4/28/57

Scripture: Psalm 111 (read); see Numbers, including chapter 4.

An artist said to a magazine reporter: “The trouble with modern man is that he is in pieces and some of the pieces are missing.” He makes human life sound like a jig saw puzzle that can not be quite completed while some of the pieces are lost.

Well, some of the lost pieces are found again in such a discovery as that of a criminal who was being executed more than 1900 years ago. He was one of two admitted thieves who had been caught and condemned. The most unusual part of the ordeal was that one who seemed innocent of any crime was also being put to death between the two thieves.

As they hung on the crude and cruel crosses, with a crowd below taunting the one in the center, one of the thieves joined in the taunts with cursing on the man in the center. But the other one, he of whom we now speak, rebuked the first with this challenge: “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And then he said to the one hanging in the middle: “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power.” The response of Jesus indicates that the conditions to wholeness had been met in the thief’s understanding of his situation. The pieces were being found and put together. Jesus said to him: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” [Luke 23: 39-43].

A first condition of wholeness is the willingness to enter into responsible existence. In the thief’s case, he could see that this meant an honest admission: “We indeed justly. We are receiving the due reward of our deeds.” Even though it was a sort of “death bed conversion,” so to speak, it was a squaring up to reality. It may be that he was facing, for the first time in his life, what his soul was really like. And he was taking the burden of what he saw with no further side-stepping. There was no more giving of excuses; no whining about being born in an underprivileged part of town; no passing the buck. “We indeed justly.”

One of the reasons why we people of today have a hard time finding the lost pieces of living, is that we have a hard time translating into our own thinking and practice this kind of encounter with responsible existence.

The advances in knowledge have given us valuable tools for understanding the behavior of others, but also a scholarly apparatus for excusing ourselves from many responsibilities. If we get caught up in some grim reminder that our present situation is in a complex of past decisions, we seek absolution by explanation. We console ourselves with being extrovert or introvert, afflicted with inferiority complex or its opposite, or what-not. Or we may take refuge from the implication of our own uncomfortable personal responsibility by making a passionate attack on some politician, or on the liberals, or against the reactionaries, or on communism, or on something else that seems to need attacking. (For the moment we are considering, here, not the battles that need to be waged, but the motive which some of us satisfy, by drawing attention - including our own - away from our own responsibility.)

We can always blame heredity and environment, with plausible success, for the way in which we have acted. We can abuse the kids, kick the dog, yell at the wife (or husband), or engage in even more serious forms of aggressive behavior on the assumption that external stimuli have set in motion certain automatic nervous reactions over which we have no control. Napoleon can blame his final reverses on the English, on the Russians, on Josephine, on anybody else but Napoleon.

Or we can face, and accept, our due responsibility just as that thief admitted his situation as he pleaded for the understanding and compassion of the suffering Jesus. And if that thief could ease his soul before dying by coming clean with an admission of his own responsibility, any one of us can face living the better by assuming a high sense of responsibility for what we must be and do and what we may become.

The Old Testament book of Numbers may seem in spots, like dry reading until some of the vital truth that inheres in the Scripture reaches our understanding and illuminates the way. Reading in the early chapters of this book, we are informed that in the 2nd year after the Israelites had left Egypt, while they were encamped in the desert, Moses felt that it was God’s will for him to take a census of all the people to see how many able-bodied men could be counted on for their army of defense, and for other purposes. The only exception was those who were of the tribe of Levi. The Levites were put in charge of everything that was sacred. They were to serve Aaron in caring for the tabernacle or tent of meeting.

Since the Hebrews were now a nomadic people, on the move from one place to another, this meant taking down and setting up the tent or tabernacle, and the careful transport of all of the furnishings. Anybody who interfered with the sacred duties of the Levites would be put to death.

Within the tribe of Levi, the sons of Kohath drew an especially sacred task. Whenever camp was broken, Aaron, the priest, and his sons, would go forward to the holy of holies or sanctuary, remove the curtain, lay violet-colored cloths over the sacred belongings, wrap them in leather, and put them on a sort of stretcher for the journey. All of these sacred objects then became the particular care of the Kohathites. And when the Israelites brought forward the offering of six wagons and six teams of oxen to haul the tent and other heavy periphenalia, none were assigned to the sons of Kohath; for the Kohathites had a special duty. The most holy things, covered and wrapped by the priests, were to be carried on the shoulders of the sons of Kohath. They were never to be assigned to the baggage train, but personally borne by the men themselves.

It is well to note that this duty was not thrust upon the sons of Kohath. They did not have to serve. They chose to; they volunteered. They could have requested some other duty. They could have demurred from this. But they were willing to carry the sacred objects on their shoulders.

The willing acceptance of personal responsibility is always a part of God’s will for your life. In the service of the Kingdom, no men are drafted as unwilling conscripts in a cause they hate. It is always a labor of love. No one is truly prepared for life as it is until he knows that his rightful responsibilities must be met and chosen.

Those of us who complain that good fortune has escaped us because we do not “get the breaks,” or because our heredity or environment is unfavorable or mediocre, our teachers not understanding, our friends betraying us, our money lost, or our health or dear ones taken --- may offer these as excuses. But we are not building Christian character that way. Heredity is important; but Elizabeth Barrett Browning became what she was despite a paranoiac father. Environment is important, but it was not allowed to keep Abraham Lincoln down in the backwoods. One’s health is important, but Paul continued his great missionary work despite a “thorn in the flesh;” and a Helen Keller rises to inspired usefulness over almost insuperable physical handicaps.

Whoever supposed that life is a bed of rose petals? Everyone has obstacles to surmount. It is how he handles the obstacles that counts.

Circumstances are important, and many difficulties are very real. But no one need be wholly shaped by circumstance. Teachers have known more than one student who had a relatively low IQ who nonetheless became creditable scholars by persistent, interested effort. A crowded family life may be considered by some to be unfavorable. That was the situation of John Wesley. He was 15th in a family of 17 children in a poor vicarage in England. Nevertheless, he became one of England’s great men, partly because his mother made some time for each individual child in that large family. And many a privileged person has failed to develop any high sense of responsibility.

A University Professor [H. N. Weaver] once described to his class the efforts of his own college roommate to provide himself with exactly the right atmosphere for pursuit of the intellectual life. The fellow bought a large, comfortable chair that was supposed to be good for study. He got study slippers and a lounging jacket. A book rest was fastened to the arm of the chair to hold a book at just the right angle for reading. There was a special lamp with eye shade; pencils, paper and revolving book case were handy. The fellow would come into his room after the evening meal, take off his coat and shoes, put on the lounging jacket and study slippers, adjust the reading lamp, put his back on the rest, select a pencil, adjust his eye shade and when everything was just right -- fall asleep! If this shows anything, it goes to show that the inward, personal response is more important than the outward circumstance, whatever that may be.

It is the truth that we are responsible for becoming what we should be. We shall do it best by seeking divine help; but even that effort of seeking must be ours. We cannot assign our characters to the baggage wagons. The life we are living must be lifted to our own shoulders and carried there, just as the sons of Kohath carried the holy things there.

It is sad to hear the vocabulary of defeat -- “I am the victim of circumstance; my one vote doesn’t count; I’m driven by the tide; whatever happens, I’m not to blame.”

We do have some power to exercise over circumstance. It is ours to use. We can choose to be honest or dishonest, we can choose to be cheerful or gloomy, considerate or spiteful; we can choose to go to work or stay at home. Our choices have their limitation, of course, for we are by no means absolute; but our power of choice is considerable.

The story is told of Lyman Beecher, the father of Henry Ward Beecher, who, being a minister, once agreed to exchange pulpits on a Sunday with a rigid predestinarian. It so happened that, in driving to each other’s church on Sunday morning, they met on the road. The neighboring minister took occasion to do a little exulting as he greeted Beecher: “Doctor Beecher, I wish to bring to your attention the fact that, before the creation of the world, God arranged that you were to preach in my pulpit today, and I in yours on this particular Sabbath.”

Lyman Beecher reigned in his horse and glared at the man. “Is that so?” he parried; “Then I won’t do it!” And he turned his carriage around and went back to his own church!

God expects us to act like people, and not like puppets. Every one of us has certain responsibilities before God, and we are expected to carry them on our shoulders. Our reactions may be mature or childish. The fact remains that each of us has a self to fashion. If we should make a mess of it, it could be that we have forgotten, that what happens to us is far less important than how we respond to what happens. To build a Christian life, each one must carry Christ’s high concerns willingly on his shoulders.

It is well to remember that a dependable Christian is one who not only takes the service of these things seriously, but does it joyfully as a privilege that one would not wish to forego. Life has its obligations and duties -- plenty of them -- but the distinctively Christian approach to them, is it not, is to lift them up to the realm of privilege and make what we ought to do a joy!

It was the duty of the Kohathites to carry the holy objects; it was their solemn and sacred obligation to do so. But the way they carried these things, as an opportunity to be seized, made all the difference.

It is not much fun to live with a person whose duties are carried as a dull, dead weight, distastefully borne and doggedly endured. (We are all like this upon occasion.) But Christlikeness means joy, radiance, a sense of high privilege.

Doing our duty is not a guarantee against a biting tongue or unlovely thoughts, or censorious temper, or haughty disposition. And doing one’s duty may be accompanied by a feeling of pride and self-righteousness which is not compatible with the spirit of Jesus.

The Christian life is not simply an obligation to be met but a privilege to be shouldered and enjoyed. It really comes to pass when it is carried beyond the realm of duty to the realm of privilege.

The teacher who sees creative opportunity to speak an encouraging or enlightening word to the student outside the class room, as well as in school hours, knows the thrill of teaching. Similarly, that man understands Christianity who forgets the duty he’d like to avoid, in welcoming the opportunity he is glad to assume.

Of course Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (as described in the Old Testament) but he was preeminently a man of joy, of good cheer and radiant courage (as described in the New Testament). “Above and beyond the call of duty” is truly a Christian sort of motto.

Responsible people, then, are the ones who feel the duty of the first mile, and the privilege of the second, and who require more of themselves than is expected of them. They often specialize in the voluntary assumption of loads no one expects they must carry and which, by being borne, may improve the lot of many. They help bear the burdens of others, so fulfilling the law of Christ which is not the law of compulsion but the law of voluntary love. The service is one they gladly bear on their shoulders, like a service of the sanctuary.

This purpose of the sons of Kohath is still valid today. A responsible Christian of today takes this kind of service personally. None of the great causes in life, like the church, brotherhood, integration, world peace, or social righteousness will go forward unless we personally see to it that our part is carried. Machinery and organization are all right as far as they go. But there is a personal element that cannot be consigned to the baggage wagons.

There is a tremendous need for people who are eager to work, to serve, even to sacrifice and suffer as necessary for Christ --- people who have the courage to say of some great cause: “Here, this is my affair!”

There are a lot of slums in Chicago, and many in that city are much concerned with their clearance and with decency of life for the people therein. But slum conditions would have been incalculably worse had it not been that Jane Adams said, back in 1889, “Here, this is my affair!” and tackled the problem through Hull House.

Whatever advances there have been in treatment of women in prisons is due to the dedication of a fearless, intelligent, responsibly Christian woman named Elizabeth Fry who dared social ostracism to attack the wretched conditions in prisons of her time.

Back in the 1830s it was dangerous, in some places, to do anything about the plight of Negro slaves. But Elijah Lovejoy tackled the problem. And whatever progress has been made (Much remaining still to be done!) is due in generous measure to the work of Mr. Lovejoy who, about 125 years ago, was killed by an anti-abolition mob because he had said to himself, “Here, this is my affair!”

If we pass through the transition stage of this present time in history with any success in solving its problems, it will be not because of the good machinery we may set up, but because of people with high sense of responsibility who are willing to wrestle with these problems without ceasing.

A sense of personal obligation for the welfare of others is about the noblest quality that a life can have. “The service of Christ’s kingdom is theirs; they carry it on their shoulders.”

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, April 28, 1957

Wisconsin Rapids, April 25, 1965