Kyle Haselden Sermon, 1965-07-18, The Bounds Of Christian Action

You I would not begin properly if I did not express to you if ever so briefly my deep gratitude for the honor and the privilege of appearing in this pulpit but we must hasten to more important matters and particularly to the Christian insights which come to us from the morning scripture

specifically from this word for he is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility the works and the words of Jesus Christ are clear proof that the Christian life finds its reality not in monastic, pietystic withdrawal but in deep involvement in the world of men and of human affairs first his wicks then his words never a sign to show his power always the rushing

of his spirit toward human need but Christly life then is authenticated in its encounter with the world the use is we make of our solitarinus may be one dimension of the religious life but without social engagement the Christian life becomes too flat too singular to be credited with reality the Christian is a social being many Christians reject the Christian view of the social problems because they have not lived as Christians in the midst of those problems

the interplay between opinion and habit belief and deed is often exactly opposite from what we commonly suppose for we assume that thoughts opinions speculations come first and that deeds and habits follow after it the reverse is often true we think as we do because we live as we do the deed is mother of the thought Peter Boller knew this when he said to wavering John Wesley preach faith till you have it and then because you have it you will preach faith Robertson of Brighton understood this and so he entitled one of his sermons obedience the organ of

spiritual knowledge Jesus knew that action frequently precedes conviction so he said if any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God so obedience tends speculation into belief opinion into conviction intellectual ascent cold and bloodless into vibrant and vital commitment we find ourselves as Christians therefore not through Descartes exploration of the interior but rather through Kierkegaard's scandalous act even so involvement is perilous action

is dangerous and the more tabulent the social scene becomes the greater the possibility that the conscientiously involved Christian will either cancel his engagement with the world and retreat to the safe refuge of inactivity or that his actions will degenerate into sub Christian forms of social protest in the arena of change and conflict societies needs sometimes appear to exhaust Christian resources and seem to demand of the Christian either a piotistic retreat from

the world or actions which in motivation and in method have no Christian basis and no Christian validity since we cannot flee from the world and remain Christian how do we remain in the world as Christians what are the bounds of Christian action in a time of change and conflict there are many answers to this question but there cannot be less than two answers let me present them to you in the form of simple propositions first in the concrete human situation Christian action can never be less than justice nothing new about that but it needs to be struck at the beginning of his

ministry Jesus took up first things first he announced to his own people in Nazareth using the words of Isaiah that he had been anointed to preach good news to the poor to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind to set at liberty those who were oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord there would be more for him to say and more for him to do later but first the elementary demands of justice had to be satisfied his concern for justice for the to every man his due kind of justice was to be matched by another concern

but was never to be displaced as his ministry closed and he described the last judgment Jesus was still thinking about the hungry the thirsty the outcast the naked and the imprisoned nothing blinds Christians to the priority of justice so successfully as does the supremacy of love for they assume that they can live a life of ethereal love and thus bypass the hard U.S. demands of justice in 1937 the Oxford Conference of Churches declared undue emphasis upon the higher possibilities of love in personal relations within the limits of a

given system of justice or an established social structure may tempt Christians to allow acts of charity to become a screen for injustice and a substitute for justice love is not love where there occurs no acceptance of the other person's grief his humiliation his burden and his hope therefore Christians who say that they love their fellow men but who will not help them obtain basic justice are at best ignorant of the meaning of love and justice and at worst hypocritical in either case they can be compared to an employer who deals with his

employees graciously courteously even kindly but who refuses to pay his employees their weekly wages by withholding what by right belongs to the employees and by lavishing on them an affection which costs him nothing the employer disagrees both of his relationships his duty and his affection do we really love do we want for other men what we want for ourselves do we want to strike from the oppressed the shackles of material deprivation which prevents they're having a dignified life and precludes hope that their children will have the dignity they have not had if so then we must

transform love into active justice are we willing to surrender our use of other men as robots as instruments through which to fulfill ourselves as menials degraded into things then loves noble intention must become justices accomplished fact it is hypocritical for Christians to pretend that they live in the new testament when they have not performed the preliminary duties of the old when they have had no will with mica to do justly so that they may love kindness and walk humbly with God it is futile of Christians to aspire to the love made known in Christ Jesus

when they fall short of the human obligation defined by Aristotle Christian action fails the first test if it is not just now if we stop here with this necessary accent on the primacy of justice if we do not move on to the second proposition then our preoccupation gives to distributive justice not only the primacy due to it but also the ultimacy it does not deserve justice should be honored and served not worshiped it is penultimate not ultimate to treat justice as

though it were ultimate as well as primary is to transform a good thing into an idol this is the satanic temptation which abides today in every search for justice that we shall make it a god by which all things are tested and end which warrants the sacrifice of everything else for Christians there must be a goal beyond equalizing justice the prophet mica to whom we refer the moment ago put justice first in his memorable summary of the highest religious

insight of his time but mica arranged his trio of moral values in their ascending order and in that order justice was first necessary essential but not highest the apostle Paul went further than this in his hierarchy of values saying but the greatest of these is love and for Christians Jesus Christ expressed the ultimate effect of love that they may all be one even as thou father art in me and I in thee that they also may be in us so that the world may be leave that thou hast sent me thus the goal of Christian action in the social struggle

is not merely equality but a community to which equality is integral not justice but a society in which justice is an indispensable factor the educator and author Kaduri once said law is a system of social control established for the purpose of maintaining an ordered society among men Philipsy Joseph a judge of the international court said of this statement mark that law is not a system for maintaining order but for maintaining an ordered society likewise the Christian goal in the

social struggles is not justice but a just society not a system for maintaining equality but for maintaining a society to which equality is integral the end of Christian action is not merely an equitable distribution of goods and services and opportunities but a society in which individuals find form enjoy and mutually profit from their association with each other or to use an expression more meaningful to Christians than society what the Christian seeks is a just community therefore if our first elementary proposition declares that in the concrete human situation Christian

action can never be less than justice then our second proposition declares that in the life situation the ultimate goal of Christian action is neither justice nor concord but a community which goes beyond both in society as in the Bible there is always a tension between these two propositions justice and community throughout the social scene the Christian action which seeks justice and community in combination is necessarily more restricted needs more discipline than that which seeks only justice or only social tranquillity

so the stream of Christian action has justice as one of its confining empowering directing banks and community as the other on the one side the primary yet not imperial demands of fair just equal treatment and on the other side that unity which is always seeking to mend the broken ness of the human family on the one side the agencies of equality on the other the powers and blessings of community outside these bounds Christian action ceases to be Christian now what in our time will keep justice from becoming cold bloodless legalities which sacrifice human

affinity for the purchase of human equality and on the other hand what will keep us from substituting sentimental patronizing affection for genuine community the answer to this question is also elementary it is the love of man for man made known to us and empowered in us by Jesus Christ for he is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility the love of Jesus Christ is just it breaks down the wall of hostility that is it

removes because and the occasion for hostility but it is also uniting it does not leave justified men equal but separate it draws them into that oneness which is his true peace in the thick of our multifaceted revolution a social revolution which shakes up almost every social pattern in our time Christian love seems a harmless beautiful but important instrument but we have misunderstood the tough tenacious quality of it Christian love is no tame sentiment it is no mere emotional throb and glow it is no delicate combination of warmth and helplessness

in those life situations where men abuse and exploit men Christian love appears in the rugged forms of justice and where men are estranged by conflict and competing interests Christian love appears as reconciliation and usually of course these are coincidental situations in which Christian love must satisfy the needs of both at once the social revolutions of our time do not call for methods which destroy the identity and the sacred rights of the person

they do not call for methods which shatter human oneness rather the social revolutions are crying out in our time for Christian love a righteous love which eliminates the gross inequalities which men heap upon each other a reconciling love which binds up and heals the deep wounds separating men from men nothing in the present social upheaval changes the ancient role of the Christian that role is not to manipulate the conflicts inherent in the life situation not to use them for selfish purposes but in the love of Jesus Christ to remove those humiliating

inequities which compound our human conflict and to embody among men the message of reconciliation however some perilous and chaotic the times may become the search for a just community in Christ's love remains the mandate for the Christian let us pray you