5/3/64

Scripture: John 17: 20-26.

Have you ever received, from some friend who is off on a fine holiday, a postcard bearing some such abbreviated message as “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here”? And did you feel more than a little irritated over it? You may have felt that it was pure foolishness, if not even a bit malicious. The fact is that you are not there; that you can not be there; you have work to do at home; you have responsibilities to attend to. And, anyway, you can’t afford that kind of holiday just now. It brings small comfort to know that others are enjoying such leisure and luxury. And anyway, why does the friend have to “rub it in,” so to speak? So you laugh it off, or fume a bit, and toss the card in the waste basket ----- or do you?

Maybe the terse message is a sincere wish in the person who sent it. Perhaps this friend is one who really loves you very much and who can not really be fully happy in any pleasure unless he is sharing that pleasure with you. Each day of his holiday, he gazes out at the stately mountain peak, or over the blue water, or he walks down on shaded avenues of green trees and he thinks how perfect it would be if you were only there to share it with him. He may even hope, genuinely, that you will be able to join him there and so share in a fine experience and complete his joy by the addition of your joy.

Can we think of our Christ experiencing some feeling of lack in the glory of God because we are not there to share it with him? --- a kind of incompleteness unless he may have his own with him? Could we imagine that he might want to welcome us and to say to the Father: “This is a dear friend of mine to whom I owe very much?” This may sound like an incredible bit of imagining. And, anyway, who are we to imagine receiving such favor? And yet, our Lord gave us some hope of this kind of concern in the prayer which he offered for his church on the night of the Last Supper. Try, for a moment, to imagine the scene in that Upper Room. There was Jesus, and there were his friends --- the men whom he had called and taught and commissioned to carry on his work. They were seated about a table. The air was electric with tension as he tries to make them face the reality of his impending crucifixion. There were his parting words, given to them like a last will and testament -- words of comfort and promise. And, finally, there was this prayer for his church -- expressing his deep desire for all who believe in him as Son of God and Savior of the world -- his desire that they shall be holy, consecrated and united.

Then comes, in that prayer, this surpassing petition: “Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me, before the foundation of the world.”

When Christians gather at worship, particularly on those occasions when they gather about the table of the Lord to reenact the scene of that Upper Room, their minds may be focused in three directions. (1) From the past, they recall a historical event --- the living and the dying of Jesus, and the revelation of his glory to the original disciples. (2) In the present, they perceive the signs of the risen, living Lord, who, though we see him not with our eyes, nonetheless nourishes our souls and reveals his glory to the church. Through the church, he reaches out to the world. (3) For the future the Christian looks for the glory of Christ to come --- a “post card” saying that he awaits the coming of his own.

It is a crowning legacy which Christ has bequeathed to his disciples that there is a glory, after the warfare of earth, that he wants to share with us. Life, with that kind of gift, takes on an eternal quality. With that kind of gift, the church can look beyond the limitations of this world to the realm of being where God calls it. One of the glories of the church is that, in the light of Christ’s wish and prayer, the church can be delivered from doubt and discouragement. And there are some doubts and discouragements from which it does need deliverance.

We are too easily adjusted to the cult of success. If we apply the same standards to our religious living, we are not always reassured. The church appears to have a kind of prosperity. It is not often seriously opposed in this country (though it is strongly opposed in some parts of the world.) A majority of the people in this community, and in the nation, profess a connection with some church. Congregations rally, rather well, to the need for better facilities. And we here, in this church, propose a great improvement in this respect. And we expect to achieve it!

But there are doubts and discouragements that plague the church of our time --- and not only the Christian church, but Muslims and others as well. In the face of doubt or discouragement, it is heartening to recall that the Lord of the Church specifically desired that the people of the church, his disciples, should be with him to share in his glory.

If the Church is to share in his glory, let it preserve its New Testament role as the Pilgrim People of God. Think of two men who are assigned to foreign service in a Far Eastern country. One of them spends all of his spare time building a fine estate. He plans the house carefully, constructs it solidly, decorates it and furnishes it tastefully, surrounds it with a garden in the finest style. The other man contents himself with a modest flat or apartment. He spends all of his spare time traveling throughout the country, talking with and getting acquainted with all sorts of people, learning their customs and language, perceiving their hopes and plans.

Comes the day when these two men are recalled. The first has only the estate which he has built and must now vacate and leave behind. The second has a wealth of experience stored within his memory, enriching him and equipping him for new adventures in the future.

The Church could resemble each of those two men -- or some of both. It often digs its roots into the soil of the world’s life as a fixed, immovable community. It may attach ultimate importance to relative values, seeking its reason for existence in things which are secondary, pouring its energies into building what it must one day vacate. The great structures of ecclesiastical power, built on centuries of tradition, beautifully furnished with dogma and liturgy, surrounded by worldly influence and affluence -- would they seem so important, would we allow them to be stumbling blocks to Christian progress, if we realized their importance?

Meanwhile, is the guidance of the Holy Spirit heeded? See what enriching, adventurous experiences God has in store for his people during their earthly sojourn if they will follow His initiatives. Let no love of perishable security blind us to His leading. Let us not be so busy with digging the garden or nailing up boards that we neglect to seek the divine guiding. The Church needs to be well-housed. But it needs to be built in the life -- the experience -- of people by the inspiration of the spirit.

The symbol of the church is sometimes assumed to be the Cathedral --- built of solid materials in a size and style of architecture assumed to be permanent, lasting for ages. There is something that may well be thought of as permanent in its nature. But that is not all. The church of early Hebrew history may well be also the symbol of the New Testament church. Its temporariness is symbolized in the tent as tabernacle. A tent is a temporary dwelling. Its significance, familiar to anyone who enjoys camping, lies in its mobility. It affords freedom to move on at a moment’s notice and to live in new surroundings.

The patriarchs of Israel were tent-dwellers, pilgrims and sojourners, always ready to pull up stakes and move onward in response to the great new initiatives of God. The first house of God ever constructed by these people was a “tent-tabernacle,” for they were periodically uprooted and led on to new revelations of God’s will for them. They learned to be a community on the move, always ready for bold experiments and courageous advance.

There is a fine sense in which this congregation here may be thought of as “on the move.” In its 102 years of history as an organized church in the household of faith, it has occupied three houses of worship. These houses have been adapted to the size and location of the church membership; and to the needs of the time for service to the community. Now we find ourselves pressed to move on to new housing, better suited to our needs for training, for service and for worship. Let us be bold and venturesome about it --- ready for a courageous advance.

There was a time in the formation of the church of South India, described by Bishop Leslie Newbigin, when things were frequently held up by cautious and prudent people. They wanted to know just where each step was leading them, and precisely what would happen if they made this, or that, decision. At length the chairman of their negotiations reminded them of the Christian necessity to follow God with no guarantee of where He might lead them. They, for the most part, decided to seek for and accept that kind of leading as Christians.

Commenting further on the church of South India, Bishop Newbigin says that it has no intention of resting on its achievements. It does not pretend to have arrived. But it does feel sure it is on the right road and that it is being the pilgrim people of God. It is not defined in terms of what it now is, but only in terms of the aim toward which God appears to lead it.

The church which is true to its own nature will always be ready, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, to undertake bold experiment and courageous advance. The church recovers its true nature, as the Pilgrim People of God, if it comes in faith to that Upper Room and there listens to Christ praying, “Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory.” In that prayer, the church may see a vision of the aim toward God is leading it. When we are thus led, many of the things which we consider fixed and permanent become only a night’s lodging on the way toward that which is glorious in the Kingdom of God.

-----------------------

Of course the church for which Christ prayed in the Upper Room will be a church that is prepared to suffer whenever need arises. In the comparative comfort in which many of us have lived our short lives, we may hardly realize how much the church has suffered in its history, and still does suffer in some parts of the earth. It may be that the church has suffered, more consistently and cruelly, than any other community of people in the world’s history. It began with the brutality that was visited on Jesus. All that had been directed against him was redirected against the disciples of Christ who were, like him, scourged; who were imprisoned; who were impaled on crosses, burned, thrown to the wild beasts. The story of the church in the first three centuries has been written in the blood of the martyrs. Visitors to Rome today may walk through the ruined Coliseum, go down into the catacombs -- memorials of the price that men and women paid for believing in Christ and serving him.

Every dictatorship of the past 19 centuries, including totalitarian regimes in parts of the world today, has singled out the church as a number one enemy to be crushed and exterminated. Many a lonely grave on some island of the sea enfolds the body of some missionary who forfeited his life in a gamble to redeem God’s uncivilized children from darkness to light. But Christians have been prepared to suffer. And many of them have endured it by looking beyond their suffering to the glory of Christ. The Apostle Paul offers great example of this. He had only one ambition in life -- to share in the mission and the sufferings of Christ. He was willing to be crucified with Christ, to suffer daily with him if need be. In his Roman cell, waiting to be executed, Paul struggled with a strange dilemma -- the choice between life and death. Almost light-heartedly he wrote to the Philippian Christians something like this: “I don’t know what is going to happen to me. There is a long chance that I may be let out of here, but more likely I shall be executed. It doesn’t matter, though because either way I can’t lose. If I live, I shall live for Christ. If I die, I shall be with Christ -- for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” [Philippians 1: 21-25].

Paul had claimed his inheritance of glory. As a Christian, he had appropriated the eternal legacy which Christ, in an Upper Room, bequeathed on all who love and serve him in faith and obedience. Jesus knew that he himself was about to pass from the scene of the world’s turmoil into the glory and love of the Father. To be sure, he was going by way of his suffering upon a cross. But he was not paying undue attention to that, any more than one notices the roughness of a road in the dark when eyes are focused on the lights of home. Jesus saw beyond his Cross to the glory of God. He saw beyond his church’s cross, too, beyond its struggles and sufferings to the victory and glory of the church triumphant. Therefore he prayed, “Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world.”

In writing his study of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L Shirer describes the tense drama of D-Day. He recalls that on June 6, 1944, a vast Allied armada slipped across the English channel in weather that the Germans thought too inclement to permit an invasion attempt. Those vessels began disgorging thousands upon thousands of troops upon the beaches of Normandy. The Germans offered furious resistance, but they were caught by surprise. In just a few hours, Hitler’s impregnable Atlantic Wall had been breached, the Luftwaffe was driven from the air, and the German navy from the sea. The great battle would continue for another year, but its outcome was no longer in doubt. The initiative now lay with the Allies, whose armed forces threw themselves into the conflict prepared to suffer and die in order to hasten the victory which was then in sight.

The Cross was Christ’s D-day. On that day the forces of good and evil, of heaven and hell, locked together in mortal combat. When the day ended, Christ had overcome the power of evil forever.

The battle continues, and will still continue to the end of the age. But the outcome has been decided; victory is assured. The church, therefore, as it fights the warfare of Christ, will be prepared to suffer and to persevere. Renewed and sustained in the Upper Room by the promise of glory, it will return to its earthly conflict. If need be, it will suffer and die in order to hasten Christ’s ultimate victory.

“Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory --” Here is Christ’s prayer for his church, his deepest desire, as he approaches his death, for his disciples in that room and for the whole company of the faithful through the ages.

From that prayer, Jesus went straight out to his betrayal, the trial, the scourging and the crucifixion. He had no further opportunity to talk to his disciples. It is a wonderful thing, precious to remember, that, before those terrible hours, his last words were not of defeat or despair, but of triumph and glory --- the glory in which we of the church everywhere are invited to share.

-----------------------------

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 3, 1964.