The Gigantic Wrestler

January 14, 1965
Rochester

The Gigantic Wrestler

A few days ago Albert Schweitzer observed his 90th birthday in his jungle hospital deep in what was once French Africa, but is now Gabon. Albert Schweitzer, who is eminent as theologian, philosopher, musician, physician, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has spent most of his time for more than fifty years in a fever-ridden, disease-haunted primitive section of Africa.

Albert Schweitzer is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship, undoubtedly the most famous one. He is also a Lutheran minister. Can he be both? Certainly as far as Unitarian Universalism is concerned, he can, for we demand no creedal or dogmatic conformity. Whether he still qualifies as a Lutheran only Lutherans can say. George Marshall, director of the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship quoted a noted theologian Walter Horton who wrote in 1938, “I do not want to give the impression that liberal theology in France is altogether mute and apologetic, or on the defensive ... There is one unabashed and unrepentant liberal in France who would give the lie to any such assertion: Albert Schweitzer. Whether he is really a Frenchman or a citizen of the world is a bit problematic; he does not ’stay put’ long enough to become a settled inhabitant of any land .. but whether he is a Frenchman or not, there is no doubt that Schweitzer is a liberal. ... What we moderns must do, he believes, is to ’take the ethical religion of Jesus out of the setting of his worldview and put it in our own’ and thus under the influence of the spirit of his ethical religion, to make ’the kingdom of God a reality in this world by works of love.’” (Walter Horton, CONTEMPORARY CONTINENTAL THEOLOGY,” 1938)

I want to place Albert Schweitzer in today’s sermon as a living text. He supplied the words himself in 1932 on occasion when he delivered the prize address at the 100th anniversary of the great German humanist scholar and poet Goethe. At that celebration, which was as much a recognition of Schweitzer as Goethe, and at a time when Fascism and Nazism had come to power while a complacent, indifferent world disregarded danger signals, Schweitzer said the words which have led some to call him “The Gigantic Wrestler”: “We must wrestle with circumstances so that those who are imprisoned by them in their exhausting jobs may nevertheless be able to preserve their spiritual lives. We must wrestle with men, so that distracted as they constantly are by the external things so prominent in our time, they may find the road to inwardness and remain on it. We must wrestle with ourselves and with everyone else, so that in an age of confusion and inhumanity, we may remain loyal to the great humane ideals of the 18th century – translating them into thoughts of our age and attempting to realize them.”

Most of you know the story of Albert Schweitzer. A preacher’s son, it was not surprising that he had an interest in theology and philosophy. He performed notable scholastic achievement in the realm of philosophy when he took a doctorate for his studies of Immanuel Kant, a profound and difficult philosopher for anyone to master. Turning to the field of religion, Schweitzer studied all the lives that had been written of Jesus. Then turning to the gospels, he studied them meticulously and sensitively. The result of his studies is the book which in the English translation is called THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS. This study of the life of Jesus was a bombshell in the scholastic world of the early years of the 20th century. Schweitzer would not accept the old doctrinal ideas that had grown around Jesus. Neither would he swallow the blithe notion that Jesus was a rational man of Enlightenment, curiously appearing in Galilee so long ago. Schweitzer was also convinced that Jesus had been a real person, not a fantasy. Schweitzer was determined to find the Jesus that really lived and walked the dusty roads of Palestine. Such a method was flagrant heresy to many of that time of sixty years ago – it would be heresy still to many. THE QUEST has been modified in its impact by the studies that have continued. Of course. But it is still a significant contribution to the extensive library about Jesus.

A ranking philosopher and perceptive theologian seldom has other outstanding qualities. But Schweitzer has other facets of brilliance. Along with philosophy and theology, he cultivated his capacity for music. Studying under Widor, then Europe’s most noted organist and interpreter of Bach he was soon instructing the teacher, developing for him some of the qualities of Bach, his architectonics, or as Schweitzer put it more simply, the truth of Bach’s religious feelings which were expressed through music.

Schweitzer was not satisfied to be the greatest interpreter of Bach, nor was it enough that he was the most sought-after organist for consorts and lectures in Europe. Schweitzer found music such a compelling religious experience that he also became a master of organ architecture – one of the competent authorities on organ building. His advice was sought by many of the deans of great cathedrals and churches of Europe who were concerned about preserving their great organs. He was a champion of the hand-built organ and fought against assembly-line instruments which he regarded as incapable of developing the warmth, grandeur, the lilt ... [words missing from copy] of the wind organ created by the hands of a ....

... happened in Schweitzer’s life before he was thirty years of age. Why did a man who through genius and his enormous capacity for hard work had won a scholastic doctorate in philosophy, another in theology, and a third doctorate in music suddenly turn to medical school to become a physician, specializing in tropical diseases?

Schweitzer says that he set himself the goal of studying until he was thirty and then devoting himself to helping mankind in an active and specific manner from then on. Some say that Schweitzer was unable to reconcile his deep religious beliefs with the realities of European power politics – the unscrupulous, imperialistic, nationalism that led to the first World War. Therefore, say the suspicious, Schweitzer rand away from the dilemma of a peaceful man in a world soon to become engulfed in a horrible war; that he ran away from a world that was so foreign to his inner feelings and escaped to the “primeval forest” where his conflict with civilization could be forgotten in serving the sick and ailing natives of Africa. No one can fully understand his own motives, not even a man as brilliant as Schweitzer. But it is doubtful if someone wishing to run from responsibility would escape by plunging into a life of incredible toil, danger and frustration.

It would seem that Schweitzer was beginning the great task of meeting life as it really is, in all its dirt and disease as well as its moments of high nobility and sophistication. Furthermore he was meeting life where he could do something to change it for the better.

First of all, said Schweitzer, in his Goethe Prize address, 33 years ago, (and this many years after the beginnings of the African adventure), “we must wrestle with circumstance so that those who are imprisoned by them in their exhausting jobs may nevertheless preserve their spiritual lives.

Schweitzer has never been entirely optimistic. In his great philosophical work, CIVILIZATION AND ETHICS, he expressed the belief that in spite of gleaming towers of steel and concrete, vast quantities of scientific knowledge and invention, the conquest of air, water and the atom, our civilization is decaying. He sees too many losing moral courage, too many seem to be willing to be bribed by paltry gadgets and to be deluded that the great values lie in what we have, rather than what we are.

He heels the same faint dread when examining lives. When one closely observes; and this is the opinion of other [wise] people who have lived a long time and watched many decades of human procession pass in review, there comes to the heart a feeling that life’s fulfillments never match life’s promises, that life “suggests a good which it somehow fails to impart.”

But, maintains Schweitzer, even though circumstances seem to imprison us, wrestle with them we must in order to retain our moral life. Did he do this?

One of the aspects of civilization which tortured Schweitzer as a young man was the nature of the hate-breeding nationalism which was characteristic in Europe in the days before World War One, and exists today, of course. Schweitzer had come to the conviction, greatly influenced by his studies of Jesus, that the needed work of the world should be done for persons as persons for reasons of simple humanity. He believed that to think of one’s self as being a German or a Frenchman or an Englishman and to classify others by nationality, in preference to thinking of them first as human beings with human needs, was a violation of the spirit of Jesus – to Schweitzer the spirit of Jesus was the spirit of true religion.

How did he wrestle with the circumstances of nationalism in his world of international suspicion and smoldering hates? Schweitzer, born in Alsace, was a German subject. Most of his education had been in German universities. When he decided to dedicate himself to the service of humanity, particularly the needs of human beings in the ... tropics, he could have gone to the German church ... been assigned by that group to one of its mission ... tions. Instead, however, he rose above what he thought ... ht be a tendency to think of human beings second. He went to the Paris Missionary Society and requested permission to serve one of the French missionary stations. At first the mission directors were reluctant to accept this genius and religious prophet. He was a German subject and the French hated the Germans. He was a non-conformist. The non-conformist has always been suspected by bureaucracies, even church and mission bureaucracies. Not only did Schweitzer not accept the orthodox evangelical ideas about Jesus, but by his study of Jesus and the publication of the book, others had been led to admire the humanity of Jesus rather than worship his divinity. Schweitzer asked for no money or equipment. He would furnish all needs through the generosity of friends and what he could make through the publication of his books and his organ recitals on his rare trips back to the continent from his labors. Although the Paris Missionary Society did accept him, he was intern[ed] for periods as an enemy alien during portions of World War I. By the time of World War II, however, so securely had Schweitzer established himself as a missionary doctor rather than a German national, so world-wide had been the recognition that his was a completely unselfish service to humanity, that his mission station, although administered by Schweitzer, a German National, received needed quantities of drugs from the United States in an area that was the possession of a France which had surrendered to Hitler.

The circumstances of nationalism confront us all. Schweitzer wrestled with it and preserved his spiritual life.

There were other circumstances with which this good doctor had to contend. Among the difficulties Schweitzer and all missionaries in that part of Africa had to wrestle with were white ants that consume paper, books, curtains, cloth and floor coverings; menacing mosquitoes spreading malaria and fever; biting flies of numerous varieties, and each variety, it seemed, spreading a different disease; jiggers that live by burrowing into the skin of one’s feet; rats that eat the patients’ food and nibble patients’ feet at night; fleas that carry the plague; bush cats that kill the poultry; elephants that trample gardens, baboons that uproot the crops; violent storms which with little warning blow off roofs. All of this and more in an area with an average temperature of 110 to 120º F and an average humidity of 98%.

Schweitzer wrestled with these and many more aggravating circumstances which took his time and energy but which could not deprive him of his spiritual life, because he never conceded that humanity and humanity’s needs were not worth the struggle.

We, like Schweitzer, have an inheritance of faith. It is dynamic – or should be, spurring us constantly to find new ways to speed to ever-changing man; persisting in the effort to communicate the high goals of man to a fast-changing culture. We should not try to escape that religious responsibility. Of course we know the words about Creation, truth, service, fellowship, love – but who doesn’t? I’m told that in London, the Hyde Park section is similar to Boston’s Common in that there is an opportunity for the soap box orators to let off steam and expound their ideas. One religious skeptic is alleged to have shouted, “Look at me! I’m a h’atheist, and I’m ’appy, than Gawd.”

It’s just as ridiculous to think one’s self a believer, to use the words but not wrestle with the circumstances which prevent religion from being as valuable and effective tool for living as it might.

Secondly, Schweitzer said we must “wrestle with men, so that distracted as they constantly are by the external things so prominent in our time, they may find the road to inwardness and remain on it.”

There is considerable irony in the fact that Schweitzer’s mission stands in the area where once was the center of slave traffic with the United States. Should not we wrestle with men when they are so driven by greed as to transport nearly sixteen million human souls from Africa. A little more than five million survived. Over ten million are believed to have died on the jungle trails on the way to deportation or to have died in the foul holds of the slave ships. Has there ever been a time when there was no need to wrestle with man so that they may find the strength of inner honesty and outward ethics[?] All religious institutions, including the Christian Church, [have] been guided many times by what is, rather than what ought to be. In the slave-trading days, some allegedly pious Christians advanced the feeble and contemptuous rationalization that the captured Africans were better off as Christian slaves than free primitives. Schweitzer has never tried to interfere with native, tribal customs. But he does try and heal the wounds and cure the ills of the African, who lives not in a primitive Eden, but a rather green and steaming hell. One of Schweitzer’s motives in dedicating his life to the needs of jungle people was his conviction that one thing he could do was to dedicate his life to making small an individual atonement for the great wrong done to the peoples of Africa by centuries of cruel Colonial exploitation. [Although what he has done is small only in his own appraisal.]

Schweitzer wrestles not only with the consequence of the past and present evils done by white peoples, but also he wrestles with the ignorance, apathy, and superstition of the native. Schweitzer has always wrestled and more strenuously today than ever with the suspicion that the African naturally feels deeply-wronged toward the white man.

Schweitzer has wrestled for more than fifty years with people everywhere so that they will not forget the mission station at Lambarene. Supplies must come through under difficult conditions. Drugs must be packaged in precise ways or they will become useless in the scorching climate. In the late evening and morning hours, the old physician must not only labor with the task of finishing his scholarly studies of a philosophy of civilization, he must write hundreds of letters to friends and sponsors in all parts of the world so that the support of his mission station may not falter. People forget even good causes without constant reminder. In his latter years, the gifts have come much more freely, but the problem is always substantial.

In recent years, particularly during the increasing ferment of African revolutionary nationalism, which has brought about so many new African nations, there have been bitter criticism of Schweitzer. Whereas 20 years ago he would have been easily named either just ahead or just behind Gandhi as the greatest man living in the 20th century, today there are many disenchanted critics who assert that Schweitzer the legend is great, but that Schweitzer the real man is little.

What are the charges:

Schweitzer is labeled an “opportunist” who regularly seeks headlines to advance his own image in the public eye and to increase the flow of money to his mission enterprise.

He is charged with autocratic behavior at Lambarene, running the mission as a dictator.

He is accused of being not only a segregationist, but also of holding a low opinion of African mentality, believing the African too immature for the responsibilities of life.

He is charged with maintaining inferior hospital standards, of not putting into use modern medical equipment, methods, drugs and techniques.

Perhaps the most vitriolic charges come from those who lambaste him because he has failed to play any role in the nationalistic liberation movements in Africa.

The temptation is great to ignore charges – and merely point to the man. He says nothing (the thought occurs of the spiritual written about Jesus standing before Pilate, “he never said a mumbling word.”) Schweitzer would not be the first authentically great religious man to have experienced calumny in his lifetime. But the collection of accusations is a mixed bag of truth, half-truth and utter falsehood; and his accusers may have a greater readiness to call names than a willingness to endure hardship for the sake of one’s religious commitment.

Is Schweitzer an opportunist? True it is he has gone to Europe many times and America at least once on fund-raising journeys for his mission. The mission has cost large sums – but let him cast the first charge who has never worked for a Community Chest build-up and drive or church fund appeal or financial program for an institution that helps people.

True, Schweitzer acquired many headlines when he appealed, cajoled, begged the powerful nations to do away with atomic testing, to reject forever the use of such weapons of global disaster and race suicide. Are you not glad he maintains this strong voice for peace? His name is not on the treaty between the US and USSR banning testing in the atmosphere, but no one can persuade me that his influence was not of importance.

He is charged with autocratic behavior and segregationist policies. He does run Lambarene as far as staff and visitor’s quarters and meals are concerned. As Donald Harrington pointed out, Schweitzer is the old “German professor” type who does give the orders. As far as segregation at the hospital is concerned, we might wish for him to be more in tune with today’s necessities, but he is not. But I believe only those who have authentically suffered for the sake of a non-segregated society have the right to be judgmental of him. Furthermore, do you know of any hospitals in Africa, in the U.S., in New York, in Rochester, operated on the town meeting system for policy directions and decisions? Do not compare Schweitzer’s hospital with an annual parish meeting of a liberal society in the U.S. - compare it with a hospital.

As far as inferior standards are concerned and lack of modern methods, how many 90-year old physicians do you know whose offices and equipment are the most modern? How many 90 year old physicians do you know who are still practicing? Schweitzer’s jungle complex comprises 70 buildings, plus a separated leper village with a staff of four doctors and thirty nurses and aides. Each year 1,000 new patients come to the jungle hospital village. Schweitzer has long held the theory that he must conduct his medical mission in terms that the African tribes will understand. Thus the patient’s family will come with him and live at the village. It is more a hospital community than a hospital. Usually there are 1000 persons, plus 120 in the leper village, living in the complex. True the village has no modern plumbing (but this is the African jungle).

But the operating room is well equipped and thoroughly hygienic. Mortality from surgery is about ½ of 1%. Infections arising after operations are at a lower rate than large university hospitals in the U.S.

Schweitzer, perhaps, could improve the facilities, just as he could provide better living quarters for himself than the two cluttered rooms in which he lives. True, at 90, he needs seven to eight hours sleep at night, rather than the three to four hours which sufficed for many years.

But some of his critics make their charge from the comfort and luxury of highly-paid city practices. Some are African doctors, who did not return to the jungle to practice, but who would not be in the world, perhaps, but for Schweitzer who may have saved the life of parents or grandparents.

Has Schweitzer’s halo tarnished? The halo was never there. He is human, not supernatural. As Mangus Ratter, one of his biographers wrote, “Albert Schweitzer is an ordinary man, doing extraordinary things. Inspiration is not lacking in his life, but sweat and purpose, hallowed by consecration that makes him great.”

As for Schweitzer’s failing to support African nationalistic movements, those who criticize should reflect on the events of more than one-half century ago. Schweitzer of course doesn’t defend himself. It was the hateful atmosphere of European nationalism which was the significant influence in the life of an Alsatian, subjected to German rule, who went to Africa as a missionary for a French religious society; he was interned as an enemy alien during parts of World War I. Nationalism to Schweitzer always has been one of the necessary burdens carried by the family of man.

How can 90-year-old Schweitzer, this gigantic old wrestler be expected to see the liberation spirit behind the complexities and violence of African nationalism? Perhaps it is a grievous paradox that the European nationalistic spirit which he rightfully rejected in 1914 is quite different from the African nationalistic spirit which has opened a chasm between Schweitzer and his contemporaries in the 1960s.

So Schweitzer still wrestles with men today because most of us are so distracted with external things that we forget the dream too often, the goal of what ought to be. There is no known person in the world who combines the mental genius and physical stamina with humanitarian impulses as does Albert Schweitzer.

Lastly, Schweitzer challenges us with the greatest and most formidable opponent of them all: “We must wrestle with ourselves and translate the great humane ideals into the thought of our age and attempt to realize them.”

Perhaps when time has rolled over the deeds of the present, Schweitzer will have made the greatest impact on his time with his life of unselfish service. Perhaps on history he will have made his greatest mark with his philosophy of life, two volumes of which are still in preparation. Wrestling with himself as he was deeply moved by Jesus’ ethic of love, he confronted himself time and again with the question: “What does it mean to me? How shall I love my neighbor as myself? How shall I love the Lord my God with all my heart and mind and strength?”

He discovered in himself, as we all may in ourselves, a will-to-live. We do struggle to preserve ourselves. Quicker than thought, we ward off the sudden peril or falling object. And our will-to-live, reasons Schweitzer, is set among everyone else’s will-to-live. After years of thought he came to a guiding spirit, “Reverence for all life.” The doctor realizes that all life lives on all other life, vegetable and animal. Yet his religion of “reverence for life” insists that there shall be no unnecessary waste of life. He will kill a snake which threatens the life of a human, but he will also take a snake sunning itself on the road and place it by the side of the road so the wheels of a truck or cart will not destroy the snake. (Adlai Stevenson mosquito. “my”)

In reverence for all that lives, Schweitzer finds the answer to the question that wells up so frequently from the depths of our emotions, “Why?” “Why am I?” “What is life?” By wrestling with himself, he found himself compelled inwardly to satisfy a demand that life made upon him. By wrestling with himself, as well as studying the truths he found in theology, music, philosophy – in the life of Jesus, he found how he ought to live. Then he set about to live that way. And after he put his hand to the plough he has never looked behind him.

Perhaps those three formidable opponents which Schweitzer name for us, Circumstances, Men, Ourselves are the same temptations that Jesus and other persons meet who have fully accepted the challenge that life plants in every human heart. We wrestle with temptation – and the temptations present themselves in Circumstance, Men, Ourselves. Browning must have anticipated a man like Schweitzer when he wrote,

“What are temptations but for man to meet,
To grapple with and trample under feet,
and so be pedestaled in triumph.”

A Christmas Window on the World

December 13, 1964
Rochester

A Christmas Window on the World

Christmas festivities are profound but elusive mixtures of the sacred and the profane. Aldous Huxley grasped the puzzling cultural contradiction in his novel, THE GENIUS AND THE GODDESS, when one character says to another, “Drive carefully ... this is a Christian country and it’s the Savior’s birthday. Practically everyone you see will be drunk.”

Christian celebrations are mysterious compounds of self-satisfaction and self-transcendence. We find great ego-comfort not only in “what we are going to get for Christmas,” but also in being showered with gratitude and attention for the lavish presents we give. But moments of sensitivity occur when we are freed of the shackles of self-centered existence and wistfully we turn our eyes upward to that highest star we have never really followed wholeheartedly. In such moments of self-forgetfulness, we perceive that Christmas is a rare time when the littleness and greatness of life’s possibilities are encapsulated in a season.

I’m not concerned today with the age-old impulses and deep-rooted human traditions which stirred people from pre-historic times and in all places to celebrate mid-Winter and mark the restoration of days of lengthening light. Even as we look out on a winter world from the sanctuary of our homes, let us consider Christmas as comprising windows on a world of human wishes and fulfillments. Consider with me, Christmas as a window on a world that is; Christmas as a window on a world that could be.

Christmas is a window on a world that never was. Like many other stores at this season, large department stores in Boston arranged fascinating windows where little figures moved in mechanical rhythm through a world of fantasy. Although in our city these Christmas fantasy windows are not part of the season this year, many Main Streets in American have little elves hopping about or lovely snow princesses charming the passers-by; or wise men or shepherds reverently approaching the Madonna and child. You have seen such show window productions of fantasy and have been delighted by them.

But such windows of charming fantasy portray a world that never was. The snow-covered cottages of the Middle Ages were cold. Living was not only difficult, but many times, brutalized by the raw hardships of existence. The elves, dwarfs and snow-princess reflect a world where people believed in witches, good fairies and supernatural guardian angels, who with a touch of the magic wand or a sound of heavenly music would transform cold, hunger, misery and darkness to warmth, well-being, happiness and light.

I was interested to read yesterday of an institution that attempts to establish and maintain a world that never was. An attorney separated from his wife brought suit against her to recover his children. She had taken the children and become part of a religious colony where husbands, wives and children all lived separately from one another. In defending the colony’s right to its peculiar ways, the defense attorney is reported to have pleaded to the court as follows: “Who is to say it is narrow because the children do not have to listen to the unspeakable Beatles or see the more undesirable features of the mass media today such as the more pornographic paperbacks in the newsstands.” The defense then told the court that the children at the center have never heard a radio, seen television or newspapers, or even played at a playground (see BOSTON GLOBE, 12/11/64).

Now the point is not to dispute the right to choose a way of life in a religious community where association is voluntary, no matter how odd the Utopian plan. But to attempt to isolate children from the growth experiences of their culture is to live in a world that never was. For however our culture may be measured on a moral scale, we must live in it. If it is vulgar, we may attempt to refine it. If it is less moral, we may try to make it more moral. But to separate oneself from the forces of human society is futile, for such efforts seek a world that never was and never will be.

But because our fantasy flights at Christmas are temporary, light-hearted and a restful change from the difficult rhythm of prosaic living, we need not fear to indulge in window watching and lend a responseful heart to charming make-believe. Albert Camus (THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, p. 9) wrote “a man defines himself by his make belief as well as by sincere impulses.” In another essay, Camus extended another dimension to this thought when he wrote, “There are no more deserts. There are no more islands. Yet there is a need for them. In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better one has to old them at a distance for a time.” (THE MINOTAUR)

When we load the buffets in our homes with stuffed dates, oranges, apples, ribbon candy; when we shut out the problems of business or politics as we relax in the evergreen-scented sanctuary of home; when our major attention is confided to the number of our household, we are achieving for the moment a fortress of self-sufficiency, healthy indulgence and mutual love which cannot endure, but which for the few hours, gives us a grasp on comfort, contentment and cheer. As psychiatrist Erik Erikson commented, “If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.” (YOUNG MAN LUTHER, p. 75)

But the second Christmas window is the world that is. The real world encounters us at Christmas, too. [lightly crossed out: Our real world cannot wiggle away from the unembarrassed accusation of modern poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in “CHRIST CLIMED DOWN.”] Our Christmas trees have lost their roots, we do put plastic babes in wallboard mangers; not only some of our relatives, but also we ourselves frequently behave in cornball fashion. In the world that is, Christmas has surface glitter. Too often we fail to probe beneath that surface to discover whether there are deeps or only shallows of meaning. [also lightly scribbled out: If Ferlinghetti’s lines offend, one should search himself to see if that hostility is born of guilt.

Christmas is a window on a world that is. Nine days ago, when all flights were canceled because of weather, I took the train in order to reach Boston for a week-end of meetings. As the train moved eastward, the severity of the ice store increased. In the Berkshires, the trees were so heavily laden with ice that the burdened boughs were struck by the train. The sound of impact of bough and train was like intermittent gunfire. One branch cracked the engineer’s window.

Upon arrival there was news of many highway deaths caused by icy roads; there had been single accidents involving hundreds of cars; there were the usual ghastly reports of death from faulty heating devices and fires caused by over-heated stoves. This is the world of Winter that is – a world of hardship, particularly for poor people. ]

People do respond to this world that is at Christmas. The coins ring in the street corner kettles where one can help hungry man and destitute families. The radioman receives thousands of pennies for the toy programs in the hospitals. We purchase Christmas seals where proceeds help persons who are ill; we purchase cards from our own UUSC and the proceeds are applied to a variety of projects whose common denominator is human need. Many persons have their private, and sometimes, substantial project where aid is channeled to persons.

But in the world that is, it is also true that the Christmas flush of giving pales. If the kettles were on the street for twelve months, there would be sharply diminishing returns. Individually our devotion lags after a while, even to good causes. Limited span of attention is not confined to children. Because this is the way of the world, Community Chests, United Funds, Social Welfare Agencies are established and maintained. If we were expected voluntarily to contribute weekly, or monthly, without a pledge campaign for a yearly commitment to the Community Chest, then the quota would be so short of fulfillment that few of the necessary agencies could begin to maintain effective service. When we raise the shade on the window of the world that is, such is the scene.

At this great season of song, worship and gifts, we hold high the ideal of peace and goodwill. We read the old gospel legends about rejoicing angels singing of peace on earth, good will to men. Yet we would be naive if we failed to perceive the world that is. Protestant theologian, Robert McAfee Brown, wrote, “It is easy to gush over ’the baby Jesus’ and what a sweet picture the stable scene makes on a Christmas card with cute little angels flying overhead. We must not forget that the baby whom everyone helps to adore will grow up to be the man everyone helps to crucify.” (THE BIBLE SPEAKS TO YOU)

In his autobiography, BORSTAL BOY, Brendan Behan, the late Irish playwright and poet who lived so boisterously and excessively, writes of an incident when he was jailed and beaten cruelly. As he was recovering, he was given some books. Even in the midst of pain and prison squalor, he was cheered-up by the prospect of being able to read. He observed, “It’s a queer world, God knows, but the best we have to be going on.”

Our Christmas window on the world that is should never be far apart from the window on the world that never was. Reality needs to be paired with fantasy. But our Christmas observatory would be unfinished if we failed to pay attention to the third window: Christmas is a window on the world that could be; a world where all little children are brought the gifts of opportunity in the world as well as the gift of love in the home. Christmas is a window on the world that could be when we are roused from our complacency. I don’t know the source of the following lines, but many of us might ponder them to our benefit:

“The Affluent Society is only too ready to be the Acquiescent Society. Large numbers of people are so pleased to discover that they never had it so good that they lack the imagination to envisage ways in which they might have it much better and the charity to realize that there are plenty of people in the world who continue to have it badly. All too many of those who are in a position to remind people of these responsibilities and obligations are content to be as profitably acquiescent as the rest.”

Now the Christian gospel legends place a particular framework around the world that could be – a setting wherein a Messiah is expected, astrological predictions are made of his coming, humble shepherds, overwhelmed with reverence and awe, bend at the cradle; rich and wise men arrive acknowledging allegiance and respect; finally, threats to the new-born king arise from an established and tyrannical order. In Vol III of his SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Dr. Paul Tillich precisely comprehends the meaning of the legends when he notes, “the speeches and writings of all prophets and mystics and of all those who claim to have had a divine inspiration are couched in the language of the tradition from which they come, but are driven in the direction of the ultimate.” (p. 127) And again, “There is no pure Spiritual Presence where there is no humanity and justice.”

Thus, when Old Zechariah was rejoicing in his son, John, born to Elizabeth, he proclaimed,

(Luke 1, 76/79)
“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High
for you will go before the lord to prepare his ways
To give knowledge of salvation to his people
in the forgiveness of their sins
through the tender mercies of our God,
when the day shall dawn upon us from on high
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet in the way of peace.”

Those who were in darkness and shadowed by death needed what in our day we would name freedom, peace and a rightful share in the abundance of this old planet.

The magnificent words attributed to Mary are decidedly radical, or at very least announce striking goals for society,

(Luke 1 52/54)
“he has put down the mighty from their throne,
and exalted those of low degree;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away.”

Zechariah and Mary, the Shepherds and Angels were not singing of a world that was, but of a world that could be and should be.

In a documentary film, years ago, about WWI, the Christmas truce in the trenches was recalled. On Christmas day the firing stopped, soldiers met in no-man’s land, fraternized, sang carols, exchanged cigarettes and food. For a brief hour they were living a world that could be. For if such a world could never be they would not have shared their songs and smokes.

In the world that is, if I walk down the street and push people around, or break a window, or start a barroom scuffle, I will be arrested for disturbing the peace.

In the world that could be, when a rascal nation disturbs peace on earth, good will to men, that nation too will be restrained by an international police force for disturbing the peace of the world. Then people living in the world will hear the angels’ song. Psychologist G. Robert Mowrer pointed to a corresponding truth when he wrote, “the only form of love that is genuinely redemptive and therapeutic is one that is demanding and expectant.” (THE NEW GROUP THERAPY, p. 31). In the world that could be and should be, peace would be demanded and expected. When it is demanded and expected by a resolute parliament of nations, then the nations will know peace, and one day, good will.

So on this midway day of the 1964 Christmas season, my wish for you is that you look through the Christmas windows on a world that never was, for fantasy has its place; on a world that is, for to run from reality is to lose one’s life; on a world that could be, for without the star of hope to guide us in the dark, the season is robbed of meaning.

Chad Walsh wrote the poem, “Letter to a Young Poet,” (printed in KEY REPORTER). I share his concluding lines:

“Meanwhile there’s many kinds of dark.
Explore them now. Explore and write
And find or make a path in the night.
Bisect the darkness with the moment’s light.”

Salvation Reconsidered

November 29, 1964
Rochester

Salvation Reconsidered

“What must I do to be saved?” That is the question that a fear-stricken Phillipian jailer asked of Paul and Silas.

The Christian Book of Acts (70-80 a.d.) recorded the fascinating story of Paul and Silas, jailed for disturbing the peace. Their real offense had been to prevent the owners of a disturbed slave girl from further exploiting her delusions. Paul and Silas were beaten and placed in irons in the town jail. At midnight, when an earthquake occurred which opened the doors and sprung the locks of the hand and leg irons, the prisoners did not escape even though the opportunity was present. It was after this astounding series of events that the jailer asked the salvation question.

As a Roman citizen, Paul had a right to be tried in Rome. Therefore he was immune from sentence in a province if he claimed his legal right. This was the historical seed which flowered in to this sensational story. Fond editorial hands of later generations have embellished the basic story with miraculous trimmings. This is not surprising; many ancient stories have supernatural escape as the theme.

What is relevant to our theme today, “Salvation Reconsidered,” is Paul’s answer to the jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and all your household.”

All religions attempt to deal with the question of salvation. Can persons holding Unitarian Universalist faith like ours, a faith rooted in freedom and trusting in reason, find meaning in “salvation?” How do we confront the nature of this religious idea which seems universal in time and place?

Because we believe in the essential dignity and capacity of all human beings, many of us find little relevance in the question, “Are you saved?” Because of our appraisal of the supreme worth of human personality, we may reply, “I didn’t know I was lost.”

But Christianity is a salvation religion (listen to evangelists on TV). Historically, Universalism was founded as a salvation denomination, proposing that all persons would be saved through the goodness of God. No God of love and justice would sentence any human being to eternal punishment. All persons would be saved and there would be a final harmony of all souls with God.

What is salvation? The dictionary first defines salvation as “the saving of man from the spiritual consequences of sin, especially in the after-life.”

One of the most influential and central doctrines in most branches of the Christian churches is that all believers must “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.” “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive.”

If you believe this is the final and ultimate “word of God,” nothing that is to be said will be of much interest or usefulness to you. On the other hand, if you reject any consideration of ancient religious ideas because you see no place for such reflection in a modern age, then you too might think on other things. But if you share my belief, that ideas, dogmas and institutions are the result of forces moving within the dimensions of human’s natural history, then the idea of salvation deserves investigation to ascertain whether it has any meaning for us today.

There is great confusion about religious salvation in my opinion. Generally both the religious conformist and the non-conformist think of it as a future state to come as a reward for those who have obeyed rituals or believed creeds. The believer hopes for a happy land beyond the grave. The non-conformist rejects the idea of salvation because any concept which requires postponement to an utterly uncertain future seems to him either to be “pie in the sky” or wishful thinking. Paul Tillich observed, (THEOLOGY OF CULTURE, p. 35) “... salvation is beyond time, it is always independent of any stage of time. It is the eternal present above every temporal present.”

I, too, find that unless salvation is an experience we can know in the present time, there is no profit in pursuing its meaning. But to search out any relevance for today, we must review its historical development.

The various Christian doctrines of salvation have been subjected to several ancient influences:

First, in primitive Jewish religion, there was a great ceremonial occasion when the people rid themselves of the sins which they felt guilty, by rubbing their hands on the hide of the scapegoat. This scapegoat was then driven into the wilderness, carrying the sins of the people.

In a more enlightened and responsible age, this primitive notion of carrying the guilt burden for all became transformed into corporate responsibility [in the] exalted poetry of Isaiah (53 4/5):

“Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteem him stricken
Smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities
Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
And with his stripes we are healed.”

Most scholars agree that Isaiah was not predicting the advent of Jesus, or any other individual Messiah who was to come as “the suffering servant.” Rather Isaiah in a superior blend of poetry and ethical prophecy was referring to the whole body of Israel which must bear responsibility.

Theologically and culturally the idea carried over into Christian theology, but with a complete reverse emphasis. Instead of a whole people bearing corporate responsibility for the sins of many, Christian theology proposed that Jesus was a single “suffering servant” who “bears our stripes.” This is a remarkable instance demonstrating that theology is not necessary always evolutionary, progressing to higher ideas. Here is an instance of regression to a more primitive and less human point of view.

As time went on after the death of Jesus and the missionary activity of Paul and others, Christianity not only began to influence the Oriental-Greco-Roman world, but also the new Christian faith was affected by that world also. Many of the ceremonial rites of the pagan mystery religions – initiation, baptism, sacramental meals and ornate ritualism became Christian practice. Not only pomp and circumstance, but also uniformity of belief transformed a faith which had been simply begun as a rural, communal, wandering brotherhood of disinherited people who had committed themselves as disciples of a disturbing, inspiring, non-conforming prophet, Jesus of Nazareth.

Consequently salvation became associated with sacraments. One was saved, if he was to be saved at all, by baptism, communion and death rituals. Not until the Protestant reformers, Luther, Calvin and others, who insisted that the “just shall live by faith,” was there a challenging new note in the Christian scheme of sacramental salvation.

In spite of all the weight of powerful Christian institutions, there is not the slightest evidence that Jesus would have subscribed either to the sacramental scheme of salvation or the simpler, but equally dogmatic, New Testament evangelicalism of Protestant orthodoxy.

We know Jesus only through the reports of others. But enough is recorded so that we have some assurance that the way of salvation for Jesus was not the way of most of the historic Christian churches. A man of means asked Jesus about the way of salvation. Jesus answered, “sell all that you have and give it to the poor.” (Luke 18) The man was sad, for he had great wealth.

On another occasion, Jesus seemed to shock his own followers when he told a woman her faith had saved her because she loved much. Is more needed?

I believe that Jesus held the salvation idea cherished by most of his fellow-Jews in his own time – an idea primary in modern Judaism. Salvation is moral; responsi[bility] is both individual and corporate. A person must find his own way to the good life and to the God he/she will worship or to the highest value he commits himself to cherish.

Paul said, (Ph 2/12), “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” This seems somewhat foreign to the spirit of Jesus that I sense coming through the ancient pages, for Jesus faced life differently. I believe Jesus might have said something like this, “Do not be overcome by your fears, but work out your own salvation in reverence, morality, and hope.”

We live in a different age. Their ways are not our ways. What is the way of salvation for us? We too, need a “way” - whether we will call it a philosophy, code, or way of living. Even as 1900 years ago, Christianity provided a strengthened morality to a world bubbling with ferment and change, so in our day we need a religious basis for salvation to give us inward assurance and social unity.

Most of us who would gather here would not feel at home either with over-simplified doctrinal formulas which proclaim the only way of salvation is to be linked with belief in a single Savior or over-elaborated ritualism which assert that we are saved by seven sacraments.

When I reconsider the idea of Salvation, three expressions have meaning to me: character, reconciliation, imagination.

One of the other dictionary definitions of salvation offers the thought that salvation is “preservation from destruction, disintegration, failure or other evil.” This definition uses words easier for me to understand than “the spiritual consequences of sin.”

First, salvation by character was explicit in one of the Unitarian affirmations of faith; it has been implicit in Universalist teachings for a long time. We do not claim originality. Salvation by character is an old and respected basis for living. This has always been the mainstream of prophetic, ethical religion. Centuries before Jesus, Ezekiel proclaimed (18/5), “If a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right – if he does not oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment ... withholds his hand from iniquity, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes and is careful to obey my ordinances – he is righteous, he shall surely live, says the Lord God.” Clement of Alexandria (ca 200 a.d.), a searching thinker among the early Church Fathers, remarked about this passage from Ezekiel, “This indeed is the blessed life, the life of goodness.”

Character is what we are and what we do. Character should focus our perspective so we will not make any artificial and unrealistic distinctions between things alleged to be “spiritual” and things alleged to be “material.”

John Murray Atwood used to tell the story (from a Quaker source) about the little boy who was well-smeared with dirt as he happily made mud-pies. A lady said to him, “come with me and we will wash you up and tell you how to get to be an angel in heaven.” The little boy answered, “I don’t want to be an angel in heaven, I want to be an angel here in the mud.”

Regardless of what may await us in worlds beyond our experience, salvation by character involves what we are and what we do here in this world. The English educator, the late L.P. Jacks asked, “What should we know of goodness if we only had heard it talked about and never seen a good man or a noble woman?”

When the jailer begged Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” he may not have been asking a theological question. He may have been serving self-interest. It has been suggested (Interpreters Bible) that what the jailer really wanted to know was “what must I do to escape the consequences of this?” That is, the consequences of responsibility for an unlocked jail and [unlocked] prisoners’ handcuffs and leg irons. Salvation by character is a viewpoint that affirms you do not escape the consequences of what you have done.

Whatever motives that throb within me and whatever acts I perform that consciously or insidiously separate me from the things and the principles I believe highest place additional barriers between me and redemption – whether I define redemption in some orthodox fashion or whether I define it simply as humanistic self-fulfillment and maturation.

The great poet John Masefield told (Saturday Review) how, when still in his teens he had left the sea and taken a job in a factory, although he yearned to be a poet. But like many aspiring writers, he had received little response from publishers. Then he chanced upon these homely lines,

“Sitting still and wishing
Makes no person great
The good Lord sends the fishing
But you must dig the bait.”

John Masefield was sufficiently reproved so that he persisted in his literary efforts and eventually the world recognized his ability and success came to him. The lines, “the good Lord sends the fishing, but you must dig the bait,” express a dual trust in the universe and the quality of human initiative and integrity which “salvation by character” implies. David Hume (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 308 Harvard Classics) expressed the same challenge succinctly, “Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”

But this is not enough. We must confront the social nature of character. Thus, there is salvation by reconciliation, also.

Plain-speaking Jeremiah, another of the great prophets of our Jewish heritage mourned, (8/20) “the harvest is over, the summer is ended and we are not saved.” “We” are not saved! Salvation is not an individual affair, but an achievement of community. The leaders of the American Revolution endorsed the Declaration of Independence, “we pledge our lives, fortune, and sacred honor.” There can be no individual salvation worthy of the name unless that redemption involves reconciliation between human beings in the human community.

Herman Melville in his great novel, MOBY DICK, expressed a sensitive understanding of salvation by reconciliation, in the chapter, “The Castaway.” Melville introduced the portion, “A most significant event befell the most insignificant of Pequod’s crew.” Pip, the little cabin boy, ordinarily did not accompany the whaleboats when these were launched from the vessel when a whale was sighted. Pip, a native of Tolland County, Conn. loved life and usually remained in safety in the Pequod. But, one day on the broad Pacific, one of the oarsmen hurt his hand and Pip was enlisted as the substitute. Pip was tangled in the harpoon rope after the harpoon was fixed in the whale and was pulled overboard. Stubb, the second mate cut the rope in order to stop and pick up Pip. Strangely enough, shortly after a similar event occurred. When a whale was harpooned, it turned under the boat. One of its fins made a sharp rap on the underside of the boat. In terror, Pip jumped overboard. This time the second mate did not cut the rope. He assumed that one of the other whaleboats would pick up the cabin boy. But these boats had turned in another direction and had not seen Pip jump.

Pip was alone. He saw no other humans as he struggled to keep afloat in the Pacific Ocean. By rare chance, he was sighted after a considerable time by the vessel, the Pequod. Pip’s life was saved; but his reason was forever gone. Henceforth, he was mentally helpless. The strain of feeling that he had been completely abandoned by his human kind had been too much for him to bear. The old myth of Cain carried the same terrible condemnation, “My punishment is greater than I can bear,” when he was rejected and excluded from human community.

Salvation without restoration to bearable community seems a pointless and hollow achievement. Our world is dotted with persons yearning for fellowship, dreading rejection and hoping that there will be a breakthrough of the crusts of self-centeredness. The saving way points to persons being saved by reconciliation of individual [deeds] in cooperative citizenship, universal churchmanship and happy family living.

Last, I would submit to you that there must be salvation by imagination. Jesus remarked to Nicodemus, (John 3/3), “Truly I say unto you that unless one is born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Ordinarily, the orthodox thinks of being “born again” as referring to the Christian conviction of guilt and consequent conversion that sometimes follows – a polarization of emotional extremes.

But, it seems to me, that one can also believe that Jesus was saying that imagination is necessary for salvation. You must acquire a new vision. You must “get a glory” as Berton Braley versified – see things as they could be. Even persons of moral stature and integrity can become deeply depressed unless hope continuously offers the vision of a better world.

We need the imagination to appreciate the varied ways different persons formulate salvation. Some Hindus find salvation in the way of Bhakti, “devotion.” Through faith, love and service, they find salvation, rather than in vows, pilgrimages and sacred rites. We need the imagination to welcome these different ways and say, ungrudgingly, “thou are not far from the kingdom.”

When the Buddhist holds up the Four Noble Truths and pledges himself to the Eight fold path to salvation, we need the imagination to recognize a fullness to such a faith if one embraces it wholeheartedly. Whatever power impregnates the universe, it is a universal power, available to all who seek it in honesty, even though myths and rituals and attitudes differ in time and place. Salvation must be for all, or it is for none. In our world, torn with misunderstanding, this affirmation requires a born-again imagination, but without it, we shall not be saved.

Few, if any, Unitarian Universalists believe in the myth of the Fall of Man through Adam’s sin, yet there is a symbolic way that this old religious story may be a signpost directing us to meaning. (see Alan Watts, MYTH AND RITUAL IN CHRISTIANITY). The “Fall” might represent human illusion, born of self-centeredness that he is completed in irresponsible individuality. Redemptive love might represent a born-again vision that whatever is hold or divine in our lives is linked to character, reconciliation and imagination. We are saved by our vision of what we want to become and the nature of our struggle to reach that goal.

Two Thankful Men – and How Each Was Right and Wrong

November 22, 1964
Rochester

Two Thankful Men – and How Each Was Right and Wrong

Reading: Luke 18 9/14

This parable is less an exhortation about prayer and more a parable about confused human personalities – how we should deal with ourselves. Jesus’ parables were gems of literary creation. One of the signs of their value is the summer in which they have stimulated persons in all succeeding generations to think upon the human condition and how we may improve the ways we deal with life. On this Sunday closest to Thanksgiving, will you think with me about this parable, because it suggests the necessity of establishing wholesome distinctions between self-confidence and arrogance; between humility and self-abasement.

To be thankful is to feel a sense of gratitude and obligation. Thanksgiving is a holiday when such thankfulness is expressed culturally and individually.

Consider the Pharisee. First of all, one must be alert to resist the stereotype, unfortunately anti-Semitic, which has gathered around this parable. Because the Pharisee in the parable is hypocritical, all Pharisees were hypocrites – or so the slander has persisted. To condemn an entire group for the wrong-doing of one, is not only wretched logic, but also in the case of the Pharisees, quite unhistorical. Anyone who is at all perceptive can find hypocrites among ministers, elders, merchants, middlemen and managers. But to generalize on a whole class is both wrong thinking and applied injustice. Furthermore, the Pharisees in Jesus’ time were the liberals of the day. They did not want to discard out-of-hand the old Law and ancient traditions, just because times had changed. They sought ways to reconcile the old laws with new conditions by thoughtful re-interpretations. Neither the reactionary nor revolutionist ever approves such reconciling efforts. But the achievement of working consensus in any time of trouble is usually the result of efforts of persons who cherish the same ameliorating attitude of the Pharisees. It should be clear that in discussing the parable, I am referring only to this individual Pharisee and not to his class.

This particular Pharisee, however, is the personification of smug complacency, “God, I thank Thee that I am not like other men.” Jesus commented that the man exalted himself but would be humbled by God.

The lucky majority in our nation who are well off in this world’s goods – and this includes most of us here without a doubt – should exert care that our Thanksgiving responses do not reflect, “better than thou,” and “holier than thou” attitudes. (too many times these attitudes of assumed superiority really should read, “luckier than thou.”) Do we not tend to exalt ourselves as a nation where the granaries burst with plenty and the counters overflow with commodities? We are proud of our pre-eminence of wealth and power. We no longer boast of “manifest destiny,” but we tend to think of ourselves as the “great people” who have the wisdom, wealth, weapons and power to instruct the rest of the nations what the best decisions are.

We should be disciplined by the recognition that the rest of the world does not believe that our nation holds all the keys to the kingdom of man’s finest destiny. An historian of India (see reference, H. J. Muller, USES OF THE PAST, p. 324) takes for granted that any view of world history will still be chiefly concerned with Asia because Asia is the source of all the world’s great religions and has maintained a high culture for a much longer period than the West.

In the old parable, the arrogant one used the word, “I”, five times in two short sentences. One does not have to be a psychologist to guess that such an outburst is much [more] the expression of overblown ego than it is a prayer of thankfulness. Perhaps your prayers are not so self-centered, but inasmuch as the person who gives me the most trouble is myself, I assume that your condition does not greatly differ. Therefore, let us all be cautious in reciting our accomplishments, for their virtue may be exaggerated [and] our self-satisfaction unjustified.

There is another sentiment in the Pharisee’s prayer which is even more petty than the recital of alleged accomplishments. “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” Dr. Paul Fornier, the Swiss psychiatrist who is one of the most persuasive in finding Christian truth in the insights of psychiatry wrote, “The person who represses his conscience often tries to shift his discontent upon innocent victims. The weak are well designed to play the role of scapegoat.” (THE WHOLE PERSON IN A BROKEN WORLD, p. 14/15). The hypocrite’s prayer in the parable would seem to be a good example of such transference of guilt.

It is not only that the weak are made scapegoats, but also there is a secret and unhealthy temptation to experience a perverse sort of satisfaction when ill-fortune befalls someone else. Wise men recognized the condition long before the psychologist and psychiatrist recognized that secretly we hold some unlovely wishes. Thales (640 b.c.e.), sometimes called the first of the philosophers, said, when he was asked how people best bear adversity, “By seeing your enemies in a worse plight.” (quoted by Henderson, PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, p. 2).

Although there is no need to dwell on the subject, the hypocritical Pharisee was right, also. We should be grateful that we have not become extortioners, unjust, adulterers or grafting tax collectors. We may attribute it to our individual virtue, when we should be at least as grateful to our parents and the social environment in which we were reared, but every person should feel a certain quiet pride in living up to high standards of morality and obeying the regulations of his religion.

Those of us who may not be impressed with fasting or tithing should not feel superior to the person who is committed to a faith requiring much religious discipline. When a person lives according to his best lights, he has set an impressive mark for the rest of us.

Frequently a person must trust his own capabilities and depend on his self-confidence. Otherwise he fails to accomplish all he might. There was an old, orthodox Sunday-school song which said it well,

“Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone
Dare to have conviction
Dare to make it known.”

Second, consider the tax collector who, standing far from the altar with his eyes cast down, prayed, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Now those of you interested in a side excursion in the attitudes toward tax collectors, should not that nowhere does Jesus indicate that this man was a dishonest tax collector. He may have been a grafter, but such is not indicated. Apparently just to be a tax collector for the Roman Empire in an occupied nation was sufficient onus to place one in the company of extortioners, adulterers and the unjust. So you see taxation has been a most unpopular practice long before the income tax came to the U.S. in the 20th century.

Anyway, although the tax collector is the favored one in the parable as it has come down to us, I have long been somewhat disenchanted. There is something phony about being loudly humble in public.

We should recognize that using the tax collector in the parable was another way that Jesus proclaimed his central message, which appeared again and again in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke: “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

But even allowing for this teaching emphasis and for the parable style, a style not that of the novel or even the short story, humility is a vice when it exists only for its own sake. There is a variety of twisted arrogance which hides beneath a veneer of pretended humility. Charles Dickens’ character, Uriah Heep, is a wonderful illustration.

There is also an old legend about a king who was told by a seer that the king would live to a great old age if he would live with great humility. The king discarded his stately robes, royal luxuries and dressed in rags, left the palace and moved to a rude hut. He issued orders that no one was to show him reverence. Then in barren solitude he tried to examining his own feelings with as much self-honesty as he could muster. He realized that he was much more vain of his seeking humility than he ever had been proud of royal privilege and power.

Whereupon he took wiser advice, “dress like a king; live like a king; but be humble in the secrecy of your heart. Nietzsche was a bitter philosopher who gave Christianity little quarter or even fairness, but did he not touch a sensitive spot, at least for some, when he wrote, “A Christian’s thinking is perverted, even when he humbles himself. He does so only to be exalted. His great delight is the mean and petty pleasure of condemning others.”

In Christianity and other religions as well, there have always been some who believe the chief way to glorify God is to abuse and humiliate themselves. You may recall the story of St. Simon Stylites, who lived for years on the top of a pole, suffering continually in filth and pain. He believed that in debasing himself, he was pleasing God. The Hindu fakir, supposedly in religious ecstasy, sits on hot coals or walks barefoot on sharp nails. It’s an ironic comment on much distorted humility that our English words “fake” and “faker” come from a word supposedly signifying religious humility - “fakir.”

Humility is wise when it exists only for its own sake.

But there is a need to say emphatically that repentance when sincerely offered is an emancipating experience. Some might say, “If you repent, God forgives you.” That is what Jesus meant when he said that the tax collector “went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” Others who might be less ready to concur with the theological proposition that God forgives he who repents, would agree that to express one’s errors, and be truly sorry for them, is to be free from the burden of secret guilt we may have been carrying. To tell all is to be forgiven all – although one can still compensate for injuries to others and allow changed behavior to be the goal of a new start in living. To unburden oneself – not necessarily only to the psychiatrist or the psychologist, although that is called for in many instances – to unburden oneself is to experience an openness of living which will not only help you, but help others, who will relate to the attitude of expressed self-honesty.

The tax collector was right in his attitude of humility, too. When humility is authentic and not exhibition, it can guide us to productive perspectives. Humility is accepting certain facts about our universe, primarily a modest estimate of our place, talent and permanence. We should recognize our name and our fame, if any, is of very transient importance and temporary duration.

Michelangelo is probably the world’s most famous artist. His achievements as a painter, sculptor, architect and poet represented a life of genius almost unexcelled. Those who visited the Pieta at the World’s Fair were deeply moved by its superb form and color. Yet one of his biographers, Papini, commented on Caprese, the village where Michelangelo was born. The village is ti... a few houses and the church of San Giovanni, where Michelangelo was baptized. Papini wrote that it was significant that the village of Caprese was better known for the fine quality of its chestnuts than as the birthplace of Michelangelo. If the greatest artist of the ages ran second to the flavor of chestnuts in his home town, then perhaps we should feel, as well as act, modestly. We should have humility as well as self-confidence. We should see ourselves in the perspective of the uncountable age of the planet and the brief time we consciously will live on it.

Of course while I have been talking about character in an ancient parable, you must have guessed that I was not thinking about two different kinds of individuals, but rather two tendencies with wrestle within ourselves. There is a struggle within each of us between the hypocrite and the penitent. We have a tendency to be smug about our possessions or position; we are also conscious on occasions that we should cry out to whatever gods there may be, “have mercy on me for I have been very wrong; I have missed the mark.” If you have never known the pains and discomfort of such feelings, you probably stopped listening after the first minute anyway.

Sometimes we ride a personality curve upward; we feel complacent, assured, successful. Then the curve turns down, we wonder if we can ever come near the goal of our dreams or rid ourselves of those terrible feelings which strike us when we should have done better and could have done better, had we been less lazy, greedy or self-centered. Can we do better?

Ezekiel, that OT prophet of the fantastic visions, knew an experience of his God which may be instructive to us, even though Yahveh of the OT neither speaks to most of us nor is real to us. After a dramatic and picturesque vision of God, Ezekiel wrote (1/28 – 2/1), “Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking; and he said to me, ’Son of man, stand upon your feet, and I will speak with you.’”

We can stand upon our feet, wrestling with our own vanity as well as guilt. In the mythology of the Norse people, my ancestors, there was a strong belief in fate – one’s end was ordained from the beginning of time. They believed, however, that while fate will decide the moment and manner of death, fate will not decide how you will face it. You will decide how you will face it.

So with us. There are all variety of situations we will not control – the situation will happen to us – some will be good luck, some ill fortune. But if we stand upon our feet with a minimum of hypocrisy and an absence of self-abasement, in the long run we will know that life deserves our fulsome thanks.

Whom Shall We Hate?

October 4, 1964
Rochester

Whom Shall We Hate?

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the O.T. story of Micaiah, the prophet, who told King Ahab that there was no necessary connection between what he wanted to do and doing what was right. Because Micaiah was the only adviser who spoke so courageously and pointedly, he also became the object of the King’s anger. When the King of Judah, Jehoshaphat, had suggested that Micaiah be consulted, King Ahab of Israel said, “Micaiah ... but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil.”

As things turned out, King Ahab would have lived, not ingloriously died in defeat, if he had taken the advice of the candid Micaiah, instead of hating him.

Whom shall I hate?

The person who gives me good advice that I refuse to heed?

The person who is a picture in my mind of something objectionable or evil? A picture not necessarily much like the real person?

The parents who advocate novel changes in human affairs and social structures – hating them because I am fearful that such changes will threaten my place on the status ladder or jeopardize my wishful thinking about preferment or power?

The criminal who has committed foul and loathsome crimes?

The political candidate I oppose, hating him because his possible election would put me among those who backed a loser?

Whom shall I hate?

Hate exists. One can assume from the Warren Commission report that hate was the directing force in the lives of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Certainly hate took command in the most terrible moments of decision in their lives.

Hate exists. The “hate groups” whose scurrilous literature reaches us so widely, hate all varieties of minority groups, except their own reactionary minorities.

Hate exists. Too many times all law officers are hated because of the brutality, ignorance, or prejudice of a few.

Hate exists. There is something bizarre as well as instructive in the current re-runs of movies made 20 years ago, when the movie propaganda line helped the government propaganda by expressing and inciting hate toward Japanese and Germans – hate which now sounds almost as antiquated as if we could hear the shrill call of the junkman and the slow click of his horses’ hooves on brick-paved streets.

Hate exists. How many socially respectable and outwardly balanced persons in furious solitude have muttered curses at someone and wished him ill-fortune because such an object of hate had become “one-up,” been lucky, clever, or ready for opportunities the other had missed or delayed seizing? Or the hated one merely had been the innocent scapegoat for various frustrations?

What is hate? Hate is an outlaw emotion which has gained sufficient power over us to become a directing motive. Hate is an emotion spawned by ignorance and nursed by fear. The psychologists can outline its maverick growth. Because of our human nature, we can easily become ever-anxious about our own egos to the point of unhealthy vanity, while at the same time cherishing doubts about our own adequacy to achieve goals and our ability to perform up to expectations. When situations arise in which we seem unable to cope, fear increases together with the discomforts caused by being thwarted. If one adds the ingredient of suggestibility, particularly suggestibility to easy, over-simplified answers, then the state of ignorance and the feelings of fear, vanity, thwarting and suggestibility can merge in the guiding motive of hate.

The headline name may be a classic example. Now I neither pass judgment on Lee Harvey Oswald nor attempt an apology for him. Unfortunately for him and for our system of law, even though we are magnetized with the dreadful fascination and speculation of the assassination circumstances, he can never be convicted or absolved of the awful crime. But the Warren Report, judging from excerpts, digests and summaries, has thoroughly established a formidable array of circumstances to demonstrate that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole killer of President Kennedy. That Oswald hated authority figures seems highly probable. What made him hate?

The Warren Report indicates many of the ingredients which combine in a poison broth of hate. Oswald’s childhood was hectic, anxiety-ridden, insecure. His father died when he was a small child. After a short while with his widowed mother, he was sent to an orphanage. Following this experience, he was sent home to his mother when she married again. But this home, too, became broken in three years or less. Thwarting, fear and the pains of a bruised ego must have gathered in ominous merger.

As a boy he was known to authorities for delinquent behavior. It was said of Oswald by one counselor, “no one ever met his need for love.” Then the boy became the man who possessed a “deep-rooted resentment of all authority,” who nursed “hostility toward every society in which he lived.” The Warren Report indicates how this accumulated hostility may have directed the hate motives which triggered assassination.

We know now whom he hated, and the terrible consequences which so profoundly shocked us all and affected our destiny.

Whom will I hate? Whom will you hate? Must there be hate? Several observations:

First, we must never forget the relationship between emotion and intellect. Among the unverified statements I have recently noted, was an item that by body weight man is composed of 43% muscle and 2.5% brain. The intellect must reasonable control all that muscle or the outlaw emotion of hate can ride amok, unchecked by higher values.

It has been said that for 2400 years all Western Philosophy has been commentary on Plato. Certainly he gave many an enduring clue to the priority that reason must claim over passion if we are to be truly human. In TIMAEUS, Plato used the analogy of anatomy to make the point that reason must exert control or we fail to achieve the human stature which could be ours:

“Now of the divine, he (God) was the Creator, but the creation of the mortal he committed to his offspring ... they proceeded to fashion a moral body, and made it to be the vehicle of the soul, and constructed within the body a soul of another nature subject to terrible and irresistible affections – first of all pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil; then pain, which deters from good; also rashness and fear, two foolish counselors, anger hard to be appeased, and hope easily led astray – these they mingled with irrational sense and with all-daring love, according to necessary laws, and so framed man .... That part of the inferior soul which is endowed with courage and passion and leaves contention they settled nearer the neck, midway between the midriff and the neck, in order that it might be under the rule of reason and might join with it in controlling and restraining the desires when they are no longer willing of their own accord to obey the word of command issuing from the citadel.” (See Synopticon, Vol. 7).

Plato may have underestimated the power of emotions as well as speculating fantastically on anatomy, but he did not overstate the primary role that reason must play in policing the outlaw emotions of hate and irrationality.

The reasonable mind should not be given an assignment to smother emotion, even if it could – which it can not. One of the realities of human existence is that squelched and repressed emotions can sabotage the effort to achieve health in body and mind. The power of reason is disclosed when the reasoning mind directs the expression of emotions toward the achievement of goals which are not just ego impulses, but rather goals made authentic by effective knowledge; and illuminated by the higher values which, in our better moments, we have learned to prize.

When caught up by the splendid dreams of the best of our heritage and the most inspired moments of our personal experience, we are persuaded that truth, beauty and goodness represent the true goals of human endeavor, particularly in the application of these virtues in life.

When there is knowledge instead of ignorance, then there is courage rather than fear. And when courage triumphs over fear, then love casts out hate. Nowadays, some persons wince at the word, “love.” But in the closing sentence of his essay, “Knowledge and Understanding,” Aldous Huxley, unsparingly and incisively, emphasized both the flaws and the irreplaceability of this word, “love”: “Of all the worn, smudged, dog-eared words in our vocabulary, ’love’ is surely the grubbiest, smelliest, slimiest. Bawled from a million pulpits, lasciviously crooned through hundreds of millions of loud speakers, it has become an outrage to good taste and decent feeling, an obscenity which one hesitates to pronounce. And yet it has to be pronounced, for, after all, love is the last word.”

Let me attempt to emphasize another dimension when considering the question, “Whom shall I hate?” The hazard of falling victim to the hate virus increases when we play the treacherous game of “odd man out.” “Tag – you’re it” may be noisy, active, harmless play for children, but it can be a most dangerous game for adults when used to condemn and despise persons. Yet it’s a game we are constantly tempted to play.

For example, if I hate a person, a Communist, Fidel Castro, for example, I can expand my hostility on cussing him out in absentia; I can suspiciously surmise his secret agents are manipulating every political and diplomatic decision I oppose; and all the while because my energies have been channeled into personal hate, I may never exert myself intellectually to grapple with the momentous historical question of why people plan, carry out and sustain revolutions.

If I hate, as a person, a Neo-fascist storm-trooper, George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi, for example, I can recite the authentic list of totalitarian horrors and tremble at the possibility that it could happen here. But to the extent that I hate him as a person, I have used up my energies and emotion which should be rationally directed toward the problem of handling in a democracy the activities of those who would destroy for others, the very rights which permit these conspirators to incite and attract the ignorant, the fearful and the thwarted.

One of the insights provided by the old Hebrew Scripture of Proverbs is found in the eighth chapter where there appears a long, superb passage praising “Wisdom.” Two lines, (vs. 36), read,

“but he who misses (wisdom) injures himself;
All who hate me (wisdom) love death.”

This applies directly to the “tag – you’re it,” “odd man out” method of combating supposed danger or threat. It is far wiser to deal with problems not personalities. All who hate wisdom, by hating persons, may utterly fail to meet the issues competently.

Another way of looking at this aspect of hate is to recall how frequently the “Devil” theory of religion or history has appeared. From ancient times people have been unable to reconcile what they believed to be the goodness of God with the obvious occurrence of disasters – fire, flood, disease, tornado, volcanic eruption – disasters wherein the lives of persons, good and bad, were rubbed out indiscriminately. The belief in demonology arose in very ancient times and was carried forward into our Judeo-Christian heritage, that God could not be responsible and that there must be a supernatural spirit of evil nearly equal in power to God.

By and large, most persons do not take the notion of a supernatural Devil seriously any more, but we have been sufficiently tainted by ancient ways of believing so that we tend to personify, readily, a philosophy or government we oppose in the person of an adversary, usually a striking personality, who becomes a Devil (the nonsense about “Impeach Earl Warren” is a current and deplorable example). Somehow the crude notion arises that if we could ship this Devil back to hell, then there would be peace and light and everything nice. But most controversies are deeper and stronger than the personalities who may be their current advocates, even though we have made devils of them. I have no real expectations that conditions will be otherwise in my lifetime, but is not the whole atmosphere of political campaigns fogged over with the “Devil” theory of political choice?

We are warned about the devilish nature of a candidate’s manners, morals or associates. If we people of this land would exert some special mental effort to permit our reason to direct our 45% muscle around, perhaps some day the Devil theory of opposing factions will have gone the way of the sacrifices to Moloch; and candidates will respond to a reasonable demand that campaigns be devoted to basic issues, defined problems and authentic prospects.

But the Devil theory, the “odd man out” way, the “tag – you’re it” gambit will remain until the answer to the question, “Whom shall I hate” is “No person. I hate no one.”

The hate groups, the Neo storm troopers, those who cherish only a conspiratorial view of history are passionately involved in a search for significance, distorted and brutalized though that search is. But twisted crusades are marked by a conspicuous omission, which is the concluding observation on the topic, “Whom shall I hate?”

Those who hate neglect the ancient and imperishable reality that healthy and moral human significance is realized only when (As Hilary Frye remarked at the G.A., 1964, SF), “the individual finds worthwhileness in helping others grow and in the process, grows himself toward his own fulfillment.”

When the question is put to us, “Whom shall we hate?” and we answer truthfully, “no one,” the point is not alone that we are placing the supreme worth of human personality as a value superior to the temptation to hate; but also we are coming into our own as persons. As Dr. Herbert Mowrer, research professor of psychology at the University of Illinois has observed, “we can be true to ourselves only if we are first true to others.”

Even amidst strong differences, there is little doubt that this policy of mutual good-will is intimately related to physical health as well as moral virtue. There have been some findings to the effect that only patients with high blood pressure and kindred ills are reported with considerable consistency to be persons cherishing feelings of intense hatred or guilt.

When the greatest of the ethical prophets, Amos in the eighth century, B.C. came down to the corrupt city from the clean hills where his sheep ranged, he was caustic in his indignant condemnation of the rich and powerful who oppressed the poor and needy; he excoriated the lazy, the political grafters, the swindling merchants. Yet this prophet who is perpetually the model for the goals of ethical religion, did not hate persons. His most famous passage illuminates the clear distinction:

“I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Amos hated the hollow ritual and the solemn hypocrisies, but he did not hate people: “I hate, I despise your feasts.” In another famous passage he said,

“hate the evil and love the good,
and establish justice in the land.”

We are true to ourselves when we refrain from hating any person. Hate the evil deed, but not the person. Whom shall I hate?

A Theology for Free Persons

September 13, 1964
Rochester

A Theology for Free Persons

If you resist theology because you may believe that it either restricts your intellectual freedom or violates your common-sense view of the realities of life, this sermon is for you, because theology can be a liberating power we may not have fully used.

I do not speak of someone else’s theology, whether creed of a church or the instruction of an authoritative personality. Freedom of individual belief is unrestricted among us. But if such freedom breeds inertia to the need for spiritual self-determination then its greatest benefit remains unused.

Theology is the person’s achievement of an orderly way to think and feel about himself – his relationship to his fellow man and to his God, and that neither the blows or bounties of life, nor the miseries or grandeur of human experience can irreparably ruin the conviction that conscious life is the greatest gift of the power that made us.

An “orderly way of thinking and feeling has the consequence of form in our system of religious values. A theology for a free person is not the absence of thoughtful patterns but the presence of inter-related reasonable propositions.

Consider the verse by Edith Lovejoy Pierce:

FOG

Outline is lost
While drift devours
Both rock and steel,
Iceberg and hull,
Nil are the stars.
Let no ship move
Nor yet at anchor ride.
Distinctions must be made,
Lest mind with mad collide.
That chaos may creation be,
Let there be light,
Let the eye see!
Unless outline is found
The adventure runs aground.
(The Pulpit, 6/64)

Without form, a theology for free persons is chaos. But when form hardens into doctrinaire thinking, then theology has no distinctive merit.

There is a phrase which has remained with me long after the name of the author has been forgotten, “the significance of history is found in the struggle for freedom.” Even as Jacob wrestled with the angel all night, so the free person must struggle to fasten a secure hold on the realities of existence.

No person congregating among us for longer than a week can help but be aware that there are wide differences in the premises and implications of our several ways of appraising the creation and meaning of life. There is no natural growth in ignoring our differing convictions; there can be no reconciliation if points of view are submerged in polite irrelevancies. Thus a theology for free persons does not have a destination for pilgrim’s progress but paths of understanding, roads of dialogue, highways of personal growth. As a base for a new season in this free church will you consider three propositions that are necessary for a theology for free persons:

1)Embrace the search for truth which will keep us free.
2)Engage in the dialogue with others to ensure our contact with what is real.
3)To respond to a dynamic pulse which will keep us growing as persons.

First embrace the search for the truth which will keep us free. If this great equation “the truth makes us free” sounds like an empty platitude, then perhaps you have never taken the search for truth seriously enough. Martin Luther once said, “I did not learn my theology all at once, but I had to search deeper for it, where my temptation took me. (quoted Erikson, YOUNG MAN LUTHER, p. 251). There is a loneliness to the search for truth, because to be faithful to its urgency, one must weigh in reasonable balance all propositions offered for belief. One must examine critically, not only the authorities of ancient religious institutions, which is easy, but also the assertions of friends, parents or current political powers, which requires considerable more courage and self-honesty.

A modern philosopher, Dagobert Runes, commented, “Thinking is a luxury of the mind, most people stick to necessities.” (COGITATIONS TREASURY, p. 25)

The search for truth demands much from us. We nurture pre-conceived pictures in the mind and resist intrusion of facts and logic which may alter such prejudice. The search for truth implies that we are neither born with the truth, nor is it revealed to us thruough supernatural or occult means. We embrace the search for truth when we expose our unexamined notions to the facts as they are offered to us in life. Whether one is treasuring religious ignorance or nurturing comfortable, but untrue legends of political or social life, the change-over to truth-seeking will be arduous and painful. Think of the effect on our various political candidates if we citizens should take our nation’s destiny seriously enough to demand that they should embrace the search for truth for freedom’s sake. Think of the religious revolution which would happen if many millions would ask, “Is this true?”, rather than pleading, “keep me feeling good.”

In spite of various semantic devices, that some language is neither true nor false, e.g., “how are you?” is not an inquiry of one’s health, but a ceremonial greeting, one of the great opportunities Unitarian Universalists have is to emphasize that most words have meaning that [?] affirmation can be true or false! There is an Arab proverb (quoted SR), “Language is a steed that carries one into a far country.” It may seem to some that UU reluctance to repeat creeds or prayers, or sing gospel hymns for old times’ sake, or to provide inoffensive comfort to a few, is straining at gnats, but words have meaning. It is said that a famous movie tycoon when he was urged to make a decision, said, “I’ll give you a positive ’maybe.’”

There are numerous faiths which provide musical liturgies, chanted services and antique creeds with a great deal more skill and art than we. But we have no excuse to concede that any group should be more interested in the truth of words than we. Once in response to a student’s question about the nature of truth, Alfred North Whitehead answered, “Truth means that life matters and has consequences,” adding that “life matters most when we realize most deeply that what we are and do has consequences for others.” (quoted by Nels Ferre, GODS NEW AGE, p. 44).

While it is true that while there is much lonely creativity as the individual searches for the truth, it is just as true that a theology for free persons needs engagement in dialogue with others in order to insure our contact with what is real.

A theology for free persons is produced by dialogue, for without interaction with other connections, our view of life may become seriously distorted. Do you know the parable of the gull and the earthquake told by William March (99 FABLES – Univ. of Alabama Press), “A seagull tired from a long flight over the ocean, flew toward land and lighted on a crag, but as it happened, an earthquake occurred at that identical moment, the shoreline trembled, lifted upward, and collapsed beneath him. At this the gull flew back to sea, screaming tragically “see what I’ve done, I lighted on the crag to rest and I wrecked the whole coast!”

When we fail to try to understand the diversity of opinion and varied inter[pretations] of fact that exist between persons, we fail to apprehend the testing and the strengthening power of a theology for free persons. It is appropriate to refer to Paul Tillich’s definitions of mind (p. 24, Vol 3, SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY), “Mind is the consciousness of a living being in relation to its surrounding and to itself.”

The mind becomes a human response because of the perceptions brought to it from the world beyond self. A theology for free persons can be trivial and barren if there is no listening to what the people of the world are saying; how one’s associates deal with problems they believe to be either vital or ultimate; how diverse are the assumptions and conclusions that preface and terminate the discussions of similar facts.

The late poet John Holmes had the poets sure touch of understanding when he defined the eleventh commandment, “to listen.” As a somewhat unreformed interrupter from way back, let me suggest that this eleventh commandment may have more real power for individual liberation than some of the original, legendary Ten. How many times have you observed two persons in wordy contention pass each other like parallel lines that never meet, because neither one was listening?

I clipped an anecdote from a Sunday supplement which seems illustrative:

A clerk in a general store was serving a customer. The manager was at a desk some distance away, but he overheard the clerk say, “No, madam, we haven’t had any for a long time.”

Dismayed that his clerk should give way so easily to failure, the manager rushed over to help. “Oh, yes, we have,” he interrupted. I’m sure that if Mr. Johnson here sends a boy to the warehouse, he can locate what you want and have it brought over immediately.”

The lady laughingly thanked him, turned, and left the store.

“Never refuse anything,” he admonished the startled clerk. “Always send out for it.”

“Well, you see,” replied the young man timidly, “she was just saying to me that we hadn’t had any rain lately.”

Whether religious, political, or whatever, if our convictions are so fragile and insubstantial that one does not dare participate in dialogue, then those convictions are built on shifting sands. If our theological believes are so insecurely held, that the eleventh commandment, “to listen” is ignored, then those believes are far advanced in the process of decay.

The consequence of a search for truth and dialogue is the response to a dynamic pulse which will keep us growing as persons.

Change is the most characteristic process we can observe about our universe. Force is in motion and everlastingly causes change. This is the dynamic action, not only of corn and beans, but also of theologies and moral values.

You and I learn from others as we search for truth by dialogue. When the eleventh commandment is obeyed, you learn and I learn. To learn is to change.

Although Joan of Arc may not represent the best illustration because she listened most to her own “voices,” she was one of the prime movers of dynamic change in the medieval world. Maxwell Anderson in his play, “Joan of Lorraine” has Cauchon say, (p. 73), “For Joan has begun a heresy, She appeals from the Church on earth to the Church in Heaven. She does not recognize the necessity for an agent between the individual and its God. And this heresy of hers begins to affect the whole Western World.” This was dynamic change.

There is a declaration attributed to an Appalachian mountaineer, which succinctly, although ungrammatically, comprehends the nature of dynamic change and the reasonable hope it contains, “We ain’t what we want to be, and we ain’t what we’re going to be, but we ain’t what we wuz.”

In truth-seeking, dialogue and dynamic change are the dimensions of a theology for free persons. Progress is not only uneven, but also difficult to find at times. If our theology has identifying values it is the willingness to think and re-think, learn and re-learn. These we accept as our task and recognize as our glory.

One thing more, I have attempted no answers to specific problems today. The sermon may be too theoretical. Some may be surprised that John Dewey, too often caricatured as too pragmatic an educator once wrote (quoted SR 8/15/64 p. 48) ”Theory, in the end, is the most practical.” I put this before us also, for if we thoroughly believe, we will find ways to speak and act on the lively and sensitive issues that are pressing on human events.

A theology for free persons is a most difficult assignment of thought, for you must not only develop your own convictions, but be willing to alter them when evidence and new experience calls for that change. One must be willing to learn as well as teach; to listen as well as speak – and this is a task no less formidable for self-styled “liberals” than for others.

Insert: Am I human enough to acknowledge fact and new experience? That is the search for truth.

Am I sympathetic enough to listen to others and understand their feelings as well as their facts? That is dialogue.

Am I sufficiently open to the basic nature of life to change position or direction when the impact of truth and dialogue demonstrate the need? That is dynamic change.

All discussion about thorny problems and tense issues has a theological base. When one argues for equality for all persons, underneath it is a theology about the nature and worth of the human creature. When another holds back, qualifies his support of constitutional right of recriminations about the necessity of waiting for some rights, a withholding of full privilege for now, he too is revealing his theology about the nature of man. Is man a person from whom freedom, fellowship and human dignity should never have been withheld? If you believe that, then there is and has been an obligation to apply that theology in society. That is why insistence on underlying social justice has been a central plank in pulpit platform holding a theology of man’s worth.

The full achievement of a theology of free persons is a huge task, demanding the most mature attitudes and actions. For most of us this is a reach always longer than our grasp for we do not always assert our freedom; again and again we fail the tests of self-discipline; we shrink from obvious applications of truth. Yet there are reasonable goals for us individual[ly]. In member socieities of our [?] we can add the sound of our ....