2/22/53

Scripture: Matthew 5: 17-24.

Once a year, many communities hold certain observances to mark “Brotherhood Week.” Our own city has had such observances for six or eight or ten years. At the latest community Brotherhood Week meeting, held last Tuesday in Wisconsin Rapids, Attorney Robert Hansen of Milwaukee ably presented for our thinking the necessity of living as brothers at the same time we recognize with tolerant understanding the differences which are rooted in training and conviction.

In a world torn by warfare and rumors of war, there is yet a primary desire for peace. There is little or no disposition to bargain for peace at any price. But there is a deep longing for peace.

But if we could resolve all the tensions between nations, and see the family of nations organized under world law, would we then enjoy peace? Well, peace between nations does not necessarily assure peace within nations. Several lands have been reddened with blood, though not at war with any other country. And the conflict of ideas and interests in industry, among races, between religious affiliates, persist and plague us. The soldier who wrote to his wife that he wished she’s stop nagging him so he could “fight this war in peace” was revealing a mood by no means isolated.

Well, peacemaking begins with self. Last Sunday I tried to suggest that there is a worthy and necessary sense in which one must love one’s self. It is part of the inclusive commandment to love your neighbor, that you also love yourself rightly. Interestingly enough, Attorney Hansen made the same point at one place in his speech on Tuesday evening. We need to be at peace with ourselves if we are not to be at odds with others.

“..... To thine our self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Of course we must understand to what kind of self one must be true. The Prodigal Son thought he was being true to himself when he left home to live as he pleased in a distant place. It took some time and a great deal of waste to demonstrate to him that the husks of self-indulgence will not satisfy indefinitely. Augustine tried every form of sensual pleasure he could imagine until he finally found that the soul is restless and unsatisfied until it rests in God.

A grand old man of the Methodist Church, Bishop Herbert Welch, was honored at his 80th birthday by a large company of friends who gathered to honor him. When asked to speak, he said: “As I get older, life becomes simpler, because I see the essentials more clearly in the evening light.”

Now the search for peace of mind, and for peace between groups of people of differing ideologies, could lead the unwary man to softness and selfishness. It is a mistake to confuse peace-keeping with peace-making. It is no real road to peace or to brotherhood if one is too indifferent to care, or too good-natured to feel righteous indignation at wrongdoing. The peacemaker is called, not to a sheltered, passive role, but to an active aggressive program. True tolerance is not blind, but is a wide understanding of the viewpoint which is tolerated. And it is by no means agreement or unity! Tolerance is the ability to create some kind of positive harmony out of differences. It is the effort to throw the light of understanding on our blind prejudices, and to discern the merits, as distinct from the errors in another’s person or position.

During the time that the southern states were in revolt from the union, and had established a Southern Confederacy, General Robert E. Lee was severely criticized by General Whiting. It would have been one kind of normal behavior for General Lee to watch for his chance to get even with General Whiting. A day came when the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, asked Gen. Lee to come for a consultation. Davis wanted to know what Lee thought of Gen. Whiting. Without any hesitation, Lee commended Whiting, and his ability, in high terms and called him one of the ablest men in the Confederate army. An officer drew Gen. Lee aside as soon as possible to suggest that he must not know what unkind things Whiting had said about him (Lee). Lee answered the officer, saying, “I understood that the president desired to know my opinion of Whiting, not Whiting’s opinion of me.” There spoke the spirit of one who was big enough to build peace on merit without weakness, undeflected by personal ambition or interest.

The peace maker takes seriously, by deed as well as by word, the task of building brotherhood among people of differing racial and religious groups. He does not try to do by agitation what he fails to do by demonstration. He prepares for world citizenship by practicing brotherhood in his own community. He knows the futility of talk about a family of nations unless he can practice the principles of brotherhood in his own community.

In his autobiography, Horace Taft, younger brother of William Howard Taft, gleefully related the following: “I did not know,” he said, “until nearly seventy years late that my welcome into this world was not unanimous. I was greatly tickled to run across a letter which I still possess, written on the day of my birth, December 28, 1861, by my father to my grandfather Torrey. After telling of the important arrival and of my mother’s condition, he adds: ‘Willie is very much displeased about it and insists that old Santa Claus brought him here because no one else wanted him. Louise has, however, compromised the matter with him and the baby is to remain awhile, and if he does not behave well he is to be sent to the orphan asylum, but if he behaves well we may keep him. Harry is pleased with the new brother, but Willie wants no other brother than Harry.’ Evidently I behaved well,” said Horace Taft, “for I never went to the orphan asylum.”

What changes the feeling of jealousy or rivalry, which one child in a house may feel at the arrival of another? What makes acceptable the necessary division of attention and patrimony? It is the parental love which encompasses the whole family. Likewise, only the lively sense of God’s fatherhood can beget the family feeling in our local community and in the world community. As I understand it, the only workable basis for brotherhood is a religious basis. Brotherhood is based on religion that is not easy, but that makes demands upon us. And one of those demands is that we recognize the fatherhood of God so earnestly that we recognize our brotherhood, under God, with people of slightly or startlingly different viewpoints, training, ancestry, race, worship, politics, and to a degree even of ethical standard. Now what has all this to do, particularly, with brotherhood between peoples of the major religious faiths?

Well, first of all, it is healthy to recognize some differences. By and large, Protestant Christians adhere to a kind of democracy in church government, and to variety in creedal expression. The church minister is rather a servant of the worshipper’s welfare, than a mentor of his conduct. We adhere to the idea of the priesthood of all believers and the personal responsibility of every Christian worshipper.

The Roman Catholic Christians appear to place more stress on the authority of the church, upon simple faith in what is taught the worshipper by priest, bishop and pope. And there is a strong disposition to regard their church as the one and only true church -- a position which no Protestant can possibly concede, and which most Protestant Christians do not hold of their own church.

The Hebrews place a high regard on the teaching function of the rabbi; upon the commandments illuminated by Moses and commended by generations of the faithful. They perhaps underline the ethics of justice. Christians try, at least at their best, to explore the ethics of love and mercy. There are other differences -- many, many of them in the modes of worship, and in the traditions by which people are kept reminded of the faith. But all sincere Jews and Christians are persuaded of God and of their right and duty to worship Him, Most High. And therein lies a basis for brotherhood despite wide differences of belief and practice.

There are Catholics who are bigoted and narrow. There are Protestants who are arrogant and intolerant. There are Jews who in their way are offensive to others. There are gentiles who will fling the hateful, and unfair taunt: “Christ-killer.” And there are Hebrews whose manner strikes out as if everyone could be expected to be an enemy. There are people whose ancestry and tradition or half-hearted decision places them in a supposed religious grouping who have no earned right at all to be so considered.

Not every non-Catholic is a Protestant. A Protestant is one who “testifies for” (Pro-testare”) his positive faith. Not everyone who is known as a Jew has a religious right to be so classified.

-------

Part of brotherhood is to keep our eyes open, to know the strengths and weaknesses of our brother, to judge him as an individual person and to be willing so to be judged ourselves. And it is an error to assume that human brotherhood rests on uniformity. We are mistaken when we assert that similar religious convictions are so essential; that to be brothers there must be agreement on interpretations of the truth. That, in fact, is the basis for division and enmity. Because the human frailty of that kind of reasoning lies in the unhappy assumption that there is only one really “right” way and that all others must at length come to agreement with me! It isn’t necessarily so!

We will have a better insight into God’s will if we recognize God’s great love for variety. Not all birds are canaries, or wild swans. No two flower petals found in the woods are identical under the microscope. The tremendous variety among people is a fact and must be recognized and accepted. There is a proper rightness in skin color that is fair, olive, tan or black; in cheek bones that are high or not so high, in arms that are long or short, in hair that is luxuriant (or sparse!); that is black, auburn or yellow; straight, wavy, curly or kinky. Harder for many of us to understand, but no less essential is the recognition of widely differing cultures with merit in each.

How revolting it would be if every living person was a monotonous pattern of every other person! “Long live the difference” not only between men and women, but among neighbors all over the face of the earth! I would not want all spring blossoms to be violets or apple blossoms.

A little boy thought tomato sandwiches to be the best food he could imagine. He really never had enough of them until one summer day he spent a month with his aunt and uncle. His aunt was more devoted to other forms of activity than to constant cooking. So one day she just told the boy to fix his own lunch. She said that there was bread, salad dressing and a knife on the kitchen table, and plenty of ripe tomatoes. She couldn’t have pleased him better! He made all the tomato sandwiches he could swallow! Next day, when he was offered more of the same fare, he gave the answer he would have thought impossible a couple of days earlier: “No, thank you.” When he became a man he still liked tomato sandwiches, but he was happy that the Lord had not limited him to a straight diet of tomatoes, even with bread and salad dressing added!

Even you and I like some variety. Just so surely does God like, and intend, variety. And I rather think the Almighty may not be averse to the variety of ways in which people of sincerity approach Him in worship.

--------------

1) In broadening the base for our brotherhood, let us look a little further. Not only is there a frank variety in all of creation, including human nature, but there is also an undeniable kinship. The Bible observes that “God has made of one blood all people to dwell on the face of the earth.” Scientific study has literally underlined that truth so extensively that we recognize that the blood banks need draw no differential at all between donors, or recipients as to whether the blood comes form, or goes to, someone of any particular race or creed. And there is a spiritual kinship that is also far deeper than one might realize. Our brotherhood is undeniable.

2) We also share a common search and wistful yearning. There is in the spirit of all men a desire to know truth. Some cover it up. Some even fearfully hope it will die out. But there it is, and it persists. We do not always get the same answers in our search for truth, but we desire to find it.

3) Further, we share a common failure. In not attaining unto the truth which we have perceived, we fail. There is real insight into the Biblical insistence that all we have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God. In this humbling experience we are brothers.

4) And there is an intimate basis for brotherhood. Time and again, the thing that prevents a runaway of our religious prejudices into open strife, is the personal friendships of individual Jews and gentiles; of Catholic and Protestant persons.

And it is effective in inter-racial relations as well. You recall the military orders, after Pearl Harbor, that all people of Japanese descent be removed from our west coast. One fine Japanese family had just leased a farm which they hoped to make their permanent home. They, and the owner alike, were distressed at the order for removal, but knew it must be obeyed. After frantic search, the owner found a Chinese family that would come and take over. Through a misunderstanding, the Chinese family arrived a week early -- before the Japanese family was to leave for internment camp.

What would happen? The Chinese had relatives who had suffered under Japanese invasion of China for years. There could have been an explosion of emotional fireworks! But these two families were servants of God. The Chinese family helped the Japanese to pack their belongings. The Japanese family acquainted the Chinese with the farm they were to work. What might have been a tragedy became a little corner of God’s kingdom on earth.

To those who know themselves and all mankind to be children of God, there are always roads to brotherhood. For mankind, with all its variations, and with the widest of differences, is still one family of the Creator.

--------------------

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 22, 1953;

also February 13, 1955.