4/22/51

Scripture: Philippians 2: 1-16.

Text: Philippians 2: 10-11; --- "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow ---- and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

Our Christian faith reaches out, unlimited by either time or space. It is the aim of the Christian faith and effort to reach the lives of all people everywhere, now and forever. Our participation in the spread of the gospel is not to end until "every knee shall bow --- and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." The slogan and aim of the missionary movement of a generation ago was "the evangelization of the world in this generation." That is the way the Christian spirit in the heart of mankind should reach out --- and just as fully today as a generation ago.

The poet, Robert Browning, draws a word-picture of a skillful artist who could paint much better than many famous artists. He knew his colors and how to blend them. His brush hand was steady, sure, and very skillful. He knew perspective and balance admirably well. But his pictures lacked the spark of genius that might have made them great. They were near technical perfection; yet were dull. In his soliloquy of self-examination the artist makes this significant statement:

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what’s a heaven for?

Ask that sort of question about the work of Christianity: "Does the reach of the Christian gospel exceed its grasp?"

Speaking in terms of missionary endeavor, the gospel of Christ has been carried to the geographical ends of the earth. There are Christian witnesses in every part of the world. In many parts there are vigorous indigenous churches enrolling millions of disciples of Jesus Christ. And the total Christian population of the world is reckoned at more than 650 million. Those interested in statistics tell us that, since 1920, the number of Protestant Christians has increased from 6,500,000 to 25,300,000. The Christian population extends into 120 countries and island groups with 141,169 churches and a missionary personnel of 192,987. Greatest gains were made in: South Africa - from 740,000 to 5,467,000; in India and Pakistan - from 580,000 to 4,650,000; Brazil - from 70,000 to 1,657,000; Korea, China and Indonesia have also showed great gains for the same period.

In our time, in the day of many people in this room, in spite of the aftermath of World War I, despite the great economic depression that reduced all Protestant missionary work by one half, in spite of World War II, which penetrated nearly every missionary area, despite the recent and present cold war in Europe and Red expansion in Asia, this great and significant growth has occurred.

And yet, this growing membership in Christian churches around the world, to the present total of 650 millions in the world’s 2 billion people, has been unable to hold back the tides of war, nor as yet to redeem vast multitudes of people from ignorance, poverty, disease and fear. We share responsibility for their condition and as Christians we cannot shirk the obligation. Our record indicates what can be done with little. What marvelous changes might be wrought if we would take Christ more seriously; serve him more whole-heartedly. To see a little of what the outreach of Christianity has been, look for a few moments at India, one of the countries where Christian missionaries of several lands have labored patiently and fruitfully.

A Hindu practice, thousands of years old, permitted, and even expected, child marriage. Child marriage often resulted in terrible suffering and tended to lower the physical stamina of the race. While the British ruled there, they were joined by several Hindu legislators who decided that the practice must end. They met to vote on the question. There was violent opposition to the measure and howls of hatred and threatening came from a mob outside, while inside the chamber, the viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, unperturbed and utterly determined, put the question. They voted, and in a moment of time, the age of marriage for the girls of India was raised from nothing to 12 years.

The men who voted that measure were not Christian missionaries. It would have been personally easier for them not to insist that that particular institution of Hinduism be abolished. Yet they ran the national and personal risk of doing so. Why? Because the basic principle, in Christian belief, that the human spirit has infinite value had reached those men. It was 65 years ago that they stood for that principle as it applied to the lives of little girls of that country. The reach of the gospel exceeds its grasp.

Look a little longer at India and see what else has happened. The lot of the widow there has been wretched. Before the 19th century, the practice of suttee was the rule. Under that rule, when a man died, his body being burned, his widow was expected to throw herself alive into the fire and thus die with him. Early in the 19th century the British prohibited the practice by law. After that, the widow was usually taken into the household of her father-in-law where she was practically a chattel slave. She could never re-marry; she could not get any education; she could not earn her own livelihood apart from the father-in-law’s household. There are millions of widows in India, many of them still mere children in age who, in the past, were doomed to hopelessness.

Christians preached against that practice. But it was stubborn, being so long a part of Hindu tradition and custom. But now, the parliament of free India has, by law, abolished all limitations against widows. They are emancipated. A government predominantly Hindu is changing Hindu customs in favor of persons. And the same legislature has also abolished the former severe discrimination against outcastes. The degradation forced upon outcastes for ages in now lifted. The gospel of Christ has reached and illumined the minds, and warmed the hearts, of men, many of whom, though touched by principles of the message, are not within its grasp.

Mahatma Gandhi was a Hindu, and remained so all his life, but he was tremendously influenced by the life of Christ. He became so liberal in his interpretation of Hindu law that the reactionaries of his faith killed him. The effects of that martyrdom have been most favorable to liberal development. His death has brought peace between Pakistan and India, and beneficial change to the patterns of Indian living.

Our Christian faith has reached out into Buddhist and Confucianist lands where, by affirming the value of life and demonstrating a way of life that is joyful and abounding, it has become established. Through Christian influence, modern medicine was introduced into China; education and opportunity came to Chinese women; practical people struggling for existence came to hope.

From Japan comes a story of a Buddhist monk who came to the Protestant pastor of a certain town and asked that all of his Buddhist group be baptized as Christians. His Buddhists had lost their faith in the power of idols and wished to know the living power of Christ. The Roman Catholic press reports a similar experience in which thousands from a Japanese city sought entrance into that church. Disillusioned by the fearful experience of military destruction and defeat, hosts of people in Japan are seeking some certainty that will last. There is not only a considerable turning to Christianity there, but Buddhism is also said to be turning from a negative to a positive type of thinking under the prompting of laymen. It too is declaring the value of life.

One of the projects of Christian cooperation in Japan is the Japan International Christian Union, of which our own Congregational Dr. Hashiro Yuasa has been chosen president, and which is attempting to raise $10,000,000 for this additional center of demonstration and Christian training. Our young people assisted in a campaign to raise money for it last year. Some funds were raised, but millions are yet needed. And the support of the Christian work already there must be maintained.

The outreach of our faith into non-Christian societies is marvelous. At the same time it is dangerous, for it can too easily become a secularized caricature of Christianity. We must extend its grasp. Offering a goal that is beyond the physical and material phases of living, our faith meets the harsh and brutal realities of living with hope, with love, with trust in a God of love and right --- a God who is our peace. That is its great contribution.

Today, many of us place great reliance on the United Nations agencies to transform the world into a brotherhood of educated, healthy, economically self-supporting people with a rising standard of living. But no secular institution can redeem people from their sins of hatred and selfishness, as well as ignorance. Internationally, it remains the responsibility of Christian missions to push the grasp of Christ farther out along its reach.

Does our faith have a chance in the struggle with communism? In China, Indonesia, Poland, Russia? Is it realistic to believe that Christianity can win out over such a ruthless foe? Let the question hang there for a bit while you look back to see what Christianity has survived during 19 centuries of history.

Communism masquerades in some of the garments of Christianity. It deceives many honest people in many parts of the world. It publishes aims that are noble: "To establish a worldwide brotherhood of justice, liberty, security, happiness for all men equally. A world in which there shall be no more injustice, selfishness, or desire for power over others." Who wants to quarrel with much goals? They are the goals of Christians, too (with some reservations as to definition of security, etc.) On paper they are splendid.

But one glance at the means by which communists work for those goals discloses that they have swallowed whole the cosmic lie that the end justifies the means. Denying God, they can and do kill to create freedom, liquidate whole classes to achieve a so-called classless existence, deprive in order to produce plenty. The most villainous methods are used to serve the ends of nobility. According to such mad logic, deceit is good, brutality is right, injustice is necessary, oppression wise, persecution useful; -- intolerance, hatred, cruelty, murder and all the devices of the Nazis multiplied and worsened are justified. Some of the communists must be colossal, sophisticated, cynics; and some unbelievably simple, to expect noble ends to be achieved by such degraded means.

But the outreach of Christianity even into communism is considerable. In the first place Christianity holds these noble ends and labors through noble means toward these ends. It is often slower. But it is sure --- and, when tried, it arrives rather than getting lost in the blind alley where the Godlessness of communism has left so many disillusioned folk. We of the Christian faith do move too slowly. We must speed up our grasp along with our outreach, in order to emancipate the human spirit.

The communist attempt to lead people away from God toward self-sufficiency, all in the name of humanity, is a terrible distortion of the aims that belong to Christianity. We must be setting those aims straight and be about the work of grasping them.

Thou shalt love God, and thyself as thy neighbor.

How love self.

Jesus loved self as with God.

"I and the Father are one." [John 10: 30.]

How far is God admitted to our common purposes.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 22, 1951.