4/14/68

Scripture: Matthew 13: 44-52; 28: 1-10.

It has been a long time since Jesus walked the earth in Galilee, through Samaria, and in Judea; in Nazareth and in Jerusalem and in other cities as well. Yet, after almost 19 1/2 centuries, his spirit still walks the earth, and we celebrate that truth! Once again, we have reminded ourselves about his ministry of teaching, preaching, healing, as we have gone through another Lenten season. So much of his action and of his teaching ministry was packed into the days after he set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem. Here, in our church, we have considered some of his parables as they apply to all living -- to our lives. This past week we entered Palm Sunday at a time when hope mingled with disappointment and despair. It was a Day of Judgment --- and continues to be for us.

On Thursday, we gathered about the table of our Lord in renewed dedication. And we welcomed into membership those who are prepared to share our fellowship in Christ. On Friday, we met with those of other churches in remembrance of the crucifixion and death of him whose name we bear as Christians. And now we join with all Christians everywhere in the glad proclamation: “He has risen! He is risen indeed.” Though he was dead, He yet liveth. We come to the Easter almost surprised at the joy it brings us. That joy echoes and reverberates all over the world in out-door sunrise services; in stately cathedrals, in thatched meeting houses, in improvised field chapels, in church buildings of all sorts and locations. Easter praises rise from lips that speak all the languages of the earth; from mouths of every racial strain; from men, women and children of every kind of class or condition.

A lot of life’s experience fades from memory in the ages that pass. And yet the Easter experience comes with freshness at each new spring-tide. We who live in April of 1968 proclaim anew: “God lives! Christ lives! I live!” And there are intimations of eternity in our faith. There are those who, this past week, have consigned the body of a loved one to the good earth out of which the Creator fashioned it. But the resurrection of Christ fans high our trust that the spirit of the loved one yet lives! And we are shaped and made whole by that faith.

Since Christ is risen, so lives and endures the spirits of his people. The mother who died early this week still lives, not only in some distant realm, but in the memory and lives of her children. Though his body lies inert and entombed in an Atlanta cemetery, the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. still lives and moves mightily in the earth. Though my own father’s mortal span ended more than 21 years ago, his integrity, his confident trust, his determination and strength of spirit still live for me.

It must have been the confident expectation of Jesus’ enemies that, once he was put to death, his troublesome influence would be ended. For a very short time, it may have appeared true that their world had returned to their kind of normalcy. The disciples of the Nazarene were scattered, stunned, leaderless, hopeless. But, after a few days, word spread among them that the Master was not dead. Very soon they were rejoicing in his living. And, after they had been stirred further by the presence of the Holy Spirit, they took up with enthusiasm the preaching of his way, his understanding of truth, his guiding presence. And the teachings which they remembered took on added meaning.

While he had walked and talked with them, he had repeatedly talked of the kingdom of heaven -- the kingdom of God or the realm of His righteousness. The idea of the kingdom of God was not new to the Hebrew people of that day. They had heard of it all their lives. For generations, their fathers had believed in it; prayed for it; confidently taught their children to anticipate it and expect it. The kingdom of God had become a commonplace of their religious lives.

That appears to have been the problem with which Jesus wrestled in many of his parables. He was not trying to get his hearers to believe in the kingdom of God --- they did believe in it already. He was trying to get them to awaken to the glorious meaning and worth of that kingdom. He was trying to tell them that what they had so long expected was actually happening before their eyes --- and they could play a significant part in the happening! Of course they did not believe him --- not because they doubted the kingdom of God, but because they had become so familiar with the idea that they no longer thrilled to its glory nor awaited its coming with eagerness.

Familiarity does not necessarily breed contempt. But it can, and will, breed something just as evil unless we are alert to it: Casualness, complacency. Don’t you wonder sometimes, which is the greater evil: open doubt or denial of God, or taking Him for granted with an air of familiarity? The writer of the book of Job seems sure that Job’s probing, doubting search was more acceptable to God than was the smug assurance of his friends who not only never doubted, but professed to have God’s thoughts neatly catalogued in their own minds. It is well to be on our guard lest, through the blindness that is born of familiarity, we lose something of the glory of the Christian faith in the kingdom of God.

Jesus tackled the problem of their understanding squarely, repeatedly, constantly, knowing what every teacher knows -- that few things are more difficult than to breathe new life into an ancient or hallowed idea. Both his aim, and the method he used, can help us to a new awareness of the meaning of the divine event we call Easter. What he did was simple; once done, it was so simple that it was settled; there was no argument about it. It had been an axiom of Jewish thought in Jesus’ day that God would create the realm -- the kingdom -- locate it on earth (in Palestine, to be exact, with Jerusalem as the capital). The Jews, as God’s chosen people, would be its citizens. The bonds of earthly oppression would be thrown off --- they would be freed from Greek, Roman and Egyptian threats. And all nations would look to this kingdom, this city, and the people, for guidance. Like the prophets before him, Jesus saw what was wrong with that dream. The ones who believed it never thought to ask whether or not they were fit for citizenship in that kingdom --- they just assumed that they were! And Jesus was saying, “Not so.”

Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure lying buried in a field. The man who found it, buried it again. For sheer joy he went and sold everything that he had and bought the field so that he could possess the treasure.

Here is another picture of the kingdom of heaven: a merchant looking out for fine pearls found one of very special value: so he went and sold everything he had and bought that pearl.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down in the sea where fish of every kind are caught in it. When full, the net was dragged ashore. Then men sorted them out, put the good fish in pails and threw away the worthless fish. That is how it will be at the end of time. Angels will go forth, will separate the wicked from the good and will throw the wicked into the blazing furnace, the place of weeping, wailing, grinding of teeth. “Have you understood all this?” he asked; and they answered, “Yes.” “When, therefore, a teacher of the law has become a learner in the kingdom of heaven, he is like a householder who can produce from his store both the new and the old.” And Jesus’ listeners must have got the point that all men must not merely discover the kingdom, but, in order to own it, or possess it, or be citizens of that realm, must accept it as the only really important thing in their lives, and be willing to give everything else for the infinite privilege of living in it.

This emphasis of our Lord upon complete commitment to the will of God, if we are to be fit citizens of His realm, is a kind of refrain in all of Jesus’ teachings. It sounds through the Sermon on the Mount, as he outlines the duties of discipleship. If you would live in the kingdom of God, he told his disciples, you must live in complete obedience to God’s will. You must overcome your hatreds, lusts, anger, greed. You must subordinate property to service and need. You must trust God so completely that there will be no room for fear and anxiety in your life. You must meet curses with prayers, and vengeance with forgiveness. Only then will you be ready to enter, and possess, the kingdom of God.

On another occasion, Jesus was stopped by a man whom we have come to know as “the rich young ruler.” This man wanted the most important gift open to a human being -- the gift of eternal life. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” he asked. Jesus studied him for a moment, then said: “You keep all the commandments, don’t you?” “Yes,” came the reply, “I have kept them all my life.” Something in the young man’s manner conveyed his great spiritual need to Jesus, who “looked upon him and loved him” as he threw open the doors of the kingdom to him. “One thing more you must do,” Jesus said. “You must get rid of all that separates you from God. Go sell all that you have and give it to the poor,” he advised, as if to say, “only those who have mastered the art of giving can receive the precious gifts of God. You must learn how to give lovingly to those in need as long as you have anything to give. Only then will you be so empty of pride, greed, selfish drive, and anxiety about the future that the love of God can truly enter into you and take possession of you and bring you the gift of eternal life.” It was too hard a choice for that young man, and he went away sorrowfully. His involvement in his kind of world was so deep that he simply could not exchange his great possessions for the “pearl of great price” --- even eternal life in the kingdom of God. [Mark 10: 17-22].

There is a puzzling comment in the New Testament which tells us that “the common people heard Jesus gladly.” [Mark 12: 37]. Harold Bosley says that any easy reading of that comment needs to be revised or enlarged to read: “The common people heard him gladly until they understood what he meant; then, like that rich young ruler, they went away disappointed and sorrowfully, for most of them were involved in many things they did not want to give over in order to follow him, or to enter into the kingdom, or to possess eternal life.”

Jesus met a wall of incredulity and unbelief in his public ministry. He talked to his own people about ideas, hope, dreams they had embraced for generations, with this difference: he blinded them by a vision of their glory, and frightened them by a frank statement of what must be done by any who would claim these benefits. The contemporaries of our Lord knew about the idea of the kingdom of God all right. They were too familiar with it to see its real ramifications. It is quite possible that we handle Christmas (and Good Friday), and Easter with a familiarity bordering on casualness and complacency. Do we take them so much for granted that we miss their glory?

Some years ago, at a church conference in a midwestern city, delegates faced a platform on which a big cross was flanked by two equally large candelabras. The cross was made of opaque glass covering fluorescent tubes that lighted the entire cross. Not long after the conference started, a delegate sent up a request to the presiding officer: “Dim the cross; it hurts eyes.” Maybe so. But there were other delegates who hoped that that request was not prophetic of the conference spirit! When the glory of Easter dazzles us, or bewilders or even frightens us, we turn away from it or seek to dim it to something easily bearable. Before we do so, it were well to take a good look at Easter even if it dazzles or hurts us. What is Easter, and what does it mean?

Several answers suggest themselves. The most obvious and truest answer is that Easter is the historic celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The New Testament voices no doubt of this. The snatches and fragments of the first sermons of preachers of the Christian faith, found in the book of Acts and the letters of Paul, are full and firm about the resurrection. Hear what they say: “But God raised him up.” [Acts 2: 24]. “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.” [Acts 2: 32]. “...whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.” [Acts 3: 15].

Scarcely 25 years after the resurrection, Paul said, in his letter to the Corinthians, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” [I Corinthians 15: 3-8].

People who like a tidy story containing no problems or ambiguities may feel that there is no coherent, convincing step-by-step account in the gospels of what happened. But it would be entirely superficial to let this apparent lack of unity blind us to what the writers were trying to explain: namely their own experience of the risen Lord. Preachers of the early church used this experience of the risen Lord as proof of three tremendous claims: (1) that he was the Messiah; (2) that God, through him, had overcome sin and death; (3) that whoever would rise with him must first die with him. The early church was a response to faith in the risen Lord. The early Christians did not understand all that it meant, nor do we. They did not agree on some pat interpretation of it. But they stood firmly on the fact of their experience of the risen Lord. And of this they were witnesses. The church, then and now, has been and must be a witnessing fellowship --- not just hearing of the faith but telling and sharing the faith --- not just by a few ministers but by all Christians.

There are many ways of describing what the resurrection of Christ means -- this experience of the risen continuing Christ which shines with dazzling brightness in the New Testament. It seemed to the early Christians as the stamp of God’s approval on all that Jesus had said and done. It was the triumph of God over death that man could become a new creature in Christ. Abundant life becomes possible here since it is the beginning of eternal life. Whatever be the doubts with which we wrestle, let them not blind us to the glory of Christ’s resurrection. Let us not treat it with such familiarity that we fail to perceive the pearl of so great price and preciousness. Let us be prepared to sell all else and to hold back nothing.

After a century of great missionary eagerness and reaching out over the earth with the message of Christ, some of the missionary forces of the world’s Christian churches met, some 30 years ago, in Jerusalem to discuss the place of Christian missions in the emerging modern world. Among many observations coming out of that meeting was this thoughtful statement: “A profound change has come over the motivation of missions in our times,” said the delegates. “Formerly we were stirred by the thought that people were dying without Christ; now we are moved by the thought that people are living without him.” Many live and die as though Jesus Christ had never lived, died, and risen again. We tend to shrink from the discovery that we must be willing to leave all else that gets in the way of following him. There is no cheap substitute for so vital a faith, and no bargain counter where it can be found.

It may be stated in several ways:

1) If our religious faith is to mean anything to us, it must mean everything to us.

2) If we try to limit our religion to part of our life, we lose it throughout all of life.

3) We can not collect vital Christian faith piece by piece. To be sure, it grows from immature beginnings. But even the beginnings must be wholehearted.

4) We can not buy Christian faith on margin of time or possession or life. Everything that we are must be laid on the line.

5) Vital Christian experience does not come by calculating, prudent approach. Either we fall love without reservation, or we miss it.

6) We must put everything into our Christian faith in order to get anything out of it.

The presentation of the claims of faith has a rough time of it in the world of our current experience --- just as it has had through centuries of life. Our spiritual plight can be put in terms of a single sentence: “We are citizens of an age that seems determined to write its obituary in terms of evasions rather than affirmations; of compromises rather than convictions.” It is to us, therefore, that the historic Christian faith comes with its sharp word of warning and hope: “You must come to terms with God as we see Him in Christ. You must choose, everlastingly, between your own way and His way.”

Once again we welcome, and celebrate, the joy of Easter. Let it be a time of glad acceptance of the risen Christ, and wholehearted commitment to his way, as citizens of the realm of God.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 14, 1968.

Also at Waioli Hui’ia Church, April 22, 1973.