3/29/53

Scripture: (Read Luke 18: 31-43)

We are well accustomed, on the Sunday before Easter Day, to a review of Jesus’ triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. We make a considerable celebration of it. Added to the celebration of millions of other Christian folk all around the world, the occasion takes on considerable significance. I suppose that actually the history that was contemporary with Jesus’ ministry on earth took little notice of that little procession. It was a local event, sufficiently noticeable to arouse the determined disapproval of the religious authorities of Jerusalem. But it was not pretentious parade; else the Roman officials would have taken note (as government does) by requiring the usual permits and precautions.

A group of friends of the Nazarene Teacher, and a considerable gathering of the common folk who like a procession lined the way along which the little party came; Jesus riding upon a donkey and others walking along with him. There was some shouting, waving of tree branches, and even laying of coats paving the path, as some remembered an ancient prophesy that their Messiah would come in such lowly circumstances. But it did not amount to a popular uprising. One wonders if it would have made a news headline anywhere except, perhaps, right there in that city. That little procession became a Triumphal Entry into the ancient city chiefly in the after years when its significance has been assessed in the view of intellectual history and religious experience. For with the passing of time, the event does become truly a procession of triumph.

But today I want to think back to what led up to that procession. We read the story of it in the three synoptic Gospels -- Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Luke’s account the story of it appears in the 19th chapter. Away back in Chapter 9, we read that Jesus “set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem.” And in between, there is a lengthy account of his ministry of teaching and healing and assurance along the way. Phillips Brooks, the great American preacher of the late 19th century, used to say that every true life has its Jerusalem, toward which it is going. Because I think there is a significant spiritual discernment in that statement, I want to talk today about “Going to Jerusalem.”

A person hardly comes really alive until he begins to be drawn toward that spiritual city of his destiny. One begins to live completely in the present when he feels a significant future before him. It seems necessary to our nature. The lower animals seem content to live each moment of each day, anticipating a little segment of the future only by instinct, as when the birds begin their migration. But man has a far more significant urge to live for a mighty destiny. Our nature must always look forward. So every true life has its Jerusalem to which it is going. The call to that city is not heard so clearly or insistently at first. But it becomes clearer as we go along.

One man’s Jerusalem may be his profession; to another it is his faith; to another it is his cause. To some it is a purified society in which life will be lived worthily. If one could stop the student at his books, the saint at his prayers, the philanthropist at his planning, and say to each one, “What does this mean? What are you doing? What is it for?” one would discover toward what Jerusalem each is headed. The person who is going to no Jerusalem is without the human health the Creator intended for him.

The finest exhibition of this is seen most perfectly in Jesus. His manhood stands out the more vividly as he sets his face toward Jerusalem. The tendency began at his birth and it never ceased until he gave up his life on a cross outside the city. Angelic music came to the souls of men about Jerusalem at Jesus’ birth in the neighboring village of Bethlehem. Egypt, where they carried the young child to escape mortal danger, was on his way to Jerusalem. Life in the carpenter shop was on that way. The visit to the temple, when he was twelve years old, was on the way (though he had come that time in seeking and learning rather than in spiritual determination as he later came.) He was baptized and consecrated to the life-long journey to Jerusalem. “For this cause was I born. For this cause came I into the world,” said he. These words and these events are like footprints of his along the way to Jerusalem. At last he came there, taught in the city, cleansed the temple, instituted his Last Supper, yet a continual feasting of spirit. And in the tragedy of Good Friday, he laid down his life. He had reached Jerusalem at last. The most intense, persistent purpose the world has ever seen had reached completion: Jesus had come to the Jerusalem of his intention, and mankind was shown its salvation.

With Christ as the great image and pattern before us, let us speak now of the Jerusalem of every life, the tendency of every life to come to some appointed result, and of the struggle by which it is reached.

1) We may say that any man’s life result will consist of his character plus his circumstances. Both of these terms are vague; look as deeply as you will and you cannot read one’s character perfectly. Study his circumstances as carefully as you may, yet you cannot tell precisely what will happen. For these two causes are not entirely clear. The Jerusalem toward which he is traveling does not become entirely distinct in advance.

And yet it is best to know that both of these elements do enter into the decisions of a man’s life and neither may be left out of consideration. Try to leave out a man’s character, and think that his destiny is controlled only by circumstances, or environment as we say, and you become a watcher with little purpose of creating life’s drama -- only the power to observe it. On the other hand, leave out circumstances, or environment, thinking only of character, and you set a premium on willfulness.

Here is a little fellow of thirteen years or so, lively, tough in mind and body, full of the zest of living. Stricken by a crippling disease, he believes at first that he can make his legs work by sheer force of will. Finally he accepts the circumstance that probably he will not make those legs work again. And so he sends a request to his father to get one of those wheel chairs that can be folded and put in the car, or can be moved all around the place by himself, with him in it. And he sets out to become a great force like Franklin Roosevelt, or Robert Louis Stevenson.

There in that village is a man, poor in circumstances, but full of enterprise. His life will be made up of a constructive mixture of both those elements.

Here is a fellow who is essentially a meditative soul, but pushed into the press and hurry of a 20th century city. His life will be compounded of both these elements.

He who would begin to discern his Jerusalem must know both of these forces that shape his destiny. You can not simply fling yourself into any form of action, just because that action is going on around you, without considering where and how you particular attributes can fit in. On the other hand, you can not just study yourself and demand that an age and a place fit itself around your own particular aptitudes.

This past week, the young folk of Lincoln High School had an extraordinary opportunity to consider a wide variety of vocations to which they may wish to apply their lives. Those who make best use of this step in assisting their thinking and planning will consider both the need in society for the vocation that attracts them, and their own interest and ability which can be further trained to meet that need.

Columbus discovers American partly because he is Columbus, with a consuming curiosity to see if there be a passage to the orient in a direction opposite to that traveled for generations. But partly he discovers America through the circumstance that navigational science, and geographical knowledge and speculation had arrived at a point where he could embark on such a venture.

The pilot of a Northwest Air Liner flies it partly because he has the coordination of body and the interest of mind to take it up. But he flies it partly because the Wright Brothers finally succeeded, where a host of others had failed, in getting a heavier-than-air machine off the ground; and because countless other discoveries and improvements have provided the circumstances for a modern flight -- circumstances that did not even exist 50 years ago.

Martin Luther and John Calvin kindled the Religious Reformation, partly because they were true hearted men of great integrity, partly because the tinder of ecclesiastical corruption had reached a point where it was really inflammable. Jan Huss had died before their time. Others came later -- all good men and true. But the circumstances were right to combine with the personal earnestness of Luther and Calvin to make the cleansing fires of Reformation burn most brightly.

But how can one do anything about either himself or his circumstances? Do you, or I, make either? Are you of so much consequence? Am I? Or are we of so much consequence that we can determine our own Jerusalem? Probably somewhere these extremes lies the humility which recognizes that with God all things are possible and that He has appointed some kind of Jerusalem for you --- and yet you have the freedom, under God, to do some choosing, and deciding.

Jesus calls himself: “Him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world.” God made the world; God made Jesus; the world needed - and still needs - a Savior; Jesus became a Savior - and is a Savior. The two met there in Jerusalem, the sacred city -- the Saviorhood and world’s need of being saved.

For you and me (as it was for Jesus) to get a view of our Jerusalem, gets a lot of things straightened out and removes some indecisions. It adds purpose to our living.

A friend comes to you and says: “Do this with me.” It may be an invitation to something that, to some other, is precisely the right thing to be done. But you quietly reply, “I cannot.” He says, “Why not?” and you say, “I am going to Jerusalem” -- your Jerusalem, your goal and mission.

2) And your power of purpose is strengthened; for you are now ready to struggle and to sacrifice, to endure hardship, perhaps pain, in order to go ahead. A vision inspires you. You will not be dissuaded by fear.

Do you recall what Jesus said of himself and his band of followers? “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. And all things which are written concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated and spitted on, and they shall scourge him and put his to death.” [Luke 18: 31-33]. What a catalogue of miseries! Yet they deterred him not a bit.

Some such steadfastness of purpose is what enables people to go ahead through danger and hardship, through suffering and even death toward their own Jerusalems. Had Jesus turned back to safety we would have said, “Yes. Fine man! Quite a teacher in his day. Too bad more people didn’t listen.” But going up to his Jerusalem makes him different! He becomes the Savior of us and of all time.

O let us not pray for easy lives! Let us pray to be stronger people! Let us undertake tasks equal to our powers! And pray for powers equal to our tasks! The doing of your work may then be no miracle. But you will be a miracle. And you shall wonder at yourself that so much fullness has been given to you, by the grace of God, as to make this Jerusalem of yours accomplished.

It is dreadful thing to suffer except in doing duty. But to strive, to struggle, even to suffer there is glorious.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, March 29, 1953.