10/26/52

Where Do You Stand?

Scripture: John 15: 1-17

Text: John 15: 15; “Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth, but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”

The last Sunday in October has come, in increasing measure, to be observed among the many Protestant churches as Reformation Sunday. On the calendar, it marks the anniversary of an occurrence in Wittenburg more than 400 years ago. About noon, on the eve of All Saint’s Day, a German monk named Luther, having given a great deal of thought to ecclesiastical questions from a spiritual and ethical point of view, wrote out some 95 propositions for debate. Then he nailed a copy of his propositions to the door of the church in Wittenburg. This was not an unusual thing. In fact it was an accepted practice, the church door being regarded as a kind of bulletin board for the posting of matters to be discussed and debated -- matters that had to do with religion and church procedure.

The unusual thing was the interest that was immediately evident. For there was spirited discussion and debate on Luther’s theses, and the discussion - pro and con, for and against - of some of his ideas spread over Germany and into distant places. As the heat of argument mounted, there came a time when Luther’s very life was in danger. For when he stood in the presence of those who sought, by their ecclesiastical authority, to make him recant of his positions, he is said to have replied, “Here I stand. God helping me, I can do no other.”

We sometimes speak, and think, as if the religious reformation, from which stems our Protestant heritage, began with Luther and his 95 theses. Actually it did not. It was a movement much wider and deeper than that. For the Protestant Reformation began on no particular day or in any particular year. It began in no specific act. It was the result of an experience, not an action; of a life, not a day. It had been growing in the minds of a great many people who felt a great moral lack in their church.

Martin Luther was only one of those who sensed the spiritual struggle. But his life illustrates some of it so well that he became a symbol. Luther had been a law student. But he entered monastic life after vowing that he would do so, if his life were spared during a frightening electric storm. As a monk, he wrestled sincerely with the thought that God was righteous and perfect, whereas he, Luther, was of a nature sinful and morally weak, but ought to be right and perfect. He tried re-forming his life by various disciplines -- by fasting, by going nights without sleep, by prolonged and intensive periods of study and prayer. Still he could feel no assurance of God’s forgiveness. There was still torment instead of peace in his soul.

There came to him an opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Rome with an older monk. What a privilege! Here seemed to be what his soul had longed for. While there, in Rome, he went from place to place in the churches and crypts, visited countless shrines, viewed relics, said masses --- but all to no avail. When he got home he felt, as he said, as though he had “carried onions to Rome and brought back garlic.”

Working hard, in 1513, on making a summary of the Psalms for an edition of the Psalter, he came to the words, “In thy righteousness, deliver me.” [Psalm 71: 2]. Again the awful notion of God’s righteousness and his own unworthiness.

But there began to grow in his consciousness the notion that God’s righteousness was something other than judicial righteousness. He read the words of the gospel: “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” At last Luther saw, in a flash of insight, that the verse referred to the “forgiving righteousness of God, by which in his mercy he makes us just.” “Then,” says Luther, “it seemed to me as if I were born anew and that I had entered into the open gates of Paradise!”

He discovered what so many others have found, that peace of soul and renewal of spirit comes not from the routine of doing some act or acts which are prescribed as good, but from yielding one’s faith to a merciful and forgiving God. Then, justified by such faith, one has not a compulsion, but a desire to do those acts which seem good in the light of such salvation.

In this age in which we live, you and I are confronted with urgent choices. There is abroad a dynamic, insistent, materialistic philosophy which aims to remake the present destiny of man into complete conformity with the wishes of a party. Wherever that party controls the political life of masses of people in Europe or Asia, it permits no deviation of thought, word or deed. In the face of that kind of power over the lives of whole nations of people, it becomes a matter of acute concern to us that so many folk of our time seem willing to let others do the deciding as to our destiny --- as if to say, “We don’t know what is right. We can’t take care of ourselves or decide our destinies. Let someone else do it for us.” They may be willing to let the state do it for them, if they are secularists. If they are religiously inclined, they may want the church to do it.

To combat the threat of totalitarianism, whether political, economic, or ecclesiastical, we need a renewed Reformation in our souls! To become folk who will think for ourselves, who will take a hand at running our own affairs, who will make our own decision, who will add our voices and vote in the common concerns of our group life.

The sixteenth century Protestant re-formation of the church, into the likeness of the earlier body of believers gathered about the Master, underlined the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers; that every person ought, and can, approach God personally, not through some third person acting as intermediary or priest -- even though that person be elevated to a position of authority by the church. The grace of God’s forgiveness, of His blessed, encouraging presence and guidance, is not administered by any few, but is freely available to all who will sincerely seek God’s will for themselves.

I am sometimes asked to pray for someone. And I do so gladly -- but not as an intermediary. I much prefer to pray with someone, walking as a companion, for the moment, into the forgiving, renewing presence of the Father. And I regard our church not as an authority but as a fellowship of Christian searchers. The Protestant faith is a testifying, witnessing faith. It never has been just a revolt. The pro-testant church is a re-formed fellowship of believers who have direct access to God’s grace.

The 15th verse from John’s gospel in the 15th chapter has particular significance for us: “Jesus said, ‘Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth, but I have called you friends, for all things I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.’” Let us recognize and examine a few differences that the re-formed faith of this pro testant fellowship make.

1) Our faith is a vital, warm direct relation to God, as we are led by Christ and taught in the Bible. We have, not a mediated faith, but full-orbed contact with our Christ and with our God. Great as was the thinking of Thomas Aquinas, he nonetheless insisted that knowledge of God can only be inferred. We of the Protestant heritage rely on the spirit of our text: “Ye are my friends.” We give ourselves not just to what is required, but to the love of God, to the expectation of his mercy and to the experiences of his peace; to his direct guidance and inspiration in our lives.

And this relationship depends on no intermediary. Our experience and preference is a little bit like that of the young fellow who, having had a lover’s quarrel with his young wife, went to a friend. He explained the misunderstanding, as he saw it, to his friend, asked him to go and talk to his wife about it and see if it might be straightened out. The friend did so and found that she was quite ready to resolve the difference. Upon arriving home from the visit, he found the young husband waiting for him. The friend assured the young fellow that he could rest at ease; the wife understood, and all was well. “Rest at ease!!” exclaimed the young man. “Man, give me my hat. I’m going to see her.” He wanted more than the assurance of a third party. He wanted fellowship.

Like Priscilla of colonial fame, are we not, as Protestants, hearing God say, “Speak for yourself, John.” This is the priesthood of all believers. All approach God on the same basis as complete children of His. “All things I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.” A true Protestant Christian holds precious the faith that he can go directly to his Creator and Sustainer with himself as he is.

While I lived for a time on one of the islands of the Pacific, I used to get my hair cut by a Japanese man who was the only barber in the village. One day as I sat in the barber chair, I could hear the monotonous intoning of a Buddhist priest in the barber’s living quarters. I asked Sumida-san about it, and he said, “O yes, the priest is saying prayers before the family shrine in the other rooms.” No one in the household seemed to pay any particular attention. Mother and children appeared to go about their household tasks. Sumida went on snipping my hair. The priest of their religion was there, saying prayers for them. And that seemed to be all that was expected -- except, probably, that he be paid something when he was finished.

But the Christians across the street held, and always do hold, that any worship happens within one, and not for one. And we underline this believing experience especially in the Protestant churches.

This direct, vital, personal faith is at the heart of freedom and true democracy. Without it, I doubt that there can be a democracy such as we have known it in the best periods of our nation’s history. Each person, under God, runs himself responsibly, and with self discipline, in cooperative fellowship with his fellows for the good of all individuals in the community.

2) A second essential in Protestant experience is our belief in the authority of the Bible. For some, the effort to interpret and understand the Bible is not desirable. They prefer a church with authority -- a church whose experts decide what is the truth and tells the communicants what are the essentials of the faith. They do not lack for answers to some of the great questions of life, and some of them accuse the Protestants of “believing only what you want to believe.” There is enough evidence in that statement to make it bite as a taunt. But it is not true that we have no authority. Our authority is in the Bible, at any point where God speaks directly to us out of the experience revealed therein.

The Bible, through all of its revision and translation in language, has still preserved for us the spiritual record of God’s dealing with mankind and of man’s search for God.

3) Our Protestant faith demands of us a deep, sincere devotion to what is morally right. It is no idle boast to say that where the faith of the Re-formation has been devotedly held, there is an emphasis on moral conduct not found in like degrees without it. When we find ourselves or our group drifting into the notion that the “end [supposedly a good aim] justifies the means” [even though the means may be unworthy], we can be sure that we are drifting aside from the faith we have professed.

There is a strain of the Puritan (at the Puritan best) which belongs with our tradition. It is Puritan self discipline that brings to birth, and preserves, our freedom.

A soldier of World War II told his chaplain of a phrase that kept going through his mind in each of the several battles he went through. It was something his Colonel had said in addressing the regiment embarking for overseas duty. The Colonel had said: “Men, whatever happens to any of us, let us remember down deep in our hearts that this is a mission for freedom. Men will be free if we win, and slaves if we lose.” The thing that kept that particular soldier’s courage up, and his morale high in tragic days, was the phrase in his experience, “This is a mission for freedom.” And it was a mission of high personal responsibility.

We Protestant Christians have a mission, too -- deep within the soul of life. We are free souls, with direct access to God. We yield to no institution the right to control us spiritually, but we do believe deeply in the necessity of Christian fellowship. We control ourselves under God, by devotion to the truth revealed to us in Scripture, and to the Christ who opens the door of our understanding.

There is a great vitality in Protestantism which should make us optimists and enthusiasts about our adherence to it. The spirit of the Reformation is a necessary, a continuing, and a growing spirit. It says to each of us, “Manage and control your life for its finest, most useful fulfillment in the community.” It says to the state, “You do not confer rights on the individual citizen, for such rights as he has are the inalienable gift of God, through sonship from Him, and partnership with Him.”

Within the Protestant spirit, we may and should be fearless in our search for truth. The inquiring mind belongs to those who exercise this faith. Truth, inasmuch as it is always God’s truth first, hurts no man. Consequently, Protestantism is rightfully the foremost advocate of public education wherein the boys and girls of all creeds, races, and social backgrounds meet in mutual appreciation of their backgrounds and common search for understanding. Public education is a chief bulwark against the fragmentation of the whole American body politic.

Protestantism is setting its face to the problem of America’s unchurched, as indeed it should. [Needed: some thousands of new churches, of which Congregationalists share is estimated at some 333]. The Protestant outlook aims to be, fundamentally, Christianity at its best.

On this Reformation Sunday you and I can join together and say: “I take the whole Christ for my Savior, I take the whole Bible for my staff, and I take the whole church for my fellowship.” Is that where you stand?

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 26, 1952.