3/24/63

Scripture: Matthew 7: 21-29.

During these Sunday morning Lenten sermons, I have been concerned to call our attention to some of the facets of the Master’s character. We have considered his joy; his magnanimity; his occasional indignation and anger. Today, I hope we can give some thought to his loyalty, especially his loyalty to his cause.

Jesus had gotten along far enough in his ministry so that there were not a few who recognized his leadership. He was being called "Master," "Lord," sometimes "Rabbi" (that is, "teacher"). He knew that with some, it was a tribute to him. With some, he knew it was a matter of currying favor by fawning upon the leader. Now and then he had something pointed, even stern, to say, as in the account which we have read this morning as our Scripture lesson. "Not every one that says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." [Matthew 7: 21]. There may even be those who say "Lord, Lord," and who can talk about the work they have done in my name, and who yet are still not worthy --- people to whom I may say, "I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers."

Jesus apparently was not flattered, even subtly, by all the people who called him "Lord." And, after all, that is basic integrity. Would a university professor be worthy of his name and position if he accepted personal compliments in the place of hard work on his courses? It may be orthodox to refer to Jesus as "Lord;" it may be pious to call him, "Lord, Lord;" but neither can satisfy the demand he makes on our lives unless accompanied by real devotion to his cause.

Jesus’ attention and loyalty became singularly focused on his cause. There came a time when someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside wanting to speak to you." His reply seems almost cruel until we think of it a while. "Who is my mother?" he said. "And who are my brothers?" Then, stretching out his hand to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers." "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother." [Matthew 12: 46-50].

In the essential, spiritual sense, Jesus appears to say that only those who do God’s will can belong to his family. You and I may believe that God has a will in general. But any will that God has for the whole world necessarily includes a will for your life and mine. The finding and performing of that will says something about the kind of loyalty we show.

Jesus was completely absorbed with the will of God. When someone addressed him as "Good Teacher," he would reply almost brusquely, "Why do you call me ‘good?’ there is only one who is completely good; that is God alone." [Mark 10: 17-18]. When disciples inquired about future events, he declined to forecast the timing saying: "No one knows --- but only the Father." There was a time when disciples thought Jesus needed food, and pressed him to eat. His comment was: "I have food to eat that you do not know about --- My food is to do the will of Him that sent me and to accomplish His work." [John 4: 32-34].

Consider what it does to any person to enter into this spirit of Jesus, seeking to know and do what God wills for you. One must be willing to do whatever God wants for his life; loyal to as much of that will as he knows; asking, not just once in a while, but habitually, "What will you have me do?"; testing one’s choices by the principles of Jesus; tuning his conscience and his intelligence until God can speak through him.

Former President Eisenhower has observed that there ought to be a resurgence of expressed patriotism among us in our country. And he is right in this demand for loyalty to one’s country. Consider the Master’s loyalty, not especially to the Cesarean or Roman government but to what he called the "Kingdom of God." He was a great patriot in that loyalty.

No character was ever counted great without noble loyalty to a cause such as that shown by Livingstone, Luther, Florence Nightingale, Abraham Lincoln. Jesus lived for the Kingdom of God on earth, the rule of righteousness in the personal and social relationships of mankind. He lived for it, he prayed for it, he suffered for it, he died for it. His was a patriotic loyalty for a great cause.

He once said to his hearers: "You are the salt of the earth." And then he exhorted them to be good salt. [Matthew 5: 13]. "You are the light of the world," he said. "A light is no good if it be hidden under a bushel basket. Let your light shine where people can see it in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." [Matthew 5: 14-16]. He reminds his disciples that they are more than private individuals; that they represent a cause; they stand for him in this world --- his honor, reputation, success are in their hands.

See how true it is that every man has a power to represent something more than himself; that he always comes to stand for a type of character, or a special human interest, in the minds of his acquaintances. One could hardly think of Beethoven without thinking of music. Could you think of Abraham Lincoln or William Lloyd Garrison or Harriet Beecher Stowe without thinking of the abolition of chattel slavery? Can you think of Jesus without thinking of the cause of God and righteousness in the earth?

For what do we stand? What kind of Christians are we? What do you suppose comes to the mind of those who know you and me as members of one of the families of Christ in this community?

Jesus sheds another shaft of light on this matter of loyalty when he remarks that no one can serve two masters. For he will hate one and love the other; or he will hold to one and despise the other. [Matthew 6: 24]. "He that is not with me is against me." "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these other things shall be added unto you." [Matthew 6: 33]. In the long run, no one ever succeeds in standing for both God’s kingdom or the opposite. When a man chooses sin, he becomes a representative, an ally, of the forces of destruction in human living. This is true of the effects of dishonesty, of gambling, of lying, of sensual vice. It becomes treachery to the cause of human welfare. In the long run, no one can be on both that side and on the side of righteousness. Jesus was on the side of loyalty to the world’s salvation.

We see Jesus’ loyalty most insistently when he went into the garden of Gethsemane to pray on the night he was arrested. His disciples were with him but he went on ahead and alone to pray in an agony of concern. Coming back to where they were, and finding them asleep, he asks Peter, "Couldn’t you watch with me for an hour? -- Of course the spirit is willing even if the flesh is weak." [Mark 14: 32-42]. He stayed there at prayer and watchfulness, until his betrayer led his opponents to take him. He could have escaped, but loyalty kept him there. It sometimes costs heavily to be loyal to the will of God. It costs far more, in the end, to be loyal to the cause of evil. Loyalty always costs.

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Now this matter of discussing theories about Jesus, and the matter of facing Jesus himself are very different experiences. One matter is intellectual, the other is practical; one involves ingenious thinking, the other means prompt action. One can debate and theorize about trade winds and ocean currents and the possibility of hurricane winds. He can do this in the library or in the parlor or at his office desk. But piloting a ship on the open sea, in fair weather or foul, is quite another matter. The theory is beside the point unless it is put to use in navigating the ship.

One feels something of this kind of contrast when moving through all of the theological discussions about Jesus until, in the gospels, he faces the Master himself. For in the gospels one finds in Jesus one who is impatient with all those who hold a high opinion of him, unless they stand for the things which he represents. He is very direct in his comment: "Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ --- but he who is doing the will of my Father." He never welcomed ascriptions of praise unless they were accompanied by real loyalty to his cause.

People called Jesus by a great variety of names --- "Good Master;" "Elijah;" "One of the Prophets;" "A teacher come from God;" "John the Baptist risen from the dead." But to all, he insisted that not only imperfect opinions, but even adequate opinions of him were entirely unsatisfactory unless the people who held those opinions were thoroughly devoted to the cause for which he stood.

When the poet, Alfred Tennyson, was made poet-laureate of England, the presentation was made by Sir Robert Peel. In so doing, Peel confessed that he had not himself ever read a line of Tennyson’s poetry! His action was formal and official. It involved no deep, personal appreciation of the one honored, and no love of the beauty he represented.

How much of the praise lifted for Jesus is of this "official" character? If it is just polite applause, it means nothing to Jesus. You recall that, at his trial, Pilate referred to him as "king" or asked him is he were a king. Jesus replied, "Are you saying this of yourself; or did others tell it to you concerning me?" [John 18: 33-34]. The Master would not accept acclaim, from friends or enemies, that was merely the borrowed result of other people’s thinking. He insisted that people should be, themselves, utterly devoted to his cause.

Now the explanation of this attitude of Jesus lies deep in his character. For he himself was entirely committed, and deeply loyal, to his cause. The Mississippi River flows down the central part of our nation. Other great rivers, smaller streams, and brooks flow into it as tributary streams. But the Mississippi is central. Like this great watershed is the central dedication of Jesus, flowing through his life.

It is said that Hannibal, when he was only nine years old, swore eternal enmity to Rome. That purpose continued all of his life until he died. He was not deflected from it by suffering, or toil, or failure. In a nobler way, Jesus had the same sort of resolute and undiscourageable devotion. At the age of twelve, he already shows his dedication to his Father’s business. Throughout his ministry he was singular in his central devotion. "We must work the works of him that sent me while it is day," he would say. [John 9: 4] "I must preach the good tidings of the kingdom of God in the other cities also." [Luke 4: 43]. "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me." [John 4: 34]. Late in his ministry, he "steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem" [Luke 9: 51] knowing full well what would befall him there. In the garden of Gethsemane, he pledged the last full payment of his loyalty: "Not my will, but thine, be done." [Mark 13: 46].

We praise the heart and mind of the Master, his expression of love, his stern adherence to duty, his revelation of truth. But we have not yet appreciated his personality until we perceive and understand the absolute devotion of his will to his cause.

Those who love symphonic music look for the great variety in musical expression -- the feel of tragedy and triumph, meditative passages and movements of great urgency and acceleration. Jesus’ life is like a symphony, filled with passages of joy and of tragedy, frank recitatives of teaching, stirring harmonies of love, and so on. But the master theme of his life symphony is his loyalty. This concept of our Lord, as utterly devoted to his cause and calling others to a like loyalty, is essential in correcting some of the misapprehensions of the Master’s personality.

For example, he has been called an ascetic, a hater of ordinary human happiness, calling people apart from home and ordinary relationships in order to save their souls. Did he not tell people to hate mother and father, and leave them behind, for his sake? [Luke 14: 26]. Didn’t he say it is better to pluck out an eye or cut off a hand than to risk the soul’s welfare? [Matthew 5: 29-30]. Didn’t he tell a man to sell all he had and give his goods to the poor, and to come and follow him? [Mark 10: 21]. So, people have said, Jesus was ascetic in teaching. We could answer this by simply naming another set of facts: he was at home at a wedding feast [John 2: 1-11]; his enemies called him a "gluttonous man and a winebibber" [Matthew 11: 19]; he did a lot of his teaching at the dinner table of friends; he loved flowers and children and the home life of his followers. All we have said about his joy refutes the charge of asceticism.

The real answer, however, is to see that when Jesus sets before his followers a firm and self-denying life, demanding that even father, mother, children, houses or lands shall not stand between one and his allegiance to the cause, he is not urging a monkish withdrawal from the world. What he is doing is more like the spirit of Garibaldi, saying to his little band of patriots: "I promise you forced marches, short rations, bloody battles, wounds, imprisonment and death -- let him who loves home and fatherland follow me." He is calling them to dangerous campaigning. Jesus represents a cause to which he is utterly loyal, and his note is that of a great leader, not an ascetic, when he says: "Through exile from the synagogue, through trial before councils, through loss of property and family, through the baptism of blood that I shall be baptized with, come and follow me."

At the other extreme, from those who regard Jesus as an ascetic, are those who insist that he was a poet -- filled with sweetness, and tenderness of heart, with universal charm. It may be that someone who lives 19 centuries after Jesus was known in Palestine can paint Jesus in this color, but nobody who saw the Master then seems to have suspected it! The money changers didn’t find anything soothing about his whip of cords. The Pharisees didn’t send soldiers out to arrest a nice poet. The Nazareth neighbors who decided to throw him over a cliff missed his poetic quality. When Hebrew fishermen decided to leave their boats and nets to follow him, they were excited more by his challenge to loyalty than they were by his poetic sweetness. Even skeptical Thomas says: "Let us also go, that we may die with him." [John 11: 16]. When John the Baptist, strong and stern and severe, saw Jesus, he cried: "There comes he that is mightier than I, whose shoe laces I am not worthy to loosen." [Mark 1: 7]. All of this sounds like something more compelling than the vague kind of poetry. Of course some poetry is verse of great strength. This is the only kind that could be used to characterize the quality of Jesus’ life.

The leaders of a nation do not give themselves to fearful anger, inciting a mob to shout, "Crucify him" just to be rid of a "lovely character with a transporting countenance." Few poets have been hated because they proposed to turn the world upside down. Nor have they commonly been crucified with a superscription, "King of the Jews." This enemy of the stuffy Pharisees was no dreamer, but was rather a soul of prodigious power, intensely loyal himself and engendering loyalty in disciples who should carry on the work of his cause long after he was put to death for it. It was a chief complaint of the chief priests that this Nazarene "stirs up the people." It was not any placid pleasantry about Jesus that appealed to a man like Napoleon, but rather the electric quality of the Master’s loyal life.

This aspect of our Lord’s character, as a loyal devotee of a great cause, was what gathered followers. It is reflected in his habitual thought of God. There is no doubt that he thought of God as love. But far above that, he emphasized the will of God. He speaks of God continually as one who has a purpose for the whole world and all who dwell in it: "I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me." [John 5: 30]. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." [Matthew 6: 10]. He believed that he was a representative of the eternal purpose of God; and that this cause is the only one worth living and dying for. "The kingdom of God is at hand," he proclaimed. And he kept on proclaiming it until he died. Missionaries tell us that in those lands where there is a high regard for loyalty, this trait of Jesus wins people to him most of all.

To Jesus, the world is coming out somewhere. God is purposing his kingdom here. Our business is to fight under his orders, making every generation’s battle a skirmish won in Go[‘s campaign. We do not have to do the ultimate winning; he must do that, and he will. We have to do what we can in our time. It is the central passion of Jesus’ life to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand, a present concern of ours rather than a future event of some sort.

The Master’s first demand upon us who follow him is this: "Where do you stand with reference to the cause which I represent?" He was utterly loyal to it. He expects the same loyalty of you; of me. "Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it."

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, March 24, 1963.

Also at Waioli Hui’ia Church, March 25, 1973.