James F. Peter - "Troublers of the Nations" (October 24, 1954)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(organ music begins) | 0:05 | |
(choir singing) | 0:15 | |
(choir singing continues) | 1:13 | |
(choir singing continues) | 2:06 | |
(choir singing continues) | 2:40 | |
(choir singing continues) | 3:02 | |
(choir singing continues) | 4:05 | |
(organ music continues) | 4:28 | |
(choir singing continues) | 5:04 | |
(choir singing ends) | 5:46 | |
(organ music ends) | 5:46 | |
- | Accept O' Lord these offerings thy people make under thee | 5:50 |
and grant that the cost of which they are dedicated | 5:55 | |
may prosper under thy guidance | 5:58 | |
to the glory of thy Holy Name | 6:01 | |
through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen. | 6:04 | |
In the name of the Father, | 6:43 | |
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. | 6:44 | |
The text is in the first Book of Kings the 18th chapter | 6:51 | |
and the 17th verse. | 6:55 | |
"Is that you, you troubler of Israel?" | 6:59 | |
"Is that you, you troubler of Israel?" | 7:04 | |
Elijah was the troubler of Israel. | 7:10 | |
He was the man whom his king charged | 7:15 | |
with being a troubler of the nation, | 7:17 | |
and the way in which he troubled his nation was simply this | 7:21 | |
that he dared to speak his mind, | 7:26 | |
whenever he saw that the policies and the personal behavior | 7:30 | |
of those in authority were due to be called into question. | 7:33 | |
The responding attitude as represented by King Ahab | 7:41 | |
is one which Christian people | 7:45 | |
in similar circumstances frequently meet. | 7:47 | |
Why don't you church people | 7:54 | |
keep out of things that don't concern you? | 7:56 | |
One often hears this sort of question. | 8:00 | |
If in your district, someone proposes | 8:04 | |
to do something that affects | 8:06 | |
the social behavior of many people. | 8:09 | |
A lot of them don't come to church. | 8:11 | |
If we choose to construct an immigration policy | 8:15 | |
that rigidly excludes all Asiatics from our borders. | 8:18 | |
If we desire to extend the facilities for gambling. | 8:23 | |
Why do you church people want to stir up trouble? | 8:27 | |
Why don't you stick to your job of preparing men's souls | 8:31 | |
for heaven and leave other people to look after | 8:35 | |
the kind of life and the kind of conditions | 8:39 | |
that they have to live in while they're here on the earth? | 8:42 | |
As a general opinion, opinion concerning the appointed work | 8:47 | |
of the church in the world today, this is a common one. | 8:51 | |
And more often than enough, church people, | 8:56 | |
perhaps because of the commodity, but more often | 9:00 | |
simply because they've never thought | 9:03 | |
the thing through thoroughly, | 9:05 | |
exceed in such an estimate | 9:08 | |
of what is the church's task in the world. | 9:10 | |
More often than enough, they're prepared to accept this | 9:14 | |
as the part, which they ought to be playing | 9:19 | |
in the world, rather than caught the unwelcome criticism | 9:21 | |
that they are troublers of the nations. | 9:26 | |
What I want to declare this morning, | 9:31 | |
on this day that is set apart as United Nations Day, | 9:35 | |
and therefore one upon which it is specially appropriate | 9:40 | |
that we consider what should be our attitude | 9:44 | |
towards the nations of the world today. | 9:46 | |
Is that any attitude of silence | 9:50 | |
or inactivity on the part of church people, | 9:52 | |
in regard to national or international affairs | 9:56 | |
must be unacceptable. | 9:59 | |
In contemporary affairs, local, national, and global. | 10:03 | |
There does exist for Christian people | 10:09 | |
the responsibility to think, to speak, and to act. | 10:11 | |
And they do exist on occasion, | 10:16 | |
circumstances which are bound to result in their action | 10:20 | |
being criticized as an unwarranted troubling of the nations. | 10:23 | |
Now, there are several reasons why the attitude | 10:31 | |
that I am propounding must be assumed by Christians. | 10:34 | |
There is for one thing, the example of the past. | 10:40 | |
If you're incline to think that to be religious | 10:45 | |
means to withdraw yourself from the world | 10:48 | |
and acquiesce at any situation, | 10:51 | |
rather than become involved in it, | 10:54 | |
and counter criticism of being a troubler of nations, | 10:56 | |
then you should reflect for a moment | 11:02 | |
upon the type of activity, which has characterized | 11:04 | |
those in the individuals in the past, | 11:07 | |
whose place in the history of religion | 11:10 | |
we have learned to hold in highest regard. | 11:13 | |
The foremost figure in the story here | 11:18 | |
is one example of what I mean. | 11:20 | |
There is no doubt | 11:24 | |
that in the history of religion, generally, | 11:25 | |
and in the prophetic movement, particularly, | 11:28 | |
the place occupied by this man Elijah | 11:31 | |
is one of tremendous significance, | 11:35 | |
and no one can deny | 11:39 | |
that Elijah was a troubler of the nation. | 11:40 | |
Whatever you may be thinking about the miracles | 11:46 | |
that are attributed to him, | 11:48 | |
you can't escape the fact that his dominant personality | 11:51 | |
did intrude itself into the politics of his day, | 11:55 | |
that his influence was felt in fears different from that | 12:00 | |
to which we commonly reserve the description religious. | 12:04 | |
And in that respect, Elijah is by no means unique | 12:10 | |
in goodly fellowship of the prophets. | 12:13 | |
Amos, the herdsman and gather of sycamore fruit. | 12:17 | |
When he dared to condemn national sin | 12:23 | |
even when he stood in the King's own chapel. | 12:26 | |
Isaiah the courtier, | 12:31 | |
when he sounded the warning against the foreign policy | 12:34 | |
upon which his nation embarking. | 12:37 | |
Jeremiah, when he appeared in public | 12:41 | |
with a plow yoke about his neck | 12:43 | |
to give added emphasis to his warning | 12:46 | |
that a yoke of Babylon would rest upon his people's neck, | 12:49 | |
if they continued in the policies | 12:53 | |
which the authorities were approving. | 12:55 | |
All these were troublers of the nations, | 12:58 | |
and the ground upon which they intruded themselves | 13:02 | |
into national policy was none other than a religious ground, | 13:05 | |
because they were convinced that the God whom they worshiped | 13:10 | |
and in whose name they preached, | 13:14 | |
and whose character they sought in their own | 13:17 | |
circumstances to exemplify, | 13:19 | |
was a God who demanded a concern for all people, | 13:22 | |
was a God who demanded that if the occasion arose, | 13:27 | |
a man should not fear to be a troubler of nation. | 13:31 | |
On religious grounds, they proposed to intrude | 13:36 | |
into the policy and communal life of their day, | 13:40 | |
or you can consider as of course the Supreme example, | 13:46 | |
which the past has given to us, the life of Jesus our Lord. | 13:51 | |
Was he solely concerned with curing people's souls? | 13:58 | |
Was he solely concerned | 14:05 | |
with making Mary mortal spirit fit for heaven? | 14:07 | |
Of course, it's true that there stands | 14:13 | |
at the very center of Christ's teaching, | 14:15 | |
an assertion that in the long run, | 14:19 | |
it isn't any man's external environment | 14:21 | |
that finally shapes him. | 14:23 | |
And that it is possible for a man gloriously to triumph | 14:26 | |
over the most difficult circumstances. | 14:30 | |
And yet Jesus was a healer of men's bodies. | 14:35 | |
He was the outspoken critic of the authorities of his day, | 14:40 | |
who felt that observance of the minutia of the law | 14:45 | |
and of traditional practices was more important | 14:48 | |
than individual persons. | 14:52 | |
And it wasn't because Jesus went through the countryside | 14:55 | |
after in pious platitudes, | 14:58 | |
that the civic authorities put him on a cross. | 15:01 | |
It was because his conception of the service of God | 15:05 | |
led him into actions that were in interpreted | 15:09 | |
as troubling the nation. | 15:13 | |
And this fact, so clearly pointed | 15:17 | |
to him the example of Jesus. | 15:20 | |
This truth that religion extends | 15:23 | |
into all the conditions of human life | 15:25 | |
is supported also in what he had to say in his teaching. | 15:29 | |
Have you ever reflected that in all the parables of Jesus, | 15:35 | |
the only specially religious figures that he drew | 15:40 | |
from that specially religious period | 15:43 | |
are the Pharisee praying with himself in the temple | 15:46 | |
and the priest and the Levite, | 15:52 | |
who passed by on the other side, | 15:54 | |
leaving the man whom the robbers | 15:58 | |
had left half dead on the road to Jericho. | 16:00 | |
None of them you'll agree | 16:05 | |
a picture drawn in a especially attractive light. | 16:07 | |
And yet on the other hand, | 16:12 | |
what a procession of bailiffs, and debtors, | 16:14 | |
and farmers, and fisher folk, | 16:18 | |
and housewives, and children, | 16:21 | |
passes across the stage of the stories, which Jesus told. | 16:24 | |
All of them occupied with everyday activities | 16:29 | |
and yet as Jesus presents them, | 16:33 | |
they're occupied with God, | 16:36 | |
with everything hinging upon whether | 16:38 | |
in their everyday activities | 16:41 | |
they are rightly or wrongly occupied. | 16:43 | |
You can add to the example of teaching given by Jesus | 16:48 | |
the example of his own life. | 16:53 | |
And you can add the example of all who have been greatest | 16:56 | |
as the Bible presents religion. | 17:00 | |
And you find that the example of the past | 17:02 | |
is a clear pointer to the truth that it's no crime | 17:05 | |
rather is it on occasion or positive duty | 17:09 | |
for religious people to become troublers of nation. | 17:13 | |
We shall see this more clearly if we reflect | 17:22 | |
for a moment upon what is basic to our Christian faith, | 17:24 | |
because basic to all Christian thought | 17:29 | |
and worship and behavior | 17:32 | |
is the truth that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. | 17:35 | |
The truth that at a time in our history | 17:41 | |
and at a place that you can mark in the map | 17:46 | |
of our material world, | 17:49 | |
in a particular person | 17:51 | |
the Almighty God revealed Himself supremely. | 17:54 | |
All right, as Christians, we believe that | 17:59 | |
but do you see what it means? | 18:02 | |
It means that everything in this world of ours, | 18:06 | |
it's homes, and it's carpenter shops, | 18:09 | |
and it's village streets, and it's city market places, | 18:13 | |
And it's places of council and decision. | 18:18 | |
All these things have been taken up by God | 18:22 | |
and used by Him when he wanted to make known | 18:25 | |
to men supremely what kind of a God he is. | 18:28 | |
And since God became man and dwelt among us, | 18:36 | |
experiencing our pleasures, feeling our wariness, | 18:41 | |
knowing our temptations. | 18:47 | |
There is not a single thing about any man's life | 18:50 | |
or any nation's activity from which the church | 18:54 | |
can stand back and say, that's worldly. | 18:59 | |
That's not our business. | 19:02 | |
Everything is the concern of God's people | 19:05 | |
precisely because they are God's people | 19:09 | |
and everything has been shown | 19:12 | |
to be the concern of God himself. | 19:14 | |
Not only is it silly, but I dare to use the word | 19:18 | |
and say that it's blasphemous, | 19:21 | |
to preach a Gospel of the Word made flesh, | 19:24 | |
and preach it as though it were only concerned | 19:28 | |
with strumming harps on a cloud in heaven. | 19:30 | |
And as though it had nothing | 19:33 | |
whatever to do with this material life of sweat | 19:35 | |
and blood, and toil, | 19:38 | |
in which men and women live out their earthly days. | 19:40 | |
And to the example of the past, | 19:46 | |
and to the basic emphasis of the Christian gospel | 19:48 | |
you can add what is probably an adventitious argument, | 19:52 | |
that it is always through the scene, | 19:56 | |
that people come to know the unseen. | 19:59 | |
And I sometimes feel | 20:06 | |
that where there is indifference towards the church, | 20:07 | |
it is only because people have not realized | 20:11 | |
how deeply involved in every day activity | 20:14 | |
the Christian gospel really is. | 20:18 | |
And I must add that a great deal of the ignorance | 20:22 | |
on the part of people outside the church | 20:24 | |
is due to the inactivity of people who are inside it. | 20:28 | |
Wilfred Grenfell was far from being an enemy of the church | 20:34 | |
but he had this to say, and I think he said truth. | 20:38 | |
He said, if Christianity cannot be attractively | 20:45 | |
presented to the world by its apologist in action, | 20:49 | |
if its preachers cannot be leaders in deeds | 20:55 | |
as well as in words, | 20:58 | |
if our presentation of Christianity has nothing | 21:01 | |
to offer except its philosophy, | 21:04 | |
if it fails to deliver the goods | 21:07 | |
which developing reason and enriched faith in God | 21:10 | |
teach men that being a Christian calls for, | 21:13 | |
then mankind has a right | 21:17 | |
to demand that some new religion come on the scene, | 21:20 | |
which can adapt itself to our ever advancing world | 21:23 | |
and the example of the past and the basis of our faith | 21:29 | |
and the need of the present, | 21:33 | |
all cry out that the church must have a concern | 21:35 | |
with what is going on in the secular world, | 21:39 | |
even if it does mean Christians being characterized | 21:43 | |
as troublers of the nation. | 21:47 | |
I imagine that it hardly needs to be pointed out | 21:54 | |
that any thought along such lines as these | 21:57 | |
must have some outcome in action. | 22:00 | |
If the Christian gospel has these implications | 22:06 | |
for the society about us, then we as individuals | 22:09 | |
must take the trouble to inform ourselves adequately | 22:15 | |
about the conditions of society. | 22:19 | |
Karl Barth has remarked and remarked it in truth | 22:22 | |
that a Christian has no more right | 22:26 | |
to fall asleep over his newspaper, | 22:28 | |
than he has to fall asleep over his Bible. | 22:31 | |
And Maurice's record also remarks in truth, | 22:35 | |
that Christians have no right to complain | 22:38 | |
of their difficulties in fulfilling their duty | 22:40 | |
in the political sphere, | 22:43 | |
until they have put themselves to a good deal, | 22:45 | |
more trouble than most of them have so far done | 22:48 | |
to qualify themselves for performing it. | 22:51 | |
We must, as individuals inform ourselves | 22:55 | |
and having informed ourselves, | 23:00 | |
we must make our viewpoint known, | 23:02 | |
make it known in discussion, make it known in letters | 23:05 | |
to the press, make it known in approaches to those | 23:08 | |
who represent us in councils and parliament, | 23:11 | |
and make it known by a prayerful use | 23:15 | |
of that hard one privilege, which is yours | 23:19 | |
and mine in our respective countries, | 23:22 | |
and yet which before God, we must hold as a responsibility | 23:24 | |
as well as a privilege, | 23:28 | |
the unrestricted access to the secret bank. | 23:31 | |
As individuals we must know, | 23:36 | |
and we must make known what we know, | 23:39 | |
and then think of that vast potential | 23:45 | |
for influencing public opinion that rests | 23:47 | |
in the Christian congregations planted | 23:51 | |
here and there across the world. | 23:54 | |
How in every city and every suburb, | 23:57 | |
there is a group of people bound together | 24:01 | |
by a common allegiance | 24:03 | |
Think of these things, and then think if you will, | 24:06 | |
how the communists would use these planted cells | 24:11 | |
as a means for indoctrinating and converting the people. | 24:16 | |
Could it be that the communists are more serious | 24:22 | |
about their faith than we are about ours? | 24:26 | |
Or again on the national plane and in the widest sphere | 24:33 | |
of global policy and international diplomacy. | 24:37 | |
If we would be true to the implications of our fate, | 24:43 | |
we who are the church must see | 24:47 | |
that those who are in authority | 24:50 | |
are made to know what ought to be done | 24:52 | |
in the light of the gospel declared to mankind | 24:55 | |
in Jesus, our Lord. | 24:58 | |
So that if wrong things are being said or done, | 25:01 | |
no matter how highly placed the offender, | 25:06 | |
nor how dangerous the intervention might be, | 25:09 | |
the church should speak the words of truth | 25:13 | |
and should act in whatever way lies | 25:17 | |
within its power. | 25:19 | |
Troubler of the nation, | 25:23 | |
that was the scornful title flung at Elijah, | 25:27 | |
and the assumption accompanying it | 25:32 | |
was that anyone who troubled his nation, | 25:34 | |
must be a wrongdoer. | 25:38 | |
Troublers of the nations, | 25:41 | |
this is the title that will be flung at you and at me, | 25:44 | |
if we act along the lines that I have suggested, | 25:48 | |
and yet that if we would be true to our faith | 25:54 | |
is precisely what we must be. | 26:00 | |
Then grant us Lord in all things thee to own, | 26:06 | |
to dwell within the shadow of thy throne, | 26:11 | |
to speak and work, to think and live and move, | 26:14 | |
reflecting thy known nature which is love, | 26:19 | |
that so by Christ redeemed from sin and shame | 26:24 | |
and hallowed by thy Spirit Cleansing Flame. | 26:29 | |
Ourselves, our work and all our powers | 26:33 | |
may be a sacrifice acceptable to thee. | 26:38 | |
And now to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, | 26:52 | |
three persons, and one God be ascribed by us | 26:56 | |
and by the whole church as is due, | 27:00 | |
the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever, | 27:04 | |
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God | 27:09 | |
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. | 27:13 | |
(choir singing) | 27:23 | |
(choir singing continues) | 28:02 | |
(choir singing continues) | 28:55 | |
(choir singing ends) | 29:19 |