Week 17 Sunday
Week 17 Sunday
A Further Clarification
Romans 5:1-5; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Peter 1:8-9
I hesitated to write what I did yesterday, for there may be those who feel that they must find exactly that experience or else they are not united and released and filled. This is a mistake. I have never known two experiences exactly alike in emotional tone. They differ widely, and yet there is the same sense of inner release and unity, and thereby heightened power to live creatively. Don’t seek the experience of another, seek Christ, and let him give you the kind of experience suited to you, which will make you more useful.
Christ said to a friend of mine who is really alive with God, “I won’t stir your emotions, but I will give you mine.” He did. And his emotions were for her exactly right. His emotions were always healthy and always under the control of the purposes of the kingdom.
I know the modern reaction against emotion in religion. But it often takes a real emotional upheaval to shift the center of life from self to Christ, and when emotion does that, it is redemptive and releasing and not merely for selfish enjoyment.
That such a profound change could take place without emotion is unthinkable. And yet the emotion is a by-product of the facts that are taking place. We do not depend on them; we depend on Christ. And he comes in to abide permanently amid the flux and change of emotion. But if my soul takes its tambourine and dances at his coming, don’t be astonished. I should be astonished at myself if I didn’t do just that! Such a Guest, bearing such a Gift, into such a heart—the wonder is not that one has emotion, but the wonder is that one can be so restrained!
When Archimedes, after coming suddenly on a mathematical solution, ran out into the street crying, “Eureka, I’ve got it,” we understand. Then it is just as easily understandable, and more so, if we cry out in the same way, not over a mathematical solution, but over a life solution. Life is untangled—we’ve found the Way!
O God, my Lord, I thank you that I have put my feet upon this way of complete victory. I do not depend on anything extraneous, but I do depend on you. Amen.
Week 17 Monday
Fear of Not Having Emotion
Isaiah 12:2-3; James 1:3-4, 6, 17-18
Many people are not afraid of emotion; they are afraid that they will not have any. To such I would say that the emotion will come, if you keep your eyes on the right place. If you look in, you will be discouraged; if you look around, you will be distracted; but if you look at Christ, you will have peace.
It may be that you will have to launch out and steer by what the mariners call “dead reckoning,” by obedience to instruments without any sight of the stars. You may have to act on obedience without any stars in your sky. The stars are there, but you don’t see them. Act on faith anyway. Keep affirming in your heart, “I have paid the price, and I accept the Gift. It is done.” Talk faith to God and to yourself. The answer comes back to you, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9). That is not a promise, it is a fact. You can bank on it to cover your need—and more. “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:57). Victory is a gift. Empty your hands and take the gift. The manifestation will come.
A father, absent from home for a long time, was expected by the eager and excited family at a certain time. But he did not come, and the children and the mother went to bed disappointed and dejected. The next morning, they sat at the breakfast table in silence through sadness, when, lo, the father walked in from upstairs! He had come in late and had gone to bed without rousing them. But he was just as much there the night before as when he appeared in the morning.
So when you pay the price and accept the gift, then he is there—there to protect and save you, even though the manifestation of his presence has not come. That will come. And when it comes to you, it will be morning!
O Christ, whether I sail under “dead reckoning” or under the clear stars, I sail—with your hand on the helm of my life and everything under your control. Amen.
Week 17 Tuesday
Talk Faith to People
Luke 4:37; Romans 1:8-10; 1 John 1:1-3
We said yesterday that in taking this step we should talk faith to God and to ourselves. If talking faith to ourselves seems like autosuggestion, we have no apologies to make, for we all practice autosuggestion in everything. It is a process of all thought. The question is, just what do you suggest to yourself? If you suggest to yourself the highest hypothesis that you know, then it is legitimate autosuggestion and most necessary. You are suggesting what you honestly believe to be the highest truth you know, namely, that the character of God demands that if you do your part, God will do his part. You are suggesting to yourself that you launch out upon that. You cannot do otherwise. Therefore talk faith to yourself.
But you should probably talk faith to others. It might help you, probably will, to confess your faith. You need not tell of something that has not happened, but you can tell where you stand, and where you are going, and what your faith is on the way. This turns the whole attitude of the life toward faith and affirmation. It cuts the channels through which the new life comes to you. It establishes new habits of thought, it commits you to the highest.
The acceptance of the gift by faith drives in the nail. The confession of that faith to others clinches the nail on the other side. It gives the soul a push in the direction you want to go. That push may be decisive. It may be the opening of the door into conscious freedom and victory.
It is not unreality. It is a confession of faith, not of accomplished fact. That faith will turn into fact, and the fact into feeling. In truth, the faith is a part of the fact; it is the fact begun. The redemption is now in operation in the very fact of the faith.
O God, my Lord, I cannot confess to my worthiness, or to my conscious finding, but I do confess to my faith in your utter trustworthiness. You will see me through. Amen.
Week 17 Wednesday
Clean through the Word
John 13:10; Acts 20:32; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Ephesians 5:25-27
Jesus uttered these remarkable words, “You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3). What was this “word” that gave cleanness? Why did he say “word” instead of “words”?
The reason seems to be that Jesus’ words gathered into such a living body of truth and insight, into such a coherency and oneness, that they were no longer words, they were “the word.” The three stages seem to be “words,” “his word,” “the word.” But he also shared with us his silence, and his silence also became a part of “the word.”
The legendary Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu opened the Tao Te Ching with these words, “The way that can be expressed is not the Eternal Way; The name that can be named is not the Eternal Name.” But Lao Tzu did not see Christ. Had he, he would have seen the Eternal Way and Eternal Name walking the ways of time and speaking our names. The Word became flesh!
These lines say it well:
Lo! your vast Self we name, but do not know,
And in the naming break the mystic spell,
O Lord, if the silence is your hymn,
Teach us to sing it well.*
In the naming of Christ we do not break the mystic spell of eternity; we interpret it, and more, are cleansed by it. For the alabaster box of the eternal must be broken, that the perfume may fill our hearts, and with the filling cleanse them.
But the cleansing Christ performed through the impact upon his disciples for three years was more than a personal cleansing. He was cleansing them and their universe. It was a cluttered-up world they faced, and Jesus left them, as far as they were concerned, with a world of things and relationships, cleansed.
O Christ, help us to let that Word be spoken in every portion of our being and in all our relationships, that they may be cleansed, and that we may be cleansed. Amen.
* Unknown source.
Week 17 Thursday
The Cleansing of Their World
Matthew 23:9; John 1:18; 14:9; 1 Timothy 2:5
Yesterday we said that the disciples had come to Jesus with a very cluttered-up universe. Superstitions and magic and wrong notions and practices filled their world. It is true that the prophets had cleansed away many things by their cutting words, and we cannot know how much they did until we see it in contrast, say, with India, where religion, lacking this prophetic cleansing note, is still cluttered up with magic and superstitions and wrong notions.
First of all, Jesus cleansed God, or rather, our ideas about God. He cleansed away the gods and half-gods, the national and local deities, took away an autocratic, irresponsible God, and left us with God, our Lord, who does not ask you and me to do anything that God will not do. “Anything,” except one thing—repent for sin committed.
Beyond that God shares everything with us. I wonder if in the cross he did not do that too. Is the cross God’s repenting for our sins?
Dr. Shailer Mathews, dean of the divinity school at the University of Chicago (1908–33), says that the future idea of God will be in terms of pervasive life-force within the universe, instead of in terms of God as Lord. I feel he is wrong. If your eyes are on nature as the place to see God interpreted, then it will be in terms of life-force. But if they are on Jesus, you will interpret that life-force in terms of the Lord. You have looked into the face of the Son. And that one look makes you feel that, whatever else is to be unfolded in the interpretation, this is the interpretation. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “No one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). The emphasis is on the Lord (Father); you cannot see the Lord (Father) unless you look on the face of the Son. There you see God’s likeness. And what a likeness!
He has forever cleansed our ideas of God through the Word that he has spoken unto us.
O God, how can we ever cease to love such a God? Our hearts bend in deepest gratitude that such a God fills our universe, and us. Amen.
Week 17 Friday
The Cleansing of the Kingdom
Luke 17:20-21; Acts 1:3-8
Jesus not only cleansed our ideas of God; he went further. He cleansed our ideas of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God was to the Jewish mind a setting up of a world state with God as ruler and the Jewish people as the vice-regent of God. Jesus took this idea and cleansed it of national elements and universalized it, and made the kingdom to be ruled by a new dynasty of vice-regents, the servant kings. God as the chief Servant is the greatest of all, and power will now be distributed to us according to service rendered. This will be beyond all thought of race and birth and color, and will be given to human as human.
Upon this kingdom all the Hitlers and Mussolinis will ultimately break themselves, for we cannot tolerate a new outbreak of a nationally messianic people ruling the world. We have seen a vision, the kingdom of God has been forever cleansed for us, and we cannot rest this side of it. The kingdom is the ultimate order.
But Jesus also cleansed the material. We have alternated between the idea of matter as God and matter as bad. The materialist takes the one side, and Hinduism, on the whole, the other side. Jesus cleansed away both ideas and gave us a world of matter that God looked upon and saw as “good.” My body is not an enemy; it is the handiwork of God and as such is to be kept fit and well and used in the purposes of the kingdom of God. This is my Lord’s world and should be enjoyed and used and dedicated. Since I have seen the Word become “flesh” I can no longer be afraid of “flesh,” the material, for it has within it the possibility of expressing the Divine. Jesus cleansed the material. I never really saw the material until I saw him. Then my world was new. And an amazingly worthwhile world is the scene of the coming kingdom.
O God, we thank you that we live in a world of matter. Help us not to fear it, but to use it in your kingdom. Amen.
Week 17 Saturday
Further Cleansing
Matthew 5:31-32, 43-45; James 1:27
Jesus went further: He cleansed the family. The home was the one and only institution he defended. But he not only defended it, he cleansed it. He cleansed it from polygamy on the one side and polyandry on the other, and founded it on the life partnership of one to one, on the basis of an utter equality. This is an ultimate conception, and modern looseness and promiscuity will fail, for it will break itself upon this ultimate rock. Hindu and Muslim women are now advocating social boycott of any man who has more than one wife, and in the end the conscience of the world will approve a boycott of all promiscuity.
But Jesus went further and cleansed love. He found it as lust and left it as love. That love can be between those of the same sex, and between those of the opposite sex, married or unmarried. It is possible truly to love a married man or a married woman of the opposite sex, and that without lust. Jesus has cleansed love.
Jesus also cleansed prayer. He found it as magic and mere petition and left it as communion. Prayer was no longer getting something out of God, but God getting something out of us. It was a pulling of ourselves to God that, through this higher contact with higher power, higher purpose might be achieved.
Jesus cleansed religion. He made himself the definition of religion. To be religious is to be Christlike, and that definition forever cleanses our minds from unworthy and lesser conceptions. “But don’t you shield unworthy religion behind your definition when you give such a definition of religion?” a Hindu asked me. No, I do not shield it; I cleanse it. We have looked into a Face, and we can no longer think of religion except in terms of this Life.
Finally, Jesus cleansed the disciples. He cleansed them to the depths of their being through the Word spoken to them. What a cleansing—themselves and their universe!
O God, our Lord, we thank you for the breadth of this cleansing and for its depth. Help us to accept both. Amen.