12/6/64

Scripture: I Peter 2: 9-25.

Text: I Peter 2: 16; “Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil.”

One of those occasions of special emphasis during Advent each year is Universal Bible Week, from the first Sunday through the second Sunday of December. Today, therefore, is the beginning of that week. And next Sunday is normally to be observed among all who wish to do so as Universal Bible Sunday. However, I want to move up to the first Sunday of Universal Bible Week --- today --- the comments which I should like to make in this year’s observance.

We open the Bible for individual reading at times of our own choice and custom. We open and read it as teachers and pupils in its study. We open and read it during corporate worship each Sunday. We honor it not just because it is tradition to do so; not even because there are those who may admonish us to read; but because it has so much of life to contribute to our own understanding of who we are, and why we are here, and how we shall address ourselves to the needs and demands of our living.

Sometimes there develops a strong desire to be reading the same passages of the Bible at the same time that others are reading. It was such a desire that gave the American Bible Society a good idea in 1943. A lonely Marine, stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, really originated the idea when he asked his family to read the same passage with him each day. Somehow they worked out a list of passages which they agreed they would be reading day by day for a season. So the young Marine in the South Pacific, and his family in the United States, were reading from their Bibles the same passage each day, knowing that they were searching together for the divine light and truth which could sustain them.

The American Bible Society, having the idea called to members’ attention, developed the idea for a wider attention and practice. A committee made a selection of readings, recommended for each day from Thanksgiving through the Christmas season. The list was published on a bookmark-sized piece of paper and was made available, through churches, to those who wished to join in this uniting kind of study reading. The first such bookmark list was made available in 1943, and the Society has published such a list each year since then. Though our order this year is late, we hope that there may be a supply here, by next Sunday, to be put on the literature tables for free distribution to those who would like to refer to them in the balance of the advent season, joining thus in a spiritual bond with Christians around the world. A couple of samples are on the tables today. The theme for this year’s program of reading is “God’s Word for a New Age.”

Meanwhile the non-denominational work of the American Bible Society goes on. In 1963, this Society alone distributed more than 34 million Scriptures all over the world. Of course they go, in great numbers, to the peoples of all 50 of our States in this Union. They also go, as far as financing will permit, to all other countries of every continent on the globe. They are translated into more than twelve hundred tongues and dialects. When financing and personnel permit, they will be translated into hundreds more languages and dialects where they are not yet known.

Some of the groups in our church make annual gifts to the American Bible Society. Our denomination -- the United Church of Christ -- also gives modest but earnest support. The total impact of the burden and glory is caught up in the words of a Northern Uganda pastor to Mr. Christopher Mutugu, who operates the Bible Society van: “You have not come to sell a book. You have come to satisfy our hunger, and we are grateful.” The Bible is, literally, Good News for all times and every age. The poetic pen of Henry Van Dyke has this to say of it:

“Born in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet, and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is a servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is a son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight and wise men ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, and word of comfort for the time of calamity, a word of light for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wicked and the proud tremble at its warnings, but to the wounded and the penitent it has a mother’s voice. The wilderness and solitary places have been made glad by it, and the fire on the hearth has lit the reading of its well-worn pages. It has woven itself into our dearest dreams; so that love, friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing of frankincense and myrrh. No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own.

When the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley of the shadow he is not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in hand; he says to friend and comrade: ‘Goodbye; we shall meet again.’ And, comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who walks through darkness into light.”

This was Henry Van Dyke’s estimate of the Bible. He was a skillful writer -- the same who wrote “The Story of the Other Wise Man” and “The First Christmas Tree.” One may associate his name and writing with a comforting and cheery atmosphere. But Van Dyke was also a fighter. Long a minister in a Presbyterian pastorate, then a university professor at Princeton, he was sent as US Minister to the Netherlands from 1913 to 1917. World War I was raging in Europe during that time. Van Dyke found that it was impossible for him to maintain a neutral viewpoint as required by our country up to that point. So he resigned and devoted himself to war propaganda and then to a chaplaincy in the US Navy. His Bible was a source not only of comfort but of strength in the conflicts of which he was a part.

The Bible is relevant to the demands of every age, whether it be a time of tranquillity and peace, or of revolutionary upheaval. Now it happens that our age, in this part of the 20th century, is one of revolutionary upheaval. People who were formerly docile under colonial rule are demanding liberty and human rights that have long been denied them. People of our own nation long relegated to a kind of second-class citizenship, and before that to outright slavery, are not minded to wait in patience any longer for the kind of liberty that will assure them an equal chance with others at jobs, housing, education and the estate known as human dignity. People who want standing for their newly emerging nations, and who want maximum opportunity in their new nations, are eyeing the so-called free world and the so-called Soviet world with an inquiring eye to see which way of life appears to have the most promise for them. It all adds up to a tremendous shaking up of life in our time.

The Bible is not an outworn set of books from an out-dated library to be left behind in the struggles of our civilization. It belongs in the middle of the struggling. The voices of its prophets speak not alone to the injustices and erring ways of people who lived centuries ago. They speak a sobering and inspiring kind of word to us in our day. The suffering love of Christ was lavished, not only on the friends and enemies of his day over 19 hundred years ago, but is an example and command for us in our day. Church and world can be revived when people of any age --- of our age ---will listen - read - receive and meditate --- and act. The Bible speaks to people in times of revolution and non-revolution alike.

The passage which was read this morning from I Peter is not particularly inflammatory. In fact, it appears quite the opposite. But it does speak to the great need for liberty in the heart of all mankind. Not a little is said in the Bible about freedom. The inscription upon the Liberty Bell which is treasured in our own country is from the Old Testament book of Leviticus (25th chapter, 10th verse): “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” The proclamation was part of a very special celebration among the Hebrews of Moses’ time.

Freedom was doubly precious to the Christians of the New Testament -- perhaps because neither they nor the Jews had political freedom. All were ruled by the ruthless power of Rome and were subject to severe penalty for any act or attitude of political disobedience. The Christians were subject to persecution in both political and religious matters, for among the leaders of the established Jewish church many of them were persecuted for their new-found faith in Jesus. And so freedom was a treasured, longed-for ideal.

This is characteristic of most people who are compelled to obey the rules imposed by others. In the first one third of the present century, when Koreans found themselves an unwilling part of the Japanese empire, the Christians of Korea took great satisfaction in New Testament references to freedom. Sometimes it seemed that the only true freedom they knew was the freedom of the spirit which they found attested there. They treasured the teaching, and fellowship, of missionaries who helped them to understand what the Bible has to offer to them and to all mankind. And, from the point of view of a tyrant, the Japanese police were probably quite correct in suspecting that the Korean Christian community was not willingly submissive to the Imperial rule. Just the word, “liberty”, can inflame the hearts and fan the hopes of those who do not have it.

New Testament writers made frequent references to freedom. The City Council building of Detroit bears a New Testament inscription quoted from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (3rd chapter, 17th verse): “Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the Lord is, there is liberty.” One thinks of other words of Paul, in the letter to the Galatians [5:1], “For freedom Christ has set us free.” You recall the words of Jesus as quoted in the gospel of John [8: 32]: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Peter’s advice, which centers in his first epistle [2:16] was given to people who were widely scattered throughout the Roman empire. They were small groups of Christians, some of whom had been Jewish, many of whom had been Gentile pagans, who lived in constant danger of persecution for their faith. It was sound advice -- encouraging and hopeful: “Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God.”

There was no denying that they were part of a society wherein many of them were literally servants -- perhaps outright slaves, or indentured servants of others. And they all had to acknowledge the rule of the Roman emperor and honor him. But their truest fear, their holy fear, advised Peter, was to be fear of God -- not of their worldly rulers. They might have to endure suffering and persecution. They might be beaten for their mistakes and wrong-doing. They might even be beaten for doing what they believed to be right. Peter advised them to endure it in the spirit of Christ patiently remembering God’s approval and Christ’s suffering example.

Now Peter’s advice was given to people who had little hope of social or political freedom. Rome was still too brutally powerful to be challenged. Roman citizens could benefit by Roman progress in road building, comfortable living, legal advantage. But neither citizen nor slave could seriously challenge the power by which they were ruled. Peter’s advice was the attempt to encourage the Christians to remember the spirit of freedom and to live in that spirit above the necessity of mundane obedience. This does not quench the thirst of all sorts and conditions of people for liberty when conditions make it possible. Living by obedience --- even by love --- does not obliterate one’s sense of justice.

There is such an easily discernible connection between freedom and Christian faith that not a few observers see the connection on the international scene. Now that Colonial rule is fading out, and millions of people have hope of national liberty, it can be seen that part of the pressure for independence stems from the introduction of Christian teaching out of the Bible all across the world. If a man is told, long enough, that he is a child of God, precious in His sight, and of potential equal worth with other men, then, sooner or later, he is going to ask some questions about his inferior political status, and why he is not accorded better education advantages. And he will raise other relevant questions. He may conclude that the only way his interests will be served will be as he achieves political independence and begins to direct the affairs of his state toward his own welfare.

We hear much about freedom in our day; about free enterprise; about the freedom-loving Western nations; about the freedom of the individual in contrast to the coercion of a totalitarian society. It is well for us to see freedom in Christian perspective; to look frequently at the relationship between freedom and faith. To begin with, the Bible generally recognizes that man’s freedom is not absolute; it is always lived within a responsible framework. Man’s freedom is always lived within limits. In this world of time, man is free, but he is not independent of the laws of nature -- the physical laws governing the world and his physical body. Man is free to climb a tower or go up a high building. But he is not free to jump off it without endangering his life. Even Jesus disclaimed any freedom to jump off a high building. A person is free to dive beneath the water. But, if he descends beyond certain depths, he may suffer serious injury.

Through the inventions of mankind, man has expanded his freedom. His inventions are, in the main, an understanding of the laws of nature and a manipulation of the same ---- but not their abrogation. He has learned to fly, with certain conditions. If those conditions fail to be met, he still falls. Through an increased understanding of the principles of aerodynamics, man can be freed for flight from the earth. But everyone knows that a host of limitations still confine and govern his movement. Such freedom as man has comes about as man meets certain conditions that are a part of the universe.

Before he became aware of some of the laws and conditions of the universe, man dreamed of a freedom that was independent of them. He dreamed of perpetual motion; of creating a machine that would go on doing useful work without the addition of any more energy. The quest was futile, he now knows. But the quest was also “one of great historical interest; for as a result of the vain quest, there grew up the greatest of all generalizations of physical science, the principle of the conservation of energy,” the first law of thermodynamics. That is, you get out of a machine no more energy than you put into it, with a certain measurable loss along the way.

This brings us to a recognition that man is not only dependent upon the laws of nature, but that he is dependent upon the spiritual laws of God. Life and liberty are the gifts of God. Man is a guest upon earth. The Psalmist has expressed it with beautiful perception: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” [Psalm 24: 1]. We are often blind to this reality; and particularly so in our time. We thoughtlessly upset the balance of nature, contaminating the air and the streams, bulldozing out natural beauty while we are intent upon immediate aims. We enthusiastically use up the fuel energy that has been stored in the earth through millions of years. Man does have freedom to use these energies. But he is not independent of them now, nor in the future.

Again, man is free, but he is not independent of his fellow men. Man is both a gregarious creature, and a social creature of necessity. It is society --- the whole company of mankind --- that makes man human. Man by himself in isolation would be less than a man. In society he is educated into history and into the human skills. He learns the history, the language, the principles upon which any of his own contributions to culture must be based. We can never grow apart from others. We are interdependent among all others.

And another consideration is this: we are free, but not independent of responsibility. Along with our hearing of rights in our day, we must hear also of responsibilities. This is true both of those who have enjoyed responsible freedom and those who now aspire to it.

When Carl Sandburg was presented with a gold medal for history and biography by the Academy of Arts and Letters, he said: “We find it momentous that Lincoln used the word ‘responsibility’ nearly as often as he used the word ‘freedom.’” Lincoln understood that the two are inseparably coupled together. Freedom of speech carries with it the obligation to speak responsibly. Freedom of the press requires a responsible use of the press. Our freedom to worship in this church continues only as long as we exercise our responsibility in worship. We

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 6, 1964.