Prayer

April 29, 2001
Sarasota

July 29, 2001
Port Charlotte

The Meaning of Prayer in Human Experience, updated from March 20, 1960, Akron

The first stimulus to this presentation occurred when there popped up on my computer screen a story about a father teaching his daughter Caitlin the Lord’s Prayer. She pronounced each word carefully. Coming to the end, she prayed, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some E-Mail.”

What is the meaning of prayer in human experience?

If you become irritated to hear such words as prayer, Lord, [or] God, it is OK to tune me out. I have been reliably informed that sometimes a better sermon is heard when one tunes out the pulpit – that is, what one preaches to oneself However, some Scotsman, I do not know if it was David Hume, Thomas Carlyle, or my old friend and mentor, Angus MacLean, who once said that in times of much trouble or peril, even the atheist is permitted one wee prayer.

The second stimulus to this talk was an article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune on January 2, 2001, indicating that many older Americans use prayer to ward off stress. “According to the study, prayer is used more often than exercise, heat, relaxation techniques, humor, or herbal remedies to maintain overall health.” Another sentence from the article, “Seniors who prayed or used other spiritual treatment were also found to use more positive and self-reliant coping strategies.” Is that what prayer is, a ritual or spiritual sedative, Prozac for the mind? A coping mechanism?

The followers of an obscure religious sect in the Far East pray as they stare at their own reflections in a mirror. Is that what prayer is? The contemplation of one's own image?

When Albert Schweitzer was making his third voyage to Africa in 1929, a violent storm occurred while he was busily writing the last chapter of his book on Paul the Apostle. Because the ship pitched too violently for him to write at the little desk in his cabin, Schweitzer kept himself steady while writing by kneeling down with his writing board on the bunk, his feet wedged against the bulkhead. The steward happened to come in, and seeing him in this position said at once, “Oh its not quite as bad as that yet, sir.” Is this what prayer is, assuming the posture and saying the words of prayer when dangerous events seem to threaten our lives and welfare?

Let me repeat an anecdote I told in the LEAP class a few weeks ago. John Greenleaf Whittier once asked Ralph Waldo Emerson what he prayed for. “When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows, and look out at the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive and that I live so near Boston.” Is that what prayer is, thanks for being alive and gratitude for being in a particular geographical location?

Prayer means so many things in human experience that perhaps case studies of some famous prayers may enable some greater grasp of the meaning of prayer. These prayers are not reported on a chronologically progressive basis, but rather we will ado a little moving back and forth historically.

There is a “show me” prayer, variously attributed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and Rousseau:

“Oh God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.”

St. Augustine in his earlier years could not control his erotic passions and could not live a celibate life. His notorious prayer: “Oh God, save me from sin, but not quite yet.”

Nearly two thousand years before that self-serving prayer, Moses experiencing depressing adversity, prayed in this wise, (Exodus 32/32):

“Alas this people has committed a great sin in that they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now, if thou wilt, forgive their sin; but if not, pray blot me out of thy book.”

About 80 years ago, the minister of the Universalist Church in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who, when requested to deliver the prayer at the inauguration ceremonies of the city government, spoke in so candid and unusual style that his prayer created a sensation state-wide, even nationwide. Dr. Levi Moore Powers, a minister of unusual courage, intellectual power and social passion prayed like this:

“We pray for the retiring mayor. He might have done better and he knows it and now we are sending him to the state house. Help him to be the representative he may be and ought to be.

“We pray for those who must guide our city in the coming year. There is Alderman Daniel Marshall. You know what a good fellow he is and how everybody likes him – the most popular man in town, though there are those who say he needs a stiffer backbone. If that is so, Lord, give him what he needs, and if it is a lie, help him to refute it.

“Then there is Alderman Johnson who needs thy help, Lord. This is a new job for him. But everybody speaks well of him and many who did not know him voted for him because those who know him best said he was all right. May he end this year with this good opinion confirmed and increased.

“Most of all we pray for him honored in being chosen mayor. But we have given him a hard job, Lord. You know very well that the laws of this city have not been well enforced. May he accept this responsibility and not only do his duty, but insist that all those responsible to him do their duty as well.

“Not alone for those we have chosen do we pray, Lord; we pray for ourselves. We confess, Lord, that we are a logy, grouchy set of citizens, most of us. We no sooner elect men to office than we find fault with them. Help us to see that good citizenship is an all-the-year job that cannot be delegated to others.

“We pray for the voters of this city; there are some too lazy to vote but not to lazy to grumble. Bless them. We pray for the citizens who want good streets, good schools, good fire and police protection and good health officers but who wish other people to pay their cost.

“We pray for the business men whose votes are always determined by the expectancy of special favors for themselves. Bless them, if you can. We pray for those who believe that all laws should be enforced except the laws which they do not like or which, if enforced would trouble them.

“We pray for the comfortable who do not care for anything so long as they are left at ease.

“We pray for the political managers who swap votes and sell out their friends and let bad candidates go unopposed.

“We pray for the ministers who say what it is pleasant to hear rather than what is true. We pray for all connected with the newspapers who openly advocate civic righteousness and secretly promote crooked politics.

“We pray for the lawyers who use their knowledge to help those who wish to evade the law and so enable themselves and others to get something for nothing.

“We wish, O God, that these people might be blessed, but perhaps we are asking too much. It may be that the only thing you can do is to let them go to hell.

“Increase our love and devotion to our city. May we be zealous of its good name and prosperity. May wealth, happiness, intelligence and character so increase that the proudest boast we can make shall be that we are men and women of this city. Amen.”

Father Joseph Manton, a Roman Catholic priest of the Redemptorist Order, was one of New England’s most skilled and eloquent preachers, with a radio program that not only his fellow Roman Catholics listened to, but also many others who admired his magnetic speaking skills. I listened whenever I was in the area.

About forty years ago on St. Patrick’s Day, Father Manton delivered the invocation at the breakfast honoring Robert Briscoe, then Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ireland. It was a rare occasion in Boston, when that city so strongly touched by Irish immigrants and even now, the country’s most typical Irish-American cultural area. The piquancy of that St. Patrick’s Day feast was increased by the wonderful fact that Lord Mayor Briscoe was Jewish.

Here are Father Manton's words at that St. Patrick’s festive occasion:

“Almighty God, our good and gracious Father, we find ourselves a bit bewildered this morning. You know that the first President of the Irish Republic was a Protestant; the present Lord Mayor of Dublin is a Jew; the news is going around that the Lakes of Killarney belong to a Yank; and historians keep whispering in our ears that St. Patrick was a Frenchman.

“Help us then this morning to hold high the brimming cup of hospitality to a good and great man and to greet him not as a stranger but as a treasured friend. And, dear God, stay the man up with monumental patience as he heroically endures a hundred toastmasters from here to the West Coast who will gaily imagine that the very fillings in their teeth are fragments of the Blarney Stone, as they ring all the obvious changes on a Jewish Mayor of Dublin. Help the poor man not to be banquet-weary of all these glib attempts to paint a green beard on Moses, or by the end he will be seeing little leprocohens.

“Deliver him, O Lord, this real Irishman who risked his life for the land he loved, from any professional Irishman (with an angle) – there are mercifully very few – but spare him even these; the sham shamrocks, the bogus bogtrotters, the synthetic Sinn Feiners, and especially the extravagant psycho-Patricks who love too loudly through a green haze an Ireland that never was.

“Finally, dear God, bless this man, our friends; and his meal, our food and today let the blessings come down generously even on the English muffins and the orange juice, so that, having broken our fast at the top of the mornin’ we may rise to thank You from the bottom of our hearts. Amen.”

From the indigenous tribes of this continent, whom the European invaders named, “Indians”, came this prayer, “Great Spirit, may I not judge my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.”

Then there is a notable prayer uttered nearly 800 years ago by the man whom some have described as the only Christian since Christ, St. Francis of Assisi:

“O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.”

Then there is the 17th century Nun’s Prayer, found in a religious house in Gloucestershire, England:

“Lord, Thou knowest better than I know myself, that I am growing older and will someday be old. Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody’s affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all, but Thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.

“Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others’ pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

“I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessening cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

“Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a Saint – some of them are so hard to live with – but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so. Amen”

In dealing with these prayers of human experience, there is no analysis of the origin and evolution of prayer. Prayer began with attempts at cosmic bribery as well as cosmic communion. Primitive persons thought God or the gods could be cajoled, bribed or persuaded. Many people today still believe that.

But these prayer examples, as widely different in attitude as in historical placement, deal with some of the meanings of prayer that can touch the sensitivities of our personal experience. No one who has experienced shattering tragedy or terrifying injustice can blame Job’s wife for her prayer of condemnation, “Curse God and die.” There are times when under the overwhelming burdens of events that seem utterly unjust, our prayers are neither thankful, interceding nor adoring. They are protests of indignation. This experience of anger against the cosmos is one of the meanings of prayer, too. It is a vehicle which asserts that the human being has rights of protest.

The prayer of Moses is another aspect of the experience of prayer. Moses had tried to lead his people in ways he believed good; he had tried to persuade them to the worship of Yahveh and to abandon idol worship. When he encountered their falling away from the high ideals and good practices, Moses’ prayer faced facts. Moses felt responsibility for those he was leading. He did not say, “O God I have not made an image like these sinful people.” He prayed, “forgive their sin or blot me out of thy book.” In such self-honesty and sharing of responsibility prayer exalts even moments of sorrow and disillusion.

When Levi Powers shocked and astonished those gathered at the Gloucester inaugural, he illustrated vividly prayer as an experience of social power. He did not pray for the prophets of Israel, but for the politicians of Gloucester; he did not quote the children of Israel about their sins, but bluntly prayed that Gloucester men and women in the 20th century would face up to the conditions of good citizenship. Prayer can be a relevant experience. Unless it is relevant, it is probably idle exercise. Whether in the meditations of solitude or the eloquence of public invocation, prayer as a meaningful experience must be relevant to the condition of the individual and the well-being of all.

hi the third act of Hamlet, Claudius has a brief soliloquy while waiting for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Two lines of that soliloquy apply:

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below
words without thoughts, never to heaven go.”

Father Manton’s prayer at the breakfast for the Lord Mayor is an appealing example of another aspect of the prayer experience – graciousness. Prayer can illuminate the quality of our experience with words and ways that might be embarrassing in direct dialogue. Prayer helps us build bridges between our differences so that our encounters in human affairs are gentle and appreciative with a proper leaven of laughter.

What can we learn of the Native American’s prayer to the Great Spirit? Be careful in judging other people before you know what they have had to deal with.

A religious columnist reminded his readers that the prayer of St. Francis to console rather than be consoled, to love rather than be loved, is a marvelous example of movement from the passive to the active, “We love, we serve, we give.” It occurred to me last night, thinking back to Don’s fine sermon series on the meaning of life, that those six words aren't too shabby a definition of life: We love, we serve, we give. The older I get, the Nun’s Prayer speaks to me more and more directly. I believe it speaks to everyone who, for example draws a social security check. For sure, I need to heed the precepts and advice of that prayer.

A few years back, I was in someone’s house who kept a shelf of National Geographies. Pulling one out at random, I found an article about which I took extensive notes.

In former years a fishing fleet sailed annually from Portugal to the Grand Banks. During the season, the fishermen fished from dories; then worked back on the vessel slitting and salting the catch. Danger was commonplace and hard work the daily routine. On one of these voyages, Antonio Rodrigues Chaloa, a good doryman from Oporto, was separated from the vessel by the closing in of fog. When a gale came up, Antonio was blown far from the vessel. When five days passed, the captain and shipmates gave him up for lost – one more good man who had gone down to the sea in ships, never to return. Then on the fifth day, Antonio’s dory came into view. So exhausted was he that he had to be lifted from the dory to the vessel. An observer on the voyage asked Antonio about the long, lonely days and nights of danger, storm-tossed and fog-bound. “What did you do?” Antonio replied, “I prayed. I did what I could. Then I prayed and thought of my wife and seven children back in Portugal. The compass was out – that’s why the fog got me. Then during the storm, I anchored and rode to the wind, using my oars to keep the dory headed into it. Often I had to bail for my life when the heavy seas broke over. I was afraid, for my anchor line was only a piece of rope. If it broke, I would be drifted off the banks and out in the open straits. Then I knew I’d be finished.

“But the anchor rope didn’t carry away. I had to row plenty, to keep the dory headed to sea. I made a bit of shelter with the sail. I ate raw cod and I drank the fog moisture wrung out of my woolen cap.” That was all he said after rowing five days and four nights against a gale in order to keep a fourteen-foot dory headed to windward in waters of the Arctic Circle.

He prayed, but he kept the dory headed into the wind. Prayer must include the will to struggle as well as be thankful.

William Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, England (I believe he died in 1954), once said, “Prayer gives a man the opportunity to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his Maker, but himself.”

Whether called prayer, meditation, inward determination to focus mind/emotion/ethic, or coming to terms with oneself, or seeing ourselves as we are contrasted to what we could be, whether or not addressed to a particular god or gods, the experience can be one of illumination, communion with the highest we know, a confident step toward mysteries never to be fully revealed and a confrontation of our human condition in all its grandeur and all its misery. It does not matter whether the experience occurs in church, in solitude on one’s knees, striding a busy street, celebrating a public occasion or working at some needed service. The experience will sharpen our consciousness of essentials, recall us to those vital things of most value to living and touch us with both the knowledge and the mystery of the great tides of life in which we are all engulfed.

The Meaning of Prayer in Human Experience

March 20, 1960
Akron

The Meaning of Prayer in Human Experience

What is the meaning of prayer in human experience? The followers of an obscure religious sect in the Far East pray as they stare at their own reflections in a mirror. Is this what prayer is, the worship of one’s own ego? When Albert Schweitzer was making his third voyage to Africa in 1929, a violent storm occurred while he was busily writing the last chapter of his book on Paul the Apostle. Because the ship pitched too violently for him to write at the little desk in his cabin, Schweitzer kept himself steady while writing by kneeling down with his writing board on his bunk, his feed wedged against the cabin wall. The steward happened to come in, and seeing him in this posture, said at once, “Oh, it’s not quite as bad as that yet, sir.” Is this what prayer is, assuming the posture and saying the words of prayer when dangerous events seem to threaten our lives or welfare?

Prayer means so many things in human experience that perhaps case studies of some famous prayers from both ancient and modern times may enable us to secure some greater apprehension of the meaning of prayer. These prayers are not reported on a chronologically progressive basis, but rather we will do a little moving back and forth historically.

There is a “show-me” prayer, variously attributed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Voltaire, Paine and Rousseau:

“Oh God, if there be a god, save my soul, if I have a soul.”

Nearly three thousand years before that prayer of theological sophistication, Moses, experiencing depressing adversity, prayed (Exodus 32/32):

“Alas, this people has committed a great sin in that they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now if thou wilt, forgive their sin; but if not, pray blot me out of their book.”

Robert Sherwood in his great drama, “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” re-created a prayer voiced by Lincoln on the prairie at the bedside of a sick child:

“O God, the father of all living, I ask you to look with gentle mercy upon this little boy who is here, lying sick in this covered wagon. His people are traveling far, to seek a new home in the wilderness, to do your work – work, God, to make this earth a good place for your children to live in. They can clearly see where they’re going, and they’re not afraid to face all the perils that lie along the way. I humbly beg you not to take their child from them. Grant him the freedom of life. Do not condemn him to the imprisonment of death. Do not deny him his birthright. Let him know the sight of great plains and high mountains, of green valleys and wide rivers. For this little boy is an American and these things belong to him and he to them. Spare him, that he too may strive for the ideal for which his fathers have labored, so faithfully and for so long. Spare him and give him his father’s strength – and give us all strength, O God, to do the work that is before us. I ask you this favor, in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, who died upon the cross to set men free. Amen.”

More than forty years ago, the minister of the Universalist Church in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who, when required to deliver prayer at the inauguration exercises of the city government, spoke in so candid and unusual a style that his prayer created a sensation. Dr. Levi Powers, a minister of unusual courage, intellectual power and social passion, prayed like this:

"WE PRAY for the retiring mayor. He might have done better and he knows it and now we are sending him to the state house. Help him to be the representative he may be and ought to be.

WE PRAY for those who must guide our city in the coming year. There is Alderman Daniel Marshall. You know what a good fellow he is and how everybody likes him - the most popular man in town, though there are some who say he needs a stiffer backbone. If that is so, Lord, give him what he needs, and if it is a lie, help him to refute it.

THEN THERE IS Alderman Johnson who needs thy help, Lord. This is a new job for him. But everybody speaks well of him, and many who did not know him voted for him because those who know him best said he was all right. May he end this year with this good opinion confirmed and increased.

MOST OF ALL we pray for him honored in being chosen mayor. But we have given him a hard job, Lord. You know very well that the laws of this city have not been well-enforced. May he accept this responsibility and not only do his duty, but insist that all those responsible to him do their duty as well.

NOT ALONE for those we have chosen do we pray, Lord; we pray for ourselves. We confess, Lord, that we are a logy, grouchy set of citizens, most of us. We no sooner elect men to office than we find fault with them. Help us to see that good citizenship is an all-the-year job that cannot be delegated to others,

WE PRAY for the voters of this city; there are some too lazy to vote but not too lazy to grumble. Bless them. We pray for the citizens who want good streets, good schools, good fire and police protection and good health officers but who wish other people to pay their cost.

WE PRAY for the business men whose votes are always determined by the expectancy of special favors for themselves. Bless them, if you can. We pray for those who believe that all laws should be enforced except the laws which they do not like or which, if enforced, would trouble them.

WE PRAY for the comfortable who do not care for anything so long as they are left at ease.

WE PRAY for political managers who swap votes and sell out their friends and let their bad candidates go unopposed.

WE PRAY for the ministers who say what it is pleasant to hear rather than what is true. We pray for all connected with the newspapers who openly advocate civic righteousness and secretly promote crooked policies,

WE PRAY for the lawyers who use their knowledge to help those who wish to evade the law and so enable themselves and others to get something for nothing.

WE WISH, O God, that these people might be blessed, but perhaps we are asking too much. It may be that the only thing you can do is to let them go to hell.

INCREASE our love and devotion to our city. May we be zealous of its good name and prosperity. May wealth, happiness, intelligence and character so increase that the proudest boast we can make shall be that we are men and women of this city. Amen."

The occurrence of St. Patrick’s Day last Thursday is a reminder that within quite recent years, Father Joseph Manton, a Redemptorist Priest who is one of New England’s most skilled and eloquent radio preachers, delivered the invocation at the breakfast honoring Robert Briscoe, then Lord Mayor of Dublin. It was a rare occasion in Boston, when this city, so strongly touched by Irish immigrants and even now perhaps America’s most typically Irish-American cultural area, greeted the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The piquancy of the occasion was increased by the wonderful fact that the Lord Mayor Briscoe was a Jew.

This was Father Manton’s prayer:

“Almighty God, our good and gracious father, we find ourselves a bit bewildered this morning. You know that the first President of the Irish Republic was a Protestant; the present Lord Mayor of Dublin is a Jew; the news is going around that the lakes of Killarney belong to a Yank; and historians keep whispering in our ears that St. Patrick was a Frenchman.

“Help us then this morning to hold high the brimming cup of hospitality to a good and great man and to greet him not as a stranger, but a treasured friend. And dear God, stay the man up with monumental patience as he heroically endures a hundred toastmasters from here to the West Coast who will gaily imagine that the very fillings in their teeth are fragments of the Blarney Stone, as they ring all the obvious changes on a Jewish Mayor of Dublin. Help the poor man not to be banquet-weary of all these glib attempts to paint a green beard on Moses, or by the end he will be seeing little Leprecohens.

“Deliver him, O Lord, this real Irishman who risked his life for the land he loved, from any professional Irishman (with an angle) – these are mercifully very few – but spare him even these; the sham shamrocks, the bogus hogtrotters, the synthetic Sinn Feiners, and especially the extravagant psycho-Patricks who love too loudly through a green haze an Ireland that never was.

“Finally, dear God, bless this man, our friends; and his mean, our food and today let the blessings come down generously even on the English muffins and the orange juice, so that, having broken our fast at the top of the mornin’, we may rise to thank You from the bottom of our hearts. Amen.”

A final example of a notable prayer was uttered more than 750 years ago by the man whom many have described as “the only Christian since Christ,” St. Francis of Assisi:

“O Divine Master, grand that I may not so much to seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.”

In dealing with these prayers of human experience, there is no analysis of the origins and evolution of prayer. Prayers began with attempts at cosmic bribery, as well as cosmic communion. The primitive thought God could be cajoled, bribed or persuaded. But such motives should have no role in our kind of world.

But these prayer examples, as widely different in attitude as in historical placement, deal with some of the meanings of prayer that can touch the sensitivities of our personal experience. No one who has experienced shattering tragedy or terrifying injustice can blame Job’s wife for her prayer of condemnation, “Curse God and die.” there are times when under the overwhelming burden of events that seem utterly unjust, our prayers are neither thankful, interceding, nor adoring. they are protests of righteous indignation. This experience of anger against the cosmos is one of the meanings of prayer, too. It is a vehicle which asserts that the human soul has rights of protest.

The prayer of Moses is another aspect of the experience of prayer. Moses had tried to lead his people in ways he believed good; he had tried to persuade them to the worship of Yahveh and to abandon idol worship. When he encountered their falling away from the high ideals and good practice, Moses’ prayer faced facts. Moses felt responsibility for those he was leading. He did not say, “O God I have not made an image unto thee, like these sinful people.” He prayed, “forgive their sin or blot me out of thy book.” In such self-honesty and sharing of responsibility, prayer exalts even moments of sorrow and despair.

Robert Sherwood’s beautiful Lincoln prayer illustrated another poignant aspect of the meaning of prayer in human experience. Those who have known the sorrow of those pioneer parents can participate in Lincoln’s passionate petition. In a new, adventurous, beautiful country of fertile plains, who can not pray that the boy will grow strong and wise in a country challenging humans to the utmost of their skills and resources? Life is so fine. Yet that prayer of petition concludes with acceptance and resolution, “Give us all strength, O God, to do the work that is before us.” Prayer means acceptance.

When Levi Powers astounded and shocked those gathered at the Gloucester inaugural, he illustrated vividly prayer as an experience of social power. He did not pray for the Prophets of Israel, but for the politicians of Gloucester; he did not confront the children of Israel with their sins, but bluntly prayed that Gloucester men and women in the 20th century would face up to the conditions of good citizenship. Prayer can be a relevant experience. Unless it is relevant, it is probably idle exercise. Whether in the meditation of solitude or the eloquence of public invocation, prayer as a meaningful experience must be relevant to the condition of the individual and the well-being of all.

Father Manton’s prayer at the breakfast for the Lord Mayor is an appealing example of another aspect of the prayer experience – graciousness. Prayer can illuminate the quality of our experience with words and ways that might be embarrassing in direct dialogue. Prayer helps us build bridges between our differences so that our encounters in human affairs are gentle and appreciative, with a proper leaven of laughter.

Halford Luccock reminded his readers that the prayer of St. Francis to console rather than be consoled, to love rather than be loved, is a marvelous example of movement from the passive to the active, “We love, we serve, we give.”

A fishing fleet sails annually from Portugal to the Grand Bank. During the season, the fishermen fish from dories; then work back on the vessel slitting and salting the catch. Danger is commonplace and hard work daily fare. One of these expeditions, Antonio Rodrigues Chaloa, a good doryman from Oporto, was separated from the vessel by the closing in of fog. When a gale blew up Antonio was blown far from the vessel. When five days passed, the captain and the shipmates gave him up for lost – one more good man who had gone down to the sea in ships never to return. Then on the fifth day, Antonio’s dory came into view. So exhausted was he that he had to be lifted from the dory to the vessel, but he was smiling and after rest was fishing again that same day. An observer on the voyage asked Antonio about those long, lonely days and nights of danger, storm-tossed and fog-bound. “What did you do?” Antonio replied, “I prayed. I did what I could. Then I prayed and I thought of my wife and seven children back in Portugal. The compass was out – that’s why the fog got me. Then during the storm, I anchored and rode to the wind, using my oars to keep the dory headed into it. Often I had to bail for my life when the heavy seas broke aboard. I was afraid, for my anchor line was only a piece of rope. If it broke, I would be drifted off the banks and out into the open straits. Then I knew I’d be finished.”

“But the anchor rope didn’t carry away. I had to row plenty, to keep the dory headed to sea. I made a bit of shelter with the sail. I ate raw cod and drank the fog moisture wrung out of my woolen cap.” That was all he said after rowing five days and four nights against a gale in order to keep a fourteen foot dory headed to windward in waters beyond the Arctic Circle.

He prayed; but he kept the dory headed into the wind. Prayer must include the willingness to struggle as well as to be thankful.

Whether called meditation, prayer, inward determination, coming to terms with oneself, or seeing ourselves as we really are and as we should be – prayer is an experience of illumination, communion with the highest we know, a confident step toward mysteries never to be revealed and a confrontation of our human condition in all its grandeur and all its misery. It does not matter whether the experience occurs in solitude on one’s knees, striding a busy street or working at some needed service. The experience of honest prayer will sharpen our consciousness of essentials, recall us to those vital things of most value to living and touch us with both the knowledge and the mystery of the great tides of life of which we are a part.

The Strengthening Agreement

November 20, 1960
Akron

This sermon celebrates our American Thanksgiving by reviewing some of the principles and deeds of the Pilgrim Fathers, tendering particular notice and honor toward that document which was their strengthening agreement – The Mayflower Compact.

Adjoining historic Burial Hill, at the head of Town Square in Plymouth, Massachusetts is an Italian Renaissance style church which houses the oldest, continuous church congregation in America. Since the Pilgrims landed from the Mayflower, there has been an unbroken record of parish affairs and a continuous ministry. The church building itself is the fourth in the series of buildings that have been constructed by this continuing congregation.

When you enter the church, you will observe three famous stained glass windows in the channel. The left window portrays a soldier, seated; by his left hand his sword rests in its sheath; his right hand likes on an open book on his knee.

This is the window if civil liberty. The soldier prefers democratic procedures, symbolized by his seated posture, the sheathed sword and the open book. Discussion and intelligence should be the mainstays of the social process. One has the right to speak, to gather peaceably, to have trial by jury, to elect by secret ballot, to gather in political convention without fear, to write an editorial conveying one’s convictions, even though that expression might be unpopular or radical. All these principles which have been grown under both support and struggle in America are symbolized by that soldier whose strength is ready to be used.

The right window depicts a minister holding a scroll of the law, with his arm on the scriptures, indicating our religious heritage. When the Pilgrims held that first American Thanksgiving feast, the autumn after that first dreadful year, they were not originating a holiday. The Indians who gathered with them also had a long history of celebrating harvest home. The Pilgrims found scriptural authority for harvest festival in the ancient Hebrew book of Leviticus (23 33/38). All peoples everywhere have been deeply moved always by the mystery of the harvest and the wonder of growing things which nourish the life of man. The ingathering festival, when thanks are offered to the creator for harvest abundance, is among the universal ceremonies and feelings of the human family.

In the center of this triumvirate of stained glass masterpieces is the Window of the Compact. The figure of civil liberty and the figure of religious celebration flank the central window which shows the Pilgrims gathering in the cabin of the Mayflower to sign the document known as the Mayflower Compact.

Because we live in an age of advertising superlatives when the “colossal” is merely mediocre and the average is described as super-colossal on a wide screen, yet, the language of the Compact may seem somewhat restrained and antiquarian, but like many old treasures, its quality endures. More important, the Compact is the original instrument of democratic government on this continent and from its key sentence one can traces the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights:

“We solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one 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 most meete and convenient for the general good of the colony.”

Those who signed were not identical in their ideas – John Alden was a tradesman, Miles Standish a soldier and the people were of various backgrounds and classes. As George Williston pointed out in his provocative account of the Pilgrims, SAINTS AND STRANGERS, there were not only the Pilgrims from Holland, but also some of the passengers and crew were undesirables -- “strangers” -- recruited from the London streets by the company which financed the Pilgrim enterprise. But “Saints” and “Strangers” alike found in that Compact a strengthening agreement, which not only continued in strength and dignity as it fortified those principles which later received constitutional form, but also foreshadowed a strong strain of liberal thinking in the centuries to come. Let us consider again from whence the Pilgrims came and the course they took.

When Henry VIII too the Church of England out of the Roman Catholic Church, free religion and the rights of church members to govern their affairs was by no means an automatic by-product of that separation. Even the Cromwellian revolution maintained a church hierarchy in the form of the presbytery. In the sixteenth century, Robert Browne revolted against the idea of religion being enforced by civil law. Secretly he taught what today we refer to as the congregational form of church government. Believing that a church should be separate from the State, he insisted that the magistrate should have no coercive power over it. Each local church should be complete and bound only by voluntary allegiance to larger church bodies. Because of the implications in the Reformation doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers” -- that all persons were equal before God – it followed that all members were equal in the church, with the same voting rights and the same privilege of holding office. Furthermore, Browne insisted that the whole purport of the New Testament vindicated this view of Church and State and represented gospel sanction for the equality of members.

One of the consequences of Browne’s efforts and thought was that the movement which is sometimes called the “Scrooby, Leyden, Plymouth” group. Vital to it was John Robinson, who never set foot on the shores of the new world, but without him the voyage could not have been organized, or the spirit maintained that carried the group through disastrous trials to their goal of permanent settlement.

About the year 1600, scattered persons from Scrooby and nearby towns on the East Coast of England gathered in a church organization with this covenant, “We, the Lord’s free people, join ourselves, by a covenant of the Lord, into a church-estate in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all his ways, made known or to be made known unto us, according to our best endeavors.” (Can you not see how one statement in the recent statement of principles of the Universalist Church could grow from this covenant, “we believe the authority of truth, known or to be known?”)

William Brewster, well-born and educated, was one of the dynamic spirits and ruling elder. Alert for heresy, the civil and religious authorities soon came after the small, reforming religious group and Brewster was jailed. The Pilgrims determined to escape to Holland but were betrayed by a sea captain in their first attempt. They eventually got away to Holland in 1608 after much suffering and persecution. Holland was not an entirely strange land for the group, as already two Separatists movements from England had established themselves in Amsterdam. But as these groups were characterized by internal dissension, the Scrooby group decided to go elsewhere. So they went to Leyden, textile center and home of a famous university. Soon John Robinson was elected pastor and the group grew in numbers. The Pilgrims were a welcome addition to the Leyden community and the Dutch magistrates remarked [on] their high qualities of conduct and character.

But some of the Scrooby Pilgrims were uneasy in Leyden. They still longed for the sovereignty of the English flag, even though they had been persecuted by English authorities; they missed the mother tongue and the opportunity to rear their children in English schools. Even more as William Bradford commented, “They were inspired with a great hope and inward zeal for the propagation of the gospel in the remote parts of the world, a mighty work in which they might be the stepping-stones for those who might follow in the paths where they had led.”

Permission to settle in the new world was not easy to obtain. Finally, a company of London merchants, known as the Adventurers secured the patent for the land and supplied capital.

John Robinson decided to stay in Leyden, but his contribution was creative and enduring. He came to believe strongly in the separation of Church and State. When the group was preparing to leave for the New World, he composed a letter of farewell and instruction and included his counsel that they should become a “body politick, using amongst yourselves civil governments,” and this became a part of the Mayflower Compact. He fortified their determination when he urged, “it is the first duty of man to inform his conscience aright; and then to follow the direction it gives.”

You know how the Pilgrims sailed August 1, but when the Speedwell proved to be unseaworthy, a second start, Sept. 2, was necessary with all the passengers aboard the Mayflower. Two and one-half months later, they reached Cape Cod bay after an arduous voyage. On November 11, 1620, they gathered in the cabin, signed the Compact and thus created the constitutional instrument which was their rule of government in the new world.

The Pilgrims represented a liberal element that softened the harsh and intolerant Puritanism which was to settle other parts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During the long ministry of Francis Kendall in the early nineteenth century, the Church became Unitarian. And for the last generation, The First Universalist Society has combined with First Parish Church.

The Compact was the first organized instrument of democracy produced in the colonies. From its recognition of the equality of persons has grown principles embodied in the town meeting form of civil government, the separation of church and state, toleration of heretical views and recognition of conscience as the final arbiter of man’s decisions.

There is a further consequence: The conjunction of the Thanksgiving festival with the celebration of the Mayflower Compact suggests a revealing insight into human growth in wisdom, courage and religious maturity.

The feast of harvest home is as old as the ages far removed from the earliest histories, when primitive man expressed the great surge of emotions he felt when the mystery of the fertile soil, the growing season and the time of harvest provided him with the roots and fruits which fed the family. With no laboratory knowledge of the germination, root, bud, blossom and fruition, early man felt abounding gratitude for the mysterious providence which enabled him to survive and eventually to plan, plant, and cultivate. In all places and times it has been good to sing praises for the beauty and fruitfulness of the earth.

But the agreement of the Compact, together with the ancient feeling of thankfulness for harvest home, proclaims something else about man. Man cannot be fully satisfied with a full belly only. In order to survive, food is the most primary substance to secure and sunsure [sic?]. The history of man clearly indicates that where food is unobtainable, high ideas of morality or spirituality are submerged in a flood of hunger pains. This is a fact of human existence, call it materialism or what you will, but people have to have something to live on before they reflect and act on ideas worth living for.

But as man in the more fortunate areas has been able to provide at least a minimum, subsistence level of necessities, he has been turned to other things. The Pilgrims in the cabin of the Mayflower agreed to a way of government which provided that laws were to be established by the body politic – that is, by the people themselves. They had committed themselves to self-government, asserting that man must be equal before the law and free before his God.

The human pilgrimage of man provides no unqualified assurance of man’s ability to grow in wisdom and stature. History has dark corners of evil when inhumanity, intolerance, unspeakable cruelty have provided considerable testimony to the weakness and moral inadequacy of the human being. But there has been a gradual refinement of ideas; certain values of freedom and human dignity have been emerging; and the religious festivals of mankind increasingly emphasize the better moralities that are beginning to be prized in the human venture. Thanksgiving is not only gratitude for the abundance of nature, but re-assertion and re-statement of the inalienable rights to worship according to conscience and to be equal before civil government. Christmas is not alone a theological proposition that sinful humanity could only be redeemed by God taking form and paying the sin-sacrifice for all men. Christmas has become more profound and poignant in its emerging theme that all human life is valuable. All babies whether born in the lacquered cradles of the wealthy or the poor straw of a stable, are of supreme worth.

Most ceremonies are ancient, but always there is needed the growth of principle, the re-evaluation of what is, in the light of what should be, a continuing recognition of advancing truth to refine and protect the best of the human venture. John Robinson in his farewell address to the Pilgrims at Leyden, said it best in his famous prophecy of a religion dedicated to advancing truth, “The Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from his holy word.”

Advancing Science – Retreating Reverence?

September 18, 1960
Akron

Is there a conflict between the modern mind and the ancient emotion of worship? In our Akron area, persons are exhorted to participate in tabernacle religion because it is “old-fashioned Holy Ghost” religion. Thousands attend and support these movements enthusiastically. I am not concerned today about what is happening in the tabernacle – whether it is authentic worship, or a social phenomenon of a nostalgic group. But most persons who have been stirred by the honesty and sensibility of liberal religion have also now and again wondered wistfully if common-sense and plain ritual have not missed the “many-splendored thing” of real piety.

Most Universalists believe that the method of science is an enlightening guide in the discovery of truth. Science is not a storehouse of revealed truth, final and complete. Science is a method, an attitude toward probabilities, a tool by which we learn. Science is a living discipline which seeks out the problem, gathers information germane to it, tests relationships and assumes an hypothesis or theory.

When you drive over the High*Level bridge, you are no over-anxious, ordinarily, that the bridge will collapse or suddenly melt. You trust the engineers who have accumulated reliable structural knowledge and experience. You have faith that the steel-maker, surveyor, and bridge worker have developed sufficient skill and intelligence so that the bridge will resist the stresses and strains and we motorists daily can cross safely high over the Cuyahoga Valley.

The combination of open-mindedness, persistence, accuracy, initiative and fidelity to demonstrated truth have elevated the scientist to the role of the great discoverer in modern times. The abundant results of scientific inquiry and experiment are evident at every turn.

The nature of our non-dogmatic, forward-looking faith is such that we readily embrace both the scientific method and the consequences of its results. This does not mean, however, that we believe the test tube, transistor and mathematical equation should replace the hall of worship or be sufficient reason to dampen man’s personal witness to religion.

We need to be cautioned, however, that this readiness to permit the weighing of scientific theories on the scales of evidence and successful experiment can weaken our ability to respond to life with the deep emotion of worship. Worship has lost power when we can no longer be clutched by its truth and seek to be consoled only with its antique beauties of sound, color and movement. This can be illustrated if we will consider how the rise of modern science disturbed the harmony of faith; if we will review two attitudes toward this storm which tore apart the veils of old, awesome mysteries.

A partial muster of some of the monumental scientific discoveries will help emphasize the dilemma of traditional religion.

When Copernicus asserted that the earth was not the fixed, immovable center of the universe, but rather a moving planet, satellite to a star, he did more than make a gigantic stride in astronomical theory. He pulled the rug out from under the authority of religious astronomy. If the skies above were not the heavenly kingdoms, then where is God, his court of judgment and the streets of gold? The development of telescopes of enormous range and fine precision have failed to achieve a focus on the heavenly throne. The deeper we probe into space, the more difficult becomes the puzzle. As galaxies without end disappear beyond the horizon of light-speed, as we contemplate the elusive hints that time and space may not be fixed certainties, where then is Our Father’s House in which there are many mansions? Our earlier assurance that the Creator was a loving, male parent, primarily concerned with human life as it exists on the fixed center, planet Earth, is shaken by the triviality of our infinitesimal, orbiting dot on the edge of a minor galaxy.

When Lyell and Hutton and their successors read the record in the rocks which testified to the millions of years of geologic disturbance and re-shuffling of the crust and climate of the earth; when Darwin stated the enormous evidence for the development and selective survival of all species, with man emerging from a long passageway of development, what then shall we do with the story of Genesis? The testimony of that biblical story of beginnings is that man and other living things were each specially and individually created. To say that Genesis is an authentic, symbolic account of evolution is to overlook the central contradictions.

The older anthropomorphic worship depended upon two proofs for the existence of God and His plan for man – Nature and Scripture. The scientific probabilities of astronomy, geology, biology and archeology have affirmed a more convincing account of the growth of life and the structure of the Universe than the lonely, but no longer convincing myths of historic religion. When the scholarly disciplines disclosed that holy scripture itself was a developing, growing production of men subject to the follies and limited by the knowledge of men of their own age, then the idea of the revealed, supernatural authority of scripture was no longer persuasive.

As Andrew White described in his classical study, THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY, organized religion resisted scientific discovery every step of the way. In spite of the violence of the attacks, in the every-day life of the world, scientific discovery has been the consistent victor over theological opposition. When writing his classical PSYCHOLOGY, William James noted, “I have to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts.” In the modern world, science is universal. It has won its way with the bite of tested theory and stubborn facts.

What shall we do then with the ancient objects of worship? In the Phillips translation, Paul writes to the Romans (10/14): “The lesson we must learn, my brothers, is at all costs to avoid worshiping a false god. I am speaking to you as intelligent men: think over what I am saying.” The modern philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, sensitive to our modern dilemma of intellectual honesty versus theological conformity, wrote (SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD), “To acquiesce in discrepancy is destructive of candor and of moral cleanliness. It belongs to the self-respect of the intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final involvement. If you check that impulse you will get no religion and no science from an awakened thoughtfulness.”

One disenchanting alternative is to resign ourselves that we must be content with the intellectual discoveries and practical accomplishments of science. We can condition ourselves to no longer wanting that deep thrill of awe, that sense of shattering holiness which marks the visit of worship to our hearts. But this is a barren prospect, for the spirit of man seeks more than that.

Or, we can, as most people do anyway, live two lives. One is the every-day life, living by and profiting from the schedules and verities of modern scientific thought and technology. On Sundays they worship the God of Moses, Jesus, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther or John Calvin. That these religious giants hammered their deep sense of worship out of their personal experience in confronting their world is not permitted to discipline modern acceptance of their by-gone formulations. The old dogmas are mellow, the old hymns comforting, the mythological world-view offering no arduous labors of mind. Perhaps most people will go on this way – old religion, Sunday, new science Monday through Saturday. But sooner or later such a dream world will return to the chants with a hollow echo and there will be no real sustenance not only for the mind, but also the heart. For the heart cannot forever remain aloof from the stirrings caused by the modern challenges to the mind.

There is choice other than the retreat of reverence in a scientific age. There is also another option to setting aside modern thought in the experience of worship. In his philosophy of civilization, Albert Schweitzer comments, “The beginning of all spiritual life of any real value is courageous faith in truth and open confession of the same. The most profound religious experience, too, is not alien to thought, but must be capable of derivation from this if it is to be given a true and deep basis. Mere reflection about the meaning of life already has value in itself.”

I submit to you that the more one reflects on the “history of the warfare between science and theology,” the stronger the conviction grows that the defeats theology has encountered have been victories for religion. This assertion is not as paradoxical as may first appear. Alfred North Whitehead said somewhere the defeats of dogma have been the discoveries of religion.

When we consider how the old Ptolemaic astronomy proposing a static, central Earth was replaced by the Copernican system of a dynamic universe containing worlds without measure, representing a Creation beyond the limits of human imagination, we should be excited with the thrill of widening knowledge and the wonder of unbounded mystery. All the refinements of physics have pointed ever more strongly to the basic oneness of the building blocks of the universe as they ever re-form and renew in the wondrous Cosmic dance. We are touching an awareness of the unity of Creation which ancient sooth-sayers would never have dared to guess or assert.

Wonder heightens as awareness intensifies that there is one Creative Force and Power, ever-creating and modifying the Universe, our home. We have not begun to create the symbol and liturgy which will express this new feeling. Dante sensed something of the inexpressible majesty of creation in these lines from the DIVINE COMEDY, (Canto Xxiv)

“... the pen passeth on,
And leaves a blank: for that our mortal speech
Nor e’en the inward shaping of the brain,
Hath colors fine enough to trace such folds.”

A few weeks ago, climbing a rocky gorge at Bash Bish Falls in New York, an experience brought home to me another certainty of our existence. In order to assist in the steep climb, I would reach up to grasp a branch or twig for leverage or hand-hold. If I attempted to rise by clutching a dead branch, it would give way and I would slip backward. But a living branch, many times the frailest twig, if alive, would hold fast and provide the anchor for a necessary rise.

A faith born of the living Universe will provide us with the lift and glory of worship when we grasp the living realities of religion, not its ancient limbs made brittle because life has passed to new growth.

It is equally vital to comprehend that religion is neither the authority for technical theory nor dependent upon any scientific hypothesis for justification. In one of mankind’s greatest letters, Paul writes to the people at Corinth, “and though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

Religion is the sustaining framework for our total experience of ourselves, our fellows and our universe. Religion is a response to the undivided experience of life. If one assembled the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, then lifted the completed picture by one corner, the puzzle would collapse. The function of religion is to surround and support the different size piece of our manifold experience.

Theologically a sacrament has been held to be the way one can link himself directly to God – received God’s grace. Through baptism, communion, unction and the other sacraments, God may be experienced – or so many believe. Few of us here could accept this as literal truth. But in a more comprehensive sense, reverence need not retreat under the aggression of scientific fact. For in a poetic measure at least, the sense of wonder is the sustaining sacrament of sensible religion. Consider the lilies of the field, the stars in their courses, the culture in the microscope and the red shift of light on the plates of the astronomical camera. Wonder-full are our sensations; reverence will increase mightily if we but feel the marvels of an orderly, law-abiding Creation registering on the probing tentacles of our human experience.

Reverence is not a prisoner of the formulations of any one time or faith. It is an experience of the grandeur of life and a confident surmise that man can find integration of his life, assigning a total appraisal of value to the universe.

There is nothing suggestive in the old legend of Elijah’s religious experience following his escape from King Ahab. Elijah refused to cut his religious standards to accommodate the cult of Baal which was so favored by Jezebel. The act of running away always increases the load of despair. Elijah wished for death, but in his dream under the Juniper tree, an angel ministered to him and he awakened with renewed courage, moved on until he found safety in a cave. Once more he experienced depression, but he felt he was called upon to stand upon the mountain. There the wind roared, the avalanche tossed great stones and the earth was trembled in earthquake, but the Lord was not in these fearsome experiences.

When the storms passed, Elijah heard the still, small voice, “What doest thou here, Elijah?”

In this universe, the growth of reverence is a consequence of the old but ever-new question of the still, small voice. What doest thou here? Amid the winds that roar and the fires that burn we must each find meaning for ourselves. What doest thou here? For authentic religious reverence is an experience which comprehends life in all its fullness. The ancients found their faith in their total appraisal of victory but also defeat, knowledge but also mystery, joy but also sorrow, guided by love and hope. So, also, must we.

What In The World Are We Coming To?

June 19, 1960
Akron

I propose this question to you in the light of the world in which we live. Is our present hopeful, or shall we resign ourselves to despair, extracting some measures of comfort, amusement and distraction before the ultimate hammer blows of destruction create a wasteland? Any religion of vitality and meaning has to look with candor at the world as it is. Moreover any religion deserving the name has to cherish a view of the world that is to be. Time is relentless and the future is constantly becoming the present.

Universalism won its way into the hearts of the people nearly two hundred years ago because of its world-view. The future was assured because God was good and by his nature would condemn no living soul to everlasting punishment. All souls would be saved and “the final harmony of all souls with God” was a firm foundation of the faith of our fathers.

Universalism today must have a world view in the frame of our times.

There is no obvious evidence for easy assurance and light-hearted hope in the world.

What in the world are we coming to when there are such agonizing delays and postponements blocking the solution to the mad race for supremacy in weapons of nuclear blast, disease germs and whatever else may be secret in the laboratories of horror?

Little more than forty years ago we were introduced to the use of mass weapons when long-range artillery weapons, tanks and aircraft were used in World War I.

Then the second world war brought the ghastly innovations of saturation bombing, V2 bombs, the concentration and death camps, with the curtain of the mad war dance being rung down at the terrible atomic climax of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As soon as we had company in the matter of possession of atomic weapons, the prospect of horror multiplied as the stockpiles of nuclear bombs grew relentlessly and research expanded for new applications of the demonic.

In Manila, Thursday, Pres. Eisenhower said that war had become “impossible and preposterous.” Who could disagree? Yet, what in the world are we coming to when the nation’s commander-in-chief announces that war is both impossible and preposterous but, 80% of all our country’s lavish expenditure of all money for scientific research is alloted by the war center, the Pentagon?

What in the world are we coming to when the unsaid conviction spreads infectiously that we cannot have both peace and prosperity?

Many people are convinced that the terrible depression of the nineteen thirties was never really solved, but rather has been successively postponed by the industry of wars and the preparations for threatened conflicts. There is a common belief that peace news depresses the stock market, and that when the temperature drops in the cold war, stocks begin to rise – particularly those industrial stocks representing the activities which would experience increased volume and greater profits from more billions for armament.

What in the world are we coming to if we are forced to chose between the Scylla of war or the Charybdis of peace-depressed economy?

In his monumental Study of History, Arnold Toynbee advances the proposition that civilizations have been toppled in the past, not from any technical deficiency but because of moral failure. We will neither be saved nor damned by our scientific knowledge and engineering skill but by the humane use and rational control of the gargantuan powers which have been disclosed.

What in the world are we coming to – sudden death or gradual growth in wisdom and moral stature?

Several years ago a dramatic event occurred which is a modern parable. A college ball team, traveling to an out-of-town game in the mountainous area of a Western state, climbed a grade for eleven miles and began the equally steep, sharply-curved down-grade. Hardly had the bus passed the crest when the driver applied the brake and found that the brakes were gone through some mechanical failure. He pulled the emergency brake only to find that defective also. Quickly he attempted to shift the transmission to the lowest gear in order to slow down the increasing downward momentum. But the gear shift broke off in his hand.

The members of the ball team had been relaxing – some playing cards, some reading or studying, others thinking of the game that awaited them at the destination. Suddenly they were trapped in a brakeless bus going too fast for them to jump, with the breakneck speed carrying them faster and faster toward what seemed certain, violent death. What could the helpless passengers do? What could the driver do? The only control he had remaining was the steering wheel. What in the world were they coming to?

Their plight had a remarkable likeness to the dilemma in which you and me, Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizens, find ourselves in the world. In a world where nuclear power and disease germs are the foundations for negotiations, what can average citizens do? Are we not trapped in a world speeding uncontrolled downgrade?

Despair is easy to come by and there is some basis for despondency. In Bible times, many of the prophets were equally pessimistic about the destiny of mankind. Our Jewish Christian heritage grew in the midst of calamitous circumstances. From 6 centuries before the time of Jesus until the Jews were dispersed and Jerusalem destroyed in 132 a.d., they were under foreign domination and control.

Out of those long years of captivity there grew a literature which despaired of any chance of human improvement. Portions of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and other O.T. books reflect the destruction of hope from human sources. The N.T. reflects this same disillusion with human nature, with its most complete and imaginative expression in the revelation of John. Humanity could not save itself, for man was evil and incapable of redeeming his corrupt nature. There was no help for man except in the supernatural help of God. God would come with his angels. Even the awful power of Rome would be utterly defeated. Those faithful chosen of God, supernaturally redeemed, would forever have the everlasting privilege and happiness of glorifying God forever.

This, too, was the theme of the Old Testament book of Joel. The despair of this prophet was so enormous that he likened the troubles of his time to a dreadful, irresistible destroying swarm of locusts:
(2/3)
“Before them a fire devours,
And after them a flame scorches.
Like the Garden of Eden was the land before them,
And after them it is a desert waste;
And nothing escapes them.”

Joel used a strikingly realistic simile. When the hungry locusts had devoured their way across the land there was nothing left but desolation. Joel was proclaiming from the depths of his despair that there was no prospect for man – his human strivings would produce only wasteland. Joel’s poetic language is so striking that probably he had experienced the ravaging destruction of an invasion of locusts. Many times locusts have bequeathed humans suffering and starvation.

The locust is still a threat today. But, unlike the despairing resignation of Joel, there is a new approach being tried in the desert wastes of Bible lands (see National Geographic 4/53).

With technical assistance from the United States and other countries, there is a cooperative resistance to swarming locusts. Technicians are using powerful insecticides sprayed from airplanes and other methods of halting the locust plagues before they gain momentum in their swarming invasion. In order to work effectively to destroy the nests of locust eggs, old barriers had to be eliminated. Locusts play no favorites of race, creed or national interest. All lines had to be ignored in order to halt destruction.

In those desert wastelands, cooperation is more than a world – it is the way that people survive. There in the desert they call to us that no matter how insurmountable the odds, despair is not justified because cooperation can make the difference.

There are prophecies of hope as well as despair in the Bible. There was Micah who voiced a never-quenching human hope:

“And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid.”

In the N.T. there is the parable of the Good Samaritan – man saving man. The hope for supernatural saving salvation expressed by John of Patmos is not the only expression of saving ways.

In the old scriptures of mankind, wisdom which has withstood the test of time has been a clue in the everlasting and undying things of the spirit. Perhaps the story of how the locusts are being halted has a clue for the larger issues of life-cooperation for survival between peoples of different government structures, different skin-color, even hostile nationally, halted the spread of wasteland, diminished the toll of human devastation.

What in the world are we coming to? Something fairer and finer than we have known – if we learn from the desert peoples and cooperate for survival. Cooperation between those who disagree violently is a fairer answer than mutual destruction.

But we did not complete the parable of the runaway bus which was rolling brakeless down the eleven miles of steep grade. They made it! Although the speed reached as much as 110 miles an hour, the bus did not hurtle off the road even when taking the sharp grades. A miracle? No, the hand of God did not intervene, in any direct way at least. The squad of boys, some of whom had been taking their ease in cards, conversation, or whatever, threw their weight around!

When the bus was swerving wildly in the centrifugal force caused by taking the curve at high speed, the boys unitedly would throw their weight against the other side of the bus. In a rapid sequence of hairbreadth adventures they slipped out of the hand of death again and again by throwing their weight around.

When they had passed the dangerous part and the grade began to level, the driver was able to bring the bus to a stop without human damage. To top off the adventure, after temporary repairs were made, the squad proceeded to the ball park, played the game, and won!

What in the world are we coming to? The chart of the future is both inscrutable and perilous. We may not be driving the bus, but we can throw our weight around, particularly when our plight is dangerous.

There is a great will to peace and brotherhood in the world.

If you have the current issue of LIFE magazine, you should read a brief but remarkable report by John D. Rockefeller, IV on the rioting in Japan. We have generally been informed that the riots against the Kishi government which led to the face-losing cancellation of our President’s visit were sinister politics, inspired by Communists. But, according to the first-hand observations of Mr. Rockefeller, there were many persons rioting against the Kishi government because of their faith, not in Russian or Chinese communism, but rather belief in the prime necessity of peace and the promotion of human liberties and civil rights. They were throwing their weight around to focus world attention on their situation.

We are being courted; we are being wooed for our votes. Whether you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent or disinterested voter, the political statisticians are computing the circumstances which will lead you to cast your vote this way or that in November. Millions and millions of dollars are going to be spent to get your vote.

Morality is involved in all political issues. Our constitutional foundations of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are essentially religious values. I cannot think of any vital, political issues which are not based on one or more of these noble premises of our government.

We may not yet have to resort to riot and violence, but we can add the weight of our convictions to the precarious balance of our times.

If every one of us threw our weight around by spending a little time and a four cent stamp to inform the leaders of the political party to which we normally give allegiance that we want a free and fair nation and a peaceful and cooperative world, it just might make a difference. Now, I’m enough of a cynic to be aware that political platforms, particularly in presidential years, are contrived masterpieces, seeking maximum eloquence in generalities with a minimum commitment in particulars. Nevertheless, if the party chieftains hear no uncertain sound that we the people were placing the value on our individual votes high – that we were not only interested in party personalities but also in peace, freedom and the pursuit of greater excellence in the distribution of the mammoth abundance for living of which the world is potentially capable, we might sharpen the planks in the platform.

You may well ask, what are my particulars beyond generalities? Here are a few:

The need for international control of mass weapons and specific steps which lead at some measured pace toward world disarmament.

The abolition of tests which in some degree are poisoning the atmosphere with radiation.

A program which will lead in the direction of greater measures of world law – the repeal of the Conally amendment as an immediate specific.

National economic alternatives to a war-geared industry. How would each political party provide leadership in maintaining our need to continuously expand our national economy without an enormously overweight armaments preparation?

Leadership to reduce now the discrimination against minority groups in employment, education, housing and civil rights. What steps should be taken to overtake the ever-widening gap between our young population and the educational facilities required to equip them intellectually and practically for satisfactory careers and productive lives in the world now breaking upon us.

The political voices you hear are more than verbal duels between party choices – they are pleas for your vote. Behind the sometimes subtle and sometimes vulgar strategies of party eggheads, glamor boys and political bullyboys are more efforts to lure money from the wealthy for political warchests. More importantly they are fishing tournaments for your vote and time.

Queen Elizabeth says to Richmond in King Richard, III, “an honest tale speeds best being plainly told.”

If we can add our weight, by greater demand that political platforms be plainly told, in sentences of less rather than greater fence-straddling, we will be throwing our weight around and the bus may ride out the dangerous curves of our times.

The Meaning of Death in Human Experience

April 17, 1960
Akron

Easter is the climax of the annual celebration of life. The songs are joyous; the seeds are swelling; life is recalled from the depths by the trees; there is warmth in the air and fragrance in the breeze. We respond to the resurgence of life, as man has always rejoiced when the earth offers its green re-assurance of the persistence of life.

The myths of mankind have always celebrated the return of spring with rejoicing. As man, in his long evolution, gradually developed a keen self-consciousness, he found the eternal re-birth of vegetation, a model for his hope that the human spirit, too, would never die.

In the Christian celebration, the story of eternal life has been compressed. In most myths of dying-rising savior gods, the cycle follows the season – death in the autumn, resurrection in the spring after the long winter. Jesus is entombed on Friday and rises from the dead, Sunday, abbreviating the pattern into three days. Death, Friday – Life, Sunday.

The thrilling impact of Easter on the Christian world is not alone [in] that it is a central expression of the rebirth of life after the winter death. More strikingly, Christian Easter is an optimistic attempt to place happy meaning in the experience which has baffled and frightened man – death.

Unless we are willing to encounter the meaning of death in human experience, we can neither understand life, nor live it to fullness. Montaigne once said, “only the man who no longer fears death has ceased to be a slave.”

Dali, the artist who has created such provocative images, has made use of the idea of time. His painted watches are stretched out of shape, distorted, smashed. Perhaps Dali is saying that we would like to stretch time out, destroy it – somehow escape from it unceasing, precise measurement of our living days. But we are the miserable slaves of time, unless we can free ourselves from the fear of death.

Freud may have been essentially correct when he said, “No one believes in his own death. In the unconscious everyone is convinced of his own immortality.” How well this feeling of exemption from death was expressed by the Psalmist, “a thousand shall fall at thy right hand and ten thousand at thy left, but it shall not come nigh thee.” But is this not wishful thinking to dream that we may be exempt from the experience which comes to everyone else?

On a more aggressive level, that courageous old rationalist, General Ethan Allen, angrily resisted the termination of his life. When Allen's life was ebbing fast, his minister at the bedside told him gently, “General Allen, the angels are waiting for you.” Allen retorted, “Waiting are they? Waiting are they? Well, goddamn 'em, let 'em wait!”

Years before the gospels were to be shaped in written form, Paul wrote about the meaning of Easter. To Paul, death was the old enemy. In Paul's theology, death was the penalty for sin. As Christ was sinless, death could not hold him. Paul confronted death with his belief in Jesus' resurrection, “O Death, where is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory.” Because he believed that the resurrection of Jesus guaranteed that death could never triumph, ultimately, he could reassure his audience (1st Corinthians 15, Phillips translation), “And so brothers of mine, stand firm. Let nothing move you as you busy yourselves in the Lord's work. Be sure that nothing you do for him is ever lost or ever wasted.”

But the sobering fact is that early Christianity was influenced strongly by the wide-spread belief in dying-rising vegetation gods. The confusions and contradictions in the resurrection stories, the fact that the earliest gospel, Mark, did not originally tell the miraculous story indicates that the literal coming to life of a dead man probably didn't happen.

What really happened has always been one of the great speculations of our civilization. Most of us in the liberal, free churches would believe that either Jesus didn't die or that the reports of his literal resurrection are without foundation. As you know, Holland Wolfe makes a very persuasive case for the probability that Jesus did not die on the cross, but was revived in the tomb by those closest to him.

But more appropriate for our purpose today, is to note how the resurrection story, irrespective of its historical validity, is the great assurance for people wrestling with the fears and facts of death.

There is unmatched democracy in the experience of death. Inevitably, it happens to every living thing. Heidegger, the German philosopher, commented, “Dying is something which nobody can do for another.”

Man's history varies greatly in time and place. But all cultures have death rites. Even the earliest humans buried their dead with weapons and moved the dead limbs into various, cultic postures before burying. The Egyptians were so sure of the continuity of human personality that when a king died, his tomb was a princely home. A staff of servants died with the king's entombment so that he might lack no accustomed attentions in the afterlife. Most of our vast knowledge of ancient Egyptian cultures has been derived from a study of the hieroglyphs and equipment in the lavish burial tombs.

The effort and hope to connect the living and the dead is a basic experience of the human family. One of the absolute facts of life is death. Or, if you wish, one of the absolute facts of death is life.

Consider what Shakespeare has Julius Caesar say to Calpurnia, his wife (Act II, sc. 2),

“Cowards die many times before their death.
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders I have yet heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”

It may be most strange that men should fear death, but fear it, they do. Those who should know the human psyche tell us that many of the anxieties which corrode our emotional stability are basically related to the fear of death. There is a child's prayer, steeped with fear, so old that its origins are obscure in antiquity, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

“If I should die” -- is that not the specter that haunts our contentment?

Obviously, the complexities of our inner selves are so great, that unraveling the knots of our plain and obscure fears is beyond the range of complete intellectual understanding.

We are living in times which show evidence of progress. From the time man appeared on earth until the present, in the modern, privileged West, almost thirty-seven years have been added to life expectancy. In the more fortunate areas, people can go through this increased life span without necessarily ever being exposed to real hunger or hardship.

But these benefits do not completely satisfy. We are haunted by intimations of mortality. Sometime in everyone's life there comes a shocking awareness, “I'm going to die sometime.” We maintain a sophisticated front, but in the experience of death, there is a certain kinship to a story in McKinley's political career:

1890 marked a Democratic landslide. McKinley met two other fellow-Republicans who had been overwhelmed by defeat. McKinley tried to make light of the beating, “Upon the whole, I'm glad it happened that way.”

“That's what I'm saying to everyone,” Joe Cannon retorted, “but boys, don't let's lie to one another.” (IN THE DAYS OF MCKINLEY, Margaret Leech, p. 48).

At the deep levels of our feelings, the return of life to soil and twig sounds a responsive chord. If life never dies in the earth, can it be true that life never dies in the human?

Thus the orthodox Christian gadfly shouts, “alleluia” on Easter morn because he believes that the risen Christ has gained eternal life for all those who believe in him. If one can shut out considerations of reason and history, the great sting of death is healed by the empty tomb of Jesus.

What about those of us who see no availability of a supernatural salvation scheme and see Jesus as human, not as miraculous guarantee that our self will persist? We are by no means exempt from the fear of death. This apprehension is universal among conscious beings. If there were no such experiences as death, would we be able to define and value life?

Death is a biological necessity. If death never took an extended holiday, life would soon become intolerable. There is no way we can eliminate biological death, even though we yearn desperately that there should be greater justice. Each of you knows person after person who would have lived longer or whose death might have been kinder.

The human experience of death cannot be eliminated. Biologically, life can be extended, but never without limit. Death is inevitable, but the basic message of returning life – Easter – Spring – Hope, is that death can be deprived of its horror. As battle with King Richard III approaches, Richmond says to his comrades,

“All for our vantage; then in God's name march.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallows' wings.
Kings it makes Gods, and meaner creatures, Kings.”

There are two contrary ways one can secure release from fear of death.

First is the Christian assurance, but discoverable in a multiplicity of forms in all the world's religions, then and now.

This is the affirmation of immortality. Death is not the end because the individual human soul persists in an eternal, spiritual framework. "Death is swallowed up by victory," Paul cried. The human spirit is immortal; our loved ones who have gone before are awaiting happy reunion. the soul is immortal and will glorify God forever. This is one way of rooting out the terrible fear of death -- if you believe it, whole-heartedly.

The alternate way of living without fear of death is to accept it as the end of personal consciousness. (This is my present belief). One's immortality is fond in children, memory and contribution of service. There is little doubt that "I" will cease to be. I will not know or be known, but the elements of which I am composed will change form and re-enter the great, dynamic, mysterious process of the Universe. I will be soil and sea, air and chemical, but I will experience nothing of this, for my consciousness will cease with my life.

I suppose those who fear death the least belong to one or the other of these two groups. The horror of death is diluted by a conviction about it.

Those confidently expecting personal immortality of spirit will find their satisfaction in preparing for life beyond time. Their ways will be honest and useful because of conviction that characters formed here will persist. Such a man will consider well his attitudes and acts because the persistence of these character traits will be eternal.

A man in the other group, feeling that it is fairly certain that death is the end, will seek to intensify his participation in the present. "Is there no other life? Pitch this one high."

If I "pass this way but once," and there is no other chance for me to help make life endurable, decent, joyous, and friendly, then there is no greater foolishness than to spoil my only opportunity.

Whether or not you expect an eternal home for your immortal spirit; or whether you believe the life you are living is the only conscious one you will ever have, by and large your control over life is limited in either case. Medicine has increased longevity, but everyone is ultimately subject to disease, decay, accident.

Our opportunity for control of life is not in its quantity, but its quality.

The meaning of death in human experience is not that we can avoid it, but that we can do something about the quality of life before death pays the inevitable visit.

The sports pages printed an apt illustration, recently. Training for the Olympic games, a muscular American shot-putter broke the world's record. He had long been skilled, strong, and co-ordinated, but had never seemed to learn to arch his throw high enough to secure the trajectory necessary for maximum distance. Then, across the uprights of the pole vault standards, he tied a string. In practice he learned to put the shot high enough to clear the string. When he learned to do that, he broke the world's record.

The meaning of death in human experience is like unto that. Whether one believes in the Risen Christ or growing man -- or any other variety of high-level ideal, life must be pitched high. As preparation for another life, or as justification for the only life we have, we need the enriching values of wisdom, beauty, love, goodness and truth, sparked by the universal Spring affirmation of the persistence and worthwhileness of life.

The Meaning of Jesus in Human Experience

April 10, 1960
Akron

The important place of Jesus in human experience is matched only by the insignificance of his influence in human experience. Both sides of this paradox are writ large in order to get some grasp on the startling difference in what he has meant to persons and to acquire some understanding of the social consequences of a man's life which may dilute the substance of his life and teachings.

Jesus is not the same person to all minds. To some, Jesus was the Messiah; others look upon him as the pre-existent, second member of the Trinity, "very God of very God"; others, attempting to separate what Jesus was from what theologians have believed about him, insist that he was a teacher of the highest kind of ethical behavior -- gifted, virtuous and martyred -- but a man. Others, who may have felt the sting and outrage of persecution by Christians, respond with hostility at the sound of the name of Jesus -- for them he represents the leader of the intolerant and inhumans.

In the experience of some, Jesus offered the world a way of living which would solve all the problems of greed, conflict and hate. In the Sermon on the Mount and in his parables are rules for human behavior which will root out all the terrible passions reflected in man's inhumanity to man. His defenders testify that if only people would follow his way of life, all that is good and true would be universal among persons everywhere. Unromantic critics find considerable merit in the criticism of George Bernard Shaw that there must be some fundamental wrongness about a religion that has been preached and taught for two thousand years, but never followed.

Schweitzer and others have demonstrated the difficulty of knowing and understanding what Jesus really was. There are no original records or drawings. Everything he said and did has been strained through the theological beliefs of those who believed that his life and death were the hinge of history. For example, if one wanted to become thoroughly acquainted with the life, thoughts and acts of Franklin D. Roosevelt, there is a full written record, movies and recordings compiled by both foe and friends. Even with this library of information, the legends grow about President Roosevelt. For the life of Jesus, we have no factual material recorded during his lifetime .We do not know his appearance. Efforts to mold his image firmly have never succeeded. The encrusted layers of theology and myth are too deeply fixed for any possibility of an authentic historical image.

When one speaks of the meaning of Jesus in human experience, one of necessity must deal with what he has meant to people who have always differed in their interpretations. His influence is persistently dynamic on those who encounter him in the New Testament, in miracle story and sign, in the dogma of a church or the debating circle of a philosophical society. Differing emotions and intellectual contradictions produce varying impressions. The emotional impact has different degrees of shock and the intellectual interpretation differs, not only among those of opposing faiths, but even among the followers of a single communion. Sometimes it seems that the only widespread area of agreement is that
Jesus was hrs name -- and even then there are those who challenge.

How can one confront all the varieties of Jesus in human experience without becoming bogged in complete bewilderment? In this discussion, I am limiting arbitrarily the meaning of Jesus in human experience to what he may have meant to himself, what he meant to his immediate disciples, what he has meant to the Christian Church and to the world.

One of the extraordinary designations for Jesus is the "Son of Man."

What is distinctive about the "Son of Man" is that this is how Jesus described himself. This title appears more than eighty times in the gospels, but only four times outside the gospels. In the gospels, it is Jesus who used the phrase in speaking of himself. What did it mean?

First of all the Son of Man meant the human individual. Jesus was expressing his human powers and limitations. He was an individual man, with all the frailties and glories of the human individual. The Greek expression is probably a translation of the two Aramaic words (bar anasha) which indicated the separateness of the person from the crowd.

If Jesus believed himself to be the Messiah, or came to believe that in the course of the Galilean and Jerusalem ministries, then "Son of Man" would also indicate that Jesus thought of himself as the Messianic person, the creator of a new humanity, sent by God to conquer and to judge.

But we will never really know what Jesus meant to himself.

The disciples he gathered to him found his leadership strange and difficult, but magnificent. In the gospels they eventually testify that he is the Messiah, Son of the living God.

But even then there was no precise understanding of what the Messiah's salvation was to mean. Some Jews believed the Messiah would bring political independence from the rule of Rome. Perhaps they shouted loudest on that triumphal entry. Others in that day, ground to bone-weariness by poverty, believed the Messiah would being food and prosperity. Eagerly, they may have waved palms and elaborated the rumors about the story from Galilee about loaves and fishes. Still others may have cared not at all for political independence or full stomachs but were stirred by faith that the triumphal entry would inaugurate the spiritual reign of God and the people of the covenant would have the new heart and the new spirit prophesied by Jeremiah.

But to his disciples, he was teacher, also. Tradition has it that Mary, whose life Jesus had transformed to wholeness by power of acceptance and forgiveness, is said to have called him Rabbi (teacher), in that strange moment of recognition in the garden.

The meaning of Jesus in the human experience of the disciples involved faithfulness to Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom of God.

From our remote point it seems that Jesus' affirmation of the Reign of God was no easy way of living. He taught them that salvation was not measured by the usual dimensions, but that every man is secure even if he should forfeit his life forthwith and all earthly possession. "He who loses his life shall save it." Furthermore, basic to the reign of God was the law of love (good-will) -- whole hearted love of God and one's neighbor were indivisible, basic motivations.

That this way of life was as difficult then as now, is illustrated by the desertion of the disciples when Jesus was arrested and executed. That they should return from cowardice to courage, from desertion to duty not only testifies to the restoring powers of this simple, fundamentally ethical way of life, It also indicates that the meaning of Jesus in the human experience was not dependent on his individual tragedy and triumph, but on the power generated for his ideas by his life and death.

But as the Jerusalem group finally became dominated by Paul, and the missionary enterprise extended beyond the Jewish community and among the multitude of Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Asiatic peoples, the Jewish Messianic predictions were complicated by other influences.

Many of the ancient religions had doctrines and celebrations about the divine child, miraculously conceived, dying-rising savior gods and sacramental salvation.

In the period from the death of Jesus to the end of the second century, a time from which original Christian records are almost non-existent, Hellenistic and Asian influences become theologically dominant. Creeds continued the long development, from their origin in primitive Christianity in the Jerusalem disciples group, to the elaborate Christology of authoritative church, ecclesiastical pageantry and political dominance.

The meaning of Jesus became controversial among churches and the incitement to jealousy and struggles between Christian churchmen.

When emperor Constantine became a convert in name, at least, to Christianity, he wanted harmony among the quarreling Christian bishops in order to build unity in the Roman Empire. Constantine called the council of Nicea in 325 A.D., the most important council in the history of the Christian Church.

The meaning of Jesus was the issue. Arius, of Antioch, was the leader of the group who maintained that God was uncreated, always existing, but that Jesus was a created being, not eternal. Although the position Arius maintained was not one liberals would endorse today, Arianism is one of the roots of the prevailing belief in Universalist and Unitarian churches that Jesus was human.

The famed Athanusius was the leader of the other faction who maintained that the Son was wholly uncreated and co-eternal with the Father.

Constantine decided for the latter point of view. When the council at Chalcedon in 451 further defined Jesus as "very God of very God," the meaning of Jesus in human experience was settled for the large majority of Christians then and now. Jesus was God, the second person of the Trinity. The incarnation and atoning sacrifice developed as essential dogma. These are ancient notions of the Pagan world, more than they are characteristic of the Jew, Jesus.

From time to time, but most importantly in the last hundred years, scholars and independent thinkers have taken another look at the meaning of Jesus.

The growth of higher criticism of the Bible found significance in the fact that the early Christian Church produced the New Testament. The New Testament did not produce the church. The Jesus of the gospels and the early church was so merged with what the developing church believed about him, that it became apparent that one could not separate the historical Jesus from the theological Jesus.

Therefore, our immediate forebears in religious liberalism sought to strip away the encrusted theological layers so that the real Jesus would be revealed. It was widely held that important clues lay in his teachings – the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the conversations with lawyers, tax collectors, sinners, and disciples.

But many liberals in so seeking to find the meaning of Jesus in human experience have made the error of trying to attach to Jesus, 19th and 20th century progressive, enlightened, rational viewpoints. This just won’t do – Jesus was not a modern liberal holding rational philosophy. But the swing of the pendulum of theological viewpoints now impresses us with the probability that we will never recapture Jesus as he really was. In spite of the excitement over the discovery of scrolls in caves by the Dead Sea, no essential knowledge of Jesus has been recovered. Today an overwhelming majority of Christians through the creed of their churches and the preambles to their councils, have proclaimed again that Jesus is God. This dogma is not supported by reason or historical evidence but by faith. They stake their meaning of Jesus in the assumption that he was God and saved men from sin from which man was powerless to save himself. Many centuries ago, Anselm, the theologian based his theology of revelation on that premise, “I believe in order to understand.”

But there are still those of us who seek another basis for faith. We wish to understand in order to believe. Nevertheless we respond emotionally to the dramatic events of the life of Jesus even in a theological setting that offers him as a god whom we could not worship.

But beyond all the historical difficulties and beneath all the theological absurdities we feel the presence of his way upon us.

There is a story about a father, who wishing to keep his small son entertained, cut up a map of the world from a magazine and gave the puzzle to the boy. In unbelievably quick fashion the boy had the pieces together in correct position. With surprise the father asked, “How did you do it so quickly?” “There was a picture of a man on the other side. I put the man together and the world came together.”

Jesus was a child of his times. The more strenuously we try to make him a 20th century Catholic, Baptist, Universalist or Unitarian, the more certain becomes his place in 1st century, Roman-occupied Galilee and Jerusalem. Yet can we utterly ignore all the testimony that at very least he was the kind of man who makes the world come together?

There is a common ground among all the persons who believe so many different things about Jesus. Whether one thinks of Jesus as a social revolutionary, the Jewish Messiah, the second person of the Trinity, the pre-existent logos (wisdom) or the master teacher with more than a close affinity for modern methods of education, Jesus has been the creator of expectancy.

Among his immediate contemporary followers he created an expectancy of the reign of God.

When the long awaited kingdom did not appear, his later followers found in him the source of their salvation. While many of us would reject individual salvation for a few and eternal damnation for many, as an unworthy parody of real religion, this has been the expectancy of most Christians.

When persons have been saturated with the high ethical sense that flows out of the gospels, they have turned their hands and hearts to helping persons in need. Hospitals, prison reform, care of needy children, medical missions and the export of surplus food to starving peoples in far lands are all demonstrations of religion serving humans. Beneath all the liturgy and theology is the strong motivation that service to human need is expected of all those who have some high meaning for Jesus in their experience.

The Christian Churches feel the wrath of some because study groups and national councils adopt courageous and unpopular positions on political and economic issues. The so called “Social Gospel” has never been an easy position to adopt or maintain. Yet those who stand courageously on controversial issues do so because they feel it is expected by the Creator of Expectancies, that far-away person, Jesus of Nazareth.

Those of us who believe Jesus to be human, not divine in a way none of us can be, are also under the magnetism of this creative expectancy.

We feel a strong thrust for the supreme worth of persons and the continued search for truth which found its unforgettable phrasing in John’s gospel, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Even for those of us who assert that it is the humanity of Jesus which gives weight to his ethical direction, his embodiment of the highest teachings of his Jewish religion creates in all who touch the meager records of his life with a sense of creative expectancy that life can be fairer in social ways and more significant in its individual meanings than ever before.