8/23/53

Scripture: I Corinthians 13

Text: I Corinthians 13: 9, 12; “For our knowledge is imperfect...For now we see in a mirror dimly.”

This world is filled with the power of tragedy, and the power of healing. Calamity comes to a Korean village with the tides of war, or to an American city in the few moments of a tornado. A California governor’s home finds its family happiness dynamited with an attack of polio upon its youngest daughter. A child is left homeless by the death of its parents on the highway. Those who have known and loved freedom are swallowed up by the tyranny which stalks over so much of the world like a lying monster. An earthquake rumbles for days, wiping out the homes and lives of an island population in the Mediterranean.

With or without warning, tragedy may strike --- and does. And often it brings suffering to the least guilty of people.

And then there is the great force of healing at work. War ravaged towns are slowly restored to something like livability, as are also the communities wasted by tornado. The daughter of the California governor, aided by medical skill and a tremendous family faith, recovers entirely from paralyzing polio. An orphaned child is sought and loved by a home that would be lonely without it. Under a steel heel, freedom burns in the hearts of millions like the unquenchable desire for truth, and hope of liberty keeps alive the struggle between good and evil. Rescue forces rush to the aid of stricken survivors; that no more shall be swallowed up or crushed by the earthquake. And people donate part of their physical life in the blood that preserves life for so many others through the Red Cross blood bank.

Do these two forces of tragedy and healing fit together in a world whose God is love? Or are these forces themselves a warfare that mocks divine love?

Certainly the Creator seems to have commissioned human life to overcome the acts of nature that make the world so difficult. Dikes can be built against floods by sea or river, saving people and the life-giving land from destruction. Great irrigation systems cause desert land to bloom and be fruitful. The cruel seas, which lashed sailing vessels into watery graves, are rendered less destructive of human effort by the modern ocean liner. Governments battle the cruelties of the economic order trying to assure life and a chance to all citizens, especially those underprivileged, who will struggle for it. Scientific research and effort is applied to conquer the cruelties of disease. Yet the world seems never intended to be a place where one can not fail. No physical strength is entirely guaranteed. No financial security is without the threat of attack or collapse.

But it seems that the very possibility, or threat, of failure is one of the powerful factors of growth. There would be no moral choice without the possibility of tragedy. Nor can spiritual awareness of what is right, good and true, be real without the threat of evil.

There is a “principle of tragedy” in the structure of the world that has moral significance. Oscar Blackwelder defines this “principle” as a power working in men and nature which can break one’s life, defeat him, make a tragedy out of him. It may be sin in human life, a perversity that defies the good which one ought to be. It may be cruelty in physical nature. Both enter into our understanding that no system we can ever devise is going to control, fully and finally, all possibility of defeat or tragedy.

This principle of tragedy is seen in the fact that every normal life sooner or later has crosses to bear. Sometimes these individual crosses come in the form of permanent handicaps - burdens that often appear very unfair.

(1) Some such crosses come because of one’s own limitations in life -- inherited tendencies that mean poor management; poor judgment that assumes foolish risks; poor moral insight that violates the best of conscience among people, forgetting that we reap what we sow, and usually more of it. These might be called man’s unnecessary crosses.

(2) Then there are those crosses that come to every life more or less because this world of our earthly life is so imperfect a world. They are erected by human friction, by limited environment, by the presence of evil. They may come after we have done our level best to achieve personal excellence. They may arise out of situations over which we have no more control than an individual has over a tornado, or over war, or over widespread unemployment. We might call some of them inevitable crosses.

(3) And because there are these unnecessary and these inevitable crosses, there are also voluntary crosses borne by people who believe they owe something to the world over and above merely pulling their own weight. Thoughts like this illuminate such a person’s conscience: “Bear ye one another’s burdens;” [Galatians 6:2]; “As you did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me;” [Matthew 25: 40]; “We who are strong ought to bear the failings of the weak.” [Romans 15: 1]. In this kind of world, a man who will carry no cross of burden misses life altogether.

The presence of these unnecessary, or inevitable, or voluntary crosses illustrates the principle of tragedy in mankind and in nature. Such crosses must be borne, sooner or later, by every normal life. But what are we going to do with them as responsible, well-intentioned people? (1) We may try to resist them, by open, active rebellion; or by passive resistance. (2) Or we may try to ignore these crosses. We may shrug the shoulder and postpone the inevitable; or we may try such rationalization as to deny that the crosses exist at all. (3) But other than resisting or ignoring the crosses that come to us, a third way to deal with them is what Jesus did with his crosses. He used his crosses, even the ultimate instrument of torture that took his life, as keys to larger, more abundant life. His sayings illustrate this use: “I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” [John 10:10]. Also he said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” [Mark 8: 34]. Jesus recognized that the capacity for living and the capacity for suffering go together. How we handle suffering, then, increases or decreases our capacity for life.

The teachers of religions other than that of Christ do not face these facts. “They shrink back from the fullness of life in order to escape its pain.” They teach that the happy life is one that does not suffer. Even much of the Old Testament suggests that when a righteous man suffers it is in spite of his righteousness.

Jesus teaches that a man suffers because of his righteousness. The more he develops his capacity for life, the keener his conscience becomes, the more he practices what he understands to be right, the greater is his capacity for suffering. And he could promise: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” [Matthew 5: 10]. So our lives have crosses. And the way of Christ is to use these crosses as keys and clues, as instruments of self-discipline and direction, as methods of moral maturing, as spiritual doors to abundant life.

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Now we have seen what Jesus taught about it. Let us inquire what he actually did with his own crosses. Peter testified: “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten.” [I Peter 2: 21-23]. And when enduring the greatest cross he bore, out of the midst of greatest agony of the flesh, he prayed aloud: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” [Luke 23: 34]. Can we achieve anything like that? Well, at least we can follow afar off, if we haven’t the character to stand close.

Many great souls turn beds of affliction into mounts of transfiguration. Some of the world’s greatest poetry is only the story of a great heart, broken, but pouring forth the secret of a greater understanding. Some of the earth’s greatest music is the grandeur of a soul searching for the lost chords of its life and making melody along the way.

We take it for granted that youth has a beauty of its own, and that the beauty of youth fades with old age. Does it follow that age lack’s beauty? An old woman was receiving congratulations on her birthday. Someone said to her, “My, you are beautiful.” With no hesitation or embarrassment she replied, “I ought to be. I’m 74.” Whether it is decorative or not, such beauty is structural.

Some souls are so little conquered by the storms of life and the batterings of experience that they are increasingly courteous in heart, more keenly aware of liveliness and truth, really rejoicing beneath the burden of years. The quality of the cross as Jesus bears it, is like the quality of that 74-year-old woman.

But the cross of Christ is not alone the supreme example of the way to handle our crosses, and thus deal with tragedy. There is yet something else. The principle of tragedy largely accounts for the persistence of the cross of Christ. People are not content with Jesus simply as a “clue” to God and the spiritual world, or as the most trustworthy guide to moral values and insights, or as the best mirror to the Eternal, or as chief of religious teachers and greatest of prophets. But we are caught up with the feeling that a cross is God’s way of suffering with us, as He did with His Son. God is not a remote spectator of our agony, but He bears the pain and anxiety and struggle with us. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” [Psalm 23: 4]. [Mother Walker of Maui].

We rejoice at Christmastide, at the repeated news that the Eternal entered human life and history at Bethlehem. But the Eternal stays with us in the cross, and will not let us go. But God does not suffer with us only as we suffer, in a kind of pessimistic continuance. There is an empty cross and tomb that bespeak the conquest over tragedy. God sees life beyond our tragedies, and gives us sufficient glimpses of what is beyond, that we may live each day as needful.

That renewal is given to us most vividly in the free forgiveness of our repented sins, our restored self-respect, the right to face life unafraid. The Christ of the cross says, “Thy sins be forgiven. Take up thy bed and walk.” [Mark 2: 9]. He restores my soul; [Psalm 23: 3]; and yours. The forgiveness of God, through Christ, is source of good life beyond tragedy. So there is God’s fellowship in our crosses. Let each take up his own, and follow the Master of all crosses.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, August 23, 1953.