Week 50 Sunday
Week 50 Sunday
Stones That the Builders Rejected
Matthew 16:18; 21:44; Romans 9:33; 1 Peter 2:4-5
As one looks at the world situation one of the things that strikes with greatest force is the fact that, at every place of world need, the mind of Christ becomes relevant—and not only relevant but imperative—if that need is to be met. An erratic genius such as George Bernard Shaw now and again flashes out the truth: “The only man who came out of the World War with an enhanced reputation for common sense was Jesus Christ. Though we crucified Christ on a stick, yet he somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it, and that if we were better men we might try his plan.”
Never have so many people come to this realization as now. And yet never have we seemed so desperately near abandoning his plan altogether as now. We were never nearer war and yet never nearer getting rid of war than now. The world situation has become dangerously balanced. It may go one way or the other. But I repeat that the clear-sighted of the world see that what Jesus said is true: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Matt. 21:42 CEB).
The builders of civilization have tried to build without Christ. True, we thought we could put him in as a decoration to make the building religiously respectable. But we did not put him in the foundation and build upon him. We thought he wasn’t practicable. And now the structure of civilization is crumbling around us. The foundations are wrong; they are Christless, hence crumbling. “The builders”—the experts—have failed us, because they failed Christ. All their attempts at diplomacy, balances of power, security through armaments, and selfish nationalism have broken down. The bankruptcy of these methods is laid bare before us. We must begin again. This time Jesus must be not merely decorative but in the foundation itself. It is our one hope.
Your patience, O Christ, astounds us. You have waited for this hour. We have messed up the world with our Christless planning, and now we are in confusion. Save us. Amen.
Week 50 Monday
We Look at Some Rejected Stones
Galatians 5:13; 1 Thessalonians 3:12; James 2:8; 1 John 3:11, 14, 16-18, 23
Yesterday we said that Christ must be put into the foundation if civilization is not to crumble into ruin. The world demand, rightly interpreted, means that Christ must become the cornerstone in the structure of collective living. We have not put him there. The builders rejected him. Instead they put within the foundation something that was anti-Christ, namely, ruthless selfish competition. I cannot see how these two things can be made compatible. Either Christ or ruthless selfish competition must go.
Capitalism has been captured by this underlying competitive outlook. We need capital, but we do not need it as we now have it. If labor had hired capital in the collective good, instead of capital hiring labor for the benefit of the few, our world situation would have been different. The game of “Beggar my neighbor,” which is the essence of competition, has gone on until we have beggared ourselves as well as our neighbor.
Such a mild critic as University of Wales professor J. Morgan Rees makes these charges against the present capitalistic order:
Without in the least subscribing to the view that this capitalistic order is being attacked, we must face the facts: (1) That it does not secure the maximum production of goods and services for our people; (2) That it does not attain justice in its distribution of wealth; (3) That it has failed to provide a tolerable existence for its producers when there are millions of unemployed and many more millions needy in a world of plenty; (4) That it fails to give the greatest possible freedom and stimulus to personalities and to social progress.*
This may not be an “attack” upon capitalism, but it is an indictment that no system can survive long without fundamental change. That change must be from competition to cooperation. If so, Christ would be in the foundation. His principles would permeate the whole of society with a regulative love.
O Christ, this stone of love rejected by the builders is now so desperately needed that we perish without it. Give it to us, lest we destroy ourselves. Amen.
* Publication details unknown.
Week 50 Tuesday
The Love Motive: A Rejected Stone
1 Corinthians 13:1-3; James 1:27; 1 John 4:7, 11-12, 20-21
The demand of present-day life is that love be built into the social structure. Not practicable? Then living is not practicable, for living demands love. We suggested that society must organize itself around one of two motives: the hunger motive or the love motive. We have organized life around the hunger motive, largely for the benefit of the few to the exploitation of the many. This has brought us discontent, disruption, disaster.
Communism has organized life in Russia on the hunger motive, not on behalf of the few, but on behalf of all who cooperate. This is a higher step than organizing life around the hunger motive on behalf of the few, for they have enlarged the range of cooperation. But note that it is the hunger motive still. John Macmurray says: “The whole Communist interpretation rests upon the hunger motives to the exclusion of the love motives. In his criticism of Feuerbach, Marx said that Feuerbach had deified the love life of man. It would be legitimate to reply that Marx deified the hunger life of man.”* This means that ultimately there will be disruption in Communism, for the hunger motive is disruptive. For “in practice, a dominant hunger may maintain cooperation with the help of the love principle which is subordinated to it, but only at the expense of a mutual tension, breaking out inevitably in the long run into open struggle, between individuals and groups.”**
Only love can provide the ultimate motive for society, for it would include within itself the satisfaction of the hunger motive. For people who love one another will, if their love is real—that is to say if it is a motive determining action—cooperate for the satisfaction of one another’s distinct and individual needs. This love motive rejected by the builders has now become the head of the corner. We perish without it.
We come to you, O living Christ, to give us courage to believe that this love motive is the only way to live, and help us to act on it. Amen.
* Creative Society, 104.
** Ibid., 103.
Week 50 Wednesday
The Kingdom of God: Another Rejected Stone
Matthew 6:33; 21:43-44; Luke 4:43; Acts 1:3
When we study the records, we find that the message of Jesus was the kingdom of God. When we study “church history” (significant phrase, for the history of the Christian centuries is “church history” rather than “kingdom history”), we find that the message was the church. Why this supplanting of the kingdom of God by the church? Jesus intended that the church should be subordinate to and a servant of the kingdom. But we have reversed that. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation” (Luke 17:20 KJV), it permeates silently like leaven from within. But we took the church from without, as coming “by observation.” It could be counted in statistics, in buildings, in outer forms. We were “outwardists,” so we took the outward, the church.
The kingdom is more Christian in its conception than the church, for it obeys the fundamental Christian law of losing oneself and finding it again. Hence the kingdom has gone further than the church.
If you doubt this, ask yourself: Is the church a sufficient foundation upon which to build a new world society? To ask it is to answer it. It was tried during the Middle Ages and failed. But ask: Is the kingdom of God a sufficient basis for the new society? The answer is that it is the only foundation.
This stone that the builders, both secular and sacred, rejected has now become the head of the corner. It is emerging as the only solid foundation for human society. It is the kingdom or chaos. We have hid this kingdom light under the bushel of ecclesiasticism. We must now put it on top of the bushel as a candlestick. If we do, we save both. The church can be revivified only as it becomes, no longer an end in itself, but the servant of the kingdom, which is far larger than the church. For world need cries out for the kingdom.
O God, our Lord, in rejecting the kingdom we have rejected you. But your patience has worn us down. We now see your kingdom as our only light. Help us to take it. Amen.
Week 50 Thursday
The Kingdom of God Is Near
Mark 1:14-15; 13:28, 29; Luke 21:28-31; 1 Corinthians 1:30
When Jesus described the coming of the kingdom, he used different phrases, all connected with the word near.
He said that when the fig tree becomes “tender,” you know that “the summer is near” (Mark 13:28). When life becomes tender—sensitive, has within it an urge for fuller life, is ready to branch out—then know that the summer is near, the kingdom is near at hand. Was ever a world situation more tender and sensitive, tired of the old and yearning after a greater fullness of life than just now? We have wanted fuller life for individuals, but we have never yearned like this for a fuller life for everybody, in everything. Does this not mean that the kingdom is at our doors?
Jesus said that when these things happen, you know that “he is near” (Mark 13:29). The kingdom is not an impersonal order. It is a personal Presence—universalized. But what an assumption to say that the coming of the kingdom and his own coming were synonymous! It is breathtaking.
In a parallel passage Luke says, “Now when these things begin to take place, . . . your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28). So the kingdom is redemption! We have seen that the “kingdom of God” and “life” were used synonymously, but here the “kingdom” and “redemption” are also used synonymously. The kingdom is life, but it is the redemption of life as well. Many modernists preaching the kingdom of God as “life” fail to emphasize the fact that it is redemption. We need nothing so much as we need a conception that is synonymous with life, and at the same time looses a power for the redemption of life, to make life what it ought to be. The kingdom covers both. The kingdom, therefore, is the one open door before a confused and morally collapsed world. It is the stone that the builders have rejected, but is now become the head of the corner.
O Lord God, your kingdom is near. It is now within us, and yet we yearn that it burst upon the world with redemptive power. Help us to bring it near this day. Amen.
Week 50 Friday
Redemption: A Rejected Stone
Psalm 130:7; Colossians 1:14; Titus 2:14; Revelation 5:9-10
Of all the stones that the builders of civilization have rejected, none has been more tragic in its effects than the rejection of redemption. Of course, individuals here and there have known redemption, but we have not called on its resources for the remaking of the world. We thought we could make a changed world without changed people, and we have found it will not work. “You cannot make a golden age out of leaden instincts,” says Herbert Spencer. Human sin is the real barrier to the new world.
But the church must also take its responsibility for rejecting this stone of redemption by confining that redemption to a restricted sphere. We rejected it by reducing it. We entered into a compromise with the world in which we said we would confine ourselves to saving the souls of people while turning over the economic and social life to the forces of the world to manage. In this we have betrayed Christ.
I have seen the idols of the temples of China bricked up and immured (entombed) when the temples were turned into schools. They were not thrown out; that would be sacrilege. They were lovingly preserved—and confined! We have done that with Christ. We have bricked him up, confined him to the personal, and turned over the rest of life to other lords and masters—to our ruin.
Now we see where the issues must be joined; the next battles for Christ must be fought in the arena of the economic. For this realm belongs to him. As someone has said: “Christianity is the only religion which takes economics seriously. The material bases of human life are of the utmost importance to it.” For, “if man does not master economics, then economics will master man.” Christ must master and redeem both.
This stone of redemption of the whole of life is now becoming the head of the corner. We perish without it.
You, Redeemer of the whole of life, redeem us wholly. And help us not to fear to claim all life for you. Amen.
Week 50 Saturday
The Realism of Jesus: A Rejected Stone
Matthew 7:28, 29; 11:4-6; Mark 1:27; John 6:63
Of all the strange anomalies in history, the strangest is this: the Man who was the greatest realist in history has been turned into the greatest idealist. Jesus’ realism was so astonishing, so different that people did not know what to do with it. They had to act on it or reject it. They couldn’t bring themselves to do either, so they found a way by which they would do both—hold Jesus and hold the old order of life; they made him into an ideal. That ideal would be practiced someday, but not now. They thus satisfied their sense of being loyal to the high while practicing the low. Christ was crucified on the cross of being irrelevant now.
So we adopted Christianity as an idealism, lifted up high above life, inoperative except here and there in small things. Because we could hold high ideals, we thought we were thereby spiritual. But “all idealism is a concealed materialism,” for it makes a divorce between body and spirit, referring religion to the spirit while other ways of life control the material. Hence idealism becomes materialism, for the latter is acted on.
Jesus was astonishingly realistic, so realistic that people thought it idealism. When he said we must love our neighbor as ourselves, that is not idealism; it is realism, and we are discovering that it is the only realism, for nothing else will work. Unless you give an equal and fair chance to everybody, you will have none for yourself. Selfishness is suicide, collective and individual.
When Jesus said we must lose ourselves to find ourselves, this is not idealism; it is realism. It is obeying a fundamental law of life. Nothing else will finally work. The demand that religion be realistic is upon us. The world is perishing for the need of just this thing. So the realism of Jesus, rejected by the builders, is made the head of the corner.
O you realistic Christ, make us realistic. Save us from imperative ideals that have become opium to us. Amen.