Week 7 Sunday
Week 7 Sunday
Is the Way Impersonal?
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
We have been glimpsing the Way amid the ways of life and experience around us. The Way is not merely written in the Book; it is written in us and in our relationships. I predict that this will become the most thrilling, exciting, rewarding adventure of human beings in the days to come. Science, philosophy, education, economics, business, politics, sociology—all branches of human approach to life—are going to converge upon one thing: the discovery of the Way. The discovery of gold amid the dust of the earth is going to be tame alongside the discovery of the Way hidden at the basis of life. Someday scientists are going to put it all down on the table, and they are going to say, “This is not the way to live,” and, “This is the way to live.” As we look at it, our eyes will bulge with astonishment, and we shall exclaim, “But, fellow humans, the way you say is not the way to live is the unchristian way, and the way you say is the way is the Christian way.” They will reply, “We cannot say about that, for that is not our province; but this is not the way to live, and this is the way to live.”
The Christian way is the ground plan of the universe. One of the earliest written documents, an Egyptian inscription from 3300 or 3500 BC, says, “Life is given to the peaceful and death is given to the guilty,” the peaceful being “he who does what is loved,” and the guilty, “he who does what is hated.”* This is the earliest written judgment on life. The writer saw that one way leads to a dead end, death; the other leads to an open way, life. From that day to this we are finding the same thing. The Christian way is not only sanctity; it is sanity. Take any way you will and pursue it, and you will come out to one of two things: if it is not-the-way, you will come to a dead end; if it is the way, you will come to the Way. All the right ways lead to the Way.
While this is mentally reassuring and satisfying, yet it leaves one emotionally dissatisfied. For the Way seems impersonal. It is something on which to tread toward a goal. You can be grateful for a way, but you cannot love a way; it is impersonal. Is the Way personal? For I, who am deeply personal, cannot be satisfied this side of the Personal.
O my Lord, I am grateful for the Way. But my heart is hungry for response, for love in return. I am grateful for principles, but I crave the Person. I want a heart to answer my heart. Must I obey principles, or can I love a Person? Show me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Personality is our highest category of being. God may be more than personal; God cannot be less.
*Pitirim Sorokin, Man and Society in Calamity (New York: Dutton, 1946), 201.
Week 7 Monday
Religion Needs a Cosmic Guarantee
Revelation 21:1-5
We saw yesterday the craving that the Way be personal, something to love, to fellowship with. I can accept the multiplication table as true, but I cannot say my prayers to it. A weeping child cannot be satisfied if you offer the principle of motherhood. The child wants a mother. I am not a walking robot asking only for a path. I am a person asking for a Person. Is the Way a principle or a Person?
It is both! Jesus put them together in this statement, “I am the way” (John 14:6). Here the Word became flesh, the Path became a Person. A traveler was lost in an African jungle. He asked a native person if he could show him the way through the jungle. As they trudged along, the traveler became doubtful and asked, “Is this the way?” The native replied, “There is no way. I am the way.” The shrewdness of the native got the lost man through a wayless jungle; the native was the way.
Christ is the Way. He said, “Follow me”; not merely follow a set of principles, a way of life, but surrender to me, get into living fellowship with me, find out my ways, and they will turn out to be the Way. For I am the Way.
Fortunately for us, we find that when we follow him, the Way, we find that he is not a way through a trackless jungle; he is the Way in the midst of a universe that has the Way written in its very constitution. So Christ is not an imposition on life as the native with his intelligence was an imposition upon a pathless jungle. Christ is the Way written everywhere come to personification. He is the ways of life come to Life; all the paths become a Person. He sums up the meanings of life, for he is life. When you touch Christ, you feel you have not touched the margin of life; you have touched Life itself.
This is important, for religion needs a cosmic guarantee. If Jesus were an imposition on life, we would be afraid the universe would not sustain his way. The nature of reality might be against it. In that case, the Way would be only an excrescence, an aberration, an imposition; it would be unnatural. But suppose the Way is supernaturally natural, is the exposure of Reality. Then?
Yes, O Christ, then? If that should be true, I could give myself to you with all the consent of all my being. And something within me tells me it is true. For if you are not true, what can be true? If you are false, then life is false. But you are true. I know it. I come with all my heart. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am following something that has a cosmic guarantee!
Week 7 Tuesday
Listening to His Master’s Voice
Romans 8:19-22
We saw yesterday that the Way is a Person. When you love him, you fulfill all the principles embodied in him. We are not then struggling to live up to a code; that is a force-pump type of faith. Our code is a Character. We love that Character, and we then fulfill the code embodied in him. Our faith, then, is not a force pump; it is artesian. It is spontaneous and joyous and released.
In India, the newspapers came out with the headlines that the name of Mohammed written in the clouds was seen, so it was claimed, by many persons. This portent showed, said the Muslims, that the faith of Mohammed was to conquer the earth. But the name that will conquer the earth is not the name written into passing clouds, but the name that is written in the nature of reality, the name that brings into manifestation the very nature of being; that name will conquer the world.
Consider the familiar picture graven on a record, of the dog listening in the horn of the wind-up gramophone to “his master’s voice.”* Is that not the picture of humanity listening to its Master’s Voice as it is graven in the nature of things? If we would listen, we should hear God’s Voice from everywhere, from everything, except one thing: sin.
On an ancient papyrus is an inscription of a supposed saying of Jesus, “Cleave the wood and thou shalt find me, raise the stone and I am there.” We can go further now and say, “Cleave the tissue and you will find his will written there; dissect every relationship of life and you will find it is made to work in his way and only in his way. Raise the stones, the hard bare facts of life, and you will find him there beneath the facts of life.” Just as the Rosetta stone furnished the clue to hieroglyphics and made it possible to decipher ancient lore, so Jesus is the Rosetta stone that gives us the clue to the language of creation, to that hidden purpose running through all things. He is God breaking through into intelligibility, into redemption. He is God’s open secret. A critic once said, “Wherever we seek to go in criticism, in coming back we always meet Coleridge.”** Wherever we go in life, we meet Christ.
O Jesus, I look through life, and I see Life, I see everything. The unfolding drama of creation comes into meaning in you. I see where I must head in, what I must become life. That is my glad goal. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am not following the fixed letter of a law, but the unfolding of a living Mind. My good today may not be good enough tomorrow.
*This image was the well-known trademark of the RCA Victor record company.
**Referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), an English poet and philosopher and one of the founders of the Romantic Movement.
Week 7 Wednesday
God’s Best Photograph
Philippians 2:6-8; Hebrews 1:2-3
Yesterday we said that Jesus is the meaning of the universe come to concrete expression. A teacher was talking to some slum children and asked what they thought of Jesus. A little Italian boy answered, “Jesus is the best photograph that God ever had took.” He is! The writer of Hebrews says that he is “the imprint of God’s being” (1:3 CEB), an exact likeness of God, “a speaking image” as we say, of God.
We have high-powered wires with such high voltage that it is unusable unless it goes through a transformer and is thus made available with safety in lowly cottages and for lowly uses. Jesus is the transformer of God. Here God enters our lowly doors and becomes intimate and tender and approachable.
In one place, Jesus said to murmuring Pharisees, “To let you see that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10 Moffatt). That phrase “to let you see” is the key to the whole meaning of Jesus. In him we do not bear things merely; we see them. In him I see love, and love becomes Love. In him I see goodness, and it becomes Goodness. In him I do not hear of God; I see God. And what a God!
Someone overheard in a conversation on the street: “Jesus is the only Somebody you can’t match.” This insight sees that here is the ultimate meaning of life. And now listen to what Alfred Adler, a psychologist and a Jew, said in answer to the question of a Los Angeles pastor, “What do you think of Jesus Christ?” The reply, “Whenever I hear his name, I stop for reverence to the greatest character of human history.” But why is he great, and continuously great, unexhausted amid the passing of the centuries? Because in him we see the meaning of God, of humanity, of life, of the whole cosmic process. He is great because freighted with great meanings, ultimate meanings.
Hebrews 1:2 says, “Whom he appointed the heir of all things.” Why? Is that an arbitrary decree of God? Or will Jesus be heir of all things because all things that fit into him will survive, and all that does not will perish? So all that is, is his! “All things have been created by him and for him.”
O eternal Christ, understandable even to me, I thank you for putting the latchstring so low I can reach it. I can reach the highest, for you are the highest become lowly, reachable. And so I come, for in you I see—see everything I need. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall let people see the definition of a Christian—in me.
Week 7 Thursday
The Indicative Become the Imperative
Matthew 7:28-29; 28:18-20
But in praising Jesus as you have been doing, aren’t you overpraising him? This same question was raised by the high priests and scribes when the children shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Do you hear what they are saying?” “Yes,” said Jesus, “and have you never read, ‘You have brought praise to perfection from the mouth of babes and sucklings’?” (Matt. 21:15-16 Moffatt). Note, “You have brought praise to perfection. Praise was brought to perfection when it praised Jesus. Why? Because here is one that cannot be overpraised. Whatever you say about him is understatement, for the Word is bigger than our words, and the coming years and centuries will unfold new meanings in him. A new meaning from a child, “Jesus was the one who gave God a good reputation.”
Jesus said, “And blessed is he who is repelled by nothing in me” (Matt. 11:6 Moffatt). I should have thought that he would have said, “And blessed am I if you can find nothing to repel you in me.” But he didn’t! He meant, “Blessed are you if you are repelled by nothing in me. For if you are repelled by anything in me, you are wrong; you are blessed if you approve me, for life will approve you.”
When he finished the Sermon on the Mount, which some suppose to be idealism, “the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he was teaching them like someone with authority” (Matt. 7:28-29 CEB). What was the “authority”? An outer-imposed authority? No. It was the authority of the facts. He was lifting up the meaning of life, lifting up the meaning of the laws underlying life. He was uncovering Reality.
A good many people make the tragic mistake of considering Jesus a moralist, imposing a moral code upon humanity for which humanity is badly made. But Jesus was not a moralist in that sense at all. He was a revealer of the nature of Reality. He revealed first the nature of God, and the nature of God became the ground of God’s conduct and ours. He then lifted up the laws written in the universe and the laws written in our tissues, our blood, our nerves, written in us. Instead of being an imposed idealism it was an exposed realism; it was Reality itself speaking. No wonder it was authoritative! Here was the indicative become the imperative!
O Christ, when I look upon you, I look upon Life. For I see in you my dream fulfilled, my longing become Fact. I see in you everything I have ever thought about goodness—and more! I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All of Christ’s ways become the Way—for everybody, everywhere.
Week 7 Friday
“You Just Told Us Things”
1 Corinthians 3:11; Ephesians 1:9-10
We are considering the secret of this man’s authority. The best compliment I have ever heard given to a minister came from a Roman Catholic businessman, who said at the close of a luncheon address, “You didn’t preach at us; you just told us things.” He saw the difference between a morality imposed by fiat from without and the lifting up of the laws underlying life, laws that are self-verifying.
“They were all so amazed that they discussed it together, saying, ‘Whatever is this? It’s new teaching with authority behind it!’ ” (Mark 1:27 Moffatt). What authority was behind it? (1) The authority of God; when he spoke, God spoke. (2) The authority of Truth; Truth spoke when he spoke. (3) The authority of the Deed; the Deed spoke when he spoke. (4) The authority of Love; Love spoke and acted when he spoke and acted. (5) The authority of the sum total of Reality; Reality spoke and acted in him.
We have often read passages such as this as an arbitrary gift of God to Christ, “All has been handed over to me by my Father” (Matt. 11:27 Moffatt). Why was “all” handed over to him? All comes to him because it came from him. His will and way are written in “all”; and hence “all” cannot exist or be fulfilled apart from him. And note, it doesn’t say “all spiritual things.” It says “all” unqualified, and that means “all”—material, spiritual, secular, sacred, individual, social, national, international, heaven, earth—all. The Way is the Way unqualified!
Again, it says, “Full authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18 Moffatt). Many are willing to allow him full authority in heaven, but “on earth”? Has he full authority here too? Yes, for everything in heaven and on earth has a Christian destiny wrought into it. The earth belongs to those who belong to Christ, for no one else can run it, except into the ditch. There isn’t a situation on earth, for the individual, for society, where the Christian thing is not the right thing. For earth is not only “crammed with heaven,” it is crammed with heaven’s laws and ways as the very nature of its being.
O Christ, your will is in my lifeblood. It is woven into the texture of my being. I cannot run away from you, for I cannot run away from myself. Nor do I want to. Help me live in you this day. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The Way is the way for me to think, to act, to feel, to be in every conceivable circumstance. It shall be my Way today.
Week 7 Saturday
Christ Written in the Texture of Things
John 1:1-5, 10
Alfred Whitehead, the philosopher, says, “I hazard the prophecy that that religion will conquer which can render clear to popular understanding some eternal greatness incarnate in the passage of temporal fact.”* Note that it must be eternal greatness. We cannot give ourselves to something that is time-bound, and therefore to be time-destroyed. It must be eternal. And then that “eternal greatness” must be “incarnate in the passage of temporal fact.” It must meet us where we are, walk our dusty ways with us, redeem us, not by proxy but by proximity; the Word must become flesh. What other faith can fulfill the demand except that of Jesus?
But there is a further consideration. This Word that becomes flesh must be not only a revelation of God; it must have a kinship to the flesh, must be the interpretation not only of God but of life. In 1 John 1:2 (Moffatt) we read, “The Logos of Life.” This Logos, or Word, was not only the Word of God; it was the Word of Life. In him we see the meaning of life. He reveals God, and he reveals life. I see in him all the half-hidden meanings of life, written in me and in the nature of things around me, come into full meaning. These lines by Harry Kemp tell of this fact of Christ inherent everywhere:
I cannot put the Presence by, of him, the Crucified,
Who moves men’s spirits with His Love as doth the moon the tide;
Again I see upon the cross that great Soul-battle fought,
Into the texture of the world the tale of which is wrought
Until it hath become the woof of human deed and thought—**
Christ is in the texts of Scripture, but also in “the texture of the world.” He is the revelation of God and life. Revelation 3:14 (Moffatt) sums it up, “These are the words of the Amen, . . . the origin of God’s creation.” His will is wrought into creation, and he is the “Amen,” the affirmation of that creation. Creation comes to its own in him. Out of him it is not creation but chaos.
O Jesus, I see you as the summing up of the meaning of creation, and I see you as the author of my new creation. I need to be remade—remade into the image of yourself. I present myself for re-creation. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY:
“I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes.”***
I shall see him everywhere as I go forth today.
*Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 33.
**Harry Kemp, “The Voice of Christmas” in The Cry of Youth (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914), 127.
***Joseph Mary Plunkett, “I See His Blood Upon the Rose” in Poems of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1916), 47.