5/29/55

Scripture: Romans 12

One of the requirements, under law, for the effective execution of a legal document, such as the drawing and signing of a will, is that the person, or persons, who sign that document be of “sound mind and memory.” I suppose that this is true of other documents as well. If it could be proved, before a court, that a man was not of sound mind and memory when he agreed to buy or sell a house, the transaction could be challenged and perhaps invalidated. An aged woman whose obsession was that she could give away sizable sums of money to a great variety of charitable and philanthropic enterprises, used to send for leaders of such causes and startle them with the prospect of a really sizable gift. Then she would explain that her son, a prosperous business man of their city, could take care of the details, since it was he who helped make possible her joy in giving. When inquiry was made of him, he had a quick stock answer: “Just forget it! Mother is no longer of sound mind and memory and her agreements to make these fine-sounding gifts mean nothing.”

Well, there is a host of young folk who are graduated each year from high schools and colleges, who must be assumed to be of sound mind. They have cultivated their native intelligence with a study of information and facts, wisdom and truth. Many know that they yet need a lot of experience in the vocations to which they will apply themselves. But, being of sound mind, they are confident that they can use their experience to immediate advantage. And probably they are right, if they keep in mind the moral quality of life as well as its information and skills.

One of the gravities of life, at this time in history, is that there is so much pressure to ignore the duty to think and act rightly, as one discerns right. There is terrific pressure upon people to conform to what others decree is right or desirable. Behind the iron and bamboo curtains, diabolical devices and pressures are used against prisoners and others to destroy independent human reason, and to reduce men and women to trained-animal submissiveness. Those who have survived such “brain washing” are marked with a horror that is more real than Dante had in mind when he wrote “The Inferno.”

But the pressure upon people to conform is not confined to those totalitarian-dominated areas of the earth alone. There is a good deal of it all around us. People can be heard, on busses and trains, in shops and offices and classrooms, parroting the wild accusations of the latest demagogues and rabble rousers, reciting as verity the last bit which they have seen in newspaper or on television. And some news analysts are accorded the respect and devotion of an oracle or a divine revelation.

We too easily give in to the feeling that we are just bystanders in a world where the decisions that make our destiny are made on levels beyond our vote and voice. We suspect that we are only asked to accept and approve what those in authority have to say to us, like Nazis in one of Hitler’s “free” elections all voting “Ja” because there was no other choice.

People who are of sound mind do not, and ought not, accept that status. We are to judge, to test experience, to offer our views. For in forming our own judgments, in testing theories and hypotheses, contributing our views and experience, there is hope of arriving at a far better way of life, for the common good, than the dictator, the demagogue, or the single party can ever provide.

It was in a day when the powerful Roman empire kept the peace by force, that the Christian community got its start. And it had its beginning not by the encouragement of Rome, nor by cooperation of some Jewish collaborators. The Christians had to asset their understanding of truth in spite of Rome, and, very soon, in the face of terrible persecution. Partly because of this pressure, and partly because of the tendency of average folk, like us, to be swayed by whatever are the common, currently-expressed opinions of others. Paul urged the Christians not to be conformed. And he asked them to be “transformed by the renewing” of their minds. He wanted them to prove, by their own inquiry and the testing of their own experience, what was the will of God for them; to find out by honest inquiry what is “good, and acceptable, and perfect.” [Romans 12: 2].

That is what a trained mind is for. That is the purpose of a good education. That is the heritage that belongs to all who have had an education free from partisan control. The way has been, and still is, wide open for research in religious and spiritual experience as well as for information and skills. The question for all students, in school and out of school, is whether to join some of the mental lock steps and to march along, letting others make the decisions, or to accept the risks which true freedom can bring.

Early Christians were keenly alive to the threat of enslavement to the world and to its rulers. They became convinced that the world tends to set up false gods and wrong standards. And they believed that their new-found way of life, putting the one true God of Jesus Christ at the center of their experience, would define their proper relationship.

The renewal of mind, and the transforming of existence, that Paul talked about, do not “just happen.” To break with the “lock steps” around us demands the discovery that there is a God who stands beyond us and our little systems. Our human errors, and lacks, can be healed in an engagement of our persons with that Divine will. Not only do we have access to the will of God, standing beyond us, but we have also a “host of witnesses.” It is especially appropriate to remember this whenever we recall our desire to be a part of the “Communion of the saints.”

It was Paul, again, writing this time to the Hebrew Christians, who urged his hearers or readers: “Seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” [Hebrews 12: 1,2].

It often happens that athletes play better in front of a crowd. They may do well in practice sessions where they can concentrate on motions, plays, coordination. But in the contest itself, with cheering expectation from the crowd in the grandstand, something thrilling happens. Their effectiveness is stepped up, and they sometimes excel their previous record.

The sound and growing mind that you have, needs the supplement of your memory -- the remembrance that you have contemporaries and friends who are watching you, believing in you, and ready to encourage you -- like the friends of an athlete in the grandstand.

Not only are there such living friends, but we are also surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses” among those who have gone on. Paul’s words reveal the true relationship between time and eternity; between our time-and-space-limited world and the limitless world of the spirit.

Paul suggests that the invisible spectators we remember, though we seem to have lost awhile, are not far off from the running track of this mortal life, but surrounding it. Every time I am careless of speech or integrity, my father is present with me. And his memory, though he died more than eight [sixteen] years ago, calls upon me to do better than that. That teacher and friend who believed in me and thought that I could serve well in some field of the ministry, and encouraged me to train for it, before I myself believed it possible -- he is present with me, though dead to the flesh for over 13 [21] years.

So it is with each of you. Our loved ones who have passed away from this mortal limitation are not far away. They, with the saints of the ages, are a part of the “cloud of witnesses” very near to us, believing in our best selves.

Death hides but it does not divide

Thou art but on Christ’s other side

Thou art with Christ, and Christ with me

In Him I am still close to Thee.

It is a sobering, inspiring, steadying realization to remember that we are known by so great a “cloud of witnesses.” There are things that we might have tried to keep from them when they were here upon earth. But now, nothing can be hid from the knowledge of their remembrance. We understand that we must try to run our race so that there will be nothing to hide from them or from God.

Phillips Brooks once stated this standard of human conduct: “To keep clear of concealment, to keep clear of the need of concealment, to do nothing which one might not do on the middle of Boston Common at noonday, seems to be the glory of man’s life. It is an awful hour when the first necessity of hiding anything comes. Put it off forever if you can.”

Being of sound mind and memory, we recognize that there is no real concealment from God and from those in the Father’s house. We are surrounded by a host of witnesses. Wherefore, let each of us and all of you run the race of his or her own life as if in full view of those who believe in and hope for your success and integrity.

Let us remember that, because we are subjects of the concern of others, because we are lifted by them in prayer before God, we can find the answers to life’s problems and choose rightly life’s ways far better than if we walked alone, or drifted with the crowd. In our search for free and responsible personal living, there are handicaps which we ought to lay aside. Fear is one of them. A host of the fears we entertain ought to be replaced with trust.

Most races have not only a gallery of witnesses to encourage one’s best, but a goal to be reached. Paul’s words to the Hebrews suggest that you “Keep your eyes fixed upon Jesus as the pioneer.” And if we do that we may each run with patience and confidence the race that is set before us. Being of sound mind and memory, you may sing the “quiet songs of experience and the hearty melodies of innocence.”

Those who are transformed by the renewing of mind are they who devote their service in all relationships around them; who share in leading others to creative fellowship under God; who report for the risk and the duty and the opportunity to live freely.

May you find little sympathy with Hamlet’s lament:

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!

And may you join hands heartily with Rupert Brooke in saying:

Now God be thanked, who has matched us with his hour,

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.

Let as many of us as may be mature have this mind and attitude.

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

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 29, 1955.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, February 3, 1963.