Transcript

In the Gospel of John, at the 17th verse of the 7th chapter, we have a saying of Jesus which sounds strangely modern. If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching. If he will do, he shall know. It sounds like our modern emphasis that we learn by doing. Nobody learns to swim by taking a correspondence course. He gets in and splashes. One does not learn to sail a boat merely by reading about it. The formula for the atomic bomb was first worked out on paper. But we did not drop one in war until we had first tried it out in the desert of the southwest. It is for this reason that we have laboratories in colleges. Similarly, law schools have moot courts where students can learn to argue cases by actually arguing cases. And medical schools have clinics where prospective doctors can learn to practice medicine by actually practicing medicine. Jesus suggests that something of the same sort is true in religion. We learn the truth about it by actually trying it out and seeing how it works. One of the commonest mistakes in religion, and one of the oldest, is to think that religion is merely a matter of right ideas. This goes back to very early times. The church drew up its creeds telling what it thought about many disputed matters. That was all right. But immediately people began to think that those who accepted these creeds were therefore Christian, and those who did not accept them were not Christian. And that was all wrong. The result has been endless argument about religion. Can you prove that there is a God? Was Jesus anything more than an extraordinary man? Can you prove that God answers prayer? Is there any real evidence for life after death? Endlessly the arguments go on, much the same today as they were centuries ago. And usually the Christian's case falls short of proof, for religion can never be proved. And usually his opponent assumes, illogically, that if the case for religion is not proved, that means that his opposite case against religion has been proved, which of course is not true. There is some justification for all this argument about religion, or at least for part of it. If anyone really believes that the religious interpretation of life is not reasonable, it is worthwhile to remove his intellectual obstacles if we can. A scientist is not going to try an experiment in his laboratory unless he has some reason to think that it may work. And similarly a man is not going to try religion unless he thinks that it may have something to offer him. But neither the one nor the other really learns the truth from his argument. It is only when he puts his idea to the test that he learns whether it is true. And it is here that Jesus meets us with his simple challenge. You will probably never win your argument, so why not just try it out and see whether it will work. It has often been noticed that Jesus, the greatest religious teacher of all time, almost never argued about religion. He offered no proof of God, or of prayer, or of life after death. But in his own experience he found certain things to be true. And then he challenged us to try them too and find in our experiences what he had found in his. The irreligious man has no right to his disbelief unless he has been willing to try the religious way of life, fairly and under the best possible circumstances, and can say that it will not work. And the religious man has no right to his faith except insofar as he has tried it in daily living, and can say that he has found it true in his own experience. That which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld and our hands have handled concerning the word of life, that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also. Columbus believed that the earth was round. Others believed that it was flat. And the argument got nowhere. But when Columbus decided to act as though the earth were round and to sail west to India, then his faith was justified by his works and he knew. Let me illustrate. We have argued endlessly about Jesus. But it is interesting that Jesus did not ask us to argue about him or to make him into a creed. He asked only that we try him out. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Follow me. I am the way and the truth and the life. He claims to be our leader, the captain of our souls. And it is perfectly safe to challenge anyone to try following him and then to watch results. Try making his will supreme in everything you do. At the beginning of the day, pause to salute him and pledge him your loyalty. Throughout the day, remind yourself that you are his man. You are trying to follow the way where he has led to see whether he really does give life and give it abundantly or whether that is just a pious phrase. As you go to your daily tasks, you are asking what his attitude toward them would be. How would he feel toward the people who might work for him and toward the people for whom he might work? Why is your work worthwhile from his viewpoint? How does it fit into his scale of values? If during the day you meet sudden disaster or exciting good luck, how do you think he would meet them? Remember, you are trying out his way to find out whether it actually works in life. This is a very different thing from submitting to Jesus' will because you must. And it is a very different thing from doing your duty for conscience sake. Life was for Jesus much more than submitting to the demands of conscience. It was a positive, thrilling, soul-releasing experiment in living. It determined his attitude toward everything else, his family, his money, his comfort and security, toward little children and weak women and brutal men, toward religious snobs and broken-hearted sinners. And all of it flowed naturally from the most important thing of all, his attitude towards God. Several years ago, a very intelligent and a very wealthy woman in New York, who had had no interest whatever in religion, was induced to spend 20 minutes a day reading the four Gospels which tell about Jesus and trying to picture what he would mean in today's life. In a little while, her own life was transformed, then the life of her home, and then the lives of her friends. And the experiment became so significant that she was induced to record it in a most interesting book. That challenge is always safe. I do not believe there is a person on earth, no matter how depraved and no matter how cultured and intelligent, who can spend 20 minutes a day thinking honestly and with open mind about Jesus without having his life profoundly changed. Or take another illustration. Do you believe in prayer? No one can count the endless arguments about prayer which have been indulged in. Is prayer reasonable in a world of cause and effect? Does not God know what we need before we ask him? Is prayer merely self-hypnosis? Where intellectual difficulties exist, arguments have done some good by removing them. But at best, the arguments have only gotten the rocks out of the garden and made planting possible. The arguments never produce a crop. It is only when we put it to the test that we find out how prayer works. A hundred years ago, any sensible man knew that an atom, too tiny even to imagine, could not be the source of any considerable amount of power. To be frank, it still seems a bit incredible to me, for I think my science is at least a hundred years behind the times. But no one doubts the power of atomic energy or of gravity or of x-rays merely because he cannot answer all the questions about them. Their power has been proved in experience in actual living. And so with prayer, not begging God for special favors, but real prayer, countless thousands have made the experiment, taking their lives into the presence of God in humble, reverent devotion. They ask God to pass his judgment on the lives they are living, and they try to see those lives from his angle, which takes a deal of moral courage. They acknowledge where they have failed. They honestly resolve not to continue making the same mistakes. They look to God for a sense of direction in living, that they may walk in his ways. They check their motives and their scales of value in the light of God's purposes. They draw down into their little lives the inspiration of an overwhelming love and of a never-failing companionship. And it works. Look at any saint coming from his tryst with his God. Note carefully the quietness, the strength, the sureness with which he goes to his daily tasks, and you know that he has found something in the silence. I have often wished that I could have seen the look on the face of Jesus as he came down from the mountain after a whole night alone with his God. Again, people argue endlessly about belief in God, or more accurately, belief that God exists. And all such arguments have their value if they can show the inadequacy of a purely materialistic interpretation of the universe. But God is never found that way. In our day, as in the day of Job, one does not by searching find out God, for God is not to be found at the end of an argument or in the bottom of a test tube. Jesus did not try to prove the existence of God for the same reason that Edison did not try to prove the existence of electricity, because he had found him as the greatest force in life. And those who are willing to try it, as Jesus tried it, will find what Jesus found, that it is possible to interpret all of life in relation to God. We can wake in the morning reminding ourselves that this new day is God's day. We have lain us down and slept, and we have arisen because he has sustained us. The beauty which we see in each day, beauty of the modest wildflower, or the breathtaking glory of a sunset, or a lovely face, these remind us that the God who made them must be a wonderful artist. The unfailing order of the laws of nature remind us that we can depend upon God. The people whom we meet, whether great or small, black or white or yellow, are all thought of as God's children, and each means something special to him. The love which we feel for our loved ones is possible because we are a little bit like God himself. We love because he first loved us. The voice of conscience is but the pressure of his hand trying to turn us from dangerous paths. All is God. It is an art, this interpreting the daily life in terms of God, and sometimes it is even something of a game. A friend of mine used to try to keep a space between himself and other people as he walked the sidewalks so that he might imagine that God was walking there beside him. A prominent New York preacher has adopted the entrances to subways of all places to remind him of God's presence in the busy life of the city, and every time he enters one of them, he is conscious that God is there in the confusion. Luther used to put an empty chair in front of him and imagine that God was sitting there, as, of course, he actually was. Jesus found God in wildflowers and the wilder birds of the air. Finally, the day which began with God also ends with God. In a moment of devotion, we offer the day to him as our living sacrifice, imperfect as everything human is imperfect, and we drift off into quiet sleep knowing that the night and the light are both alike to him. If any man will do the will, he shall know of the teaching. All really significant doctrines were discovered before they were written. They were facts of experience before they were formulated as doctrines, and the only way to prove them is to reduce them again to experience. Once a body of theologians tried to argue with a beggar on the streets about the nature of Christ. The beggar was bewildered, but Jesus had just cured him of his blindness, and he fell back upon the one unanswerable argument, Whereas I was blind, now I see. Against such facts of experience, there can be no arguments.