Spiritual Values Permeating Christmas

December, 1954
Bridgeport

Christian, in Pilgrim’s Progress, anxious to know the way, consulted Evangelist. “Do you see yonder wicket gate?” asked Evangelist.

Christian strained his eyes to look but was forced to reply, “No, I see nothing.”

“Do you see yonder shining light?” Christian answered, “Yes, I think I do.”

“Then,” said Evangelist, “keep the light in your eye and go directly up thereto – so shalt thou see the gate.”

Most religious liberals understand the cultural universality of the Christmas story; its kinship to and blending of the folk-strains of many religions and tribal memories.

Most religious liberals do not believe that Jesus was God. They believe that a man, Joseph, was Jesus’ father legally, spiritually and biologically.

Despite our rejection of the belief that God came to earth in some special way in the baby Jesus, we can experience and share values of thrilling emotional intensity and demanding ethical drive in the Christmas story.

In his poem, “Nightmare for Future Reference,” Stephen Vincent Benet touches us with ultimate horror when, as a result of the third world war with its smashed cities and pulverized people, the birth rate drops to zero, there are no more babies. “They aren’t being born.”

The candles of Christmas can be festival lights of gladness when we recognize the wonder of life’s beginnings. The story of the baby Jesus batters our hearts. His story is the story of all babies. The soft skin, flower hands, all the ineffable beauty of cradle innocence, make us aware of wonders and creative mystery beyond the power of words to express . Our emotions are painfully sensitive to glorious hopes and shadowy fears.

Then, too, whatever else God may or may not be, he must be at least incarnate in the spirit of love. Babies are born in stables, caves, ranch-houses, and mansions. The universal message of Christmas is that everyone shares in the mystery and power of life and love. In the warmth of Christmas happiness we discover anew that the human family is one. In the sobbing happiness born of creche, balsam scent, carols, candles, and children’s laughter we affirm again that “peace on earth, goodwill to men” is not sentimental nonsense, but the goal of all peoples; and we affirm that we can compress all our worthwhile dreams in a baby’s cradle and illumine them in his smile.

Rev. Carl J. Westman
First Universalist Church
Bridgeport, Connecticut

Transfigured Troublemakers

February 16, 1958
Akron

Stimulated by the remarkable gospel story called the Transfiguration, the subject today concerns transfigured troublemakers. The Transfiguration is one of the stories that we liberals are tempted to dismiss without much consideration because it lacks scientific validation. The astounding miracle is not likely to have been literally true to human experience. Imaginative persons might see the incident as lovely imagery and poetry created by the early Christian community as a testimonial of their conviction that Jesus was the Messiah.

Because Moses and Elijah represented the Law and the Prophets, messianic fore-runners to Christ, the glorious vision included their imposing personalities. Few tolerant persons could quarrel violently with such symbolic interpretations of this miracle story.

However, without being either critical of, or hostile to a poetic interpretation of the Transfiguration, one can also reason that behind the imagery and miraculous vision, there can be found an expression of the provocative fact of human social relations that many persons who are trouble-makers in their own age are crowned with glory and honor by people who live centuries later.

There is another seed of religious development in this gospel story. If we exercise the liberty of reconstruction, perhaps we can see Jesus and a small group, who were his closest friends, gathering in the hills to talk and pray. In the quiet, intense fellowship there would be created a clearer understanding of the cost of a faith which Roman rulers and their collaborators would exert great pressure to suppress. There were old folk-tale beliefs that these quiet hills were haunted by the spirits of Moses and Elijah.

According to the gospels the disciples were afraid. We can begin to understand why fear should stir when they thought they saw Moses and Elijah talking to Jesus.

Moses was the Law-Giver. Although he did not write the first five books of the Bible, he towers above all the heroic figures of Hebrew history. The impact Moses made on his life aid times was so great that three of the world's greatest religions claim him as the Law-Giver and founder of their faith, Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

But we would fail In our understanding if we saw Moses only as the stern teacher who became the embodiment of Law for several great cultures. Moses was also a revolutionist. He struck with violence at oppression. He killed an overseer who was abusing a slave, one of Moses' fellow-Jews. Moses opposed Pharaoh openly, must have conspired revolt secretly, and organized cells of resistance. Otherwise the Exodus from Egypt and the frustrated defeat of a powerful Pharaoh could not have occurred. Moses was a trouble-maker. Yet more than a thousand years later he is one of the figures in the strange religious experience of the Mount of Transfiguration.

Even as Moses was the personification of Law-Giver, so Elijah represents the fearless figure of the religious prophet who refuses to go along with the crowd. Living when the religion of most of his country-men had decayed, Elijah resists popular pressures. This is never easy.

Ahab was then seventh king of Israel. Because it was politically advantageous, he had married Jezebel, princes of Tyre. This Canaanite nation had a cruder, more-primitive religion. The priests of Baal were in the bridal party carrying with them the customs of the religion of Baal. For Ahab, this was politically necessary, or at the very least, convenient. The crowd went along with him; the crowd usually does.

Elijah, however, was determined to restore and exalt the religion of Yahveh, the one Eternal God. Neither Jezebel's fury nor the political maneuvering of the priests of Baal dampened Elijah's courage. He won a spectacular contest with the priests. Even when he had to resort to fight, because his agitation provoked King Ahab utterly, Elijah was conscious that the nation's great need was to find God in simplicity and morality. There was little real importance whether the national political structure crashed or not if the people had lost touch with high religious values.

Elijah was a trouble-maker. Yet nine centuries later he was the second figure identified on the Mount of Transfiguration. The disciples were afraid because, like many of us, they had the feeling that it was better to be a live coward then a dead, revolutionist. They knew that Jesus was a trouble-maker. The story of the vision goes on that they heard a voice through their fear, "This Is my beloved son, -- listen to him." Fear came easily to these disciples. Who can doubt that they nay have had some intimation that this non-conforming leader was a trouble-maker in the eyes of the Roman rulers, even though the poor and dispossessed heard Jesus gladly.

A skilled historian could make a considerable contribution to our store of knowledge and our fund of inspiration if there could be produced a study of how the world has been made better by troublemakers, -- persons who in their time were bitterly opposed, viciously attacked, but whose lasting goodness has been transfigured by time. This is why the jesting definition of the conservative, has rather serious historical realities: "A conservative is a person who worships dead radicals."

The trouble-maker is sometimes considered destructive, non-cooperative, a poor member of "the team." Time may transfigure him. There was a news story recently sent from Warsaw, which told how Poland's Communist rulers were preparing sterner measures to squelch independent writing. In that country if an author wants his work published, he must conform to the party-line. This, of course, is nothing new in the Soviet countries. What is of interest is the comment made by Party leader, Leon Kruczkowski, (NY TIMES, Jan 20, 1958) that "hostile tendencies were coming to the surface, tendencies alien to socialist ideology and exerting a destructive influence over the community."

One does not have to be a prophet, or the son of a prophet to predict that the influences that Polish leadership now calls "destructive" will one day be transfigured and the writings enshrined like the Declaration of Independence, The "Crisis," and "The Age of Reason."

Historically, the converse of the "transfigured troublemakers" is also true many times. The correct, safe, "constructive," position of power may carry with it influences alien to human-kind and civilization may be injured for generations. Bertrand Russell, with characteristic insight and trenchant language describes the conservative career of Germany's famous 19th Century Chancellor:

"Bismarck with extreme astuteness won three wars and unified Germany, The long-run results of his policy has been that Germany has suffered two colossal defeats. These resulted because he taught Germans to be indifferent to the interests of all countries except Germany and generated an expressive spirit which in the end united the world against his successors. Selfishness beyond a point is not wise," whether individual or national.

This is no plea that all trouble-makers will be transfigured, eventually, by history. It is a hope that we will make intelligent distinctions about why a person is a trouble-maker. Governor Faubus and Negro leader, Rev. Martin Luther King, are both trouble-makers. In the first instance I believe there will be no Mount of Transfiguration. In the case of the scholarly, young Negro minister, already faint streaks of the light of transfiguration are beginning to illuminate. Martin Luther King has been the living messenger of the power of love to overcome almost impossible barriers. He too reminds us that there are times to speak words of trouble: "The tragedy of today is not the noise of the bad people, but the silence of the good people ... there is a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds." (quoted Christian Century, 1/22/58).

Some of today's sermon thoughts originated in two books published last year, THE LUNATIC FRINGE, by Gerald Johnson, and THE SQUARE PEGS by Irving Wallace.

Mr. Johnson took his title from Theodore Roosevelt's AUTOBIOGRAPHY. The famed Rough-Rider was describing the "lunatic fringe in all reform movements." Ironically enough Theodore Roosevelt, himself, could be included among the "lunatic fringe," or the "transfigured troublemakers," for he was called a lunatic when "he insisted that the irresponsibility of men of wealth threatened to bring the whole capitalist house of cards tumbling about their ears."

Both these books bring additional bits of evidence to support the contribution of massive trouble-makers who became transfigured like Moses, Elijah and Jesus.

Did you ever hear of Ignatious Donnelly? In 1892 he wrote the planks for the party platform of the Populist Party, He included recommendations for the graduated income tax, a sub-treasury system, restriction of immigration, shorter work week, election of Senators by popular vote, and Government ownership of railroads and communication. Because of these political ideas, Donnely was not only included in the gallery of cranks, but also he was roundly abused as an "enemy of society." Yet today, everything he advocated with one exception is now generally accepted as good governmental democracy in our country.

Did you ever consider how many of the men and women who made significant contributions to humanity's real wealth of ideals achieved were jailed and persecuted? That doughty old social-gospeler, Walter Rauschenbush once said, "When God holds court, he always packs it with humanity as a witness."

The marks of persecution are important evidence. There is a legend about St. Martin of Tours. Meditating in his cell one day, the saint was interrupted by an impressive personage. "Who are you?" asked St. Martin. "I am the Savior." But the saint was suspicious (some say that saints must be in this world), and asked, "Where then are the prints of the nails?" -- and the Devil vanished.

Paul was a trouble-maker on two continents. He was beaten; he was jailed; he was run out of town. Joan of Arc, now a symbol of the right of freedom of conscience, was an object of scorn to the mob and was cruelly executed. Savonarola, the monk of Florence, with uncompromising ideals of honesty, holiness and community responsibility was jailed end then burned at the stake by those who tried vainly to suppress truth and justice. These trouble-makers were transfigured as history began to understand the nobility of their dreams and the courage with which they defended their ideals.

In 1688, England's Glorious Revolution brought to a head all the principles of liberty which had fought for over long centuries, A few years prior to that John Bunyan was imprisoned for refusing to pay lip service to the Church of England. He could have stayed out of jail by giving lip service to the law and holding a mental reservation. But he was a trouble-maker; he believed his right to dissent was more vital than his desire to stay out of jail. While in Bedford Jail he wrote Pilgrim's Progress. This allegory demonstrates that Bunyan was a transfigured trouble-maker. Behind the allegorical imagery of Mr. Greatheart, Judge Hate-Good The Black River, the mires pits and the Golden Mountains is the courageous principle that pure religion in every land has always supported, -- the denouncement of corruption, individual and social, and the holding up of better ways, not only for some vague future, but for now.

George Washington broke the king's law, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, John Murray, and all the rest whose names we revere, were either jailed or would have been if they had been caught. Lafayette and Tom Paine, fighters for freedom in both America and France, were jailed because they refused to tolerate despotism, even in the name of freedom, equality and fraternity.

In any age the majority is not necessarily right. Just because TV outdraws the forum, the study-group or the worship service is no guarantee that salvation for mankind is resident in a 24" screen. There are good laws and ways, -- there are bad laws and ways. To conform to them all, indiscriminately is to resign from the ranks of those who hope to progress. The irritation of the sand in the oyster produces the pearl. It may be the irritation in the body politic, the body religious, [which] produces pearls of progress.

You may have heard of that very peculiar animal, the Lemming, native to Lapland. The Lemming is about the size of a rat and multiplies at a tremendous rate of productivity. Zoologists have observed that at certain times of the year the lemmings start to migrate. Gathered in armies too large to count, the Lemmings, old and young, large and small begin to march. They move in a straight line, -- over mountains, through lowlands. They swim rivers and lakes. None of the lemmings go off by themselves; they all stay as part of the crowd. They pass through towns and eat their way through crops. Bears, wolves, foxes, hawks and other predatory animals attack the moving mass of lemmings constantly, but the countless swarm follows the leader. Multitudes perish on the way, but nothing stops the survivors until the end of the march is reached. More often this is the sea into which they plunge to drown while still following the leader in that straight line.

Only the sourest pessimist would compare the human family to the horde of lemmings. But metaphorically at least, we should be warned. The revival of wholesomeness in our civilization will come from the honesty, courage and vision of the minority, -- perhaps only a few individuals who are pointing the way like the frequently-jailed, and finally sacrificed Gandhi. In the end the few independent thinkers, who may be called dreamers, members of the lunatic fringe, or trouble-makers may be the ones who stand on the Mount of Transfiguration as leaders who have influenced humanity to more worthy goals and higher moral character, though they may not have stayed out of jail or off the cross.

David Hayeman, Universalist Minister, in a radio broadcast told the wonderful story of the Chapel in Leicestershire, England, built in the 17th century, when a good many hopes were at a low tide. A tablet mounted on one of the walls of the Chapel bears this inscription, "In the year 1653, when all things were throughout this nation either demolished or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley, Baronet, founded this church; whose singular praise it is to have done the best of things in the worst times and hoped them in the most calamitous."

The Hebrew prophets were the deepeners and strengtheners of the moral tissue of the culture. Truly they did the "best of things in the worst of times, and hoped in the [most] calamitous." It was easy to see them as trouble-makers in their own times, we will see troublemakers in ours, but we know that in the working out of justice in history, there will be a Mount of Transfiguration for those who have been concerned that the human being should become stronger morally and infinitely kinder to his fellows.

The Healthy-Mindedness of Jesus

December 7, 1958
Akron

More than nineteen centuries ago in the country of the Gadarenes, a crazed man scurried from among the gravestones, prostrated himself before a stranger named Jesus, and pleaded for help, "There are many of us." In our day, that strange story of events on the eastern shore of the sea of Galilee has the power to stir us to consideration of a prime need in our civilization, - healthy-mindedness.

The need for hospital beds, counseling services and other therapies far exceeds the supply. There are many millions among our population in need of psychiatric services, but such treatment is quite beyond the financial resources of two-thirds of the people, -- And this in the United States, richest country in the world.

When one alludes to the "healthy-mindedness" of Jesus, one cannot by-pass those persons who would exclaim, "Jesus - he was a fanatic whose basic mental balance is very much of an open question!" How can a rootless wanderer, a religious enthusiast who announced himself to be the Messiah, who may have rejected his immediate family, who scorned property rights and criticized religious institutions be acclaimed as healthy-minded?

About fifty years ago, a number of doctors in the then new and controversial field of psychiatry, analyzed the gospels, seeking the motives underlying Jesus' words and acts. Somewhat brashly several of these medical men proclaimed that Jesus was a victim of paranoia. The Nazarene, they asserted, had delusions of both persecution and grandeur, and that his ecstatic experiences were those of a mentally-deranged person.

About this time a man, older than most of his fellow-students was finishing his studies for the medical profession at the University of Paris. He was amused, astounded, and angered at glib assumptions and illogical conclusions of some of his medical brethren. This student was unusual, -- he already possessed two earned doctoral degrees. He was a doctor of theology whose book, "The Quest for the Historical Jesus," is still a landmark in gospel studies. He was a doctor of music, whose knowledge, interpretation and rendering of Bach is still unexcelled. But the medical student was forsaking the quiet halls of study. He was leaving the cultured corridors which echoed majestic organ tones. He was motivated by the conviction that his Christian convictions demanded that he be a medical missionary. For his thesis for the medical degree, in 1913, Albert Schweitzer wrote, "A Psychiatric Study of Jesus." This brief study has recently been re-issued by the Beacon Press.

In refuting the allegations of Jesus' mental disorder, Schweitzer effectively pointed out that no diagnosis of this kind would be justly announced without a thorough case history. There was, and is, no case history of Jesus. Furthermore, no patient can be studied in a vacuum. Even as we live in this environment of our 20th century, so Jesus lived in his. In that time, there was nearly universal belief in spirits, -- evil and good. A supernatural Messiah was expected who would bring judgment on men and nations. A captive people longed for release from persecution, poverty, and pain.

In such a setting, the story of the Gadarene demoniac is the illustration illuminating the conviction that Jesus was a splendid instance of the healthy-mindedness in his day, and a provocative example to our age of susceptibility to sickness of the personality.

The Gadarene demoniac was such a powerful psychotic that fetters could not bind him. He had most of the symptoms which indicated madness. In a day which believed that evil spirits were real beings with the power to invade a person's body and possess him, the nameless Gadarene believed himself possessed by many demons. This old gospel story has folk-lore aspects which have added ornamentation to the historical seed. The sick man remained with the gravestones, weeping and cutting himself on the tombstones in his frenzy. He had many signs which would today indicate serious disturbance. Deeply depressed, anti-social, he tore his garments as torment gripped him.

The society of that day, like our own, produced tensions that were too much for some of its members. A captive people subject to the tyranny of a powerful, occupying power, and victims of economic ill-usage by a dominant landlord class, finding grounds for hope only in the comforts of a visionary Messiah, such a group would find many of their number with insufficient inner resistance to powerful fears and shattering anxieties. Speaking of this age, Harry Emerson Fosdick, in the "Man from Nazareth" commented, "Mental ills flourished alike on the outward wrongs that seemed to have no end and on inward bitterness that could see no hope."

We don't know whether Jesus believed in the reality of evil spirits. Jesus was another child of his age, even as we are children of ours, subject to the beliefs which later ages may call superstitions. If Jesus disbelieved in evil spirits, he seemed not to want to argue as much to humor and help the man.

When the demoniac cried, "My name is legion," (there are many of us,) Jesus instructed the spirits to come out of the man.

While our age believes mental illness to be an attitude, -- a personality deficiency, and, sometimes, a physical defect, the alleged cry of the spirits, "my name is legion," suggests some observations about the disturbances we call mental illness.

"Legion" is from the Latin, "legio," - to gather or to collect. At the time Jesus lived in the time of the Augustan emperors, as many as five or six thousand foot soldiers made up a legion.

Under stress, we find our sense of healthy perspective threatened by many strong forces. We are twisted and torn by many pressures pulling and hauling us about, even as the Roman Legion might buffet captive people.

The Legion is regimented. The Roman soldier was under orders, his initiative throttled, his free movement limited to the care of his weapons and responding to the gruff commands of the leader. When pressures get too much for us we may yearn to "escape" from freedom, as Erich Fromm pointed out.

We may even be regimented in the direction of personality illness in an even more alarming fashion. Last week in Chicago the newspapers reported the fifth Annual Conference of Mental Health of the American Medical incidence of mental illness. Commenting that additional research should be launched to discover more about the susceptibility and resistance of the population to mental illness, he said that "mental disease may be communicable, may be infectious from person to person, even nation to nation." Mental illness, -- the name is legion, and may have contagious power and consequently epidemic.

One more allusion to "Legion." The strong loyalty and obedient discipline of the Roman soldiery was produced by external pressure, not voluntary allegiance produced by inner loyalty and integrity. The mailed fist may produce the obedient legion. But personalities responding only because of external pressure may collapse like egg-shells when there is no inner resistance or self-control.

There are many personality perils to which we may be vulnerable, as well as the unknown psychotic of long ago whom Jesus cured. What were the qualities of the healthy-mindedness of Jesus which were so integrated within his splendid self as to mark him as the Son of Man, -- the whole man of the ages who met the turbulence of his environment with the inward assurance that ever since has strengthened weak spirits.

When reviewing the new edition of Schweitzer's "Psychiatric Study of Jesus," Dr. Paul Pryser of the Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas, says, "To me, the internal evidence of Jesus-and-his-biographers shows a good mental health record: love for the neighbor and a positive self-esteem; constructive activity; ministrations to the sick and poor; a looking in the three directions of the past, present, and future; several varieties of love including philia and agape; an ability to show anger when it is useful and necessary to do so; a keen reality sense; and above all a considered non-conformity. What more could one ask for?" (quoted "Pastoral Psychology, Sept. 58")

Now while it is true that the more we look to the sayings of Jesus for pat answers to the specific ethical dilemmas of our time, the more surely he recedes into the shadowy remoteness of his own age, nevertheless the listed categories are universal qualities of healthy-mindedness which confer assurance and inner security to any person in any country. According to physical principles describing the refraction of light, the light-rays of stars are bent as they pass through atmospheric layers of differing intensity; we see the sun on the horizon when it has already set. So it is with the healthy-mindedness of Jesus. The facts of his brief life have dipped below the history's horizon, but the refraction of his way of life illuminates us still.

Think then on these qualities of the healthy-mindedness of Jesus.

He loved his neighbor and esteemed himself. Every teaching of the ancient sages and modern scholars confirms the necessity of the balance between positive conviction of the worth of other persons and positive self-esteem. Whether one labels this quality of life the Golden Rule or not, there can only be personality distortion when either trait is lacking. One who esteems only himself becomes an impossible egoist, -- and is ill. One who hates himself and deliberately cuts himself on the gravestones of self-hate, is also suffering from personality illness. As one reads the fragmentary gospels, there grows the strong conviction that Jesus, who did not hate even his enemies, always reflected the healthy rhythm of an outgoing neighbor who possessed complete inner security. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

His life was one of constructive activity. Of course there is a great deal that we must surmise about the life of Jesus. Most of its details we will never know. But certainly we can be assured that when he suddenly appears by the lakeside recruiting his helpers, that he is strongly conscious of a sense of purpose. Furthermore, he has plans to make the purpose real. "Come with me and I will make you fishers of men." Some of his matchless parables demonstrate better than any journal of events how purpose, pursuit of the ideal and fulfillment were determining motivations in the life of the Galilean. In the parables of the sower, leaven and lump, and the growth of grain to full ear, we sense the interplay of interest and activity in the accomplishment of high purpose.

He ministered to the poor and sick. The healing power of service has saved all of us at one time. When personal fears seem huge, and depression adds thick gloom to our anxieties, is it not true that when we do something for someone else, our personal storms break on us with less damage? Jesus did not serve others in order to feel better. That is no positive motivation for us either, but it is a spiritual law that when any of us serves another's need, acts unselfishly to reduce the weight of another's burden, then an atom of health begins to break up the clusters of our difficulties with ourselves.

Jesus looked in three directions, past, present and future. It is a commonplace [ ] that Jesus had a masterful grasp of the great Jewish culture which nurtured him. He knew history's triumphs and history's sorry days. He was saturated with the ethical imperatives of the prophets and the poetry of the psalms. He looked to the future. The Kingdom of God was coming, "repent." He, [and] many of his countrymen were buoyed up in their troubles by the hope of a better time to come. But neither his appreciation of the past, nor his visions of the future blocked his service in the present. Healing, comfort, forgiveness, comradeship, integrity, sacrifice and meeting human need were demands in the present. If these activities of the present were neglected or violated, the past was but of "antiquarian interest" and the future but idle speculation.

Then, too, there will be no glittering 20 hour week in a future world of atomic wonder and abundance, unless we live in the present and meet honestly and unflinchingly the demands of the present.

The healthy-mindedness of Jesus was also demonstrated by his capacity for several kinds of love. Love is a difficult word in our language. It can run the gamut of meaning from sloppy sentimentality to varieties of aesthetic appreciation. I'm told the New Testament Greek is much more instructive with its distinctions between eros, philia, and agape, -- sensual love, brotherly love, and godly love. Jesus' life did not seem to permit him the love of man or woman. But certainly he knew the joys of his family, he experienced the emotional depth of brotherhood, he exalted in his love for God. These distinctions are needed in our lives too. The closeness of family ties and the obligations of brotherhood are needed universal traits, but the quality of emotion rightfully differs. "Love of God" is a difficult phrase for some, but rightly understood, it is an emotion which embraces both a consciousness of humility in the face of the gigantic, complexity and mystery of creation, and a sense of joy that each of us has the power to open his senses to all this glory.

It is healthy-minded to show anger when necessary and appropriate. If the gospels carry the seeds of accuracy, we can judge that Jesus flashed with anger where people's rights were violated and their sacred ideals trampled. The scourging of the money-changes in the temple reflects an instance of Jesus as an angry man. With all the comforts of our tranquilizing culture, we need the capacity for righteous indignation. An even temper is a pleasing trait, but when anger is needed to call a spade a spade, or an evil an evil, then it is a quality of mental health to express that feeling.

Lastly Dr. Pryser calls a "considered non-conformity" an asset to mental health. The pressures of our age mold us into like images. Our houses, clothes, cars, kitchens show only slight variations from the accepted patterns of culture. Such likenesses may be relatively trivial, really bothersome only to the artistically creative. But conformity to ideas is dangerous to us as persons. To fear to express ourselves, to be afraid of being labeled as holding unpopular opinions, can be corrosive to our inner health. Jesus challenged us all to preserve the health of non-conformity when he asked that most penetrating question, "What shall a man be profited [if] he gain the whole world and lose himself?" Jesus was history's shining example of the non-conformist.

The gospels reveal not a supernatural wizard but an inspired courageous person; not a soothsayer for political decisions, but a model for human character.

When the villagers returned to the graveyard they saw the Gadarene demoniac sitting quietly. "They were afraid." Why? It is perhaps that, (as J.C. Schroeder commented,) in a topsy-turvy frightened world, sanity is more feared than insanity? Perhaps this is why people prefer Jesus as a God to be worshipped, rather than a man to be followed.

Jesus was healthy in mind and spirit. As we have noted, healthy-mindedness is no occult secret, but a way of living with oneself and others in mutual esteem, cooperative service, realistic mental apprehension, love, and honest non-conformity.

Do you recall Gandhi's words:
"It is because there is such a goal, and because there was such a figure as Jesus, that I cannot be pessimistic, but instead I am hopeful and confident of the future, and because his life has this significance and meaning to me, that I do not regard him as belonging to Christianity alone, but rather to all peoples, no matter under what name they worship."

Our Worthwhile Heritage

November 23, 1958
Akron

"Heritage" is a word with the meaning that something valuable has been given by others who have lived in another time. Heritage also implies that the gift is precious, must be cared for and defended. In New England, particularly, there is an atmosphere of reverence surrounding colonial furniture, Paul Revere silver, antique interiors and family trees rooted in Pilgrim times. With all deference to those who cherish these possessions and traditions of the past, it should be pointed out that our essential, most worthwhile heritage has no necessary connection with grandfather's clocks, well-rubbed mahogany, Bulfinch architecture or antique pewter.

This Thanksgiving worship service, 1958, occurs at a time when everyone associating with this church will be asked to testify to their loyalty to the spirit and institutions of liberal religion. I would speak to you of our spiritual, that is, our moral, heritage, because the most valuable principles of the Pilgrim fathers are still vital enough to warrant our sacrificial giving to preserve the institution known as the Church.

Three-hundred and thirty-eight years ago a small group of religious refugees looked hopefully toward the shores of a new land as the Mayflower sailed into Massachusetts Bay. These exiled Pilgrims had launched out on a search for a home where they could worship their God as conscience dictated; where they might live in freedom while constructing their own way of life. This religious odyssey had taken them from England, to Scrooby, Holland, and thence to the New World.

No pleasant prospect awaited these "saints and strangers," (not all of them the most desirable people.) Some of them were bond servants, - vagrants for whom life had become too much in the old world. When we penetrate through the haze of historical halos, we become aware that they were hardly a group from whom we should expect heroic lives. A permanent place for the human family would not have been a reasonable appraisal at the time.

The shores were jagged with rocks. The winder was stormy and raw with the damp that chills, even in the heated, protected homes of today. During the long winter months, disease wiped out person after person, family after family. Starvation, as well as the icy grip of winter, stalked through the little community which was hanging desperately to life on the wind-swept shored of Plymouth.

Governor Bradford has left this pathetic note in his diary, "it pleased God to visit us daily and with so general a disease that the living were scarcely able to bury the dead." It should be a sobering realization that these ragged Englishment were ready to freeze, starve, expose themselves to all sorts of disease and danger in order to be free to follow their RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS. How little we demand of ourselves!

So firm was the commitment of this small band, so precious was the liberty they had come to know in this rigorous wilderness, that in Spring, when the Mayflower sailed back to England, not one of the Pilgrims was aboard. Tears were shed as the sails of the little vessel dipped below the horizon, but those tears were shed on the shores of their new and dangerous homeland.

You all know how when Autumn, 1621, came, these Pilgrims gathered with their new Indian friends. They feasted and gave thanks to God for the strength of His everlasting arms. The feast of Leviticus acquired new meaning, that worship always does, when personal experience is blended with traditions of celebration.

Perhaps next Thursday as we gather at our family tables, we will be reminded of the first Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims. Today, I would like you to consider the message of the church of the Pilgrims, and the principles that initiated the drive of their religious fellowship. These principles marked American life. Should these principles be erased, the consequential events will be sorry times for the important values we hold dear.

The first church building of the Pilgrim Fathers is long since gone. The present stone church is, I believe, the fourth structure. But the original congregation which was organized before the voyage to America in Scrooby, Holland, is still operating under their original covenant. There are unbroken records existing and there has been a ministry without break since Pilgrim times. For over one hundred years the religious fellowship of the First Church of PLymouth, of course the oldest religious group in America, has been Unitarian. In addition, for some years the Universalist society of Plymouth has been federated with the First Church organization.

In the lovely stone church in Plymouth, three notable stained glass windows face the congregation. Those stained glass windows symbolize the most worthwhile heritage. The window on the left shows a soldier, seated his sword in its sheath is held by his left hand. His right hand is on an open book which rests on his knee. The window on the right portrays a minister. The scroll of law is his left hand, his arm rests on the Scriptures and his right hand is raised in benediction or exhortation. The center window, largest of the three, shows the Pilgrims gathered in the cabin of the Mayflower, grouped around the COmpact which they signed before setting foot on the shores of Plymouth.

The first window represents civil liberty. The soldier's sword is sheathed. He is not eager to use it. He prefers to depend on democratic ways, symbolized by his seated position and the open book. Discussion, intelligence, reason, should be our mainstays in the affairs of men. As the descendants of these Pilgrims, "we hold these things to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

The right to speak, the right of gathering together peaceably, the right of trial by jury, the authority of evidence --- all these things are symbolized by that soldier who holds his strength in reserve, but holds in readiness. Liberty is our civil life, the right to defend political conviction, the right to promote the cause of a political party, the right to attempt to persuade others to our viewpoint, their right to attempt the same things with us, -- in these civil rights lie our worthwhile heritage. The secret ballot, the political convention that gathers without fear, even though out of power, the newspaper that is willing to express itself fearlessly, no matter what toes are stepped on, our dedication to the pursuit of the truth that makes us free, all of these are expressed by the first window.

Pilate said to Jesus, scornfully, "what is truth?" Pilate spoke for all tyrannies which see truth as of minor importance compared to power, propaganda, and persecution. The Pilgrims were protecing with their cold and weary bodies the flickering flame of truth, "the truth that will make us free." In this century of tension, perhaps that is the key question. "What is truth?" Does a man have a right to be free to speak, teach, and write? Will the civil liberties born of Pilgrim pioneers, Yankee farmers and merchants, the whole American colonial spirit be smothered in the "black silence of fear," in the last half of the twentieth century? Free institutions, and this church is one, ask that you know and defend civil liberties for the sake of our noblest heritage.

The window on the right at First Church in Plymouth shows the minister with the scroll in his hand, his arm on the scriptures. This symbolizes the religious origin of our most worthwhile heritage. When the Pilgrims gathered for their Thanksgiving feast they were not originating an American holiday. They were following the ancient scriptures of the Hebrews. The verses of Leviticus (23 33/38), which were read, state the rules governing the ancient festival of ingathering. Our religious forbears, probably all peoples everywhere, were almost over-whelmed by the mystery and joy of harvest home. In ancient Palestine, the whole population lived for a week in the open, sheltered only by temporary booths made of Palm branches. The American Pilgrims celebrated their feast in the open air. The historian Lecky remarked, the "Hebraic mortar cemented the foundations of American democracy."

Our loyalty should be stirred by the religious heritage brought unto us by our Jewish and Christian ancestors. It is a proud heritage, indeed. The Hebrews contributed a unique institution to history. THeir whole way of life was tied in with their religion. The Greeks were a notable people also. Their contribution is great also. They had their temples and academies. But their was no connection, necessarily, with what was taught in the temples. The Hebrew, particularly those who spoke with moral prophecy and insight, saw that religion must be a guide to all of one's actions, and their teachings were a democracy of the spirit long before that word had meaning to them. From that determination that religion was important, has evolved our American insistence upon religious liberty. In Ancient Rome, because of the profound conviction of the Jews, they were specifically exempted from the law that required the Romans to worship Caesar as a god. From that Hebrew conviction was born the Christian determination to refuse to allow power to interfere with one's religon and they withstood persecution, -- grew strong under persecution.

The tradition of religious freedom has led to a gradually-growing tolerance. We can never take such gains for granted. We must be ever jealous of our dearly-won right of discovering our religious convictions and holding to them. We must never forget that no one, -- no one has all the truth. Each of us has his share. We must cherish the words of John Robinson, pastor of the Pilgrims, "all truth is God's truth."

Seventy-seven years after the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, a young man was strangled on the public gallows in England for believing in one God. This eighteen year old boy was a Unitarian, and was hanged for questioning the theological term, "god-man," in 1697. The window that symbolizes religious freedom should be a constant reminder that these vital gains have been dearly won and could easily be lost. We need to remember that there were no civil rights in England for Unitarians until 1813. If Universalism had been organized there, then, we too would have been disenfranchised. One could be imprisoned, his property confiscated, for denying the Trinity or the infallibility of the bible. Catholics did not gain civil rights in England until 1829, and the same liberties were not extended to the Jews until 1858. It should not be forgotten too that in Massachusetts, citizenship under Puritan rule depended on church membership. If you were not a member of the established church, you had no vote in public affairs.

On this Thanksgiving Sunday, then, we have no hesitation to proclaim the need for your support so that a free church, jealous of the inroads on religious rights, can continue to grow in strength and influence. Your support is needed for this most worthwhile heritage of freedom to worship one's God, in whatever form, manner or name as may seem right to the individual.

Last, I would challenge you this day with the window of the compact. The Pilgrims gathered in the cabin of the Mayflower, composed and signed the document which you heard about a few minutes ago. In our day of advertising superlatives, it might not have sounded like very much, but perhaps you know the key sentence which is in the direct prophetic line which later produced the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, and other amendments: "we...solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation...and to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought the most meete and convenient for the general good of the colonie..." The Compact should remind us that no gain can be achieved alone. You have sung with your friends, "the more we get together, the happier we'll be." The signers of the compact were not all in full agreement. John Alden was a tradesman, Myles Standish was a soldier, and there were various classes and viewpoints represented by the signers. They knew disagreements would occur and that compromise was inevitable. Some might have to submit to the majority. Yet the compact worked. The colony survived. The American colonies had almost innumerable points of conflict. There were few who believed our government could weld together successfully the thirteen states. Yet the Constitution has worked.

David Lilienthal, who was the director of the TVA, later administrator of the Atomic Energy Commission, has been one of the notable men in high office devoted to the ideal and the reality of democracy. Lilienthal once said, "the grandest phrase in our language is, 'I'll go along with you.'"

We will not always be in agreement about policy in this free church. "I'll go along with you," means that we'll express ourselves freely, but that we compact together to come to a "sense of the meeting," to use a good Quaker phrase. Then, we act together.

We universalists have an obligation to continually acknowledge the truth that is in every point of view; to appreciate the contribution of everyone. This view we must advance not only in religion, but in all the narrower areas of social life.

The history of political union illustrates that while the League of Nations failed, there were lessons learned. The Kellog-Briand pact failed, but lessons were learned. The United Nations has had considerable success. It may fail, but again there will be lessons learned which will enrich and guide a new compact. But compact there must be. Compact to fac[e] the real issues of our day. You know the most vital, - We must put an end to war. No matter how gloomy the predictions, always the challenge of religion, your church is, "We must put an end to war." We must bring in the commonwealth of man. There are universal hopes. The challenge of our day is to find the compact that will bring persons together so that the wonderful phrase will be used by all groups, "I'll go along with you."

Most certainly for Akron Universalists such a measure of freedom and compact is an inescapable dimension to the vitality of our present and future.

Sometime ago I read of a dispatch in the paper about a war that had developed between two hives of bees. As I understand it, the bees depended upon the sense of smell to distinguish friend from enemy. A scientist who specialized in study and knowledge of bee culture, sprayed both hives, and the bees in the hives, with apple blossom bath powder. The war stopped right away, because the bees with their smell organs overwhelmed did not know whom to fight.

There is no super-scientist [that is] going to spray the human beehives with powder that will make us forget our irrational hostilities and our unreasonable selfishness. The only way we as human beings are going to be able to make our behavior smell more sweetly is to learn, like the Pilgrim fathers, to come to compact, to walk along together, learning and doing as we go.

That is most certainly a worthy goal for your loyalty in our world. Without doubt it is the authentic challenge of the free church.

The People of Our Church

September 28, 1958
Akron

Once there was a preacher named Moses. It is said that he complained to God about his congregation alleging that they were stiff-necked and contentious. According to the old rabbinic story, God chastised Moses gently, saying "I have not created them angels, but flesh and blood, fallible human beings. Since they are mortal, it is natural that they should have some of the imperfections and the limitations of flesh and blood, mortal human beings." You are not the children of Israel; I am not Moses. But like them, we too are human with the imperfections of human beings. It is in this vein that I would like to speak.

The nature of the decisions we have been facing and continue to confront are one of a kind which provoke emotional feelings among some of us. If it were possible to be calmly subjective about the decisions which will locate our future church-home, a highly-educated correct guess would be the probable consequence of the best wisdom among us all. But, because we are fallible and emotional. each of us has a reckon with the high tides of feeling that stormy weather brings.

In Enic Bangold's play, THE CHALK GARDEN, Maitland, the Butler says to his employer, "You know I can't stand criticism. Every time a word's said against me a month's work is undone."

Mrs. St. Maugham replies, "We all make mistakes, Maitland. But nothing should be said about them. Praise is the only thing that brings life to a man that's been destroyed."

It is difficult to follow Mrs. St. Maugham's advice as it is easy to develop Maitland's terror of criticism. Nevertheless, the people in our church who seek to maintain the historic reputation of this church as a leader in liberal thought and action must exercise the courage necessary to act in accordance with the best wisdom the majority approve. -- And be able to withstand criticism. It is one thing to decide; it is even more difficult to march to the frontier charted by new decisions.

This is the price of progress. As Victor Hugo commented in LES MISERABLES (pg. 606): "all sublime conquests are, more or less, the rewards of daring. That the revolution should come, it was not enough that Montesquieu should forsee it, that Diderot should preach it, that Deaumarchais should announce it, that Concordet should calculate it, that Aroutet should prepare it, that Rousseau should premeditate it; Danton must dare it." So with us, some must dare it.

The people in our Church who consider, decide, and act are no permanent line of portraits in an unchanging gallery. Thornton Wilder's dramatic masterpiece, OUR TOWN, portrays superbly the temporary nature of individual lives, and the permanence of the human family. He captures for us the glory and pathos in the lives of average people like you and I. We sense also the transience of the trivial and the persistence of the worthwhile.

The people in our Church are like the people in OUR TOWN. A child is born and with gladness he is welcomed and the group counts one more. Man and woman choose to walk together henceforth and the ceremony of marriage adds one more to the families in whose hands is such a major part of our work and worship. A man dies, in his bed or far from home, we count one less and we know the tug of sorrow. Our minds worry with the unanswerable questions and our roster bows before an aching omission. A family moves, -- we live in an age of mobility, -- we are glad for their more important and rewarding task, but regretful that an interested, democratic, liberal family has gone beyond the immediate circle of our church life. A new family arrives. We are glad because we need talent, interest,support. We need the bracing, yeasty ferment of new ideas and we need the happiness of new friends. But because we are human and hurried, we are sometimes tardy in our greeting and reserved in our welcome.

The people in our Church are a moving, changing pageant, never the same today as yesterday, and no tomorrow will be like today, but we walk together on a highway to an unknown future. Sooner or later wee all drop out along the way. But if wee have walked with good-will and understanding, we will know a stronger, happier company of fellow-pilgrims.

To change the metaphor, the people of our church find it difficult, of course, to uproot their organized religious life and journey to a new location. The re-location will be a frontier experience, with all that is implied in hardship and nostalgia for old familiar sights. The tornup roots will twinge us with pain. This, too, is human, and part of our fallibility.

There is anticipation in the consciousness of some of us of such homesickness. This has the power to weaken our resolution and dilute support. Consequently our reason for existence needs constant re-assertion. In our expansion program, full use of our assets may be demanded. In our provision for program, we have agreed on the necessity for larger, better, more modern facilities, particularly for children. Admitting this materialistic necessity of the people of our Church, it is nevertheless true that our undergirding is a matter of faith and ideas. The big idea of Universalism finds expression in program and facilities, but without the big idea, there are better uses for stone, mortar, and wood.

When Alexander the Great (RABBINIC STORIES, William Silverman, pg. 102-3) marched with his army to an African province, the people came out to meet him with golden apples, golden pomegranates, and golden bread. "What is the meaning of this?" cried Alexander, "Do they eat gold in your country?" "Is it not so in your country?" they answered him. Said Alexander, "It is not your possessions I have come to see, but your laws."

The people of our Church will have lost touch with the legacy of the liberal spirit if they stake their convictions on outmoded bricks or a particular street address.

The big idea of Universalism concerns persons: How persons can arrive at religious convictions in both freedom and group solidarity; concerns persons in their ability to learn to revere truth as it has been discovered and as it is being resifted constantly in new experience; concerns the necessity of so living and acting that life on this earth is improved constantly.

You may recall that in Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN, the last act is in the town cemetery. The dead are sitting in chairs watching the living humans. Emily, the young wife of George Gibbs has died in childbirth and is the newest arrival in the cemetery. She has not yet acquired the detachment of those whose passing has not been recent. Emily sobs, "I can't. I can't go on. Oh! Oh! It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. All that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back up to the hill to my grave. But first, one more look. Goodbye world. Goodbye Grover's Corners...Mama and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking ...and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...And sleeping and waking up. Oh earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you." (She looks toward the Stage Manager and asks abruptly, through her tears, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it, every minute?" Stage Manager, "No."

Life is too great to be petty in living it. The people of our Church have the opportunity to realize more abundant fellowship when they remain faithful, even in times of disagreement and stress, to the workable ideals of freedom, fellowship, and human dignity. These are goals that are repressed in Hungary and Little Rock. We would be impossibly vain if we believed religious liberals were the only ones to pursue honestly a better, more meaningful life for human beings. But also we would be incredibly meaner than our heritage if we failed to ask ourselves, "if not us, whom?" "If not now, when?" Van Wyck Brooks said of William Ellery Channing that Channing "was responsible for half the great dreams which stirred nineteenth century Boston." May we not assume responsibility for some of the great dreams of twentieth century Akron?

There is no stigma in differences of opinion about our re-location. It is quite correct to analyze our potential and our possibilities in the light of reasonable choices and expectations. Such decisions require bravery, however, on the part of many of the people of our church. Many centuries ago, Plato defined bravery as the knowledge of what one ought and ought not fear. We need not fear difference; we do need to fear heedless, emotional dissention. We need not fear our future if we defend, protect and diffuse the great ideas of Universalism, wherever we happen to be and no matter how we get there.

The pupils of a rabbi came to him with complaints and fears because evil prevailed in the world. "What shall we do?" The rabbi directed them to a dark cellar and suggested they sweep the darkness out with brooms. This they attempted. The vigorous sweeping disturbed the dust, but not the blackness. When the pupils reported this to the rabbi, he then instructed them to return to the cellar and get angry at the darkness and shout bad names furiously. This too failed. Next, the eager ones were told to go back to the cellar and beat the darkness with sticks, but this violent exertion changed the blackness not at all. When the discouraged pupils returned to the rabbi, he then said, "My children, let all of you meet the challenge of darkness by lighting a candle." When the disciples went to the black cellar with their lighted candles, the darkness disappeared.

So with the people of our Church. We can sweep at darkness, beat it with sticks or curse, but the blackness will remain until we bring the glow of good-will and the light of knowledge to cast out the darkness of conflict and ignorance.

"'A sower went out to sow, and as he was sowing, some of the seed chanced to fall by the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some of it fell on rocky ground, and where there was not much soil, and it sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, but when the sun came up it was scorched and withered up, because it had no root. Some of the seeds fell among the thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it out, and it yielded no grain. And some of it fell on good soil, and came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold.' And he said, 'Let him who has ears, be sure to listen.'"

As It Began To Dawn

April 6, 1958
Akron

The story of the women in the garden is one of the most hauntingly lovely of all to be found in religious imagery and mythology. Somehow the words communicate to us something of the sweetness of early flowers, something of the thrilling smell of new life bursting through wintered crusts.

As it began to dawn the blackness of night was overwhelmed by our brother, the sun. But there had been more than the blackness of night. There had been desperation of the spirit, far more shadowed than kindly, unfolding darkness of the evening.

The disciples had not stood firm in the disaster. Judas had sold out. Peter had shown the white feather. The rest of the disciples had scattered into the safety of the nameless, faceless mob. There, perhaps, the disciples had to endure the abject humiliation of hearing the cry, "crucify him," while their fright kept them quiet, even though there might have been a frantic wish to shout "hosanna" again, but they had failed.

They had held back in terror, while an unknown man, perhaps his name was Simon,had helped carry the cross. Some traditions hold that Simon was a Negro.

The Messiah had not been able to save himself. There had been no miraculous heavenly rescue. The suffering prophet from Nazareth encountered painful death as women wept and soldiers gambled. Jesus, like all others met death, - "the most absolute, the most irrevocable, the most majestic, and the most unknown of all experiences of life."

If you believe the orthodox Christian theology, your faith is that this man was God and that he rose from the dead. Furthermore, you believe that this rising from the dead was the climax and the proof of the fore-ordained Christian scheme of salvation.

Many of the religions of the ancient Asiatic and Mediterranean worlds have claimed that their savior was killed and then resurrected from his burying place. Most of these religions have long since been but historic and religious memories. Christianity with an almost identical faith in a dying-rising savior God still survived.

But for me, Easter has more profound levels of meaning than the "old story of salvation." Jesus has radiated a brighter light down through the centuries than the forgotten saviors of other faiths, not alone because of ecclesiastical, political, and cultural reasons which combined to make the historic Christian church the most remarkable institution of Western culture, but due also to the vitality of the free spirit of Jesus which has survived all attempts to smother the fertile core of his moral leadership in harsh or over-emotionalized supernaturalism. The Jewish disciples buried the real Jesus after the crucifixion, and later, devout Christian followers resurrected a Savior God.

But Easter has other, and for me, more profound levels of meaning than the old story of salvation.
The Jewish Passover added precious dimensions of human freedom, and the dignity of persons to the ancient rites of Spring. In a similar way, the Christian Easter has constructed a more significant value system around the beliefs ancient people cherished about dying savior gods.
It began to dawn on people that no power can restrain a great influence, - not even death. The spirit of Jesus was triumphant over the grave. It began to dawn on people that the cross was not final. "It was not an accident, but the law of human progress." (Reuschenbush).

Alfred North Whitehead once commented, "I hazard the prophecy that that religion will conquer which can render clear to the popular understanding some eternal greatness in the passage of temporal fact."

The disciples gathered new courage when it dawned on them that the cross was not the end, but the beginning. Suppose the voice of Jesus had been silenced, they could testify by word and deed to the redemptive power of a religion that knew no boundaries of nationality, race, or clan. Even though the hand of Jesus would move no more in healing or benediction, the disciples would work, could help, could be a redeeming influence.

As these realities began to dawn, the cowards found courage. Before long some of the enemies became friends and supporters. Paul is the superb illustration of one who found that hate could be removed from his life by the "expulsive power of a new affection," love.

As it began to dawn, just a handful of men and women began a task of telling people everywhere what Jesus meant to them. They withstood torture, scandal, and privation. They lost public approval as they spoke with conviction and emotion about what the teachings of Jesus could mean to a world in danger of going astray.

We have never yet grown big enough in spirit to adopt the teachings of Jesus as a way of living. The way of love, forgiveness, of not judging others has always seemed to us to be too "idealistic", and not "practical".

So instead of following Jesus in living faithfully by certain standards of conduct, during Christian centuries people have more often spent their time arguing whether Jesus was God, a member of the Trinity, a man, a demi-god, or whatever. Harry Adams Hersey used to tell the parable about this sort of debate. A group of people were in a valley surrounded by seemingly impassable mountains and cliffs. If they stayed in the valley it seemed certain they would perish. Then someone noticed a man standing halfway up on a ledge on one of the cliffs. Soon they realized that he was pointing a way out for them which would save them from the destructive influence of the unhealthy valley, would save them from themselves. Instead of following the way out of their difficulty, they began a long and bitter debate about whether the man on the cliff had come down from the top or up from the bottom.

Easter is a triumph of the human spirit over tragic defeat. But it is nothing short of immoral fantasy to believe that Easter celebrations are going to save the world. Survival depends on the intelligent enactment of the principle of the oneness of the human family. We see a world in fear of atomic destruction; a world that may now be a victim of disease caused by the unhealthy influence of the radio-active products of bomb-testing; a world that because it refuses to accept the simple facts of life about the brotherhood of man, is in danger of tearing itself to pieces.

The notorious Polly Adler once said bitterly, "When society doesn't understand a problem, it conveniently forgets all it preaches about the brotherhood of man." The world is always tempted to sacrifice morality for power; the kingdoms of this world are faced continually with the choice of mastering materials or being enslaved by them; the people of this world are always exposed to the glittering seductive lie that immoral means can produce moral results.

Max Lerner called attention to the American myth of John Henry. John Henry, the giant hero is a man of unsurpassed strength. His achievements parallel the tales of Paul Bunyan. Yet John Henry broke his heart when he tried to compete with the monstrous strength
[next 250-300 word cut out of sermon handout]

The disciples discovered that death could not hold the spirit of Jesus. The doors of the tomb were broken as his teachings became clearer to them. Although they experienced terror, cowardice, guilt, these devastating experiences proved to be a purifying crucible out of which came new courage and new affection.

It began to dawn on them, as it will dawn on our world some day, that one death for a great cause, is of infinitely higher value than the many, dingy, [remaining section cut out]

Religion With Reservations

January 12, 1956
Akron

During certain busy seasons if you wish to travel by air, you will not get far or fast unless you have reservations. Religion is just the opposite. The more reservations you hold, the shorter spiritual distance you will travel. You may not get off the ground.

Consider that story-teller’s masterpiece, the vivid tale of Namaan the leper found in 2nd Kings (5). Elisha the Hebrew prophet is a miracle worker who because of his intercession with Yahweh is responsible for the miracle which transformed the leprous Syrian warrior to one whose flesh was “like that of a little child.”

This story is a reminder that there was no common belief among our religious ancestors that there was only one god. God was god of Israel only, to be worshipped only on the soil of Israel. The existence of other deities seemed to be taken for granted. Each nation had its particular god whose national supremacy was accepted. Thus, the Syrian Namaan, standing on the Israeli soil which had been carted to him, becomes a convert to Israel.

But, says Namaan, “when I go into the house of the god of another nation, Rimmon, there I will bow the knee.”

Namaan accepted his new religion with reservations. He worshipped Yahweh, but still bowed knee in the house of Rimmon. Whether Namaan ever came to regret this safety-first policy, history does not disclose. There is some relevance, however, in considering the consequences of religions with reservations.

The early Christian communities were organized by Peter, Paul and the others. Considerable courage was infused as well as the beliefs about Jesus. The early Christians soon found their deep religious convictions tested in at least two ways.

Christianity was not very old when rival sects began to preach and teach strange variations of the Christian scheme of redemption. Although some of the cultish ideas permeated Christian doctrines, by and large Pauline Christianity (which is not the religion of Jesus) triumphed over the philosophical movements known as Gnosticism.

The primitive Christian communities also encountered the occasional, but ferocious persecutions of the Roman Caesars. The martyrs could have survived if they made one small concession. They would have maintained their Christian gatherings if they had just been willing to scatter incense on the imperial chafing dish and mutter a prayer to a self-deified Caesar. A mental reservation could have been made as the lips chattered the invocation. But these courageous religious radicals would not do this. They were torn by beasts in the arena and crucified on flaming, oil-soaked crosses, but would not divide their allegiance to the one god they believed revealed in Jesus.

Their intellectual rivals, the Gnostics, had no such single-mindedness. Basilides, a leading Gnostic philosopher, said that “it was permitted to throw incense on a pagan chafing dish and mutter a prayer to Caesar with a mental reservation.” Historian J. H. Allen remarks that this reservation might have preserved Basilides’ life, but the “doom of Gnosticism was sealed.” A religion with reservations did not persist, -- and will not now.

Western civilization generally apprehends the dimension of time as linear, rather than circular. While history does not repeat itself, there are some startling similarities. Proposing what may be some modern parallels of bowing the knee in the House of Rimmon or throwing incense on Caesar’s chafing-dish, I would like to ask the question, “If our religion is valid, what shall we do to make it persist?”

In our country religion supposedly is in the midst of its most influential and prosperous period. Church building construction has reached record levels with the end not in sight. It is popular to be pious. Billy Graham drew a larger crowd to Yankee Stadium than Casey Stengel and his Yankees ever did.

But serious questions are being asked. The December, 1957 COSMOPOLITAN carries a fascinating article by T.F. James. Consider just one or two of many salient comparisons made in this feature. These are provocative in considering to what extent Americans are the most religious people in the world, -- with the most reservations.

Four-fifths of Americans questioned in one survey said they believed the Bible to be the revealed word of God, but only 35% could name the four gospels, and 56% could not even name one. In another survey it was discovered that 80% believed that Christ is God, but when asked to rate the one hundred most significant events in history, the birth of Christ came fourteenth, tied with the discovery of the x-ray and the flight of the Wright brothers at Kittyhawk, NC. “Probably the most significant was a poll in which Americans were asked whether they felt religion was ‘very important.” A vast majority said it was. Then they were asked, ‘Would you say that your religious beliefs have any effect on your ideas on politics and business?’ Fifty-four percent said, ‘No.’” This prevailing sentiment of religion with reservations cuts across the boundaries of all major religious bodies, Protestant, Jew, Catholic. The statistics apply to all.

Not only may the so-called religious boom be a bubble made fragile by reservations, but also religious aberrations are growing rapidly. Usually these strange cults which have such wide appeal can be lumped together as “cults of re-assurance.” Mr. James tells us of the 1814 representatives of such positive thinking movements as Religious Science, Divine Science, Church of Understanding, and Science of Mind, who gathered in Washington to exchange happy thoughts and annihilate negative ideas. Among their activities was the Telegraphic Word Prayer game, in which players used the initials of a negative statement to make a positive one. For instance, “My Life is Miserable Since John Left Me” became “Much Love is Mine so Joy Leads to Miracle.” (I’ll take Scrabble.)

To consider another shibboleth of our times, to my way of thinking, it is either deceitful or immature to ring changes on the “dangers of materialism.” Homes, food, heat, medicine, hospitals and hymnbooks are “material” things. But in America we have stimulated what seems to be a never-ending appetite for luxury goods and shiny gadgets which are far more vital to many people than religion. Bernard Baruch says that if America ever crashes, it will be in two-tone convertibles.

Jack Mabley, columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal, devoted a column to our voracious appetite for luxury goods. Quoting Vance Packard, author of The Hidden Persuaders (which should be required reading for liberals), Mabley called attention to such facts as these: Ten Billion advertising dollars are spent each year to persuade us to buy certain products. We are brain-washed to feel dissatisfied with a year-old car or three-year old appliance. An analysis of products advertised nationally indicates (says Mabley) that “by any standard of measurement we are becoming obsessed with material things. No one person or agency is to blame, but certainly we are in critical need of a re-examination of our objectives. American kids are growing up with their goal in life as security, a home, a car, hi-fi set, out-door barbecue. Russian kids want to become scientists. Six times as many Mexican kids as Americans have a life ambition of service to their nation.”

Now to a comfort-loving fellow like I, there is nothing wrong with good automobiles, charcoal grills, and suburban living. However, the concern arises when there looms the possibility that we are willing to cast aside the true values of our Judeo-Christian civilization as it evolved toward democratic living and ideals.

Prime Minister Nehru said a few days ago, “The United States and Soviet Union are today more like each other than any two countries... the similarity is based on the faith the people of these two countries have in power, science, and technology. They both bow down to the machine.”

If Prime Minister Nehru speaks with wisdom and insight, then indeed the religious boom which should exalt the great values of individual freedom, self-sacrifice, and spiritual dedication is held with reservations indeed.

Obsession with luxury gadgets may be only a symptom of an anti-religious infection which may have a stronger clutch on us than we think. George Bernard Shaw once said, “We do not judge a man by the confession of his lips; but we judge him by the assumptions upon which he habitually acts.”

There is some evidence that there are basic changes occurring in America’s character. Such valuable studies as David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd and William H. Whyte Jr.’s The Organization Man point to trends which are moulding us in the likeness of Basilides and his Gnostics, rather than in the spirit of the early Christians who held their religion without reservation.

There are noticeable differences in the present generation of college students, for example. All sociological studies have limitations, but at least they represent some wide-spread attitudes. A profile constructed of college students indicates that they are “gloriously contented,” “unabashedly selfish,” “they cheerfully expect to conform to the status quo.” Although these students assert that they value loyalty, honesty, and sincerity, it is generally found that systematic academic cheating is common. The average student feels no political responsibility. In fact he is politically illiterate. They express a “need for religion,” but “do not expect this religion to guide and govern decision in the secular world.”

These students are symptomatic of much of the whole adult American world. We are directed by the trends of the times. We seek to place moral foundations under “group harmony” even at the expense of freedom, integrity, and individuality. A common example is the TV commandment which retains or cancels programs because of popularity only, without reference, generally, to talent or cultural contribution. Evidence can be found where you live to support the frightening fact that the real Protestant ethic of fellowship with freedom is in danger of extinction.

We no longer get excited over grave moral issues. We look upon world affairs as though the issues of our day were a boring stage presentation, rather than realizing that Dulles, Sputnik, U.N., atomic fallout, and all the other provocative elements in life today are centering in on our lives, our children and the continued existence of our society which outwardly cherishes the great religious values.

One of Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln stories seems appropriate. Lincoln told about the pioneer wife who, seeing her husband wrestling with a bear, shouted, “Go to it husband. Go to it, bear.” Her neutrality indicated reservations in her scheme of family values.

What can we do about it? We could exhort self-righteously, -- not an agreeable solution. We could say, “Oh, the pity of it all,” and go on being fat and happy. I, for one, could not honestly say that I yearn either to be torn by wild beasts in a Roman arena or live without modern plumbing. Yet, I believe that it is possible to cherish a religion without having along with it the kind of reservations which will seal its doom as Gnosticism was doomed. Alfred North Whitehead said, “to give up solving problems because they are difficult, is to give up thinking.”

Liberal religion is one religion, at least, to which we can yield devotion.

We prize individual contributions to human knowledge and accept individual interpretations of human experience. The effort is to gather loyalty to religious values which have been critically examined, rather than those which have acquired current popular acceptance. Neither unanimity nor even general agreement are absolute goals.

Our whole civilization needs to reach a level of maturity where individual creativity accepts wide diversity. On the occasion of the recent royal visit to these shores, another minister quoted the Duke of Edinboro [sic] as saying in Ottawa, “I don’t pretend to understand the stresses and strains, the pushes and pulls which people living in industrial communities have to put up with, but I know one thing. Man has got to remain in charge of the industrial monster he is building.”

The best part of the Hebrew-Christian religious heritage is a challenge to high human causes. To keep that precious heritage as a dynamic rhythm in our lives, there must be a continued re-assertion of its most radical insistence: Individual rights enfolded in a moral, spiritual community where the spirit of Jesus will prevail, rather than doctrines about him. (Ethical passion, not continuous comfortable compromise)

To achieve this we will not be able to keep to the morally neutral position of John Bunyan’s Mr. By-Ends who “never went against the wind and tide and was most zealous when religion goes in silver slippers (and) people applaud.”

History presents some stern disciplines if we but read its pages. There was one a great nation. The whole world talked about the wonders of its luxury, the brilliance of its jewels, the fashion and quality of the clothing. This nation was the most powerful of the world, with only one serious rival – a disciplined nation of strength and power. These luxury items became more frequent as the generations passed. This was a nation, which because of its opportunities and outreach, had created a melting pot of different people. Strikingly enough, this nation for several hundred years had been members of a great religion which worshipped one god.

As wealth, magnificence and power increased, poorer government became the rule. Successive leadership became weaker and more deluded. There came a time, the historian tells us, that this remarkable and glorious empire of Persia “choked on its own luxury, - an empire which already believed in one god, but did not survive long enough to witness the birth of Jesus. (Judgment of God???)

The future of our world lies in realm of the unknown future. To the extent, however that each of us maintains our highest religious convictions without reservations, we will be living at our best and for the best.

Worship

November 20, 1957
Akron
Originally Bridgeport February 21, 1954

(HASTINGS) phases: Anointing, Asceticism, Atonement, austerities, baptism, celibacy, chastity, communion, confirmation, confession, consecration, dance, deification, devotions, devotional literature, expiation, fasting, feasting, human sacrifice, hymns, images, idols, initiation, mysteries, oaths, ordeal, penance, pilgrimage, prayer, priest, priesthood, processions, prophecy, propitiation, purification, sacraments, sacrifice, secret societies, tabu, totemism.

--- There are wonders to worship ----- There are weaknesses to worship

There must be many weaknesses in an organized worship because there are so many persons who are consistently absent. There is the story about a man who asked an acquaintance, “why don’t you go to church?” “Too far.” was the answer. Then the second man inquired, “Why don’t you go?” and the answer was, “We live next door to one, and I hate to get all dressed up just to go that little way.”

In a story of the Virginia Colony of 1611 (Behold Virginia, by Willison) there is told the story of how the workers in the colony were compelled to attend church twice a day under military escort. After the bell “had tolled the last time, the (sentinels) searched the homes and commanded everyone who was able to walk to go to church right away. After the last had entered the church, the Captain of the Watch locked the doors and laid the keys before the Marshall, who then called up the roll – and woe to him who was absent without excuse.”

Many church leaders are proclaiming that the United States is the most religious country in the world, and furthermore that we are in the midst of the greatest revival of religion in our history. If this is so, there must be great weakness in worship, for during this so-called peak or religious consciousness, the national average would demonstrate that less than 1/3 of all church members are in their pews on Sunday. The ultimate in advertising weakness in worship is the church that has the slogan, “every Fourth Sunday is go to church Sunday.”

On the other hand there must be strength and wonder in worship because the converse proposition can also be stated, “why do so many people go to church?” We do not have to leave our homes to get the news; we can speak with our friends just by lifting the telephone; we can listen and see religious services through the airwaves; there are countless other and more glamorous attractions to capture our attention and money on Sunday and no longer are there soldiers whose duty it is to round us up and escort us to morning worship.

But worship has enough power so that in some neighborhoods the home-owners object to a new church because the church traffic, crowds, and noise would destroy the residential character of the neighborhood and interfere with their privacy. (Not a thrill for liberals).

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“Let righteousness pour down as a mighty stream.” When you read your N.T. again, count the number of times that Jesus conducted a worship service. “We will now chant Psalm 8!” Isn’t that a striking thought – if Jesus didn’t conduct worship services, why should we? Jesus thrust upon men’s consciousnesses the need for love and service. His whole life was worship. Even Paul, with all his submerging of the religion of Jesus, insisted upon right living and real faith, rather than the performance of ritual acts.

These germinating ideas which are at the heart of worship are the clues to the weaknesses, but also to the wonders of worship.

We no longer offer gifts on an altar in the old sense. But many people come to watch someone else worship, as in olden times people watched the priest slay the animal. One of the most devastating criticisms of the lack of depth of persons in responding to worship was made by a TV comedian. Henry Morgan remarked that he went to church with a friend. As they were coming out Morgan was impressed by the apparent fact that his friend had not felt a thing as far as that worship service was concerned.

Then Morgan went on to say, “Most people go to church the way they go to a filling station. They drive in Sunday morning and say to the attendant, ‘fill her up!’ They expect a full tank of grace. While waiting, they fall asleep and they wake just in time to have the attendant check the tank for the milk of human kindness. They throw a tip into his little basket and leave, figuring they have got enough to last all week. With most of them it runs dry before Sunday night. What they forget is that it is not only last year’s model, but that each year it suffers more and more spiritual depreciation.”

Henry Morgan’s parable has kinship with the criticism that is made at times of persons leading worship (SS and church). You have heard it

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You will find great weakness in worship if you come merely to be entertained. There was a time, perhaps, when the church service offered the most fascinating entertainment. The preacher might have been the most eloquent voice available. The organ and choir the best music, the Sunday clothes the most recent fashion parade. If that was ever true, it certainly is not so now. Let’s face it, -- in terms of entertainment, the church cannot compete with Sullivan, I Love Lucy, Wyatt Earp, the $64M question, Fight Night on television, Bishop Sheep, Elvis Presley or the Cleveland Browns.

There are persons who seek diversion when they attend church. They feel some sort of detached power when watching others worship; they find places where their particular prejudices are tickled rather than challenged; they manage to discover a preacher occasionally who is an entertaining performer. But the real wonder of the worship experience is lost when such are the attractions.

So much for some of the weaknesses of worship. But the worship service is still at the center of organized life of most churches. If there were not some values of deep intensity available, this would not be so.

Paul in his address to the Athenians in the market place, says, “[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitations. They should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, ... for in him we live and move and have our being.” Paul is saying that we are made for worship. If this be so, when worship becomes weak and flat, then we are denied the full flavor of that which is an essential part of ourselves.

The custom of weekly Sabbath was a development in religion. At first worship coincided with the seasons, when man had reason to be more aware of the mysterious powers that surrounded and enfolded him: seedtime, harvest, the shortening and lengthening sun. But the custom of one day a week set apart for worship had a dual purpose.

First of all it was to be a day when man should consider their creation and existence, when they reflect upon the mysterious, divine source of being. At the same time there was the purpose of a day of needed rest for weary bodies. To overlook either of these functions today is to deny the satisfaction of needs which the human being has recognized for hundreds of generations. Sunday, for many, has become a day of recreation. Too many times the other function is overlooked – that it is a day of RE creation also.

We cannot capture for ourselves the wonder of worship unless there is a renewal of reverence. In spite of the aroma of piety that is popular today, is not reverence a disappearing emotion? How often are we caught up by the holiness of the world that veritably our breath is taken away? Yet we miss so much when we hurry reverence out of our lives. Reverence is something that captures us, -- sometimes with the beauty of a flower, the glorious colors of a sunset, the smile of a child, the calm tragedy of aged life for whom the sands are running out, or the power of the fellowship of worship which runs from “heart to heart and from hand to hand.”

It was said of ancient Israel that Solomon’s temple was such a revered holy place that “all people longed to come there for pilgrimage and worship.” Psalm 84 which begins “how amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh crieth out for the living God. Yea the sparrow hath found a house and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my king and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will still be praising thee.”

The psalmist expressed the longing of the people of the outlying regions for the opportunity to worship in the Temple. Such a pilgrimage meant so much to them that they envied not only the priests and attendants, but even the sparrows which nested there.

But we cannot hope to the feel the edge of such deep religious feelings unless we renew the spirit of reverence. The conviction persists that there is something more penetrating than habit or social pressure in the great ceremonies of life which the church and the synagogue celebrate: birth, bar-mitzvah, confirmation, church membership, marriage, death. The church is the framework for the celebration of life.

There are people who do not need the regular practice of worship at a set hour each week to plunge to the depths and climb to the heights of this religious spirit of reverence. They can go by themselves by the river’s brink, or in the forest and come to that awareness of beauty, order, and creation which is beyond words. But most of us need the regular habit of worship to condition our emotions, to participate in that feeling which combines in thrilling intensity, joy, sorry, tragedy, and hope. If we enter “into his gates” with hope fullness and teachableness we can learn to appreciate inwardly (in the words of C F Von Weizacher) “body and soul are not two substances, but one, (it is) man becoming aware of himself in two different ways.”

Such may be the reward of reverence illustrated in the gospel according to Luke when it is said of Jesus that “when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said “the kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or Lo there! for behold the kingdom of God is within you.” Such an awareness is the wonder of worship.

But worship, whether kindled by a babbling brook, or conditioned by the regular habit of being one of a company of worshippers, cannot rest with the spirit of reverence as a detached, vague, feeling.

Worship, reverence, must be keyed to life itself. The philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined religion as the “attitude of viewing all our duties as divine commands.”

Worship is one of those rare opportunities each of us has to be completely honest with himself. You do not have to be in tune with the preacher to meet yourself as you really are. One man leaving a church said to the minister, “I want to thank you for the sermon, it did me a great deal of good.” The minister was pleased and remarked that not always did he know if his sermons reached people. The worshipper smiled apologetically and said, “I wasn’t speaking about your sermon. I left you a long way back. I was speaking about the sermon I preached to myself after I stopped listening to yours.” You can’t wash the new car in church, you can’t catch up on the housework, -- but there are a few places so well suited for grappling with the real problems, wrestling with the tensions that make us fearful, arrogant, rash or enraged.

It has been said about Immanuel Kant, whom we quoted, that he formed the habit of “thinking about his problems while gazing at his neighbor’s weather vane; and when the neighbor removed it from his building, Kant considered suing him because he claimed its absence interfered with his work.” The weather vane had become the trigger to his thinking.

When a person comes to group worship trying honestly to see himself as he really is; and his fears and hopes for what they really are; then worship can be a healing function of the spirit and the worshipper will go on his way clean and rejoicing. And that’s the wonder of worship.

Lastly, but primarily, worship can create wonder when it is related to conduct. John Murray Atwood emphasized that worship is a way “of winning a man to certain principles and implanting them.” Unless the spirit of worship improves conduct, or holds a person fast to high principles and noble duties, then it is of little purpose, In his words, “day by day, in the common round and in emergencies, if we are going to do well and faithfully, meet the danger, perform the hard duty, do over the oft-repeated tasks, we reach up unconsciously for perseverance, for fidelity, for patience, for courage, for determination, for good-will, for integrity, for love – for God, and find ALWAYS when we do, if we attend to the experience, that there is an upward surge of emotion that enables us to carry on. He girds us when we know it not.”

The Hebrews in the great devotional literature of the psalms, asked, “What does Jehovah require of his worshippers?” In Psalm 15, there is illustrated the temple liturgy performed at the door. The pilgrim asks, “who can worship at the temple?”(1) The priest answers (2-5) those who are honest and righteous, truthful, who refrain from gossip and slander, who do not harm their friends, do not insult neighbors, do not despise the reprobate, who honor those who fear the Lord, who keep an oath, who do not take interest.

Was this not demonstrated in the life of Jesus in the story of the temptation? Jesus resists powerful and seductive temptations to use his time, power to conduct himself so as to glorify himself. Jesus calls on those inward reserves of patience, courage, determination and integrity. He resists the temptation in a mighty tide of moral resistance, and when he does, we are told that Lo angels ministered unto him.

That is the wonder of worship.