Why the World Didn't End

May 31, 1959
(estimated)
Akron

Hopeless situations have a way of becoming transformed by men and events and signs of promise appear. Many a lost cause is re-discovered. The end of a night of despair is signalled by a glow in the east. "Why the World Didn't End" is a sermon on a religious quality which, when cherished, heals the wounds inflicted by foul events. I speak to you about hope.

Six months ago last Wednesday, Soviet leader Khrushchev delivered an ultimatum to the United States. Denouncing the war agreements which created a partitioned Berlin, he proposed that West Berlin must become a demilitarized, free city, and that the East German communist government would assume Soviet powers, including control and access to West Berlin. Khrushchev insisted that this explosive change in policy would take effect May 27. He further stated last November that should his proposal not be accepted, "there will no longer exist any subject for talks between the former occupying powers on the Berlin question."

Khrushchev's incendiary words as well as the political sensitivity of the divided Germany, are considered ominous threats to peace. The Beacon-Journal's Washington corespondent, Mr. Edwin Lahey took this threat seriously enough that some weeks ago his comments on the issue were entitled, "May 27, The Day the World Ended." The political future of both West and East Germany are believed to be so crucial to each antagonist, that failure to reach agreement or compromise would be the spark which would ignite the planet. One of our boys in service wrote me this week that there was some betting amongst his buddies that Thursday May the 28th would be the first day of World War III.

Because both the United States and the U.S.S.R. have enough weapons of massive retaliation to conclusively and mutually destroy each other's civilization, the world would end in a few terrible hours. There would have been rejection of the homely, rhymed plea,

"Let not the atom bomb
Be the final sequel
In which all men
Are cremated equal."

Although we are by no means in the period when peace can be complacently expected and passively realized, the fact is the world did not end May 27.

Another event did occur on May 27 which had not been expected when Khrushchev launched his ultimatum. On May 27, John Foster Dulles, 51st Secretary of State of the United States, was buried amid the dignity and pomp of a state funeral. Instead of crouching in bomb shelters in the undergrounds of Moscow, London, Paris and Washington as the world ended with a bang, the foreign ministers, including Mr. Gromyko, attended religious services to mark the passing of Secretary Dulles.

In Wednesday's NEW YORK TIMES, C.L. Sulzberger wrote a feature article which, in masterly style, seized upon the overtones and undertones of May 27.

"Certainly the last thing anyone imagined last Nov. 27, when Khrushchev announced a Berlin ultimatum, was that this date would be interred with Dulles.... (The) double funeral, consequently, assumes a curious, dual significance.

"It signifies the passing of a man and it also signifies the passing of a moment. The two, historically, are related. Dulles was aware that unprotected Berlin was held in a tight Russian fist and that, in terms of pure diplomatic logic, it was virtually impossible to prevent that fist from closing around a significant and desired prize. But by rough, unyielding attitudes he managed to prevent that fist from closing -- until he himself was gone.

"There is, therefore, a particular historical lesson in tomorrow. No matter how Khrushchev planned events for Berlin, for Germany or for Europe, they will not transpire as he implacably had hoped last November when Dulles was a vibrant, active man and Berlin seemed a doomed and isolated city safeguarded only by the threat of global holocaust.

"When Herter and Gromyko do honor the memory of Dulles they will also be observing the interment of immediate probability of disaster. There are two coffins at the funeral. One may only hope that when these living statesmen ride back together Thursday to resume their tedious Geneva negotiations, they will be able to make adjustment to this unknown era, thrust upon them by the mere passage of time."

But this somewhat lengthy comment on Berlin, Mr. Dulles, Herter and the others is not intended to persuade you that the answer to Berlin, or any other Soviet-Western dilemma is cheap or easy. It is to point out that the world did not end last Wednesday, and that the Berlin impasse should not be considered unsolvable until many avenues are explored, including the General Assembly of the United Nations.

But more sweeping than individual postponements of disaster is the quality which is integral with our whole religious culture. Now while there is a biblical proverb that "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick," and Ben Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanac reminded us "to live on hope, one eats little," the mainstream of the Hebrew-Christian religious tide is a current of hope.

The kingdom of God is the theological framework for the idea of hope. The last sentence in our affirmation is an attempt to fill the theological idea of the kingdom of God into a framework of modern language and idealistic expectation, "we avow our faith in the power of men of good-will and sacrificial spirit to overcome all evil and progressively establish the kingdom of God."

Our ancient religious forefathers, the Hebrews, though they wept by the rivers of Babylon, there came the time when they nurtured the hope that the Messiah would come. Their land would be redeemed and their God would reign over all the earth. There were many who claimed to be the Messiah amid the consistently unfortunate political and religious predicaments of the Jewish people about the time Jesus lived.

Whether Jesus cherished the hope that the kingdom of heaven would arrive suddenly, immediately, dramatically, and supernaturally cannot be affirmed with certainty. Some portions of the gospels (MARK Xiii, e.g.) would indicate that he believed in and expected an apocalypse of the nature described in Revelation.

On the other hand Jesus also taught that hope was a present reality -- already here. "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown it is the largest of plants and grows into a tree, so that the wild birds roost in its branches (Matt. XIII 32)

The scribe answers Jesus' words about the two great commandments, "to love God with one's whole heart, one's whole understanding and one's whole strength, and to love one's neighbors as one's self is far more than all these burnt-offerings and sacrifices."

"And Jesus saw that he answered thoughtfully and he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." (Mark 12) Jesus probably meant that the scribe was near to the kingdom in attitude -- that the kingdom was not a matter of fullness of time, but rather development of integrity.

Jesus was sustained in his incisive teachings and courageous actions by the hope that men would respond to right laws of living, that they would cherish high human values and grow in moral stature even as the yeast swelled

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The Millerites were just as wrong as the first century Christians. The adventists of our town and time who predict the immediacy of supernatural cataclysm are equally in error.

Religion may not end the world, but whenever the world is exposed to the imperatives of ethical faith --justice, mercy, integrity, courage, and good-will -- the world is challenged. Progress is made when persons stand together, or proclaim individually, that the kingdom of God is present when kindness and justice are the rules for living.

In the story of the early Christian adventure (Acts 17), when Paul and Silas arrived at Thessalonica they met bitter opposition in their preaching and organized efforts. A riot ensued. [editor's note: this part marked with "Lakeland"] Jason, a Christian who was host to the Christian fellowship meeting and Paul and Silas were hauled before the magistrates. The enemies of the new movement complained, "These that have turned the world upside down are come here also." Religion turns the world upside down!

The hope for man is not found in a Farmer's Almanac of world-ending predictions. The hope is in a religious attitude which will turn the world upside down. The kingdom of God arrives as men gradually change the world and turn upside down the attitudes which cheapen the worth of people; turn upside down the hollow values which ignore real human needs. Judgment is not a fixed date on an other-worldly legal calendar, but a process of human achievement as living values are refined by human experience and human education.

This is the kingdom of God that is within us and within our reach.

The world didn't end May 27, 1959, but worlds are always ending. When Jesus was crucified, his world ended. Or so his disciples thought, for some disowned their teacher and some just ran away. When Joan of Arc was burned to death at Rouen, it was the end of the world for her and those who believed in the supreme authority of her right to obey the voices she heard. I suppose the world of hope that we cherished that the religious vision and the American dream of increasing achievement of human freedom and dignity ended when Faubus nullified the Supreme Court ruling that segregated schools were illegal.

T.S. Eliot's sorry appraisal of our human failure was epitomized in his mournful line,

"This is the way the world ends --
Not with a bang, but a whimper."

But worlds are always beginning. We have a right to say with Arthur Clough,

"Fear not, retire not, O man,
Hope evermore and believe."

The world ended for the disciples, but another world began. Soon the conviction came home to them that lost causes can be redeemed. The new world of Christianity emerged as more and more persons took up the cause for which a man's world ended. Joan of Arc was condemned as a heretic and her world ended at the stake where she joined a great company of martyrs who resisted imposed authority because of the conviction that God speaks to the individual. In less than two centuries the right of the individual conscience had established the Reformation. In 1920, Joan was canonized as a Saint of the church that permitted her burning. Faubus, in this climactic week, is face to face with the most imposing roadblock he has encountered in his heedless, bigoted march. The Little Rock voters have said, "enough is enough." The arbitrary dismissal of teachers is the indignity which even segregationists refuse to stomach. It may not be too soon to hope that a new world, which abides by the law of the land, is being born in Arkansas.

Such signs of the times are milestones on the hopeful road. As new worlds are born, we can understand better the winsomeness of the New Testament writer who wrote the letter to the Hebrews, (11/1), "Faith means

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