11/13/60

Scripture: Luke 12: 13-31

This is an unequal world! Anyone with courage enough to face the facts sees it. No one with heart enough to care or mind enough to know could escape it. We live our lives on differing levels, with such differing capacities and talents as to leave one bewildered.

Some are poor in the world’s goods -- in fact a host of world’s folk are. Some are rich. Some are intellectually brilliant; some are mentally dull. Some are anti-social while others have a great capacity for friendship. Some have abundant good health; some fight daily for enough physical well-being to get along. Some appear to have rare good fortune with nothing against them, while others have little or nothing in their favor.

We accept, with little enough understanding, the statement in our Declaration of Independence "that all men are created free and equal." But to suppose that all are equal in talents and in capacities, is to fly in the face of history and to indulge in social irresponsibility. We are not equal in intellectual acumen, in physical stamina, in material endowments, or in spiritual sensitiveness.

It is true that God has created each person with a distinctive mission. For that mission He has endowed his creature with certain unique talents which distinguish that person from all others. Each person differs from every other man or woman upon earth. Beyond that, it is a simple fact that some have more than others. Some have, so to speak, been given five talents, some two, and some one talent.

Further, we did not create those talents, though we may help to cultivate and to use them. Some of these advantages came with us into life as a gift from God. We did not earn them, but received them. We obtained them rather than attained unto them. We need not be blamed if we do not possess some talents. Neither need we take credit unto ourselves if we possess them.

This question, therefore, confronts every one of us: How can you live successfully with your advantages? We all want to live worthily. No one wishes to start out in life making it a failure. It may end that way for some, but no one begins that way; we all want to "make a go" of it.

How can one live with the advantages of this world? What has our Christian faith to say to this question? The Christian faith makes clear that there are two attitudes which one can take toward his advantages. There are two philosophies by which we can live.

1) You can think of your advantages in terms of ownership. What you have is yours. You may do just what you like with what you possess. If you can sing, you can employ your music in a bar or in a church. If you have some money you can spend it for dope or for charity. You are accountable to no one but yourself. Your advantages are not a trust of God but an outright gift; an absolute possession.

People who operate by this philosophy put themselves at the center of their universe. They feast on self-confidence. They tend to feel entitled to anything they can get their hands on. Their attitude is often, "Get what you can; get it honestly if you can; but get it."

In a novel, the author introduces a character whom he names "Edith." And he describes Edith in this fashion: "Edith is a little country bounded on the north, and on the south, and on the east and on the west by Edith."

This philosophy makes people cold and callused and unscrupulous. They may eat caviar while a neighbor close by starves. They can play solitaire on Persian rugs while slum children stumble by because of malnutrition. They could pick flowers while a man is crucified. Some people with advantages held in this frame of mind are not worth knowing. Political power makes them ruthless; financial power makes them callused; intellectual power makes them arrogant.

When Jesus met with such a person he described him in a parable saying that the man had his barns crowded with harvests, and still more were to be gathered. The fellow determined to pull down his barns and to build larger so that he might say to himself, "Take it easy! East, drink and be merry!" [Luke 12 19]. But God said to this man: "Fool! Tonight your soul is required of you, and those things you have prepared, whose will they be?" [Luke 12: 20]. That way of life is a dead-end street and has no future. Real joy eludes its proponents, and mocks their frustrations.

2) The Christian faith points to a second philosophy by which you may live with your advantages. You may think of them in terms of stewardship. What you have is on loan from the creator. Your talents, time, possessions, opportunities are a trust from God. You can not and will not do with them solely what you like. You are accountable to others than yourself for your gifts.

Such a person never loses sight of the truth that what he has is a trust. God has made certain "investments" in him, and he is determined to "pay with something fine my debt to God for life divine."

David Livingstone had this in mind when he wrote in his diary, "I put no value on anything I possess save in terms of the kingdom of God." It is a far nobler way of life to live with this sense of stewardship.

It was the glory of Jesus that, having marvelous gifts, he used them for the benefit of everyone who crossed his path. He never lost sight of his stewardship. The sorrows of his generation were stamped upon his soul. He never kept himself from the needs of people. In the night it was the mental and spiritual need of a Hebrew scholar. At daybreak it was the terror of sailors in a storm-threatened ship. At noonday, it was a fallen girl by the well. The threshold of his home knew the shadows of the lame, the halt, the blind, the sorrowing, the contrite --- people with every sort of need. He healed them, every one. He was the most compassionate person who ever lived. He would heal another’s woe even while his own body ached upon a cross. He lived a faith that would not let go of God; he lived with a love that would not go of man.

It is never easy, of course, to live with this kind of philosophy. It brought the Son of Man to a cross. It brought Washington and his men to Valley Forge; Lincoln to Ford’s Theater; Joan of Arc to the stake; Albert Schweitzer to an African jungle. Ask them, "What do you get out of it?" and the answer may well be, "We get nothing but loneliness, pain, suffering, tears." But what a difference they have made! Carlyle was right when he said, "Not what you possess, but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth."

All of this is profoundly relevant to us. We live as a privileged people, in a privileged community. We have bread enough, and to spare. We hardly realize what this means in a world where two-thirds of the people do not have enough bread, or equivalent food. Our extravagance in this field appalls some who know the need.

A religious leader from the European continent visited the United States not long ago. For six weeks, he went back and forth over our country living with people in their homes, villages and cities. After visiting here from coast to coast, he went back home. Just before leaving for Europe, he was questioned by several newspapermen. One of them asked him: "What thing has impressed you most on this journey across our country?" He turned to his questioner almost sharply and said, "Your garbage containers. You waste more food, week by week, than the children of one country in Europe eat in a whole year."

The one question that should haunt us and give us sleepless nights is this: "What are we doing with our advantages?" "To whom much is given, of them much is required." [Luke 12: 48]. Does not this saying of Jesus speak to every one of his people in this room?

A former college president once said to the graduating class at Dartmouth, "If the only option available to Dartmouth were to graduate men with the highest learning but without any interest in the welfare of mankind, or to graduate men with less mental capacity but possessing an aspiration to do good, I would choose the latter for Dartmouth, because it would render a more essential service."

Years ago there occurred in Chicago the frightful Iroquois Theater fire. On a Saturday afternoon, a crowded house was listening to the "Blue Bird," when sudden flames shot out from the stage. Before the tragedy ended, more than 500 people had been burned or trampled to death.

Two university students were in the theater when the fire broke out. They separated as they rushed for an exit. One reached the street, ran across a narrow alley to an adjoining building, rushed upstairs to the second floor, got a plank, laid it across from an open window to the theater balcony, and brought back 13 people to safety through the flames. He was himself badly burned and was taken to a hospital.

To friends who came to commiserate with him he said, "Don’t feel sorry for me! Some people don’t get their chance at life until they’re 63. I’m not yet 23, and I’ve already had my chance at life. I gave myself."

The other student also found his way to an exit by trampling over the living and the dead. When he reached the safety of the street, something snapped in his mind, and he was never the same after that. All through the years after that, whenever he met a stranger, he would say, "I was in the Iroquois Theater fire, but I saved myself." Some years later, he was on a transatlantic liner going to Europe with an attendant. Walking on the deck early one morning he greeted another passenger with the words, "Do you know who I am?" The passenger said, "No sir, I do not." Then he said, "I was in the Iroquois Theater fire," and clapping his hands he said, "but I saved myself."

Well, there you have it: I gave myself, I saved myself; stewardship or ownership; self-interest or self-giving. Sooner or later you must make up your mind by which philosophy to live.

To every man there openeth a way, and ways, and a way.

And the high soul takes the highway and the low soul takes the low,

And in betwixt on the misty flats the rest drift to and fro.

But to every man there openeth a highway and a low,

And every man decideth the way his soul shall go.

Now what is this stewardship? The attractive colored insert in your letters from the finance committee chairman defines it in these words: "Christian stewardship is the practice of systematic and proportionate giving of time, abilities, and material possessions, based on the conviction that these are a trust from God, to be used in His service for the benefit of all mankind in grateful acknowledgment of Christ’s redeeming love." The exercise of one’s stewardship involves as discerning a way of helping as possible. Here are some words of wisdom from about 800 years ago.

[Maimonides’ eight "degrees of charity"]

We come today to the exercise of our stewardship concerning our own church. During the week most of us received in our homes a letter from our finance committee enclosing a tentative budget for the coming year. Last Sunday, we concerned ourselves with our Christian World Mission, and why it is essential that it be expanded by the supporting interest of all our people and churches. Our local church must grow in grace, in effective program, with facilities improved and expanded as necessary.

The tentative budget was made up and offered to us as a whole church after careful consideration, at several sessions by representatives of all phases of our church life. It is a reasonable budget with a look at the present and an eye to the future. It can be met if we give with an overall increase of 11 to 12%.

If we give as good stewards of our substance, if we participate in the program as good stewards of our time and abilities, we can oversubscribe this budget. I hope that we shall do so! Let us fill our pledge cards as an accounting unto God.

[signing of pledges]

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, November 13, 1960.