6/7/59

Scripture: John 4: 5-26 (read)

One of the sights to be seen, when I was a student, was New York City’s Broadway late at night. Crowds of people jammed the streets as they came out of theaters or other places of evening entertainment, or as they went into later spots, or as they just walked the street to see the sights and signs and the crowd. The multitude of lights made Broadway appear as bright as day. And some of the people allowed those lights, almost literally, to turn night into day for them.

We are a nation of bright lights -- neon signs of many colors, glaring lights, blinding lights. We are a nation of highly organized sales --- signs in all sorts of places where they will catch and compel one’s attention; deftly arrayed displays, and highly trained sales persons. Business folk must know a great deal about selling --- they have to know it in order to stay in competitive business.

We Americans have a great deal to learn about many things. But selling merchandise is one of the things in which we already excel. We value highly the ability to sell -- not only to display the merits of our product, but more, to convince the potential buyer that he needs and wants our product.

I suppose that this is why, among American Christians, we find so many who show what is probably an undue concern for the sales techniques of Jesus; who like to insist that the business of the ministry and church officials is to “sell” religion and one’s particular church.

A couple of decades ago, there was a considerable body of opinion which appeared convinced that the future of Christianity depended upon convincing the world that Jesus is a “swell guy” --- a little more clever at all our tricks than we are. We were given pictures of Jesus as a first-class salesman promoting his gospel with great success. Some appeared to have the idea that he was a high-minded promoter who knew all the tricks of the trade, better even than our specialists. Christianity was his bill of goods, and he knew how to “put it across,” to make it “move,” like nobody else has since his day.

In our present time there are at least some who are a little more careful how they classify our Lord. We are not too sure that he came with something for sale.

In fact some of us have observed that, if he did mean to sell us something, he went at it all wrong. By our selling standards, his technique was terrible.

For one thing, he had the best chance in the world to stock a popular line of goods, and he “muffed” it! His countrymen, many of them, were looking for a good political leader, a real rabble rouser, someone who could ignite the revolutionary tinder which was ready to burst into flame.

Jesus certainly had a way with crowds; people flocked to listen to him. Here was a chance to get in on the ground floor of something good! But he missed the chance! Or perhaps he just turned it down. At any rate, he didn’t try “to put himself over” in that way.

And that wasn’t the only success boat which he missed. The people of his day, like the people of any day, would have responded enormously to a gospel which caters to standard human yearnings to be soothed, assuaged; to be built up into something confident and successful. If he had just evolved a simple formula for success, or for sure fire happiness, and then harped away on it, in season and out, he could have preached to overflow congregations year in and year out. He could have written a book, or had a scribe write it down at his dictation, which would have been much in demand.

If Jesus had just ignored the real depth of his gospel and the whole breadth of its relevance; if he had concentrated on cheerful uplift, he could have had people standing in line for passes to his services, and piling up back orders for his books.

Then, as now, any good salesman can see that a hand holding, browstroking theology, or even a hand shaking technique can be really popular. That way lies success! But Jesus passed it up. He either muffed the chance, or turned it down. Fine salesman he turned out to be!

Instead, he jolted his hearers with all kinds of rude reminders about themselves and their condition. That is a strange way for a clever salesman to act! The customer, far from being always right, pretty often was all wrong. You can’t build a big clientele that way! No wonder so many of the people in the crowds lost interest, and that some even turned against him.

And, as if that were not bad enough, he sometimes “added insult to injury,” as we say, by warning that, far from ending one’s troubles, coming to him and following him frequently adds new and serious problems. Even where he could have been silent, he chose to get uncomfortably explicit. Would a prudent man have gone out of his way, as Jesus did, to detail the hard parts of Christian discipleship?

One man who was attracted to the Master said, “I will follow thee, Lord; but let me first bid farewell to them that are at my house.” [Luke 9: 59]. But Jesus said to him, “No man, having put his hand unto the plough, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.” {Luke 9: 62]. How is that for reverse salesmanship? Jesus appeared actually to dampen a man’s ardor by pointing out the hard fact that if we are to be disciples of Christ, it is not to be on our terms, but only on the conditions of Christ. There is no bargaining with him. If we follow him, then we really follow; he has not time to haggle or to point out the attractive features of his proposition. He isn’t interested in bartering to make a deal. He wants all of us, and all of what we are, and he want us now. That’s pretty hard to take.

And then there is the talk about burdens, and yokes and crosses --- not symmetrical crossed made of gold or stainless steel, or beautifully finished and attractively illuminated wood, but brutally rough and murderously efficient crosses on which people died. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” [Mark 8: 34]. Is that any way to put across a popular cause? Or “take my yoke upon you.” [Matthew 11: 29]. It that the way to win friends? Or “whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” [Luke 17: 33]. Is that any way to influence people? Yet this is the way that Jesus talked. And I don’t think that is the language of the salesman, as popularly understood.

Yet we may not soft pedal this note in the way Jesus talked, for it is dominant in the New Testament. When we are reading, it is easy to flip the pages where Jesus starts his hard talk. We rather like to pick and choose among his utterances. It is easier to read from an abridged Bible; to teach and preach from select passages, a gospel of sweetness and light. We’ve compared Christianity in a general way to decent citizenship; we have called gentle manners the Christian life; we’ve supposed the best integrated personality to be the best Christian. We may forget that Christianity is more than good citizenship plus good manners, plus a pinch of freehand psychiatry. We do not remember the hard things Jesus has to say!

Would it help to remind us if we used Christ’s most formidable figures of speech as symbols of the church? How about the yoke as symbol of the truth that we are yoked to Him and to one another like those who pull the burdens rather than as those who ride in ease. We are comrades of the cross, and the rule of our order is the “living sacrifice” of self. Spending one’s self in this service is the rule of this fellowship.

Well, perhaps this sounds like moralism, and possibly we would like to laugh it off as theologically out of date. Some of our theology is deeply rooted in the discoveries of the Reformation. The great Reformers found that man’s new relationship to God, a man’s restoration to fellowship with God, a man’s salvation, depend not upon the things a man does, but upon the grace of Good. People do not clamber up to God on a ladder of credits for good deeds. But God gives Himself to people out of his own great Good Work.

We are not saved from our distresses and fears, we do not enter heaven of the future, or the now, by impressing God with our own excellencies, but by the hand He stretches out to save us in Christ.

We don’t earn our salvation; we accept it. Instead of giving our all to save ourselves, we give our all to our Savior. In faith, we grasp the hand stretched out to save us; we put ourselves in the grip of that forgiving, gracious hand. That is the grace of God; His loving us because He wants to; not because He must, in decency, recognized the pile of credits we have built up for ourselves; not because we’ve got Him “sold” on our merits; not because we “deserve” anything at all. This is the grace of God that He loves us; and not because of what we are, but in spite of what we are.

But even if we shall live by faith, there is a grave error into which we easily fall. And it is something like this sort of reasoning: as long as God does the forgiving, and the saving, may we not relax our own trying? Why put out a lot of effort if it is to no avail, and if God just goes ahead and saves, or condemns us, anyway? If God is taking care of me, why do I not just go ahead and live like anybody else wants to?

The thing we ought to consider soberly is that we should be guarded against taking God’s grace for granted just because it is freely given. When we do take it for granted, while we go our own merry, or self satisfied way, it becomes cheap grace. But grace is not cheap. It is free, but it is not cheap.

The grace of God is enormously costly. It cost God his Son to offer his love to us. That is how costly it is to God. It costs us our lives to accept this grace, for we spend our lives, sacrifice our lives, give our lives to him who forgives and saves us. That is how costly it is to us.

When we hand over ourselves to God, in acceptance of His grace, we thereby place ourselves under Christ’s yoke. That we receive his grace means that we follow him, become his disciples. We do not take grace for granted; it claims us completely.

We can not pleasantly shrug our shoulders and say that “God has accomplished our salvation; so why need we try?” Grace is not that cheap nor that easy. Neither can we purchase it by the most meticulous observance of civil or moral law. However commendable this may appear, and however desirable it may be, grace just does not come that way. Jesus was very direct, very blunt, very plain on this point.

Never can we say too much about how freely God forgives. We can witness to that, day in and day out. But we must witness just as faithfully about how dearly bought is this “free forgiveness.” To effect it, cost the life of Jesus Christ; to claim it, costs our lives. When it is given to us, we are given to him. Thereafter we are under his discipline, his command, his leading. Our lives are no longer our own self concern, but are his spiritual instrument.

We do not spend, or sacrifice our time, talents and energy to him so that we may earn forgiveness; but because, being forgiven, we can do no other but to make of all our energies, aptitudes, talents, substance, and time a grateful, living sacrifice; a spiritual tool for the Master.

So this is not just old time moralism after all. It is rather a recognition by the Christian how much this salvation involves him. That which took none of his time, none of his talents, none of his energy; that free, costly grace of God; puts upon the Christian a hundred percent levy of his time and talents and energies. He does not even give a bare five percent, or a generous ten percent, to God, while he freely uses the rest for himself. But he belongs fully, completely, continuously to God. His all is dedicated to the glory of God; and in his gratitude, he wants it to be that way.

I recall the comment of a man who had been puzzled in his religion and offended at his church. Then there came a time when he caught a vision of what the church ought to be and of what true religion really was. He was so grateful for this grace that his own reaction was: “I’ve got to do something about this” and he volunteered, first, to teach a Sunday school class of boys every Sunday. Then he saw other ways to spend himself in grateful joy. Freely we receive; now freely we give by getting under a burden that is not a drudge but joyfully accomplished work.

Now, if we have said that the Christian does not have a detour around the hard, and rocky stretches of the road; that he has a job, under orders, to do, and a task to see through; there is yet a gift to the Christian burden bearer. It is a gift that makes the yoke easy and the burden light.

For that very grace of God that puts one under the burden gives one the strength to bear it triumphantly. The very God who places the yoke across one’s shoulder gives it buoyancy.

(1) In the first, there is gratitude. The man who couldn’t possibly have considered teaching that boy’s class earlier, found it a joyful task when he undertook it in his gratitude.

The more imperfect and “ornery” we are, the tougher the burden we carry. But the more aware we are of our own wrongness, and the wonder of God’s forgiveness, the more profoundly grateful we become and the more powerful our drive in His service.

(2) Again, there is hope. We proceed on the calm and confident assumption that Christ has overcome the world. He is not just a propaganda type of salesman who lived some centuries ago and then stepped aside while others were promoted to the sales force. He is rather the evidence, the proof, that victory has been achieved. It is only this community of hope that has a real future.

(3) And, third, the yoke is easy and the burden is light because God is with His own. Through his Holy Spirit he is a present companion, so that one toils not alone but in company with a great and wonderful power.

Our gratitude, our hope, and His presence: keep open the way before us; open up the vision before us; and guide us in confidence through all the burden and misery in constant triumph.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, June 7, 1959