6/11/67

Scripture: Read I John 3: 11-24.

One of the helps supplied to the churches of our denominational fellowship is an excellent desk calendar. It opens flat; it supplies space where the church appointments for each day may be entered; it illustrates the coming Sunday bulletin covers for the year; it lists denomination agencies to which one may wish to refer for information and suggestion; it calls to remembrance the calendered events of each month and ways to be prepared for them. It also suggests portions of the Bible that may make helpful reading for each week.

One of five Scriptural references that is listed to go with today’s bulletin is the story from Luke, in the 14th chapter. It is Jesus’ story of a banquet. Jesus, himself, was at the time a guest at dinner in the home of a prominent man --- a ruler who was one of the influential Pharisees. It turned out that the others were watching Jesus intently and critically.

It was on the Jewish Sabbath - a day of complete rest. While they were there in the ruler’s home, Jesus was confronted with one who was seriously ill. One account says that the patient had dropsy. At any rate he longed for healing. The technical question seemed to be whether or not curing a disease was work -- was it labor? If it was work, then it was unlawful under the religious standard to heal the patient, for all work was prohibited on the Sabbath.

Jesus asked if those present considered such a work of mercy as lawful on the Sabbath. Nobody answered. Everybody remained silent. So Jesus, with all watching and waiting to see what he would do, went ahead and healed the patient, according to Luke’s account, and let him go. [Luke 14: 1-4]. Then Jesus asked the others in the room whether or not any one of them, if one of his animals such as an ox or donkey, were to fall into a well, would not immediately pull the animal out of the well, even if it should be on the Sabbath. Still nobody answered. [Luke 14: 5-6]. So Jesus went on to tell a couple of those pointed stories called “parables.” He had noticed how some of those present had gone straight to the places of honor at the host’s table. And he pointed out that it is socially safer, and in better ethical taste, to go first to a humbler spot; a place of lessor honor; and wait to see whether one may be invited to come up to a place of greater prominence. How much better, anyway, Jesus suggests, it is to try that way than it is to risk the embarrassment of being moved down from the place of honor to a lesser spot by the host! [Luke 14: 7-11].

This advice was followed by another choice bit: Jesus suggested that when one prepares a banquet and invites only his rich neighbors, his favorite relatives, his influential friends, one will probably be invited in return and be repaid in a kind of social merry-go-round. But to invite some of those who really need food -- the poor, the crippled, the neglected -- people who can not be expected to repay in kind -- that is the sort of thing to be repaid, as Jesus said, only “at the resurrection of the just.” [Luke 14: 12-14].

Then Jesus told one more story --- a third parable. Again the story was about a great banquet prepared by a certain man. The fellow invited many to come and eat at his table but, oddly, the people whom he invited did not seem eager to come. They made excuses. One said, “I’ve just bought a field and I must go out to inspect this new property of mine. Please excuse me.” Another said, “I have bought five ox teams and I must look them over again. That’s a pretty important deal, you know. Sorry about the banquet, but I’ll have to be excused.” Another said, “I have married a wife, and so I can not come.” Well, who wants to interrupt a man’s honeymoon, anyway? Of course not. So better excuse him.

Well, the rest of Jesus’ story goes on to relate that the householder got a bit angry. If the people whom he had invited didn’t want to come, so be it! He would have a party anyway. He sent his servants out to get just about anybody who might consent to come in and eat. And they kept at it until the banquet hall was full. [Luke 14: 15-24].

Now it does not seem likely that Jesus wanted to insult his hosts, nor to condemn them in some way. But he was not one to indulge in a lot of idle talk -- just to keep polite conversation going. His mood was earnest, thoughtful, persuasive. He had a message for his hearers and for his hosts. His whole mortal ministry was filled with the idea of the kingdom of God, and the reigning rule of His goodness.

Jesus usually found illustrations near at hand. Just at that time, he and his hearers were at a dinner, and the food was probably ample. Why not let that very occasion illustrate what he had to say? And so, when one of those who sat at table with him remarked: “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God,” Jesus proceeded to describe what that kingdom is like --- not some realm away off in the future, but an attitude -- an atmosphere --- right then and there.

The kingdom of God, being the rule of justice and love in the hearts of people and in all their relations to one another, may well be presented as a great banquet. It means the deliverance of individual lives from sin and foolishness, from mental and nervous disorders, from demoralizing fear and cynicism and despair. It means the abolition of hunger and poverty. It means the will to build peace, in which art and industry and science can make their contributions to the great age of opportunity for all people everywhere. It means a renewed birth of freedom and peace in the lives of individuals and in the corporate life of the world. And surely it is the will of God that this great “banquet” be offered to all sorts of people. Why, then, do people refuse the invitation to “eat bread in the kingdom of God?” Is it because they attach too much importance to material possession? -- “I have bought a field.” Or because they have no other concern than to make a living and “get ahead” in the sense of monetary gain and social position? -- “I have bought five yoke of oxen.” Or because they put family interest before the common good? -- “I have married a wife.”

The civilization of the Western world has been influenced, to a considerable extent, by Christian beliefs and principles. But in vast areas of our common life --- in some of our business, our politics, our international relations --- Western civilization has not entered into the kingdom of God --- at the awful cost of recurrent economic reversals, mass unemployment, mass slaughter and destruction. How much longer will the banquet invitation hold --- “Come; for all is not ready” before the God of things as they are opens the banquet to the needy, the forsaken, the people who are no longer willing to be outcasts from the good things of living? --- when men will come from the east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God? Do not those who refuse God’s banquet for their lives face a kind of spiritual starvation and death --- despite the abundance which they pursue?

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Another of those Bible references suggested for reading in connection with today’s church bulletin is the portion from First John which was read earlier this morning as our Scripture lesson. This is not what we call the gospel of John; but is one of those very short letters which appear near the end of the New Testament. This reading has to do with what tends toward death and what tends toward life. It harks back to the creation stories of the beginning in the book of Genesis. Two of the brothers in what is described as the first family on earth, sons of Adam and Eve named Cain and Abel, had a kind of falling out. Cain got the notion that his younger brother, Abel, not only had a disgusting amount of success at raising sheep, but that Abel was actually favored in some way by God. It made him so angry to think about it, that Cain had killed his brother. The writer of First John reminds his Christian readers that the real message of God to people, from the very beginning, is that we should love one another, and not be like Cain, whose hatred led him to kill Abel.

Hatred is a part of the whole world of evil. It often results in physical death. More comprehensively, it results in spiritual death. “He who does not love,” so goes the comment in this letter, “remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has life abiding in him.” But the writer affirms: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.” And he is talking about love so comprehensive and so real that it is seen in Jesus who laid down his life for us. Since we know his love for us, “we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren,” says the letter-writer.

Life is laid down --- laid on the line, if you please --- in more ways than one. For martyrdom is only one way of spending it. For instance, those who have the goods of the world ought to feel a concern for those who have not. “If anyone has the world’s goods,” says the writer, “and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” Then he calls for action. “Let us not love in word or speech only, but in deed and truth.”

There is a lot of death around us in this world of today. Some of it is deliberately plotted by the criminal gangs of big cities. Some of it has been officially carried out in the capital punishment of criminals by state governments. An appalling amount of it is brought about in our automobile accident rate. There have been years in which there were more deaths in our nation from auto accident than from murder and suicide combined. If the entire city of Wausau, men, women and children, were wiped out by earthquake or fire or other tragedy in nature, our country would be thrown into shock and mourning. Yet many more than that die each year because of the mechanical failure, the faulty construction, the impatient, careless, head-strong, unmannerly operation of automobiles in America. Someone suggests that there should be two printed legends in front of every driver: “Fasten your seat belts;” and “Thou shalt not kill.”

Our news is heavy laden with the killing that is warfare. The war that continues in Vietnam; and the armed conflict in the Middle East have underlined the hatred that kills and makes uneasy the conscience of all of us who have a part in the failure to build peace. When shall we pass from this death in hatred to life in love and peace? Not until there be less determination to annihilate the other fellow and more determination to love and help. And if it should sound insane to talk of love and helpfulness, that would only underline the hopelessness of our present estate.

There was room for debate more than two decades ago, when British determination and American consent helped to bring into being the modern state of Israel. That state came into being at the expense of millions of Arabs who had occupied that land for generations, even thousands of years, many of whom still live a hopeless sort of existence in refugee camps. Those Arabs ought to be the effective concern of the Israelis and of every one of us. On the side of the Arab world and its supporters, there should be a concern for the Jewish people who were so ruthlessly decimated in the genocide of World War II days. Since the nation of Israel was set up in Palestine, with its hope and vigor and effective determination to make the land beautiful and productive again, it seems that it should be recognized for its place among the nations. The talk of any other nation about a holy war to annihilate Israel is only death in hatred. Ways must be found, through monumental effort, to bring about peace, and to set the faces of people toward love, so that life may come out of this death.

And this is God’s way; for as Jesus has said God “is not God of the dead, but of the living;” [Matthew 22: 32] and He bids us choose life instead of death. Death ends things, as everybody knows. By contrast, life represents beginnings. Creation, birth and rebirth are dominant themes in the Bible, where we read: “He that sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’” [Revelation 21: 5].

We do well not to identify ourselves with the things that are ending, but rather with things that are beginning. The religious forces of Jesus’ day were so determined to adhere to rigid formalism that many of them failed to hear and heed Christ’s new covenant of love. Something of the sort happened again when the western church rejected the fresh insights of the reformers.

But the sin of choosing death is no exclusive trait of the old Palestinian Hebrews nor of the Middle Ages Romanists. It is a human one --- a trait that besets us all. You and I may be subject to it. We resist, and hold back from, the continuous creative rebirth that means life.

Look now, for a moment, at this comparison between death and life. Death brings separation. Life brings relationship. The disciples of Jesus felt separated at the death of Jesus. The conviction that he lives in the resurrection, reunited them. With this thought in mind, it is interesting to note how much living Jesus did while he was dying on the cross. Only one of his last sayings suggests the awful separation that death is. We see it in his cry, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” [Mark 15: 34]. Death is abandonment. But, while this one saying reverberates with the sound of death, four of Jesus’ sayings on the cross were psalms of life. When he said, “Father, forgive them,” [Luke 23: 34] he expressed one ideal relationship with one’s enemies. When he said, “This day shalt thou be with me in paradise,” [Luke 23: 43] he expressed an ideal relationship with sinners. When he said, “Woman, behold thy son! Son, behold thy mother,” [John 19: 26, 27] he expressed an ideal in family relationship. And when he said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” [Luke 23: 46] he expressed the ideal relationship with God. How wonderfully he lived in these relationships, even when being put to death.

Does it not follow, then, that we are most alive when our relationships are strong and meaningful? Once, when a lawyer of his time asked Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told him to love God with his whole being, and his neighbor as well as himself. Then he added: “Do this, and you will live.” [Luke 10: 25-28]. Vital relationships spell life. Jesus taught this continually. And, conversely, separation or alienation is a form of death. To be shut off from communication with other lives is a form of death. It has long been recognized that few forms of punishment are more cruel than solitary confinement. And one need not be physically removed from others to be alienated from them. When we neglect a friendship, it tends to wither. And it dies if we allow it to be broken by anger, hatred, jealousy, prejudice, resentment or some other negative emotion. God is on the side of life, which means enriched relationship. Every time a severed relationship is reestablished, we experience a resurgence of life like a rebirth.

Some of the truths of life are affirmed by a strong “no,” as illustrated in several of the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not covet, Thou shalt not commit adultery.” [Exodus 20: 13-17]. Back in 1631, a typesetter in an English publishing house which was engaged in publishing the Bible, inadvertently omitted the word “not” from the seventh commandment. If you don’t know which one that is go home and look it up, and you’ll understand why the whole edition was called back from the book stands and the typesetter was fired as soon as the error was discovered. There are times when negatives are affirmations. But the usual attitude of life is “yes” --- a positive attitude, a forward look and movement.

God is a god of action, and he is found where people are on the move. For God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Look, then, from death to life in Him.

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Let us pray: Merciful Father of our lives, we are aware that there is much in our lives that is wrong and that destroys rather than builds life. We fail to show mercy, and Thou are merciful. We continue in ways that injure others and limit living for everyone. Correct our ways and forgive our offenses. Let us learn of Thee, and let us be living expressions of Thy love, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, June 11, 1967.

Also at Waioli Hiu’ia Church, January 13, 1973.