The Cross On The Mountain

[Soldier4Christ]

The Cross On The Mountain
The Beatitudes in the Light of the Cross

1959  Sherwood Eliot Wirt

From the Jacket of the Book

The Beatitudes from the time of their utterance have remained a challenge to men's minds and hearts. Here they are viewed in the light of the Cross, not so much as descriptions of the "ideal" life as of the "crucified" life. Each of the eight sayings is treated in a separate chapter. Because Dr. Wirt conceived them first as meditations, he has avoided the scholarly or homiletical approaches.

   Dr. Wirt strikes his keynote on the opening page, in discussing "Blessed are the poor in spirit": "Many of us learned the words as children and grew up with them. They are lovely words with a comforting sound, words that seem to promise much and to exact little .... When we examine our Beatitude more carefully, we begin to make discoveries .... It becomes evident that we cannot divorce the teachings of Jesus Christ from His life."

   This book will open new vistas to those seeking an understanding of the Beatitudes and of the Christian life.

Sherwood Eliot Wirt is founding editor of Decision magazine and the author of Billy: A Personal Look at Billy Graham. A long-time associate of Billy Graham, "Woody" (as his friends call him) formerly served as a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force, pastored several churches, and holds Ph.D.'s in theology and psychology from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (Class of '51). In 1978 he founded the San Diego Christian Writers Guild. Born in 1912, he resides in Bothell, Washington. The Cross on the Mountain is the 2nd of 46 books by Sherwood Wirt.

Note: It's fascinating to consider that at the time he wrote this book, "Woody" was very familiar with the cross at Mount Soledad in San Diego [La Jolla], since it was constructed five years earlier and Woody frequently visited San Diego. Thus, I'm featuring at the top of this page, a late-afternoon snapshot of the Mount Soledad Cross taken by my wife when we came there in the Spring of 2005. Woody seems to set this silhouetted Cross to words on page 58: "Beyond Calvary shines the Resurrection..... It is a straight line to God. It leads home."

— Douglas Gwinn       

Forward

   IT IS RARE when one finds writing of the caliber offered in this book. It is very rare in books about Jesus Christ.

   Sherwood Wirt has done his subject justice. Not only in the strong, clean literary style, but in spiritual insights into the very heart of Christ, and what it means to be His follower.

   Here one finds a lovely balance between the author's seeing and the expression of that sight.

   If the old, stereotyped religious clichés have slipped over the reader's daily conscience until they no longer leave any impression, this book is required reading.

   Jesus Christ will step from its pages, alive out of the tomb forever, as He really is, stripped of antiquity, approaching the reader with the same great, open, eager heart that broke on Calvary for love of the whole human race.

— EUGENIA PRICE         
(Author of 43 books)             

Preface

   THE OPENING VERSES of the Sermon on the Mount, known as the Beatitudes, are sometimes taken to be simply descriptions of the "ideal" life, a life of good character and good conduct to which we should all aspire. Yet everything jesus said was colored by His sense of personal mission on behalf of mankind, which issued ultimately in His vicarious sacrifice on the Cross. These pages seek to interpret the Beatitudes not so much as descriptions of the "ideal" life as of the "crucified" life. If the scholarly and homiletic approaches have been avoided, it is because the chapters were first conceived as meditations rather than as treatises or sermons.

   I should like to express appreciation to a large number of people whose influences, prayers, and practical suggestions have helped to shape the book, but must be content to mention only Mrs. Alexander J. Barclay, Mrs. Lewis H. Monk, who typed the first draft, and Mrs. Ronald LaBuff, who prepared the final typescript; as well as my wife, Helen Winola, who shared lovingly and indispensably in the labors throughout.

   My prayer is that God will use this book not only to stimulate and challenge the reader, but to bless him as well.

S.E.W.

[Soldier4Christ]

Beyond the Rope's End

Blessed are the poor in spirit:
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

   MANY OF US learned the words as children and grew up with them. They are lovely words with a comforting sound, words that seem to promise much and to exact little. How easily they roll off our tongues! As if we were saying, "If you are very polite, you will have an extra slice of cake with your ice cream," or, "If you get to work punctually at eight each morning, you will probably marry the boss's daughter and be taken into partnership."

   When we examine our Beatitude more carefully, however, we begin to make important discoveries. We find that the words do not mean at all what we have supposed them to mean. When we study them in the light of the One who spoke them, it becomes evident that we cannot divorce the teachings of Jesus Christ from His life. What He is actually doing is sending up a rocket in this verse to signal the direction to the Cross of Calvary. In doing so He is laying down a basic principle of the Kingdom of God.

   What is poverty of spirit? Jesus does not in any sense suggest (for all the insinuations of such critics as Celsus and Nietzsche) that weakness is preferable to manliness. To be poor in spirit is not contrary to being high-spirited; rather it is the opposite of spiritual pride. Poverty of spirit means that the ground of our self-sufficiency has been removed from under us. It means that our resiliency is gone, that we have given up assuming that "everything is going to turn out all right." It is the cry of dereliction from the Cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" It is the bitter sobbing of Mary in the garden. It is the heart upon its knees.

   Jesus is telling us something we very much need to know: that there is no need for us to try to "save face" before God. In the things of the Spirit it is important to be honest and frank. One of the hardest things our Lord had to bear was the criticisms of those who were making capital of their churchmanship. Such persons desired their piety to be "seen of men." There is no pride like spiritual pride. No matter how great our evangelistic zeal or how arduous our labors in the church kitchen, we may claim no heavenly trophies for our attainments. As Christians we are aware that even these duties may develop into tumors to draw off the divine life seeking to flow into us; that the only spiritual progress really possible for us is toward the Cross, and that is toward spiritual poverty.

   The secret of the Gospel's power is that it alone can deal adequately with the whole matter of pride and humility. It exposes the falsity of those who pretend to be spiritually rich. At the same time it undercuts the false humbleness of those who, like Dickens' famous Uriah Heep, use their obsequiousness as a vehicle to foster their pride. Christian humility is not merely modesty; it is the stark humiliation of Golgotha.

   The more we concentrate our gaze on the Cross, the more clearly this Beatitude speaks to us. The way of the Cross is not a velvet carpet for a prince of the Church, nor is it a Via Appia for the triumphant conqueror. It is a poor way, an unfriendly and deserted way, soiled with blood, sweat, and tears. It is a way that breaks down even a man's spiritual vitality, and leaves him at the end of his tether. It leads not to self-realization but to self-sacrifice; to the wolves and the Roman execution squad. To walk this way is not to be filled with the Spirit but to be emptied by the Spirit.

   When we have reached that crucifixion point — call it high or low — when we recognize that we are unprofitable servants, the divine blessing is released. How else could God work? He cannot fill our cups with the Water of Life until they have been drained of all other waters. That is why the blessed ones are those who are poor in spirit. It is their poverty, their insolvency, that gives them the capacity for taking on treasure. Who enjoys a meal when his stomach is already filled? "The righteous have no need of a physician." Until a man's hands are empty he cannot reach for the hand of God. There is only one way to the resurrection and that is by way of the Cross.

   A day of penitence and sober reflection, therefore, could be the equinox of God's springtime in our lives. It was as he sat in dust and ashes that Job saw the Lord. What Christ is teaching us is more than a "principle of the Kingdom," it is the secret of life itself.

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   As soon as we seek to apply the principle in our daily walk, it becomes apparent that our first need to be "poor in spirit" is not in our relations with each other but — surprisingly enough — in our prayer life. All men are children of their times, and while we twentieth-century people are more conscious of the sin and tragedy of life, perhaps, than our forebears were, we are not aware of how our era is debasing prayer. Prayer has become a weapon in the cold war. It has become a slide rule for financial investments. It has been invoked to avoid medical expenses and to heighten luxury. It has been made into an escape hatch for thwarted ambition. Many people have callously and blasphemously tried to manipulate God through prayer. They have sought to make a "science" of prayer, comparing it with electricity, speculating upon its "wave lengths" and "vibrations" and treating the Holy Spirit as if He were a kind of space-station transmitter.

   Perhaps it is natural that in a century of exploitation and propaganda there is danger of prayer becoming a racket. Just as scientists have launched their fabricated moons in an effort to gain a purchase on space, so "religious" people are exporting prayer into the unknown in the hope of obtaining a favorable trade balance with Something Out There. More than one Organization Man, impressed by the boom in religion, has sought greater efficiency for his business by inviting God to sit with his board of directors.

   The question seems not to be, "What is God like?" or "How may I seek His face?" but simply, "How can I control Him?" Thus in addition to providing an inexpensive psychiatry, prayer becomes modern man's technique for outfoxing the hounds of his own materialism, and his insurance program against the wrath of God.

   The Beatitude changes all this. It makes clear that our prayers are to begin neither with wishing nor with scheming. True prayer begins with nothing. "A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Psalm 51:17). It begins in Gethsemane with the words of Jesus, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine." A missionary tells of visiting an Indian woman in the last stages of cholera. Her body was wasted and her breathing was labored, and he had only a few minutes. With great effort he taught her to repeat in the darkened room the beginning of the Twenty-third Psalm, "The—Lord—is—my—shepherd—I—shall—not—want." That is the beginning of prayer!

   The very thought of trying to manipulate God is profane, and should strike terror into the honest believer. Here surely it is true that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Such "praying" is always childish and self-answering, but it can be outgrown. The moment we give over our immature efforts to use the Almighty for our own ends, and begin to yearn for Him for His own sake, our boldness returns. When a man lifts up empty hands to God they become holy hands.

[Soldier4Christ]

Because we spend so little actual time in prayer, we are tempted to look at it as a professional skill rather than simply a conversation with God. We even think it is performed at its best by professionals in proper garb. A corrective is needed here. Ezekiel once had a vision of wheels, but his wheels were not the leaders of the Church. Prayer is not ecclesiastical politicking. Today, as in the days of Moses, the mighty man of God may be a Church leader and he may not, but it is certain that if his prayer has prevailing power he is not a spiritual giant, he is a spiritual dwarf. He is the poor in spirit. Like Peter, he is "broke" — "silver and gold have I none" — that is, he is broken. As God cuts him down to grasshopper size, or to worm size, he discovers just how valuable are all his programs of pious affiliation.

   Again, so many of us have come to feel that prayer, like the Christian life, is a moving passenger train that we ought to be aboard. We run and try to jump on, but through ineptness we fail to make the step. As in a nightmare we see that our efforts to cling are in vain, and we lose our grip. One by one we watch the cars pass us by. Other people find Jesus Christ, learn to pray, find victory in their lives, acquire a testimony, and move on, but we remain mute.

   The prayers of others frequently frighten us, they are so artistically and fervently expressed; they fairly radiate joy and assurance. We become quite discouraged. Yet the one prayer that Jesus Christ honored above all others was the wail of a thieving tax collector: "God be merciful to me, a sinner." As Charles Spurgeon remarked from his London pulpit, "This publican had the soundest theology of any man in all England." He described himself as a sinner, and in the world of the Spirit what is a sinner? He is nothing. The New Testament was written not by men of spirit but by the Holy Spirit of God moving in men of nothing.

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   There are thousands of us who are able to discourse seemingly upon any subject, like the television experts, but at the moment of spoken prayer our jaws are frozen shut. Why? Is it because our sins rise up and condemn us? Is it because, after all, we do not really believe? Why do God's people become inarticulate and feel they cannot call upon Him? One of the commonest apologies, of course, is that one has not "come that far yet," one has not "moved along spiritually to the point" of prayer, one has not acquired sufficient skills to verbalize prayer.

   Does prayer then require some sort of expertise? How much training is needed for a man to say, "Thank you, Lord!" or "Abba, Father," or "God be merciful to me, a sinner"? The Cross certainly does not suggest that God requires polish and finesse from the men who approach Him. Humanly speaking, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the worst bungle in history, yet it accomplished our salvation. To pray we simply need to open our mouths and begin a conversation.

   A spoken prayer is the fastest-working therapy in the world because it is the most natural. It reveals every man at his truest and best, because in real prayer every man checks in at zero on the register. He comes not trusting in himself but asking for help. I have never known a stammerer to stammer when he was talking intimately to God. In counseling with people I usually endeavor to get them to pray aloud: nothing else tells me so clearly whether their problems have a solution.

   Recently I talked with a lady whose hair had turned white at forty, who had stopped working and was fearful that she was losing her mind. There were some superficial signs of neurosis, but when she prayed with me her prayer was utterly lucid and rational, and pointed in the direction she wanted to go — to wholeness. It did not take much insight to conclude that she was spiritually sound. Within a few weeks she had talked and prayed her way through her fear symptoms and had gone back to work.

   Many people object to verbalized prayer because it makes them feel self-conscious, as if there were really "nothing there" and they were talking to themselves like mutterers on the street. The truth is that in prayer it is impossible to talk to oneself. Frank Laubach tells of a young man who remarked to him archly that prayer was nothing more than mere autosuggestion. Dr. Laubach replied, "My boy, God can use autosuggestion." A West Coast minister, Robert Boyd Munger, has challenged anyone to pray fervently to Jesus Christ for five consecutive minutes — aloud — without finding his life dynamically redirected.

   Our prayers start where we are, in poverty of spirit. If we continue to wait and our prayers seem to others to grow richer in spirituality, it can only mean one thing: that we are really becoming poorer in spirit as God proceeds with His pruning and stripping. The way of the Cross is the way to God, but it is not a way up, it is a way down.

   The men of the Bible were keenly aware of their spiritual meanness. Their prayers are characterized not by demands but by self-emptyings. Listen to this prayer of Hezekiah the king in the days of Isaiah: "I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living . . . Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me" (Isaiah 38:11,14).

   Out of his desperation Hezekiah received an answer, and his rejoicing is still contagious after twenty-seven centuries: "What shall I say? He hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it . . . O Lord, by these things men live . . . The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day . . ." (Isaiah 38:15-16,19).

   The prayers of the early apostles had the same characteristic note. "We know not what we should pray for as we ought," says Paul, "but the Spirit [himself] maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Romans 8:26). Instead of being "mighty men of prayer," the apostles were "unmighty men of not-prayer," yet God gave them both prayer and power in the midst of their poverty.

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   There is a sense in which we can find the whole Bible a commentary on this Beatitude. From peak to peak, from Mount Moriah where Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac, to Mount Calvary where Jesus of Nazareth endured the humiliation of a Roman gallows, the cry is echoed: "The poor in spirit shall enter the kingdom!"

   Abraham went to God with absolutely nothing; he walked out of his Father's house "not knowing whither," not even knowing who had called him. Thus was he rendered fit for the Lord's summons.

   Moses was probably the most unpromising prospect for leadership that a people ever had, yet he goes down in history as one of the greatest. He had an Egyptian name, a speech impediment, a weak set of knees, an ugly disposition, a criminal record, and a price on his head; he was despised by Hebrew and Egyptian alike. His life was bankrupt, and because of that, God could use him.

   I am fond of the story of David in the cave of Adullam. It is a perfect illustration of what Jesus was talking about. David was being hunted down like an animal by the king's troopers. He was hiding in the meanest hole in a primitive and poverty-stricken land, and his crew matched the environment. "Everyone that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them." (1 Samuel 22:2) They had nothing to lose, and were ready for anything — even for God. That meant God could do something with them, and He did. He met David with blessing upon blessing, even to the royal scepter. The dispirited became the vehicle of the Holy Spirit.

[Soldier4Christ]

There are other fascinating illustrations of the Beatitude in Scripture. The widow of Zarephath welcomed Elijah into her home when the household was on the verge of starvation. "I have not a cake," she said, "but a handful of meal in a barrel, and little oil in a cruse: and . . . I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die" (1 Kings 17:12). The prophet Elijah might have been discouraged by this lack of provender, since the Lord had told him that the widow would "sustain" him. Instead, Elijah found that it was the lack that set up conditions so that God could act. He told her to prepare what she had, and the Lord would take care of the rest — which He did. The cruse of oil became a cup running over, a symbol of divine blessing. Centuries later Jesus Christ added a footnote to this story. He pointed out that the woman of Zarephath was not even one of "God's people," as the Israelites called themselves.

   Mary, the mother of Jesus, seems to have been a wisp of a Galilean peasant girl about whom very little is known. If she had noble character and distinguished ancestry, she did not trade on it. She speaks of herself as the "handmaiden of the Lord" of "low degree" and "low estate." Luther suggests that if God had wanted human nobility and honor for His Son, He could have chosen Caiaphas' daughter to bear Him. Instead, God found that Mary's qualities — or lack of qualities — were eminently usable. Experts may differ on how Mary might have scored in a modern intelligence or personality test, but this is sure: in the test of spirit the Lord seeks out the low score, and Mary qualified.

   Jesus in effect illustrates the Beatitude in parable after parable: the beggars are called in and banqueted after the guests fail to make their appearance; the young prodigal sinks to the status of the swineherd and even of the swine. When he has nothing, he remembers his father's house. The story of the rich young ruler makes us see that it is not enough even to know the commandments and the catechism. The young man turns away from Jesus sorrowfully, for without a broken spirit he cannot follow.

   The most remarkable thing about Pentecost was not that the early apostles were all "of one accord" or that they spoke in many languages. The most remarkable thing was their poverty of spirit — they were empty, so they could be filled.

   The Apostle Paul drives home the point in a hundred ways. He tells how the Savior of men "made himself of no reputation" for our sakes. How those words cut across our pride! Think of the infinite pains we take to erect our own reputations. Our character is our masterpiece, representing a lifetime effort to lay claim to honor among men. Yet Jesus (as Paul says) took the form of a slave, and humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death (Philippians 2:7-8). As for Paul, there are many who consider him the second greatest man who ever lived. Certainly he traveled to spiritual high places that leave the rest of us earthbound. Yet near the close of his life he wrote a very simple epitaph for himself. It was: "The Chief of Sinners."

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   Goodspeed translates this Beatitude, "Blessed are they who feel their spiritual need." There is not one of us who will not face at some time the gap between what he is and what he ought to be as a Christian. It is good to learn at the beginning, therefore, to accept ourselves not as we ought to be but as we really are, because at the Cross we find God accepting us in our misery and poverty. We are prepared for the "exchanged life" that Hudson Taylor speaks of, as God takes away even our rags that He might clothe us in the glorious raiment of His righteousness.

   In answer to our prayer the message of this Beatitude comes as a gift of hope: our heavenly Father takes us as we are, with all of our lack and shortcoming. The only requirement He makes is that we come with an empty vessel. And here is the promise: that men's extremity is God's opportunity, and that our place of despair shall become the scene of Christ's atoning victory.

   Thomas Hooker was a beloved Puritan preacher who is honored in New England today as the father of constitutional liberty. As he lay dying in Hartford, the members of his flock gathered around him and sought to comfort him. "Brother Thomas," they said, "yours has been a life of great achievement and piety; now you go to claim your reward." Hooker retorted, "I go to claim mercy."

   No pretense, no contrived "front" will do before God, who treats all "fronts" as whited sepulchres, and checks every man's luggage before the final journey. Thus the paradox: the spiritually rich are the spiritually empty. How easy it is to say, and how difficult to learn! So much in modern life seems to teach the exact opposite.

   For example, in suburban America today there is a strong drift to the churches on the part of young married couples. Are they being drawn by a deep hunger, a sense of spiritual need or a conviction of their sinful state? A revealing survey was made by William H. Whyte, Jr., in this connection.1 In one suburban community Mr. Whyte found that the residents considered their churches to be "prestige groups" where social values were to be gained by being included. Salvation seems to have been the last thing in anyone's mind. People joined the house of God for friendship, stability, and "belongingness." What factors made them choose one church rather than another? Here they are in order of importance: first, the minister; second, the Sunday school; third, the location; fourth, the denomination; and fifth, the music. Somewhere in the mechanics of motivation the Gospel was overlooked.

   Mr. Whyte does not comment on the results of his door-to-door findings. He does not have to. His statistics reveal all too clearly that there is an "infinite qualitative difference" between signing the roll of a local church and entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet Jesus Christ exacts the same requirements in suburbia that he does anywhere: poverty of spirit. The survey only highlights the Beatitude. Christ died for those in the tracts as He died for those across the tracks. All are leveled at the Cross and there is no difference. The only kind of prestige that counts with God is that which is sealed by the blood of His Son. The only social value He honors is our love for each other, which is His love shining through.

   Here then is our Lord's meaning: the spiritually rich are the spiritually empty. "That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die" (1 Corinthians 15:36). But when God finds that at last the road has been cleared of debris and obstruction, He comes in with power.

   So we see that our pilgrimage will be a different kind of journey from any we have ever taken. In science and in education we proceed with experimental faith from the known to the unknown, but to walk into the land of blessing we must forget even what we "know." Only in the spiritual world must the Pharisee leave his post of attainment, beat his breast alongside the publican, and declare that he possesses nothing of his own. Only in personal encounter with Jesus Christ do we surrender everything and declare our way to have been the way of failure, that it may become the way to the Cross.

   It is when we let go of the rope that we discover that underneath are the everlasting arms. It is when we have no spirit at all that we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us" (2 Corinthians 4:7).

[Soldier4Christ]

Beauty for Ashes

Blessed are they that mourn:
For they shall be comforted.

   THE BEATITUDE is saying quite simply that if we mourn, we shall receive comfort and blessing, and that if we do not, the blessing will be withheld. It thereby faces us with a dilemma, for to many of us mourning is a lost art. We scarcely know what it means, so how can we practice it? The word has slipped out of our vocabulary.

   Until quite recent times mourning was a well-recognized human activity. Even in our own country special clothing was prescribed for the mourners: the arm bands, the widow's weeds, the mourning cloak. Not only was there mourning for death, there was mourning for sin. In many churches of a hundred years ago the front pew was reserved as a "mourner's bench" for worshipers who were under conviction by the Holy Spirit.

Today it is a mark of the age that we do none of these things. If we do not whistle in public, neither do we mourn. We simply try to carry on and battle it through. We may be upset, we may analyze our case histories, we may fall apart, we may leap from a bridge, but we do not mourn.

   It becomes important to discover what Jesus means by this Beatitude. Why should we mourn?

   Let us start at the Cross. Perhaps the view from Calvary will give us the right perspective. Who were the mourners at the Cross? There were Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the wife of Cleophas, and perhaps Salome. A few men mourned, too, scattered through the jeering and whipped-up crowd. There were Joseph of Arimathaea, and Nicodemus, and John, and the Roman centurion, and one of the thieves. Not many, considering the size of the throng. Was there another? Yes, one more: Jesus Christ Himself. As He hung on the Cross, He mourned, and we would do well to study His grief first.

   Jesus Christ mourned with compassion for His fellow man: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." His sensitivity embraced everything from the fall of the sparrow to an obscure widow's eviction. He mourned first of all for the human race that ignored the free gift of life He offered, and that felt it "expedient" (to use the word of Caiaphas) to crucify Him. He pitied the thralldom of disease and sin and death in which His brethren were held. We cannot understand the radiance of Jesus' life until we understand that He was one who mourned — at the grave of Lazarus, on the brow of Jerusalem, in Gethsemane and on the Cross.

   If we seek the kinetic power of the Christian life, therefore, we have uncovered a secret clue; it is mourning. Some call it "concern." Some call it "carrying a burden." Others, "being sensitive to human need." Take this quality out of human life and you have destroyed humanity. Develop it and the race is blessed.

   Compassionate mourning can take a variety of forms. A mother's heart skips a beat when she hears of the suffering of a child: this is mourning. An honest citizen is shocked to learn of the bad news that has come to a neighbor: this is mourning. God uses such hearts creatively, and gives them strength and comfort. The pitiable person is not the mourner but the one who finds his solace in other people's woes. For him God provides no blessing; instead there is the ominous suggestion of the word of the Lord to Malachi: "I will curse your blessings."

   Spiritual awakening has never come to a people who have not mourned. No one can become a truly evangelical Christian without having been given a burden for the salvation of his fellow man. Paul declared, "I say the truth in Christ . . . that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren . . . that they might be saved" (Romans 9:1-3; 10:1). It was out of such a concern that the Christian faith sprang, and when that concern dies, Christianity will die. We need to remind ourselves of this truth. No sociological goals, no "adapted programs for special community needs" will compensate for the drive to seek out the lost. The Gospel goes where the mourners go.

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   We are to mourn not only for the suffering of the world, but for the sin of the world, including our own sin. Walt Whitman wrote some well-known lines in Leaves of Grass which expressed his admiration for "the animals" who are "so placid and self-contained" and "do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins." The verse was intended not as a compliment to animals but as a rebuke to Christians of a certain type. Unfortunately, it threw the whole moral question into the animal kingdom. The capacity to be sorry for one's sins is one of the distinguishing marks of true humanity, that is to say, of humanity under God. The sensitive conscience may be the butt of much of the world's spite, but it is God's strongest weapon in the soul of man.

   When Peter pleaded, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" (Luke 5:, he was going through the same ordeal of fire that every Christian must undertake within himself. The life in Christ is not a life of constant introspection but it does require periodic self-examination. If our prayers are all praise and thanksgiving or all supplication and intercession, without any attention to the shortcomings and failures of our daily walk, it is not long before our lives begin to show serious deformity. The psychologists who would rid their patients of all guilt feelings are as wrong as the preachers of law without Grace. How can anyone ever absorb the New Testament teaching of forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ until he has come to a state of mourning for his sins? Jesus is no Savior until we are aware of our need to be saved.

   The Israelite mourned not only for his own sins but for those of his nation. Do you remember the cry of Isaiah before God in the temple? "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips . . ." (Isaiah 6:5). At the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem the succeeding generations for well over two thousand years have mourned, not just for the misfortune of the Babylonian exile, but for the national sin that, according to their prophets, was punished by God's judgment in the exile. By the same token, the healthiest thing that could happen to America today would be a period of nation-wide mourning. For what? For events of the past, or the present, or for dread of the future? No; rather for the sin that brings judgment upon a people.

   When a Christian thinks of such incidents as have taken place at Little Rock (racism), he may feel an impulse to take remedial action: to write a letter, to join a group, to make a contribution, or to treat his fellow man with more love. Such impulses are right and good. What happened at Little Rock, however, requires of God's people more than social activity; it calls for mourning. Without that grief and sorrow, well-intended social action so often turns out to be mostly nervous reaction. It takes tears to make an ethical action real, otherwise it is simply indignation — it is Peter cutting off the ear of Malchus. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

   Not long ago a dead dog was being "orbited" through space. Doubtless its place will soon be taken by a dead man. Can anyone contemplating the "scientific advance" since Hiroshima doubt that somewhere, somehow, the human race has acquired a fatal defect or flaw that is really a passport to doom? The old Dutch doctor in one of Somerset Maugham's South Seas yarns remarked, "Life is short, nature is hostile and man is ridiculous." When we think of the infinite possibilities for good that lie within the human breast, of the tremendous resourcefulness of men, their courage and sacrifice in adversity, their capacity for love and kindliness, and then see what the race is up to, what can we Christians do but mourn?

[Soldier4Christ]

Consider Jesus of Nazareth, the most generous-hearted person who ever lived. He never refused a request for help. "Great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all" (Matthew 12:15). He went out of His way to cross racial and religious barriers. He compassed the whole world in His love. Study Him as He set His face to go to Jerusalem: note the honest way in which He dealt with friends and opposition alike; see how each interview left Him stronger in reliance upon His Father and nobler in the eyes of men. In the midst of the tension and controversy that surrounded Him there was a calm that can only be described as holy. It was a good life, a glorious life, and it ended with all the vulgarity of a street accident.

   God pity us if we do not mourn for the tragedy of life as it is lived out, and has been lived since our first parents, in sin compounded and woe multiplied. Yet the Gospel proclaims that in the midst of such mourning — not in spite of it, and not to the left or right of it — we are blessed.

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   A natural cause of mourning is the transitoriness of life. Death is the raw material of the poets, who have turned mourning into a fine art. Thus Shakespeare:

Out, out, brief candle,
Life's but a walking shadow

and Keats:

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die

and Shelley:

O weep for Adonais, he is dead

and Tennyson:

Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.

and Arnold:

And we are here as on a darkling plain

and Fitzgerald:

A Moment's Halt—a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—
And, Lo! the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from

and Thompson:

Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-field
Be dunged with rotten death?

   Noble as are these expressions of pathos, they cannot match the description of death in the words of Scripture:

Because man goeth to his long home,
and the mourners go about the streets:
or ever the silver cord be loosed,
or the golden bowl be broken,
or the pitcher be broken at the fountain
or the wheel broken at the cistern.

(Ecclesiastes 12:5-6)               

   The Christian Gospel has never dodged the truth: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Yet there are those who consider it indecent to mourn for death; who believe that tears in a Christian suggest a lack of equipoise. Mourning is even classified by some shallow interpreters of modern living with melancholia and manic depression. Better psychologists, however, know that the mourners have always been a healthier people than those of a more stoical frame of mind. The rigid shutting off of bodily juices in the face of tragedy so often manages to turn people into something less than men. The discipline that masks all feeling in a show of bravado or sangfroid is a fool's discipline. It plays ostrich with reality, for the truth is that every human being is doomed. The mark of fate is upon each of us; we may eat, drink, and be merry, but tomorrow we die. It is the mourner who comes to grips with this reality; so that, far from being a victim of gloom, he is made through Christ the conqueror of it.

   To illustrate, a father who suffers the bereavement of a beloved child may go through his personal catastrophe dry-eyed. He may consider any betrayal of emotion to be a sign of weakness or even of lack of faith. He may sternly "carry on" his daily life without interruption. In such an experience even though we may not mourn outwardly, our bodies do. In odd, strange ways, not always healthy, the heart serves notice that it is dressed in black; for man is mortal, and he cannot help mourning his mortality. How much better that grief should express itself in normal fashion; how much more comfort in true mourning!

   The Scriptures suggest a link between human nature (the problem of sin) and human destiny (the certainty of death). "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). Without going into all the implications of the passage, we can see that Paul is suggesting that the shortness of life is bound up with the evil in the world. When Mary Magdalene stood weeping at the tomb of Jesus, her heart was broken not only because of the Life that had been extinguished, but because of the deed that caused it. To mourn for sin and to mourn for death are but two sides of the same cloth. The poets have always known it. It is important for us to learn it too.

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   Note the absoluteness of the Beatitude's statement: the blessing will not fail to come. Comfort, of course, is derived from the words "con" and "fort" meaning "with strength," and behind the promise of this word stands the resurrection of Jesus Christ, where total defeat was turned into glorious victory. Thus the valley of the shadow of death becomes our main highway to the life of goodness and mercy. There are no side exits; it is a throughway, a turnpike. If we mourn, things will be better. God will bless.

   There is a passage in Isaiah which follows immediately after the famous verses quoted by Jesus Christ in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18). The passage reads:

       The spirit of the Lord God is upon me . . . to comfort all that mourn . . . to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified (Isaiah 61:1-3).

There are no more beautiful phrases in the English language, but there is more here than literary excellence.

   The promise to the Christian is that "if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: if we suffer, we shall also reign with him" (2 Timothy 2:11-12). The distinction between worry and mourning is that one brings enslavement, the other, release.

[Soldier4Christ]

If we possess that sensitivity of spirit that enables us to enter into the agony of mankind, we shall be given in reward the lifting of the Spirit who will keep us from being smothered by the agony. If we make our "quiet time" of worship a period of genuine empathy, of sorrow in prayer, of participation and involvement in what may well seem (humanly speaking) to be the death throes of the race, then there is hope for us. If God will not honor our service, He may honor our tears.

   Peter taught us that the sufferings of Jesus Christ are a pattern for us to follow. John painted on a mighty canvas the picture of those who "came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Revelation 7:14). Paul and Silas received the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, as, with sore backs, they sang songs at midnight in the jail at Philippi.

Some through the water,
Some through the flood,
Some through the fire,
But all through the blood;

Some through great sorrow,
But God gives a song
In the night seasons
And all the day long.

   The comfort of this Beatitude means, finally and precisely, joy: beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning. But joy is not simply a sentimental word like pleasure or happiness. Joy has a clean tang and bite to it, the exhilaration of mountain air. Joy, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, is what sent Jesus of Nazareth to the Cross. It was a joy in prospect, and for the Christian, fulfillment today is never complete; there is always joy in prospect. That final joy is suggested in John Bunyan's description of the death of Valiant for Truth in Pilgrim's Progress: "So he passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side." That is how a Christian goes home!

   Meanwhile there is a gladness that is real and that is present. The disciples felt it when, in the days following the Crucifixion, Jesus appeared and stood in their midst (John 20:20). He bore "tidings of comfort and joy," for no one can mourn or weep for long when Jesus is around. The things He brings are cheer and courage and good news. Depressed spirits simply cannot stay depressed in His presence.

   Today in the name of Jesus great world-wide organizations are engaged in a ceaseless task of providing comfort for the mourners: One Great Hour of Sharing, The Salvation Army, Church World Service, the Red Cross, World Vision, and others. As they feed the hungry and clothe the naked and provide shelter for the homeless, they are bringing the same good cheer that Christ spread wherever He went. Even more, the Church that unashamedly proclaims the New Testament message of salvation is bringing comfort that is genuine rejoicing, for it is producing God's richest fruit in new men and women.

   All this was made possible through the Cross. Jesus spoke repeatedly of the meaning of His forthcoming suffering, death, and resurrection, yet none of the disciples understood. Had they done so, they would not have been scattered and confused at the last. They did not see what the Savior saw, that while man crucified Him intentionally and "meant it for evil," God meant it for good. If there had been no ashes of Gehenna there would have been no beauty of the Resurrection. If there had been no atoning death there would have been no redemption. No mourning, no joy — and no blessing.

   We can be glad that God raised up mourners, for to them He gave comfort that leaps beyond the Cross, beyond the Resurrection, even beyond Pentecost, and takes us into the very heart of the Book of Acts and the glorious, joyful life of the early Church.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   As we distinguish the true meaning of "mourning" we find it necessary to sift out the false. Mourning, as Jesus described it, must never be construed to suggest self-pity. Preoccupation with one's own woes, carping, and plaintiveness have no stake in this Beatitude. Jesus certainly did not teach, "Blessed are they that moan"!

   A letter was shown me from one who has steadfastly refused to be reconciled to the death of a mate. "After all these years I still cannot accept it," the letter ran, "I just grieve — and grieve — and grieve."

   All of us recognize that there is a kind of mourning that is a drag upon life. It is perhaps better described not as mourning but as mournfulness. Some mournful types tend to give healthy-minded Christians the "creeps." They seem to cast such a pall over everything, and to try to turn existence into an endless dirge. Nothing is ever right. Even the topic of the weather becomes a conversational maneuver to expose one's miseries in a fresh appeal for sympathy. The chirping of the "Pity-Me Bird" can be insatiable as well as incessant.

   We have seen that mourning, as we have considered it, exemplifies the Spirit and mind of Christ, but the mournfulness of which I now speak more closely resembles the Pharisee. The former suggests the divine compassion of our Lord, the latter indicates a psychological state of depression. The one offers relief and release through divine blessing, the other offers a prospect of solid and perpetual gloom.

   "Moaning," if I may use the expression, is nevertheless one of the favorite activities of the human race. Psychiatrists are paid as high as fifty dollars an hour to listen to it. Divorce complaints in county courthouse files are filled with it. Everybody does it; sometimes it seems that to meet is to talk is to "moan." Yet nowhere in Scripture is it promised that the "moaners" will be comforted or blessed, and life upholds the Word of God. It is the bitter lesson of experience that the man who builds Dismal Castle will have to live in it. Those who make the most of trifles will eventually be given a condition worthy of their exercises in complaining.

   My wish for you is that by the Grace of God you may become a true mourner; that by His Spirit you may be empowered to put aside the daily ration of gripe and beef, and capture again the vision of your vocation as a son or daughter of God. How much more easily we run the race of life, when these weights are dropped off! Then we learn anew the rich, strong meaning of "comfort": not comfort that lulls or cuddles like a hot-water bottle or a baby's pacifier; but comfort "with strength" that sounds a trumpet note of deliverance! "Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished" (Isaiah 40:2).

   We take our leave of this Beatitude with thanksgiving and with a promise to return to it, for we have learned much. We have discovered — what we already suspected — that the growth and maturity of a Christian is not achieved simply by leaping from one joyous experience to another. There is a process of mourning that must also be passed through; and it could well be said that man is most truly man when he mourns, for out of the crucible God molds the polished instrument, fit for the hand of the Master. Out of the spirit of heaviness the new man emerges, clad in the garment of praise. So long as his mourning is according to the mind of Christ, the Christian is secure in the knowledge of blessing.

[Soldier4Christ]

When the Last Are First

Blessed are the meek:
For they shall inherit the earth.

   AS WE MOVE further into our study we are discovering the need for inward discipline. The Beatitudes, we find, are really "hard sayings"; they are flexing muscles that we have not used for a long time, and we are not sure whether the struggle is worth it. Especially do we feel discouraged when we come to the third Beatitude, for while the words say, "Blessed are the meek," we are semantically conditioned to think, "Blessed are the weak." The Sunday school hymn couplet went, "Gentle Jesus meek and mild, look upon this little child," and so we say that we know what meekness is: it is weakness, softness, gentleness, docility; to be meek is to be something less than a man, it is to be tame, passive, yielding. It is to be womanly, as woman is of the weaker sex.

   Does not the "meek little man" bring up immediately the spineless image of Caspar Milquetoast? Does not the "meek little wife" turn out to be the one who lets her husband "get away with murder"?

   We could not be more wrong. The meek are not weak: they are so strong, says Jesus, that they shall inherit the earth. They are mightier than any breed the human race has produced from blood and soil. They control more power than is found in interplanetary space, for they have access to the Creator. Their battle cry is the song of Deborah against the Canaanite host under Sisera (Judges 5:20, 31): "They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera . . . So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord." The men who have written history's most impressive pages have been meek men, and when the latest tyranny to afflict the earth's surface is removed, it will be meek men who will do it.

   Who are these men? What is the trait that Jesus Christ is describing in them? How can we gain it for ourselves?

   Let us move out into full view of the Cross and begin from there. Calvary presents a grim historical picture of an itinerant carpenter and teacher being executed on trumped-up charges of sedition and heresy. To the eye of faith, however, there is evident also the deliberate self-sacrifice of God's only-begotten Son, who was seeking to obey His Father's will. The Gospels teach that He laid down His life not because He was trapped by a false apostle or lynched by wicked men, but because He wished to fulfill the Scriptures by atoning for the sin of the world. "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how distressed I am until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:50) It was His own decision, arrived at only after much agony of Spirit; He literally "learned obedience by the things that he suffered." He obeyed, He underwent the discipline, and He finished the work, and throughout He exhibited — meekness.

   Thus the meek man is not necessarily a passive personality at all. The meek of whom Jesus speaks are those who have chosen to heed the voice of God and to place themselves in the center of His will. They have followed their Savior to the Cross and have put their lives upon the block. In their obedience they have shown the capacity to take it. Meekness, says Archbishop Trench, is "an in-wrought grace of the soul, and the exercises of it are first and chiefly towards God." At the Cross we see the God-centered quality of meekness. Jesus Christ, who seized the initiative from Herod, from Pilate and even from John the Baptist, now obeys His Father's will to the yielding up of His life.

   The Cross teaches us a definition of meekness that will keep us from ever being bothered by this word again: we must be nothing, that God might be everything. Thus the meek are not simply the jaunty, as some would attempt to derive from the French translation of our Beatitude: "Heureux les débonnaires; car ils hériteront de la terre." Nor are they those who possess a vague "faith in the friendliness of the universe" (Ligon). First and foremost, the blessed meek are those who have given over their lives to the Savior that He might live in them.

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   Does the Bible confirm the view of meekness we see from the Cross?

   It is a fairly simple process to take the original tongues of Scripture and to read back into the Hebrew and Greek an interpretation of a word or phrase that fits our presuppositions, not to say our prejudices. It is not so easy to approach the Bible objectively and meekly, and to ask what it is seeking to teach us. In fact, one of the real hurdles for the modern Christian is the Bible itself.

   Many of us are modest enough in our daily walk, but our attitude toward the written sources of the Christian faith can become quite patronizing. The men who wrote the Bible were not moderns, we say, they were ancients; and how can they teach us? Our intellectual hauteur exudes when we acquire a little background of Bible history. We approach the sacred page with condescension; whatever the problem the text poses, we can "explain" it. How sharply the scalpel of this Beatitude severs the root of our criticism, for it tells us that our pride has neutralized its own argument! Only the scientist who sits down before the facts as a little child learns the secrets of nature; and only the meek have an inheritance in Scripture. "Receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls," advises James. Received any other way, the salt has lost its savor; the Bible is stripped of its life-giving power.

   By comparing Scripture with Scripture we make remarkable discoveries about this Beatitude. Like several others its roots are found in the Psalms. The very wording of the 37th Psalm is significant:

    Those who wait upon the Lord shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall be no more: you will look diligently for his place, and he will not be there (Psalm 37:9-11).

Further in the Psalms we read:

    The meek shall eat and be satisfied (Psalm 22:26).

    The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way (Psalm 25:9).

    The Lord lifts up the meek (Psalm 147:6).

    Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises . . . with the timbrel and harp. For the Lord takes pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation (Psalm 149:3-4).

   Aaron and Miriam challenged Moses' authority by asking, "Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us?" (Numbers 12:2) The text then relates that "Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." There is no suggestion that Moses was subservient to his brother or sister; his attitude was rather one of forbearance, while his humility was directed toward God. To see Moses meek, see him standing barefoot and wordless before the Lord on the rocks of Sinai.

   When the churches of Galatia are instructed by Paul (Galatians 6:1) how to administer church discipline to a brother found in error, they are warned, "Restore such a one in the spirit of meekness." Again, Peter tells the Christians of Asia (1 Peter 3:15) to be "ready always to give an answer to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with meekness and reverence." Both verses suggest that the man of meekness is under divine authority. He is humble because he realizes that his own spiritual standing lies in the Grace of God and not in any achievement of his own. He is meek because he is submitting to the discipline of the hand of God the Father. Jesus Christ Himself submitted to that discipline, and left the pattern.

[Soldier4Christ]

Perhaps one of the clearest illustrations we can find in Scripture is in Ezekiel. The Hebrew prophet of the exile was given a vision of the holiness of God which he describes in these words: "I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about . . . This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face." Blessed are the meek! Ezekiel, prone, heard a voice of One that spoke: "And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee. And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him" (Ezekiel 1:27, 28; 2:1-2). God did not leave Ezekiel prostrate on the ground, but raised him up that he might speak boldly to the house of Israel.

   Clearly there are set forth in all these passages characteristics that we do not ordinarily associate with the concept of meekness. Even stronger than the promise of blessings to come is the note of discipline and teachableness. As Christ Himself expressed it, "Learn of me, for I am meek."

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   As a young university graduate I was eager to make a name for myself, to catch the eye of the nation in some sensational way. Depression days were propitious for dreaming, and out of my wool-gathering there emerged a new "beatitude": "Blessed are the colorful, for they shall make the world their oyster." Richard Halliburton, going round the world on a shoestring and writing his way to fame, seemed to hold the answer to life. I yearned to be a "creative personality" who would trip his way in sprightly fashion with a tip of the hat to anyone, even to God.

   One stereotype perhaps above all others that I wished to avoid was the species known as "Jesus-lover" or — as we contemptuously referred to them — the "Christers." Their lives seemed to be dipped in pastel shades; their words sounded utterly dreary. What could be more undesirable than to surrender one's vitality and aggressiveness for a bland "goodiness," to immerse one's individuality in an ocean of piety? I would have laughed gaily at the fun that J.B. Phillips has since poked at a hymn which he says is "still sung in certain circles":1

Oh to be nothing, nothing,
Only to lie at His feet,
A broken and emptied vessel
For the Master's use made meet.

   Today I am not so willing to ridicule another man's faith. Today I am not so sure that the "colorful" are blessed, or that they are even colorful. When one has stood spiritually destitute alongside blind and ragged Bartimaeus, pleading with Jesus that he might receive his sight, and has felt the scales dropping from his eyes, he sees things differently. To my new eyes the creative personalities are those who radiate the love of their Lord. The Frank Laubachs, the Eugenia Prices, the Joy Ridderhofs, the Albert Schweitzers, the Billy Grahams, the "broken and emptied vessels" whom God has put together and used — in short, the meek: these are the ones who seem to hold the secret of life. The gallant Halliburton is lost on a daring but pointless adventure at sea, while the meek inherit the earth.

   Who are the meek? If a man is willing to take Jesus Christ as his Savior and give up trying to save himself, he is meek. If he is willing to ascribe full glory to God and to give himself absolutely none, he is meek. If he is willing to desist trying to pit the spirit of man against the Spirit of God in contention, he is meek. God tells the meek man, "You shall be dead to every grade and rank among your fellow men. You shall seek the lowest place for yourself, and you shall seek it every day. You shall continue to dwell in it until you would not exchange it for a throne in heaven. You will rejoice every time that you are ignored and every time that your name is passed by."

   If the man protests that this is a bit rough, God replies, "You will stay until it becomes smooth."

   It makes no difference to the Lord whether a man be an extrovert or an introvert; whether he be aggressive or retiring; whether his intelligence quotient be high or low. God the Creator is not looking for creative personalities at all, but for people that He can use, clay that He can mold, dust that He can breath upon and cause to live.

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   To anyone who has read Thucydides, the present world struggle seems to be a replay of the Peloponnesian War. America, with her luxuriant culture and her traditions of freedom, wishing at all costs to preserve her way of life, is Athens redivivus. Soviet Russia is Sparta with her tight dictatorship, her allies among the have-not nations, and her total orientation toward combat. It was the fate of Athens to sink in the midst of her glory. The same fate, Toynbee reminds us, has overtaken scores of proud civilizations in the epic of man.

   But if Athens was proud, certainly Sparta was not meek, and history records that the Spartan empire quickly fell apart. What the outcome of the present battle of titans will be, no one knows, but what we learn from the Greeks only reinforces the teaching of our Beatitude. The meekness that inherits the earth is compounded of more than discipline. It includes an element best described as the fear of the Lord. The Spartan knew nothing of this fear. His gods were made of plaster; he gave them the veneration of superstition. And when the clay gods fail to produce, as Pearl Buck shows us in The Good Earth, man turns on his idolatrous objects of worship and makes baseballs of them.

   The fear of the Lord imparts a strange power to the believer. There is a suggestion of it in Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The Psalms are full of it. The character of Martin Luther was formed by it. It created Cromwell's "New Model Army," the best-behaved and most invincible force of men the world has ever known. The iron in the Puritan soul was tempered with it, and the Declaration of Independence was the result. In the Book of Proverbs we read that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." It could be said that this was the first statement of the theory of the survival of the fittest, for the God-fearing man is not easily intimidated by his fellows. It is also another way of saying that the meek shall inherit the earth.

[Soldier4Christ]

Quite evidently we are discussing an element that is not too prominent in the twentieth century, and it is doubtful whether a crash program of nuclear construction in America is an adequate substitute. Unless the missile men and muscle men are also meek men, their labors are doomed: this is the plain teaching of the Word of God. In Charles Rann Kennedy's drama, The Terrible Meek,2 the Roman centurion points out the flaw that eventually destroyed his empire:

    "We go on building our kingdoms—the kingdoms of this world. We stretch out our hands, greedy, grasping, tyrannical, to possess the earth. Domination, power, glory, money, merchandise, luxury, these are the things we aim at; but what we really gain is pest and famine . . . dead and death-breathing ghosts that haunt our lives forever . . . Possess the earth? We have lost it. We never did possess it. We have lost both earth and ourselves in trying to possess it."

   Standing in the shadow of the Cross, the centurion utters the prophecy of the Beatitude:

    "I tell you, woman, this dead son of yours, disfigured, shamed, spat upon, has built a kingdom this day that can never die. The living glory of Him rules it. The earth is His and He made it . . . Something has happened up here on this hill today to shake all our kingdoms of blood and fear to the dust . . . The meek, the terrible meek, the fierce agonizing meek, are about to enter into their inheritance."

   The men of Sparta conquered and fell. They conquered because they were hardened warriors; they fell because they were not meek, and only the meek are blessed.

Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be.3

   Four centuries after Sparta there stood on Mars Hill in Athens a man named Paul who taught the worship of the one true God. Had the Athenians learned that lesson in Pericles' day, who knows what might have happened?

The meek survive because they are fit to survive. Nothing can destroy them, neither angels nor principalities nor powers nor ICBMs nor cobalt bombs. They are invincible.

   Meekness is like the surface of the water that is tossed by wind and storm, but when the tumult dies it invariably returns to its calm reflection of heaven. Meekness is a food soft to the palate, but it produces sinews of steel. Before God it bends to a humiliation beyond humility; before man it endures beyond endurance.

   Were we to be sojourners in ancient Palestine and to discover Abraham, lying on his face before the altar of an unseen God, would we not question his balance and good judgment? Yet this same meek Abraham was given an inheritance like the sands of the seashore.

   We learn from Jesus Christ that there is a meekness that we are to bear toward our brother, and even toward our enemy, and that it is subject to a daily conditioning by God Himself. It cannot be trusted to maintain its own level. When I attended the Chaplain School at Fort Devens during World War II, our instructor at the first session opened his Bible to Galatians 6:1 and read the words, "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering yourself, lest you also be tempted." It does no good to prostrate ourselves before the Lord if we then proceed to be overbearing and arrogant toward our neighbor. The spirit of meekness is to be a continuing conditioner in teaching us to accept reproof and to face criticism objectively.

   Perhaps the best way to relate the Beatitude to our daily lives is to consider driving in traffic. If there is one place where our century needs to understand the meaning of meekness, it is behind the wheel of an automobile. The qualities of patience, endurance, and courtesy make up the difference between life and death; and the Christian on the highway is God's representative under discipline.

   Remember that meekness does not mean servility and the meek man is not a door mat. Look again at the Gospel portrait of our Lord. Even in the washing of Peter's feet He maintained a dignity that transfigured the scene. There was a noble quality to His manliness that drew young and old. The compassion of His healing ministry flowed not from weakness but from strength. On the Cross where He took the worst that man could give Him, He held His head so high that even the admiration of a Roman legionary was kindled.

   Meekness can best be contrasted with timidity, as well as with aggressiveness by the figure of a door. Three men wish to go through the door; one is aggressive, one is timid, and one is meek. The aggressive man does not wait to see whether the door is locked, but hurls his weight against it and forces the latch. The timid man stands outside the door, dreading what is on the other side, afraid to try to enter. The meek man approaches the door and tests the knob to see whether the Lord has unlatched it. If He has, this man proceeds to walk in.

   It is true in personal relationships and it is true of our nation as a whole that we are short-rationed in this quality. God lets us toot our horns all we please, but He never blesses the result. What Jesus Christ is suggesting in this Beatitude is a measure long overdue: a revival of meekness. Today the world is weary of boasting; yet with the resurgence of nationalism there is little relief in prospect. How welcome would be a prophet who would speak for our time the words of Isaiah: "Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob . . . yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, you are of nothing, and your work is of nought" (Isaiah 41:21, 23-24).

   No one can lead another closer to Christ than he stands himself, and no nation can make another nation behave better than its own example. It is time to pray in our land for a spiritual awakening that will create a national meekness. We know that when it comes it will be of God and not of man. It will not be a contrived phenomenon. It may use the modern mass media and it may not. It may well take the form Shelton Smith suggested, of "a hard-bitten, psalm-singing band of religious revivalists." It may come through national suffering and disaster; certainly it cannot be expected to arrive on pillows of luxury. We can, if we will strip ourselves of some of the accoutrements of padded living, begin to prepare for the divine visitation.

   In the book of Genesis we are told that God gave man "dominion . . . over all the earth." Man has not used that prerogative according to the rules; he has made his own rules, and the bully-boys have usurped the power wherever they could. now we know that their day is doomed. The meek shall come into their own, not because they are deserving but because God has promised them a blessing. No gold stars are passed out in heaven for meekness, for it is by Grace we are saved. The Beatitude is, from beginning to end, simply an outpouring of divine Grace through Jesus Christ "so then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy" (Romans 9:16).

____________________________

1. J.B. Phillips, Your God Is Too Small, The Epworth Press, London, 1952.

2. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1922.

3. Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850.

[Soldier4Christ]

The Straight Line to God

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

   HERE IS A STRANGE DECLARATION: so simple it is passed over as obvious, so profound it is usually misunderstood. Were we to substitute the words, "Blessed are they who keep struggling to do better; for they shall be rewarded," we would express the meaning usually attached to the Beatitude. We would then have a worthy addition to the world's collection of platitudes and half-truths. We would also be doing a great injustice to the words of Jesus. Our Beatitude says nothing about toil or struggle. It says nothing about achievement or even about improvement. Quite the contrary: it speaks of men whose emptiness leaves them unable to work.

   The deeper we get into our study, the more do the Beatitudes stand out in bold relief, overarching the maxims of men and wisdom of this world. The world cannot read the Sermon on the Mount; only the eye of faith is able to focus properly on the Word and to grasp what Jesus is teaching. The world reads the fourth Beatitude and thinks it is saying something about lifting ourselves by our bootstraps; faith senses that here is something closely akin to the cry from the Cross, torn out of the anguish of the soul of our Lord: "I thirst!"

   It is common today for a community to honor one of its more active citizens by declaring him "Man of the Year." A profession or vocation finds it useful to select some prominent member and present him with an award. A philanthropist or a man of achievement will have a street, a park, a city or a mountain named after him. Of the honored one many will think, "He has arrived. His works of righteousness have been rewarded. He has reached the top. What more can he ask for, and what more can life provide?"

   Yet the righteousness of which Christ speaks is not necessarily kind deeds or good citizenship. New Testament righteousness is not synonymous with goodness. Neither is righteousness to be confused with self-righteousness. Thus the upright man in the Bible is neither a do-gooder (in the tiresome sense) nor a prig.

   The Old Testament concept of the seeker after righteousness is best symbolized by a pious Hebrew sitting under a fig tree, meditating on the law. The New Testament portrait is more dynamic. It conceives the seeker as possessed of a mission, a man stripped to essentials and basic drives: "this one thing I do." He is a man with desire, with hunger and thirst. His eye is "single."

His appetite will be appeased by no fleshly dainties. He is on a hunger strike for truth — about himself and his environment. Is he right with God or is he not; and, if he is not right, how can he be set right? Such a man, says Jesus Christ, will get his answer. He will get it not by dashing up and down mountains of moral effort, nor by aspiring after some distant Holy Grail of achievement, but by quietly starving out every other claim on himself.

   That, perhaps, is why spirituality often has been associated with some kind of fasting. To miss a meal for God may not fill us with righteousness, but our relationship with Him is never quite the same afterward.

   Right at the beginning, then, we must readjust our approach to the Beatitude. It seems so simple — if we go after a thing we will get it. "The Lord helps those who help themselves", is a well-known adage. Are we not so trained from childhood? Yet Jesus is not talking about a "thing," He is talking about righteousness. And in the Bible righteousness is always a condition before God rather than before men. Therefore, our Lord is speaking of what it takes for a man to be justified in God's sight, to be ripe for the Father's fellowship, so that he can walk and talk with his Lord freely and without rebuke. To do all this, says Jesus, takes more than man can muster. He must look for help beyond.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   Two members of Grace Church met on a downtown street. Their thoughts naturally gravitated to their church and to the potluck supper scheduled for that evening. One asked, "What are you folks planning to bring?" The other replied, "My wife is away, so I'm bringing a good appetite!"

   A poor enough way to conduct a potluck supper, you remark; but our subject is righteousness, and Jesus Christ says that the man's reply is exactly correct as far as righteousness with God is concerned. If he brings his hunger with him that is all he needs to bring; he will be filled. We are told that nature abhors a vacuum, but in the life of the Spirit it is different: God honors a vacuum and fills it to overflowing.

   Before a man can be made righteous before God, then, he must be made "un-righteous." He must get rid of his "hot dishes and desserts" — the food of his own cooking. He must be relieved of the claptrap of the ego, the things that he considers commendable in his own eyes. It is a process so painful that Paul calls it crucifixion and Jesus Christ calls it something close to starvation. It is the spiritual leveling that takes place before the Cross.

   The seeker finds that he has been hungering and thirsting after the wrong things, after forbidden fruit, and he has committed the sin of his first parents all over again. He discovers to his dismay that the sins on one side of Main Street are as offensive to God as the sins on the other side; "for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:22-23). He finds that the attitude that sustained him in life — perhaps best described as "I'm just as good as anybody else" — has actually distorted his vision and kept him from facing reality. In short he finds a description of himself in Paul's words: "They being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God" (Romans 10:3).

   Our Beatitude suggests that if a man yearns to be blessed with the righteousness of God he must first be stripped of the things that contaminate. In a defective environment, in a society that lives by compromise, we ask how such decontamination is possible. We know that the world steadfastly refuses to recognize that human nature can be changed. Do not the philosophers advise us that we are doomed to struggle through life half nobleman and half beast? In the words of James Branch Cabell, "Man plays the ape to his dreams."

   When the cadres of Marxism announce dogmatically that in the future Communist society, when all "vestiges" of capitalism are removed, there will be no more thieving, molesting, or disturbing the peace, we laugh at their naïvete. We know better! Man does not educate himself out of his sins. And when we apply the same logic to the new birth we are tempted to pause in doubt. Are we really purified? Are we truly holy? Our friends ask us knowingly, is that halo dust on our shoulders or is it only dandruff? And then the final temptation of Satan: wouldn't it be better to relax in our dirt and contamination than to assume a virtue we do not possess?

   The answer of the Gospel is like thunder from the seventh heaven: No! The God who made human nature can change human nature, and does! All efforts by the creature to make himself over are futile; "without me you can do nothing." Our hope is in the Lord who saves and renews. We need not imagine that our fates are written in the stars; God made the stars too. By His Grace He has made a way for us out of the human predicament. That way is by the Cross, and it is by hunger and thirst. We must want God — want Him badly. "When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek" (Psalm 27:.

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We must want the righteousness of God so desperately that we are willing to label even our goodness as unfit for His holy sight. We simply cannot have it both ways: we cannot confess that we are sinners and at the same time seek to justify our acts. We cannot throw ourselves penitently on the mercy of the Lord and still try to preserve prestige and maintain our reputations. Christ did not die for noble beasts or beastly noblemen; He died for sinners, and He clothes only sinners who have discarded the rags of their own righteousness.

   Thus the nails are slowly driven into our hands and feet, and the spear enters our side. We realize at last that we have reached the end of the road to Calvary. It is the moment of moments — the "existential" moment. For us all decks have been cleared, all planes have been grounded, all battlefields are quiet. There is darkness over the Place of the Skull, and silence in heaven for the space of half an hour. The clock at the heart of the universe seems to have run down. We know now what it means to be under the curse of sin. It is God's move.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   God does not fail us. The moment we have divested ourselves of the rags we once thought becoming, the moment we reveal to Him our spiritual shame and nakedness, He hastens to us with cover. That is the great word of divine mercy in the Bible: cover. He covers our sins with His robe of righteousness.

   At the age of seventeen I was inducted into a university fraternity by the process known as "hell week." After being exposed to the usual collegiate indignities for several hours I was flung into the fish pond and brought nude and shivering before the assembled chapter. My mortification was without limits; but at that point someone flung a quilt about my shoulders and covered me. I shall never cease to be grateful to that "brother"; the quilt's warmth and the kindness it symbolized after the ordeal fairly melted me, and the act is as vivid today as when it happened.

   Since I have become a Christian I have been flung many times into a spiritual fish pond. The life of a believer was never calculated to inflate the ego — too much of the "id" is forever bubbling to the surface. And yet the promise of Scripture is unfailing: God covers our unrighteousness with His own righteousness.

   How does He do it?

   With the seamless robe of Jesus Christ.

   When Christians speak of the "work" of Christ they do not refer to His woodwork in Joseph's carpenter shop, or even to His labors of teaching and healing. They mean the work of establishing men and women before God, of making them worthy of the heavenly Father and holy and righteous in His eyes. Such is the work of the Cross.

   The scene at Calvary cannot be made a pleasant one by any stretch of imagination or theology. The more we examine it the worse it becomes. What a ghastly business to have gone through! To study the Passion of our Lord is to realize that the real meaning of this Beatitude is: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled — by me, through the Cross." Seekers after righteousness do not find their reward automatically, as if life never fails, or as if the search itself is the reward. They are blessed because Christ atoned for them by interposing Himself in their stead.

   If our sense of justice is annoyed by this, the annoyance is only a smoke screen to hide a greater issue. Far more deeply disturbing is the implication that each of us who believes owes more to Jesus Christ than to any person who ever lived. Not because He founded Western society, or gave to us the climate of democracy and science, or created the Church. Rather because He lifted the curse of unrighteousness from us and made us fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:. And to break our cold and doubting hearts He did it gladly.

   There is no greater work than Christ's — or harder work — and in a very real sense it is still being carried on. When I see the Lord at work on a human soul today I stand back and gape in sheer admiration. I would never have dared to make the attempt. Even when Christ uses me to sow the seed, and I explain the Scriptures to an inquirer, a voice seems to whisper that my own personality defects are so glaring that the message will never come through. Thus when a proud, self-sufficient, ambitious soul comes crashing down at the base of the Cross, I think, "Is it possible?" It is not easy to tell when a man is spiritually hungry or thirsty. "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned." I have been mistaken many times. Only the Holy Spirit is wise in these matters. He draws the heart in the first place. He riffles the water, kindles the fire, creates the appetite.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   The deepest yearning in life is to know that our lives are somehow fulfilled and have meaning, that in spite of everything they "add up." Though we live in a tainted world that is forever rubbing off on us, we want the assurance that we pass muster, that we make the grade. We are eager to know that when the heavenly Father checks us over, instead of discarding us as a "reject," He will put on us His stamp of approval. We don't like to think that at the end of our span of years we are going to be picked up as "returned empties." We wish to be brought upstairs as "vessels of honor."

   To know that he is right with God gives significance to every breath a Christian draws. Not to know it is to spend one's days seeking consolation in the markets and assemblies and revels of dissatisfied humanity. The world assures us that it is foolish to seek the righteousness of God, for it takes a genius to make a saint. Far better (argues the world) that we make an amiable adjustment to sin in this life, without, of course, overdoing it. The Scriptures reply that sainthood, like genius, is a gift, but a gift available to anyone. The robe of Christ fits everybody. The New Testament saints were not "canonized," they were simply people with faith. They did not earn their good standing with God, they received it from His hand as a gift, and only in that sense were they "gifted."

   Anybody can find significance for his life in Jesus Christ. What Christ came to earth to do was not only to set men free but to set them right. His sacrifice was specifically to prepare us for fellowship with God here and hereafter. The heavenly Father welcomes us with open arms and imparts to us blessing upon blessing — not because we are upright but because Jesus Christ has clothed us with His own virtue.

   There is a moving description in the Old Testament of Abraham pleading with God to spare the city of Sodom. Abraham asked first if God would destroy the city should there be fifty righteous men within it. The Lord replied that for the sake of the fifty righteous ones He would forego the destruction. Abraham then lowered the number to forty-five, then to forty, to thirty, to twenty, and finally to ten. The Lord replied each time, saying in turn that if such a number of righteous men were found in the city, He would spare the place (Genesis 18:20-32).

[Soldier4Christ]

Abraham stopped with ten, but no suggestion is given that the Lord's patience was exhausted. Had Abraham reduced the number to five, or three, or even to one righteous man, it cannot be inferred that he would have been refused a hearing. In fact, it is the teaching of the New Testament that for the sake of one righteous man the whole world has been offered a God-sent chance to avert its destruction and doom.

   If we only knew it, Jesus Christ's righteousness is enough to cover all our lack of it. His love is enough to make up for our unloveliness. More than that, His Grace is able to take these virtues and to invest them in us, so that we become more like Him. When we hunger and thirst after Jesus, this Beatitude is fulfilled; for He is our righteousness. "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink . . . from within him shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:37-38 ASV).

   Jesus went to the Cross not only to bring us to God by conveying His righteousness to us, but also to show us what practical Christian living means today. As Chaucer wrote of his "poor parson":

This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf,
That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte.

Jesus not only wrought upon the Cross, He also taught. He left us an example, and bade us take up our crosses and follow Him. He showed us how to behave like men, how to use the assurance of our righteous standing before God, not to lord it over our neighbors, but to help them. He showed us that true righteousness is nothing we can boast about, since it is only a borrowed cloak, dearly purchased, with ownership in heaven.

   And it is the glory of the Gospel that for all the darkness of the road Christ leads us along, there is a light in the distance. Beyond Calvary shines the Resurrection. The way of the Cross is no nightmarish death march into oblivion, with just one sacrifice piled on another. It is a straight line to God. It leads home. The promise of this Beatitude is that in spite of everything that afflicts us on the way, in the end we shall be filled.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   At one period in my life I carried on a running debate with myself on the question of questions: Why did Jesus Christ die for me?

   He die for the world, perhaps; for the Church, to be sure; for "sin," so the apostle indicates; for the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy, undoubtedly.

   But for me?

   I was being trained in a theological seminary with a deserved reputation for scholarship. I studied every "theory" of the atonement — penal, commercial, forensic, classical, moral influence, Anselmic. The strong and weak points of each were made known to me. I looked upon them with detached, twentieth-century objectivity. "Interesting historical phenomena," I thought, "but the mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse."

   I learned that Jesus of Nazareth combined within Himself the concepts of the Son of Man as found in Daniel, and the Suffering Servant as found in Isaiah; that the shedding of blood is necessary for the remission of sin because the cost of forgiveness is high; that a savior-figure is psychologically useful as a therapeutic agent to rid man of his guilt feelings.

   None of these answers convinced me. None caused me to leap out of bed in the middle of the night, after the manner of Horace Bushnell, crying, "I have found it. I have found the Gospel!" They only left me more puzzled. Of all the reading of those years, I can remember only two passages that really spoke to my condition. One was a comment of Williston Walker, the church historian, in his discussion of theories of the atonement: "The message of the Gospel is that in some true sense Christ died, not for general justice, but for me."1 The other was a passage in the journal of John Wesley, entered on Saturday, February 7, 1736:

       Mr. Oglethorpe returned from Savannah with Mr. Spangenberg, one of the pastors of the Germans. I soon found what spirit he was of: and asked his advice with regard to my own conduct. He said, "My brother, I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit, that you are a child of God?" I was surprised, and knew not what to answer. He observed it, and asked, "Do you know Jesus Christ?" I paused and said, "I know He is the Saviour of the world." "True," replied he; "but do you know he has saved you?" I answered, "I hope he has died to save me." He only added, "Do you know yourself?" I said, "I do." But I fear they were vain words.

   The truth is that I did not want anyone — God or man — to be sacrificed on my behalf. Lenin was agreeable to sacrificing half the world in order to forward his theories, but I told myself that I was not inclined to be so free with other people's lives. The Biblical arrangement by which righteousness is imputed to the believer is wonderful, but (as I reasoned) it is too hard on the sacrificial victim. It seemed to turn Jesus Christ into a kind of scapegoat for a makeshift cosmic plan to gloss over the defects of the human race, in order to satisfy the Creator. The Cross becomes a kind of apology for man as the one creative act that misfired. I called it unfair to Jesus.

   Yet the answer of Scripture was that I could not have it any other way. All the power of the Christian life, the promise of joy beyond pain and triumph beyond tragedy, is possible only because of those six wretched hours on Calvary when God "made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

   Today I know that the reason Christ died upon the Cross was to ready me to meet God, here and hereafter. The years of hunger and thirst have ended in blessedness and the filling of the Holy Spirit. That which alienated me from the presence of the Lord has been taken away, removed, covered. I have freedom of access with every other believer — as Peter Forsyth says — not because I am a lover of love, but because I am an object of Grace. Once this tremendous truth comes home, the search is over, the seeker becomes a finder, and Christianity comes alive. When the sinner owns up to his sin and is clothed with the divine righteousness, all the dull, dreary forms of the Church become clothed in His sight with richness and glory. Life itself is transformed into a doxology. He is born anew.

__________________

1. Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1942 ed.

[Soldier4Christ]

The Making of Merciful Men

Blessed are the merciful:
for they shall obtain mercy.

   THE FIFTH BEATITUDE seems to offer some more straightforward "boot-strap religion." Virtue appears to be its own reward. If we are kind and forgiving toward other people, they — together with Providence — will be favorably disposed toward us. The way we treat those around us conditions the kind of clemency we receive, not only from our neighbors, but from God Himself. The Golden Rule (or a misunderstanding of it) is thus projected into outer space by a kind of celestial stimulus-response or push-button formula. If our welldoing measures up in quality, God presumably can be "triggered" into an appropriate response. Another well-known verse is often cited to underscore the point: "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," to which is added our Lord's comment, "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you" (Matthew 6:12,14).

   We are seeking to interpret the Beatitudes by the Cross. We are seeking the person behind the teachings, believing that in these verses portraying the blessed man, Jesus Himself is the character described. Or as Carl Henry has interpreted it, "He clothes the Beatitudes with his own life."1

   Jesus' life, we know, derives its full meaning from the Cross. How does the Cross bear out the "stimulus-response" interpretation of the fifth Beatitude? We may begin by saying that Jesus of Nazareth was one who practiced mercy daily. "All they that had any sick . . . brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them" (Luke 4:40). Compassion was the essence of His character. It led Him to frequent unsavory places and to touch the untouchable. It gave Him a special concern for the weak; for children, for the handicapped, for the misfits and victims of society. He refused to countenance violence or bloodshed on His behalf. Even on the Roman gallows, as the reformer Zwingli has said, our Lord was "true to Himself" and forgave those who sought to do away with Him. Yet when the sentence of man was passed upon Him, He received no clemency. His reward was neither acquittal nor pardon but execution, and there was no interference.

   Here is the one stark fact about the crucifixion of Christ that stands out above all others: from every human point of view it was merciless. It was brought about by the two cruelest forces of the ancient world: imperial might and religious fanaticism. Roman law was inexorable. Its justice was cruel and final. The empire that systematically enslaved sixty million people was in no mood to trifle with a man who, according to his own tribe, claimed to be a rival of Caesar. As for the religious bigots of the time, they (like their counterparts today of whatever persuasion) showed a supreme inability to sympathize with or understand someone of differing views. Thus the merciful one obtained no mercy.

   We are forced to go back to our Beatitude and ask, "What does it mean?" Obviously it does not mean, "Do this and you'll get that." In the storm and stress of life no sheltered island is promised where the faithful will be rewarded. A dedicated Christian friend once said in my presence, "I believe that as long as I am taking care of my orphans, the Lord will take care of me." We can admire and love him for his compassionate heart; but what will he do with the Cross? For the Cross makes it clear that the way God takes care of us may be altogether different from the way we reward (or fail to reward) each other. If we are decent and loving to each other, we may reap thanks in this life and we may not. We may die full of years like Father Abraham and we may not. Life hands us no gilt-edged warranty that rectitude wins "the big payoff." If we look to Jesus Christ, He does not pin a "good-conduct" medal on our chests; He hands us a Cross.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   "The quality of mercy," says Portia, "is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven." The Shakespearean figure is valid and Scriptural. It corrects the fallacy that mercy can be conjured up on earth out of a bottle or a good-will sack. Christian faith teaches that mercy does not go up that it may come down; it comes down period. It is unmerited favor from God himself to an erring people who can do nothing to earn it except to hold out their hands.

   When we understand that mercy follows the line of vertical descent, the fog layers of our confusion begin to burn off. There is no stimulus-response, we discover; there is no bargaining for divine favor. To make a bargain one must have something to bargain with; and if we had anything to bargain with we would not need mercy. Our repentance is no asset, for it is the liquidation of all assets. "And if by grace, then it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace" (Romans 11:6). There is no "triggering" here, for God's mercy belongs to Himself and He exercises Crown rights over what is His own. We can plead and beg for mercy, but you will note that the Beatitude does not suggest we shall necessarily receive it.

   What, then? Having eliminated from our quest all human impulses, prayers, sympathies, pityings, generosities, deeds, penances, sacrifices, almsgiving, self-interest, props, crutches and derring-do; having seen that none of these have any claim on the mercy of the Lord; having ascribed absolute sovereignty to God in all these matters as the sole fount of Grace, what are we to do next? What further conditions need to be fulfilled?

   Let us see what the New Testament means by mercy. The word is not a synonym for charity or even for pity in its ordinary usage. Mercy is primarily the gracious act of God in dealing with men: not after their just deserts, but by releasing them, pardoning them, setting them free from the just penalty of their wrongdoings.

   Mercy does not set aside justice or belittle justice. The Word of God is terrible in its promise of recompense: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!" Mercy does not minimize the offense of the Cross. "If I were God," cried Martin Luther, "and the world had treated me as it has treated Him, I would kick the wretched thing to pieces." Yet so unspeakable is the love of God that He took the penalty of our sin upon Himself, that mercy might "rejoice" over judgment (James 2:13), and the stain upon men's lives might be wiped away.

   Today the earth and the skies are filled with signs that suggest not the mercy of God but rather impending doom. The race for space is just another indication that the Lord is inexorable in His judgments upon sin, and "the way of the ungodly shall perish." It is a time when men's hearts are failing them for fear; when the imagination shrinks at the portents of the future. What should the Christian do? Should he raise children, vote for school bonds, build his church and try to live a decent life, when the Lord seems about to permit him to blast himself off the planet?

   To know God is to know the answer. As the Scripture says, He is slow to anger, kind, patient, compassionate, ready to pardon, eager to impart to us the gift of Life. At the Cross love triumphed over justice in the heart of our heavenly Father, and every condition was fulfilled that was required to set men free from the power that thwarts their lives. You and I may hold back with our doubts; we may hesitate to accept God's offer of pardon and peace; but there is no straining the quality of God's mercy. All He requires is our brokenness.

   To walk in that mercy is to know freedom from worry about the future, for the future lies with God. It is to know freedom from worry about the present, because each day is a walk in fellowship with our Lord. And it is to know freedom from worry about the past, because "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin."

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   What is a merciful man? The New Testament's answer is that he is first of all mercy-full. He is filled with the mercy of God, and in that state he is emptied of everything else, or the term means nothing. We quickly recognize that the ordinary meaning of the term "merciful" today is hardly "mercy-full," any more than "graceful" suggests in common usage "filled with the Grace of God." Yet let us reflect a moment: mercy, we said, descends from heaven as a prime attribute of God. How then can we speak of a merciful person without suggesting the fullness of God in him?

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The quintessence of mercy lies in its moving beyond the nicely calculated judgments that regulate our human relationships. It transcends the strictures of justice. Perhaps a very earthy incident will illustrate the operation of free mercy in the Kingdom of God. The municipality of Richmond, California, maintains a carefully-worked-out system of traffic ordinances, with fines graded according to the seriousness of the offense. Not long ago I was stopped by a servant of that city and charged with a violation involving a fine of some twenty-seven dollars. When court convened I entered a plea of "guilty." Apart from explaining that the act was "unintentional," I made no effort to defend myself. The judge, surprisingly, set aside the hierarchy of penalties and proceeded to administer not justice but mercy. I walked out of the courtroom a defenseless violator of the law, stripped of every "extenuating circumstance" and disarmed of every rationalization, yet pardoned and filled with mercy.

   Until a man has encountered the living Lord in some such way he cannot know the meaning of the word "merciful."

    Just as I am, without one plea,
    But that thy blood was shed for me,
    And that thou bidd'st me come to thee . . . .

   To be merciful is to be filled with God. The eyes of compassion are no human eyes. When we look feelingly upon our brother in need, it is not our own feelings that affect us; our own feelings are quite "unfeeling." In the battle for survival it is "every man for himself" and we are quite "merciless." God pity us; we even take secret enjoyment in other people's discomfiture. When we look upon our brother in mercy, it is the Lord who looks and feels and makes use of us as His instruments, "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). Writing to a mother who had lost her child, Baron von Hügel declared, "It is He who made the mother's heart; it is not simply her love, but in the first instance His love, with just some drops of it fallen into the mother's heart . . ."2 Since God is the author of all mercy, every cup of cold water is really given in the name of Jesus, although only those who are in the beloved can understand the reward.

   Once on a by-street in Hilo, Hawaii, I witnessed a strange sight that has haunted me ever since. It was a trial conducted by a flock of mynah birds. In the center of the street one forlorn bird had alighted, and in a surrounding circle several feet in diameter were fifteen or twenty of its "peers." The trial consisted of shrieking and chattering and hopping up and down. At the conclusion of the deliberations the jury pounced upon the bird in the center and pecked it to death with long, sharp beaks. Then court was adjourned and all flew into nearby trees. Shocked at this disturbance in nature, I went over and removed the body.

   More than once since then I have seen men behave in ways that reminded me of a mynah-bird trial. Justice that is not tempered with mercy is perpetually in danger of becoming "mynah-bird justice."

   Speaking vertically, with reference to God, no one of us can make any pretensions in the realm of mercy. We are all mynah birds at heart. We are disqualified by our very natures. We cannot administer what we do not have. Only God can make us merciful; only God is unfailing in pity and tenderness; only "his mercy endureth forever." And so great was God's love toward us that He disregarded our shortcomings, failures, and missing of the mark, and sent us a clean bill of health. He published His amnesty and established His fount of mercy on the most unlikely spot on the face of the earth: the Golgotha execution grounds. It was there, where murder was officially condoned by mankind in the name of religion and law, where imperial justice and ecclesiastical scruple had smothered every spark of human pity, that we received eternal pardon and grace.

   No wonder men have been confused by the Cross! For amid all the "mynah-bird" passions at the Place of the Skull, the believing Christian has found nothing but love — love — love, and mercy surpassing all earthly thoughts and deeds. The bloodstained beams have become the precious and beautiful symbol of salvation. The whole sordid, rubbish-littered scene of Calvary has been forever transfixed with the ineffable glory of God.

Mercy there was great, and grace was free,

Pardon there was multiplied to me,

There my burdened soul found liberty,

At Calvary.

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   This Beatitude offers us a chance to re-examine some of the sore points in our personal lives. Perhaps we think we have treated our neighbor justly, but have we been merciful? The merciful man is the magnanimous man. He "overlooks" the wrongs that have been done him, just as God, in the words of Paul, "passed over" our former sins (Romans 3:25). That is, the Christian hands out horizontally toward his fellow what he has received vertically from the Lord.

   There are seasons when Christians are invited to make a special gift to the One Great Hour of Sharing or similar charity for the relief of the world's suffering. In our self-inventory today we are asking whether such generosity is merely applying salve to our sore consciences. It may be a different story when we are asked to be men of mercy to the Jew or the devout Roman Catholic or the man of different skin alongside us, or to the rather obnoxious alcoholic across the street, or even to the person living under the same roof with us. "You have to do a lot of business with God," says Edward John Carnell, "to mellow out in sweetness." Yet in parable after parable Jesus Christ identifies Himself with just such folk as "these my brethren."

   Even if we have the good will to be merciful, and we sincerely want to be used of God as instruments of His grace, we do not always know how to proceed. Should we "tell off" a person for his own good? Is it not more merciful in some cases to be polite and tactful, and to skip the facts? Does a man achieve more under a "hard-boiled" boss than under one who is gentle and "merciful"? Could there be a situation in which it would be kind to be harsh, and unkind to be kind?

   Ernest Ligon, the child psychologist, suggests, "Mercy does not always express itself by withholding punishment. For one child punishment may be necessary, in another it may produce a sullen, spiritless, and anti-social personality. Permitting a youth to work his way through college may develop a sense of responsibility in one student, produce an overmaterialistic, money-grabbing philosophy of life in another, and an inferiority complex in a third."3

   If it takes wisdom to establish justice, it takes even more to have mercy; in fact, it takes more than man possesses. Without the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Christian hardly knows how to begin to act. The making of merciful men is a divine art. If there is any one rule that can be given, it is, "Follow Jesus Christ."

   A friend of mine recently returned from a trip to South America where he investigated the state of the Church. Everywhere he went he discovered that the Pentecostal movement is making strides, and he inquired of the nationals and missionaries he met the reason for their advance. They told him, "The Pentecostals are accepted because they believe that Jesus has the answer to every problem."

Certainly in the matter of mercy we can trust Jesus. He was not soft as mush, He was hard as steel. The sternest words in the Bible are not found in the Old Testament, they are found on the lips of Jesus; yet His life was a symphony of mercy.

   He teaches us that the merciful man is the one who seeks to save others from suffering, even at the cost of immediate pain, and even if it means vicarious suffering on his own part. From Jesus we gather that the merciful man does not seek to improve his own status at the expense of the misery of his fellow. He leaves practical jokes to others. He has a compassionate heart. he goes the second mile. He brushes off the slights and buffets that come his way as of little consequence. In all these things he anticipates no reward, but simply conforms in obedience to the pattern of his Master.

   In the tabernacle of the ancient Hebrews the center of worship was the Mercy Seat, over which brooded the cherubim with wings outstretched above the Ark of the Covenant. When the veil of the temple was torn in two at the time of the Crucifixion, Jesus Christ became our Mercy Seat. It is from that Seat that our Lord creates the man of mercy. He does not promise such a man that he shall have "self-fulfillment" as our culture understands it, or even that he shall be "happy," as some translators interpret the first word of our Beatitude.

   Nevertheless Jesus Christ does promise a blessing and it is this: open access to all the riches of heaven. To "obtain mercy" is not only to receive a passport to immortality; it is to unlock the door to life's greatest mystery and its most elusive, guarded secret. What the artist dreams of in her cubes and abstractions, what the alchemist searched for in his magic elixir, what the manager pursues in her disappearing "plateau" of success is what the Lord Jesus Christ issues as standard equipment for those who are His own: peace with joy in the borrowed dimensions of mercy.