Transcript

Hear the word of God for our lesson text and center this morning. I read the first two verses of the 12th chapter of Paul's letter to the Hebrews, which you will recognize as a summation of all that great 11th faith chapter. Therefore, with all this host of witnesses encircling us, we must strip off every handicap, strip off sin with its clinging folds to run our appointed course with steadiness. Our eyes fixed upon Jesus as the pioneer and the perfection of faith, upon Jesus who, in order to reach his own appointed joy, steadily endured the cross, thinking nothing of its shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. With this lesson as a background, let us take a journey together this morning. We are prone to carry too much baggage as we journey from place to place over the land. It is very difficult to take along just what we need, and we usually end our preparations with too much of everything. To know the need of a journey and prepare for that is an art few persons ever achieve. In the year 1935, a large group of people were standing on the docks at the foot of Canal Street in the city of New Orleans. A great cruiser was coming slowly to the docks while bands played, flags waved, and the whistles of other vessels added to the noise of the welcoming throng. It was the first visit of the cruiser New Orleans to the city for which she was named. Shortly after the vessel had tied up at the dock, a number of people went aboard for reception, and as the gold abrade of the offices flashed and the spick and span sailors went about serving as guides to the multitudes, it became a never-to-be-forgotten moment. Then a group found themselves seated at a table being served with sandwiches and drinks beneath the giant eight-inch guns of this mighty ship, and one man remarked cynically, well, this is good, having a pink tea party on a battleship. Now that seems a good description of the way we go through life oftentimes, carrying excess baggage, weighted down with useless cargo, engaged in occupations that do not have creative qualities, bound down by selfish indulgences, lights of mental and spiritual imaginations turned low. In the midst of all this, we come face to face with our obligation to society as a great evangelical church. It may be that we are cumbered about too much serving and have forgotten the first things of our faith and our commission. Certainly if the church is busy with tea parties, then have we lost the faith that would send us forth as a church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Religion has always suffered with too many tasks and has always flourished with the one great mission. Gideon and his army of 32,000 were not enough to defeat their enemy, but God and Gideon's 300 were quite sufficient. The wisdom and knowledge of the soothsayers, the astrologers, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes were not enough to save the people, but a carpenter of Nazareth, whose mission was to seek and to save the lost, was quite sufficient. The cumbersome machinery of a well-organized ecclesiastical church, rich in ceremony, schooled in law, and a storehouse of knowledge from the prophets was not enough, but an unlearned fisherman, unimportant tax gatherers, and wayside people with hearts charged with the power of a mission and a commission were quite sufficient to bring a lost world into the realm of the saving Christ and the glory of God. Is it not about time that we, as individual Christians and as a mighty church, remember our first commission and lay aside so many unnecessary things and press toward the mark for the prize? Truly, I think so. Today is race relations day in our Methodism. Isn't it about time that we strip off some of the prejudices from our minds on this question and begin to work it out realistically? I am as white as any and was born farther south than the deep south, and I want to say that the southern Christian white man needs to take the lead in this great problem before our nation at this time. All the Negro wants or needs is a fair deal, just and square in every way. Can't we grant that to him? Verily, I believe we can and we must do this. Then there is the matter of religious prejudice. It seems to me that it is later than we think on this question, and while Christian groups harangue one another, other philosophies of life are not asleep. Would it not be well to give ourselves wholeheartedly to the task of Christian cooperation and live in Christian unity? I speak not only to my own church on this matter, but to all groups of religious people as well, for certainly the day is here when close cooperation between different religious groups is vitally necessary. Certainly those of us who follow the teachings of Christ should find points of interest and similarity of worship that would draw our hearts and our minds closer together. There is another battlefront for which the church needs to strip for action today. It is the battlefront of war itself. Too long has the church let war alone until the moment of blasting shells and zooming planes when nothing could be done about it, but now that war has just ended and peace has come to the world, the church needs to enter the field for a just, durable, and lasting peace built on the foundations of goodwill toward all men. We need to strip away the popular fallacy that war is inevitable about every 25 years. We must strip away the untruth that war cleanses society and clears away the debris for an advancing civilization. It does nothing of the sort. The church needs to put on the whole armor of God and set out to establish peace on earth. Of course, we can learn to live together if we want to, and we must certainly want to. I heard a scientist say the other day that he knew of plans to strive to invent a means of communication so that all people could hear each other over the world in an understandable language. This would do the job of defeating war forever if the people could only speak to each other and know the minds and hearts of each other. The church has that message. Centuries ago, there was an occasion when a voice spoke to various tribes of people, gathered together, and all heard in their own language. So we have this message of the Christ today, and people of every race and creed and tongue can understand the language of the Christ if it be spoken to them. Let us strip away foolish misunderstandings about one another, and let us look unto him who will translate this message into terms that can be understood by all, and war will become impossible, and peace will be a lasting pattern of life, and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Indeed, the entire matter of the stewardship of life tells us that we need to divest ourselves of many things in order to be able to sing, like a mighty army moves the church of God, certainly with the danger flags flying, revealing that only 51 percent of our people is in the Christian faith of this nation. We need to put on the whole armor of God, and that whole armor of God is not weighty enough to hinder our warfare, but is buoyant and powerful and mighty. This whole armor of God, expressed in the words of the prophet of the long road, I am going to America. What for to do? To live to God, and to teach others so to do. What a great faith Asbury had. We watch this faith crossing the ocean, landing on the beaches of a new world, unafraid, daring the dangers of the wilderness, the solitariness of the mountains, and the hunger of the prairie in order to carry this gospel onward. His equipment was meager, his horse, his saddlebags, his Bible, his hymn book, the little bit of raiment he might be able to take with him, but what a mighty cargo he actually carried. Faith in God, love for his fellow man, a determination to plant the kingdom of God upon the earth. This mighty ship of faith, stripped for action, pushed back barriers, cleared jungles, drained the swamps of imagination, built a mighty highway of spiritual desire, and made the path plain for the wayfaring man of the world. But let us go back to our battle cruiser. I have before me the report of ship section, office of public information of the United States Navy. Shortly after my story, this cruiser put to sea, stripped for action. Flags were gone, except for the necessary symbols. Gold braid was locked up, and men were dressed simply and practically. Bands no longer played, and crowds did not meet the vessel with shouts. She has gone to battle. Now in my imagination, I stand at the docks once again, and I see this vessel coming home. There are great scars. Her bow has been shot away. There are marks of shrapnel in her side. Men have died on her decks and below decks, but she has acquitted herself gloriously in the cause for which she was built. I read the record of her deeds, and they carry no little weight in the achievements of our forces in a war that, thank God, is past. But I seem to see another ship coming in. It is the church. She too has gone forth to the conflicts. The blood of the martyrs of the ages stain her walls. The enemy has left great gaping holes in her, and on many occasions, the word has gone out that she was sinking. But each time, there seemed to be some unseen presence standing by, protecting, defending, watching. I see the church represented by a great apostle of old, a half-blind, rod-beaten, lash-striped, stone-marked man, an outcast from his original society, who had given up ceremony, denied the law, except as it came to its fullness in Christ, and whose knowledge was limited to a determination for Christ alone, who knew what it meant to have no man stand with him. This man, Paul, who had stripped himself until he would only say, I have kept the faith, thrilled the world of his day, and set the spiritual ideals and goals, as well as the theology for the Christian world to follow through the centuries. The church, represented by such men as Paul, comes marching triumphantly. What does she have with her? I see no great accompanying paraphernalia. Indeed, I can hear each one saying, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. O church of the living God, the time has come for us to strip for action, in the warfare of the spirit, that we may build the kingdom of Christ on earth, that kingdom not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Will you hear the call of the church in this hour?