9/9/65

Scripture: Read Acts 3.

Let us picture in our minds a scene in Jerusalem a short time after the Resurrection. Peter and John were going into the temple to pray. A lame man was stationed by the temple door where he was accustomed to asking alms --- literally begging of the worshippers. He asked alms of Peter and John. Peter looked at the poor fellow and said to him, “I have no silver or gold, but I give you what I do have: in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, walk.” He took the man by the hand and raised him up; and the fellow did begin to walk.

Of course the incident drew a crowd. It would get a crowd today! We have read about it in the book of Acts. As the crowd gathered, Peter seized on the occasion to deliver a brief sermon in which he said: “You killed the Prince of Life” --- at least that is what we read in the Authorized or “King James” translation of the Bible. In Dr. Moffatt’s translation, it is put thus: “You killed the Pioneer of Life.” When the Revised Standard version arrived, this passage is found to be translated, “You killed the Author of Life.” It appears that there are several possible translations of this phrase. These three translations serve to illustrate the truth that when we try to describe Jesus, no words are quite adequate. These three terms: “Prince of Life, “Pioneer of Life,” and “Author of Life” are apparently all different. And yet they all seem to fit Jesus.

Perhaps, if we consider the three titles in the three translations, it will help us to see some combinations that our day needs to make. (1) First: Christ, the “Prince of Life.” It is not surprising that Peter gave him that exalted title. Jesus was a princely figure. We have made much of the fact that his birth was in a stable, that he appeared in a humble sort of home, that he never achieved any wealth or any notable social status. Yet the gospel tells us that he was of the royal line of King David. His bearing must have been impressive. It could only have been a commanding kind of figure who could drive the entrenched money changers out of the temple courtyard.

When Jesus, at length, stood before Pilate as a prisoner, the Roman governor was apparently impressed by the power of his presence. Even on the night when Jesus took a towel and a basin and washed his disciples’ feet, he said to them, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.” [John 13: 13]. There was something of dignity and lordly stature in him even when he stooped, with a basin, at his disciples’ feet. And when it came to the crucifixion, it was a penitent thief hanging beside him who cried out, “Remember me when you come into your kingly power.” [Luke 23: 42]. Jesus was a regal spirit even at his death.

When we hear the word “Prince” we think of royal ancestry and rich background. This is a time when we need to give attention to the backgrounds of our living. We need to see what is behind us in order to safeguard us for the road ahead of us. Attached to your motor car is a mirror which enables the driver to see the road behind without taking his major attention from the road ahead. When we of our Kingdon household have been taking a trip together and the several members of our family take turns at the driving, each one who gets behind the steering wheel, after fastening the seat belt, adjusts that rear-view mirror so that the road behind can be clearly seen, before starting ahead again. Of course you and I know that it is quite as important for us to know what is coming behind us as it is to see what is in front of us. On our crowded highways and streets there is as much danger of collision from the rear as there is from the front. Especially do we need to know what is behind when we make a left turn.

In our social thinking we speak of turning to “the left” as meaning turning to the new, possibly to the radical, often to the revolutionary. And it is evident that there has been a considerable trend, during recent decades, toward the “left” in the political and economic life of our world. Hence it is doubly imperative that all of us, and especially any of those who look sympathetically “leftward”, to be well aware lest some old fallacy carrying a 1965 license plate come dashing up the road to wreck us.

That is a real danger that threatens us. The philosophies of some totalitarian programs and of dictator-led governments, are often old theories carrying new names. And it was from such shackling oppressions that Jesus came to free the human spirit. He said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” [John 8: 32]. This gives dignity and worth to the individual. And like a trumpet call comes the apostle’s call: “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set you free.” [Galatians 5: 1]. This is not to be stubborn. But it is to be sure that we look to Christ the Prince, and to behold the rich background of life which we have through him.

Consider our nation. Christ, the Prince of Life, has never been crowned king by any government. There is no real Christ-controlled nation in the world. Nevertheless we who live in countries like the United States of America and Canada have a rich heritage of Christian culture. The great ethical principles, and spiritual ideals, of the Hebrew prophets, and of our Lord Jesus, have been built into the foundations of our society. The bases of our law and the groundwork of our institutions are rooted in Hebrew-Christian background.

If there ever was a time when we need to look back to the fundamental principles of our nation’s founders, the time is now. Let us give more study to the history of our nation. Let us steep our minds in the spirit of integrity, industriousness, and courage, which cleared the wilderness and built the communities of this our western continent. The better we know the things that made the good in this nation and its neighbors, the better we shall handle the things that America makes to be used.

And let us look to the background of the church as well as the nation. Three and one half years ago, we celebrated the centennial of this church. Last month, our family attended a centennial celebration of 100 years in the life of Trinity United Church of Christ near La Crosse, where my son, Arthur, was student minister for the summer. No one can measure the value of a church’s service through a century. The leading of little children to God, the dedication and idealism and enthusiasm of youth, the strengthening of marriage bonds, the stabilizing of business life, the shaping of civic ideals, the war against sin, the saving and rehabilitation of souls --- all of this and more is a total which only the Divine Calculator can compute. Yet, even with these and a lot of other century-old congregations, the United State of America is still a land of young churches --- two or three hundred years at most. If we take the measure of the church, we must go back at least 19 centuries to Pentecost, and even farther into the earlier Hebrew background.

The Christian church is not just a community organization like the hospital association or the public school. The church is the Body of Christ, created by Him to carry on His work. It is He who is its head and who had kept it going through the centuries in spite of divisions; in spite of frequent mismanagement of her business; despite the mediocre morality of her members. It is a Holy Spirit that has kept the church alive.

In order to be more confident of the way ahead, let us look back to Christ, the Prince of Life. For He is the head of the church. And the church is the one organization that has survived all the changes of living from the Roman chariot on stone highways to the jet plane and the rocket-borne space capsule.

If you who have served in the Army or Navy think that the church looks small in comparison, or if you who do business with million-dollar (even billion-dollar) banks think that church business is petty by contrast, just remember the vastness of church organization, belting the entire earth as well as bridging the centuries. And of all this, the Head is Christ, the Prince of Life.

(2) Now let us turn our attention to a second translation of our text, where, according to Moffatt, Jesus Christ is called the “Pioneer of Life.” And how well that title fits him! Jesus started something so significantly new that we have come to date our calendars from his birth. He put new values into life and gave people new vigor in establishing them. He set men and women on the trail of truth, saying: “Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened.” [Matthew 7: 7]. Quickened by Christ’s spirit, people have asked the seemingly unattainable, and received the apparently impossible. They have sought the secrets of life’s mysteries and thereby achieved the findings of scientific search. They knock at the closed doors of many prejudices, of ignorance and bitterness, and there opens the way for understanding and brotherhood.

It was H. G. Wells who once likened Jesus to a mighty moral huntsman sweeping across the landscape of history, digging men out of their little burrows of respectability in which they have ensconced themselves. Christ deserves the title: “Pioneer of Life.” And we need to see Him as Pioneer, as well as Prince. There is always the danger that in looking back --- as I have been urging us to do --- we may lose our pioneering spirit toward the future. The rear-view mirror is not supposed to withdraw our attention from the wind-shield and what lies ahead. Let none of us become so enamored of the “good old days” that we are intolerant of anything new. Probably all of us have to watch this tendency as we grow older, lest we grow too timid to tackle the untried things ahead of us.

Years ago, a family on vacation was traveling in Colorado. They stopped at Colorado Springs long enough to take a drive up Pike’s Peak. This was long enough ago so that the road had no protecting walls at many points, and the car would skirt cliffs over which the passengers could look down a couple of thousand feet or more. The driver whom they had engaged seemed to measure his driving skill by the shrieks of his passengers. And he was having a very good day on that trip. He would make a hair-raising hairpin turn and then turn around to grin at his panicky passengers. The mother became so nervous that she could not bear to see those cliffs any longer, and so she put her head down in her husband’s lap --- which didn’t help much, because his knees were trembling.

While father and mother were having a dire time of it, the seven-year-old son was having the time of his life! The closer the car came to the edge of the cliff, the farther over he would look, thrilled to the core! That lad was thinking less about the Bible, at the time, than his parents were; but he was illustrating something that is in the Bible. In the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, the writer says of persons as they grow old, “They become afraid of that which is high.” [Ecclesiastes 12: 5]. Probably the fear of the high is one of the tendencies of advancing age. Physically, this is not without reason. Bones become more brittle, and older persons had best not be skipping around high places like mountain goats. But mentally and spiritually one need not be afraid of the high as he matures into older age. Immanuel Kant was 74 when he wrote his “Metaphysics of Ethics.” Goethe was past 80 when he finished “Faust.” Spiritually, one can keep on growing, until he believes the best is behind him. He is still progressing as long as he can say with Browing’s Rabbi Ben Ezra: “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.”

The attitude of those who receive Christ as Pioneer of Life is that of looking ahead to something better. To them, the Golden Age is ahead, not behind them.

Some years ago, Canada had a governor-general named John Buchan, who made a significant comment on how to keep the long view. He said that we speak of youth as climbing the hill of the years and then, when people pass the middle years, we speak of descending the hill. Buchan reminds us that, when we go up a long hill, we have to turn around to see the long, panoramic view. But when we are going down the hill, the view is constantly before us for it is straight ahead! This past week, we had Dr. Alan B. Taylor with us at church and in the several meetings of our parish from Sunday through Thursday. We enjoyed his humor, his sharing of faith and experience. Now 72 years of age, he is officially “retiring” from his work of more than 44 years on the mission field at Durban, South Africa. He is going back to Durban to retire.

But he has no notion of stopping from work. He will not be practicing surgery nor managing the affairs of the big McCord Hospital. But he expects to be at work with whatever opportunities for service come to his hand. And one of the things he proposed to do is to enroll in a course on Rapid Reading which is being offered at the University of Natal.

So it is for us when we have Christ’s confidence as the Pioneer of Life.

(3) And now do we begin to see why the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, in translating our text, calls Christ by a third title; the “Author of Life.” His spirit is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. The sources and the aims, or ends, of life are in him. This stream which we call life rises in those things which Christ represents, and flows at last into the ocean of love to which He led.

If we have gotten away from our godly beginnings, let us call ourselves back to the Author of Life. If our stream has grown sluggish and muddy, let us turn to the pure springs that first fed it. We grow weary of the reports of graft and crime and intolerance, of racial hatred and national bullying. We need to balance the bad news with the good news of God. Instead of asking, worriedly, “What is the world coming to?” let us think about, “What has come to the world?”

The Christ who appeared to our world 19 centuries ago was a “life-giving Spirit.” As the gospel says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” [John 1: 4]. And “to all who received Him, who believed on His name, He gave power to become the sons of God.” [John 1: 12]. His unceasing courage and unending power is still available to us. Let us accept these from Him who faced far greater difficulties than ours and yet could say, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” [John 16: 33].

Let us take our jaded tastes which always crave new stimulants to Bethlehem where we can behold the simple, pure, elemental things of living --- mother love, childhood innocence, humble wise men, shepherding care. In that presence, our own better selves can be reborn.

Let us take our bitter partisanship, our religious and racial prejudices, our hatred of national and personal enemies to where we can hear Christ saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” [Luke 23: 34]. And let us believe that forgiveness can heal the wounds and divisions of a broken and bitter world.

Believe in the Prince of Life and enjoy our heritage. Believe in the Pioneer of Life, renewing our faith in the future. Believe in the Author of Life and let us “lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith.” [Hebrews 12: 1,2].

Let us pray.

Ever loving God, we lift our littleness to Thy greatness that, in Thy life, our lives may richer, fuller be. We are grateful for Thy protecting care that makes possible our coming together here again. Thanks be to Thee for the good earth which feeds us, for our nation which guards us, for the families which comfort and encourage us. Forgive us when we come up short. Fortify us for days ahead. Let not the temptations of yesterday torment and spoil our tomorrows. Watch over us in every day’s most quiet need or great occasion. Help us to understand the good in others and to bring out their best.

For we pray in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

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

Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 9, 1965.

Also at Waioli Hui’ia Church, April 21, 1974.

Also at Rudolph Moravian Church, July 28, 1974.