11/26/50

Scripture: Hebrews 11: 1-16

Text: Hebrews 11b: ... "he (Abraham) went out, not knowing whither he went."

The greatest single need of our time is faith. This is true of all times, but we are preoccupied with our time. Many allow themselves to be overwhelmed by an anxiety complex, forgetting that streets do have a foundation, houses do shelter, and a civilization is upheld by the belief of its citizens.

There walk across the pages of the Old and New Testaments gallant and brave spirits who have about them an air of dash and color, people who faced misgivings with a divine nonchalance. They ought to be found not alone in the pages of ancient writ, but on the leaves of today’s book. Perhaps they are to be found, if we look about! Members of Congress believe that crime has no proper connection with government, and a committee starts rooting out the facts which may be used to clean up a sinister and wide-spread civic stench.

Three seminary students became convinced that New York City’s Harlem district ought not be surrendered to Vito Marcantonio’s communist front organizations. They move in with sidewalk services, store front churches, neighborhood committees, with frank and working friendliness. They go the communists one better -- a lot better. Backed by several Christian denominations - our own among them - they begin to return the church and Christian ideals to a human area from which churches had all but moved out.

A person who had given a lifetime of service to people faced the end of life by an incurable physical ailment. And it is inspiring to hear the stricken one’s voice say calmly: "I’m not afraid of what lies ahead for me. And I have been glad for the work I was permitted to do among people in this community." There are folk like this. There need be more!

1) Our times are endangered by those who become so overwhelmed by frustration that they come to feel they are of no consequence or significance. Great movements are surging through the world! It takes more than the frustrated ones to advance them! It matters tremendously whether we live or die, sink or swim!

Clarence Darrow was sitting next to a clergyman one evening in Washington. Perhaps his company irritated the eminent lawyer who had so little use for religion. During the conversation Mr. Darrow turned rather sharply and said: "I will give you my definition of life. Life to me is an unpleasant interlude of nothingness." Well, successful as he was in the practice of criminal law, and ridiculous as I believe to be some of the positions defended by William Jennings Bryan, I will choose the positive faith of Bryan as my inspiration rather than the hopeless, cynical, pessimism of Darrow.

We are born to fly like eagles, not to act like sparrows. We must have faith in ourselves.

2) Then, too, we must have faith in one another. This is a time when airwaves and news print sputter with insinuations, accusations and counter-accusations. Charges and counter-charges are as numerous as cranberries in the bog in October. This is the day of the character assassin. At a time when we ought to be holding fast to one another, building mutual trust and closing our ranks to show the world that people live together for the common good in a democracy, we give the world the impression that we may tumble apart in brittle groups, each seeking advantage at the expense of others. The enemy ought to have no such aid and comfort.

Somehow the world, much of it, gets the impression that there is serious division and distrust in the place where one should least expect it -- in religion. What was meant to unite men divides them. What should draw the churches together further estranges them. Of course the churches are hurt, and hurt others, by mutual distrust one of another. There are differences in governance, belief and manner of worship between churches. I maintain that some of these differences, rather than killing the Christian spirit, actually engender spiritual vigor. They can be contributions to the common Christian cause that might wither from too much conformity without the stimulus of diversity. But there is the great core of belief in God that is the common expression of all Christian faith in every church. There is the devotion to Jesus Christ and his saving leadership.

The parade through our city streets yesterday, despite the bitterness of unseasonable weather, was a visible evidence of some great truths we all hold in common in the several churches of Wisconsin Rapids. [consisting of National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA].

3) Further, we need faith in a better world. This need is one of the more sobering facts of present day life. The disillusioned will say, "Good will is a beautiful idea, but it won’t work; kindness is a gracious virtue, but you must never expect it to accomplish anything." Many have come to the conclusion that one must not only accept things as they are, but never expect to alter them or accomplish anything better.

Hunger and pain and misery and ignorance will always have a toehold. An aging man exclaims: "Thank God I’m old, and won’t have to face this hopeless world much longer." Worse yet a student says to another student, "Why all this fuss about building a Christian order? Tomorrow comes the revolution when G. I. Joe and Ivan will sleep side by side in the frozen trenches of Alaska or Siberia."

We have a way of boasting of our country’s might. We suppose ourselves to be the most powerful and the wealthiest nation on earth. Let us beware the boasting. But we do have amazing resources of human and natural power, of know-how, skill and genius that are the marvel of the earth’s people. We ought not be so unstable, so hysterical, so uncertain as we often are.

We were sure of ourselves at the beginning of the century. In every way, on every day, we were getting better and better. Then we realized that there was so much warring among the nations of the world that, we are told, if all the people of the North American continent were swept away by some cruel reversal of nature, they would not equal in number the people who have died by reason of the wars fought in the first half of the 20th century!

Do we believe that nothing better can come to pass? Does the road have no turning? Someone has observed two perils which have always confronted civilization. One is the peril of prosperity; the other is the peril of adversity. The peril of prosperity is arrogance. The peril of adversity is cowardice. We are in deep need of faith - the kind of belief that engenders courage.

In every century, and country, there have been men of vision and understanding and imagination who have led men from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light. They addressed themselves to the building of a better day. They refused to accept evil issues as final. They sometimes burned their bridges the better to follow the stars.

Abraham -- went out not knowing whither he went.

Moses -- led his people out of their meager security in Egypt to wilderness - 40 years - before the promised land.

Jesus -- led his disciples through danger to freedom and vitality of spirit.

Abraham’s world was rotting at the core - tumbling apart. He committed himself to adventure -- where there was a future for civilization. He dedicated himself to vision. He became a restless wanderer. Only land he ever owned was his grave.

Every individual who has dedicated himself to some high purpose belongs to that gallant group who will not accept the disillusionment of the status quo as permanent, but who, by faith, lay hold on something better, something right. One thinks of the day when Pastor Robinson knelt on the cobblestones of Leiden with the embarking Pilgrims, assuring them "that God has yet greater things to reveal of himself." Life on that basis - though dangerous - becomes a thrilling adventure.

Life is full of hazards. ... It may well be that in some least-expected hour some heartbreak will explode in your face; some anguish catch up with you; some evil seek to rub you out. These are risks to be accepted, eventualities to be dealt with when they arise.

The world spends part of its time praying for deliverers; and the other part nailing them to a cross. But one cannot bargain with faith. When one says "up to this line I will believe, and no farther," faith stops at that point and one lives with mere expediency. The life that protects itself behind iron curtains has no future! Iron curtains of any sort are symbols not of faith but of defeatism. "No man having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." [Luke 9: 62].

How acquire this living faith? -- Not with economic determinism and Karl Marx; not with new tools of mechanical power of multiplication of physical energy. But with Lincoln, who maintained that things are never settled until they are settled right. Or with Our Lord, who insisted that not by physical might but the word of God, the spirit of God -- comes the right hand of power -- the power that endures.

The last word is not on Corsica but in Galilee; not with Pilate but with Paul; not with Judas but with Jesus.

( Rev. Kenzo Tajima -- pastor of the Japanese Union Church of Pasadena in 1942. Sermon before evacuation, "New Pilgrims."

"Lean on God’s promise to Abraham, that was spiritual.

"There is not the slightest doubt that God’s redeeming work is going on today. None is left out.

"God’s plan applies to individual groups. It is redeeming.

"Pilgrims must leave worldly possessions behind.

"Let us keep hope; God never rests.

"Let us not be slack in love; ‘Love never faileth.’ [I Corinthians 13: 8]. It is always constructive.

"The only effective fight we can now put up against war is love."

 We can act as though we have nothing to lose. We can live as though nothing can throw us. We can write as though angels guided our hands --- sing as if choirs invisible chanted in our souls.

"Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God." [Hebrews 11: 16].

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, November 26, 1950.