white men violated black women at will. And then as the conscience of the nation
slowly awakened so did the fear that the black man would retaliate. When the
civil rights marchers walked through Cicero, Illinois, one phrase was shouted all
along the line - "If you think you're going to come here and rape all our women
you'll be a dead nigger first." (p. 67 Why Black Power, Joseph R. Barndt )

It always comes out - this terrible hatred rooted in fear and
spawned by guilt. The very phrase "Black Power" frightens us - and fuels our
htred -— even though we live in a world of political and economic power. The
late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. summarized it well: "A guilt ridden white minority
fears that if the Negro attains power, he will without restraint and pity act to
revenge the accumulated injustices and brutality of the years. A parent, who
has continually mistreated his son, suddenly realizes that he is now taller than
his parent. Will the son use his new physical power to repay for all the blows
of the past?" (p. 139, Strength to Love)

Is the Gospel relevant here? I+ is -— but only as Christian
people put aside fear — and realize once again that love is powerful —- that there
is no fear in love ~— that not only our welfare but our survival, depend on someone
breaking us out of the trap of fear in which we seem to be caught. I don't know
anything more relevant than that.

But how? How can we love that much? How can we incarnate
that perfect love which casts out all fear - which runs roughshod over all hatred
and bitterness? "We love, because he first loved us." That's how. We can't do
it alone - something like a miracle of grace has to happen to us. We need help -
even in our loving.

But again, this is how it is with all men. We are not born with
built-in love for all men. In fact, we are born with the equal capacity for love
or hate. An infant loves when he learns to love himself; that is, when he
experiences his own loveableness. A parent calls forth love within his child by
extending his own love. Reuel Howe describes it well, "Only those who have been
loved and who love themselves are free and able to love others. The ability to
love is always theresult of having been loved. This is true of the child's
relation to the parent,and it is true of our relation to God." (p. 82, Man's
Need and God's Action)

It's Not Basy to Be a Christian
John 14:18-27
May 25 — Communion

I'm disturbed. On this gentle May Sabbath I'm disturbed as I haven't
been for some time. I share with you a very deep concern about the action of the
General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, mecting last week in San Antonio.
I am disturbed by the response to those actions which I have heard from the com—
munity, from members of other Presbyterian churches and from the members of this
congregation, But mostly I'm disturbed by two questions that are asked by the
General Assemblies' action and the people's response: "What binds us together as
Christian persons?" Does anything? Are we bound together in any way that is
different from the inter-personal relationships that prevail in, say, the P. T. A.?
The second question is this: "What binds us to the Church of Jesus Christ? Does
anything? Is there a substantial, tangible commitment to the church?

I guess I'm disturbed because the tempest in which I found myself this
week demands that those questions be confronted and answered. I operate under the
assumption that what binds us to the Church is our faith in and commitment to Jesus
Christ. I operate under the corollary assumption that the faith, and this commit—
ment, is expressed in our forgiving love and loyalty to each other. I operate
under the assumption that there is no earthly reason for our being here — our being
a congregation - other than this faith - this hove and loyalty.

The uniqueness of this faith, love and loyalty is that it either comes
first in our lives, or not at all. Faith in Jesus Christ is not conditional, I+
depends on nothing but Him. It judges all we are, every opinion we have. every
stand we take. And if it doesn't —- if it does not occupy that central position
where we live and move and have our being, we delude ourselves by calling it
Christian FAith.

And yet the church can survive on less than that: the church can exist
in society as an association of congenial people. Individuals can maintain their
church relatedness with far less than that radical trust in Jesus Christ -— so long
as no one rocks the boat; so long as no one makes the kinds of demands on them
that require giving Jesus Christ sufferance over everything else in life. It's not
difficult to be a Chritian until we come upon a week like last week.

I've heard from people last week I haven't seen in, lo, these many
months. I've heard people call their church a communist organization who haven't
bothered to worship in it -— or engage in its ministry -— or support its existence.
And I've heard from many responsible church members who are deeply concerned, and
who have asked me to speak to the situation. I have been doing that, of course,
but now I would focus on what happened and what it means. I would preface my
remarks by saying that I was as: surprised as you by the nows releases that began
last Tuesday. I have no more factual information than you; nor do I have spectacular
secrets to reveal. I have the rudimentary knowledge of how these things came
about,. and some opinions regarding the responsible approach to them.

The General Assembly meets once a year and is the highest judicatory
of our church. It is comprised of 420 ministers and 420 elders, elected as
commissioners by their Presbyterys. : The General Assembly guides, directs and
administers the work of the church. In addition it speaks to the church and the
world in its Social Pronouncements.

Social Pronouncements are, to say the least, a very sore spot with many
Presbyterians. Many believe that the church should not address itself to the world,
and I would disagree strenuously with this point of view. Apparently, so do tho
majority of commissioners to the General Assembly. Im any case, a Social Pronounce=-
ment is first drafted by the Permanent Committee on Church and Society, again a
committee representing the national church and including equal numbers of clergy
and laity. These people mect, several times a yoar, with the staff of the office
of Church and Society, to study, discuss and write the first draft papers that
will go to General Assembly.

and methods or of the "Black Manifest’ of which he is a chief mover. This mani-
festo obviously contains much that is impossible and much to which our Church must
be unalterably opposed. But James Forman is att present the most disturbing critic
of the churches from the extreme militant point of view. We need to hear him;

to listen thoughtfully to him, to try to understand what he represents.

"I have received telegrams and letters protesting the bringing of Mr.
Forman to San Antonio. Many have objected to the use of church money for this
purpose. Those who wrote may not have recognized that the Assembly heard him not
because it approved of him but because it needed him. And it would be unprecedented
for a speaker to be invited to come -to address the Assembly at his own expense.

"His coming makes it possible that some will misunderstand the most
creative actions of this Assembly as occasioned by the demands of the "Black
Manifesto" or as taken hastily in fear. Tho fact is that no church money is boing
put into funds which are under the control ofMr. Forman's group. The Assembly did
what it did, through its own channels, and in its own way.

"I write this letter because much of the CHurch may be where this
Assembly was seven days ago —- uneasy, puzzled, unsure. We have ended in a
wonderful spirit of harmony and satisfaction. I am convinced that this is
nothing clse than the working of the Holy Spirit in a group of carnest, secking
Christians who were gathered together in Christ's name. My prayer is that this same
unity, this determination to do unusual things in an unusual way, this facing into
an uncertain future in joy and trust may be characteristic of our whole church.
Faithfully yours, George I. Sweazey, Moderator, 18lst General Assembly."

The Church of Jesus Christ is struggling today with a matter of life
and death - what is its role in the world? To what role is God calling his
Church? In secking to be a faithful communion, the Presbyterian Church has gone
out on a limb many times, endangering its membership and financial strength, but
only because the elected representatives of Presbyterian people have felt in
their hearts that God was calling them to a new stance of discipleship.

To atruggle with the role of the Church in the world is to begin with
the fact that it is a new kind of world - a new situation internationally - a
new set of realities domestically. The Church can decide to withdraw - to crawl
into its shell and pretend that it is still 1910. Or it can thank God for the
newness of the situation and engage it head on. I, for one, am. a Presbyterian,
because our church has consistently been alive to the world, and has tried
desperately to be guided by nothing but God's call to faithful obedience. When
we stop doing that; when we measure what we say and do. by any other standard, I
will withdraw because we will no longer have the right to call ourselves the
Church of Jesus Christ.

After all, the church does have some rather specific marching orders
as it secks to be the agent of God's love in the world. And those marching orders
do not contain warnings against tramping on toes, or offending political
ideologies, or losing lmembers or money.

I think the marching orders of Christian people are rather clear.
Listen to this paraphrase of the prophet Isaiah, written by J. Elliot Corbett,
(Prophets on Main Street, p. 66) “Have you not heard the injunction of the
Lord? If thine enemy hunger, feed him. Yet there are those among you who say,
‘Let them starve, and let hunger be the curse of Communism. Let us not show mercy
and love, but be as cold and calculating and ruthless as the enemy. Let's win
for a change! Is your memory so short? A man in Central Europe said, "Let us
waste no love on Jews, spare no mercy to captured Poles. Blot out the Bible
from your mind. The sword is more important than the Cross." That man wanted to
win, too. His name was Hitler. No, saith the Lord, do not adopt the attitudes
or ape the methods of those who hold an alien philosophy. What does it profit
you, if in the struggle with your adversary, you become identical with him? You
have your own ideals to promote, your own principles to uphold. It does not :
take fire to put out fire, but water - Living Water. Is your enemy hungry? Feed
him. «Does he slander? Bless. Is he hostile? Show friendship. Does he act

carey
F bs Ay

Love Is Something You Do
I John - solected; Matthew 5:43-48
June 1, 1969

It sounds a little like a Charlie Brown sampler, or a Sister Corita poster,
put "love is something you do," It is one of those "catch phrases" that adorn
sveatshirts and picket signs, the subtetly of which leaps out of print and strikes
down deeply within us, But that sentence also contains a very sophisticated and
a@ very radical and a very Christian concept of the meaning of the word love,

It is difficult to talk sensibly about love for the very simple reason that
the English language is poor here, and that "love" is an extremely versatile
word, Linguists write volumes on the many meanings of the word and most conclude
that the best thing to happen would be to strike the word from our vocabulary and
begin to use a whole series of words that are more precise,

After all, we do use "love" to describe a whole range of feelings that act~
ually are not even related, We love our country; we love a song; we love a
school or university; we love a dress, or a suit, and automobile, our home, We
use the word to describe everything from sexual relations to the relationship a
father has with his son. We use it in fraternal organizations among men; in the
life-long commitment of marriage; we whisper it to each other as adolescents and
sing about it and now we've even used it to label a brand of cosmetics,

In the mythology of our culture we have been conditioned to expect love to
"happen" to us one day; right ovt of the blue. We've been conditioned to think
of romantic love in terms of bells ringing and lights flashing, and a temporary
loss of our ability to function. What is worse we have so sustained the myth
that many married people find themselves in trouble because these mythological
definitions of love have just not boen part of their experience,

When we use the word "love" , ordinarily we are dealing with feelings and
emotions which we experience, But vhen the New Testament uses the word it has
nothing whatever to do with subjective, experienced feelings. Love, in the New
Testament, is something you do, not something you feel,

The Greeks - and the New Testament was written in Greek - had several words -
all of which we translate as love,

Eros, from which we get "erotic" indicated physical, sexval attraction, In
its best sense, and its original sense, it indicated the healthy desire of one
person for another person, In our culture, however, the "erotic" has been ex~

Toited to sell mmtion pictures, and magazines and even weed killers, Put,

r “I~ eros meant physical attraction,

That, the Greeks understood, was quite different from what transpires be-
tween members of a family, or between good friends, That relationship the called

il. lia, familial affection, Thiladelphia is the city of Protherly Love: filial
devotion is what a parent has for his children. We call it love: the Greeks
called it Philia,

There are other Creek words that are translated love, but these two ~ eros
and philia - bring the semantic rroblem into perspective, Put when the New Testa-
ment talls abovt love it uses still another word - Agape,

One semanticist commnts that "agape: has neither the warmth of philia, nor
the intensity of eros; that it refers to the will rather than to the emotion;
and that it is concerned most about the demonstration of love through action,"
(A, Richardson, Theolobical Vord Pook of the Pible)

Agape is bene.v.... . LLom, and notice that it has nothing to do with feel-
“7s. That is when wo got into trovble. If you've heard many sermons chances
-~ «. ,9ulwe heard the content of this one several tines before, Every school

boy knows that love is many t ings and that the New Testament idea of love is a
little different from what goes by that name in our eviture, Bverybody knows
that Christianity teaches men to love each other, But we get stalled at this
point because no amount of preaching, no amount of chureh-going - no amount of in-
ternal disci~line = has been able to make us feel love,

We, like all mon, aro basically "responders" when it comes to love. We are
very much inclined to fecl love for those who leve us. When it comes to serving
or helping someone we do it generously and immediately so long as the someone

charity that literally gushes from the Church annually; because the beneficiaries

of that charity are not really the poor ~ for whom the conditions of poverty
remain - but the donors, the ones who have given without sacrificing or caring,
and who will reap a harvest of good feelings from the gratitude of those they
have given a few samples of affluence.

Christian love is not a feeling but an activity. I+ is not judgmental
and it does not demand a response of gratitude. The third and perhaps the
most important thing about this love is that it is the test of Christian
faith. I read to you this morning from the first letter of John. New
Testament scholars speculate that the author may have been the last living
associate of Jesus. We know that the letter was written in a time when all
kinds of divergent and alien ideas were creeping into the Church, and that
the letter was an attempt to set down in writing some standard by which
men and their beliefs could be measured. One general theme runs through
this letter - love. Love is the test of Christian faith. This is how it
reads: "Here is the test by which we can make sure that we know him: do
we keep his commands? . . . My children, love .must not be a matter of words
or talk: it must be genuine and show itself in action. . ."

It appears that the Church of Jesus Christ has spent a lot of time
devising other standards: theological orthodoxy: adherence to certain
ethical prohibitions ~ everything, in fact, but this ultimate test. But
this is it: this is what defines a Christian: this is what he does uniquely
and specifically — he loves.

How? If love is a matter of feeling, we are in trouble. But agape -
love is a matter of will. It is a matter of living and acting in a certain
waye And that we can do. How can we do? - choose to do it. Will to do
it. Forget our feelings and love because that is how we are called to be.

And then, having divorced this process entirely from the arena of human
emotion, a miracle happens. Feeling is born: love — as emotion reappears —
but this time in a new way. Before, our love for others was based on their
worthiness - and our need. Now we love — for no one's sake but God's.
That's what agape means — loving for God's sake.

That's what the New Testament means by love. That's what the cross
means -— God's own unmerited love for us. That wasn't a feeling — but an
act, a costly act. And it is the promise of the Gospel that that act -
that supreme self-giving — that perfect love - is what enables us
to love.

Love is somthing you do. May God grant us grace that we may - do it.

Amen.

fi Nia

Defrosting Our Religion
Havthew 3110-17

Jone G, 1369

ie nore 2 think about the situation that passage of seriabire deg

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co the more hupercug Lt becomes. Ind the fimnier it peta the core J

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seu dt iv an liwediate relevance tor the Church today.

emu ann githiae «4h a uble with tax eclleoter: ane sinnesss; be sonld

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acc aids wubhelines, bao traitors, the onen who

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onteles in due etrcet, or standing im the

we the Phorleeec.

‘ete
They had come to see this strange prophet from Nazareth; they were secenda-
lized by what they saws

Suddenly one of them mustered his courage and shoulddout above the
happy din: “Jesus of Hasareth, - what's the meaning of this? How can you
explain this ~ you who would come in the name of the Lord, eating with
people like these?" I imagine them being horrified. ‘They represented
religion: they stoo# for everything that was upright and gocd and res=
pectable. And this man ~- well, anyone could wee that he couldn't be worth
listening to.

There were others among the peripheral spectators. Disciples of
John the Baptist: lean, ascetic men who emulated their teacher by spending
most of their time in the desert wilderness, eating locusts and wild honey,
regorously denying themselves for the sake of purity. ‘The first etone
was cast by the Pharisees. They threw the second: "Why do
we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples fo not fast?" It was a little
like getting caught by the minister, sitting on your patio, cool drink
in hand, on Sunday mornigg.

‘or the Jesus fasting was an obligation on the Day of Atonement,
Yom Kippur, and other publically proclaimed fast days. ‘The reference here
is to voluntary fasting, a personal discipline for thse who wanted to do
something additional ar an expression of piety and devotion. I+ mist huge
been a tense moment. Not many people agreed with John the Baptist, but
there was no questioning their sincerity and devotion. ‘nd #9 Jesus re=
lied gently but firmly: "Can the wedding cuests momrn as long ax the bride-
groom is with them?"

He did not, you will notice, argue with them about their fasting.
He made no value judgement. He merely introduced a new idea ~ that

Cblebration just might be an appropriate mode of expression as far as

he was concerned. ‘he image of the wedding feast is, of course, quite

en
commen in the vacabulary of the Hew Festament. ‘weddings were real
Ceachevidene. “he wedding Teast Jesus himself attended had heen going on

faye befern be got there: and from the amount of wine he oro-
E 1?

3 iE

3

Vicen bu cust heve continued for several more dayc.
Sah, Ag ony cure, ir the situation desoribed in cur few Testanent
desea Ghic rossi. ‘Tha abtirviion itealf can be internreted an tumuecuse

dios Cntanacwa When iicarbbon of the Pharisees. jut idoin ables

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Love Is Justice

Hosea 1:10; selected

Herman Melville was a gifted teller of sea tales, but he was also a pretty good
philosopher and theologian, In his symbolic tragedy "Billy Budd", Claggart unjustly
accused the tongwtied boy of helping to plot a mutiny, Finally, after endless
provocation Billy hit Claggart and the blow accidently killed him. Everybody
knew that the death was an accident, and that the blow was the result of harrass-
ment and great stress, The ship's officers were ready to acquit him of any crime,
But the captain, a stern disciplinarian by the name of Vere, convinced them that
their duty was to stringently apply the articles of war, particularly that provision
regarding the striking a superior officer, So they hanged Billy, The law was
obeyed: justice was served, Or was it?

The relationship of justice to love has always troubled and fascinated the mind
of man, Where does love stop, and justice begin? For the past several weeks we
have been thinking about God in terms of love, We have seen that our heritage
teaches us that love is not so much one of the characteristics of God, as it is
His very essence, We've thought about the definition of love as an activity
rather than a feeling both the love of God and the love of man for his fellow man ,.
But still it is problematic, What is love? When does justice come in?

Parents know that their love for their children is far more than a feeling,
They know that love is not an easy tolerance of whatever the child happens to be
doing, In his best seller, “Betwoon Parent and Child", Dr, Haim Ginott draws
a very clear distinction between a healthy permissiveness and over-permissiveness,
Over-permissiveness, ~ of over destructive behavior says "I don’t really care,"
Parents learn that justice has something to do with love and that love without
justice isn't really love,

But in matters outside the home ~ in religion, for instance, the relation-
ship is not always that clear, Commenting on his conversion to Judaism, Sammy
Davis Jr, said: "As I see it the difference is that the Christian religion
preaches love thy neighbor and the Jewish religion preaches justice, and I think
justice is the big thing we need,"(Esquire 10/59) 4

Now that's very poor theology, but it is an accurate reflection of the image
Christian faith has at this point, Too frequently our love, as Christians, comes
out as nothing more than indiscriminate sentiment, Too frequently it is like the
man who was hopelessly in debt; who inherited a fortune, and gave it all to the
poor - without paying his creditors,

The relationship of love to justice is very difficult; and I have been helped
by the insight that there really is no relationship: that you can’t have one
without the other: that when you're talking about love, you're talking about
justice, I'd like to suggest simply, that love is justice,

The late Paul Tillich, one of the finest philosophic thinkers of this century
advanced the concept that Christian love, acted out, is simply justice, He
taught that in God himself, love and justice are a unity, and that both words
indicate the same divi: characteristic, The trouble is, again, with the strong
tendency toward sentimentalism within the Christian Church, Without giving it
much thought men define ove as something you feel ~ not something you do,

On this basis then, it is easy to convince yourself that you love your neighbor
even though you don't do anything ebowt i+ and it is possible to teach, as the

great proponents of the social gospel did, that if you feel love for a man you

really ought to deal justly with him, Tillich had the profound audacity to ask
a very simple question at this point - "How does one love another man, if he is
dealing unjustly with him?" Tho answer is obvious: unjustice is wmlove, Love
is justice,

The separate idoas that God's love ~ and that God is just are very old, nearly
as old as recorded history, But this concept that love and justice are the same
hat Oh a uniquely Jusac-Christian notion that has its roots in the history of

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infidelity. Neither in revenge, punishing the offender for the s-ke of
punishnent, But in a love ~ the very nature of which is to be justice,

Now ~ what do we learn here? What are the implications? Time will allow just
a few suggestions,

First, we understand on an intellectual level that love is justice, We
learn to tighten our belts semantically by differentiating between love without
justice which is simple sentiment, and justice without love which is simple’
retribution,

Second, this intellectual formula has some very practical meanings, In our
role as parents we seo that if our refationship with our children does not contain
a Gisciplined justice we can’t call it love, By the same token we see that
there is nothing more sterile then punishment for the sake of punishment, and
that justice without the possibllity of loving redemption is not really justice,

On a wider scale I would hope we might be moved to look again at what is
called justice under the law when applied to someone who breaks the law, In
fact, our second look will reveal a system that practiced punitive retribution
without any thought of rede. °...> Capital punishment - is not justice - it
is retribution, If we are concerned about the uniquely Christian concept of
what it mcans to be just, we should be oppossod to it, and actively so. In
the whole complex matter of doaling with the criminal the Christian needs to keep
insisting that whatever is done he carefully woighs and measures by the stand-
ards of justice, and not merely reflect the neurotic need of our society for

The implications are meny ani I am sure that you are not only disagreeing
with some of the ones I have dawn, but are thinking of some of your own, That
is good,

Finally, I would hope that in all of this we have heard the good word of
the Gospel, We are dealing with a God who really cares about us; a God who cares
enough to be displeased when we stumble and fall; a God who cares enough to be
angry at the evil and dishonesty in which we participate, But lest our religion
be an expression of fear we must remember that our judge is our redeemer;
that the one who measures us ~ measures us lovingly.

The winsome words of Hosea remind us that our God has been pursuing his
children in love down through the eenturies; that his pursuit took him among men
and ultimately to the cross: that >o matter who we are, or what we have done or
what we will do, God continues to pursue everyone of us - until we turn to
him in faith and obedience,

Theat is the good news, God is love = justice: justice - love, now and
forevermore, Amen,

Playing at Religion

Matthew 117; 7-19
Septemher 21, 1969
John M. Buchanan

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing
were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says: 'Some gardner must tend
this plot.' ‘he other disagrees: ‘There is not gardner.' So they pitch their tent
and set a watch. No gardner is ever seen. ‘But perhaps he is an invisible gardner,'
“So they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol it with blotd-
hounds. But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No
movements of the wire ever betray an invisible clinber. The bloodhounds never give
acry. Yet still, the "Believer" is not convinced. ‘But there is a gardner, invisible,
intangible, insensitive to electric shocks, a gardner who comes secretly to look
after the garden he loves.' At‘ last the Sceptic despairs: 'But what remains of
your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible,
eternally elusive gardner differ from an imaginary gardner or even from no gardner
at all?' [Martin C. D'Arcy, S.J. in Varities of Unbiiicf,M. Marty p. 49]

That story, attributed to a Frency theologian, is a parable of the spiritual
predicament of modern man. Indeed we have pitched our tents and built our fences
and retreated behing endless collections of theological jargon. But the relentless
press of modern science, modern thought, has not abated, and the general tHeoy of
the times is that the gazdner is either totally non-exi;tant, or else an imaginery
figment that ought to be preserved for. the security and health of human life. In
either case the articulate Christian is confronting a rather serious challenge to
his integrity and to his fadith. *

The story of civilization can be described as a man's show but steady emergence
from dependency on God to a state of independence. "Secularism" is the word for
it, and we are living in an age where it has come to-full fruition. At some point
in the last century the scales were tipped. Up until that point the idea of God
played a determining role in the affairs of mengGod the ruler and controller of
nature; God the providential mover in history God the protecter of good men and
the judge of evil men. But the scales have been tipped; the process is reversed.
As one writer put it: "We don't pray for rain anymore = we build irrigation
systems: we don"t pray for deliverence from.a plague, we invent a yaccine." In
our time men have “come of age" and learned to do for themselves many of the things
once attributed to God. And the regult is a severe theologic al predicament.

Alfred North Whitehead observed that:. "Each age has its dominant preoccu-
pation, and during the three modern centuries the cosmology derived from science
has been asserting itself at the expense of older points of view with their origins
elsewhere." [Ibid p.135] And Walter Lippman: "The radical novelty of modern
science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of
religion, that the forces which move the stars_and atoms are contingent upon the
preferrnces of the human heart." [Ibid p. 135]

Science tipped the scale. We have learned that heaven is not “up there"¥
that certain atmospheric conditions gave girth to Hurricane ‘Camille, not the
wrath of God: and that people get lung cancer because they smoke - not because they
offended the Heavenly Father. A perceptive person will realize that science has
done “Christian faith a great favor by precipitating a crisis; by

(3)

Jesus was saying that his contemporaries were like children
at play in their practice of religiosity, As in child's play
ritual counted ore than reality. Observing the sacrificial daw
was more important than actually living grateful lives, As in
child's play - no one really exsected the results of the exercise
to be of any consequence. So one could go through the motions of
devotion to the God of Justice and then steal money from one's
tennants. Fis co “emporaries were "playing at religion" and I
wonder whether the prevonderence of religion today - in a culture
that has totally rejected the os -lity. of God is not evidence
of the same situation. I worder if we are not playing at religion.

Recent studies of American church goers have revealed among
other things that there is as muc” bigotry and racial prejudice in
the church as there is in the non-churched portion of the population.
That, I would suggest, is utterly impossible, unless a lot of those
church-goers are just »laying at their religion. We are reminded
every sar at about this time that the Lord who demands total self-
giving, actually gets about 2% of our treasure as an exoression of
our faith, and I would suggest that that too is sossible only if
a lot of us are just "playing a game."

Someone recently asked James Fore‘ian why he brought his demands
to the church - instead of General Motors or I.Beli. His answer was
that General lotors and I.3.M. never said their nuroose was to feed
the hungry, and help the poor, ani liberate the oopressed = but the
church has said that. Mr. Foreman’s marxist ideology and violent
rhetoric is most offensive to me, But he has done this - he has
caught us in the act of "slaying at religion." For there would be
no James Foreiman today, no racial revolution if the Church of Jesus
Christ, ani the Christian people of this nation had been doing
something other than playing for the last two hundred years.

You and I are part of the secular culture of the 20th century.
We are part of the Church of Jesus Christ of which Ishave been so
critical. We are able - you and I - to engage in an exercise of
eriticism such as this ~ but it is no more than exercise until we
focus. You and I, specifically, are related to each other through
this congregation of Christians. And so let's look here, Are we
"Dlaying at >ligion" in Bethany -resbyterian Church?

There are many aspects of the life of this congregation that
might be examined in light of this question, But one thing we all
dot one activity is at the center of our exnerience as a congregation,
and that is corporate worship. In my conversations with you - and
in my personal reflections upon our Sunday morning @xverience I sense
a rather vague feeling that worshin is not really too important. I
sense that we are most vulnerable at this point to the charge of
Dlaying - placing ritual over reality, not really expecting anything
of consequence to result,

While I was thinking about this topic last week I cane across
an article in Ihe Christian Century (9/17/69) by Ir. Browne Barr,

a very effective pastor, which was quite heloful, Or. Barr proposes
that crisis in worshio today 1s at the point of preaching. Congre-=
gations are deluged with what he terms "Pop Sermons" which, like

Pon Art, are "so negligible as artifacts that all which remaing for
the critic (or worshis,er) is to talk about, around, beliind and
across it." len are not moved by such. ar, they simply discuss it.
So, men are not moved by such sertons, they merely discuss them,

I was both humbled and stirred by his description of a real
sermon: "It is an instru-ent by which the great hand of the eternal
grasps us, peodle and oreacher alike; a hand which leads or drives

Victims or Vistora

Job 18 = Romans 8:31-39
September 28, 1969

John M. Buchanan

"Into every life some rain must fall." That's an inncouous little cliche
with which we attempt to soothe young children when a -party has been cancelled.
But at the same time it is a great and terrible truism about every life, young
or old, rich or poor. Death and taxes may be the only absolute inevitabilities
in our lives, but the odds are very high that several other semi~inevitabilities
will happen to us - like serious illness, grief, deadening disappointment, pro-
fessional failure - and so on. Everyone of us, some more than others, but never—
the less everyone of us, will encounter serious tragedy along our pilgrimage. Some
of us have confronted a crisis recently: some of us are in the process of working
through a problem right now: some of us will’ have the bottoms pulled out of our
little worlds in the near future. I+ is part of life - and I am suggesting that

when it happens, whatever it is, wé can be either victims or victors.

Now, I have set this cormon in the context of personal tragedy or crises,
because it is at this point precisely that the relevance or irrelevence of Christian
faith is posited. Furthermore, while faith in Jesus Christ involves a total life
style, including the good and the bad, it is when the news is bad that the Good
News of the Gospel is most improtant. I would prosecute my case by directing you
to two p> tions of scripture - one from the Old Testament, a poet's soliloquy —
about a man named Job; the other from the New Testament, penned by a man who knew
the power of God's love in the midst of tragedy; namely St. Paul.

Any discussion of tragedy that seeks to be faithful to the Biblical witness
must ultimately come to grips with the story of Job. I am always pleasently
surprised to hear people in the hospital express a certain encouragement and comfort
derived from their observation of people who are sicker than they are. I think it
is a mark of strength and sensitivity, "No matter how bad things are, someone else
is having it worse."

The story of Job serves in this capacity. If you think you have problems
you haven't seen anything till you hear about Job.

Job was a good man; a devout and pious man who served the Lord, who was loved
by his family and esteemed by his collegues ~ but one day, Job's life came crash—
ing in upon him. A scries of messengers came to Job with the news that three
raids by bandits had resulted in the theft of all of his oxen, asses, sheep and
camels, and that everyone of his servants had been slain. A man of considerable
wealth suddenly had absolutely nothing. And if this were not enoygh, cven while
the third messenger was telling his story, another appeared to report that a vio-
lent wind storm had flattened the house in which his sons and daughters were eating
and that they were all dead.

Job comment: "Naked I came from my mothers' womb, and naked I shall return;
the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

But his troubles were not over. For Job was afflicted with "loathsome sores"
from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. And we see him -— totally
humiliated, crushed ~ nothing left - not even the personal dignity of worthful-
ness — sitting in a pile of ashes, scratching his sores.

Three friends came to Job, and after sitting andmourning with him for a week,
attempt to explain +o him why all of this has happened. But it doesn't work;
nothing fits. The traditional answers to the question of suffering are flat and
stale. It is unfortunate that by some gross misunderstanding of the story Job

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God". But there is more: there is another word. If the "Victim or Victor"
suggestion has any validity, the Job story probably brings us down somewhere be~
tween the two: somewhere at the point of courage or endurance - but something less
than victory.

St. Paul provided the further, and distinctly Christian word. He had been
in jail several times, beaten, flogged, humiliated, separated from all his posse=
gssions — and ultimately would die a martyrs' death. But he could write: "Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or
persecunion, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these t.ings
we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." .

That kind of thinking takes us past the point of mere endurance. It suggests
that the God to whom we turn in time of trouble is supremely a God of love. It
announces that nothing life does to us alters the love of God for us. And that
love can transform us from pathetic victims into Victors.

That is the Good News of the Gospel.. That is the point at which Christian
FAith confronts us at our deepest, most desparate, need. In fact, it is so good
that we have difficulty accepting it. I think one of the most difficult theological
concepts for us to handle is the idea that the love of God is not a protective device
which shelters us from harm and tragedy; but rather an enabling device which gives
us the power to emerge victorious from whatever happens to us. Everyone of us has
confronted tragedy and wanted to shout in the face of God = "Why me? Why this?"
Everyone of us has felt that life is empty of meaning and that we are alone in a
dark void. And the Good News of the Gospel is that the love of God is with us -
even there, in that dark void; that it can and will transform the darkness of the
present into the bright light of dawn.

Basic to all of this is the concept of love as a transforming power. That's
how Paul understood it, and I think we know something about it too, As parents
we aan't do very much to alter the circumstances that have resulted in unhappiness
or hurt for our children. They come to us — insulted by a friend, or physically
hurt or crushed by an incident at school. And instinctively we gather them in our
arms, loving them, assuring them, supporting them. And our love becomes a trans=
forming power. The situation hasn't changed — but the person has. Love turns a
victim into a victor.

A man can be knocked down every day, disappointed in his aspirations, a
failure in his plans - but the love of his wife can literally be a transforming
power ~ to which he can retreat = and from which he can derive the strength to

carry on another day.

God is like that: the love of God expressed in Jesus Christ is that kind of
power; power to transform victims into victors.

Claude A. Wesley, principal of a Negro elementary school in Birmingham,
Alabama drove his little girl to Sunday School one Sunday morning, dressed in
her best. She never came home. This is what Mr. Wesley said: "I drove Cynthim
to Sunday School and went to get some gasoline for my car. I was just a few blocks
away when I heard the explosion. I knew it was our church. I rushed back but 1
could not find Cynthia. I wanted to think that she had left the church, but sorme-
one told me I'd better go to the hospital. There they asked me what she was wemring-
I told them a little class ring. They pulled out her hand and I saw the ring.
Then I sa¥ her patent leather shoes and white socks and I said, 'That's her, '
I have not asked why it happened to us. I don't feel bitter about it......"
[from Interpreting the Times, The Protestant Hour, 1967, George T. Peters]

Religion for the "Now Generation"
Romans 5:1-11

October 12, 1969

John M. Buchanan

At a retreat last week for the ministers of Crawfordsville Presbytery, I had the
privilege of hearing Dr. Lowell Colston, a leading authority in the field of Pastoral
Care. Dr. Colston, among many other things, called our attention to what I consider
to be two very important obuervatdone ateut 20th century American man.

First, he reminded us that we are very much inclined to get involved in symbols,
to the degree that the symbols become more important to us than the reality they are
supposed to symbolize. Consider, for instance the American Flag as a symbol, the word
"patriotism" as a verbal symbol, and the actual reality -- the love for and loyalty to
the nation these symbols are supposed to represent. The fact is that many people are
so pathologically obsessed with the symbols that the reality is totally lost. This
week our community will be visited by a leading spokesman for the John Birch Society.
And while it is probably unfair to prejudge, if Mr. Griffin is typical of others who
speak for his organization, he will wave the flag a lot and use the word patriotism as
frequently as possible and then proceed to encourage his listeners to treat the consti-
tutional structures of the nation with utter contempt. !

We get overly involved with symbols -- at the expense of reality. I am reminded
of the comment by J. S. Whale, a very articulate theologian, that the greatest danger
to Christian theology comes from scholars who stay in their studies writing laboriously
about the words "redemption" and "reconciliation" without ever having felt redeemed or
reconciled as an experienced reality.

The second important thing Dr. Colston said was that most of us are conditioned
to avoid, at all costs, an expression of or an encounter with very deep human feelings,
And, as if to document the truth of his thesis, the assembled ministers acted according
to the script. In the course of one discussion a young minister mentioned his
admiration for John R. Fry, controversial pastor of Chicago's First Presbyterian Church.

An older pastor expressed his disagreement with a little passion, and both men got angry.

oat

was going to be, So 1 should have enjoyed myself instead of longing for future fulfill-
ment." The college student counts the days till graduation. The young executive lives
for the next raise and promotion. Harried parents long for the freedom that will accom
pany their children's maturation. Middle age people look forward to retirement. And the
result is an entire life cycle of waiting -- waiting for fulfillment, happiness, meaning,
satisfaction -- on the premise that whatever those words mean -- they will be experienced
sometime in the future but not now.

Enter the "Now Generation". All of a sudden we are confronted by a whole culture
within a culture that isn't buying any of it: a generation that wants so desperately to
document their rejection of "when my ship comes in ism" that nothing is too absurd, too
outlandish, too shocking, if it drives home the point. The theology of the "Now Genera--
tion" is that it is a ara of life to be consumed with banking today for tomorrow's
withdrawal. Participation, contribution, fulfillment - happens now, or never. Human
experience is now -- not later. Human feeling -- emotion is to be felt and experienced
with intensity and is not to be subdued. And so psychedelic colors are so bright that
our eyes hurt. And blaring acid rock is amplified so greatly that our ears hurt. Minds
must be bent and expanded with drugs in order to experience and feel more. Soul music
pours out the deepest human feeling. Sexuality is not only celebrated, as it should be,
but @iefied and glorified, and taught to be experienced now by anyone and everyone.

And the good old "when my ship comes iners", which includes most of us here today
-- and everyone over thirty, simply shake our heads and long for those simpler, quiet
days of yesteryear. Sometimes for good reason. The "Now" mentality has given rise to
excesses aplenty. In fact, human existance is far more than being titillated and
stimulated every minute. And in the final analysis, the "experience everything now"
mentality may be as phony as the "when my ship comes in ism" that it hopes to supplant.

But mostly, we shake our heads and feel threatened and sometimes frightened because

_we simply cannot cope with the whole concept that life is to be lived and celebrated now,

not tororrow; that significance and meaning must be derived from what is happening now,

-5=
suffering those were to be stoically born in the knowledge that at least it all will be
over soon. The early Christians, that is to say, were indulging in "when my ship comes
in ism."

But Paul saw things differently. Salvation is something men experience now --
not just in the future. The peace of Jesus Christ is experienced now in the midst of
life's hum drum and suffering. The gap between God and man has been closed. The for-
giving act men were trying to perform themselves had already taken place.

One New Testament commentator summarizes this radically good news as follows:

/ "Our peace with God has been secured: let us possess and enjoy it. We have
actually been given access to God's gracious favor and we are actually standing in it;
let us realize our situation and be glad. Let us inwardly be what we are in objective
fact. let us actually be the justified, acquitted persons we are. The essential redeem-
ing, reconciling work has been done -- it has been done for us! The enmity has been
overcome. God has restored us to our true place within his family. Let us rest and
rejoice in him." (John Knox, Life in Christ Jesus, p. 17)

The Good News which St. Paul so gladly proclaimed, and the Gospel in which we stand
today is rooted in our remembrance of the Jesus Christ who lived and died among men, and
who arose from his grave to be eternally present in the common life of humanity. That
Gospel, as Paul understood, and as we need to understand, is for the "now".

Jesus himself, announced that the Kingdom of God was at hand; not coming in the
future -- but in the "now", the present moment. One writer put it this way, "Jesus
lived his life in such a way that he encountered every man he met with a radical decision
for or against the presence of God in the now. The one thing he kept reminding his
hearers was that the expected reality for which they were looking, the delivering event
for which they hoped, the reign of God's love for which they yearned was at hand!"
(Thomas Oden, The Celebrating Community, p. 97)

That, of course, is the Good News. Our hope has been fulfilled. Our hope for

eternal security has been accomplished. We don't have to worry. We don't have to spend

Sl

The New Humanity
Romans 5:12~21
October 19, 1969
John M. Buchanan
awh

William Barclay, a very articulate British theologian and New Testament scholar,
introduces the text we have beforeus this morning — Romans 5:12-21 - with a warning.
It is, he says, at once one of the most influential and most difficult passages in the
entire New Testament. On another occasion I began a sermon with a similar statement
about a similar text, and was later chided gently by a listener who felt that an apologetic
introduction revealed my own lack of security. That well may be, for here I confess a
certain trepedation before a great and difficult portion of scripture. And I am con=
vinced that it is far better to confess that than to either ignore the passage, or to
present it in a dangerously over=-simplified form. Wherever we come out, that latter
approach would short change you. And so I begin with Barclay's warning. This is a
very important and very difficult passage and those who still live with the myth of a
"simple gospel" are about to be bored or confused, and probably both.

I would invite you, in the hackneyed school=<room phrase to "dawn your thinking
caps". I would hope we might think theologically this morning, and I invite you to
this task, not for the sake of intellectual exercise, but because I believe God's word
is appropriated to us when we struggle with the deep truths of the Gospel, and the deep
doubts of our own minds.

The passage in question is made more difficult by the fact that Paul, having
begun his arguement, is reminded of an objection to his logic and goes off in another
direction in response to that objection. The main arguement resumes later, The
printed text in your bulletin omits this digression.

A key to the major thrust of Paul's thought may be found in a contempory analagous
situation. Not long ago, in a cave on a remote South Pacific island, a Japanese
Soldier was discovered who had been hiding and living there - since 1944. He had
never heard that the war was over. He was motivated by the reality of the struggle
in which his nation was involved. When he was told that the war was over ~ that is,

a new reality now exists - he could not and would not believe it.

That, with certain obvious limitations, is an analogy of the human predicament
according to Paul. Humanity is trapped by an old set of realities that no longer
exist. There is a new Reality — a new humanity -— but men either cannot or will not
believe it.

But this is getting ahead of ourselves. To understand Paul's thought we must
come to grips with the three main themes which underlie his argument: Three ideas
which he and his readers simply assumed, but which have very little currency today.

The first is the "Solidarity of Man". Paul was a Jew, and one of the cornerstones
of all Hebraic thought is that mankind, humanity, is a unity, a family, or a cor-
porate reality, and that this corporateness is prior to and more important than
individuality.

The Jews thought in terms of clan, and tribe and nation. A Jew was a Jew —
and for that matter still is - not because of theological persuasion ~- but because
he is part of a people. The simple survival of the Jew and the rennaisance of Israel
as a nation state is testimony to the tremendous power -f this idea.

When a man committed an offense, his clan or tribe was held accountable. When
one man sinned the nation was guilty. The Jews simply thought in terms of the group -
not the self. When the Psalmist asked "What is man that thou are mindful of him?" he
didn't mean "Who am I?" He meant "What is this corporate reality - this humanity -
this 'man'?"

Now we have trouble with this central Biblical idea because we have been schooled
and nurtured in its categorical opposite. "Individualism" has characterized Western
thought since the Industrial Revolution. Individualism is at the base of capitalism
and democracy and is firmly lodged at the focus of the American mentality. So nuch
so that it becomes, at times, a fettish with us. I've know people who didn't like the
minister talking about "the commmity of faith" because it sounded too much like a

“commme", In any case we think in terms of the individual, not only economically,
but deeply - philosophically. If we have any feel for humanity because we are.

moments we think about it, and worry about it and feel afraid of it. At sometime in
our late twenties or thirties a very traumatic thing happens to us. We wake up one
day and realize that we are going to die. We knew it before, of course; we knew that
biologically the system would stop; intellectually we had confronted death in about

the same way we confronted all the other life proéesses. But suddenly it is real it's
going to happen to me: my life is already half over. And in that moment death evolves
from a biological curiosity into an existential reality - a power which begins to con-
trol our thinking, planning and living.

William Stringfellow speaks very bluntly and clearly about the power of death:

"A man begins to die when he is born. Death accompanies him in every event and exper—
ience in this world; it constantly overshadows all that a man says and does; and it is
the final outcome of his labor. Though a man amass graat wealth or many possessions
they will neither protect him from death nor themselves be free of death. Though a
man make himself an amiable reputation by his thought or words or deeds, the memory of
him dies as certainly as he himself does." [Free in obedience p. 63-64

And again - "Except for God's own intervention in this history in Christ, it is t
the power of death which reigns in the world, in all things, at all times, whether
recognized or not by men or nations." [Tbid p.69]

Death is a power —- a reality that enslaves us - a fear which, like a parasite,
extracts the joy and meaning from any and every human experience,

But what if the power of death has been defeated? What if there is a greater
reality = the reality of life? What if God himself has intervened in this dismal
progression in a way so simple, so magnuificiently decisive that death literally, no
longer has dominion over us? What if, in Stringfellow's words it is possible "to
live in this life, in the very midst of death's works, safe and free from death?"
[Ibid p.72]

If that were true we would have in our possession the very best news of all.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is precisely that the "what if" has happened. That,
intellectually, is the Good News, as Paul struggled with it. In Christ Jesus we will
live - in him we can live — now.

Personally ~- it cam mean a New Humanity - a new life; a transforming power that
changes a succession of days leading inexorably toward death into a glorious freedom =
freedom to live without fear; freedom to live because death no longer has dominion.

Let us accept that: let us celebrate our new humanity + let us grasp what has
been given to us. Amen.

Prescription for the "Blahs"

Romans 3: 21-26

October 26, 1969 - Reformation Sunday
John M. Buchanan

One of the more creative television commercials is the one promoting a tablet, which
when dropped into a glass of water, becomes a very potent antidote for several common,
bodily afflictions. It is even effective against an exotic, recently discovered afflic-
tion called the "Blahs". Now I have no formal training in Medical Science and so I am
wueble to reveal the clinical description of the "Blahs". But as I understand it, it
is part physiological and part psychological. Very slippery to diagnose, yet we all
know when we have it: and it is highly contagious. If you have the “blahs" very long,
your husband or wife inevitably will contract it from you and here I speak with some
experience. In the final analysis the “blahs" resembles intense emotional fatigue which
is expressed in physical tiredness, inertia, And though the magic tablet may help, the
most commonly practiced home remedy is to stare at a blank wall — or a television soreen,
which is euphemism for an electronic blank wall, and lots of sleep.

We have the “blahs". Just as certainly as this is Sunday morning the American People
are in the middle of a "blah" epidemic. You and I have it. We feel it in each other:
we keep contaminating each other with it. We are as tired emotionally and physically
as any people ever were: and we're doing a monumental amount of wall staring. Partic-—
ularly in the Church. Now with that improbable introduction, and with the promise that
we're going to look a little more deeply into the causes of our ailment, allow me to
direct your attention to the fact that this is Reformation Sunday. The two are related -
our having the "blahs", and this being Reformation Sunday. But it's going to take me a
little time to describe how.

To understand the significance of the Protestant Reformation we have to get inside
the minds of two men —- St. Paul, and Martin luther - neither one of which appears ever
to have had the "blahs", by the way.

Paul was the first Christian to reflect philosophically on the meaning of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ as it confronted a particular oulture and a partioular religion.
That is, Paul, was the first Christian Theologian. But he was also a Jew, and a good
one, and he embodied in himself the conflict of Gospel and Jewish culture. Paul was
part of a culture obsessed with religion - and the concept he chose to symbolize this
_ Obsession was the law. For Paul "law" meant really two things.

First, the Law was the collection of Mosaic and Deuteronomic statutes which along
with the collected historic interpretations, made up the Torah. The religious law
dominated the life of the faithful Jew. It told him what to eat and when: it told him
when to worship and how: it regulated his relationships with friends, foes and livestock
in his field.

But Paul meant more than this objective reality - this. behavioral code - when he
used the word "law". Law, for him indicated a mentality - a way of being religious,
an approach to life based on the assumption that whatever men needed from God — love,
blessing, grace, righteousness, forgiveness, salvation - was available to them if they
pulled the proper levers, by living the right kind of life.

It was this phenomenon that Paul meant when he talked about the Law. God and man
are separated - and the way reconcilation is effected - the way the two are brought
together is by man being religious, observing the customs, demonstrating piety, repeat—
ing the proper prayers. Religion ~ summarized and symbolized by the word "law" was
man's bridge to the Almighty,

Paul saw that this law — and the religiosity in which it is expressed, quickly
becomes an end, in and of itself. It’s thrust is inward ~ it focuses on the self and
the self’s quest for righteousness. And because it is so totally self-centered it gives.
birth to a whole system of institutions and offices the sole function of which is to
perpetuate the same religiosity.

It is in this kind of context then that the Gospel, as Paul understood it, ran
head on into religion and culture - which for the Jew were one and the same thing. The
Gospel is the very good news that men are justified by faith. Today's English Version
provided the best rendering of that passage I"ve ever read: "God's grace is a gift,
and it is free - no strings attached. It is just there, to be grasped by all who will
believe: because that's the kind of God he is.

hippies and intellectuals we once could call radicals for opposing the war has become
& new coalition of businessmen and insurance agents and housewives, on? million strong,
and they are telling us that this war will never end, until we make it end.

We have to cope with the prospect of a Red China, now a nucilbar power - goon able
to drop those bonbs on New York and Chicago: and for twenty years our goverenment has
been telling us that that too will go away if we just ignore it long enough; but it
hasn't.

We have to cope with a spiralling inflation that has effected everyone here. Our
campuses are noted now for their violence level. Students subsidized by our money tell
us we've created machines that service the establishment, "elite concentration camps",
instead of institutions of higher education. In our cities blacks and whites confront
each other with violent rhetoric and violent behavior. People move out, the tax rate
soars,murisipal services decline. The air is full of dirt and strontium 90. The
streams are polluted with industrial waste. Drugs are in = people talk about mari juana
in about the same way they used to talk about women smoking. Everybody's buying a gun.

On and on it goes, and the news media pumps it to us twenty four hours a day.

We are the first generation of men ever to know what was happening to them while it
happens. And it all gives us a monumental case of the "blahs". Life is truly tough -
and we're very tired thinking about it all.

And we go to church on Sunday morning to that traditional respite from life's
concerns to be comforted and salved and spiritually massaged; to hear that everything's
really 0.K. if we keep obeying the right rules. And more often than not we get more
of the same. We're made to feel guilty for our foriegn policy, responsible for poverty
among us and told to pay reparrations to people we always thought were pretty nice as
long as they stayed in their places.

And if we didn't have the "blahs" before that will ‘do it. We feel worse at 12:00
than we did at 11:00. So we retreat ~ to the back yard, the T.V., patio or den = to
those last havens of rest and refreshment. We have the "blahs" so badly, nothing will
get us out. We want only to be left alone. It's really a widespread phenomenon.
Community organizations of all types are suffering today ~ because people are tired -
emotionally and physically. Life is getting to be a bit too much.

It's happening here at Bethany Presbyterian Church. We have the "blahs": the
apathy is thick - at our meetings - our planning sessions ~ even our worship. We must
assume, whenever we plan a program, that no matter what it is = no matter who is in=
volved or how good its content, the vast majority of church members just aren't going
to be interested. No one is quitting in opposition to policy - everyone knows they
should come to church. It's simply a whole lot easier tostay at home.

The church today is under severe attach today ~ by those who say it is doing too
mach, and by those who say it isn't doing enough. Some are predicting that the church
will never make it to the 21st century. I don't believe that. But should that dire
prediction come true - it will not be because of attack from within or without. We
will have died of the "blahs".

It's never been easy to be a Christian. St. Paul was ultimately a martyr. On
this Reformation Sunday we remember the soul-rendering agony, the courage and stamina
of Martin luther. It's never been easy - but I believe it is quite possible that it
has never been this hard either. The temptation to withdraw - to succumb to the "blahs"
is probably greater today than ever.

Please don't. In the name of Jesus Christ let us live in this world = let us
confront its problems ~ let us embrace our salvation and then go out and do something
in His name. Amen.

In times past your Spirit has picked up tired and weary men and sent them into
the world on fire. Our Pather, we pray for that renewing, recreating life giving
Spirit. Amen.

4
j

Saints Sinners and the Gates of Hell
Matthew 16:13-20
November 9, 1969
John M. Buchanan

Robert McAfee Brown, one of the more articulate prighyterian theologians,
offers his readers a small quiz in his book The Bible Speaks to You. The
quiz is a series of six statments (p. 190) to which the respondent answers
"yes" or "no".

.1. There is a Godeesess

2. God is concerned about mManeseres

3. God ig creator, judge and redeemereeeee

4. God is revealed in Jesus Christ seceess

5. God demands obediencesseess

6. One who believes these things must be aotive in the Churchs.+e.

Brown suggests that most people vould respond with an unqualified "yes"
to the first five statements, but at item #6 the protests would begin.

In another book, Beliefs That Matter, Ganse Little, past moderator of the

General Assembly and pastor of a large California congregation, notes that
every year he asks the members of his Junior High Damaneisaniies Class whether
it is necessary for a follower of Jesus Christ to be ‘ member of a chureh, and
every year a great number of them answer "no". [p. 91]

Nothing in my experience puts me in the same league with Robert MoAfee
Brown and Ganse Little - except that I have personally encountered the truth of
their assertions time and time again. Im the popular mind being a Christian
and belonging to the Church are just not related. That popular mind exists
outside the church, but not exclusively, for I discover an astonishing number
of church members who vehemently defend a Christians right to belong or not to
belong, depending on his own whimsy. The Churdh, that is to say, is altogether
op tional ° }

And yet, Sunday after Sunday, you and I stand up and confess our faith; and
one of the things we confess is our belief in the Church. We believe in God

the Father Almight, and.in Jesus Christ, his Son, our Lord, we believe in the

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on the rock of faith like Peter's - even though he said nothing that resembles
that either. I would suggest that we allow the text to stand, as it is. Peter,
in fact, was the leading light in the early Church before Paul. He was the
spokesman: he was a rock. The important thing about the sequence is, in my
mind, the fact that a confession of faith in Jesus Christ is tied directly to
the existence of and membership in the Church =— and the related fact of what
Riibiasd immediately afterward.

Peter was a momentary saint. But he was also a sinner. Jesus went on to
“tell how he must suffer and die. And Peter, the one who had seen the identity
of Jesus, the one who had the courage to voice his conviction, the one on whom
the Church would be built, proceeded to demonstrate that he really hadn't
Sekine koa what it was all about. "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living
God." But suffering and death? “God forbid, Lord. This shall never happen to
you." This time around Jesus' response to Peter was a little different: "Get
behind me Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not on the side of
God but of man." It's quite a demotion. One minute blessed, strong, a rock
of faith: the next minute Satan, bungling, insensitive, shallow. Yet it is
still Peter upon whom Jesus will build a Church: a saint — and a sinner — but
the gates of hell will not prevail against that Church.

Much has been made of the suggestion that Jesus didn't intend to establish
a Church at all. And one line of New Testament Scholarship attributes this
entire portion of the book of Matthew to a later insert. In fact, the Greek
word for church, Ekklesia, appears only three times in the Gospel narrative,
all three in Matthew and two times in this text. It is true, with this one
exception, there is very little in the words of Jesus specifically talking
about a church. But that statement must be understood in the context of our
Lord's Jewishness — and in the context of the fact that he had gathered around
him a small community of people clearly assigned to carry on the work of
teaching, preaching, healing and worshipping. That is to say, Jesus didn't

spend much time talking about a community that already existed.”

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The Church has ite faults. Ady apelopla tor inattational Chelatiale wee
didn't acknowledge that fact would be guilty of gross error. The history of
Christianity is not always pretty. The Church has been involved in the Crusades -
the Spanish Inquisition: the Church in our century nodded in approval at Hitler
and Mussolini: the Church in our nation blessed slavery and war. And today
the Church sometimes seems like the last bastion of total unconcern with the
issues of human dignity and social justice. But, let us remember that Peter
was both saint and sinner: so — we are all. Let us remember too - in response
to the anti-—institution movement ~ that ideas need forms; that no idea exists
for long without a structure. To be gute - the institution may be slow and -

cumbersome — it may be 20 years behind the pace of cultural change. But — and

' again I use the words of Erni Campbell: "A motorcycle may- execute a U turn

quicker than a trailer truck, but in the long mm it's the truck that delivers
the goods". [The Pictes tent Hour, Plain Words for Troubled Times p. 33ff |

Of course the ledger has eo sides, and I think in our anxiety to be honest
about the Chirk ” forget that fact. The Church in the Middle Ages may have
been hopelessly corrupt, but it was also soley responsible for keeping alive
the arts and letters that would finally bring an end to the Dark Ages. The
Chutch may have blessed slavery: but it was also the Church which first called
slavery for what it is — and it is still the institutional church that is
literally giving its life and blood for the restitution of that historical
iniquity. The Church may Sides bloaneh its head while Hitler came to power:
but it was also the Church that went underground in Germany ~ and today in
China - rather than submit to totalitarianism of any kind. The Church may
spend inordinate amounts of dcliaen on its own self-enhancement: but a UNESCO
survey serveral years ago pointed out that well over 80% of the health and
education services in the idiot continent of: Africa were either carried out or ©
started by the Christian Church. The Church may be insensitive to human need but
it has been said that the British Labor movmment owes far more to John Wesley

than it does to Karl Marx; and it is a fact that the momement in England

of what it ought to be: at what it does in light of what Ch

‘a ce AS ow a

rist calls it to do.

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the Presbyterians' nor Methodists’ ~ but Jesus Christ's. It is his-andit = =
will not fail. And because of that it is worth our belief - our devotion PS

our very lives. ; :
Amen. : ee.

4

Our Fathey, we don't often think in these terms — but we are grateful for }
your Church through the ages. We are grateful to be a part of your holy es
people. And although we stumble and fall ~ we would serve you with complete .
devotion. Be with your Church - be with us = as we seek to be your faithful f

and obedient people: through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

Surprised by God
Genesis 21: 1-7

November 16, 1969
John M. Buchanan

The phrase "joyless Christianity" is a contradiction me terms. It makes no
sense at all. And yet, I would suggest that, this is precisely what we have on
our hands. Religion sans joy. I keep returning to this theme - but I do so
because it keeps coming up in my perception of the Church — and particularly
the Church as I work in and through it in this place.

There 4s, I would propose, about our religion too much theorizing and too

little feeling: too much talking and too little experiencing: too much
discussing and too little acting. For the life of me I can not recall ever
feeling joyful - or experiencing deep happiness as the result of a discussion
group. Theories are ideas: and ideas which remain locked in the mind soon die
there. That is our problem: the Gospel of Jesus Christ withers - and dies in
the recesses of our minds: and we possess a religion without joy.

’ This is not, in any way, to say that religion is only an emotional = feeling -
type of experience. It is not, in any way, to disparage the honest intellectual
quest of a seeking mind. Far from it. That extreme too bogs down in its own
blind alley. In this complex age ~ in this complex society we need to be thinking
deeply about the meaning of our faith: we need to know what is going on in the
world, and how that, whatever it is, relates to our faith. We must be theologians,
everyone of us. Our problem lies in the fact that for many of us this is all
there is.
| It all began with the Inlightenmentjthat period in history which followed
the Dark Ages. For a thousand years the human intellect was the captive of a
barbarian and ignorant mentality. Men lived their lives on the basis of super=
stition. Man's progress, intellectually, culturally, technically and socially
came to a rude halt ~ and remained static for a millenium, Then the Enlightenment -
the Renaissance - art flourished, philosophy was reborn, symphonies were composed
and books written. The movement them began which gave birth to the industrial

Genesis, and focusing finally on one of the stories I've known since childhood -
the Birth of Issac. But this timd — a phrage jumped out of the text: & phrase
I really hadn't known was there ~ a perfectly beautiful and utterly profound
phrase ~ spoken by an old woman who had just borne her first child, Sarah said
"God has made laughter for me."

Now before we deal with the subtle impact of that statement, which by the
way his fi in my mind all week long, let us here and now acknowledge that we
have a lot of trouble with the whole Old Testament. There is nothing very
rational, after all, about talking snakes, axe heads that float, dry bones that
dance and a sun that stands still. Things like that don't happen - and when we
discover that they don't we encounter our first Old Testament crisis. Perhaps
none of it is true - perhaps nothing really happened the way it is told. Many
of us, I would suggest, never get over that crisis. We live with it by filing
all those Sunday School stories on a shelf in our minds reserved for "Jack and
the Bean Stock" and "Snow White". And by refusing to deal with the depth of
the crisis, by stalling our motors in the discovery that the Old Testament is
not an encyclopedia of historic and anthropologic facts we very conveniently
manage to ignore the real issue with which the Old Testament confronts us.

That issue is that there is a God - one God who ig totally free. A God
who created and bcektinines to create. A God who choses people to do certain
things and then gets imtimately involved in their lives. A God who discloses
himself in history - big history like a political power struggle between the
Babylonian and Persian Empires: and little histories - like the life story of
an unremarkable woman by the name of Sarah.

That is, the Old Testament insists that God is really God; not & captive,
domestic ‘God who operates in very understandable ways - but a God who is free —
and who keeps interjecting himself into the common life of men. We don't, you
see, really want to buy that - and therein is our problem.

When they .looked ‘back on their own history, for instece to their miraculoue

es € iS TAS Ses mh = asia 6 ieee’ Ee it i oe : at

There is a God: a God who is free to act in ways as surprising as the creation
of the cosmos and the birth of a child. 7

Christians, then, are people who perceive things aitterently. Christians
are’ people who are always alert +0 the fact that God is - and that he is very much

involved in the life of the world, and with their individual rere Christians

‘are people who know that secret, and who — because they perceive the power and

' presence of God are living myreand experiencing more — and crying more — but

always laughing deg. Tate ip 2ald of grace: life has been infiltrated by
God: the life of nations and the life of men. None of it is excluded: there
is no place — no situation outside the realm of God's redeeming power: God is
involved in life with us - when we are shooting at each other and when we are
loving each other: when we are having babies and when we are dying.

William Stringfellow has, I believe, said it best: ",.e.the most notorious,

plain and victorious truth of God is that God participates in our history -

even yours and mine. Our history - all our anxieties - have become the scene of
his presence and the matter of His care. We are safe. We are free. Wherever
we turn we shall discover that God is already there. Therefore, wherever it
be, fear not, be thankful, rejoice and boast of God." [A Private and Public
Faith p. 72] .

Where you and I are grasped by that truth we are suddenly able to look
into our own histories and see the power and presence of God, opening a door
here — closing one there: creating a new possibility here - bringing meaning
and growth there. That done we begin to see him now - moving us, urging us,
holding us up when we stumble, creating us over and over. We begin, that is to
say, to come to grips with a God of surprises.

Another woman bore a child, and was surprised, for her motherhood was even
more unlikely than Sarah's. In a manner of speaking she laughed too; so did her
kinswoman, Elizabeth and the baby in her womb. The biggest surprise of all is

\
that God did come among us: the ancient Israelites were right ~ He's that kind

= illest! 8

a es Ee. tee

As I prepared this sermon it became increasingly apparent that it needed a
story to introduce it. The arory ought to be real, immediate, but most of all it
ought to relate in a very personal way to Phoces experience of those who would hear
it. I thought of several incidents in 5 my own experience that did the job beautifully
for myself, but they were extremely personal, and probably would lose their impact
.in the retelling. And so I'm going to ask you, to help me get this sermon off the
ground by thinking of your very own introductory illustration.

Here are the ground rules. Think of a situation in your own past when you were
guilty of hurting someone you loved, a wife or husband, your children, your parents,
a dear friend. Recall how lousy you felt about it — your anxiety, your fear of the
inevitable confrontation, your suspicion that some irreparable harm may have been
done to the relationship of love. And then recall that when the confrontation
occurred you discovered that you were forgiven, the other you hurt still accepted
you, love was not destroyed. Mpnguess=ie—thet-everyone-here-can-play..back-—a-mmmber
cinakdmaone—qeimecntiaeee It's an amazing experience + almost unbelievable. Itts
exhilarating to be free of guilt ~ to be free of the anxiety and the feeling that
somehow we've got to make amends. It's a beautiful experience to know that we are
aocepted in spite of ourselves: that we are forgiven even before we say "I'm
sorry", that we are loved just as we are.

Now, if my suppositions are correct, everyone here has an illustration - |
perhaps a whole list; and allow me now to tell you what you have an illustration — ee

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“Grare is what is "good" about the good news. Itudensentrai-even~toegerudimentary-under—
Stending-of-Ghréstfait ty. It is a profoundly simple concept = so simple, in fact,
that it is difficult to explain and even more difficult to believe,

and expositor of grace. Time and time again he wrote to the early Christians that
the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that God's love is a gift, a free gift
that cannot be earned or deserved. Men used to be under the law - that is, they
jived with the assumption that God's acceptance of them could be earned by unflagging
adherence to the rules and regulations which constituted the religious law. No
more, said Paul. You are end in a state of grace. God loves you apart from anything
you have done: you are free from the law, arid the anxiety of continually attempting
to prove yourself. You are Sie to live joyful lives in response to that. Having
faith, for Paul, was what a man did $n: Seiascinas to God's undeserved love ~ and it was
a radically and gloriously new approach to the whole question of man's relationship :
with his creator. fs
The Church of Jesus Christ exists to proclaim and celebrate the good news. Our
worship is not an undefined reach toward the heavens by men searching for God, but

the response of a group of very happy people who know they are loved. Every week <
The new Bock of Comme Werskie prcitrsbes a gederat Conlescin

the Gospel is announced .”\ Benya heniifieQeiaL ith Seblibaen titra at the end of tir wich
exercise the good news is PEWS "God shows his love for us, in that while
we were yet sinners Christ died for aciesee If aman is in Christ, he is a new
creation: the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.",.... In the name of
Jesus Christ, we are Soneinins® Nothing “iffy" or conditional about that, Regardless
of what else happens in worship ~ or in the sermon = the good news of God's grace
is here announced and celebrated. And the happiest moment of our worship ought to
be as we respond ~ " 0 Lord, open thou our lips

And our mouths shall show forth thy praise.

Praise ye the Lord.

The Lord's name be praised......-Glory be to the Father, and

to the Son and to the Holy Ghost."

n Corpo we
And why? Because the very essence of our being mgge is all tied up in that little
ke be veri Aded oF ad Lo celerote
liturgical exercise, God's grace - God's love - God's forgiveness.
Thus far we have been thinking in terms that might be called “very basic

Theology". And there comes a time in every theological discourse when we must ask

—

noises, bright light, cold air and rough handling. We know that ess someone makes
physical contact with that baby, unless he is stroked and fondled” there is a good
possibility he will die.
ww
oe

After one year of life the ‘person has received all the data he needs to conclude -

"I'm not OK = you (the parents) are OK" He hia learned to walk alone, that is he's ve
Guls Kaowing We SNe

not carried and therefore not fondled enough, he's continually smelling bad, stumbling
and falling, and now being hit for crawling out of his crib =- or knocking over vases.
Something is radically wrong = "I'm not at all OK = but those other people must be."

Harris proposes that that data is recorded permanently, carried into childhood Z
and adulthood; and that many people, perhaps most of us live out our lives +e
be OK to earn the love and acceptance of others.

Reuel Howe, another man who has worked extensively in the area of religion and
psychology notes that “Anyone who works with people knows how common it is for men
and women to have predominantly disparaging feelings toward themselves. They

cannot believe in themselves, or that other men or even God accept them.: [ ps 104

Man's Need and God's Action ] Sealbury Yess, Creemuach, Coun. 145%

Howe, and others, have said that this need for love and acceptance is the deepest
yearning in the human heart - the deepest need we have. And they have said,
unequivocally, that this need is largely unmet for most of us.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ ought £5 be the answer. The Gospel of grace and love
and forgiveness. That's a "preacher" statement if there ever was one. But Thomas
Harris, the psychiatrist, is the one who said it. "The central message of Christ's
ministry was, the concept of gracessesseee.The concept of grace..esesis a theological
way of saying ‘I'm OK — ia 'e5 OK. It is not you can be OK, if, - or — you will
be coven dy, prommaitiomatiz ter POT ORNS ts fp 201 |

The child mst know that he is loved, unconditionally, The child mst experience

— Bo ses when he crawls out of the crib, dirties his pants and breaks the best

we are +o be ae Porsors, eke woreda Ne peter: a Sane agg so. ek , aus
ae dew te Wwe ho “Ourselves gt
vase. es §omehwere along the line you and I must mow that we are Yoveds accepted,

forgiven - not on the basis of what good lives we've lead — but unconditionally.

Is There Any Hope?
I Peter 133-9
December 21, 1969
John M. Buchanan

Chrsitmas Day dawned. To my joy I saw brilliant bie skies overhead. Already
we had one welcome gift, that of glorious weather.

I looked down the hut. It ws hardly recognizable. The ground was clean and
neatly swept. The bamboo bed slats had been taken out and thoroughly debugged.

The walls above the sleeping platforms were garlanded with green boughs - the one
note of Christmas cheer the jungle offered in abundance. Men stirred, got up, and
began to move about, wishing each other a hearty “Merry Christmas."

For once we ate our breakfast in leisurely, gentlemanly fashion. Then we
prepared for church. We wore whatever was our best, although it may have been no
more than a clean loincloth.

I went early to church. I wanted to have a few moments of quiet. Someone
had made a Christmas wreath of Jungle greens. Resting against the ivory-colored
bamboo of the Holy Table, it gave a feeling of serenity.

Others had also come for those moments of hallowed quiet. Men entered softly.
By fifteen minutes before eleven o'clock, when the service was to begin, the church
was full. Some were sitting on the ground, some on bamboo benches, some on home~
made stools. But most were standing along the sides and at the back or front,
whichever one might like to call it. Over two thousand P.O.W.'s filled the area.
But the hush I had felt when I first arrived remained unbroken.

Padre Webb entered and took his place in front of the Holy Table. He prayed
in silence, raised his head and announced the first hymn, "O come, all ye faithful,
joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem." He did not need to say
the words and have us repeat them after him. Those who knew them sang them; those
who did not picked them up from their neighbor.

Bill Maclean was standing beside me. He was singing bass and in Latin. We
had been at St. Andrews University together. While we sang, there came to my mind

the going-down service before our last Christmas at home, which students

t

-3-

I remarked to Bill, "This is a Merry Christmas ~ especially when you compare
it to last year." "

"Last year!" He made a face. "That was a muddy mess. No holiday, no church
service, hardly any food. If I remember correctly, you couldn't eat anything any—
way."

"Right. I was on a diet of nothing. That was just before I got ‘dip’ and a
few other things. It was almost the end."

Bill looked more serious. "We're not out of the woods yet = not by a long way.
But now there's hope. That's the thing - there's hope."

That was a section from a book I am sure many of you have read: Through the

Valley of the Kwai by Ernest Gordon. Gordon is now Dean of the Chapel at Princeton

University. During the Second World War he was a captain in the Scottish Infantry,

a prisoner of war after the British collapse in the Far East, and one of the survivors
of the Japanese Death Camp made famous by the motion picture, "The Bridge Over the
River Kwai."

The book he wrote is a remarkable story of the miraculous transformation that
occurred in a group of men who had accepted the fact that for them there was no hope.
In the P.O.W. camp British gentlemen became animals. Concern for the welfare of
others was non-existent. Men stole food from each other: men slowly dying of mal-
nutrition, diptheria and amoebic dysentery were simply ignored and left to die
alone. Civilization, as these men had known it, simply came apart, because there
was no hope at all. The death rate soared, and because there was no realistic
expectation that life in the immediate future would have any significance ~ in fact,
that there would be a future -— men lost whatever it is that distinguishes them from
animals.

The theological premise on which Gordon's very fine novel is built, is that
Hope is an absolute necessity for the survival of human life. That's an important
premise ~ a relevant idea as we reflect on the meaning of Christmas in this year

1969.

ae
moving out to meet the future, the precise contents of which we can never really
know in advance.

And on what basis does one have this hope? Christmas - the coming of Jesus
Christ into the world - the living hope of a God who participates in this life with
us. That is the shattering goodness of the Gospel. Not just because a baby was
born 2,000 years ago, but because the birth of that child signaled the incredibly
good news that Almighty God cares about us in this life: that he participates in
this life with us: that we, whoever we are, wherever we are, can face our futures
hopefully because God will be in them with us.

That makes quite a bit of difference as we face the perplexing days ahead. In
Vietnam, in our cities ~ in the halls of Congress - in the United Nations - on our
campuses ~ have we any reason to believe that the God who invaded the world by way
of a rude manger bed will not be there too? He is there - and will be there because
of that we may have hope.

It makes quite a bit of difference to us personally, as well. Bwveryone of us
faces an uncertain future. Everyone of us carries a load of problems, concerns,
simple things really - but mo umentally significant in the way they influence our
daily attitude - our relationships with those we love - our style of life. Well, the
incredible hope of Christmas is that God is a partner with me in my life, and with
you in yours: that he is going to accompany you and me as we walk into that uncertain
future: that his redemptive, creative love is going to be a factor, a power, at
work in whatever the future might bring. ;

That's not starry-eyed naievete -: nor is it a cynical fatalism: that is Hope,
grounded in an openness to reality - a confidence that in Jesus Christ we may welcome
a thousand tomorrows — because God is with us.

Is thereany Hope? I would rather sing my response —

"Good Christian men, rejoice,
With heart and soul, and voice;
Give ye heed to what a dare

News! News! Jesus Christ is born today." Amen