Great Realities That Go Astray – Atonement

Palm Sunday (April 12), 1981
Port Charlotte

re-written from:
April 11, 1954
Bridgeport

The hosannas sounded then. They sound today. Amid the long days of Lenten solemnity, Palm Sunday erupts in a moment of triumph.

In the Christian scheme of salvation, the Palm Sunday pageant begins the week of climax with a joyous overture to a drama of courage, fellowship, betrayal, rejection, and defeat. The curtain falls – but the curtain rises on Easter Sunday, with the believers ecstatic with the assurance that their Lord has risen and that life is life everlasting.

The Christian worship of centuries has made the Palm Sunday procession a central part of the way God fulfills a divine plan. The predictions of the children of Israel, made hundreds of years before, are believed to have been fulfilled. This is not an ordinary victory pageant or a hero’s parade – this is God, who has foreordained these moments from the beginning of the world. In the atoning death on the cross, God, and in his incarnation as the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, saves all humankind from the sin of [the] Fall. So goes the plan of Christian theology.

As we see the religious advertising, look to the TV and radio evangelists, feel the emotion that seems to be at the core of the vast majority of Christian groups, we become aware that this doctrine of human salvation through Christ’s atonement is the central certainty of the Christian plan of salvation. “And I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto me.” Thus says the gospel writer speaking for Jesus.

Most Christians respond with a surge of enthusiasm as well as increased sense of their own guilt when they are reminded in forceful and picturesque terms that in Christ Jesus, very God of very God, is the only salvation for sinful men and women (that is, for those who believe in him).

Even though recognizing that this doctrine of the suffering servant who redeems every believer pulls at the heartstrings, nevertheless the scheme of the only human salvation through the atoning death of Jesus Christ is a reality that has gone astray. The scheme seems simple on the surface: [mankind] is depraved, the inheritors of the original sin of Adam. Because of this depravity, men and women are incapable of saving themselves, so God becomes man and saves his believers.

There is, first of all, the confusion that exists in the minds of the believing Christians as to just what this doctrine means. Few will actually discuss the hows and whys of this doctrine, central to orthodox Christianity. The truth is, there is no doctrine about which those who believed it differ more than the explanation of the atonement of Jesus.

In the early centuries of the Christian church, the church fathers generally held that by Adam’s sin, and by our own, all humankind was lost to the Devil. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, ransomed men and women from the Devil through the atoning death on the cross. But even though ransomed to the Devil for all humankind, the Devil could not hold him because God was sinless. The Devil was tricked and Jesus arose from the dead.

But this doctrine began to bother some thinking persons. It was a nagging theological concept to believe that there was a being, the Devil, almost as powerful, if not as powerful, as God himself. Such a conclusion amounted to believing that there was more than one God. It was just as disturbing to think that God, in cheating the Devil of his ransom, was guilty of the type of sharp practice for which a merchant would be [written up] by the Better Business Bureau.

Then along in the 11th century, Anselm, a noted scholar, formulated a new view which attempted to get around these difficulties. Anselm said that man owed a perfect obedience to God. But because the human was by nature sinful, because he was of Adam’s seed, he/she was incapable of perfect obedience. Therefore, men and women could not pay their just debt of perfect obedience to God. So God, in his yearning and love for the human family, became man and ... Jesus was able by his death on the cross to pay the debt of perfect obedience. “Not my will, but thine be done.... Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

This was accepted by many. It is still the basic atonement theory for some schools of thought. But again, when we look at this calmly, there are many objections. To each proposition, the question “why?” can be asked without a satisfactory answer. If God were all-powerful, every proposition of Anselm’s scheme seems a useless sort of thing, other than God was playing an amusing game with himself.

Other theories have made appearance. You would not want me to take time to speak of them at length. There was the so-called criminal law theory that god by his nature was forced to punish men and women for depravity and sinfulness. But God in Christ became a willing substitute and accepted the punishment which was deserved. Therefore there was no further claim on any sinner who became a believer.

But all of these and other various schemes of supernatural atonement have at least three serious flaws. First of all, they attribute to God a poorer character than we look for in a good person. A human being of honor does not kill the innocent so that the guilty may escape their just punishment. Neither does a just person exact punishment against the son for moral wrong committed by the parent. Are any of these complex, not to say, primitive ideas about the atoning death of Jesus any real credit to a god many think of as love? Sir Oliver Lodge, speaking years ago of an old theory of atonement, said, “none but a cur will ask for the punishment due him to fall on someone else, nor rejoice if told it had already so ‘fallen.’” (HIBBERT JOURNAL, Jan. 1914) For God to decree that Jesus must bear the punishment for my sins or your is just morally irresponsible.

The second flaw in these supernatural theories of the atoning death of Jesus is that the nature and character of [mankind] is misrepresented. Our generation needs no particular reminders that men and women are not perfect. They are guilty of enormous errors and evils. Certain gross burdens that humanity bears like war, treachery, and intolerance seem to be handed generation to generation. Yet to infer from such evidence that men and women are depraved by nature and incapable of achieving salvation is to conclude more than facts warrant. Children are born without moral stain. They are born with the urge to struggle for food and comfort; they are born with the urge to be loved and to love; they are born with physical, genetic inheritance that can be molded or led in many ways. But babies are not squirming bundles of original sin.

If the human family’s long history of misdeeds and the long list of persons who have bent toward evil is evidence for human depravity, what about the much longer list of good people – the “millions who humble and nameless the straight hard pathway trod?” There are more good people than bad people in every generation. Were that not so, human society could not have continued. So if it may be submitted that humanity’s many misdeeds are evidence for depravity, may it not also be submitted that the greater score of goodness is evidence for the essential worth and potentiality of the human personality?

The third mistake in all these miraculous atonement ideas is that they make all meaning to Jesus’ life conditional on three ideas: belief in his alleged miraculous birth, his crucifixion, and his alleged physical resurrection. It makes salvation dependent on belief in these three events. Only one of these events, the crucifixion, has probable historical truth. This third mistake is perhaps the most serious problem, because it separated Jesus’ death from his life. Jesus’ death is important to us only because of the kind of life he lived. It is doubtful Jesus ever said much about death. He said a great deal about life. “Which one of these sons did the will of his father? Go then and do likewise.” He healed the sick, he did not say you will be healed because of my atoning death which is to come. Is it not our verified experience in all the tide of events that make up our lives that it is not alone what we believe, but what we do, that changes things[?]

We know that people who accept the miraculous supernatural salvation schemes are not necessarily better for it. Many times persons will keep their religion in a tight compartment and never permit any religious principles to leak out and change the course of their conduct for the better. The so-called believer may be no more trustworthy in the everyday affairs of life than the person who makes no loud claims for his “saved” condition.

But even though these difficulties exist with the various atonement issues, most of us respond with the emotional feeling of considerable depth to this holy week. We feel the impact of the triumphal march into Jerusalem, we long to participate in the feeling of splendid fellowship that marked the last supper, the gloom and defeat of the cross of execution touch our hearts with sorrow, and the new life, the triumph of Easter cause Christians to affirm, “alleluia.”

We thrill at the events in Passion Week even though we are aware of the origin of the ceremonies. Our historic Christian worship is a blend of the Jewish worship and custom and the worship practices and customs of the Grecian-Roman-Asian world. The blending took many centuries. The Yom Kippur [CJW note: at a different time of y] was and is a Day of Atonement for the Jewish people. The Greco-Roman world worshiped many dying-rising savior gods. They observed the vegetable and plant life of the world of dying in the [season of] Fall. They were dependent upon this vegetation. When spring came and new shoots came through the ground, the people rejoiced. The god of growing things was born again. The[y had] vegetation gods, and they had various names for various times and lands: Osiris, Attis, Adonis, is to name but a few. The early Christian missionaries blended the Jewish and Pagan festivals into the new Christian religion. It was the melting pot brewing, just as the melting pot in America has blended many peoples and their customs.

But back of the social origins of the spring festivals of dying atonement and living resurrection, there is a reality. When we lose touch with this reality we may lose touch with what is both wonder-full and poignant in the affairs of human beings.

This is the reality – that whenever persons are made redeemed [CJW note: made better], whenever good is made to flower from evil, whenever persons are made whole and more honorable, there is always suffering and sacrifice by those who are the keepers of the dream. Always when there are human beings who have sought to free persons from the chains of ignorance, or the slavery of tyranny, or the dungeon of low ideals, or the post-house of selfishness – these saviors of humankind have always generated conflict, hatred, and bloodshed. The persons who seeks to bring light of knowledge and to extend the hand of justice – it is he or she who is crowned with thorns and lynched on the Calvarys of the world.

John Murray Atwood always emphasized that “anyone who undertakes to teach or advocate new truth, running counter to traditional doctrine, always encounters opposition. If he/she persists and is faithful, opposition becomes bitter; first there are attempted bribes, then threats, and if he/she still persists the outcome may be death.”

It has always been so. We may predict with some assurance that it will always be so. Four hundred and fifty years before Christ there lived in Athens a poor, homely, fat man. He was a teacher and he tried to impart to his students the inquiring mind. He taught them to ask questions. He asked questions. He questioned the tyrants of his day who demanded complete and unquestioning loyalty. And so he was silenced: he was ordered to die in the fashion of his time. So Socrates died with creeping paralysis caused by the cup of hemlock. Yet his sacrifice, his atonement, if you please, is one of the reasons why our civilization has had the great advantage of the gains that were achieved by minds that were free.

Look at the saviors of humankind – the have suffered for you and for me. They have atoned for us. When the Swiss confederation was seeking its political independence, in a day when political independence was unknown, they had much to overcome. The armies of the Holy Roman Empire were well-armed and well-trained. The Swiss had few arms and smaller armies. In one battle the Swiss were armed only with axes and they marched toward enemies who came towards them armed with long lances. It would seem that the long lances would cause death and defeat before the brave Swiss could get close enough to struggle hand to hand. Then one of the Swiss patriots suddenly dashed forward and gathered into his one body a number of the lances. The line was breached, the Swiss were able to close in, and win this battle for their freedom. Arnold von Winkelried was a savior for his nation. In his death, his countrymen were freed. He atoned.

So with Jesus. He came into the city whose welcoming cheers were to turn to shouts of “crucify him.” He was the same man, whether applauded or stoned. He was faithful to the vision he saw and tried to make it real by his personal example and his teachings. Throughout the bitterness of the mockery that was called a trial, then along the painful way to the cross, he did not forget his family, his friends, his ideals, or his God. His was the nobility of all the faithful who perform sacrifice that humanity may be healthier, better, and live in a more just society. This was sacrifice of a man who remained true to the best. By his sacrifice, he like another later savior, Lincoln, “belongs to the ages.”

How much more moving is this real atonement of human beings to whom life is sweet. There is no sorrow or tragedy if an all-powerful God merely comes to Earth and Judas, Peter, and Pilate are but puppets being yanked hither and yon playing their pre-determined roles. The old idea just does not identify God closely enough with the moral struggle.

The reality for us is in seeing that the atonement, whether by Jesus or any of the other great friends of mankind, is actually a disclosure of unconditional caring working in and through human efforts.

The reality of the atonement is that suffering has moral power, when a great cause demands suffering.

[CJW note: King: “unmerited suffering is redemptive.”]

We live in an age which is making what may be a great and tragic mistake. So many slide into the rut of thinking that religion is for the purpose of curing little pains, of making people feel self-satisfied and comfortable. The reality of the atonement is that the cross is not merely an exciting word for people who let religion get to their emotions. [CJW note: pre-empted meaning] The cross is the symbol of the inescapable way that the world is made better by the willing devotion, faithfulness, trust, and sacrifice of humankind’s known and nameless saviors. The reality for them is that they become aware of what atonement really is – at-one-ment with the moral fiber of the universe, at-one-ment with the God they worship, or at-one-ment with the difficult but necessary goals of justice, mercy, and love.

What’s the Big Idea?

June 26, 1956
Bridgeport

What’s the Big Idea?

We have been requested to make some observance today of Civic Sunday. Feeling that the Barnum Festival, coming next week-end is a community celebration, the Bridgeport Pastors’ Association suggested that the churches might very well make some fitting recognition of the spirit that prompts such a gigantic spectacle. The Barnum festival is a good idea. It is a good idea whenever separated groups in a community do something together. Something good is happening when beauty, talent, humor, pageant and parade create diversion for the adults and bring excitement and laughter to little children. It’s a good idea too – but it’s not the big idea.

The memorial service we will observe next Sunday, honoring the memory of Phineas T. Barnum is a good idea. He was not perfect. Who is? But he had as many fine qualities as the average person and was a better churchman than many of his day. Just as much as his generosity, his fearless pronouncements of his Universalist beliefs deserve our praise and commemoration. A Barnum Memorial Service is a good thing – but it’s not the big idea.

The nation-wide publicity, the ballyhoo, the trade and interest which accrues Bridgeport businessmen, these preliminaries and consequences of the Barnum festival are good for Bridgeport. The sense of community becomes badly fragmented in city life today. The consequences of urban progress in housing, transportation and specialization of occupation are not entirely beneficial. We love the intimacy of the close-ly knit village, the small but crowded church. We have broken away from the provincialism and isolation of the tribe, clan and family. That break-through was good because it was necessary in the changing world. But in so doing, the person-to-person relationship, the sense of community, threatens to become a part of the forgotten past. So the gathering of clans, the lodges of parading Shriners and Knights, the procession of veterans, baton-twirlers, the floats of business and industry come to recapture and preserve something of the sense of community that was never better illustrated [than] the old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration in the small towns of America. It’s a good idea – but it’s not the big idea.

“... They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks ... nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall ... them afraid ... For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. (Micah 4) That’s the big idea! That’s the daring, optimistic dream of community that men have the power to vibrate within us and tumble the walls of the Jericho of self-centeredness. We must put an end to war, hunger, disease and agonizing poverty because every person on our globe is part of one human family, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh – we must build the universal community, because that’s the Big Idea. That’s the basic oneness of all great religions, not the prize package of Judaism or Christianity.

Here in America the white invaders have been so dominated by their share of mankind’s history, they have never known or overlooked the fact that some of the human beings from whom they took the land had the big idea too. The great Iroquois tribes who made up a Confederation of Indian Nations prior to the time of the European Invasion, dreamed of the Big Idea around their council fires. Their religious savior Deganawida (OUR WILDERNESS SAVIOR, by Thomas R. Henry), born of a virgin mother, or so the Iroquois were taught by their religious teachers, beheld a great vision. This vision was . preached and communicated by Hiawatha, the Indian Savior’s .... Hiawatha was not the character of Longfellow’s poem. The real Hiawatha was a person whose career and personal qualities are startlingly parallel to the life of St. Paul. Deganawida dreamed of a gigantic spruce tree whose top boughs broke through into the light of heaven. (p. 32) The tree grew out of a luminous snow-white carpet spread over rock-strewn hills. This tree was the sisterhood of humanity. Its roots were the tribes. This was the symbolic concept of ‘the universal law of equity, righteous and well being’, of the Great Confederation, in the minds of Deganawida and Hiawatha. The carpet coveted the lands of the nations who had accepted the gospel of Hiawatha and Deganawida. It could be extended to cover the earth. All men of all races could find sanctuary upon it, as when children they had found sanctuary in the arms of their mothers.

The soil from which this tree would grow was composed of three double principles:

“Ne Skenno – health of body and sanctity of mind, peace between individuals and groups.
“Ne Gaiinwiyo – righteousness in conduct, thought and deed; equity and justice in the adjustment of human rights.
“Ne Gashedenza – maintenance of self-defense and military power; maintenance and increase or orenda and spiritual power....”

These religious prophets of the Iroquois had the big idea for they saw the whole human family as being part of the same roots of the great tree of life.

The Big Idea, the universal human community whose roots are irrevocably intertwined, must be more than the unifying symbol of universal religion. If it is only words for religious devotion or only a dream that has no reality, then it is not the big idea. Rather if it is but an echo of occasional wishful thinking; if it is but an empty dream with no fulfillment wanted, and no fulfillment possible, then it is a snare and a delusion and the foulest obscenity of the ages.

But there is substance to the dream. The ideal has begun to become real. This week at the San Francisco Opera House the tenth anniversary ceremonies of the United Nations are the living testimony that the big idea is more than a then the longing of an Israelite the fantastic dream of a native American. FIX. Many Americans have felt aggrieved that the United Nations has not always been a rubber stamp for the United States. Probably many Russians have similar grievances from their point of view. All the prejudices of the tribe have not yet been exorcised from our emotions. We dearly love to hold to and favor what we think of as our own. So sometimes we forget the big idea because we fear Danish silverware, Icelandic fish, English woolens, German Folkswagens, or Japanese gadgets will reduce the abundance of material wealth that is ours. Even more, we fear that delegating part of our sovereignty to a parliament of mankind will produce some terrible sort of disaster.

So in spite of many doubts, some of which obviously are caused by selfishness, and some less clearly provincial, the United Nations is the best spelling out in practice so far of the big idea.

Of course men have died in Korea. There can be no evading of those agonies. Other men have suffered in captivity. A plane has been attacked in the narrow Bering Strait. But threatened wars have been averted many times by UN action or influence – in Israel, Iran, Greece and other spots that might have been the fire to heat up the Cold War. There is no need to repeat to you things that have been said before, which have been shown you this year in movies, slides, pamphlets and newsletters. But when wars are averted, when hungry children are fed, when disease is cured or prevented, when technical assistance begins to lift the burden of burdensome labor and brings the light of knowledge into the faces of those who have been illiterate – one can affirm that the big idea can be achieved.

The dream has become the possibility. This we now know. The Big Idea can become true.

But in our time we cannot rest with the assurance of the possibility. In our time we must face one more fact. The Big Idea must be achieved. How many atomic and hydrogen bombs would it take to reduce all living things to ashes? Winston Churchill, not a scientist, but a man wise enough to understand the implications of what scientists discover, said 50 atomic bombs would do it. Both the United States and the USSR have been manufacturing atomic bombs for years. It has been reported that the United States has thousands of atomic bombs, to say nothing of hydrogen. Perhaps the Russians lag far behind; perhaps not. Even if we decided to take the way of aggression, there is no assurance that the “survival of the country with the most terrible and greatest quantity of atom and hydrogen bombs would have more than a Pyrrhic victory. There is not much comfort in strength because if the Russians fry to dust, so probably will we. A larger quantity of unused inventory of bombs will be slight consolation because no one will be left to be comforted.

The Big Idea must be achieved because there are nervous fingers on the hair triggers of the weapons of mutual extermination.

A scientist speaking before a group of manufacturers and business-men not long [ago] held a one-inch cube of solid uranium metal. He told them that the fissionable power in that one inch cube was equivalent to a “good many hundred thousand pounds of TNT.” Just a single inch cube!

But also, that single one inch cube was equal also to 3 million pounds of coal: equal to the power created by several hundred thousand gallons of gasoline. That potential, for a horrible death or a more abundant life can be held easily in the palm of one’s hand.

Two of three children in the world must go to bed hungry tonight. If all the potential power that is stored so that a nation can make the death strike were used to create power machinery for consumer goods, farm machinery, canneries of food, meat, and fish.... If all the power equivalent to millions of tons of coal were created to turn the wheels of transportation, heating plants, textile mills, drug manufacture, perhaps those children might be fed and clothed with a life before them.

Perhaps you say the cost of this Big Idea is too much. Perhaps you read only the headlines of squabbles and disagreements in the U.N. Perhaps you have not followed our UNESCO newsletters posted on our bulletin board.

The philosopher George Santayana once defended the much criticized Greek philosophy of Epicureanism by remarking that with all its alleged defects in the eyes of Christian philosophers, it had certain values. It taught men that their reliance was on themselves. They were “comrades afloat on the same raft together with no fate not common to them all, and no possible helpers but one another.”

We belong to a religion that teaches that all mankind is one; their roots are one and the future of each is unavoidably bound together with the fortunes of all. The same life-giving fluid runs through all the roots and out to the outermost twig and leaf. Whether we like it or not the people of earth, white, black, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, unbeliever – we are all one. When we recognize and discipline our thoughts, our feelings and our acts in harmony with the feeling of universality, one mankind of many colors, one god with many names, then we are [within] sight of the city of God.

“Earth shall be fair, and all her people one;
Nor till that hour shall God’s whole will be done.
Now, even now, once more from earth to sky,
Peals forth in joy man’s old undaunted cry --
Earth shall be fair, and all her people one.” (Clifford Bax, #342, HS...)

That’s Universalism and that’s the big idea.

The Providential Seed Corn – and the Puzzle of Thankfulness

November 24, 1965
Plainfield

Also,
November 20, 1977
Lakeland

The Providential Seed Corn – and the Puzzle of Thankfulness

In November – December 1620, before deciding to settle Plymouth, the Pilgrims reconnoitered other parts of Cape Cod. In his unorthodox book of the Pilgrim adventure, SAINTS AND STRANGERS, George Willison has a fascinating chapter, “Babes in the Wilderness.” Monday, the 13th of November, 1620, was a day when the women went ashore to wash the heaps of clothes and bedding soiled in the long voyage. Sentries guarded them while excited children ran up and down the beach. Some men repaired the longboat; others dug clams on the tidal flats to make a succulent feast.

Two days later, sixteen men led by Captain Myles Standish, set off to explore the best possible place of settlement. Soon they glimpsed five or six Indians, whom the Pilgrims called “Savages,” but the Indians darted off into the woods. The Pilgrims pursued; and if the native Americans had hostile intentions, nothing could have been easier than an ambush. But there was no trap.

Near what is now Truro, on Cape Cod, Captain Standish and his company came on several clearings which the Indians had used as cornfields. They noticed sand piles covered with grass rugs, which although the first pile they investigated was a grave, others proved to be underground enclosures for corn stored in large baskets – three or four bushel capacity. This of course was the Indian seed corn being stored for next year’s crop. The Pilgrims simply helped themselves to other people’s property without permission and with no compensation. Willison writes, “This was just plain larceny of course, but the Pilgrims were inclined to regard it as another special providence of God. And in a sense it was, for without this seed corn the would have had no crops the next year and all would have starved to death. As it was, they just barely managed to squeeze through.” (p. 150)

When one thinks about it, this is a variation on a thanksgiving theme, is it not?

Can taking other people’s property, just because one needs it, be called the “providence of God?” The question may seem irreverent, because haloes have been shining over Pilgrim memories for quite a while, but supposed it happened to you today? Suppose some ragged invaders of a different skin color helped themselves to your stores of food at the beginning of Winter? And it was food you could not possibly replace? The Pilgrims were people of the Book – the Bible, we are told. What happened to the commandment “Thou shalt not steal?” Judgment at this distance of 345 years is unnecessary and futile.

But we might well think back with gratitude on the forbearance of the Americans to these invaders. Slaughtering the Pilgrim Company would not have been difficult. Continued harassment would have caused an utter failure of the Company, particularly that first dreadful Winter. Furthermore, the continued history of relations between colonizers, and later our nation with the Indians reflects little glory and much shame upon us for the broken treaties, the imposed degradation and nearly complete extinction of the American Indian cultures by the invaders from Europe.

So in moments such as these, we would feel some sense of repentance; we would not only admire the Pilgrim fathers, but also the Indian brothers, for without the forbearance and peaceful attitudes of these so-called “savages,” the Plimoth Plantation would have been no more enduring than that ill-fated colony of Englishmen on Roanoke Island in Virginia.

Such gratitude may be a variation on a theme, but an aspect we should recognize more than we do.

And so they survived.

Attached:
November 21, 1954
Bridgeport

The Religion of the Third Feast

When the settlers at Plymouth gathered the following year to give thanks, to feast and to enjoy the friendship of their Indian neighbors, an American tradition began. Because we are Americans, we are emotionally conditioned to think of Thanksgiving as a celebration born on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, [345] years ago. That’s a long time ago. The tradition of a government of free men under self-imposed laws that was born in the cabin of the Mayflower at the beginning of that great adventure was a heritage that grew and culminated in the American Revolution with goals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; was a tradition that then exerted a cleansing moral force on some of the infections of tyrannies that had hung on: slavery, voting franchise for everyone regardless of wealth or poverty or sex, free public education, and new in our time the legal removal by the Supreme Court of the stain of discrimination because of skin color. There are many ways that the Pilgrim tradition has enriched us, freed us, and put pressure on us to discipline ourselves.

But the Thanksgiving tradition is older than the Pilgrim’s feast in 1621. Thanksgiving is an ancient ceremony with roots in the very beginnings of our ancient Hebrew religious culture.

The reading from the old scripture of Leviticus (23/ 33/38) tells the story of the Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths). This scripture is the written record of ceremonies even more ancient. The Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkat (Succoth) was the celebration of the final harvest home of the fruits and olives. It was a time of rejoicing. In early times the whole Israelite population lived for a week in the open, sheltered by temporary tents of palm branches. As time went on their descendants observed the ceremony in various ways. When the temple was built in Jerusalem, Sukkat became a time of pilgrimage to that most holy place where sacrifice was offered. In many Jewish homes, even to this day, the rooms are decorated to take on the appearance of booths. Our harvest feast of Thanksgiving is in one sense the Americanized version of the old Hebrew feast of Tabernacles.

This Feast was the third of the great religious festivals when Pilgrims marched to Jerusalem. Christianity has many parallels. The first feast, Passover, became Easter for Christians. The second, the Feast of Weeks, is somewhat less known in America, but in most Christian countries is observed as Pentecost, or Whitsunday.

Thus the meaning of Thanksgiving stirs our feelings because not only does it appeal to our patriotism, and to our pride in the faith, courage and resourcefulness of the Pilgrims, but also because Thanksgiving stirs our religious feelings at depth. (More than that one of the days when human affection is ...)

In addition, the intensity of our emotions is reinforced because this Autumn ceremony of thankfulness for harvest home is not alone the product of our Hebrew and Pilgrim heritage.

The Pilgrims may have been as much inspired by the Indians as their Hebrew heritage. A. Hyatt Verrill, explorer, scholar of Indian cultures, author of many books, who died in New Haven just a few days ago, made a very interesting claim in his book, THE REAL AMERICANS. Mr. Verrill noted that the “Indians’ seasonal dances and ceremonies (were) numerous and of many kinds ... in the Eastern states the Algonquin tribes such as Delawares, Shawnees, Iroquois, Mohicans, Massachusetts ... and others hold a great autumnal or crop ceremonial feast. (Hundreds of years before the Pilgrims landed) The Indians gathered to give thanks to the Great Spirit and lesser deities for abundant crops, good hunting and fishing. Dances were held ... Drums of a special form were thumped .. A new fire symbolic of a fresh start in life was kindled and there was a great feast with venison roasting ears, wild turkeys, squash pumpkins, pudding.” Mr. Verrill believed that it was from this great Indian ceremony that we derive our Thanksgiving.

One of the most shameful, as well as least known sections of American history has been our inhuman treatment of the Indian tribes who lived on the North American continent when the Europeans began colonization. When history is looked at with some objectivity – when we forget the way we have been conditioned by the “western” movies and the lurid books – we become aware that the Indians of this continent were friendly and hospitable to the newcomers. They were far more friendly to the Europeans than the third and fourth generation Americans were to later immigrants from across the sea. The causes of so-called Indian massacres can be found in broken treaties, in natural retaliation against the brutality, ignorance and greed of the white men who came across the sea. If the Indians had not been friendly it is obvious that there could have been no settlements established.

When the Pilgrims held their great feast of thanks to God they were under the influence of Indian culture as well as Hebrew culture – and the culture of the American Indians was far more advanced than we have ever realized or admitted. The Indian tribes were deeply religious. For the most part they lived in peace with other tribes. Their family life was wholesome and taught high values to the growing children.

One of their Thanksgiving prayers has been translated thus:

“We give thanks for the corn and beans and quashes that give us life;
We give thanks for the wind which moves the air and blows away diseases;
We give thanks for the sun which has looked on us with a kindly eye;
We give thanks for the moon and stars which give us light when the sun is gone;
We give thanks to the Great Spirit, who is all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of his children.”

Furthermore, the religion of the third feast has even deeper roots than already described. Nearly all peoples, all over the world, have had harvest ceremonies and feasts. The wonder of growing things that are nourishing and pleasant to the taste has always gripped the imagination of human beings. Persons survive because of growing things. The record of history, and the events of pre-history which we can assume from tribal memories, folk songs and remnants of ancient ritual – all these confirm the intensity with which seedtime, growth and harvest have always captured the religious feelings of persons of all-time, everywhere.

As far as can be learned, not all harvest festivals were the same everywhere. Variations occurred because of such factors as the most important food crop, the climate, and the relative state of cultural advancement. However, the essential rituals in primitive harvest ceremonies were: 1) propitiatory rites, 2) observances to secure fertility, 3) the offering of first-fruits.

Most of our beliefs are survivals, refined and enlightened, of these primitive expressions. The universal elements of Thanksgiving or harvest festival still basically express the same emotions. We are false to our human heritage if we discard or ignore these basic feelings. But w are also traitor to humanity if we ignore the advances and enlightenment won for us by human beings who refined the barbarisms by unselfish acts and by radiant influence, causing more light to shine on ancient symbols and sacrifices.

Thus the religious meaning of Thanksgiving can best be apprehended by looking at the ancient and primitive ways, and then taking them to our hearts with the refinements of the best of civilization.

First the people of the pre-historic past observe the ingathering of the crops with propitiatory rites. They believed that all things were occupied by spirits. There was the corn-spirit; the tree spirit; the spirit of every vegetable. The people believed that when these were taken for food, the spirits would be angered unless they were placated. So ceremonies grew around the harvest. The corn spirit had to receive some attention or it might be angry at the persons who harvested the golden ears. The vine and tree had to be placated when the grapes and fruit were taken for human use.

Out of this primitive fear of the spirits of growing things has grown, gradually, the spirit of thankfulness to the Power people call God. This world, our home, furnishes us with food, warmth and shelter. There is a spirit of mysterious growth. It does not matter too much, I suppose, if we call that spirit God, Yahweh, Allah, Manitou, or whatever. In the city, particularly, where we are too far from the soil, we have a particular need to remember to be grateful for life and for the harvest which sustains it. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for harvest home – for harvest home means life for us and all we love.

The second of the worship elements that the primitives observed was the ritual to insure that the fields would be fertile another year. The rites were primitive. Many peoples included the sacrifice of a human being, the ashes of the sacrificed one being scattered on the fields so that the following year a good crop would grow. As persons gradually became conscious of the value of human life, there was refinement in ritual until animals were sacrificed, and as time went on even that custom was abolished.

But even though the sacrifice of human life no longer would be tolerated, the basic obligation of conservation and restoration of the “holy earth” is ours nevertheless. More and more we must realize that the organic elements of the soil must be restored if abundant, nourishing crops are to be continued. We live in a world where the net population is increasing at a fearful rate. If ever our world is to see a relaxing of tensions between the “have” and the “have-not” peoples, there must be an adequate food supply. Conservation of the soil, forests, water supply, restoration of the mineral elements of the soil removed by crops, all measures which will increase food supplies must be taken in our world if human life is to continue.

(Constant struggle between competing interests)

The battle that Theodore Roosevelt fought and won for conservation in early 20th century America can be lost in our day if we forget the necessity of keeping forest reserves, game preserves, water supplies flood-control and power achievements beyond the power of greedy, short-sighted men.

[Editor’s note: the following is in the Bridgeport sermon, but apparently excised for Plainfield and Lakeland:

There are additional perils. The new noun in our language, “fall-out” refers to the fact that as a result of atomic and hydrogen experiments, many places in the world, even our own country, have experienced rainfalls of radioactive dust. So far, we are told, except for the unlucky Japanese fishing vessels, these “fall-outs” have not been [of] sufficient intensity to represent a danger to human life. A good many people, even the conservative and militant Winston Churchill, are greatly concerned that if these fission experiments continue, the fall-outs will be deadly enough to poison our soil, to make the fruit and all growing things, for which we are thankful, deadly for human beings.

We may have to make a different kind of sacrifice than the primitive peoples to [ensure] the fertility of the earth. We may have to take steps that will halt the rain of death; even if these steps mean that we may have to revise our accepted ideas about individual sovereignty and our notion that we have the right to tell the rest of the world to go hang.]

The third primitive ritual observed in the shadowy and ancient past was the offering of the first fruits to the god and gods. Not only were the fruit and vegetables brought to the altar; and the fatted calves burned in the altar flames; but in more fearsome days the very first child of a man and woman was consecrated to a fiery death in the gaping mouth of Moloch.

Early peoples felt these heartbreaking acts were necessary to appease the anger and desires of the gods they worshiped. No longer do we roast our first-born at the altar of religion. (Although the Mars still receives his tributes). We do not decorate our altars with fruit and vegetables. When churches did, of late years it was for the purpose of feeding those who were in need.

As men advanced in understanding they recognized that rather than destroying humans and vegetables on the altar as a thing pleasing to God, they increased their responsibility for the welfare of their fellow human beings. (Amos: “I hate, despise, but let, righteousness,” etc.)

Thus the Hebrews in their Feast of the Tabernacles refined and humanized the meaning of the festival. In addition to the more original elements of harvest ritual and thanks, the Feast of Tabernacles became the occasion when the Hebrews remembered with gratitude the wanderings of their ancestors who roamed the wilderness for many years, sheltered by tents. The booths (or tents) in houses or in the fields where the Israelites should dwell for 7 days in commemoration of the feast is a reminder to them that their ancestors thought enough of their unique religion and culture to want to be freed from the chains of slavery; to venture into unknown perils for the sake of freedom and for the chance to live their lives in the way they believed to be right. “Let my people go,” said Moses to Pharaoh. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, the people went anyway. They sought freedom. Their courage is one of the great parts of our heritage as well as the heritage of the Jewish people.

Philo, the Alexandrian, one of the greatest Jewish philosophers who lived [around] 200 BC, said of this harvest festival of tabernacles, “it teaches equality, the first principle and beginning of justice ... (as well as) the witnessing of the perfection of all fruits of the year, and the giving of thanks to the being who has made them perfect.”

Thus the first-fruits in our day must be a recognition that life is given to us for moral uses: that God is best served by serving the needs of our fellow-men.

We are all tempted at times to be like the boy in the nursery rhyme (with a little poetic license)

“Little Jack Horner, sat in a corner,
Eating a (Thanksgiving) pie.
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum,
And said, what a great boy am I.”

But that is not the best of our heritage. From the Jewish people, and from their moral growth that added justice and righteousness to the necessary components of the harvest festival came also the idea of the synagogue. This is a time in Jewish congregations when the institution of the synagogue receives special recognition. We would do well to be glad that the Jewish people evolved this institution for it was a fore-runner of real democracy. In the synagogue all men were equal in the sight of God; no priest, no person or privilege could claim special distinction; all souls were equal as they sought to learn more of what religion is and what religion does. The church fellowship has incorporated many of the best ideas of the synagogue; democracy in church policy; the value of every person; the necessity of learning the facts of religion as well as learning to respond emotionally to religion.

So amid next Thursday’s celebration of family, food and the spiritual fragrance of happiness together, may it be that we will experience a drive to real thanksgiving – be part of conserving a world of hope for all persons; a drive to be working members of a world synagogue dedicated to learning more so that all people may obtain justice and a satisfactory life in which everyone can rejoice and give thanks in freedom to the God who is the creator of all persons everywhere in the world.

Spiritual Values Permeating Christmas

December, 1954
Bridgeport

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worship

November 20, 1957
Akron
Originally Bridgeport February 21, 1954

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[bottom half of page 2, and all of page 3, are missing]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is the wonder of worship.

From Fear to Faith

November 8, 1953
Bridgeport

Some of you may remember Farmer John in the sensitive novel The Cathedral by the late Hugh Walpole. Somewhere in that story the hero, Farmer John says, speaking of the people who lived in the cathedral town of Polchester, “We are not bad people here, but like people everywhere else, we are lazy and selfish. The two hardest things in the world are true altruism and honest clear thinking... but we are afraid, you and I like the rest – afraid of our safety, afraid that some one will rob us, or laugh at us, or hurt us physically, or make us feel small. We are not – most of us, cowards about big crises, but is the little things which destroy us.”

I want to speak for a while today about fear. Who would disagree that fear can haunt our lives with nameless as well as known apprehension and alarm. I am not going to dwell on the fact this day that there are real dangers of which we should be aware. For the moment let us define these threats, such as the traffic hazard that is presented to a child, as “concerns.” In our sermon fear will be considered as feelings of dread and terror which are more likely to destroy us emotionally than to preserve [sic] us physically.

These fears would seem to have no reliable base. You may have read or heard from children themselves about some of these imaginary dangers that are so frightening. There was a little boy in Nantucket (reported NY Times) who was “terrified solely (according to his mother) by the beach bus and would scream and cower under the seats during the whole of a ten minute ride. There was recorded also the four year old of husky size who would refuse to walk over sidewalk gratings for fear of slipping between bars set not more than an inch apart.” Our hearts go out to the little ones with their irrational but, to them, very real dangers.

But fear menaces more than children. One doctor in the field of mental health (Boston Globe, Dec. 1952) says flatly that the majority of Americans are unhappy and that the chief reason for this unhappiness is fear. Fear is responsible for the stale, empty lives so many people live; “fear is responsible for weakness, weariness, aches and pains.” We Americans on the surface fear the loss of our money and financial security; we fear that we will fail, we fear not being liked by the people we know. Below the surface there are other fears born in our childhood and buried beneath the layers of day to day happenings. When times of crisis come the grip of fear on us maybe so confining that we will not measure up to demands that our age may demand.

Another example – the TV stars are the new elite of the entertainment world. They display their talents before the largest audiences in the history of the world. Their lives are pitted with the corrosive acid of fear. The physical strain caused by fear is causing many of them to limit their appearances on this new 20th century marvel. One physician speaking of the numerous top-liners who skirt the brink of physical and emotional breakdown says “the cause of the afflictions of the stars can be summed up in one word, fear.” “It is the fear of the unseen audience and fear of the unknown reaction that seems to assail them. They work themselves into a terrifying state of mind because of the horrifying realization that once they say or do something on television it cannot be recalled.”

The TV star cannot hear the applause from your living room, so he lives in fear of the unknown. This fear of the unknown leads us to one of the great unspoken fears of many people. The fear of death. Death is an unknown. As has been pointed out, we in our American life take part in a conspiracy of silence about death. (see Eric Fromm Escape From Freedom p. 245-46). In Ancient times the Greeks paid little attention to the fact of death, placing all their emphasis on this life. On the other hand the Egyptians of thirty and forty centuries ago built their whole civilization around death and their belief in the afterlife and the preserving of the human body.

Our Jewish forefathers in religion admitted the fact of death realistically and prayed for the eventual achievement of a state of justice in this world. In our day somewhere we tend to repress the fact of death. Our ceremonies and customs try to repress the fact of death. We even speak a special language at the time of grief in which the word death is not even mentioned. We speak of “the departed,” cemeteries have become “burial parks,” and we have begun to think that an atmosphere of quiet luxury for a few hours helps us meet the human crisis. Thus we not only “do our best” to the person who has died, but we manage to keep our fear of death from being expressed.

Yet suppress it though we will, nevertheless that fear of the unknown lives among us.

It was said of Pope Julius II that vanity and fear of death and destruction caused him to engage the greatest of sculptors, Michelangelo, to design and make a magnificent tomb for his body when it should die. Michelangelo’s artistry was so breathtaking that Julius decided that the old Basilica of Constantine was not splendid enough to house this glorious tomb. So he decided to build a new church to house the tomb. So in order to defray the enormous expenses to build St. Peter’s, Julius and his successors encouraged the sale of indulgences to a larger extent than ever before. The resulting scandals from these sales precipitated a young monk into challenging the biblical authority of the pope of Rome and that young monk Martin Luther sparked the Protestant revolt. So fear of the unknown was at least one of the reasons for the splitting of the Latin church.

No previous generation in all history has more reason than ours to hope for a better and fairer world and community. Science, medicine, and communication promise that if we will there can be less disease, more comfort, more interesting lives than has ever been possible.

Yet fear is holding us back. The twentieth century has been a “journey into fear.” We live in dread of atomic destruction, economic depression, and in the shadow of nameless fears. We whistle shrilly but cannot drown out the sound of our fears. We turn eagerly to the books that will quiet our fears, “peace of mind,” “peace of soul,” “guide to confident living,” and perhaps the most pathetic clue to strivings is the book title, “how to win friends and influence people.”

And perhaps the most crippling of all fears is the fear of ridicule.

There is no great secret about our fears. Our fears are born of ignorance and uncertainty. We fear the unknown and we are uncertain because we are in terror that we have no safe base on which to face life. Fear is corrosive. Fear so overwhelms our senses that veritably in times of terror the smell of fear is in the air.

But there it is an even more sinister result of ignorance. Ignorance gives birth to fear – and hate is holding a lighted match to the fuse of the powder keg of our tense and puzzled world.

Unless we find a safe base our fears will destroy us, individually and as communities. What can liberal religion offer [to] remove the poison from the fangs of ignorance, fear and hate?

Of all the definitions of faith, one of the most challenging is found in the dictionary. I think it is the fifth in the series, and goes something like this: “faith is fidelity to one’s promises, or allegiance, or duty, loyalty, a strict adherence to duty and the seeking of fulfillment of promise.” Tolstoy thought that the “function of religion is to give to life a meaning which death cannot destroy, a significance and a meaning which is not bounded by our three score years and ten.”

Basically we can compress these definitions into this: fear can be transformed into faith by experience. Faith is not what the child once said, “believing something that just isn’t so.” Tertullian, the early Christian, once said, “I believe it because it is absurd.” But for those of us who would like to see our religion become vital, [we] cannot stand with him. We are aware that “faith in holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”

Our experience must seek to explore the unknown and throw light upon the ignorance that gives birth to our fears. The explorers here vividly illustrate this. Columbus sailed on, and on, and ignorance became knowledge and today the journey from Europe to America holds few terrors. Faith is an experience like that. Faith is not stumbling along with the eyes shut and lips muttering prayers; faith is determination to push back the frontiers of our ignorance whether that ignorance be of continents, international affairs or of our own inward strivings.

In one of the most famous of sermons ever preached in this country, Horace Bushnell of Connecticut spoke of the expulsive power of a new affection. He took as his text, Peter’s visit to the tomb on the Sunday after the crucifixion. Peter, still in the grip of the terror and fear that had caused him to deny that he ever knew Jesus, was told by Mary that the Master was not in the tomb. So Peter and John ran to the tomb and Peter went in. The Peter that came out was no longer the terror-stricken coward. The Peter that came out was the brave preacher who fearlessly preached what he believed about Jesus, even though the end was a martyr’s death in Rome. The experience there had the power to replace paralyzing emotion of fear with the serene energy of a man who had been completely won to a new idea.

Perhaps this is what the ancient prophet Isaiah was talking about when he said (35:3 ff.) “strengthen the feeble hands, and the tottering knees make firm; say to those whose hearts beat wildly, Courage! – fear not!” “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.” What Isaiah is saying in the beautiful imagery of his poetry is that when fear is expelled there is a sense of confidence and fulfillment and somehow the world is clean, fresh, and peaceful. That sense of release and fulfillment can come through the experience of exploring that which has been hidden from us.

That sense of experience is also our answer to that jagged fear of the mystery of death. You remember how Shakespeare has Julius Caesar say, “cowards die many times before their death, the valiant never taste of death but once.” The late Catholic philosopher, George Santayana expressed this same thought this way, “but the radical fear of death, I venture to think is something quite different. It is the love of life. The love of life... is the original impulse by which good is discriminated from evil and hope from fear.” Thus it is in experiencing all the good things of life that we expel the fear of death.

It is in sharing life’s experiences together that we throw light on ignorance and the feeling of fellowship has the expulsive power to root out our fears. It was on the occasion of an automobile trip in which several men riding together found common ground of which they had been unaware. There is little said about this, but to me the most far-reaching effect of the United Nations, even in their disputes is if there are sitting together in the same room for hours at a time. Almost inevitably, whether the hostile delegates admit it or not, there is constantly new light on old ignorance and with that light there will be a lessening of old fears.

The faith that transforms fear is a living experience.

There is an old obscure legend surrounding the ancient story of the parting of the waters of the Red Sea so that the Hebrews escaping from bondage could elude the pursuing Egyptian soldiers. As in the ancient Bible story, Moses waved his wand over the waters. But in the other legend, the waters did not part until one Hebrew slave had the courage to leap into the waters. Before he could sink, then the waters parted.

Thus sometimes our fears become faith through the courage act experience. [sic]

In addition to seeking the experience that will open the door on the dark closet of ignorance, the liberal in religion will say that we must apply reason to the circumstances that vex and frustrate us. Some pessimistic theologians proclaim that the age of reason has passed. Man has demonstrated, so these people say, that he does not use his reason. Man is a creature of irrational emotions and it is futile to expect him to apply common sense to his problems. Man’s only salvation lies in throwing himself on the mercy of Almighty God.

We live in times where there is some evidence to support this view of our helplessness. We seem almost powerless to halt the tide of events that is bearing us toward disaster.

Yet, as a professor of philosophy at CCNY (NY Times) remarked, “our reason may be a pitiful candlelight in the dark and boundless sea of being, but we have nothing better, and woe to those who willfully try to put it out.” And the poet told us, “it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

There is less need to feel helpless we fear. We need to remind ourselves continually that history is filled with men and women who have enriched the lives of their time and all lives since because they were willing to apply thoughtful observation, and reasonable inferences to the facts of their experience. That is how the great discoveries are made whether they be continents mastered by the explorer, or antibiotic drugs [by a scientist] who has had faith to experiment and the willingness to apply judgment to his findings.

(Erich Fromm, Man for Himself, p. 205) “Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton were all imbued with an unshakable faith in reason. For this Bruno was burned of the stake, Spinoza suffered excommunication.”

We journey from fear to face when we seek experiences that will replace ignorance with knowledge, when we apply reason to our judgments, --and one thing more. We need a vision of the truth that is founded in perfect love, in unselfish good will and fidelity to people. This is the inescapable dimension. A movie can be either two dimensional or three dimensional, but if a religion is to provide a way of life that will enrich our lives and those around us with meaning that “death cannot destroy,” then religion must have that deep dimension of human love.

That was the central message of the New Testament. (1st John 4:18) “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. For fear suggests punishment and no one who feels fear has attained perfect love.”

Is that not what Paul affirms also when he says in Romans (8:15) “for all were guided by God’s spirit are God’s sons. It is not a consciousness of servitude that has been imparted to you to fill you with fear again, but the consciousness of adoption as sons, which makes us cry “Abba”, that is, father. The spirit itself testifies that with our spirits that we are God’s children, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ.”

I know of no better way to sum up what I have been trying to say about the subject then to tell you an event some of you may know. In a way I think it’s a parable about this journey from fear to faith. It’s the story of man against the sea. If you like you can think of the wild, angry ocean as the world in which we live and the man as all humanity trying to keep alive and afloat until he can find the security of a safe harbor.

About a year ago a French professor, Dr. Bombard, was interested in finding out if men could survive on the sea without any supplies. There have been so many cases of shipwreck or plane crashes where the survivors either starved or were swamped as they attempted to use small boats or rafts to reach safety. Dr. Bombard was convinced that there were ways of living off the sea itself and preserving life. But the only way to demonstrate his beliefs was to experience the hardship himself.

So he built a crude raft, placed some emergency provisions on the raft but sealed the containers, determining not to use them unless he was on the point of death. So we set out on the raft to go from Europe to America. The journey was fearful. Living off fish and birds, was he was almost overwhelmed by the mighty, surging power of the open sea. He made the discovery that all sailors must make to survive. In order to conquer the sea he must first conquer himself. This was his greatest battle. Dr. Bombard told how he won this fight against fear, this trial of terror by using such devices as carrying on imaginary conversations with a codfish and following a rigid discipline and painstakingly keeping a log. More than two months later he staggered ashore on Barbados. The sail of the raft was limp and bedraggled, he and everything on the raft were encrusted with salt, but the seal was unbroken on his emergency rations. He had demonstrated his faith. He had conquered his fear; and his vision of goodwill toward his fellow men was made real by his willingness to perform a redeeming act so that by his experience others might suffer less, others might live. That is the real triumph of faith over fear.

There's No Business Like Church Business

July 1, 1956
Bridgeport

This title is chosen because of [the] present celebration of the annual Barnum Festival. What with the great Ballyhoo Show last night, the coming Parade of Champions and great Street parade, with the auspicious beginning of the second year of Shakespearean Theatre at Stratford on Housatonic, we are made conscious these days of the glitter, fascination and entertainment of show business. There's no business like it, and most of us rejoice that the great performers, actors, directors and producers are determined to go on with it. '

P.T. Barnum lived long before Irving Berlin wrote the song that Ethel Merman and others have made part of our American culture. Barnum, too, believed there was no business like show business.

Barnum also believed there was no business like church business. He gave his money, his time and his public allegiance to the Universalist Church. He was convinced enough of the merit of the message of Universalism that he was willing to be known publicly as a religious liberal. Once, you will recall he went to jail because he was a Universalists and Universalists were not permitted to testify.

Barnum was interested enough in his church to write and publish his reasons for being a Universalist. You might not agree with his arguments; some of his testimony has become dated by later scholarship. But in its day it was trenchant reasoning. Much is still valid. But, not many laypeople are willing to take the time to write out the reasons why they are Universalists. Isn't it true, if you will look back on the actions of people, do not many of them act as though the Church was not the "Greatest Show on Earth" but the "Greatest Bore on Earth."

Many times a person approaching another member to get a task done for the church, is almost unbelievably shy; seemingly quite reluctant to ask for something for his church. We are quite apologetic for our church at times. Why? Have we lost our nerve? Has religion lost its zest? Is organized religion merely an outworn relic, with little relevance for the needs of people today? Are we afraid to make the church really count in our lives because of the manner in which we might alter our loyalties and our allotments of time, money, and devotion?

It was with such questions as the foregoing in mind that I attempted to draw some tentative conclusions as to why I happen to believe there is no business like church business. There are negative as well as positive claims which may be lodged against the church.

There is merit in removing the rose-colored glasses often enough so that the church may be seen in the role of shabby conniver as well as in the spotless role of the angel. For the church and churches, all forms of organized religion is subject to constant decay. Unless the decay is eradicated. Unless new shoots are constantly taking root so that worn-out growth can again become part of the dust of the earth, then the church will no longer serve mankind well.

So first I would ask you to consider that there is no business like church business for being a shelter for hypocrisy as well as honesty. On many occasions this was the sore spot that Jesus struck with rigorous frankness. Think back of the conversations you have had with persons who wanted no part of any church. Is it not so that the most common criticism by these no-church goers, is that they believe there are too many hypocrites in the church.

Any honest reading of the history of the church discloses without any shadow of a doubt that there has been an alternation of the best and the worst in the rise, growth, and decay of the formal religions of the world.

There are examples on almost every page of history. Thousands of Huguenots slaughtered in a single day in the name of the one "true" church. Thousands of lives made more wholesome, cleaner, ---saved from sordid lives or ugly death by the spirit of human reform nurtured at least in part by the great evangelical movements of the 19th century.

When one considers the inquisition, the acid and unlovely bigotry which has characterized many sections of both Protestantism and Catholicism within Christianity, the failure of organized religion to make much of a dent in war, the hardness of heart which is the vain character trait of many persons who loudly proclaim the virtues of a particular religion, then we are tempted to affirm that evil is most foul when it infiltrates the life of religion.

But when one considers the martyrs, the service to those in need, beginning with the elders of the primitive Xn church, continuing down through the religious orders which were founded to serve humanity in its needs, the orphanages, hospitals, and educational institutions inspired, organized, founded and nurtured by the countless branches of all forms of religion, we have to affirm to that good is never better than when discovered in the workings of churches.

All churches proclaim one way or another the "liberty of the Christian man." But also when one church becomes by far the strongest in a nation, historically that church begins to use force to have its own way, rather than persuasion. This is true not only of Roman Catholicism, but many branches of Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, as well as the great religion of Islam. They forget the quotation Mr. Jackson uses, "a man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still."

There is no business like church business for irony. One could almost define Christianity as the worship of dead radicals. Jesus, Paul, John, the Church Fathers, Luther, Calvin, and in our liberal traditions, Murray, Ballou, Channing, and Parker. We may not worship their memories, but we do hold them in high favor, and quote their lives and sermons with approval. Yet, ironically enough, most churches will persecute their live radicals.

One of the most feared slanders in the church today, is the charge that some of the ministers and lament are atheists. It is a loosely used word which usually means that the one called the name doesn't believe in the god of the one who makes the label. Yet, in the beginning, the early Christians were called Atheists, persons who believed in a detestable superstition.

There's no business like church business. The church proclaims itself to be an institution of God. All churches do one way or another. Yet the worst mistake any church can make, whether it calls itself "the true Church," is to place itself beyond human criticism.

There's no business like church business and the greatest mistake you can make is to see only one side of its picture, either good or bad. For just as in the buying and selling of antique furniture to be used in a home today, you must see both sides of the picture, whether the claims are true or false, whether the facts are as they state, and what use it is today.

Yet is isn't a true picture to portray the church only as an institution in which the alternating currents of good and evil render about equal power. For in addition, there's no business like church business to help people see themselves who are religious more for what they can give, rather than what they can get. This is not to say that persons do not find some needs satisfied in the worship and work of the church. It would be naive to think that persons would continue to attend and support churches if they got nothing. But, the highest rewards of the church offers results from the opportunities of giving.

While many persons do get peace of mind, via the "buck up old boy philosophy, life isn't so bad after all," there are also those and their name has been legion in the past who acquire serenity, even though life is bad and difficult, by trusting that the universe is ultimately biased toward what is good for life. There's no business like church business for acquiring an honest as well as reverence inner balance, if you will give your trust.

There's no business like church business either for defining life in terms of what you can give others. That was the way Jesus defined religion. Micah of a more ancient day said, do just, love march (an outgoing attitude) and walk humbly with thy God.

When the church gets beneath ceremonies, whether simple or ornate, there's no business like it for telling us humans that we need religion because of what we can give. This is not because we will be automatically rewarded, but rather the act or intention of giving without hope of reward, is the essence of getting to know God.

Lastly I would say that there's no business like church business for carrying in its movement the values which human beings believe to be of ultimate importance. With all its faults and fumbles, the church symbolizes what we have faith is the highest. Whatever our ideas of deity may be, the highest ones we place in the religion of our allegiance. When the events and feelings of life become disconnected, confused, doubtful, we find in the church the institution which expresses the myths and principles which we believe to be highest and of ultimate importance. The human spirit; the continuing endurance of human life experience, forgiveness, mercy, love, truth, and beauty.

There's no business like church business. In our modern day we have not yet found the architecture and the liturgy and symbolism which the Gothic cathedral, the mass and the cross, and vestments did for Medieval man.

But the human spirit will not be denied. When we too recognize that the religious institution must be the vehicle for our most valuable hopes and dreams, then we will seek to make it as significant for us as the RC was for Francis; Judaism for Isaiah; the wandering brotherhoods for Buddha.

The Right Answer to the Wrong Questions

April 29, 1956
Bridgeport

There is little difficult in getting the right answer to some questions. If some excited person asks you with some heat, "Do you believe in the American way of life?" The answer is easy, "Of course I believe in the American Way of Life."

In a period when atheism seems to be more the sure indication of sinister activities, rather than a philosophical argument, the right answer to the query, "Do you believe in God?" is, of course, "Yes I believe in God."

When school taxes are high, and tempers are higher, we all know that it is best to advance a comforting "no" when an angry man asks, "Do you believe we need all these expensive frills in the school system?"

Has there not been an occasion when a finger has been pointed at you, accompanied by the rhetorical question, "Don't you believe the labor unions are getting too fresh?" You know that you are called upon either to look sympathetic or grunt acquiescence.

In a year such as this one, where we Americans are caught up in the excitement of Presidential nominations and elections, there is presented an excellent opportunity to observe dialogue similar to the foregoing.

All candidates are going to avow their undying support of motherhood and their unrelenting opposition to sin. The depth of emotion exhibited by the nominees as they speak of the American Boy or the hard-pressed farmer will be matched only by non-committal vagueness which envelops the course of action recommended. As a matter of fact, I for one, do not need he assurances of President Eisenhower, and the democratic nominees, whoever he may turn out to be, about brotherhood and the equal rights of all Americans. I am pretty well convinced by now that most all our national leaders will make eloquent appeals for brotherhood and gradualism and will condemn sin and revolution. What I do hope the nominees will make clear is that they believe the responsibility of the executive department of the government is in supporting the decisions of the judicial branch of the government, the Supreme Court. Are we a federal republic or a confederacy?

This example from our political life is by way of illustrating that the wrong questions may bring the right answers, but with no accompanying clarification of issues and no growth in understanding.

Margaret Isherwood in a rather distinguished little book on religion, The Heart of the Matter, remarks (p. 41) "In place of, 'do you believe?', a more apt criterion of salvation in the future will be: 'Are you trying to learn and deepen your understanding? Are you responding with a positive attitude toward the challenge of life? Are you faithfully and continuously going forward toward such glimmerings of Light as you are capable of seeing? Are you living so that here and now, in this particular phase of your being, you can begin to comprehend the meaning of eternal life?'"

Many of the questions to which we can give the easy, "right" answers, are the wrong questions because there is no real decision involved.

Most of us would readily answer, "yes" to the questions about God and the American Way of Life. But the questions are wrong. When a person is deeply concerned about whether you or I "believe in God," the question should not be one requiring a simple, unthinking affirmation, but rather, the questions should be, "What kind of God do you believe in? How does this God make himself known to persons; and how does he demonstrate his power and love in the world we experience as human beings?"

Who would be silly enough to say that he disbelieved in the American Way of Life? But, what is the American Way of Life? As it appears in the Green Mountains of Vermont? In the teeming cosmopolitanism of Chicago? The rocky shores of [the] New England of Puritan and liberal tradition? Last week, a 79 year old Negro minister was killed in Mississippi by a group of drunken white men. The drunks were careening down the road in an automobile and one of them threw a large stone at this elderly clergyman, killing him. The white sheriff, after investigating the affair, remarked (to the world) that the drunks, "were just pranking." Is that the American Way of Life? In New York City, in some areas of tension, many teachers live amidst a reign of terror, as juveniles, seemingly

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... concerned with ethics. He wrote many passages which indicated a strong interest and conviction in manners, morals, and right action. Yet his emphasis was theological. You must believe in Christ who is the New Adam who supersedes the old law.

James, seems more thoroughly Jewish than many others of the New Testament, particularly because of his emphasis on the practical and non-speculative. James asks the followers of Jesus, "What does it mean to have faith?" James sharply challenges the right, but easy answer to the wrong question. He says, "Thou believest that God is one, the demons also believe." James says several times in the 2nd chapter, "faith without works is dead." James tries to be specific (Moffatt trans):"Suppose some brother or sister is ill-clad and short of daily food, if any of you tells them, 'Depart in peace, get warm, get food, without supplying their bodily needs, what use is that? So faith, unless it has deeds, in itself is dead."

If James were living today, he would reprove us constantly: preacher and parishioners; republicans and democrats; one worlders and two worlders. If we may judge from his letter to his fellow religionists, he would say to us, "Let's not stop with glittering generalities. Let's get beneath the shiny veneer. Let's see if there is anything we can do."

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... is breaking through the iron censorship curtain of the communist dictatorship.

Does it not them come as somewhat of a mild shock when the charge is made seriously that our Federal State and local governments are interfering with freedom of the press? This is neither a propaganda blast of the Daily Worker, nor the irresponsible attack of an eccentric. On the bulletin board you will find posted the NY Times story quoting Richard Slocum, President of the American Newspaper Association, and Vice President of the Philadelphia Bulletin, charg[ing] that officials were withholding information the public was entitled to have.

(Incidentally, there is nothing more relevant to the maintenance of the free church, than freedom of communication.)

Is it not true that Socrates acquired his just reputation for wisdom by his ability to ask relevant questions?

Secondly, it is not enough to signify, "I believe." There is the need to respond positively to life. There is a universal quality in the human venture in that everyone of us, sooner or later, usually sooner, will be confronted with situations involving tragedy, extreme frustration and defeat. The manner in which we meet extreme difficulty involves belief, of course. But the belief must be accompanied by some sort of action. "Faith without works is dead."

Anne Magnani, the fiery Italian actress, recently honored by the "Oscar" for the best acting performance, is dedicated to her profession. It is said that one of her strong motivations is to ensure that her teenage son, crippled by polio, will be assured of financial security and permanent care. She remarked recently, "You ask me if art is important? I say yes. More than anything in life, except I'd give it all up if my son could have his legs to walk again."

I know little about this famous actress except that she has encountered the bitterness of unhappy marriage, and the tragedy of the crippling illness that befell her son. However she may phrase her beliefs about life, she ... positively, courageously.

It seems to me also that we will be going forward to "such light as we are capable of" by deeper probing of the easily accepted generalizations.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, remarked with his facility for the striking phrase, "goodness must have an edge to it." Among my own character failings is a tendency at times to hesitate to pursue with complete persistence, some of the actions and positions demanded by my ethical convictions. This failing is because of a reluctance to offend people who might disagree with me. Like many of you, I do not enjoy the prospect of turning friendship into hostility. There are many times when Ralph Waldo Emerson's words apply to me -- my goodness does not have enough edge to it. Margaret Wilkinson in a poem conveys something of this same feeling:

"I never cut my neighbor's throat,

My neighbors gold I never stole,

I never spoiled his house and land,

But God have mercy on my soul.

For I am haunted night and day,

By all the deeds I have not done;

O unattempted loveliness,

O costly victories never won."

Let me testify in conclusion, that neither this matter of inquiry, of questioning, of analysis, is the suppressed meaning of the New Testament. I use the word "suppressed" because so much of the preaching and teaching of the Christian centers on the necessity of "belief."

Yet if you read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you will note that the great word is not the word "believe," but rather, "Kingdom." How does the Kingdom come? There are different points of view expressed, but the main ones seem to be repentance, search, growth. "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." The kingdom comes by searching -- the widow searching for the lost coin. The kingdom comes by growth -- the mustard seed which becomes the large tree. The kingdom comes by patience, -- not all the seed falls on fertile ground. The kingdom comes by persistence - the woman crying at midnight.

This gospel of John, different in so many respects, does not advance the doctrine of belief, alone. When one reads John, the great word that leaps out through the symbolic language and lovely legends is "life." Life more abundant, -- a happy wedding at Cana, a Samaritan woman who finds in life the universality and moral character of God; a call-girl of that ancient time finds redemption and purpose -- new life. The transformations happened because of inquiry, action, commitment.

It strikes me again and again that Jesus taught something like Socrates, -- not by giving answers to what frequently were wrong questions, - but rather by the device we need today -- in religion, politics and education, -- the asking of the right questions so that we will think, inquire, acquire convictions, and act.