Week 52 Sunday
Week 52 Sunday
Witnessing before Our Pontius Pilate
Acts 20:16-27; 22:17-22; 2 Corinthians 11:23-31
You and I have come to the last week of our pilgrimage together. We must study together the last portion of the passage on keeping our commission free from stain (1 Tim. 6:13-14 Moffatt). In the presence of two things, we are to keep that commission: (1) “In the presence of God who is the Life of all”—in the presence of the abundant resources of God—keep your commission free from the stain of emptiness, of inadequacy. If you don’t, then you hurt yourself and others. (2) “In presence . . . of Christ Jesus who testified to the good confession before Pontius Pilate”—in the presence of this full, abundant Life, pouring itself out in face of opposition.
We have considered the first; we must now pass on to the second. It is not enough to possess abundant life; that abundant life must be witnessed to and lived out in the presence of some Pontius Pilate—something that stands athwart this new life—and to meet it unflinchingly means that this new life will crimson into a cross. This business of being Christian in a world of this kind is no easy undertaking. We have to meet the equivalent of Pilate. And that would mean?
To discover its meaning we must ask, not who crucified Christ, but what? For the who embodied a what. Seven embodied sins combined to crucify Jesus: (1) self-interested moral cowardice—Pilate, (2) vested class interests—the priests, (3) envy—the priests, (4) faithless friendships—Judas, (5) ignorance—the multitude, (6) indifference—the multitude, and (7) race-prejudiced militarism—the Roman soldiers.
The probabilities are that you will have to live out your abundant life in the face of evil embodied in one or more of these forms. When you do, then this abundant life meets its cross. That cross cannot be escaped. If it is escaped, then its sequel is also escaped: the resurrection. If you become a recessive personality, refusing to face up to opposition, taking the line of least resistance, then you will never be a resurrected personality. No cross, no creation.
God and Lord, I see that I must stand up to life if I am to have life. Help me have the power “to take it.” Save me from all retreatism and lack of spiritual initiative. Help me be calm and poised in the face of opposition, and help me win by being winsome. May none of this sour me, or give me “acidosis of the soul.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 52 Monday
Witnessing before Class Interests
Matthew 9:9-13; Galatians 3:26-28
We saw yesterday that we would have to live out this new life in the face of opposition. You will have to face your Pilate. You will want to get things done, say for the sake of a community, and self-interested moral cowardice, holding power, will block you. People in public life, for private interest, will look around to see how your plans affect them, and will decide on the basis of self-interest. Your plans are crucified on the cross of self-interest.
What are you to do? Meet your opponents with their own weapons—fight fire with fire? He who fights fire with fire is sure to get burned. In a battle of beasts, the biggest beast wins. Keep your Christian attitudes; they are your one real asset. There is always one thing open: you can suffer for, and if necessary die for, your Pilate, as Jesus did for his. Jesus conquered Pilate by not being like him. He broke Pilate by letting Pilate break Jesus’ body while he kept an unbroken spirit. That unbroken spirit broke Pilate and his empire. It will break anything that opposes it. Jesus wasn’t on trial that day; Pilate was. And when Pilate said, “What I have written, I have written” (John 19:22), what he wrote was his own doom, and unwittingly, he proclaimed the kingship of Jesus. “I am a part of that power which always wills evil and always works good,”* says Goethe.
Again, you will have to witness your confession before vested class interests. You will have to meet your chief priests. Wrong attitudes can be embodied in a class as well as in a person. People often think according to class interests instead of as persons. There is “a class war,” and the laborers do not create it; they simply proclaim what they find. Sad to say, many laborers then proceed to embody the class interest they deplored in others. Two class interests never made a fellowship. What is left to you? You can suffer for, and die for, if necessary, the embodied class interests in order to have a classless society, the kingdom of God.
O Christ, give me power to face soured, selfish religion and to die for it, if necessary. For this kind goes not out except by prayer and fasting and a cross. Keep my soul from all interests of class, from class thinking and class attitudes, and help me witness against them by word and deed and attitude. Let me be a brother or sister of people, and not of a class. Amen.
* This version of the quotation by Mephistopheles to Faust is from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (New York: New Directions Books, 1957), 40.
Week 52 Tuesday
Witnessing before Faithless Friendships
Psalm 41:9; Matthew 10:34-36; John 13:21-30
We saw yesterday that as Jesus went on his way, the system of exploitation of the people by the religious leaders was endangered—their class interests were involved. But they were also envious and jealous of the growing power of Jesus. People were falling away from them and crowding around Jesus. So green-eyed envy pushed up its head and slandered Jesus by twisting his meanings. Jesus was crucified on misquotations.
Very often we, too, will be crucified on misquotations. A religious leader told a derogatory story about another religious leader, and when the truth of it was questioned, and the falsehood pointed out, the teller of the story laughed it off by saying, “Well, anyway, it makes a very good story.” It did, even if it did leave the reputation of another lying wounded and bleeding. Envy twisted that story. Oh no, it only twisted itself into a snake.
You will be crucified on misquotations and twisted meanings and misrepresented motives. What are you to do? Meet blister with blister? Two blisters never made a community. Two hot words never made a warm friendship. No, you are a Christian. “You must not rule your lives by theirs” (Lev. 18:3 Moffatt). You can do what Jesus did. He died for those who lied about him. Their lies perished. He lives on. The same thing will apply with you. A lie is a waning moon; the truth is a waxing moon. A lie goes into night; the truth goes into light.
Again, you must witness before faithless friendships: your Judas. Often those who dip their hand in the same dish will betray you. When money or position or self-interest beckons, these friends fall away. It is not easy to keep from being embittered toward those who were once comrades in a cause and are now indifferent, or on the other side.
What shall we do? We can still do what Christ did in Dostoyevsky’s story: Christ came to preach in a town in Spain. The Grand Inquisitor arrested him, and said, “Why did you come back? You left everything to us, the church—go back.” Christ made no answer, but came and kissed his ninety-year-old, faded lips and went away.*
O Christ, help me do just that, or the equivalent of that, to those who betray me. And help me not to betray anyone else lest your burning kiss be on my lips. That would be punishment indeed. I could stand anything but that. You terrible, judging lover of my soul, your kiss of love reminds me of my kiss of betrayal. Help me be true. Amen.
* Based on Ivan’s story of the Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, book 5, chap. 5.
Week 52 Wednesday
Witnessing before Dull Ignorance
Acts 3:12-21; 17:22-34; Romans 10:1-4; 1 Timothy 1:12-15
Perhaps we will have to witness our confession before another thing that crucified Jesus—ignorance in the multitude. For three years he had spoken as no man had spoken—had poured himself out night and day to get the people to see. Even his inner circle didn’t understand him, and he sighed and said, “How long am I to be with you . . . to bear with you?” (Matt. 17:17). In the end, the ignorance of the multitude crucified him. They chose Barabbas—literally, bar-Abba, “Son of the Father”—and crucified Jesus, also bar-Abba, “Son of the Father.” They chose a local, patriotic rebel, and crucified a world redeemer.
When we meet with ignorant opposition, what are we to do? At this time, when there is a pressure toward a blackout of mind by otherwise intelligent people, what can we do? Well, we’ll have to do what Jesus did. He prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). And he died for them. We can do the same. And someday the resurrection will come.
I remember pleading for a move in a conference in India that would reconstruct the world church of Methodism. My proposal went “on the table” with a bang. Then, twenty years later, it was taken off the table and adopted, almost to the letter, for the world structure of the church. You can wait. The years and the centuries will speak against the hours. “Whatever is born of God overcomes the world” (1 John 5:4); whatever is born of ignorance perishes. Be patient. Someday the stones that are thrown at you will be gathered up and made into a monument to your insight and foresight.
Grasp the truth in these words: “We triumph even in our troubles, knowing that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3-4 Moffatt). Note the steps: trouble, endurance, character, hope. The hope is based on the solid reality of tested character, and verse 5 adds: “a hope which never disappoints us.” With a hope based on that solid reality, we can wait, for that hope never, never disappoints us.
Here hope is not dope!
O God, we know that this hope cannot disappoint us, for if we obtain nothing else out of the situation, we have character left; and character communing with you is Heaven here and now, no matter what is on the outside. I thank you that we are unbeatable. We can put up with ignorant opposition. Let it come. Amen.
Week 52 Thursday
Christians Are People Who Care
Matthew 5:43-48; Romans 12:10, 14-15; 13:8; 1 John 4:7-21
Perhaps the cruelest verse in literature is “And sitting down they watched him there” (Matt. 27:36). The multitude sat in stolid indifference and watched him go through his agonies. It is easier to meet opposition than it is to meet indifference. “And Gallio cared for none of those things” (Acts 18:17 KJV). You will have to witness your confession before your Gallio of indifference. What are you to do when people do not care?
There is only one thing to do: keep on caring. Christians are people who care for people who do not care. Love does not change, no matter the changes in the other person. To allow other people and circumstances to determine your conduct and attitudes is to become a mere reflection, the sum total of the attitudes of others. Perhaps we shall have to do what one modern saint suggested: “Be so humble that you cannot be humiliated.”
I am told that in the Andes Mountains, when the pack goats meet one another on a narrow ledge where it impossible to pass, one will kneel and let the other walk over it, to the safety of both. Perhaps you will have to kneel and let people walk over you. Notice I said “kneel,” not knuckle. There is a difference: In kneeling, you are bending low at the feet of Christ instead of knuckling at the behest of people. Kneeling is voluntary and for his sake. A bridge is something people walk on, but it leads from something to something. If you are to be a bridge between someone’s indifference and awakening, a bridge that bridges between groups and races, you will be walked on. Never mind; people may be getting somewhere when they walk on you.
A highly trained, gifted young doctor went to China as a medical missionary. While attending typhus cases, he was stricken and ravaged by the disease. When he heard there was a poor woman who would die if a Caesarian operation could not be performed, he had them carry him into the operating room. They held him up, one on each side, as he operated and saved the life of the woman and her baby. But the shock was too much for him; in two days he was dead. He cared. Perhaps the woman never knew and maybe did not care. He did; that is enough.
O Christ, you cared even when the multitude sat in open-mouthed indifference and watched you there. Help me to care like that. When everything I love is trampled on by indifferent feet, help me go quietly on to await your processes of resuscitation. I can wait for you. Amen.
Week 52 Friday
Witnessing before Race-prejudiced Might
Acts 10:34, 44-48; 11:12; Colossians 3:9-11
We come now to the last of the seven things that crucified Jesus and may crucify us—race-prejudiced militarism, the Romans. The Romans despised the Jews. “Am I a Jew?” sneered Pilate (John 18:35). When the Roman soldiers got hold of Jesus—“the King of the Jews”—they made fun of the Jews in the person of their King. They were mocking a nation, in him. So Jesus took the scorn, intended for the Jews, and bore it for the very Jews who were crying out to crucify him.
What are we to do in the presence of race prejudice, linked with power? We can become embittered and sullen, or we can do what Jesus did: he suffered and died for the very people who mocked him. That possibility is always open!
Yesterday, I talked to a highly intelligent African American cook, a graduate in chemistry of a great state university. He said, “I had high hopes while a student, but after trying in vain for two years to get a job as a chemist or a druggist, I gave up and became a cook.” Race prejudice snuffed out those high hopes and doomed him to be a cook. A few days ago, an African American teacher told me that her boys saluted the flag and ended by saying: “With liberty and justice for all but me.” The “but me” was under their breaths.
What can be done? We can do what Jesus did. That is always safe. He died for the very Romans who hated him. Result? Out of a slave race has come the world’s greatest freedom. Rome and its military might perished, while Judea, in the person of the Christ, lives on in the hearts of the multitudes.
In Formosa, there was the custom among a tribe to kill a man each year and lift his head up to their ancestors. A Chinese interpreter asked, “Why?” When told why, he added, “Then next year, you will kill a man in a red cap.” The next year, the chief shot a man in a red cap. It was the interpreter! The custom stopped. Now the interpreter is enshrined as a god. Someday we shall set up monuments in our hearts to the “redcaps,” who carried our bags in their hands and bore our racial insults in their hearts.
O Christ, I thank you that you took all these racial insults into your heart and emerged out of that sea of hate the Son of Man, beyond race and beyond insult. Help me do the same. Help me identify myself with the underprivileged and the despised, and to take no privilege they cannot take. And perhaps the custom will be broken by that cross. Amen.
Week 52 Saturday
It Is Tomorrow!
Isaiah 25:8-9; 1 Corinthians 15:51-58; 2 Corinthians 2:14; 1 John 5:4-5
We have been talking about the cross; is that the last word? No! God’s last word in human affairs is not the cross, but the Resurrection—not defeat, but victory.
A great newspaper editor pointed to two desk drawers and said:
On one side of that desk is a Bible, and on the other side is a typewriter. I try to make the two sides of this desk speak the same thing. For I know that if what I write in my editorials coincides with what is in that Book, it will live on; but if it is out of harmony with that Book, it will perish.
That is our faith. Everything right has “Resurrection” written on it; everything wrong has “Death” written on it.
Someone asked the brilliant missionary James Whitford Bashford why, when he could be an influential bishop in America, he chose to bury himself in China. He replied: “Because I believe in the Resurrection.” That Resurrection became a fact. Most people plot and plan themselves into mediocrity, while now and again somebody forgets himself into greatness. Bashford was such a one!
Dr. George Washington Carver, the African American saint and scientist—who did more for the agriculture of the South than any other person living or dead, white or black—wanted to be an artist until a teacher said, “George, your people need agriculture more than art.” He put those brushes away in a trunk and did not look at them again for several years. He lost himself in people’s needs. And now he has unconsciously painted his image in the hearts of all of us. He forgot himself into greatness.
Yesterday, while meditating on an address, I was tempted to be put out with some ministers who disturbed my quiet. But out of the corner of my ear, I heard one tell of a boy who was suddenly and unexpectedly whisked into a long, dark tunnel on the train. When the train emerged from the darkness, the sun was shining, and the boy exclaimed, “Mother, it’s tomorrow!” Perhaps that is our final meditation: Out of every interruption, every disturbance, every frustration, every sorrow, out of every dark tunnel we are to rescue a “Tomorrow.” That is Abundant Living!
O Christ, we thank you that the last word is not useless regret over defeated yesterdays or difficult todays, but the last word is the dawning tomorrows. With you, “the best is yet to be.” We salute the Dawn with a cheer! For we have the Dawn within us. “The Holy Ghost makes me put back my shoulders.”* Amen.
* Attributed to Rufus Moseley.