2/21/65

Scripture: Read Psalm 133, 134.

Text: Psalm 133: 1; “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.”

Last Sunday was Race Relations Sunday. The sermon was a meditation on neighborliness as applied in our relations with those whose race differs from our own. We are in critical need of developing far more of that qualitative neighborliness in our day.

A few years ago, says Martin Luther King in his essay “On Being a Good Neighbor,” there was a certain auto accident on a Southern highway. The automobile had been carrying several members of a Negro college basketball team. Three of the young men were severely injured. Someone called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived at the scene of the accident in a very short time. But the ambulance driver, a white man, took one look at the injured fellows, said without apology that it was not his policy to service Negroes, and drove away. A passing motorist graciously drove the injured young men to the nearest hospital. But there, the attending physician said, belligerently, “We don’t take niggers in this hospital.” When the injured young men finally arrived at a hospital for colored people some 50 miles from the scene of the accident, one was dead. The other two died thirty and fifty minutes later, respectively. Probably all three could have been saved if they had received treatment immediately.

There may be thousands of inhuman incidents occurring regularly in those parts of our country where there are no dealings, or few dealings, between the races. There is something sick and wrong about our corporate life until we can find a way to think of people as people, and treat people as people without being governed solely by race or color or any other of the group labels that stereotype individual persons. There is something wrong when we see people as entities or merely as things. It is more right, and usually is rewarding, to appreciate the humanness of every person.

The ferment of which we are belatedly aware is not alone in this country. It is rising at many points of the earth. Let me speak of an experience related by Daisuke Kitagawa when he visited a community in Northern Rhodesia, in Africa. Daisuke Kitagawa is executive secretary of the Division of Domestic Mission in the Home Department of the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was born in Japan, educated in Tokyo and New York, served a Japanese congregation in the State of Washington from 1939 until he was sent to a Japanese relocation center during the war. For six years he was employed by the Department of Church and Society of the World Council of Churches. It was during this period that he traveled over Africa as well in other areas.

It was in a Northern Rhodesian community that he met and talked with a number of young African leaders in political ferment. They were enthusiastic, friendly to their visitor, and more than ordinarily frank. Among other things, they made it plain that they regarded Missions and Missionaries as always “European” whether they came from Britain, Scandinavia, Western Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand --- and irrespective of their denominations. They assumed that all “Europeans,” whether they be missionaries, or civil servants, or business folk, or engineers, or farmers, or executives, are Christian. And all are likely to be blamed for what one of them does. (Talk about black folk putting white folk in one class!) A third assumption is that Christianity is the religion of the white men --- and the white men do not practice what they profess in the lofty statements of their church councils.

But then these same “heady” young Africans went on to tell Mr. Kitagawa more of what they meant in their criticism. It was as if they were saying: “We are against the churches, the missions and the missionaries because they act contrary to what we believe is the heart of the Christian gospel. When we criticize them we are doing so not as African nationalists, but as Christians ourselves.” The chairman of the meeting said to the visitor, “I want you to understand, Mr. Kitagawa, that we are not trying to chase all the white people out of this country. We are not that foolish. We know that we need their help, their skills and their capital, and the country is large enough for them and for us. All we ask of them, and in fact the only thing we ask of them, is that they treat us as grown-up human beings -- nothing more, but nothing less. If they do so, they are not only welcome to stay among us, but they will be positively wanted by us. If, however, they will not treat us as their equals, we are not going to put up with them much longer.” Here is a sobering attitude for people of every sort to consider. People, everywhere, want to be considered as people, with equality of consideration as their natural right.

There are many inequalities that give thoughtful folk grave concern. Someone with a mind for statistics has brought up this observation. “Did you know that the Negro baby born in American today, regardless of the section or the state in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing a high school education as a white baby born in the same community on the same day; one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of ever earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter and the prospect of earning only half as much.” This should give all of us grave concern. But the most basic concern is that which the young African leader expressed to Kitagawa --- that everyone be given the right to be fully a person.

Jesus had a way of getting across the lines of group separation. He had the power to feel with the other person. He lived in a segregated society. “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Yet he could make a Samaritan the hero of one of his most pointed parables. He lived at a time when Rome and all her lackeys were hated as bitterly as conquered Europe hated their Nazi overlords a quarter century ago. Yet he healed a Roman centurion’s servant; and he called a publican -- a Roman henchman -- down out of a tree to eat with him. He lived in a day when every orthodox priest offered a temple prayer thanking God that he was not a woman. Yet Jesus responded to the touch of a stricken woman upon the hem of his garment; forgave a guilty woman in Simon’s house before the icy self-righteousness of the Pharisees; talked in easy, natural friendliness with Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” -- as though he were yourself -- whatever be the race, class, creed or condition.

Last Sunday was Race Relations Sunday. Today is something else --- Brotherhood Sunday, at the beginning of Brotherhood week. Its observance is urged by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Its emphasis is upon improved relationship, and understanding, among Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Here again, as in race relations, the proper emphasis is upon persons -- not religious stereotypes. David Elton Trueblood has observed that “The ultimate form of the Categorical Imperative is ‘So act that you treat all persons as persons, and as fellow members in a society of persons.’”

Recently there has appeared a new experience -- a new climate -- in Protestant-Catholic relationships. Part of it has an origin in the World Council of Churches and in the Vatican Councils. There is far more disposition toward getting acquainted --- toward dialogue --- than there has been for a long time. This disposition to “get acquainted” --- to talk to each other, to listen to each other, to enter into honest debate and honest discussion is a hopeful sign in human relationship. We are not suddenly going to become one in viewpoint or belief. But we are likely to understand one another far better, far more realistically, than we have for a long time past.

Two of the better known figures in recent dialogue encounters are the late Gustave Weigel of the Society of Jesus, and Professor Robert McAfee Brown. Brown outlines six possible “ground rules” for effect dialogue between Protestants and Catholics.

1) First, each partner must believe that the other is speaking in good faith. If the Catholic has reason to suspect that the Protestant is simply trying to get the inside story on hierarchical politics so that he can exploit it, the Catholic is going to become reticent and uncommunicative with any frankness. If the Protestant feels that the Catholic is just talking “democracy” in order to cover up the “real” Catholic position, he will preclude any good coming out of the discussion. Any effective dialogue must assume that both participants are devoted to the truth. But we must count on something more significant than devotion to truth alone. We must further count on common devotion to the One who said, “I am the truth.” We must be able to count on each other’s good faith as servants of Jesus Christ. Sharing this faith makes us “brethren” without condescension on either side.

We are “separated brethren,” for there is much upon which we shall disagree. But we are “separated brethren” in the effort to recognize the truth upon which we do agree.

2) A second ground rule: each partner must have a clear understanding of his own faith. It is quite inadequate just to scrutinize the other fellow’s faith --- each must know his own, and present it for everything that has worth in it. We Protestants, in particular, need to recognize this. Our reformed faith is by no means to be equated with “What-I-find-appealing,” and we need to clarify our own thinking on what it is that we have to present as informed Protestants.

3) Third ground rule: each partner must strive for a clear understanding of the faith of the other. This is both a necessary “pre-condition” of dialogue and a result of it. If Catholics can make a well-thought-out distinction between the “worship” of God and the “veneration” of Mary, it behooves Protestants to try to understand what the Catholic means, whether the Protestant agrees or not. And it behooves the Catholic to arrive at an understanding that Protestantism is not just an “aggregate of different forms of free thought.”

Two corollaries appear under this effort to understand the faith of the other:

a. First of these is a willingness to interpret the faith of the other in its best light rather than its worst.

b. The second corollary is this: each partner must be continually willing to revise his understanding of the faith of the other, as more light breaks through the dialogue.

Both of these are a part of the attempt to get a clear understanding of the faith of the other.

4) The fourth of Robert McAfee Brown’s suggested ground rules is that each partner must accept responsibility, in humility and penitence, for what his group has done, and is doing, to foster and perpetuate division. No reputable Catholic historian any longer denies that things were is a sorry state in 16th century Christendom. Conversely, few Protestants any longer try to make the 16th century the Golden Age of Protestantism. The Reformation was necessary, but both sides still need to pray “forgive us our debts (or trespasses)”.

5) Fifth. Each partner must forthrightly face the issues which cause separation, as well as those which create unity. We have continuing differences as well as points of agreement. We Protestants may, for instance, become enlightened as to precisely what a Catholic means by the infallibility of the pope. But there is still no middle ground between the positions that 1) the pope is infallible and 2) the pope is not infallible; there is no such thing as being “a little bit infallible.” We must be prepared to face, fairly and honestly, our differences, with understanding that they do exist, even though they may not be so divisive as we once supposed. It is futile and dangerous for either to suppose that the other is going to “give up” certain beliefs for the sake of unity. That is far too dear a price to pay. And we are not after uniformity, after all, as much as understanding.

6) The sixth and final ingredient is this: each partner must recognize that all that can be done with the dialogue is to offer it up to God. What “happens” as a result of the dialogue must be left in His hands. We must not be too sure just how things will come out under guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, though much of the terms which Catholic and Protestants now set for reunion seem mutually exclusive. We can learn to understand, agree to disagree at points that seem essential to each of us, and respect each other as neighbors and as persons.

The atmosphere of dialogue is prayer --- not the expectation that I will win a debate, nor the admission that the other fellow will win an argument, but the trust that both may find understanding in a Christian experience.

These six conditions for fruitful dialogue, then, may contribute to understanding of each other as persons.

1) Each believe that the other speaks in good faith.

2) Each have a clear understanding of his own faith.

3) Each strive for a clearer understanding of the other’s faith. This implies (a) a willingness to interpret the other’s faith in the best light rather than the worst, and (b) continual willingness to revise his understanding of the other’s faith.

4) Each accept some responsibility, in humility and penitence, for what his group has done unfairly, and is doing to perpetuate division.

5) Each face forthrightly the issues which cause separation, as well as those which create solidarity.

6) Each recognize that all that can be done with the dialogue is to offer it up to God.

There may be others, but these are the conditions that are suggested by one of the current Protestant theologians and teachers.

Now let us remember that brotherhood applies to the relations between Christians and non-Christians, as well as to that between Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians. We are encouraged to remember Brotherhood Week as an observation and encouragement of good relationship between Christians and Jews. Here again, we Christians do well to try to eliminate all patronizing attitudes toward our Jewish neighbors. They are persons, and are to be so regarded by us, as we hope to be regarded by them. Some of them have suffered under the feeling that they are treated condescendingly as a minority group of people rather than understandingly, as neighbor persons.

Many of us have a lot to learn about Jews -- even about those whom we know fairly well. In the first place, Jews are not a race of people. There are Jews of many races. Someone may say, “I can always tell a Jew when I see one.” According to competent anthropologists, this is not possible.

Like Christianity, Judaism is a religion, not a race. Jews belong to at least 3 major stocks of the human race. Many people in Asia are followers of Judaism. If they were to be classified racially, they would be called members of the Mongoloid stock. Thousands who live in Ethiopia in North Africa are Jews who would be classified, racially, as Negroid. In North America, there are people of Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid racial stock who worship in Jewish synagogues.

Religiously and intellectually, the Jews have not remained static in the last 2,000 years, but have grown and developed as have Christians grown and developed. Many a student of the Bible, particularly of the Old Testament, could find his study greatly enriched by a Jewish teacher or teachers of the Scripture.

We need constantly, to face the record of misunderstanding. And Christians have a sober responsibility for their contribution to the anti-Semitism that reached such an appalling and brutal peak with the Nazi exterminations. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see where hurts can come out of thoughtless prejudice. We are used to the term “Christian” as one of respect. There are many parts of the world where it is one of great derision; and we wince at that. Think, then, what it may do to the sensitive side of a person to be called “Jew” or “Jew boy” in derision, as could be the case right here in our community.

How do you suppose it may feel to a child to have someone either shout or mutter at him, “Christ-killer”? Or how shall the child’s father and mother shield the child’s spirit, or gird him with endurance when so attacked? Probably most of us in this room would not stoop to such an epithet. But we need to continue our effort to help create a climate that does not include such an attack upon our neighbors.

There is a richness is much of Jewish religious culture that can bring light and understanding to Christians. While we treasure, greatly, the gospels and New Testament epistles, we still regard highly, as sacred scripture, the lessons of the Old Testament as well. And that is heritage for Jews and Christians alike.

If we have only a vague tolerance toward Jewish religious holy seasons, we might attempt to understand better their significance, remembering that Jews in a community such as ours have to live with, and tolerate (and we hope learn to understand) the significance to us of Easter and of Christmas (practically a whole month of it!)

The true stance of brotherhood is that of treating persons as persons. We have read in the Old Testament psalm: “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity;” --- not “uniformity” but “unity.”

On the cover of last Sunday’s church bulletin was printed Paul’s statement to Christians at Philippi:

The Same Love for One Another

If there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Philippians 2: 1-4

We can apply that spirit to persons of every sort in the promotion of true brotherhood, respecting the difference between brothers, but still dwelling in unity.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 21, 1965.