4/15/56

Scripture: I Corinthians 13

Text: I Corinthians 13: 12; “For now we see through a glass darkly......”

The Scripture lesson of the morning is one of the well-known portions of the Bible, treasured in the minds and hearts of countless Christian people and memorized by not a few. In the Authorized Version, it is the passage about “charity.” (“Charity suffereth long and is kind.”) In numerous other translations, including the Revised Standard Version, the word used is “love.” And therein Paul has described comprehensively what love is.

Today, I want to think for a while about one phrase toward the end of the chapter. For Paul reminds his readers that our understanding is partial and incomplete. And this lack of complete knowledge, or understanding, underlines our need for a faith that give our living an assurance.

Some of life’s mysteries are man-made. An actor who had been successful on the theater stage in New York received a contract with the Hollywood motion picture industry. Having accepted the contract, he went to California and found comfortable housing a few blocks away from the studios in Hollywood. Living was pleasant, and each month a sizable check came to him --- but no work! He wasn’t asked to act in a single scene! For more than a year, he was given no real work to do. He told a friend, “I never knew why I was there; I lived a mystery.” (man-made).

Each of us lives in a mystery (though few of us, I hope, in such a frustration as that!) But we are conscious that much of our very life is a mystery. We are brought into being on this global mass of land and water and air. We whirl with it, among the other planets and stars of the universe. We find food for our bodies and air for our lungs. But who is to tell us why? And whenever we get curious enough to ask questions and to probe deeper for the meaning, we encounter deeper mystery and silence. As Paul put it: “We see through a glass, darkly” or as, “in a mirror dimly.”

1) Our life is a mystery; our knowledge is fragmentary and imperfect. And we understand but a bit of life’s meaning. Who can fathom more than the tiniest fragment of the oceans, or decipher the starry skies? What is a tear drop or a kiss? For one it may signify a covenant, for another a stark betrayal. What is death? What is life? Where and what or who is God? Many are these questions to which we find only part of an answer. Someone remarks that it is as if we walked on a strip of light amid much darkness -- without and within.

When a school boy got to the point where he studied, for the first time, the unknown in mathematics, he tried the algebraic method of letting “x” equal one unknown and solving the equation for it. He learned that other symbols, perhaps “a” or “y” could stand for the same, or some other, unknown and be used in the mathematical manipulation of a problem until its meaning is found. Then he decided to interrupt looking for the answers long enough to write out a problem instead. And he took to his teacher the one that he had written like this: “2x + y + z = 14. He showed it to the teacher and cheerily asked her what the answer is to that one! She smiled and said: “You can’t solve that; it has too many unknowns.”

Something like that troubles us. Life has too many unknowns. And we encounter them in our most serious thinking. For much of life is mysterious.

2) Moreover, we ourselves are a mystery. Every human being has a lot of this question mark of mind and motive. We do not understand ourselves -- except partially. Scientific examination can analyze our blood, identify the vertebrae and teeth, count our ribs and calculate the mythical average span of life. But our scientific search can not tell us much about why -- why we were created, and for what purpose we live.

Psychology is a worthy study that brings us to better understanding of our actions, some of our motives, abilities, and drives. But psychology cannot answer the question: “Are we immortal? What life is there beyond our dust?” Our sciences are descriptive; they are limited both by human knowledge and by our human ignorance.

The inner spirit of a person is an ocean too deep for comprehension. Every soul is an uncharted sea. We still search for the key to unlock the hidden heart of man; the mystery within us; the meaning of our lives.

3) The greatest mystery, we call “God.” In a sense, all the unknowns of our world are caught up in this one. We say that God is the force behind all reality. We may say that God is the ground of being. But God is not measured by our comprehension; not seen with our eye, nor touched by our finger tips. God is always active in the world, but like wind swaying the trees, is not seen, and is comparatively little known. Miracles of His passion, His beauty, His power, His love are found here while He Himself remains what Luther once called “the hidden God.”

Perhaps you know the story of the young fellow who as a babe had been separated from his parents at his birth. He was raised by others, but as he grew up he could not be satisfied not to know who his father and mother were. The only clue he had been able to find as to his father’s identity was a torn piece of his father’s photograph. He spent his life looking for the rest of that picture!

Ours is a partial knowledge of God. And we wander through the earth wanting more -- much more -- of Him. We want His presence. Here, again, “we see through a glass, darkly.”

A. But, mystery or not, life has to be lived. Despite its uncertainties and our doubts about it, we seem meant to get through it as best we can, with what light we have. And we are confronted with decisions which we must make partly on the basis of our knowledge, however meager that may be. It is not always clear, in every situation, that “this is right” and “that is wrong.”

Yet no person can live in continual reserved judgment, waiting until all facts may be found. We must decide: “Shall I buy that car, or must I make the old one do a year longer?” “Do I enlist now or wait to be drafted?” “Can we afford to have children in this kind of world?” “Shall we build that house and risk the mortgage?” “Shall I join the church and get busy in its activities, or shall I put if off and see, for a while longer?” There are large choices to be made; and with little final certainty. But, as the old preacher says in the play, “Green Pastures”: “You know, sometimes I think de Lawd expects us to figure out a few things for ourselves.” The essence of courage is to go on and live life out without all of the answers, with some doubts unresolved, accepting some mystery and hazards.

We don’t want our diet too heavily loaded with question marks. Some answers we feel we must have. And our search for the riddle of existence goes on.

B. But we live in a venture of faith. We go on past the gates of certainty, beyond what we can see, touch, handle, measure, into the unknown, part of which we expect to see, as experience unfolds like a gift of God. We “bet our lives” in a calculated risk of faith. We live by some kind of assumptions and by the projection of a reasoned imagination. And the most important decisions of life are made in faith. Who can say, before marriage, whether the union that establishes a new home will be one of happiness or woe? It is certainly wise to examine all factors that can be known. But there is no guarantee for the man and the woman that they will be happy and blessed as husband and wife. Yet countless couples have learned to find where their happiness lies -- often not precisely where they had supposed it would be -- because they work at it together.

Can one be sure that the vocation he chooses will satisfy his ambitions? We can not; yet we go ahead, after examining all we can find about it, and enter it and live in it by faith. Our own reading of life may be found to have been warped and inaccurate, with corrections necessary in understanding and direction. We “see through a mirror dimly.” But we do see, and we stand ready to learn, and we live by faith.

C. And we learn that our Christian faith is more than guesswork. For one thing, we do have Christ as priceless and peerless example, as teacher, as companion in spirit. Not all things are at once made apparent by Christ to us, any more than they were to his apostles. But a lot of things that matter are made known to us; most essentially that in a satisfying sense God is our Father who cares for us. Even in our greatest extremity, we have the assurance that underneath us, in our certainties and uncertainties, are the “everlasting arms.” And we can bet our lives upon it!

D. In Christ, we perceive that “behind the dim unknown standeth God” -- not just the blind forces of the universe converging upon us, but the One whom we call upon, and know, as Father. This was Jesus Christ’s sure faith in his youth, throughout his maturity, in his joy and his agony, in many moments of prayer. It was his word and his attitude -- “Our Father” -- “My Father.” At the moment of death it was: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” [Luke 23: 46]. Life’s puzzle always had this meaning to it. It is as though, for us, Christ has hung a sign on the cosmos: “God at work,” fulfilling His purpose and His promise. And if life baffles you, take heart! For it does not baffle God.

Rufus Jones used to offer an interesting illustration of a spiritual truth. Suppose (he would suggest) that you have a piece of paper sprinkled with iron filings. And suppose you put a magnet close under that paper. Seen on the surface will be the bits of metal moving in various patterns without apparent purpose. But should the watcher look beneath the paper and see the magnet moving about there, or should he even accept someone’s word that there is a magnet there, he immediately understands much more about those filings, and about the power that draws them into the patterns they assume. For an unseen hand guides the process. If life seems, at our first glance, to be an unorganized process, try looking at it with the eyes of Christ. For there can be known the hand of God, putting the particles in their places. This is our confident faith.

E. Furthermore, in Christ, we have more than confidence; we have a way of life. He not only gives us some of the needful answers to the “why” of living, but also some direction as to the “how.” He came all filled with the love of God. In this love he lived and died, daring to love, even when surrounded by the hatred of many. His love is too much for us. And that is why its challenge is inescapable. It draws us to repentance, and casts out evil with its expulsive power. We are asked to give ourselves, as living experiments, to validate the truth of such love.

A group of amateurs were rehearsing a play. The scene was difficult enough so that they were not getting it done very well. The actors did not do it with understanding. They could not interpret it as they wished. Finally, from the back of the theater came a man walking down the aisle. And as he approached the stage, he called out. “I’m the author. Here, play it this way.” And he interpreted it for them.

God, the author of creation and of each creature, sent us Christ, saying: “Here, live it this way.” And so, whether our part be lengthy or brief, we shall act on the impulse of charitableness, and in the high emotion of love.

Odd, isn’t it, that we cannot escape the mystery of life, nor fathom it? We live cocksure for a few moments; then run head-on into mystery -- to the presence of birth or death or love or sacrifice; -- something we cannot explain. We wonder about it; we may be anxious about it. But here is Christ who showed us how to live in trust, to go ahead in the expectation that though we now see in a glass darkly, we shall at length in Him see clearly, face to face.

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

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 15, 1956.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, August 28, 1966.