8/2/53

Scripture: Read Luke 4: 1-19

I do not know how many years have seen the arrangement whereby the Methodist and Congregational churches of this city have worshipped together during two months of each summer. Certainly the plan was operating successfully before either of the present pastors of the two churches came here. It seems to me to be a good plan. We have a good experience of gathering together each year in approaching our one spiritual Father. Each pastor has a chance to relax from the exacting duty of sermon preparation and perchance to hear the preaching of another for his own inspiration. Each congregation tastes some of that variety. And services are thus maintained the year round for both congregations.

Of course the ministers are not the only ones who take vacations during the summer season. On mild summer days, and some that are hot(!), many of you folk have a few days, and some have weeks, of rest and change from your vocation. And you hope to come back to your daily tasks refreshed and with your powers renewed.

It may be that there is an art to taking a vacation which should have some attention. Some make of it a time of such strenuous effort that they have to get back home and on the job “to rest up” from their vacation. Of course variety has some spice. But spice alone is not a sufficient renewal of the powers we need to keep fit in our living.

If we are going to take a vacation, perhaps we ought to know how to do it, whether it be a day of Sabbath rest and renewal during the week, or whether a week, a fortnight or a month during the year. Some may wish to head for the cities, to see the latest theater offerings, to take in big league baseball, or just to mingle with the crowds. Some seize the opportunity to visit relatives or former neighbors and to renew the ties of friendship. Some escape to the wilderness, leaving behind such things as conventional clothing, routine schedules, radio, telephone, and newspaper. They want hills or streams or lakes or forest; mountain climbing or fishing or swimming or campfires -- something different from regular civilized routine --- a bit of change that will again sharpen the zest of living in a civilized world. Some visit distant lands and scenes, make familiar strange places, and less strange the people of another place on the earth.

Because we live in a state that invites one out of doors to lakes, rivers, and woods, perhaps most of us like the kind of vacation that relaxes us in the out of doors, and the “out of city,” for a while. It is good to get some place where one can stop thinking in the driven routine of habit and necessity, and where one may open the mind to new and different thoughts. Of course, getting outside into nature’s wilderness has both its temptations and its rewards. Some of us pay too little attention to the presence of either!

You recall that Jesus went into a wilderness, away from the towns and the conformity of people, to face certain temptations. In a sense, he did not need a vacation. He had just been baptized by a denizen of the wilderness, his cousin John the Baptist. He was full of the Holy Spirit. But some matters had to be cleared up in his thinking. And so, we read, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted or tested. There, for forty days, away from other people, he wrestled with his calling. What was he to do with the spiritual power which had been given him? Was he to use it for himself? Should it be expected to supply his need for food? Ought he to convince people by astonishing them with spectacular feats? Someone exercises power over other folk. Should he be one to seek such power and authority for however benevolent ends? These were some of the decisions Jesus had to reach, wrestling with the possibilities presented (he felt by the evil one) and fortified by the Father whose will was being unfolded to him. By the end of that stay in the lonely wilderness, Jesus had reached decisions that so pushed back the evil one, that (as the Scripture says) the devil departed from him “for a season” or “until an opportune time.”

Jesus went into the wilderness to meet temptation deliberately. We go into the out-of-doors to escape some kind of temptations -- those testings and the tenseness of modern, mechanized, materialistic, urban society. The mood itself is what one man calls one of the temptations which meet anyone who takes to the woods.

A man I once knew, who had served with the US Army during the first world war, used to talk about it a little. His duty had not been over-hard as the life of many soldiers goes. He had been kept at a post far from the combat areas. There had been some chances to swim in a warm sea and to do other things that made a soldier’s life comparatively pleasant. But his soul rebelled at the completeness of the authority exercised over the soldier under the rules of war. He used to say, jokingly, but with feeling, “If there ever comes another war, I’m going to hit for the tall timber.” Well, there did come a second World War, and he didn’t hit for the timber, but stayed on the job.

But his early comment is typical of some who seek the wilderness for a kind of personal isolationism --- sheer escape from what they don’t like, leaving the burden of decision and effort to others. Perhaps this escapism is one of the temptations we face if we take to the wilderness for a vacation. There is such a thing as taking a fishing trip for a relaxation that is a kind of training for the decisions and conflict we must engage. And that is better than mere escapism.

A second temptation of the out-door vacation is to let down, in resignation, to a kind of creeping laziness. Undisciplined living can be degenerative. Most of us need jobs that require regularity of hours and habit, because weak people can not hold themselves steady without these disciplines. A vacation may mean a respite or release from compulsion; but hardly from some kind of self discipline.

A responsible executive of an important transportation company told me with some amusement, about a mountain trip which he took together with his wife and some friends. After reaching one point and getting a night’s rest on schedule, he (being a definite executive type and, after all, the man who organized the affair) was busy with urgings and orders about getting breakfast over with, saddling the horses, and getting on the trail by a certain time. His wife, who had been both sheltered and exasperated by her husband’s constant “organization” said: “Why not forget about schedules for today? Do we have to start and stop by the clock? Let’s not be in such a hurry, and let’s do as we please for once!”

Being on vacation (and also being minded to teach her a lesson the hard way, or so he thought!) the big man said, “All right! We’ll each do as we please and see how it works.” So, with masterful self-restraint, he gave no orders, announced no plans. He entered no conference with the others to see what they planned to do (he wasn’t used to conferences anyway; he was used to giving orders!) Well, things got well snarled up -- as he knew (and perhaps even intended) they would. Breakfast dragged out as each one ate what and when he or she pleased, when able to get it. The horses did not get saddled -- at least for a long time. There was no agreement as to when to get on the trail, or even which trail to follow. The day wore on with nothing accomplished and no one getting anywhere.

It was a gleeful husband who related to me that his wife had finally said to him, “Will, you’d better take charge of things and see that something gets done!” So he said all right, and fell to organizing and bossing to his heart’s content. And after that day they traveled on a schedule!

Well, knowing him, I can understand his wife’s plea that they be not driven on a vacation! But the fellow had a point too. We may want respite from the monotony of our usual routine. But a vacation is less than a vacation if it is sheer laziness or is an anarchy of organization.

Early pioneers moved to western wildernesses, always aware that they were compelled to keep the wilderness at bay. Their clearings were made and maintained by sweat and toil. Otherwise, the wilderness would soon close in upon the cabin and grow over the clearing. So it is with a person.

Another temptation of a vacation in the woods or other out-of-door spot is that we who take such a vacation miss the fact that the grandness, or austerity or beauty or vastness is of God. Many of us talk about worshipping God in the out of doors. I suspect that most of us let it go at that. I’m skeptical of the amount of reverent awe generated in a game of golf or on a fishing expedition. The unliturgical language sometimes expressed when a ball slices into the rough or when a fish gets away is merely - and unhappily - coincidental.

Actually we are foolish to take for granted the loveliness, the invigorating possibility, the healing, the challenge of the out-of-doors. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” [Psalm 24: 1]. “The sea is his, for he made it; for his hands formed the dry land.” [Psalm 95:5]. Many a young person will tell you, if he is willing to discuss so personal an experience, that the loveliest part of his experience at Green Lake or other summer conferences is a beautiful out-door setting, in the late afternoon or early evening Vesper service. There, while eyes are filled with the loveliness of a sunset through trees and over water, he remembers that it is of God. And he is lifted in joyful dedication of his life to the beauty and the goodness and the rightness of his Creator.

But it does not always, or often, happen unless we make a point of our worship in the out-of-doors, by the morning watch, or other conscious reminder that this world in which we have found ourselves, and we who are in it belong to God; unless we give attention and time to worshipping Him in gratitude and in dedication. A towering pine tree may be a challenge to grow tall, straight, fearless and true in living, if we make it such a reminder. Running water may symbolize the cleansing and purity of the soul if we remind ourselves of that possibility.

Jesus found God very surely in the out-of-doors, away from the press of people. There he wrestled with temptation. There he purposely went for prayer and renewal. There he even taught and preached and healed. But it was because he sought to be with the Father rather than to escape from challenge.

I have seen a devoted teacher of young men return from summer vacation with unrestrainable enthusiasm, because he had used his vacation to fill up his soul.

A Presbyterian minister who lived next door to the house of my youth, served a church which gave him, at that time, two months of vacation every summer. He always took off for hills or streams, or great national parks. When he came back from such a re-creating experience he was filled not alone with robust physical health, and mental poise, but with spiritual illumination. His vacation literally fed his preaching for a whole year thereafter.

May your vacations and mine be the kind that conquer temptation; that reward and renew each of us as children, as men and women of God.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, August 2, 1953.