6/24/51

Scripture: Ephesians 2: 13-22

Text: Ephesians 2: 20; “Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.”

This week we of this community are seeing the completion, or near-completion, of an excellent new building, carefully designed to serve some of the needs of people in this area, and many of the needs of those of the traveling public who some this way. Many buildings - especially public buildings: schools, churches, and governmental buildings - rest symbolically upon a cornerstone. And indeed the cornerstone of a building is an integral part of the support for the superstructure.

There is a sense in which the purposive spirit of people, sometimes of one person, is a cornerstone in the support of a structure and of the purposes for which it is erected. Perhaps our community’s new hotel rests more than is usual, upon the vision of the man whose name it bears. For he has been determined that there be erected in the city an adequate means of offering hotel hospitality.

A building, well-erected, is often symbolic of human life, well-built. Certainly the apostle Paul had this in mind when he wrote to the Christian people of Ephesus that they were “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.” The living church, built, not with hands but with the spirit, is erected upon this foundation. Christian lives are built upon this foundation, and Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. And unless our life and work are built carefully upon him, our entire structure will be insecure.

How much the message and work of a church so founded are needed in our time and in our country, is entirely evident. A year or more ago, long before the unpleasant disclosures of recent weeks, Ralph Sockman quoted J. Edgar Hoover as saying that in a then recent year, 108,787 young people under 21 in the US were arrested for crimes requiring fingerprinting; that murder was committed every 40 minutes, and a major crime every 22 seconds. “Yet with all these symptoms of moral illness,” Dr. Sockman went on to say, “our citizens show such apathy that millions do not trouble to vote.”

While some 51% of our population claim church affiliation, only 28% could be called church attendants, and only 8% are in church on a typical Sunday. Our people give about $2 billion annually for all charities, including church support, but they spend 8.7 billion for alcoholic beverages, i.e. $89 for every person in the nation over 18 years of age.

Now those proportions and figures do not fit exactly the portion of the population who are active and earnest members of the churches. But only the spiritually blind among us can be complacent about our nation which needs, as seriously as ever, the foundation of Jesus Christ, with his sense of proportion and value, to make us a good nation.

In the building of our Christian community and our Christian lives, we must, in uncompromising fashion, make Jesus Christ the chief cornerstone.

We must build upon his revelation of God as a loving Father whose purpose it is that his children shall live together in brotherliness and good will; upon his view of man as a creature of infinite worth, weak and sinful though he be; upon his conviction that the good life is one of inner purity of motive which will reveal itself in worthy deeds; upon his assurance that our lives, however broken by wrong or sorrow, can be made whole through the gracious forgiveness and spiritual renewal of God.

If we do make our lives living stones in the spiritual temple of our Lord, built together with the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, God will surely bless and use us.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, June 24, 1951