Week 31 Sunday
Week 31 Sunday
The Basis of These Fears
Psalm 119:45; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18; 4:1-2; 1 Timothy 1:5
All of the fears we have been looking at are rooted in one thing: inward division. The inwardly united soul has no fears. What is the basic remedy proposed?
There are two great modern answers that are strangely alike: one comes from Walter Lippmann and the other from Mahatma Gandhi. Lippmann says to school your desires, don’t expect too much, contract the area of your expectations and hopes, and then life won’t hit you on too wide a front, and your fears will thus be lessened. His remedy is to pull in. Mahatma Gandhi, on the other hand, following the Gita, says to stand inwardly aloof, without desire for the fruit of action. His remedy for fear is to pull apart.
The answer of the gospel is this: “Love has in it no element of fear; but perfect love drives away fear, . . . and if a man gives way to fear, there is something imperfect in his love” (1 John 4:18 Weymouth). Perfect love drives away fear! The answer is not pull in or pull apart, but pull out all the stops! Expand through perfect love. That expansion drives out all fear. The answer of the gospel is in line with its own nature; it is positive, affirmative, expansive.
But first it contracts. It narrows its love down to one Person—that Person is God through Christ. “The love of Christ constraineth us,” says Paul (2 Cor. 5:14 KJV). We become single-pointed, with one consuming passion that eats up the lesser passions in the life. This love of Christ fuses the divisions of the soul into a burning unity. There is no room for inner fear, for there is no room for inner division. Division confuses; love fuses. Fear cannot live in this fire of love—this love that wants nothing and is therefore afraid of nothing. Wants nothing—except Christ. Bowing before him, we now bow before nothing else. Unafraid.
O you, who have conquered our inmost being, we thank you that no fear can now make us afraid. For nothing can separate us from the love of Christ—nothing. Amen.
Week 31 Monday
Fears and Divided Loyalty
Matthew 6:22; Luke 9:28-36; James 1:6-8
There is no deliverance from fears unless there is an undivided loyalty to Christ. Perfect love literally does cast out fear, and, vice versa, imperfect love admits fear into the heart. This is vividly brought home to us in the transfiguration scene. The Jewish heart of Peter was divided in its loyalty, wanting to keep Moses, representing the law; Elijah, representing the Prophets; and Jesus, representing the new Revelation, all on the same level. “Let us make three booths” (Luke 9:33). This was serious, for the whole of the future was bound up with the question of whether Jesus was final and whether supreme allegiance should be given to him.
The moment that division came, a cloud overshadowed them, “and they were afraid as they entered the cloud” (v. 34). That inner division brought clouds and fears. Then God speaks out of the cloud.
Where there is division, there will be clouds and fears. Take the international situation today. Why are we so overshadowed with war clouds, and why do we fear as we enter those clouds? The answer is simple: division. Each nation is thinking in terms of itself, losing a sense of the collective unity; selfish nationalism emerges and controls, and hence world division. The result? Clouds come over us, and we fear as we enter those clouds. And no wonder!
But out of those clouds comes a Voice. God speaks! And because we would not listen to the voice of God as it spoke through intelligent reason, now we must listen as God speaks to us through the roaring of the cannon and the crash of our civilization. The Voice is one of judgment and invitation. It is this: “This is my beloved Son: hear him” (v. 35 KJV). Those clouds will never lift and those fears will never depart until we listen to Christ.
O God, you are speaking out of the clouds today. We tremble at your voice of judgment. Help us not merely to tremble but to obey. Save us from our divisions. Amen.
Week 31 Tuesday
The Clouds over the Economic Life
Isaiah 58:5-12
Today clouds hang over our economic life: unemployment, glutted markets, scarcity, depression, fears. Why? The reason is simple: division. Those in control of the organization of our economic structure, thinking they held the whip hand, intercepted too much of the gains that science and technique had brought and kept them from passing on to the people. A cleavage went clear through society between “the haves” and “the have-nots.” The result? A cloud of depression hangs over our economic life, and the brooding fears underneath that cloud are terrifying.
And now God speaks out of this cloud of depression. Let Walter M. Horton interpret that Voice:
Is it tenable, one may ask, that God should be at once a God of wrath and a God of love? Has he two hands, one iron-gloved, the other warm and human? Is it conceivable that he should alternately woo us with the one and strike us with the other? Could we believe this, we might hear him saying to this generation in tones of mingled sorrow and anger, “You must and shall have deeper fellowship in your social order. You may take it this way (stretching out the right hand), or you may take it this way (clenching the left fist). If you will hear my word, you may make the great soulless machine of your industrial civilization an instrument for the common good and a bond of fellowship between you; but if not, then I will smash your civilization, and reduce you to a primitive level of existence, where you must recover the art of fellowship, which your pioneering forefathers knew and you have lost.”*
In other words, God is speaking out of the cloud of this depression: “This is my beloved Son; hear him.” And unless we do, that cloud will never lift, and those fears will never depart.
O God, why cannot we listen to your still, small voice? Why must we have to listen to your voice of wrath as it speaks through our calamities? Forgive us. Amen.
* Realistic Theology (New York: Harper and Bros., 1934), 112.
Week 31 Wednesday
The Cloud over Our Churches
Romans 12:2; Colossians 2:8, 20; 1 John 2:15-17
No one has to argue that there is a cloud over church life. Our vague uneasiness has grown into a fear that all is not well. Why? Again, divided loyalty, inner division. The divided loyalty is this: In each nation, instead of keeping the gospel of Christ in a framework of universal reference, we have more and more identified it with national cultures. The conquest of the gospel of Christ by local cultures is going on apace, causing the slow dechristianization of our churches. On the “Antioch Chalice,” claimed by some to be the original Holy Grail, the figure of Christ sits above the Roman eagle. That was the position Christ occupied in those early centuries. He was first and the nation was second.
Today the nation is using the national culture for its own ends, and because the church has become so identified with that national culture, it is using the church too for its nationalistic ends. As Francis P. Miller puts it, “A process which began with a culture molded by religious faith has ended with a religious faith molded by a national culture.”
The most ironical feature of the present situation is that Protestants now find themselves in exactly the same position as the Catholics were four hundred years ago. . . . In the early fifteenth century the Catholics mistook static ecclesiastic forms for the content of their faith. In the early twentieth century Protestants are mistaking dynamic cultural forms for the content of their faith. And the triumph of cultural forms over religious content is even more deadly than the triumph of ecclesiastic forms.*
We are divided between Christ and national culture. Which is supreme? Again the clouds come over us and the Voice speaks: “This is my Son; hear him.” And until we do the clouds of our fear will not depart. Christ must be first.
O God, Caesar comes again, clothed in national culture, and demands our supreme allegiance. Help us not to bend the knee. Amen.
* The Church Against the World, part 2, http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=412&C=193, accessed April 18, 2014.
Week 31 Thursday
The Cloud over Our Churches (continued)
Romans 15:5-6; 1 Corinthians 1:9-13; 12:13; Ephesians 4:3
But the division within Christendom is not merely between allegiance to the national culture and the allegiance to Christ; there is division between the churches themselves. The household of Christ is divided against itself. And as a result of our family divisions a cloud has come over us, and under that cloud we are fearful, and for good reason, for a divided church has little moral authority in a divided world. We must adjust our differences or abdicate our moral leadership.
I asked a missionary how they obtained a lovely piece of property and received this reply: “The man who owned it built such high and expensive walls around it that he went bankrupt building the walls and had to sell the property.” The owner went bankrupt building the walls! Is that not dangerously near the history of the Christian churches today?
We have so exhausted our resources in putting up ecclesiastical walls between ourselves and others, and in keeping them in repair, that we have little left to use in helping redeem a world. If the time and intelligence and soul-force we have expended in proving that we were right as against our brothers and sisters had been expended in united action against the problems that now confront the world, they would not now be so far from solution. And we would be leading the procession of events instead of being led by them.
These divisions have brought a cloud over our religious life—dark, rainless clouds, clouds that presage storms of revolt, clouds that produce fear. God is today speaking out of that cloud and God’s voice is as of old: “This is my Son; hear him.” And what does the Son say: “Lord, I will that they may be one” (see John 17:20-21). When we become one, the clouds will lift. But not until then.
O God, our Lord, forgive us that we your children have set up walls against each other. Help us to feel and act upon the solidarity of your family. Amen.
Week 31 Friday
Clouds over the Personal Life
2 Samuel 24:24; Acts 4:35-37; 5:1-3; Philippians 3:7-8
We have looked at the clouds over the collective life; we must now look within and see if there are any cloud-producing divisions left within ourselves.
It may be that you have started to pay the full price of victory and then have drawn back. That hesitation has meant a division, and that division has meant a cloud, and that cloud has meant a fear.
In South India, the temples are usually in the form of a hollow square with high, beautiful, ornate tower-gates on the four sides. I noticed that one of those tower gates was closed and apparently never used. The reason was that the rich man who was presenting the tower gate to the god sat down in the midst of the building of it and began to count how much it was costing him. This offended the god—the idea that anyone should ever count the cost of a gift to him! So he refused to be taken out in procession through that gate; since it was deserted by the god, it is now deserted by people. A cloud of uselessness and decay is upon it.
Perhaps you have felt that same cloud of spiritual uselessness and decay over your inner life, and perhaps you realize it is there for the same reason—you have counted the cost and have hesitated to pay the full price. You are willing to give, but not to give up. You have prayed very hard that the cloud might lift, but it doesn’t, and it won’t. There is one saving factor—God is speaking to you out of that cloud, and God’s voice is this: “This is my Son; hear him.” If we cease our hesitations and listen to that voice, we shall lift up our eyes and see no man save Jesus only. He will then have our complete allegiance. And there will be neither clouds nor fears.
O Christ, we know that you will only fill our horizons when you fill our hearts. Help me to let you fill my heart undividedly. Amen.
Week 31 Saturday
The Undivided in Heart See God
Jeremiah 33:39; Galatians 2:20; 5:16-17, 24; 1 Peter 4:1
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). The word pure literally means “the undivided.” When the disciples listened to the voice of God, became united in their inner allegiance, then their uplifted eyes saw Jesus and him alone. But many of us refuse to listen to that Voice, and so the cloud lingers and the fears cling. The reason we don’t listen is because we are listening to something else, something closer by.
I paused in writing the above paragraph to call down to a workman who was carrying some old tin sheets upon his head, but no matter how loudly I and others who joined me called he did not hear, for the sound of the near rattling of the tin was in his ears. Some closer thing, as insignificant perhaps as old tin sheets, fills our ears with its din—some personal hurt or loss, some slight, some resentment, some clamoring habit, some foolish ambition, some infatuation, some love of money—these fill our ears and God’s voice is drowned out. And that Voice was calling us to something big.
The harbor at Galle, Sri Lanka, is beautiful, and it was the original harbor of the island, but now it is comparatively deserted in favor of newer Colombo. The reason was this: When the sailing ships came, the harbor was perfect for them, but to make it fit for the big ocean liners, they would have to blast out a huge rock at the center. It would cost a hundred thousand pounds or more. Lesser voices of fear and hesitation prevailed; they refused to pay the price, and the city now is a dead city, a shell of its former greatness. Had they listened to the voice of faith and courage, they would now be a growing city, but the lesser voices filled their ears and prevailed.
O God, save me from these lesser things that incapacitate me from hearing your call, and help me to pay the full price that I may have full deliverance from fear, and the full vision of you. Amen.