1/22/50

Should Everyone Speak Well of You?

Scripture: Luke 6: 20-36

Text: Luke 6: 26; “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! For so did their fathers to the false prophets.”

Nearly a year ago, I was returning by train from a special meeting of the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches which had been held at Cleveland. At table in the dining car I sat with a couple of businessmen who were traveling from the east to Chicago. One of the men had at hand a copy of Robert E. Sherwood’s book “Roosevelt and Hopkins.” The other man asked him how he liked it, and how he happened to be reading it.

“I’m reading it as a sort of act of penance,” said the first man. “You see I’m a manufacturer from New England. I’ve been violently opposed to this man Hopkins and have regarded him as something of a rascal. Now that he’s dead, I’m coming to the conclusion that he was a man of considerable character and personal integrity with a number of qualities for which he deserves to be admired, whether I’ve agreed with his policies or not. So I’m reading this book from cover to cover as a kind of penance for what I now think was my erroneous estimate of Harry Hopkins.” He went on to recount some of the favorable traits of character and accomplishment which were detailed by the author.

I thought the comment was interesting, the more especially as the speaker in the diner identified his own position, and his own prejudices. The book to which he referred is one of the multitude of books I have not read, but from which I have heard some comments. One of these comments concerns the other leading character of the book, the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It seem that Sherwood commented on the unremitting animosity of much of the press toward Roosevelt, and in doing so says: “It seems to me that the hostility of so large a part of the press to his administration was essential to Roosevelt -- as an inspiration even more than as a deterrent - and that he would not have been the president he was without it. He would never have thrived in an atmosphere of cloying unanimity.”

I suppose any president of a country so democratic as is our nation is a ready made target for criticism - even for abuse and vilification. Most of the rest of us do not experience it in any such degree as does any resident of the White House. Nor are most of us convinced that we should find any considerable inspiration in it for us. Probably most of us would find it distasteful.

My mother has sometimes recalled to her children that her father had once announced his candidacy for some modest official position in his county or township. And she said, “We had always thought of Pa as a very good man until he ran for that office. We were astonished beyond measure to hear then that he was such a bad man as those of the opposition made him out to be.” Well, Grandpa lost the election and was restored to comparative tranquillity. Though he could ride a bucking horse until both horse and rider bled at the nose, and until either the horse gave up or he was unseated, I doubt that he would have relished very highly a continual fight with some of his neighbors.

All of which is a kind of backhand way of saying that few of us relish the negative opinions other people may have of us. What we say and do is seldom entirely apart from the question in our minds: “What will people say?” We are even sensitive to what effect the actions of others near to us will have on our reputation.

I recall a minister who proclaimed himself an avowed pacifist (I think the war experience modified his attitude somewhat.) He was a considerable scrapper, though, and would run to meet a verbal fight with some of the military brass which was quartered near him, rather than wait for the fight to come to him. His eldest daughter attended the university in their city where there was a sizable unit of the ROTC. It seems that, through popularity or by connivance, she was elected a student sponsor of the ROTC. And so she came swinging into the house one afternoon in a military uniform. I remember the rueful expression on his face as he later described his feelings. “Have a heart, daughter! Can’t you have some consideration for the old man in this matter?”

Even Roosevelt, though he seemed to thrive considerably on adverse criticism, was keenly sensitive to the effect of his utterances on others. Sherwood is reported as saying that the late president went over his speeches again and again studying every implication “for its effect on various groups in the nation and on allies and enemies and neutrals.” I guess Mr. Sherwood should know, since he helped to write those speeches over a period of five years.

What people say is a powerful deterrent, if not an inspiration. But probably most people so deterred have a sneaking admiration for the person who flouts public opinion, appearing oblivious to it. We may even fondly imagine that one day under similar circumstances, we ourselves will take the satisfaction of kicking public opinion in the teeth and saying exactly what we think we really believe.

One of the utterances of Jesus, as reported in Luke’s version of his sayings, has a bearing on this bent of our nature toward acceptance and approval, and avoidance of disapproval. This sentence from the Sermon on the Mount may have the capacity to amaze us because it seems to ignore or to challenge this natural inclination: “Woe to you, when all men speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” Jesus is saying here that there are some things for which a Christian person should stand, things that are almost sure to bring him unpopularity, at least in some quarters. He is saying that at the moment one finds that he is applauded and praised by all people, instead of abused and slandered by some, he had better ask himself a searching question: “Have my opponents been converted, or have I changed and deserted what I believe to be good?”

Plutarch relates of Phocion, the Athenian, “Once while he was delivering a public speech and making a good impression, and saw that all his hearers were equally pleased with what he said, he turned to his friends and said, ‘Surely I must have forgotten myself, and said something wrong.’” It is related of another eminent philosopher that, when someone announced to him that all men were praising him, he replied, “Why, what evil have I done?”

Jesus’ admonition to his hearers would be just as valid if it were to read, “Woe unto you when some men speak well of you.” Probably he had this in mind when he continued, “For so did their fathers to false prophets.” The false prophets were those who soothed people with lies, who told powerful rulers and powerful classes, not what God wanted them to hear, but what they wanted to hear. The true prophets were those who delivered God’s message to all people, without hesitation over offending people in high places and without shrinking from the consequences of their hostility.

Jesus’ hearers stood in the noble tradition of great prophets like Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah, and he was reminding them of it. The opposition and malice which they were sure to encounter should not discourage them nor cause them to complain. Rather, Jesus told them: “Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad -- for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

Probably most of us like to think of ourselves as liberal people in many ways, in religion, in education, perhaps in politics and economics. Certainly I don’t want anyone to tack the word “reactionary” on to me - nor the word “fundamentalist.” I’m even a little bit skittish about the word “conservative.” But the word “liberal” has been much abused. Sometimes it is applied as if to describe one who has become so broad as to be shallow - one whose convictions, if he ever had any, are all watered down to ineffectuality.

That spicy writer in the “Christian Century” magazine who signs himself “Simeon Stylites” had a comment bearing on this in one of his articles. Commenting on a point raised by the great Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, Simeon Stylites remarks: “Often this Great Dane is too high for me; I cannot attain unto him. But when he gets down to my level he lays it on and raises welts ... What has bruised me lately is his parable of the geese in the barnyard. The main plot is this: ‘Kierkegarrd wrote that the Christians of his day were like a flock of geese living in a barnyard. Every seventh day they paraded to a corner of the yard, and their most eloquent orator got up on the fence and spoke of the wonders of geese. He told of the exploits of their forefathers, who dared to mount up on wings and fly all over the sky. He spoke of the mercy of the Creator who had given geese wings and the instinct to fly. This deeply impressed the geese, who nodded their heads solemnly. They applauded the eloquence of the preaching goose.

All this they did. One thing they did not do. They did not fly. They went back to their dinners. They did not fly; for the corn was good and the barnyard secure.’”

Says Simeon Stylites, “Laugh that off, it you can. If you say, ‘Never touched me,’ you are standing in the need of prayer. Those sentences bear down: ‘One thing they did not do. They did not fly.’”

Let all of us who like to be liberal try to laugh that off. Possibly it is as reasonable a test of our liberalism as any to ask ourselves, “Do we fly at all?”

When we complacently remark, “Well probably one religion is as good as another if we all believe in God,” it seems likely that we have gotten so fat and contented and careless as to be easy prey for some new form of ecclesiastical or political tyranny to jab us awake. The expression of positive religious faith, in an atmosphere of dearly-bought and costly freedom, is the kind of flying our spiritual forebears did. We’d better be stretching our wings for all their endurance before we get fenced in!

Not only freedom to worship the Father is challenged in our time, but our time dares us to act for the freedom of brotherhood. And it is not easy.

In the summer of 1946 at the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches meeting at Grinnell, Iowa, the Council voted to adopt the following resolution:

“We repent of the sin of racial segregation as practiced both within and outside our churches, and respond to the mandate of the Christian gospel to promote with uncompromising word and purpose, the integration in our Christian Churches and our democratic society of all persons of whatever race, color, or ancestry on the basis of equality and mutual respect, in an inclusive fellowship.”

I was present, though not voting, at that Council meeting. And I well remember some of the discussion. It was recalled that our Churches had historically taken a leading stand, and an active part, in abolishing legal human slavery. Now, it was urged, it is time again for us to take an advanced stand even if it means a pull of another 100 years.

One minister of a church in Missouri, a sober, lever-headed, devoted sort of man, said, “This will probably split my church wide open. But if it does, so be it; for this is the ground that must be taken by the churches if we are to have anything effective to say about the brotherhood of man.” That man knew that the kind of liberalism that really gets up, flies, and goes somewhere, is not easy, and may be very costly. “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.”

Let this always be remembered, too, by those who get inspired to fly again; to be prophets of the right; much of the good we may seek to promote can be spoiled if promoted in the spirit of hatred. We can not do the will of Christ, nor promote his healing, hoping, saving ministry without the grace of forgiveness toward those who seem to us disposed to defend the “devil’s works.”

To hate is to poison the inner springs of the spirit, and to deny the redeeming power of the sacrificial love that could go even to a cross. “But I say unto you that hear, love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” [Luke 6: 27-28].

Unhappily we are seldom in a frame of mind that makes those admonitions of our Christ easy reading for us. But once in a while we see a glimpse of this spirit mightily at work in the world. Abraham Lincoln was not only a much loved, but a much maligned and hated man. He was no softie, but took some mighty stands for unity of country and for human freedom -- steps that were costly in blood and treasure and human energy. And yet he seems to have done his agonized “flying” without hatred - “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” And this quality of spirit poured healing oil on the wounds of a bleeding nation. You could multiply instances of the same kind of healing in personal relations among people you have known.

“Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!” You and I must get up and fly! But fly without hatred, with forgiveness and good humor. “Love, -- bless, -- do good.” For the highest prize we seek is not the glory of ourselves, but the glory of God and the loving acceptance of His righteousness.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, January 22, 1950

Wisconsin Rapids, January 21, 1962