2/27/55

Scripture: I Corinthians 13

Around the household, a familiar directive is “Shake well before using.” This admonition is part of the instructions on many a bottle of medicine. White ink, white shoe cleaner, and some hair tonics, require shaking before using. French dressing must be shaken well before using, if it is to be the proper blend of oils and flavors one desires on the salad.

Ted Gill suggests that there is a sense in which Christianity, that is to be vital, effective, real, should be “shaken well” before using, and shaken frequently. If we want our gospel full strength, and well balanced, we can not let its parts separate. We’ve got to agitate it. Christianity has been known to get into a rut wherein its “works,” that is the things the Christian does, are all-important -- the motions through which the Christian goes; the deeds he counts up; the disciplines to which he subjects himself, are exalted.

It was from such an extreme that Martin Luther revolted when he laid such emphasis on justification by faith. “The just shall live by faith,” he read in his Bible. [Hebrews 10: 38]. And he marked into its margin another word for emphasis, making it read: “The just shall live by faith alone.” Those who pursue Luther’s line of emphasis too narrowly are likely to come one day to a realization that creedal faith alone is sterile and self-defeating. For, “faith without works is dead,” says the wisdom of the ages. [James 2: 26].

We don’t want either faith or works. We want both faith and works; our faith showing us the work we ought to do, and our work showing forth the faith that is in us. We don’t want personal piety or Christian social ethics. We want a private righteousness that longs and works for a better world; and we want to do our best for a better world so that there will be room for private righteousness.

We don’t want a Christian testimony given by our lips or our lives. We want to witness our belief in our Lord by what we say and what we do. We don’t want our Christianity to “fall apart.” In order to keep it from separating; in order to keep it together, we’ve got to keep it well shaken.

Among those influences that keep our Christianity well shaken is a reminder of certain often-overlooked facts. Probably we Christians have to be well shaken -- jarred, jolted, disturbed -- by certain aspects of the gospel of which we must be reminded.

We dare not, save at our peril, tone down and tame our Christianity into something cut and dried. We must stop taking the gospel for granted, assuming that it is plain and obvious. In its beginnings, Christianity must have been regarded as astonishing, unpredictable by stolid standards, novel, shocking! Who could predict what those Christians were going to do next?

To get that exciting radiance into our Christianity, we’ve got to keep it well shaken; and indeed, to keep ourselves well shaken. If we have hidden, or covered, the colorful side of the gospel, we need to “shake it out” so that the right side shows.

What are the things that matter most to us? Power and position? Possessions? Food and clothing and housing?

Did these things matter to Jesus? He turned his back on power and position. He seems to have possessed nothing save the clothes he wore. Food may have been where he could find it. And as for house, “the Son of Man had not where to lay his head.” [Matthew 8: 20]. Most of these things which we value so highly, he appears to have valued only in secondary place. That ought to shake us some! Our everythings were nothings to him in the light of what he seemed to think important.

We exalt position, possessions, power. We live for them. We may fight for them; but even when we do not fight for them, we pay them tribute in our deference or in our jealousy. Not so with Jesus. He had his chance for them, and he turned it down. He deliberately turned these things down! Early in his ministry he had to decide what he really wanted. And he decided, right then, that what so many of us pursue was not worth his time or effort. Is not this the meaning of his wilderness dialogue with the devil as he was tempted there, following his baptism?

But why were these beckoning idols of the human mind counted so little by him? Are they not ingredients of the good life? Would not anyone be happy to have enough possessions so that he need not worry about food or clothes or housing? Do we not need power enough to be free and independent?

Did Jesus undervalue these things? Are we wrong in assuming that they are necessary and desirable? Surely he proved by his whole life that he wanted us to be fed and clothed and housed. What is more, he must be grieved that half, or more, of the earth’s total population is ill-fed, ill-clothed, and inadequately housed. Why should he have undervalued these things?

Well, for one thing -- and this is fairly obvious -- he rates these things low because they don’t last. They do not have endurance, stability. Jesus wants us to build our lives on things that last, that are stable and permanent.

Possessions, power and prestige, are all checked at the gates of eternity. It is literally true that, in the words of a well known drama -- “You can’t take it with you.” These things are earthbound. Not all of them will even go as far as the grave with us. There may be many intermediate failures along the way before the final failure of them. Even while we live, our prestige, power or possessions may vanish. And then what do we do? What point is there in living if all this be washed away?

The story is told of an incident on a southern dog-racing track. It seems that, in order to get the greatest speed out of the hounds who do the racing, mechanical rabbits are raced around the tracks in order to keep the dogs in pursuit. One day, in the midst of a hot race, something went wrong and one of these mechanical rabbits seemed to just explode and disappear. The poor dogs nearly went crazy! They lived for that chase, and now the point of their living had vanished. They just milled around, frantic, helpless, frustrated; hopeless, mixed up hounds for sure!

Some of the things we pursue so avidly don’t last, either. And even if we occasionally catch up to them they don’t satisfy, or satisfy only fleetingly. They don’t meet our deepest needs. And we are still anxious over other things, uncertain of the future, perhaps afraid of death.

When it comes to the profoundest needs, these material or measurable matters can not reassure us. If they could, the rich and the powerful and the famous should be the happiest of people. I doubt that they are. Someone observes that the densest concentration of psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts is found on Park Avenue, New York --- and they are all busy! No one needs them more than do the very ones who can afford them because they have, apparently, everything.

History demonstrates the same thing at other points. The decade of most enthusiastic social action in our own 1930s was that in which there was most concentrated effort to get the good things of life equitably shared. Yet the material things left a lot to be desired.

Is there an illustration of this in southern California -- the “Golden State,” flowing with orange juice and sunshine? It is so comfortable and convenient that thousands gravitate to it. Yet there is no place where there is a crazier assortment of “cults” than those invented and supported by the healthy “sunkist” citizens who seem not so satisfied with what they have.

We of the Christian persuasion clash head-on with the Communists at this point. There is a lot about their business that we don’t like. We abhor the blustering and bluffing of communism, its bullying, its bloody brutality. But most of all we hate its lies. And its biggest lie is that if everybody gets enough of the earthly material, everyone will be happy. That just isn’t so! And those who fall for that lie are dangerously duped.

These physical and social satisfactions are not enough. For, on top of the highest pinnacle of success or power or possession, the lonely soul still wants meaning in life, assurance of what is beyond, the companionship of the Eternal.

Thomas Carlyle remarked that, “Not all the Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe, in joint stock company, could make one shoeblack happy above an hour or so.”

George Buttrick says: “The famished Bedouin, finding treasure in the desert, cried: ‘Alas, it is only diamonds!’ Man in his deepest hunger cries, ‘Alas, it is only bread.’”

Both Carlyle and Buttrick were only paraphrasing our Lord when he said: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

But now, we can give our Christian attitudes another shake.

Some of us may feel that we have not been jolted very much by Jesus’ re-evaluation of what the world thinks is all important. There may be nothing new about that to us. We try to keep material things in their subordinate place. We know that with Jesus, and so with us, it is the things of the spirit that matter most. If we want to see real, enduring satisfaction, then look to earnest faith, and a sturdy defense of what we believe. These are the matters that are everything to the Christian, aren’t they? Isn’t that what the Bible tells us, and isn’t that what Christians believe?

Well, let us look again at what the Bible tells us. Can we not hear Paul at this point? “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

So even some of those high spiritual goals are nothing, according to Paul --- at least in some circumstances. What about philanthropy, charity, self-sacrifice? Can anything be higher? Is there anything more necessary now than for us to find the will and the way to give of ourselves and our goods for the health and restoration and happiness of our fellows in need?

And yet --- hear this --- “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

How can the Bible, and Paul in particular, look so suspiciously at what seems to be the highest and best in human action?

You know why! Probably you have seen the answer. For you can see what happens to faith and doctrine and preaching by themselves! Without love, eloquent witnesses and ardent believers create Inquisitions, or drown witches. They get in the way of the quest for truth, block cooperation among people of good will, break up congregations and embitter the members, kicking around the broken body of Christ in the very name of Christ!

You know that, in philanthropy, it is possible to give in a way that hurts more than helps, wounds rather than makes well, humiliates rather than heals, exalts the giver rather than raising up the recipient.

You know what is wrong with self-sacrifice by itself, too. Have you never seen a family in which parents have given up themselves, spent their very lives for the advantage of their children, to educate them and get them started; and then who have used their obvious sacrifice as a club, have tyrannized, dominated, dictated, crushed the hope and joy and life out of the family they claim to have served.

None of it is any good by itself. Even our spiritual “virtues” are nothing by themselves. They are like those material, physical and social things that are nothing by themselves.

To redeem them, Christ calls us to repentance, to right intention, to prayer, and to love. It is these imponderables that weigh most with him.

For of these is compounded his eternal values. Look you to him, and be satisfied.

-------------

Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, February 27, 1955

Wisconsin Rapids, September 27, 1959