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Week 3 Sunday

Week 3 Sunday

Toiling in the Dark

John 6:16-21

We must get clear this whole matter of whether the Christian way will work before we can go on to “victorious living,” for as long as we have the suspicion lurking in our minds that we are about something that cannot be done, that the universe won’t back it, there is a paralysis at the center. If, however, we are sure that the sum total of things is behind our acting, then our wills are steeled to do the hitherto impossible.

It was said of the disciples that they were toiling in the dark, rowing and getting nowhere. The wind and the waves were against them and the whole thing was ending in futility. Then Jesus came. They cried out against him, in fear that he was a ghost. But finally they took him in, and “immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going” (John 6:21). Is that the history of our lives? We strive for goals we cannot reach. The whole thing ends in futility—toiling in rowing and getting nowhere. The sense of meaningless striving is upon us. We are “up against it.” And everything is very dark. Life is too much for us. Then Jesus comes and we are afraid of him; he is ghostly, unnatural, and will demand the unnatural and the impossible. This is our first reaction. But finally we let him in; and, lo—we are at the very place we were striving to reach—we are at the land to which we were going! This is the very way it works.

But there is no doubt that we are afraid of Jesus. It was said that when Herod heard that Jesus came, he “was troubled, and everyone in Jerusalem was troubled with him” (Matt. 2:3 CEB). Troubled at the coming of the Deliverer! They were naturalized in their own lostness. But should the dynamo be afraid of the coming of electricity? The flower at the coming of the sunshine? The heart at the coming of love? Should life be afraid of the coming of Life?

Help me, gentle, redeeming, impinging God, not to keep you at a distance through fear. Help me, then, to take you into my little troubled boat. Amen.

Week 3 Monday

How Do We Get to the Goal of Self-expression?

2 Corinthians 2:14-16; Galatians 2:20; 6:14

We saw yesterday that we toil in futile striving until Jesus comes. Take the natural things within us, which are part of our very makeup; can these instincts be fulfilled, can they reach their goal apart from him?

Take the instinct of self-expression. Noted psychologist Alfred Adler said that the instinct of self is the strongest of the three major instincts: self, sex, and the herd. Hence self-expression is natural and normal and right. We therefore strive to get to the goal of self-expression. We all do. The smallest member of our ashram, a three-year-old, after singing at the top of her voice, will announce triumphantly at the conclusion of the grace, “I sang.” We all laugh. In polite society, we do not laugh at sophisticated attempts at self-promotion—we get irritated. Place a dozen people in one situation, all of whom want to express themselves, and you have the stage set for clash and confusion and jealousy. The result is refined strife. The whole thing ends in futility. We thwart one another. We are toiling in rowing and it is getting dark . . . darker. Then across the troubled waters Jesus comes to us. We cry out in fear against him, for we suspect what he will ask of us. He will ask that we cease all this and lose ourselves. And that is exactly what we do not want to do; we want to express ourselves. It is unnatural, ghostly, impossible. But as we toil further into our futilities, he keeps coming, until at last we let him in. Then we lose ourselves in his will and purposes. We forget about our self-expression. And, lo, we are at the land to which we were going!

We are never so much ourselves as when we are most his. For then, we have found ourselves. We have arrived. We have obeyed the deepest law of the universe: the one who saves his or her life shall lose it, and the one who loses it for the sake of Jesus shall find it. It works.

O Christ, we feared you. The drowning feared the lifeline—forgive us. But your very coming to us is your forgiveness. We thank you. Amen.

Week 3 Tuesday

How Do We Get Rid of Enemies?

Matthew 5:43-48; Romans 12:19-21

Take another natural instinct—the instinct to get rid of our enemies. Those who thwart us, who hurt our feelings, who do us harm become our enemies. So we strive to get to the land of the riddance of enemies. Sometimes we try the crude method of fists; sometimes, if we are more refined, we strive to cut off their heads by the sharpness of our tongues, or socially we “cut them dead.” Or we go to the court and hope thus to make them bend the knee. Or collectively, we go to war with waving banners, lying propaganda, and belching cannon. In all these ways, and many others, we strive to get rid of our enemies. But we are soon toiling in rowing and getting nowhere. We are not getting rid of our enemies. We are multiplying them.

For we soon find that harsh words produce harsh words; sharp tongues have a way of sharpening other tongues. “Cutting other people dead” results in isolating ourselves. Court cases produce court cases. And as for war getting rid of enemies, we find it only produces them. Mailed fists, shaken at the world, turn the world into a looking glass from which mailed fists shake in return. We get nowhere. Blank futility. Then Jesus comes to us across our troubled waters. We are afraid, for we suspect that he will ask us to love our enemies. And we do not want to love them. We want to get rid of them. But he keeps coming, until finally we let him in. And then something strange happens. As we catch his way we find a positive desire, even a craving, to do good to people, even to our enemies. And lo, we are at the land to which we were going. Our enemies are gone. We have got rid of them in the only possible way of getting rid of them—we have turned them into friends. Even if they do not respond, our enmity has gone and hence our enemies. We have arrived.

O Christ, help us today to take your way, even toward our enemies. And it may be that at nightfall we shall have no enemies. We too shall arrive. Amen.

Week 3 Wednesday

How Can We Arrive at Greatness?

Mark 10:35-45

The instinct to be great is another phase of the instinct of self. We all want to be great. The little one in the corner and the ruler on the throne feel the same way about themselves.

Two little boys, children of missionaries, argued over the respective greatness of their fathers, when one little fellow capped it all with this: “My father, why he teaches subjects in the school so hard that he himself doesn’t understand them!” That settled the matter; he was greatest, and the son also, by implication!

We laugh at the little ones, but it becomes serious when it gets to us. We try by thought to add a cubit to our statures (see Matt. 6:27). We buy expensive clothes to try to make our neighbors “green with envy.” By acting the “he-man,’’ some men try to be forceful and impressive.

A head man in colonial India said to the missionary in charge of a criminal settlement, “Please fine me a decent sum and not four annas (a very small amount). I am no four-anna man. I shall never be able to lift up my head among my people having been fined only four annas!” He wanted to be great, if only by a great fine! What difference is there between this and those of us who “fine” ourselves the price of a new car each year when we do not need it? We too must keep up appearances, must appear great. What about the student who swaggers in order to appear great in the eyes of other students?

It doesn’t work. It ends in futility. We grow small trying to be great. We toil in rowing, trying to get to the land of greatness, and end nowhere. Then Jesus comes. Again we fear him, for we fear he will ask us to be the servant of all in order to be great. And we do not want to serve; we want to be served. But still he comes. Then we let him in. We forget greatness, as we bend with him to serve the rest. And, lo, as we bend we rise, the servant of all becomes the greatest of all. We have arrived.

O Christ, the Man who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, help me to be like you this day. Amen.

Week 3 Thursday

How Do We Get to Happiness?

Acts 5:41; Galatians 5:22; Philippians 3:1 (Moffatt)

We all want to be happy. And rightly. This is a deep-rooted instinct. God must have planted it there. The God who made sunsets, who painted the rose, who put play into the kitten and the smile on a baby’s face and laughter in our souls, is surely not happy when we are unhappy. “Down with the coffeepot face, up with the teapot face.”*

So we start out for the land of happiness. We declare that the world should show us a good time. But somehow or other it eludes us. It slips through our fingers when we grasp it. The most miserable and fed-up people I know are the people most bent on being happy. They have to jump from thing to thing in order not to be bored to tears with themselves. They are saying to their souls what the old lady said to the frightened child. She had taken him to the circus, and as she shook him until his teeth rattled, she said, “Now, enjoy yourself, do you understand, I brought you here to enjoy yourself. Now do it!” Thus we try to make our souls enjoy themselves.

But the soul weeps within and doesn’t know how to enjoy itself. It has missed the way. It is toiling in rowing and getting nowhere. And it is dark, very dark in some people’s souls. The land of happiness isn’t in sight. Then a Figure appears across the waters! We are afraid. Is not this poet A. C. Swinburne’s “pale Galilean” whose breath has turned the world grey?** We cry out in fear. But this patient insistence overcomes us and we let Jesus in. We now forget our happiness as we begin to think about the happiness of others. We walk with Jesus into the saddened homes and strive to lift that sadness, and, lo, our hearts sing with a strange new joy—a deep, fundamental, and abiding joy. We have arrived.

We have misunderstood you, O Christ. We thought because your symbol was a cross that you are therefore Christ the Sad. Forgive us. We now see that you are Christ the Glad. One touch of your gladness and our hearts forever sing. We thank you. Amen.

*From an old children’s song. Coffeepots are seen as dour “long and thin,” whereas teapots are round and happy.

**See “Hymn to Proserpine.”

Week 3 Friday

How Can We Arrive at the Goal of Sex-fulfillment?

Matthew 5:27-30; 19:3-6; Galatians 5:19-21

Sex is an integral part of human nature and is, therefore, God-given, not unclean in itself. It is as natural as the appetite for food. God has given us this strange power through which we share divine creatorship. It is, therefore, not something to be whispered about in dark corners or brooded over furtively in the mind. It must be faced openly and frankly.

Through this strange power, mere femaleness turns to motherhood and mere maleness turns to fatherhood. A home is set up, a child in its midst. Love binds all three. Nothing is more beautiful on earth. Heaven bends low and touches that earthly thing into a heavenly thing.

But while sex, under the guidance and restraint of pure love, can be a heavenly thing, used in the wrong way it can turn earth into hell. Sex has produced more happiness and more unhappiness than any one single thing in life. It all depends on what you do with it.

Many try to get to the goal of sex expression through unrestrained freedom. They say they have a right to taste all experience, including sex experience, apart from morality. So they try. They are soon toiling in rowing. It is getting dark. The promised heaven turns into a present hell. They are getting nowhere except into deeper self-loathing. Then Jesus comes. We are afraid of him. He is unnatural and strict. But since we get nowhere without him, we let him in. And lo, we are at the land to which we were going. Inside the marriage relationship, restraint and dedication lead to creative ends. Outside of marriage, taking the power of sex and turning its driving force to creative ends leads to even higher levels of creativity: music, art, poetry, religion, serving the weak and underprivileged. In either case, we have arrived at sex-fulfillment.

O Christ, you are shutting to us the gates of lesser life that you might open those to larger life. Help us not to complain when you will not let us be swine. For you would make us after your own image. Help us to arise and follow. Amen.

Week 3 Saturday

How Can We Arrive at the Goal of Inward Unity?

Matthew 6:22; Ephesians 4:1-6; James 4:8

If there is one thing that both modern psychology and the way of Christ agree on, it is this: Apart from inward unity there can be no personal happiness and no effective living.

Jesus said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation” (Matt. 12:25 KJV). That simple statement has within it all the depths of wisdom that modern psychology has discovered from the facts of the inner life. Divided personality, inward clash, these are the things that bring desolation to human personality.

Many say to a distracted soul, “Pull yourself together.” This is futile advice when there are mutually exclusive things within us. They won’t be pulled together. Experience taught Old Testament lawgivers the futility of trying to plow with an ox and an ass yoked together. It was forbidden (see Deut. 22:10). Experience forbids us from attempting to pull ourselves together when there are conflicting selves.

“Exert your will,” counsels another. But suppose the will, which expresses the personality in action, is itself divided? Again futility.

The psychoanalyst, after getting hold of the distracting place in a disordered life, and after relating it to the rest of life, says that to be held together there must be something upon which to fasten the affections. This will lift you out of yourself and keep you unified. But often nothing is offered except, perhaps, just the counselor, a professional trestle upon which the patient can twine the vines of affection. This is, to say the least, unsatisfactory.

So we toil in rowing, trying to get to the land of inward unity. We are tossed by many a wind and many a wave. And it gets very dark. Then Jesus quietly comes. We more easily let him in this time, for there seems no other alternative. The soul seems instinctively to feel, “The Master has come.” He gathers up the inward distinctions, cleanses away the points of conflict, and unifies life around himself. We have arrived.

O Christ, we need a master, someone to command us. You are that law. For your commandments are our freedom. Help us to accept your way, that we may find our own. Amen.