5/19/57

Scripture: II Corinthians 4: 1-7

Text: II Corinthians 4: 7; “For we have this treasure in earthen vessels.”

The Christian Church has been under fire. It is accused of being a middle class institution to the exclusion of other groups. It is called the most segregated institution. Some say it has sacrificed depth of conviction for broadness in numbers. There are those who raise questions as to its sincerity. And so on, through a grievous list of indictments.

Feeling that the church should be more honest, more prophetic, more deeply sincere than any other fellowship, there are those who speak freely of its lacks. However, this is nothing new. Fifty and sixty years ago, doleful comments were made as to the church’s sincerity and effectiveness.

We look back to Puritan New England expecting to find the church unassailed in its supremacy. But Cotton Mather was deploring the feeling that the cause of pure religion was “decaying and expiring in this country.” It was no Garden of Eden.

What was it like in the 13th century? That was the era of cathedral builders. Religion was in the forefront of thinking and experience, so that a spiritual type of architecture, the Gothic, appeared -- and not only in places of worship but also in houses and even barns and sheepfolds. Certainly the labels of religion were prominent.

But the weaknesses of the church in the Middle Ages show up in the writings of men like Dante. And the pressures were already building up that would “blow the lid off” in the later Protestant Reformation.

And the first century church was by no means free of the charges of error and failure. If any of us suppose that it was as unsoiled as a white blanket of winter snow, it would be well to read Paul’s letters again. For he speaks of “debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, back bitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults.” [Romans 1: 28-31].

Nearly every weakness of our present day church life was apparent in the first century church of apostolic times. There were acute controversies. Bigotry was present. In the Epistle of James there is a charge of favoritism toward men of wealth. [James 2: 2-10]. And so on!

So when we hear any cry of adverse criticism of the church, or the doleful remark that it is deteriorating, we may be reminded of the editor of “Punch” magazine who had heard from a critic that “Punch” was not nearly as good as it used to be. The editor replied “It never was!”

The Christian Church has always been under fire, and I suppose it has always deserved to be. Paul was speaking truth when he said of it: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”

Nevertheless, that struggling, defective, “earthen,” early church succeeded in planting a new religious and social ideal in the soil of the Caesars. New hope came to the heart of humanity. Men and women who could live kindly lives of good moral quality grew out of that church. And they had to make their stand in the midst of cruelty and vice. They were the people who “out-thought, outlived, and outdied” the people around them.

The church of the Middle Ages, with its bloody persecutions, was preserving the hard won cultural gains of Greek and oriental antiquity. It was laying foundations for civil law and representative government.

The American colonial church had its obvious sins. It may have been bigoted and narrow. It lived in a time of bigotry and narrowness. But it made enormous contributions to the beginnings of our commonwealth. It is vastly more profitable for us to look for its strength and its positive contribution that to spend all our energy running it down and belittling its effect.

The church in all ages has impressed people with both its signs of decay and its evidence of vitality. Two facts may confidently be stated, therefore, about the Church. First, it has defects -- “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” Second, it has strength to sustain its appeal, in spite of its defects -- “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”

What is this treasure, then -- this germinating kernel of reality that persists through the shell of pretense? We could go on and on in pursuit of such a subject; but 2 or 3 real services which the church now renders to our spirits are worth mention.

(1) For one thing, the church helps us to reappraise ourselves. Years ago, Emerson wrote, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” If that was true in Emerson’s time it is certainly true of us in our time. Our society is being speeded at a terrific pace to keep up with our factory output and technological advance. We are not, in this country, much disturbed about any problem of producing what we need. Rather, we have to enlarge the wants of people to absorb what is being produced, or can be produced. Advertising and salesmanship become the important vocations, the point of which is to expand human appetites in order to take care of what producers turn out in the factories.

Much of the medium in which we live and move and have our being consists of things. We rate people according to the factory products which they produce or acquire. We may tend to underrate the contribution of those who work with ideas --- teachers, poets, preachers, musicians, pure scientists --- except when their talents can be turned into box office receipts. We are, in the words of a writer of verse:

“..prisoners in this world of coins and wires and motor horns; this world of figures and of men who trust in facts; this pitiable, hypocritic world where men with blinkered eyes and hobbled feet, grope down a narrow gorge and call it life.”

Here in the middle of the 20th century, we need a Robinson Crusoe to remind us how we could become self sufficient if we were deprived of a mass of the things which we think are absolutely necessary.

We need the Master of Nazareth to lead us out of our things, cluttered market places, to reveal to us the wealth of enjoyment in life’s simplicities.

Some years ago, Ralph Sockman was riding with a typically successful city businessman. The man was telling Sockman of the marked impression made on a Chamber of Commerce meeting by a Hindu speaker. The Hindu said that India could learn much from American in the matter of business efficiency and production of goods; but that India could teach America some valuable points as to a mental poise and quietude. Sockman and his friend were agreeing with the Hindu speaker’s position, and were readily admitting to each other that Americans need to learn how to be still, when he glanced down at the speedometer needle climbing way up over the usual speed limit!

Now a 75 or 80 mile per hour speed -- even on some super highway, is hardly the condition most conducive to “the peace of God which passeth all understanding.” Yet this is a parable of American life, isn’t it? We speed along at a pace that enables us to glimpse only the concrete things along our path, but that deters us from observing and appraising subtle, hidden, inner values.

The rushing stream is dynamic. Fish and fisherman like the struggle with it. It fills the reservoirs that turn water wheels. But when we wish to catch the reflection of sky and leafy trees, we stop beside a still, (and often deep), pool to see it mirrored.

Our torrential western life generates industrial power. But we need the quiet lakes of contemplation wherein we can discern the “things which are not seen that are eternal.” The church calls us to service, outright. But first it calls us from the rush of competitive existence to calm, deep reflection of eternal values. Its spiritual head is the Christ who, like the shepherd in the 23rd Psalm, “leads me beside the still waters” and “restores my soul.” The church helps us to reappraise ourselves.

(2) A second of the church’s treasures for us is that it helps us to repossess ourselves. The pace and variety of demand in our living leaves us often with a spent feeling. It distracts the mind, dissipates the energies, leaves us with a need to put ourselves together again. If we sit like a weaver putting the complicated threads together in haste so that the cloth may come off whole and voluminous, on the 7th day the church gets us around in front of the loom to take a look at the pattern. We compare the design with that shown on Mount Sinai or the Mount of Olives where Moses and the Christ wove. Some threads we may need to cut, others need to be pulled more tightly. And we do need to see the whole pattern at once. The church helps us to “see life steadily and to see it whole.”

In some theories this can be done as well without the church. But, in realistic fact, we usually do not do it on that fishing trip, or at that round of golf, or during the trip to see cousin Josephine. If we are going to find that repossessing of self, it is in church, where crowded schedules, high powered travel, and overworked TV and radio and press are stilled long enough for us to be alone with God, together with others seeking the same quiet, renewing solitude.

Never did man need more to be led by still waters, to be made to lie down in green pastures, to have his soul restored. The church points a way to that kind of restoration. [Psalm 23].

(3) And a third service rendered us through this earthen vessel, the church, is that it helps us to steady our transient moods; to mistrust our distraught or depressed times and to depend on dominant worthy moods.

Most of us are subject to fluctuations of mood. There are times of exultant faith wherein we are convinced of the goodness of God and of our fellow men; and are confident of ourselves. Then there may also be hours of low mood, when we see the basement of our own nature, view with cynicism the antics of others, mistrust the ways of God. And what we really need and want is the turn to mystic insight where the atmosphere clears, and the very foothills of heaven become visible again.

These highs and lows, like ocean tide, come to all sorts of folk, to the strong as well as the weak. And the mastering of these moods by continual effort and purpose is one of the secrets of successful living pursued by all of us.

In handling our moods, we rely on the understanding of some individuals, the help of the group (like a church fellowship) and the assurance of God. Where better can we look for these than in the church, despite all its frailties? It has had the vitality to impart strength through all the years, and still has this vitality. If we get bogged down in our own individual effort, it helps to belong to a team that carries us along in the training. The fellow who wants a strong, adequate body may or may not do the setting up exercises necessary to keep his muscles in tone. But if he is on a team, he trains, even when he may not feel like it -- and the group life is good for him.

The man or woman who lives alone may, or may not, cook an adequate meal to nourish self. Sometimes nothing seems to tempt the appetite enough to be worth preparing for a lonely table. But when a whole family is to be fed three times a day, somebody -- usually the one who does the cooking -- has enough ideas so that a good meal appears time after time.

The fellowship of the church does a lot to carry us along in our own determination to make the best of our good moods, to obey our good impulses, to seek and perform the good duties of living. And, not only do we receive help; we have the satisfaction of knowing that we can give it too.

A student at a university in New York City several years ago attended services regularly at what was then Madison Avenue Church. Some years later, while teaching at a midwestern university he wrote back a letter to the pastor of that church saying: “The courtesy of your congregation is something I shall never forget and I assure you it was no mean factor in helping me keep an anchor in the finer ideals of life --- Coming into contact with many people who openly scoffed at things I was fighting to retain as precious, I found your services powerful antidotes to injections of toxins.”

Uncounted worshippers everywhere have felt it -- the suggestion, the sympathy, the imitation found in the fellowship of the church. The sight of others praising God intuitively strengthens our own praise and our feeling that God is praiseworthy. And our own praise offers the same kind of strength to others. The sermon may stir our conscience. The Scripture carries a new ray of light and understanding. The prayer and the benediction bring release and peace, and renewal. All these combine to lift our spirits God-ward.

We are like laden down ships laboring into the locks of a canal. We pause there for a while, the propellers no longer churning the water, and just allow ourselves to be lifted by the rising water in the lock until, presently, we sail out on a higher level, able to carry all our cargo of weight and woe and responsibility.

This treasure in an earthen vessel (but treasure!)--that is the church can repeatedly redeem our hard pressed lives, and put in the mood and the fellowship that strives to abide in Christian love. And this is worth the consecration of some lives which are dedicated to full time service of the church as ministers, directors of Christian education, missionaries, social workers, and other Church vocations. More than that, it is worth the loyalty and faithfulness of every professing Christian. Amen.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, May 19, 1957.

Wisconsin Rapids, June 12, 1966.