The Cross On The Mountain

[Soldier4Christ]

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   To read the New Testament is to realize that we are not just saved from something but for something. God's purpose in accomplishing our salvation was, after all, to make us useful to Himself. We are newly "created in Christ Jesus unto good works"; and those works are, broadly speaking, works of mercy. By now it should be evident that our Beatitude is not so much a statement of cause and effect as it is an equation. It could be equally well stated in reverse: "Blessed are they that obtain mercy: for they shall be merciful." Our Lord said something very much like it in Luke's account of the Sermon on the Plain: "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful" (Luke 6:36).

   The same kind of equation is evident in the verse, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." It is not simply cause and effect ("If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you"), for it also works in reverse: "Be ye kind . . . forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:32). The whole earth is filled with the mercy of God. We love our fellow human beings because He first loved us (1 John 4:19), but we also love them in order that we might love God better (1 John 4:20). Our works of mercy do not earn our fare to heaven, they are simply the staple diet of the Christian life. As the practical proverb puts it, "The merciful man doeth good to his own soul" (Proverbs 11:17).

   The world desperately needs to learn that Jesus went to the Cross to create a race of new men — merciful men. It needs these men, for our human race is perishing for lack of love and mercy. We may have thought once that we were outgrowing the cruelties of the ancients and the "barbarians," but we have been rudely awakened. The latest revolution in Cuba employed the same brutal tortures that were used in primeval Egypt and Phoenicia. God is weary of our inhumanities. He is looking for this new race to assert itself: men who will take Jesus Christ seriously, men of mercy who are willing to make the same kind of absolute sacrifice in His name and in our time. Such men He will use mightily.

   A debate is being waged around the world today over the words "justice" and "democracy." Our nation is committed to its hard-won convictions; we will part with them dearly indeed. However, in other parts of the world we are told that our democracy is not pure, and that our freedom is not freedom at all. Many of our difficulties are semantic. There is tremendous confusion simply over words.

   It is not so with regard to mercy. Its meaning is changeless. There is no mistaking the cry of a ragged, starving child, or the timid handclasp of the friendless and downtrodden. Need speaks a universal language and hunger knows no iron curtain. We never seem to run out of the demands of mercy, for the tyrant is always at hand, and no immigration statutes seem to keep out the oppressor of the poor. The beggars with their sores were pitiful in Jesus' day, but the suffering and homelessness of thousands and even millions in our time are more poignant because our nations possess the technical ability to relieve the condition.

   There is indescribable poverty in this year of Grace in Korea, in Hong Kong, in Jordan, in India, in Africa, but we need not go so far afield. Within a dozen miles of where you live there is destitution that you never suspected was there. Visit a city rescue mission and let life speak to you.

   John R. Mott once described the call of God in a man's life as "the recognition of a need and the capacity to meet that need." We who go by the name of Christ and who see the need have a task that is herculean. We dwell in a century which, whatever else it may be called, will never be known as the "Century of Mercy." Its latest tragic development is the emergence of Communist "assistance to backward nations." The merciless are now simulating mercy, not out of love for the brethren but in order to propagandize an appeal for world domination.

   Our Western leaders are being told that they must quickly extend a helping hand to the world's wretched or fall before the power of a dictatorship. Frank Laubach says, "The United States must make an all-out effort to help the destitute half of the world out of its misery, or we shall find that the world has gone Communist because of our neglect." His entreaty is based on absolute truth, but it will be ignored. Fear has never yet begotten mercy and kindness. Only Christians who know the perfect love that casts out fear can act with what Samuel Hopkins called "disinterested benevolence." With the New Testament as their guide, they must take the lead in teaching the world the sincere brotherly concern and humanity that is the stamp of the Savior on a man's life.

   Our Beatitude is more than an equation; it is an intersection, a meeting of the vertical with the horizontal. That mercy which "drops as a gentle rain from heaven" covers the earth with streams of living water. The free Grace of God becomes a human commodity, not for profit but for blessing in the everyday encounters of life. The very things which, we said earlier, could not incite the mercy of God toward us become the vehicles whereby we are to express God's love and compassion: our sympathies, pityings, generosities, deeds, sacrifices, and charity. The divine forgiveness, by which we are "accepted in the beloved," is mediated through us as a means of reconciling man with man.

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1. Carl Henry, Christian Personal Ethics, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, 1957.

2. Essays and Addresses, E.P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1921.

3. Ernest Ligon, The Psychology of Christian Personality, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1935.

[Soldier4Christ]

The Washing of the Cup

Blessed are the pure in heart:
for they shall see God.

   THE DISCIPLINE of Scripture is bringing us into the very center of the laboratory of life. In eleven short words, Jesus now faces us with man's highest hope and his deepest frustration. The longing within the human breast to behold the face of God is primordial. We yearn to leap over the barriers of sense and time and look full front upon Him who fashioned us. Yet something within rebuffs us — slaps us down — with the knowledge that we are morally unfit for such an experience. Our myopic vision will not reach to the far ranges of eternity. Its white radiance is too much for us. God is holy, and we are soiled and puny.

   "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?" asks the Psalmist, "Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart." Where does that leave us, who are confronted with our imperfections night and day? Are we doomed never to see the face of God? Is Jesus Christ holding out before us a flying goal, a carrot on the end of a stick? Surely our Lord would be cruel to promise us the vision of heaven through the achievement of personal purity, knowing all the time that we could never achieve it. There are no glad tidings here.

   Perhaps you are inclined to point out that, while you are admittedly imperfect, there are many who are morally inferior and considerably more delinquent than you. In fact, all things taken into view, you rank rather high on the scale of human behavior. We seem always so much more willing to confess the sins of others than to recognize our own! But let it be clear that Jesus is not promising the vision of God to those who may be relatively better than others. He is talking about purity, which is an absolute and not a relative condition. Only the pure in heart will be blessed and shall see God.

   Dr. Jung, the Swiss psychologist, believes that each of us wears a persona, which in Latin means "mask," and that our persona is really the "person" we present to the public view. Our inner thoughts we prefer to conceal; we even seek to hide them from ourselves. We demurely convey the impression that we are moral, law-abiding citizens while our imaginations run riot. Our bookshelves present the staid classics — but what is that dog-eared volume hidden behind? Some of us like to carry ourselves as if we were Sir Galahad, who declared in the lines of the Victorian poet,

    My strength is as the strength of ten,
    Because my heart is pure.

The truth is that we are better compared to Sir Lancelot, who carried himself nobly and wielded his sword valorously, but who while he fought betrayed the lord he served.

   If only we can bring ourselves to face our impurity, there is hope for us. If only we can stand the thought that we are not good enough for God, we have a chance. We need major cardiac surgery of the kind that the Lord prescribed for Israel: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26). The old heart must go, for it was impure. With a new heart, shall we be able to see our Lord?

   Let us look again at the words of the twenty-fourth Psalm, third and fourth verses:

       Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart: who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

A question is asked and an answer is given. Let us ask whether the reverse is also true. Perhaps if we deduce the opposite question and a corresponding answer we may learn something:

       Who shall be struck down upon the hill of the Lord? or who shall fall in his holy place? He that hath unclean hands, and an impure heart; who hath lifted up his soul unto vanity, and sworn deceitfully.

What is this but a picture of man — not as he ought to be but as he is? The twisted verses reflect the whole history of nations and civilizations and tell the fate of humanity. They pinpoint the bullying child, the mother who exploits her family to further her ambition, the man who spends his leisure scheming to magnify his importance, the dictator with a global power complex. All these are guilty of "lifting up their soul unto vanity."

   But there is something curious about this perverted Scripture. It is inaccurate. Who was it that was struck down upon the hill of the Lord? Jesus Christ, the only one whose hands were clean and conscience sound. The innocent took the place of the guilty, the just of the unjust. His crucifixion on Calvary meant that He deliberately sacrificed His purity on our behalf, that we might be rendered fit to see God. The Great Physician performed a Good Friday operation to remove the stone and to graft in the gift of life: a new, pure heart.

   The Beatitude brings us a great hope: that because He lived we too shall live and shall see the face of God. He has made clear the way: we are to take up our crosses and follow the path to that same hill where we also must climb and be struck down and crucified with Him.

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   Purity of heart requires the purity of Christ, and that is, first of all, not so much spotlessness as integrity. Forty-seven times in the Fourth Gospel Jesus declared that what he did was not done by His will alone but by the will of the Father. Because He was absolutely certain at the point of motivation, Jesus had no fears as to the consequences. They could call Him a consorter with sinners and winebibbers, it did not matter. For Him separation was a matter of vocation rather than location.

   The integrity Christ taught was not something built up over a period of years like a credit rating, or an award for safe driving. Such matters are established by the absence of stain on the record. The pure heart is more like an unexpected gift suddenly placed in the hands. Its chief characteristic is not the absence of flaws but openness toward the giver.

   In Scripture one of the clearest symbols of the believers is the vessel or cup. A Christian is a cup filled to overflowing with the water of life. He himself is an "earthen" vessel — dirt — but the water purifies and sanctifies the vessel as long as it is being poured in. When the water's flow is stopped the cup becomes stale and stagnant. The two chief marks of the cup are that it has the capacity to contain and is open at the top. Capacity is what we bring to God — and it is all we bring. Openness is what makes purity possible, as the riches of glory are poured into the vessels of mercy.

   As long as the divine life is being poured into our hearts we have a chance to see ourselves as God sees us. Therein lies our hope; for when we seek to examine ourselves "objectively" we engage in a vast self-deception. Our blacks become grays or else disappear entirely. We may become meticulously honest at one point but we ignore three others. We say we detest hypocrites, that we would far rather be condemned as sinners than as two-faced pretenders, yet even in the midst of our protestation we are artfully weaving a tapestry of hypocrisy.

On the tapestry is a legend which, when translated, suggests that not only do we intend to have our cake, but we will eat it too. If we cannot call ourselves pure in heart, at least no man dare call us impure, for how can one see in when the shades are drawn? Thus the sediment collects in the bottom of our cup and renders it unfit for use.

   Only when God's living water is splashing in the cup can it be clean. Purity of heart then becomes no longer a conscious state at all, but an unconscious one. When a mother is busy training her child in his proper duties she does not ask herself, "Am I a good mother?" The very activity in which she is engaged answers the question. When a Christian is laboring in his vocation his virtue is absorbed in his work.

[Soldier4Christ]

When Jesus told the parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25), He described how the righteous ones would be rewarded because they fed Him when he was hungry, and quenched His thirst, and gave Him a home, and clothed Him, and visited Him in distress. Then Jesus pictured them as reacting in surprise and asking when they had ever done these things: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in? or naked and clothe you? Or when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?" (Matthew 25:37-39). That for which they were being rewarded was done unconsciously as the overflow of a God-filled life. The pure heart does not know that it is acting purely, it only knows that it is responding to the Spirit.

   The only conscious thing we can say about the pure in heart is that they are fundamentally honest about their own impurity. They are not "kidding" themselves. They have carried motivation research to the point where they know that since the "heart is deceitful above all things" (Jeremiah 17:9), the good life must be a gift of Grace, and their good works are but the works of the Lord. This frankness and honesty is the basis of Christian integrity. It is grounded at the Cross, where everything is level. It provides a framework of human nothingness from which a man can look out and see the face of God.

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   In his biography of one of the leaders of the Reformation, Samuel Macaulay Jackson notes that in his early years Zwingli did not preach the Gospel in its fullness, as he was involved in a licentious sex relationship. The biographer adds significantly, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."

   This Beatitude has always focused a searchlight on the struggle of Spirit against flesh. Purity of heart and lust will not be bedfellows. From the human point of view, of course, there is simply no contest, for our bodily nature has drives so strong that they clamor for our complete attention. Flesh triumphs. A hundred times a day — or is it a thousand? — we receive sexual stimuli from all kinds of sources, and far too often the effect is to provoke reflections that lead to impurity of heart.

   The famed ascetic Jerome, who wrestled for years with his soul in solitude and fasting, far removed from all outward temptations of the flesh, reports that he was still plagued by visions of bevies of dancing maidens. The way of asceticism will put iron in the soul, but it will not remove the impurity. All the virtuous resolutions in the world will not purge a man. Benjamin Franklin in his youth made a list of puritan virtues that he resolved to achieve. At the very time he was punctiliously endeavoring to observe them, he was engaged in a shabby pursuit of sex in London.

   Jesus had a number of things to say about the sexual behavior of men and women, but His sociology, like His physical therapy, always occupied a secondary position. Christ's greater concern was to show that the Spirit of God could do for man what he could not do for himself: win victory over his body. Only God is the creator of flesh and only God is stronger than flesh; but He joins battle on this ground only on behalf of those who are willing to receive purity on His conditions.

   What are the conditions? They are very simple. First, we are to recognize that God made flesh in the first place, and there is nothing inherently evil or shameful about it. All the works of the Lord are good; "there is nothing unclean of itself" (Romans 14:14). The original sin committed in Eden was neither lust nor greed, but pride.

   Nevertheless a blight has fallen upon mankind which we Christians call sin, and this blight has created disorder in man's sexual pattern as well as in other areas of his life. The rape in the park, the incident that created gossip next door, the statistics of the Kinsey Report are all symptoms of the dislocation in what the New Testament calls "the flesh." No man ever finds God working in his body until he first finds the moral taint and impurity in his body.

   The third condition God requires is that a man invite Him to come in and possess his body. The body then becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and the owner of the body becomes a new man in Jesus Christ.

   Let it not be imagined that this new man is a kind of "superman" endowed with tremendous ability that enables him to get self-mastery over the flesh and to develop into some sort of spiritual giant. There is no such thing as a victorious Christian, there is only a victorious Christ. There are no conquests of the "new man" over the "old man," for the Christian is just as weak after he has been translated into the Kingdom of God as he was before. He is, in fact, weaker, for now he is fully aware of his weakness and knows that he dare make "no provision for the flesh." The impurities that he formerly took as a matter of course in his daily walk — the continual flaunting of flesh for commercial purposes, the inevitable round of sex stories — now sear his soul and make him realize he is a pilgrim and a stranger on the earth. They test his strength and find it wanting, and cause him to lean more and more on the only source of his spiritual strength, the Lord Jesus Christ.

   We do not move from "dirty" thoughts to pure thoughts by seeking to get closer to the Lord — for example, by attending church more regularly. Demons are not exorcised by sacred organ music. Every church has its share of impurity of heart. A man's life becomes pure only when God takes complete control of it and begins thinking His thoughts through the man's mind. For when the Lord moves, He brings His purity with Him and even the flesh is hallowed by the gracious presence of Deity.

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   In a church where I once ministered, some young people came to me after the service of Holy Communion and expressed unhappiness with the way it had been conducted.

   "What was wrong?" I asked.

   "We didn't like your suggestion that we took part because we were perfect or something. We don't feel like that."

   I went over the service and soon found the part that dissatisfied them. It read:

       Ye who do truly and earnestly repent of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in His holy ways: Draw near with faith, and take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort; and make your humble confession to Almighty God.

   Teen-age honesty had rebelled at words and phrases that suggested a purity of heart they did not feel. I now use another form of invitation to the Sacrament. In a sense there is nothing wrong with the traditional words; they are a sincere attempt to describe the pure intent without which, said Jesus, no man shall see God. My young friends had found nevertheless that the words were meaningless to them.

[Soldier4Christ]

In Edinburgh I heard the story of a venerable Scottish divine who was sitting in a pew during the service of Holy Communion. At this service the elements were passed, and he noticed that a girl in front of him refused the bread when it came to her, and that she was weeping. While the usher hesitated the old man leaned forward and whispered, "Take it, lassie. It's for sinners!"

   Surely this is the Gospel, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. But were not the honest teenagers right? And was not the Scottish "lassie" obeying a true instinct? Does God invite the unholy to lay hands upon pure and holy things? "There is no difference," replies Paul, "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." In other words, in the Lord's sight one man is as bad as another. But if that be true, let us argue, is it not a little irrelevant to talk about the "pure in heart" seeing God? And why does the Communion service contain the prayer: ". . . that, drawing near unto thee with a pure heart and conscience undefiled, we may receive these Thy gifts without sin . . ."

   If we look to the Cross we see the answer etched boldly against the sky. Purity of heart is from beyond ourselves. We are made worthy of the Communion table neither by washing our hands of the past nor by resolving to do better in the future. We were "prepared" for Communion two thousand years ago by the very act which Communion recalls — the body of Christ broken upon the Cross for us, the blood of Christ poured out upon the ground for us. What my young people did not understand is that the sacrament is a means of Grace whereby they receive newness of life as an unearned gift.

   What a relief it is to know that even though it is hopeless to try to clean up our lives and so fit them for God, cleansing is still possible. All we need to do is to turn our hearts over to Him. "Purge me . . . and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:7). The old minister spoke truth: the Communion service itself brings the conditions for Communion. The unholy hand becomes holy when it takes the sacred bread: not because the bread contains a "spiritual vitamin" or imparts some purifying quality, but because God loves sinners and gave His Son for them.

   Unless we give the Father His Crown rights in the matter, and ascribe everything to the divine initiative, this Beatitude will never permit us to see our Lord. It will only confuse and discourage us. The Communion service will then become just another moral wrestling bout. The "joy of the believer" will disappear as the X-ray of truth is trained upon our sinful conscience. We will give up and let someone else sing the praises of Zion, for we are too wicked. Someone else can be in Wesley Nelson's phrase, a "prayed-up, Bible-loving, God-honoring, fully-consecrated, victorious-living, witnessing, successful soul-winning Christian." We will sneak into the rear pew and see if we cannot "just make it in."

How many church members have resigned themselves to just this kind of dismal Christianity? Here is a fair bed of spikes indeed, a paradox of hopelessness.

   When we give God the glory, everything changes. He becomes the purifying agent, and we see that our part is confession through self-criticism. "Let a man examine himself," said Paul, "and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup" (1 Corinthians 11:28). The Scottish girl's tears did not prove that her heart was either pure or impure. They proved only that she was in communion with the One who purifies, and that her conscience was — to use the old paraphrase — "under conviction."

   We need to confess our sins if we want them forgiven. The purpose of confession is not to purify but to purge. Evangelical Christians are frequently guilty of self-delusion at this point. We emphasize the need to "confess our sins to God alone" but we seldom bother to do it. The result is that the psychiatrist has become the "Protestant confessor." Scriptural teaching provides the solution: "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be healed" (James 5:16). A Christian brother or sister only distantly related to our daily orbit can be of vast assistance in bringing us to examine ourselves before God.

   Though the confession does not purify, the forgiveness of God does. As the prophet Isaiah sang, "He will have mercy . . . and . . . abundantly pardon," and as John cast it in New Testament metal, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

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   "For they shall see God."

   How is it possible? Scripture declares emphatically that "no man has seen God at any time"; for He is described as "dwelling in light which no man can approach unto" (1 Timothy 6:16). The experience of mankind would seem to verify the point. Neither history nor science knows of a visible God. If we shatter the atom into a billion fragments, or send a space expedition to the farthest star, or dig up every archaeological artifact beneath the earth's crust, we shall be no whit closer to the face of Deity: this we know. A good thing it is, for the thought of a direct encounter with the sovereign majesty of the Lord, the architect of the universe, is — apart from His love — enough to strike the imagination with terror.

   How is it, then, that in the face of all this evidence Jesus can utter the quite simple statement that those whose hearts are pure shall see the Lord?

   Did He mean it?

   How did He mean it? Symbolically?

   We could suppose that He has given us a figure of speech, to teach us that if we were very, very good we would be rewarded with a warm and pious kind of feeling.

   Or we could get rid of the difficulty by classifying it as an "eschatological" statement, stating that what Jesus was talking about was God in the hereafter, not here and now.

   Both suggestions, of course, draw the teeth of the Beatitude.

   There is no question that Jesus meant what He said. He always did. He was not implying that the blessings of this Beatitude, or any of the Beatitudes, would be stored up for distribution in some future life rather than in the present. His teaching, like His healing, had immediate relevance. Whatever experience the "pure in heart" were to have, they were to have it now as well as later.

   But what experience? To think of seeing God as an "experience" is perhaps to think of visions. When we open this door but a crack, what a host of shapes come tumbling in: hallucinations, apparitions, spooks, flying saucers, demons, gremlins, psycho-kinetic energy, extrasensory perception, mental illness, mass psychosis, optical illusions, pathological delusions, projections, psychic phenomena, "contact with the unseen world," et cetera, et cetera. Where is the beginning and where the ending, and which way leads to God?

   Jesus had a very plain answer. It is not the development of some occult sense that brings us face to face with the living Lord. Jesus does not even use that door. He does not tell us where it leads. He points instead to another door which has on it three words: "Truth, Goodness, Beauty." He makes it clear that the new door is the door to the Throne Room. It is the door of the pure heart. Its shape is a Cross.

   Some years ago Bishop Kenneth Kirk of England wrote a beautiful book entitled The Vision of God, a scholarly and exhaustive treatment of the whole range of mystical experience. It leaves one amazed at the variety of ways in which men have sought to come into personal confrontation with God. They have searched in caves, in deserts, on pillars, on remote islands, in jungles, on mountain peaks. They have sat, kneeled, stood, lain prostrate, swung from ropes; they have fasted and undergone all manner of deprivation and self-inflicted punishment, all for the sight of God. "When thou saidst, 'Seek my face'; my heart said unto thee, Thy face Lord, will I seek" (Psalm 27:.

   Yet here is the answer, sweet and clear as a mountain stream: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Not just the pure mind, not just the pure body is blessed, but the pure heart which governs both mind and body. The heart is the seat of affection and compassion. What Christ is telling us is that love is the way to God: suffering love that is not drowned in the deep fat of selfish considerations — pure, outgoing love, that loves for the sake of the thing loved, as a man loves his country, as a woman loves her child, as Christ loved us from the Cross.

   But to see God there is yet another step. To find it let us turn to the story of Job: "I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees you. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:5-6). Job suggests that it is not finally a veil that hides the face of the Lord from us, but our own bulky shape. We block ourselves from God's view. The moment our ego collapses and we cease to kick against the pricks, we see the Lord Jesus Christ, and "whoever has seen Me has seen the Father." The instant that the Christian life ceases to be a pilgrimage of sacred events and becomes a consuming fire, the celestial vision is ours, though there is nothing left of us but ashes. God loves ashes. They are pure. He reveals Himself to our ashes. He blows His Spirit through them and we are lost — scattered through the earth as dust — but forever His. Each burned-out flake becomes the seed of a new and pure creation.

[Soldier4Christ]

Unearthly Peace

Blessed are the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God.

   ONE DAY as I walked through the crowded streets of Edinburgh I came upon two small boys fighting. The fists were tiny but were doing severe damage. The onlookers were curious but passive. I stepped between the lads and asked in my alien accent, "Why are you fighting?" A stream of braid Scots issued from both mouths simultaneously and incomprehensibly (to me). "If I gave each of you a penny," I asked, "would you stop?" They nodded eagerly. With some solemnity I handed out the coins and stipulated, "Now shake hands with one another." Instead they fell into each other's arms and went frisking down the street, leaving me to reflect uneasily upon the ethics of my action.

   Peacemaking is a divine activity according to Jesus. But does peacemaking consist in breaking up fights with bribes or compromises or cajolings or threats of force? Is there some other meaning to our Beatitude that dooes not appear upon the surface? Is our Lord saying "Well done" to my little intervention in Edinburgh, or is there a more profound theological significance to the peacemaking that needs to be brought to light? It was evident to me at the time that something was missing. I had gone the first mile and had stopped the "battle," but I had not really made peace, I had only brought an armistice.

   Jesus says that there is a second mile; that God never intended to leave us clinging to the Cross. Good Friday leads to Easter. The Resurrection is ours also. We have "the sentence of death in ourselves" (2 Corinthians 1:9) only in order that we may be delivered to a new life of righteousness and usefulness in Christ. The fruit of righteousness, according to James, is first sown by the peacemakers (3:18). To live the Christian life, then, is to follow peacemaking, and we had better find out what the Beatitude means.

   Does it mean we are to seek disarmament in the world? Are we to bend our energies toward pacts in the Middle East, the reunification of Germany, the abandonment of nuclear and missile development, coexistence with Communism and the strengthening of the United Nations? Certainly it means this: that before a man can make peace with anyone, he must first establish peace with God and with himself.

   Let us go back to what we discovered earlier: that the Beatitudes are not simply platitudes and axioms of virtuous behavior. They are really descriptions of Jesus Christ.

What He taught, He lived and was. In discussing the peacemaker, Christ is first of all painting a portrait of Himself, and then depicting the "blessed" in whom His Spirit dwells. He is not only the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), He is our Peace (Ephesians 2:14). Yet He deliberately chose not to set Himself up as an arbitrator or umpire between men, such as we might expect a peacemaker to be ("Who made me a judge or a divider over you?" [Luke 12:14]).

   The very expression "peacemaker" is a curious one. Edward L. R. Elson, in a sermon preached before the Queen of England and the President of the United States, suggested that in this Beatitude Jesus did not extend the blessing to include the peaceful, the peace-lovers, the peaceable, the peace-speakers, peace-wishers, or pacifists. He blessed the peace-makers. But the maker of peace is not the one who merely steps between two fighters. The maker of peace is the one who brings about reconciliation. The Treaty of Versailles was not peace, nor was the truce of Panmunjom. In all the history of the human race there has been only one real peace treaty. That was at Calvary, where "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." There was peace; all else has been but a confusion of bloody battles with occasional truces, armistices, and pauses for breath and ammunition.

   Jesus Christ brings peace through the Cross. He reconciles man to Himself, and He reconciles men with each other and he reconciles all to God. He restores the divine fellowship that was broken by our stubbornness, fear and pride. He reaches out with a love that saves, and bids us take hold. He removes our guilt and nullifies the sentence by proclaiming an amnesty. "Turn in your weapons and go home," He says, "The battle is over. Peace has been declared."

   Obviously the peace of Jesus is not something that is related directly to the agenda of some "summit meeting." Such meetings remain important; we have our "first-mile" obligation to do all that we can as good citizens to live peaceably with all men. Yet Jesus Christ always goes beyond to the "second mile," which is above and beyond the call of duty. His will is not simply to stop nuclear testing, or segregation; His will is to bring in the whole Kingdom of God through sacrifice.

   The true peacemaker is not just the discriminating voter, not just the citizen who breaks up quarrels or the statesman who quells aggression by stripping nations of their war potential. The true peacemaker is the reconciler who offers his own life for the peace of the brethren, and whose own peace pact was signed at a "summit meeting" on a hill outside Jerusalem.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   Robert E. Fitch has given us an interesting definition of a pietist. A pietist (whether in religion or science), he says, is one who proposes simple solutions to complex problems, who sees all issues naïvely and out of context, and who makes absolute moral judgments when the need is for compromise and adjustment. And he adds that if the pietist is allowed to have his way, he will either purge the world or destroy it.

   The astonishing fact about this statement is that it fits the New Testament description of Jesus Christ. The Gospels tell us of a Man who is simple, naïve, and absolute in matters of faith and conduct. He cuts through the snarl of our ambiguities as Alexander severed the Gordian knot. "Have salt in yourselves," He says, "and have peace one with another" (Mark 9:50). Thus He disposes of the whole war question from Galilee to the moon. Imperialism? Race? Economic dislocation? Bombs? Refugees? He leaves no blueprints and establishes no principles except two: "Love God" and "Love your neighbor."

   It is time for us to ask, therefore, what kind of peacemaker Jesus Christ is. His words are well known: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you" (John 14:27). It is obvious that He is not speaking of world peace, but what other kind of peace is there? How is it made? And what good is it?

   Let us take another look at the Beatitude: "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God," or to speak more exactly, "the sons of God." No other Beatitude has quite the same ending; our Lord must have had a special reason for choosing it. Like father, like son. Peacemakers are called sons of God because they resemble their Father, who must therefore be The Peacemaker. What Jesus is suggesting, then, is "Blessed be God the Father, who makes peace, and blessed are all who follow His divine pattern."

   All through Scripture there are overtones and nuances that reflect the godly origin of peace. To Isaiah God is most explicit: "I am the Lord, . . . I make peace" (45:5, 7). Jeremiah declares that not only does He make peace, He breaks it: "I have taken away my peace from this people, saith the Lord" (16:5). Peace comes through the sanctuary, says Haggai: "I will fill this house with glory . . . and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts" (2:7, 9). Paul strengthens the unilateral view of peace-making: "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1). When we settle accounts with God, when we "make our peace" with Him, says the apostle, it is really the Lord who makes His peace with us — through Jesus Christ.

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There is no use trying to resolve the paradox. On the shadow side of salvation it always seems as if we are doing it all; we groan and pray and strain after the Lord. But on the sunlit side it is always God, God all the way, God who "separated me from my mother's womb," God whose Holy Spirit draws men to Him in His own time, and who has been in complete command from the start.

   If the world does not know peace today it is because it does not know God. Millions of young Americans and Europeans and Asians are being taught daily that it is quite impossible to believe in God. He is "no longer a useful hypothesis." He is the "opiate of the people." He is "a projection of the father-complex." He is a supernatural gimmick invented to keep society within bounds. He is an outmoded etiological configuration belonging to the childhood of the race. He is an artifact in the museum of the department of anthropology. God, said Nietzsche, is dead.

   How tragic to grow up thus educated — to live in delusion and to die without hope! What are we Christians doing about it? Shall we wait until the Iron Curtain is melted to proclaim, "But now is Christ risen from the dead"?

   Let us take heart; it is Nietzsche who is dead, not God. We know our Lord to be a living Lord because we have received His Spirit, and we know He is the Author of Peace because of the words of Jesus Christ: "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace" (John 16:33). It may well be peace in the midst of tribulation, it may be the hush at the vortex of a tornado, but it is still a peace that passes all understanding.

   Jesus foresaw not world peace but wars and rumors of war. The New Testament pictures of the end of things are not gentle. We are reminded again of Robert Fitch's prophetic words, "If the pietist is allowed to have his way, he will either purge the world or destroy it." Jesus Christ the Peacemaker will not need to destroy the world, of course; it is increasingly evident that apart from God the world will destroy itself. Bertrand Russell says that if we do not solve our problems there is a fifty-fifty chance that not a human being will be left on the planet in forty years. So little time for the purging of the sons of peace. It is time to respond — to act!

    He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,

    He has sifted out the hearts of men before his judgment seat;

    O be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant, my feet . . .

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   While serving as an Air Force chaplain during World War II I happened to pick up a little book by a Hebrew chaplain explaining the Passover to Jewish soldiers. The writer, I recall, made an earnest effort to interpret the tragedy of war and suffering in our century within a religious framework. He used words akin to these: "You will discover inevitably in life that the innocent must suffer for the guilty. Such is the way to peace. But instead of its being all wrong, it is the answer to everything. The secret of life is sacrifice." Without realizing it the rabbi was preaching the Cross of Jesus Christ, for on His Cross the innocent was sacrificed for the guilty, and became our peace.

   It is possible during the reading of these pages that we have found the Christian faith presented differently from what we supposed it to be. We may have thought of it as a kind of cultural tonic or perhaps an individual morale builder. We know better now. We realize that to go through the gates of Jerusalem is to go straight to our own crucifixion. There is no way around the Cross for a Christian, no way under and no way over; but there is a way through.

   We are studying a Beatitude about peace. The peace that Jesus gives is a peace with a price on it, and the price is the cost of sacrifice. Isaiah says, "the chastisement of our peace was upon him." And Paul explains: "For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of the cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself" (Isaiah 53:5, Colossians 1:19-20). God having purchased peace for us at so great a price — the suffering of His innocent son on behalf of the guilty — now presents us with His peace terms: unconditional surrender.

   There is always a temptation to make a kind of festival out of Palm Sunday. If only Jesus Christ had ridden a white stallion instead of a donkey into Jerusalem, we think. There are grounds for believing that the "triumphal entry" of Jesus Christ into the Holy City was actually a very small affair; a scattering of children and curious adults, a handful of dusty peasants in from the country, some disorganized singing, a few palm branches and a donkey ridden by an itinerant prophet.

   If you would watch a triumphal procession you must turn to Roman, not Hebrew history. Rome developed the triumph to its ultimate art. The returning conqueror, the general-consul-war hero, would wait outside the city gates with his troops until invited in by the Senate. Then, after some sixty-thousand couches had lined the streets, he would make his entrance. First would come the lictors bearing the fasces, then the magistrates of the city, then the trumpeters, then the spoils — the standards, the statues, the loot, running as high as seventy-five million dollars in treasure — then the white oxen prepared for the sacrifice, and the royal prisoners (Pompey brought 322 princes), then the victorious general clad in purple and gold, seated in a chariot drawn by four horses, and followed by all his soldiers shouting "Io triumphe!"

   How mean our Lord's entry into Jerusalem seems alongside such a display! And it was to come to an even meaner end. For this same Rome that welcomed the Caesars so lavishly was to strip Jesus of Nazareth of the only robe He had, and submit Him to the treatment reserved for its most contemptuous criminals. Christ's Palm Sunday entry did not bring Him clattering through the public square to the palace steps, there to receive the accolades of the weeping populace and the tributes of royalty. Rather it brought Him to the lash and the nails and the cry of dereliction: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

   The peace of Jesus Christ is not the peace of the conqueror, it is the peace of the loser in this life. The heroes of Rome found that their garlands wilted quickly and their victories ended in bitterness. Not so our Lord! Jesus Christ became a victim that He might become the eternal Victor. Thus when we sign God's peace conditions in His Name we have lost, we have surrendered command of our lives; but because of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ we receive the Holy Spirit of God who raises the dead. Out of the fellowship of Christ's sufferings comes the power of the Resurrection. Not by the might of the legions, not by the power of the atom, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   Nearly twenty years ago I lost my heart to a river, but in return it gave to me something I have treasured ever since — peace. Few things in this life bequeath peace like a river. Isaiah the prophet knew it, for the Lord spoke to him on the subject. "For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream" (66:12). "Peace like a river" — in their imagery, these are among the most inspired words of Scripture.

   Four weeks I spent drifting down the Yukon river in a sixteen-foot rowboat, without benefit of motor, accompanied by a congenial friend and a little stove made out of a gasoline can. I wrote a story about it, in which these words appear:

   "I wondered why people cared to travel the Yukon in anything so prosaic and unimaginative as a steamboat. They learned nothing of the ways of a river; they might as well have gone riding through Royal Gorge in a boxcar. To live with it and on it, to drink of the body and spirit of the water, to become part of it, and to cherish the haunting beauty of the bend ahead, is to know a river. And when you do know it, then nothing else matters, for you have stolen a glimpse into the mystery of creation."

   In the years since then I have come to know Jesus Christ to be my Savior and Lord, and I have discovered that His life too is like a river. It begins with a miracle, springing out of the watershed of life, coursing like a laughing brook down the early years. Then comes the sudden widening of the banks as the ministry of John the Baptist flows tributary into His stream, and the strong, impressive movement of the Galilean ministry begins.

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Suddenly there is white water, and the first opposition is encountered. More riffles and rapids, and in between a swift, powerful flood bearing purposefully toward its destiny, carrying its appointed burden, spreading healing waters throughout the countryside until a roaring sound is heard in the distance. It is Passion Week. The dull sound now increases in intensity and the sheer cataract of the Cross is approached. Nearer and nearer the brink, and then — catastrophe!

   But somehow it is not a catastrophe at all, for there below is the river, newly formed, beginning a life of Resurrection that is majestic and serene as it flows to the seas of eternity.

   The river is the symbol of God's purpose in your life and mine. It is never an end in itself because it has no real end except in the ocean of infinity. It is an instrument to carry out the balance of nature, as you and I are instruments to fulfill the design of our Lord. It is always in motion, always sweeping onward even when it seems to be quiescent, for its strength lies in its deep currents. Its bounty is in breadth but its resource is in depth.

   The river's motion is the secret of its peace, for it portrays not the peace of man but the peace of God. The peace of man is the quiet pool which is dangerous, for such pools become stagnant and breed ill-health. The peace of man is lifeless; it is the peace of the tomb. The peace of God is gently moving, it is Jesus walking through the grain-fields of Galilee. But the gentleness may depart, and there will be white horses and water wheels, as when the tables were overturned in the temple. This too is the peace of God — "not as the world gives, give I unto you."

   Once we have learned the river's lesson, we are to leave it; for the river runs its own affairs and follows its vocation, as we are expected to find and follow ours. What is God's purpose for our lives: Is it not to make us fit for His own fellowship, and then to plant us in His vineyard to bear fruit? Is it not to call us to the mount of  Transfiguration, and then send us back to look for fishermen who will leave their nets to catch men?

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   One of the most remarkable Christian statements of our generation was made by Professor Edmund Schlink of Heidelberg at the World Council of Churches meeting at Evanston in 1954. Said Dr. Schlink: 1

       We do not preach the Gospel in order that the world may be preserved. Rather we accept our responsibility for the preservation of the world in order that many may be saved through the Gospel. We do not preach the Gospel in order to bring about earthly justice. On the contrary we try to establish justice in order that we may preach the Gospel.

   In four shocking sentences Dr. Schlink set forth the role of the Christian as a peacemaker in the world. He does not build and extend the Church in order to promote world peace. Instead he seeks a minimum of strife in order that he may build the Church. If not one blessing were to flow into this life from the Gospel, it would still be the Christian's commission to proclaim it, for the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and is therefore an end in itself.

   If the Christian is lured into seeking the ideal of harmony and perfection among men, he is being false both to God and man. The Christian is a traveler passing through and seeking a better life. He looks upon this life as an adventure, a testing ground, a battlefield, and a recruiting depot. The adventures are soul-pioneering expeditions with God. The testings are the battles. They are struggles with the Power of Evil that make us more durable steel in the divine warhead.

   But beyond all these, the Christian is called to be a vocational selector, searching for men who will receive the peace of the Kingdom of God. The recruiting of men of peace is what brings joy to the Christian, and it is this peace with joy that makes everything a Christian goes through ultimately worthwhile.

   G.K. Chesterton once remarked that every real Christian who believes in his faith will do two things: he will dance, and he will fight. His fighting, however, is not against flesh and blood and his joy according to the New Testament is more often linked with his peacemaking. Thus Paul writes to the Romans, "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit" (14:17). When the apostles went through Judea and Samaria "preaching peace by Jesus Christ" we read that "there was great joy" in those regions. Peace and joy together appear as authentic marks of the Good News.

   We have already suggested2 that joy is not to be confused with pleasure or happiness, which are for many but fleeting experiences in life. Goethe at the age of seventy-five admitted that he had known only four weeks of happiness. There are Christians, victims of lifelong suffering, who could say the same thing. But joy! Here we move into the eye of the believer. Joy is not happiness so much as gladness; it is the exultation of God's Spirit in man, "good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over." Joy is the ecstasy of eternity in a soul that has made peace with God and is ready to do His will.

    Peace does not mean the end of all our striving,
    Joy does not mean the drying of our tears;
    Peace is the power that comes to souls arriving
    Up to the light where God Himself appears.

    — Studdert Kennedy

   When the Church of the twentieth century stands at the Great Assize it may not be judged for the shape of its liturgy, the heat of its ardor, or the sums of its stewardship. The Church will probably be judged because it did not receive or make peace with joy. Visit a modern theological seminary, examine its library, and count the number of Christian volumes in which joy is never mentioned. "Peace on earth" was not a dogma, it was a song sung by angels. As Dorothy Sayers has said, the Church today has succeeded in doing what the apostles and even the enemies of Jesus Christ never did: it has made Him appear dull. What is the Church but the glowing hearth where man can warm his hands at the heart of God? What are its sacraments but a chalice of divine peace and joy?

   We have assumed that Christianity is a tiresome and domesticated affair. Who made it so? I would prefer, like Wordsworth, to be a pagan lost forever in the superstitions of mythology than to return to the state of being a bored "Christian." And though I do not care for violence, I would far rather have been at Calvary watching the wet, sticky blood flow down the Cross, hearing the raucous jeers of the crowd, smelling the stinks of Gehenna, and feeling the cool slime of the tomb, than to have to sit through the tedium of a joyless Sunday morning church service.

   The resurrected Jesus came through the closed door and said "Peace!" to His disciples, but it was a peace amid clamor and tumult. It was the peace of life and joy, not the peace of tranquilizers and sanitariums. Such was the kind of life Jesus led, and such is the only kind of peace He gives. We can have it anywhere, any time, simply for the asking. God built it into poles and axles of the universe.

________________

1. Quoted in Christian Century, August 24, 1954, page 1010.

2. Page 28. 

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Christian Courage

Blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

   PERSECUTED?

   A strange word, and rather unseemly. Are we then to go about seeking someone to badger and bedevil us that we might be "blessed"?

   Let us imagine that our pilgrimage has brought us through the very gates of Jerusalem, and it is the week of the Passover feast. Jesus of Nazareth, who spoke this Beatitude on a northerly mountain, is today preparing for His final ordeal, an ordeal of persecution. Our eighth Beatitude quite evidently is more than a simple Galilean proverb; it is a prediction of the sufferings of the Messiah. Like the seven signal flares sent up before it, the Beatitude lights the way to the Cross of Calvary.

   In some ways the New Testament is a handbook for the persecuted. It was written to give courage and fortitude to those who were about to be brainwashed. That is why reading the Bible is such an unreal experience for many Americans, and it is why in Korea today Christians are rising before the sun to pray and study. Our trouble is not with the King James Version, for that version, like the original New Testament, was written in a day of persecution — the ashes of Smithfield were still hot — and it carries the wild, authentic note of the early Church. Our trouble is with us: we are too accommodating about our faith. We are tolerated rather than persecuted, and our gospel is tame and stifled. The new translations show it; they are so often "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

   In the original autographs every gospel, every letter carries the message, "Stand fast in your trial. Take heart. Play the man. Be valiant in the faith." The New Testament is the manual of prescribed reading in that extracurricular course, Martyrdom 101.

   So it is that our Beatitude is cast in steel. It inters forever the woebegone hope that somehow man is going to solve all his troubles so that our grandchildren will grow up "in clover." It pours scorn upon those who yearn for a life of ease. "Thou therefore endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ" (2 Timothy 2:3). The Word is: be meek, aye, be merciful, but be tough.

   In the New Testament two kinds of suffering are to be distinguished. There is that pain and invalidism which Jesus Christ identified as the work of Satan, and from which He rescued and healed all who sought His path. There was also the suffering of persecution, to which He invited His followers with a kind of holy joy that even today makes the spine tingle. Jesus promised adventure and risk but never uncertainty. He said the Christian's persecution was certain; the only variable element was the way in which it would come.

   Our Lord said further that our persecution would prove to be a blessing. Blessings come from God. In His will and for His purpose God deliberately metes out to His own this kind of suffering. So determined is our Lord that we shall be trained and hardened for His work, that He sends us test after test in a lifelong spiritual fitness program.

       My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.

       Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons (Hebrews 12:5-8).

   The deeper a believer gets into God's training program, the more he realizes that God will stop at nothing to bring one of his sons or daughters to proper conditioning. It may even seem that God is reckless in the way He exposes us to the perils of the world, but He always knows what He is doing. He "will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Furthermore, He expects us not to weep and shake our heads about our situation, but to revel in it.

       Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete. . . (James 1:2-4).

       Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope (Romans 5:3-4).

   Hannah Whitall Smith illustrates the purpose of God by proposing to describe to a stranger — say a visitor from another planet — the way in which a lump of clay is made into a beautiful vessel: 1

       I tell him first the part of the clay in the matter; and all I can say about this is, that the clay is put into the potter's hands, and then lies passive there, submitting itself to all the turnings and overturnings of the potter's hands upon it. There is really nothing else to be said about the clay's part.

   Then she traces the role that the potter plays in the process:

       The potter takes the clay thus abandoned to his working, and begins to mold and fashion it according to his own will. He kneads and works it; he tears it apart and presses it together again; he wets it and then suffers it to dry. Sometimes he works at it for hours together; sometimes he lays it aside for days, and does not touch it. And when . . . he has made it perfect pliable in his hands, he proceeds to make it into the vessel he has proposed. He turns it upon the wheel, planes it and smooths it, and dries it in the sun, bakes it in the oven, and finally turns it out of his workshop, a vessel to his honor, and fit for his use.

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   The Church may be entering a new era of persecution in the will of God. If so, that is good news according to our Beatitude. No one will deny that in recent years the signs have been increasing. Pressures in Germany, in Korea, in China, in parts of Africa may well be heralds of something more formidable. It is idle to speculate, but the Church of Jesus Christ would be wise in these days to take stock of its supply of courage.

   What is courage? What is its anatomy? Can we reduce it to a compound of self-centered motives, such as the fear of extermination, resentment over ridicule, desire to dominate, longing for social approval, sheer bravado or the unconscious death-wish?

   What makes a man behave bravely?

   If we look in the New Testament we find the word "courage" mentioned only once. When Paul was being delivered to Rome as a prisoner, Luke says that some of the Christian brethren came to greet him at the Appii Forum on the outskirts of the city, "whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage" (Acts 28:15).

   There were no "brethren" about to encourage the Lord Jesus Christ as He faced His accusers at the last. Maundy Thursday was not the disciples' "finest hour." They worked up an argument at the supper table. They went to sleep in the prayer meeting, and they panicked in the face of the mob. They fled from Jesus as rats deserting a sinking ship. In the language of our day it could be said that one of Christ's disciples "turned Him in," another "dummied up," and the rest "bugged out."

   Yet within a few weeks these same disciples were showing a kind of valor and courage in the face of persecution that steeled them through one ordeal after another, and has continued to amaze the world for two thousand years. How was that possible? What was their secret?

   There is an interesting phrase connected with all the accounts of the last Supper on that Thursday night: "When he had given thanks." Paul, you will remember, received courage as he thanked God. He took his courage not only from the brethren but from the Lord. He gave thanks for the situation in which he found himself, and courage was given. Is that what Jesus did on the night of His betrayal? It is an action so simple that the world overlooks it as "obvious," but it is loaded with power. Whenever Christians start thanking God in tight situations, look for courage to be shown.

   General Harrison, who signed the Panmunjom truce for the United States and later stationed in the Canal Zone, supervised the removal of the bodies of five young American missionary martyrs who were slaughtered by the Auca Indians of the Amazon jungle early in 1956.

Bill Carle, the singer, visited the general shortly afterward, and quoted him as saying that in his military experience he had never seen courage like that displayed by the five dedicated young women who were made widows by the tragedy. What was the source of their courage? The answer is not hard to find. Lovers of Jesus Christ have always counted it a privilege to be allowed to suffer on His account.

   Thus James Guthrie, on the morning of his execution in Tolbooth prison, declared after the Psalmist, This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it" (118:24). Persecution drove the Pilgrim Fathers out of Europe, and the Pilgrim Fathers in return gave us Thanksgiving Day. Their remarks on the subject of courage are worth repeating. William Bradford, one of their leaders, described the Mayflower voyage in these words: 2

 

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      All great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted the dangers were great, but not desperate; the difficulties were many, but not invincible . . . and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be borne or overcome . . . Yea, though they should loose their lives in this action, yet might they have comforte in the same . . .

   Sanna M. Barlow, in her account of recent missionary activity among the Kikuyu tribesmen of Kenya, East Africa, tells how some of the African Christians "speak of our Brother Stephen as though he, the first Christian martyr, lived only yesterday." 3 Primitive though they be, they came through the Mau Mau terrors with a faith triumphant and authentic, as they declared it an honor to have their coffee trees destroyed for the name of Jesus Christ. Geoffrey Bull proved in a Chinese prison that Christian courage stands even the test of Communist brainwashing when built upon the rock of Christ. 4 Yet in a sense such courage is not given; it is only lent by God to those whom He loves, that in time of trouble they might overcome persecution for righteousness' sake.

   Whatever may be the anatomy of other kinds of courage, the Christian kind is based only upon the weakness of the human flesh and the power of the Holy Spirit.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   One of the events in American history we would like to forget is the hanging of the Salem "witches." Many of the most distinguished men of the commonwealth of Massachusetts were caught up in the hysteria that swept the colony in 1692. Among those who later confessed their error in taking part in the trials, there was a well-known Boston lawyer, Judge Samuel Sewall, who walked with God in the matter.

   For the rest of his life Samuel Sewall was a different man. He declared publicly that he was chiefly responsible for the travesty, and desired "to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men." Every year he set one day aside on the anniversary of his public repentance, doing no work, eating no food, but praying and reflecting upon his "guilt contracted at Salem."

   You and I have walked with Jesus together through these pages. We now stand outside the city gates at the trail's end, the Place of the Skull. We have learned many things as we walked with Him, and we shall not be quite the same again, for we know now that our own crucifixion is involved. That is what Jesus wanted. He never intended Calvary to become simply a memorial to Himself. The Shepherd's thought is for the sheep. His wish was that His disciples would reflect upon their own lives, now nailed with His to the Cross. Good Friday is recapitulated in every Christian's heart. We are the ones who stand before Pilate and witness to the truth. We are the scorned, the slapped, the flogged, the persecuted. We lift a cross to our bleeding shoulders; we wear the crown of thorns, we feel the blows of the hammer and the prick of the spear through our flesh. As He was in this life, so are we: reckoned dead to this world and its sin, that we might be alive to God through Jesus Christ.

   A young man whose father had recently passed away came before the session of our Church to present himself as a candidate for communicant membership. He was duly asked his reasons therefor, and replied, "Well, the old man is dead!" Some of the elders were mystified as to what he meant, not realizing that he was speaking of his own Christian experience; but the Scriptures upheld the young man: "Our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For . . . if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him" (Romans 6:6-8).

   King Clovis of Gaul, who was "converted" to Christianity and who had a habit of lopping off the heads of all who refused to follow his example, once boasted that if his invincible Franks had been at Golgotha, they would have risen to the defense and rescue of Jesus. How easy it is to miss the meaning of the atonement! The New Testament was not written to describe "the day Christ died," but rather to make each of us a witness to "the day I died."

   It is well for us to remember today not only the persecution of our Lord, but to join with Judge Sewall in looking over the past that is our personal history. Did we take care of those spiritual matters that we promised to see to? Have we spoken that reconciling word that we intended to utter, but keep forgetting? Is there yet unfinished restitution that keeps us from burying the past as it should be buried?

   Let us be very sure that our old natures are not still hanging on the Cross. Let us not seek to cling to a spark of life, but rather say with our Lord, "It is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

O Cross that liftest up my head,

I dare not ask to fly from Thee.

I lay in dust, life's glory, dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

   What is persecution?

   So twisted are the values we set on things that the very word is suspect. Its meaning hangs in doubt. What may appear to the sufferer as persecution often turns out to be a mild (or not so mild) form of persecutory paranoia. At the same time what is being palmed off to one-third of the world's population as "re-education" according to Marx turns out to be the deadliest form of persecution that the Church has ever encountered.

   Our Beatitude has frequently been misinterpreted and has even been used to aggravate a mental condition. Thus there are people who have taken the words of Jesus to be a confirmation of their suspicions that they are the victims of persecution. They are satisfied that the world is against them just because they have taken a stand "for righteousness' sake." For them it is "God and I" ranged against the forces of darkness; or, as in many modern cases (as with Hitler) it may be simply "My Battle."

   The world knows few types more dangerous than the man deluded by a persecution complex. Once convinced that "they're out to get me," he may give himself over to retaliation that is merciless. His days and nights are then passed in the fashioning of cunning and savage plans against his "enemies." The deterioration of a personality in the grip of paranoia is a fearful thing to watch. Hatcher Hughes, in his play Hell Bent fer Heaven, portrays a Carolina hillbilly "talking to his Lord" in the midst of a feud: 5

       They wuz a time, Lord, when my proud heart said, "All o' self an' none o' Thee." Then You come a-knockin' at the door o' my sinful soul an' I whispered, "Some o' self an' some o' Thee." But that's all changed now, Lord. I'm Yourn an' You are mine. An' the burden o' my song now is, "None o' self an' all o' Thee." You can do with me what You please, Lord. If it's Your will that this blasphemer shall die, I've got a shole box of dynamite out in the store . . . I can blow up the dam while he's under that a-telephonin', an' the waters o' Your wrath'll sweep over him like they did over Pharaoh . . .

   On the other hand there is a persecution that is quite real. It is found in the New Testament and its heavy hand has been felt by the Church many times since. To the Roman emperors it was simply a matter of civil administration. The little sect of Christians refused to conform, therefore it was outlawed and scattered. Ancient Rome by and large was completely bored with the claims of the early Church; like Gallio, Rome "cared for none of those things" (Acts 18:17). She swatted the Christians as one would swat a pesky fly.

[Soldier4Christ]

   In the twentieth century a new persecution of the Church has arisen, so subtle that it does not appear to a large section of the Church to be a persecution at all. The cadres and commissars behind the Iron Curtain who are assigned the task of indoctrinating the masses away from their faith were not born yesterday. They know that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Wherever possible they have sought to avoid the stigma of direct persecution. Their purpose is not so much to root out or extirpate the faithful Christians as it is to launder their ideas. Thus those who have spent time in Communist labor camps and prisons tell how the discussion method is used to bring about "acceptable" points of view. Endless conversations are carried on, day after day, until the mind is worn to a stupor, and almost any proposition seems credible enough to elicit a convincing response. No lions, no gladiators, no libations on the altar of Diana are as terrifying to face as the dreary brainwashing of the discussion. The wheel comes full circle as Marxism is made the opium of the people.

   Our day has known its share of both these types: the man who imagines he is persecuted and is not, and the man who imagines he is not persecuting, but is. And in the center is the Church of Jesus Christ, girding its loins for its latest ordeal, seeking fidelity to truth as it confronts as menacing a challenge as it has ever faced.

   There is nothing imaginary about the threat! When Karl Marx was a seventeen-year-old schoolboy at a Lutheran preparatory school in western Germany, he wrote a lovely essay on John 15, "I am the Vine"; but within a few years he was prefacing his doctor's thesis with a quotation from Prometheus, "I hate all the gods!"; and today his hatred has been fanned into a flame that threatens to seep the planet. Demolition crews stand ready, awaiting the signal to cut down the cathedrals, save where it is expedient that they should first become museums.

   What is God's message to His people thus caught in the modern counter-currents of simulation and dissimulation? We are told to be calm, to be at peace, in fact, to rejoice and be glad. Whatever may come, all is well. The faith is in good hands. The Kingdom of God is nigh. In the days that lie ahead the Church's persecutions may become even more artful and diabolical, but it will survive them too. It cannot help surviving. Even if Communism should capture the wavering population of the globe, and set up its Pilate and its Caiaphas who, in the name of "freedom of religion," would condemn the Church of Jesus Christ to the Cross, it does not matter. The Church belongs at the Cross. That is the only place where it will ever find Victory and Resurrection. That is the only place where the world has ever discovered the true significance of the Gospel (Mark 15:39).

   Blessed are the persecuted, for their message is authentic. Their sufferings are their credentials. "From henceforth let no man trouble me:" wrote Paul, "for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus" (Galatians 6:17). Let there be no doubt that the God who made history will save His people in the midst of history. Their tribulations will only hasten the great Day of the Church. "God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early" (Psalm 46:5). Blessed are the persecuted, for in the fire they are purified; yet when fire comes, we must be girt and ready.

God grant that we who are His Church may be wise enough to tell the real from the false, and to stand fast in the truth.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

The rock . . .
The Roman lock . . .
What is there to it?
How did he do it?
They tell me he is risen
Out of death's prison
But how can that be?
What did they see?
O terror of that daybreak hour
O rapture of the Savior's power,
O Life that broke but did not bend,
O grave that burst from end to end!

   You are a temple guard in Jerusalem. You have been losing sleep for some days. There was the affair Thursday night — the arrest, the questioning, and general disorder. Friday night you were assigned to guard a tomb in the garden of Joseph of Arimathaea, and you are still there. It is now early Sunday morning, and you have settled back against a nearby rock to steal forty winks. You have a dream: a mighty angel appears before you with feet widespread. He raises his arm and places a golden trumpet to his lips, and there issues forth a blast that shatters the air and causes the earth beneath you to tremble. You waken in a sweat, fearing the end of everything.

All is quiet; your comrades are drowsing. Then you peer through the gray murk at the tomb that is your responsibility. Something about it seems to be different. You rub your eyes, get up, and walk toward it, only to stop amazed at the sight of the broken seal. The stone has been rolled aside. For a moment you are shocked into rigidity. Then you shout, you summon the guard, and there ensues — pandemonium!

   You have been the first to witness the power of the Resurrection.

   "The Gospels," says John S. Whale, "cannot explain the Resurrection; it is the Resurrection which alone explains the Gospels. The Resurrection is not an appendage to the Christian faith; it is the Christian faith." 6

   The disciples heard Jesus Christ tell of His approaching persecution and describe it as the will of God. They heard His word concerning their own persecutions which were to follow: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you" (Matthew 5:11-12). Somehow they never added two and two together until the two sprinters, John and Peter, stood breathless before the eerie wonder of the empty cave. It took the Resurrection to put a heartbeat into the embryo Church and bring it to life. He is not here, for He is risen!

   Did it happen?

   Johannes Weiss says the Resurrection appearances were an optical illusion. Many claim that the disciples only "thought they saw Jesus" and "felt He was near." Such theories do not solve our problem, however, they complicate it, for they make it more difficult than ever to interpret the power of the early Christians, or to explain how the persecuted can be blessed. Let us join the theorists for a moment and look at the Cross from their vantage point. What do we see?

[Soldier4Christ]

   We see a rubbish heap outside Jerusalem, where a mob of soldiers and onlookers is gathered, howling for blood. We see three dead men nailed to gibbets, the carrion birds beginning to circle, the hounds skulking in the background and waiting for their chance after nightfall. We see the final frustration of the Messiah, the Christ, the noblest soul the world has ever known, apparently terribly mistaken in His claims of Deity. And we find ourselves saying that there is no God, at least there is no God who can really be said to care for men. And if God does not care, then why should we care? We can turn our eyes away from the crosses and look elsewhere, but there seem to be only more crosses. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable . . . "

   But now is Christ RISEN!

   Risen! Not a fancy but a fact. Not a violation of natural law but the fulfillment of a supernatural law. "But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him" (Acts 2:24). As Leith Samuel says, Jesus Christ was the Eternal Son, the Co-Creator and Redeemer of the universe. Death had no claim upon Him because He had never sinned. And when He covered our sins at Calvary, He also covered our death, our mortality.

   The reality of Easter is founded upon the reality of the Cross. Men will continue to suggest that Easter is not really a miracle; that it is rather a kind of seasonal vitamin tablet or spiritual shot in the arm for the lifting of flagging spirits and the assuaging of cultural dislocations. Easter, however, points back to the Cross. And on the Cross we are ourselves crucified with Jesus Christ to the world; we become spiritually dead in order that He might live in us as Christus Victor, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

   Thus the persecuted ones find themselves keeping company with all the heroes of the faith; with Moses at the Red Sea, and David in the cave of Adullam, and Paul and Silas in the jail at Philippi, and Bull in Chungking, and Bonhoeffer in Germany, and the pastor martyrs in Korea, and the Christian Kikuyus in Kenya. But they also find themselves with the poor in spirit, with the mourners, with the meek, the hungry and thirsty, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. And they find themselves with Job, stripped of everything but God, and yet blessed: ". . . dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything" (2 Corinthians 6: 9-10).

   Our Beatitudes close with the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven and the exhortation to rejoice in gladness. Our journey has ended on a triumphant note of Resurrection joy. What we have lost, we have been given back in double measure, an Easter gift for eternity, and our cups are running over.

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might'st seekest it in My arms.

—FRANCIS THOMPSON                             

____________________

1. The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1883.

2. History of Plymouth Plantation (W.T. Davis, ed.), Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1908, page 46.

3. Light is Sown, Moody Press, Chicago, 1956.

4. When Iron Gates Yield, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1956.

5. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1924. Quoted by permission.

6. Christian Doctrine, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1942.