9/26/65

Scripture: I Corinthians 13.

Text: I Corinthians 13.

As Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth, he put, in his first letter to them, a statement about love that is classic. The words that are found in the thirteenth chapter are beloved, and repeated and re-read and memorized by many people. They speak of love that is the “agape” about which we read in Christian literature --- love that is more than just personal affection. It includes respect for others, belief in them, understanding and sharing in their best natures, and much more. Yet some of these words about love are so appropriate to the “Eros,” or love a man for a woman and of a woman for a man, that I regularly include them in the marriage service -- as I did last evening and the Saturday evening before that. Paul makes clear his conviction that no eloquence, no prophetic powers, no knowledge, no generosity, no sacrifice, not even a great faith, can avail much without love.

After crowding so much insight into his writing about love, Paul moves on to a contrasting of the indirect and the direct; the imperfect and the perfect. He was quite a philosopher, whose education probably included acquaintance with the teachings of Plato and other great thinkers. He had joined the company of those who realize that learning is a life-long process. The greatest, and most thorough scholars are learners to their dying day. This holds as well in religious experience as anywhere else. If there had been general recognition of the fragmentary character of our knowledge, perhaps there might not have been those exclusive claims by sections of the church which divided the church into segments rather than building it whole.

Perhaps the spirit of brotherliness, for which Paul is pleading, might have saved Christians from being so sure that their particular witness involved the only interpretation of right. For man’s deepest and most comprehensive knowledge, and also the insights he receives --- all this still leaves him a child in the elementary grades of the school of experience.

When Paul spoke in this vein, he was casting no aspersions upon others. He referred to childishness, courteously and thoughtfully, by using the personal pronoun, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” He makes full admission of his immaturity, while he still endeavors to grow up.

In the schoolrooms on earth, one must pass through the beginning grades before going on to the junior and senior grades. Paul knew it well, and he reminded his readers and hearers of it. He reminds us, further, that with more mature judgments, childish thoughts must go. “When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”

Notice Paul did not lose his childlike heart. Childlikeness and childishness are not the same thing. The childlike mind is trustful, receptive, pure, imaginative. Jesus commended it in memorable language. “To such belongs the kingdom of God,” said he [Matthew 19: 14]; and “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” [Luke 18: 17]. The childlike mind is essential for understanding, and entry into, what Jesus called the kingdom of God.

But childishness is pettiness in an adult, and implies immaturity. Some members of the community at Corinth were probably childish, and that was something that Paul rebuked, for one must grow up, out of childish ways to become a mature adult. Just as there is growth in so-called secular knowledge, and there are lessons and experiences and a development appropriate to childhood, so it is in the realm of spiritual knowledge and experience. In the record of Scripture itself, there is the story of mankind’s progressive knowledge and understanding of God and God’s ways. So it is in personal, human life; and so it is in the Christian church. There must be growth in understanding.

Yet, at their best, both knowledge and expectation are incomplete and imperfect. Our knowledge of God is incomplete. It is a fragmentary, incomplete, imperfect experience. It may be like our experience of the wind. We know the wind by the stirring of the leaves in trees, by white foam tips on water waves, by pressure on our faces ---- even though we can not see wind itself. So, we are aware of God’s presence and being by appropriate signs that we have learned to interpret and to understand. This limitation does not diminish the grandeur of the experience; but it does indicate the nature of the experience.

To realize the imperfectness of one’s knowledge and awareness should save Christian folk from pride and a dogmatic spirit. Had this imperfection and indirectness been perceived and accepted, many a heretic would have been saved from un-Christian persecution. Often enough, the so-called heretics have been pioneers in the proclamation of larger spiritual truths. Many of the orthodox Jews of 20 centuries ago had regarded Jesus as a heretic.

Paul knew that there was no need at all for any dogmatic, personal point of view in the Church at Corinth. There was every need for a spirit of toleration and brotherliness which can realize that the white light of knowledge is made up of many colors, and is all the richer because of it. The truth invites those who name themselves by Christ’s name - “Christians” - to practice the open mind and to realize that there is more light and truth yet to break forth from God’s word.

Part of growing up is to continue being a learner. Probably that is one significant reason why some of the adult people of our congregation propose to meet for study as a class of the church school. Others wish to continue as searchers in other ways. The experience of pupils in kindergarten and primary groups of the church school are those appropriate to that age. But it is childish of those who have gone on to more mature years not to be about the business of growing up.

Charles Scott, a minister in one of the churches of our eastern coast, makes some observations that I want to pass on to you very much as he has set them down. It is a familiar observation, and an accepted truth, that adolescence is a time when traditional values are called into question. Often these questions begin during the years of high school and reach full bloom in the college, or post high school years of growing, when many miles, as well as some years, often separate the budding adult from the old authority symbols of childhood. The growing student feels challenged by his teachers and professors to think for himself. It is sometimes a wonderful, “heady” feeling. And, at this time of growing, exuberant youth sometimes tosses out, with reckless abandon, some of the ideals and beliefs that later have to be reclaimed in more maturely accepted form.

It is a time of “growing pains” that is not always comfortable for the youth who is stretching his comprehension. Sometimes it is acutely distressing to him or her. Living through this experience of adjustment with the young folk is trying for parents and teachers and pastors. All of us stand ready to help, to encourage, to share experience. But we can not do the growing. Each young person’s maturing is his own experience. It is a sobering experience to realize that some of the things that are questioned, and even abandoned, are things that were learned from me -- whether I be parent, teacher, pastor of other friend! And yet this sobering experience must happen. The understanding of standards, rules, values and faith held by the child must give way to the understanding of the mature, if the child is to grow up.

And if we have been nurtured well, in childhood and youth, by wise and understanding adults, many of the standards and values which are questioned and even abandoned along the way of growing, will be resurrected and made our own. We never become really mature adults unless and until we make standards and values our own, and not just whispers from the past.

Unfortunately, not everyone does mature enough in faith. Some men and some women go through life as perpetual adolescents, and rebels without a cause. They can only object and protest; they can never assert nor become confident. They deserve sympathy if they have missed life’s rich experience of growing up. What are some elements, or characteristics, of a mature faith; a grown-up, adult faith? How shall we measure our own maturity in faith?

(1) Scott’s testimony is that, first of all, it must be a personal faith. It can not be simply, or only, the “faith of our fathers, living still,” passed on from one generation to another. My faith must be truly mine. It must grow out of my own experience.

Those who have been reading Dag Hammarskjold’s posthumously published book, called (in English) Markings, are finding in it the remarkable revealing record of a deeply perceptive spirit. Hammarskjold was evidently a man much aware of all sorts of experience with steady growth in perception of what life means. Concerning faith he once put it this way: “Faith is a state of mind and the soul. .... The language of religion is a set of formulas which register a basic spiritual experience. It must not be regarded as describing, in terms to be defined by philosophy, the reality which is accessible to our senses, and which we can analyze with the tools of logic. I was late,” says Hammarskjold, “in understanding what this meant. When I finally reached that point, the beliefs in which I was once brought up, and which, in fact, had given my life direction, even while my intellect still challenged their validity, were recognized by me as mine in their own right and by my free choice.”

Mature faith must be a personal faith. The words in which it is expressed may be old words, traditional words (there is much to be said for this kind of historical continuity), but the faith must become my own. It must reflect my own experience; it must speak to my own needs and aspirations.

Probably all of us here present this morning have our Christian faith in common. We join together in singing the hymns of the church, in praying the prayer taught by our Lord, in reading aloud, together, portions of Scripture. Yet it is right that, for each of us, the belief that we profess together is, to some degree, different. It differs in the individual interpretations of each of us. Probably all of us have some questionings and doubts from time to time; we have to continue the uneasy process of growing. We come to our common faith in the Christian family by differing roads for we are all separate persons, shaped by different experiences into which no one else can fully enter.

My faith has been troubled by doubts and the urgent necessity for growth since I first expressed it publicly in joining a church at an early age. And one source of strength, in working through the doubts and questionings, is the spirit of Paul’s encouragement: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” I feel sure that moments of depression and doubt will pass. In spite of the chaos and emptiness which life on occasion seems to be, despite loneliness and suffering which life brings, there is purpose, and a fullness of joy and love which endures. These are not destroyed.

The revelation that God is love is another assurance. It is the main message of the Bible, that God is not indifferent force, nor vindictive whim, nor arrogant tyrant; but is love in its fullness. And this is a key to personal happiness, social justice, and peace on earth. It is worth the staking of life and sanity. A mature faith is a personal faith; this is what makes sense. It is, for each one of us, the beliefs, the convictions, the ideals that motivate and sustain our lives.

2) For most of us, a mature faith is also a corporate faith, a shared faith. Few, if any, can be adequately Christian alone. Most of us have not the strength nor stamina. We find encouragement and strength in belonging to the community which has known Jesus Christ. I rejoice that I am a member of a “team” that is a church; that I am a part of the particular family that is the Congregational Church of Wisconsin Rapids. I may be less competent than a first string fullback. But the team includes some great people of faith -- Paul, Augustine, St. Francis; Hus, Luther and Calvin; Fosdick, Holt, and Schweitzer; Jane Addams, Fred Staff and a host of other men and women of faith and courage. I can be a Christian myself knowing that I am surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, rooting for me, pulling for me, praying for me.

There may be “loners” who are great and admirable, and who practice Christian principles more sacrificially than you or I do. But I need the community of faith. I need the church. I need the fellowship.

A mature faith must surely be a personal faith. And for most of us, a mature faith will be a corporate faith --- something we share with others, from whom we receive and to whom we give something of our own experience.

3) And, further, a mature faith will be a courageous faith. It is a faith that is not afraid; it will venture. I will be both flexible and firm. Consider the faith of the one from whom we chiefly learn about faith -- Jesus of Nazareth. He believed in the goodness of God; he believed in the purposefulness of God; he trusted in the fatherhood of God. All of these things he believed -- and he taught them to crowds who thronged after him to hear and to be healed. He taught them to individuals like Zaccaeus, and Martha and Mary, to small groups of people like his twelve disciples.

Jesus still believed these thing when crowds turned away, when individuals betrayed him, and when disciples faltered. He still believed these things in Gethsemane when he prayed, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” He still believed them on his cross, even when, for a moment, he cried out in the words of an Old Testament saying, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” A mature faith is courageous --- even courageous enough for a cross.

Dag Hammarskjold’s book, Markings, is a diary of short essays, ideas, poems, written over a number of years. It shows something of the private faith that sustained a great public man. Hammarskjold died in an airplane crash while on a mission of peace in Africa. Two weeks before his death, he wrote this prayer in poetic form:

Have mercy

Upon us.

Have mercy

Upon our efforts,

That we

Before Thee,

In love and faith,

Righteousness and humility,

May follow Thee,

With self-denial, steadfastness, and courage

And meet Thee

In the silence.

Give us

A pure heart

That we may see Thee,

A humble heart

That we may hear Thee

A heart of love

That we may serve Thee

A heart of faith

That we may live Thee,

Thou

Whom I do not know

But whose I am.

Thou

Whom I do not comprehend

But who hast dedicated me

To my fate.

Thou ---”

I appears that here was a man whose faith had a maturity and courage that was enough for a cross.

Whence comes such faith? It is hardly something that we can generate out of our own will, ourselves. It is, rather, given to us -- like all else that is good and holy. It is given to us as we come to know our Christ as Savior. It comes as we perceive God as author and finisher of our faith.

Continually He seeks to give us the gift of faith --- mature faith.

Have you grown up enough to accept it?

Amen

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 26, 1965.