The Agony and the Ecstasy
Sermon
GOD'S TWO HANDS
Sermons for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany
Agony and ecstasy provide the balance that makes up life's pilgrimage. It was true of the Children of Israel, as pictured by the Book of Numbers. It's true of us in our contemporary life's struggle. The Israelites were struggling through the desert wilderness after their escape from Egypt. As with them, it is with us; good news, bad news, good news: good news - escape from Egypt; bad news - wandering in a desert wilderness; good news - the Promised Land ahead of them. And so it is with us: the agony of life's failures and struggle, and the promise of victorious life and fulfilment by the grace of a loving, powerful heavenly Father.
Moses was God's man. He had led Israel out of Egypt; he had guided them in the desert; he had gone up on Mount Sinai and had worked out, in confrontation with God, ten life principles which could be the inner control of a people now free of the outside control of slave-masters. The forty years in the wilderness were agonizing. But here Israel's strength and faith were being developed, elements which would make them a great people. First came the agony, then the ecstasy.
God wanted this people to know that he was with them and would see them through. He didn't want them to collapse under the strain and tension of the desert. So God spoke to Moses saying, "Speak unto Aaron and his sons, saying, 'On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, "The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his Countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."
'And they shall put my name upon the Children of Israel; and I will bless them.' " (Numbers 6:22-27)
What an assurance! It carried Israel through to the Promised Land. Picture God blessing us, God letting the radiance of his face shine upon us with his love and care, God lifting up his face toward us, and giving us the gift of unspeakable peace, God writing his name upon us (we belong to him), and placing his blessing upon us. In all of this God promises to keep us from evil, physical or spiritual, that would destroy us. History says that the Israelites made it to the Promised Land; our faith says that we will too. We move from struggle to victory, from agony to ecstasy. All this comes by our response to the powerful grace of God! God will bless us, if we are committed to him.
Last Sunday was Christmas. Christ came to live among us. This Sunday begins a new year. It is a new segment of our pilgrimage. But we are not alone. The Christ Spirit has come to indwell us in our struggle. This is our strength, our joy, our victory. His name is upon us! It is up to us to let this truth be realized as never before. Now, instead of the hum drum drudgery of life, there is the exciting reality of becoming.
The Hebrews had been liberated. They had been instructed by the Ten Commandments. They were still in the wilderness, but they were pointed toward the Promised Land; they were on the way. And God blessed them with a promise, and his presence. The cloud still hovered over the Ark of the Covenant by day, and the fire by night.
Remember this! Faith releases the action of God into my life and into our world. There are actual powers of the Spirit that respond to our faith in life situations, powers that are far beyond our imagination. As with the Children of Israel, either we respond to Reality, or we fail to respond. In recent decades we haven't given faith a chance - and, therefore, haven't given God a chance. This faith, and God's response to our faith, can change and save our collapsing world.
We can realize God in our own personal experience in the midst of life. Since I am eighty years of age this is especially real to me. In a few years I must be transferred from this phase of life to the next phase which is eternal. There all of us will deal and be dealt with by God on a direct basis. Should we not now be learning to deal with our Heavenly Father on a direct basis? Jesus spoke of this daily relationship in two very clear statements: "I am with you always, even unto the end." And again: "You shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and that within the next few days." Really, the Agony and the Ecstacy touch each other constantly.
Too often we confront life's terrible problems without the realization of God's promised blessing. The Children of Israel, off and on, forgot the blessing and ran into trouble. God wants to let his face shine upon us, and to be gracious unto us. He wants to lift up his countenance upon us and give us peace. But we stumble on under our own power and never experience the victory.
Let us shift our attention from the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness to ourselves in our twentieth-century wilderness. God doesn't put us under pressure so much as we put ourselves under pressure. Humans are the only animals that act with stupidity because of our brilliance. Our intellectual cleverness tempts us to take over and forget the creative purpose moving at the center of life. With our exceptional ability we organize life on a false basis and, though we are successful in our accomplishment, we are defeated in our ultimate goal. The Christ of Christmas speaks to this situation: "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. My yoke is easy. A teaming up with me brings life into focus with real goals. Save your life selfishly and you lose it, lose your selfish life in relationship with me, and you find life."
In our humanistic oversufficiency, we have denied that God can break through into life, give us direction, and share with us energies sufficient to fulfil our responsibilities. Cosmic rays break through to the earth now and then, and change things whether we like it or not. They constitute a real force in the universe, one that we must take into consideration. God, too, breaks into history and surprises us. His energy and his will are forces with which we must reckon. Too often, however, we close the windows of the subconscious to the energies and revelations of God, and exile him from life at the exact spot where we need him most. This is the agony; the breakthrough of faith from falsehood into ultimate truth, however, is the ecstasy.
Saint Augustine said that when we look at our life without Christ, it looks like a chicken yard full of tracks in the mud, tracks going this way and that. But in the light of Christ's life, our lives take on meaning, pattern and direction. This is the rescue from chaos. Christianity without a daily experience of Christ in our lives is no match for the powerful, negative social forces at work within our society. Jesus said, "Without me you can do nothing." With him we can build a new spirit in our world. We must realize the truth about ourselves: we belong to God!
A part of the agony is the normal struggle of living. The real struggle comes when we really try to build the Kingdom of Christ in human relations. But it's worth it. We see what the world is like without it. Paul said that sufferings for this purpose could not be compared with the glory that shall be revealed to us, through our struggle under the ultimate blessing of God. The whole creation groans to see this victory, to see the children of earth actually becoming the children of God.
The jet age has produced more gadgets for comfort than any age in history. At the same time it has produced more sheer exhaustion than any other age. We haven't yet mastered the machine which has been given us as an instrument of life. Flesh and blood are no match for rod and wheel. The machine opens its hungry jaws and must be fed. The assembly line must roll on. The machine winks its electric eye and we must run to do its will; it beckons with its ever-turning second hand, and we must obey. Like Ol' Man River, "we're tired o' livin', and scared o' dyin'." We hunger for God's blessing.
Our insistence upon playing according to our own rules represents a real threat to civilization. The present nuclear threat, the failure at real disarmament, the almost impossible national debt, mounting violence and terrorism, the break-down of the home, the destruction of alcohol and drugs, all bear witness to this agonizing reality. Husband and wife, working different shifts, come home too tired to be husband and wife, too exhausted to be father and mother, too worn out to be church member and citizen, too weak to fight temptation. We try to seize life, but we lose it in the fever of grasping for it. But if we yielded to God's timing, deeper meanings and rewards would break through, and the creative balance of life would reappear.
Tension and exhaustion appear in many ways. A friend of mine, traveling at 55 miles per hour on a superhighway in another state, was overtaken by a patrolman who called out, "Speed up, Bud; if you want to go sight-seeing, get yourself another highway." We are missing too much in our rushing from birth to death. We find no time for the grazing herd, no time for the music of the brook, no time for the wind in the pines, no time for sky or bird or flower. Life is one "oblong blur." And we ask ourselves (if we even have time for that), "What has become of the beauty, the joy, and the peace?" It is hidden in the hand of God; we see it if we dare look.
We cannot go back to horse-and-buggy days; nobody really wants to, except for a nostalgic moment or two. We are irretrievably in the era of creating the machine and the computer. If we are wise, we will soon enter the era of mastering the machine and the computer. When Jesus whispers, "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me," it makes sense in the midst of this world's agony. Industry must be yoked with Christ in a new dimension of human fulfilment. "My yoke is easy;" it fits; it brings about the proper balance; it is productive in goods and cash as well as character and peace. Jesus speaks above the roar of the machine: "Come unto me all you that labor." When the spirit of Christ permeates our life-style, there is joy and peace.
Jesus did not ignore life's strained situations: he walked straight into them. He saw people of his day being caught in the mad, illogical race for things and more things, for power and more power. In response, he said some helpful things: Don't be over-anxious, and kill the whole purpose of life; don't worry too much about things; your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Be more concerned about life and people. God won't let you down, ever. See God's purposes in life, God's balance, and all necessary things will be given you. Be not over-anxious; don't get all hot and bothered; don't get yourself into a big sweat; don't go on living all tied up in knots. Jesus understood the agony of life, and the way out to freedom.
Thomas Kelley, in A Testament of Devotion, writes, "Over the margin of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by." He continues: "The deepest need of man is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are; it is God. We have mistaken the notion of poverty ... poverty of soul, deprivation of God." God knows what we are up against. In a new commitment to Christ, in a new acceptance of his energies and strength, we can "overcome the world," and help others to discover victory in the midst of life.
But it's difficult to learn to trust God in the paganistic atmosphere of the Present Age. If we dare try it, we discover that purposeful, responsible activity under God's will does not tire us. But we continue to tire ourselves in following our own blind desires into much lost motion and break-down. Under God, there is focused achievement, directed responsibility, sustained labor. It is a growing process that can infiltrate all life's relationships. We know there is a whole life waiting to be lived and enjoyed. This life has meaning; it makes sense, even for us. If we let this new experience of life be felt in the marrow of our bones, in the flowing of our bloodstream, in the pulsing of every heartbeat, let it come alive in every nerve end, then we begin to glimpse the ecstasy at the end of the struggle. We begin to know the promise of his peace. "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden" was spoken seriously for this weary, over-anxious world.
A part of the agony in the building of a new world is that those who seek to go along with Christ fall out of step with other persons who are not going along with Christ; those who seek to live in obedience to God are misunderstood by those who do not seek to live in obedience. We do not follow God's will perfectly; we make mistakes. God will have to correct us again and again. But if we are willing to be thrown against the hurt, the violence, the suffering, the poverty, the despair of the present world, remembering that the world is the testing ground for the Gospel of Christ, then we are a part of the plowing, the breaking of the crust, the beginning of renewal, the realizing of the spirit of Christ in the life of the world. This is the victory!
Our agony comes in concerned involvement with the world, facing human problems, forgetting our predisposed attitudes. It comes in re-evaluating old judgments in the light of the love and disciplines of Christ, looking at poverty and riots, looking at civil rights, social and international problems as true Christians. In our agony we are displaced with the displacement of others, driven back into a new dependence upon God, led to experience a new power and joy and peace, and to realize that the Holy Spirit is moving among us. In the midst of such agony, spiritual renewal has begun, and the New Age is being born!
Imagine the ecstasy of mutual love, of peace, of justice for all, of a world becoming a family under a Father God! Perhaps that is what is happening now in the world's agony. God grant it, and use us in the granting. This was the ecstasy of the early Christians in their daily stuggles. They knew that God's mission of love in the world was being accomplished through them. They caught the vision; they faced life and death every day; but they were filled with ecstatic joy. The agony and the ecstasy are so close to each other, at some point they touch one another.
Here are the words of Christ spoken long before the crucifixon: "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am straightened till it be accomplished." John the Baptizer had been beheaded; many of those who had followed Jesus were falling away. The power structure of the Jews was beginning to organize against him. The people were rejecting his deeper spiritual demands. Jesus was saying, "I am in agony. I am in anguish. I must do God's will and it seems impossible; I am straightened until it is done." This agony of Christ found its climax on the cross, and its victory in the resurrection.
There is a baptism with which to be baptized with. Isn't this true of life? Take the struggle out of life and we miss the ecstasy. Remember the agony of discipline, the agony of learning, the agony of concern, the agony of loving, the agony of being. Why is it that fathers often make life so easy for their sons that they rob them of the personal stuggle that could make them men? How is it that when so much is known psychologically about the needs of the family, that families repudiate the cost of real love and mutual sacrifice for each other, that which would draw them close together in a solid mutual fellowship of supportive love?
A baptism with which to be baptized! The world struggles toward civilized life. The church marches toward the kingdom of God. We struggle to perform our mission in life. "We are straightened until it is accomplished."
Jesus said that we know how to predict the weather, but we can't interpret history. Let's get one thing straight: we, by ourselves, cannot accomplish the perfect life. The accomplishment is with God; the order of the Kingdom is with God; the structure of the New Age is with God. But this accomplishment is realized by God through us in the agony of process. And that is what life is all about. That is where Jesus was. Only in this struggle do we know the joy of life's full meaning. Escape the baptism, and we miss life; escape the struggle, and we miss the Kingdom; escape the agony, and we miss the ecstasy. It was only from the cross that Jesus could say, "It is finished." Mission accomplished!
Kierkegaard suggested, "The wound of the world is kept open so God can continue to heal it." The wound of the world is truly open in every generation, so that it can be progressively healed by those of us who move with redemptive love in the midst of the world. What is happening now is just as crucial as what took place under Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Paul, Luther, and Wesley. We, too, are in the redemptive struggle. God continues to hammer out his kingdom in each New Age. The book of Hebrews suggests that the prophets of old did not fully enter into accomplishment; without us, they are not complete. We, without the striving of future generations, are not complete.
I am speaking now as a Christian to Christians. The world obviously has other standards (and the world knows no lasting ecstasy). Only humanity knows the ultimate in suffering; only humanity knows the ultimate in joy. This is brought to focus in Christian experience, wherein the faith process is realized, the power is felt, and eternal things are realized in time and space. Jesus found his Gethsemane in a garden. The Christian discovers his Gethsemane at the point where he touches the agony of the world and, either draws back in selfishness, or moves forward in redemptive healing through faith and disciplined love.
An insight into this process is revealed in T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral: Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is about to be murdered by the King's emissaries. Hearing the Baron's approach in the hallway, the priests cry out, "Bar the door! Bar the door!" But Thomas cries back, "Unbar the doors! Throw open the doors! I will not have the House of Prayer, the Church of Christ, the Sanctuary, turned into a fortress. The church shall protect her own in her own way ... the church shall be open, even to our enemies ... Now is the triumph of the cross. Now open the door, I command it, Open the door!" I have a baptism with which to be baptized.
It is in the stuggle that the grace of God is known in faith, as we walk confidently into the world in an investment of love. Today the Christian church stands at the crossroads with a baptism with which to be baptized, and it is straightened until this be accomplished. This will have to be worked out in the lives of the members of local congregations in tens of thousands of villages, towns, and cities throughout America and the world. The renewed Body of Christ is sent to purify a demonized and paganized world, to exorcise, to cast out a contemporary idolatry to which humanity bows down, even unto death. We must actualize - in our behavior - the vitalities and values of faith and hope through disciplined and empowered love. Then shall "The morning stars sing together." Then shall we know the mystery of joy that comes from God, out of struggle, as God refashions the world through our obedience. "This is the Day the Lord hath made;" let us struggle and be glad in it.
We watch as the Children of Israel struggle through the wilderness. But they have received God's Blessing, and they are on the way to the Promised Land.
We behold ourselves in our struggling and striving through our own contemporary wilderness, but we too have received God's command and God's Blessing. We are on our way!
And the Lord said, "Speak thus to my people: 'The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.' And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them."
Herein is the power and the glory - the agony and the ecstasy - "until the day break, and the fever of life is over, and we are home at last."
Moses was God's man. He had led Israel out of Egypt; he had guided them in the desert; he had gone up on Mount Sinai and had worked out, in confrontation with God, ten life principles which could be the inner control of a people now free of the outside control of slave-masters. The forty years in the wilderness were agonizing. But here Israel's strength and faith were being developed, elements which would make them a great people. First came the agony, then the ecstasy.
God wanted this people to know that he was with them and would see them through. He didn't want them to collapse under the strain and tension of the desert. So God spoke to Moses saying, "Speak unto Aaron and his sons, saying, 'On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, "The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his Countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."
'And they shall put my name upon the Children of Israel; and I will bless them.' " (Numbers 6:22-27)
What an assurance! It carried Israel through to the Promised Land. Picture God blessing us, God letting the radiance of his face shine upon us with his love and care, God lifting up his face toward us, and giving us the gift of unspeakable peace, God writing his name upon us (we belong to him), and placing his blessing upon us. In all of this God promises to keep us from evil, physical or spiritual, that would destroy us. History says that the Israelites made it to the Promised Land; our faith says that we will too. We move from struggle to victory, from agony to ecstasy. All this comes by our response to the powerful grace of God! God will bless us, if we are committed to him.
Last Sunday was Christmas. Christ came to live among us. This Sunday begins a new year. It is a new segment of our pilgrimage. But we are not alone. The Christ Spirit has come to indwell us in our struggle. This is our strength, our joy, our victory. His name is upon us! It is up to us to let this truth be realized as never before. Now, instead of the hum drum drudgery of life, there is the exciting reality of becoming.
The Hebrews had been liberated. They had been instructed by the Ten Commandments. They were still in the wilderness, but they were pointed toward the Promised Land; they were on the way. And God blessed them with a promise, and his presence. The cloud still hovered over the Ark of the Covenant by day, and the fire by night.
Remember this! Faith releases the action of God into my life and into our world. There are actual powers of the Spirit that respond to our faith in life situations, powers that are far beyond our imagination. As with the Children of Israel, either we respond to Reality, or we fail to respond. In recent decades we haven't given faith a chance - and, therefore, haven't given God a chance. This faith, and God's response to our faith, can change and save our collapsing world.
We can realize God in our own personal experience in the midst of life. Since I am eighty years of age this is especially real to me. In a few years I must be transferred from this phase of life to the next phase which is eternal. There all of us will deal and be dealt with by God on a direct basis. Should we not now be learning to deal with our Heavenly Father on a direct basis? Jesus spoke of this daily relationship in two very clear statements: "I am with you always, even unto the end." And again: "You shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and that within the next few days." Really, the Agony and the Ecstacy touch each other constantly.
Too often we confront life's terrible problems without the realization of God's promised blessing. The Children of Israel, off and on, forgot the blessing and ran into trouble. God wants to let his face shine upon us, and to be gracious unto us. He wants to lift up his countenance upon us and give us peace. But we stumble on under our own power and never experience the victory.
Let us shift our attention from the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness to ourselves in our twentieth-century wilderness. God doesn't put us under pressure so much as we put ourselves under pressure. Humans are the only animals that act with stupidity because of our brilliance. Our intellectual cleverness tempts us to take over and forget the creative purpose moving at the center of life. With our exceptional ability we organize life on a false basis and, though we are successful in our accomplishment, we are defeated in our ultimate goal. The Christ of Christmas speaks to this situation: "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. My yoke is easy. A teaming up with me brings life into focus with real goals. Save your life selfishly and you lose it, lose your selfish life in relationship with me, and you find life."
In our humanistic oversufficiency, we have denied that God can break through into life, give us direction, and share with us energies sufficient to fulfil our responsibilities. Cosmic rays break through to the earth now and then, and change things whether we like it or not. They constitute a real force in the universe, one that we must take into consideration. God, too, breaks into history and surprises us. His energy and his will are forces with which we must reckon. Too often, however, we close the windows of the subconscious to the energies and revelations of God, and exile him from life at the exact spot where we need him most. This is the agony; the breakthrough of faith from falsehood into ultimate truth, however, is the ecstasy.
Saint Augustine said that when we look at our life without Christ, it looks like a chicken yard full of tracks in the mud, tracks going this way and that. But in the light of Christ's life, our lives take on meaning, pattern and direction. This is the rescue from chaos. Christianity without a daily experience of Christ in our lives is no match for the powerful, negative social forces at work within our society. Jesus said, "Without me you can do nothing." With him we can build a new spirit in our world. We must realize the truth about ourselves: we belong to God!
A part of the agony is the normal struggle of living. The real struggle comes when we really try to build the Kingdom of Christ in human relations. But it's worth it. We see what the world is like without it. Paul said that sufferings for this purpose could not be compared with the glory that shall be revealed to us, through our struggle under the ultimate blessing of God. The whole creation groans to see this victory, to see the children of earth actually becoming the children of God.
The jet age has produced more gadgets for comfort than any age in history. At the same time it has produced more sheer exhaustion than any other age. We haven't yet mastered the machine which has been given us as an instrument of life. Flesh and blood are no match for rod and wheel. The machine opens its hungry jaws and must be fed. The assembly line must roll on. The machine winks its electric eye and we must run to do its will; it beckons with its ever-turning second hand, and we must obey. Like Ol' Man River, "we're tired o' livin', and scared o' dyin'." We hunger for God's blessing.
Our insistence upon playing according to our own rules represents a real threat to civilization. The present nuclear threat, the failure at real disarmament, the almost impossible national debt, mounting violence and terrorism, the break-down of the home, the destruction of alcohol and drugs, all bear witness to this agonizing reality. Husband and wife, working different shifts, come home too tired to be husband and wife, too exhausted to be father and mother, too worn out to be church member and citizen, too weak to fight temptation. We try to seize life, but we lose it in the fever of grasping for it. But if we yielded to God's timing, deeper meanings and rewards would break through, and the creative balance of life would reappear.
Tension and exhaustion appear in many ways. A friend of mine, traveling at 55 miles per hour on a superhighway in another state, was overtaken by a patrolman who called out, "Speed up, Bud; if you want to go sight-seeing, get yourself another highway." We are missing too much in our rushing from birth to death. We find no time for the grazing herd, no time for the music of the brook, no time for the wind in the pines, no time for sky or bird or flower. Life is one "oblong blur." And we ask ourselves (if we even have time for that), "What has become of the beauty, the joy, and the peace?" It is hidden in the hand of God; we see it if we dare look.
We cannot go back to horse-and-buggy days; nobody really wants to, except for a nostalgic moment or two. We are irretrievably in the era of creating the machine and the computer. If we are wise, we will soon enter the era of mastering the machine and the computer. When Jesus whispers, "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me," it makes sense in the midst of this world's agony. Industry must be yoked with Christ in a new dimension of human fulfilment. "My yoke is easy;" it fits; it brings about the proper balance; it is productive in goods and cash as well as character and peace. Jesus speaks above the roar of the machine: "Come unto me all you that labor." When the spirit of Christ permeates our life-style, there is joy and peace.
Jesus did not ignore life's strained situations: he walked straight into them. He saw people of his day being caught in the mad, illogical race for things and more things, for power and more power. In response, he said some helpful things: Don't be over-anxious, and kill the whole purpose of life; don't worry too much about things; your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Be more concerned about life and people. God won't let you down, ever. See God's purposes in life, God's balance, and all necessary things will be given you. Be not over-anxious; don't get all hot and bothered; don't get yourself into a big sweat; don't go on living all tied up in knots. Jesus understood the agony of life, and the way out to freedom.
Thomas Kelley, in A Testament of Devotion, writes, "Over the margin of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by." He continues: "The deepest need of man is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are; it is God. We have mistaken the notion of poverty ... poverty of soul, deprivation of God." God knows what we are up against. In a new commitment to Christ, in a new acceptance of his energies and strength, we can "overcome the world," and help others to discover victory in the midst of life.
But it's difficult to learn to trust God in the paganistic atmosphere of the Present Age. If we dare try it, we discover that purposeful, responsible activity under God's will does not tire us. But we continue to tire ourselves in following our own blind desires into much lost motion and break-down. Under God, there is focused achievement, directed responsibility, sustained labor. It is a growing process that can infiltrate all life's relationships. We know there is a whole life waiting to be lived and enjoyed. This life has meaning; it makes sense, even for us. If we let this new experience of life be felt in the marrow of our bones, in the flowing of our bloodstream, in the pulsing of every heartbeat, let it come alive in every nerve end, then we begin to glimpse the ecstasy at the end of the struggle. We begin to know the promise of his peace. "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden" was spoken seriously for this weary, over-anxious world.
A part of the agony in the building of a new world is that those who seek to go along with Christ fall out of step with other persons who are not going along with Christ; those who seek to live in obedience to God are misunderstood by those who do not seek to live in obedience. We do not follow God's will perfectly; we make mistakes. God will have to correct us again and again. But if we are willing to be thrown against the hurt, the violence, the suffering, the poverty, the despair of the present world, remembering that the world is the testing ground for the Gospel of Christ, then we are a part of the plowing, the breaking of the crust, the beginning of renewal, the realizing of the spirit of Christ in the life of the world. This is the victory!
Our agony comes in concerned involvement with the world, facing human problems, forgetting our predisposed attitudes. It comes in re-evaluating old judgments in the light of the love and disciplines of Christ, looking at poverty and riots, looking at civil rights, social and international problems as true Christians. In our agony we are displaced with the displacement of others, driven back into a new dependence upon God, led to experience a new power and joy and peace, and to realize that the Holy Spirit is moving among us. In the midst of such agony, spiritual renewal has begun, and the New Age is being born!
Imagine the ecstasy of mutual love, of peace, of justice for all, of a world becoming a family under a Father God! Perhaps that is what is happening now in the world's agony. God grant it, and use us in the granting. This was the ecstasy of the early Christians in their daily stuggles. They knew that God's mission of love in the world was being accomplished through them. They caught the vision; they faced life and death every day; but they were filled with ecstatic joy. The agony and the ecstasy are so close to each other, at some point they touch one another.
Here are the words of Christ spoken long before the crucifixon: "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am straightened till it be accomplished." John the Baptizer had been beheaded; many of those who had followed Jesus were falling away. The power structure of the Jews was beginning to organize against him. The people were rejecting his deeper spiritual demands. Jesus was saying, "I am in agony. I am in anguish. I must do God's will and it seems impossible; I am straightened until it is done." This agony of Christ found its climax on the cross, and its victory in the resurrection.
There is a baptism with which to be baptized with. Isn't this true of life? Take the struggle out of life and we miss the ecstasy. Remember the agony of discipline, the agony of learning, the agony of concern, the agony of loving, the agony of being. Why is it that fathers often make life so easy for their sons that they rob them of the personal stuggle that could make them men? How is it that when so much is known psychologically about the needs of the family, that families repudiate the cost of real love and mutual sacrifice for each other, that which would draw them close together in a solid mutual fellowship of supportive love?
A baptism with which to be baptized! The world struggles toward civilized life. The church marches toward the kingdom of God. We struggle to perform our mission in life. "We are straightened until it is accomplished."
Jesus said that we know how to predict the weather, but we can't interpret history. Let's get one thing straight: we, by ourselves, cannot accomplish the perfect life. The accomplishment is with God; the order of the Kingdom is with God; the structure of the New Age is with God. But this accomplishment is realized by God through us in the agony of process. And that is what life is all about. That is where Jesus was. Only in this struggle do we know the joy of life's full meaning. Escape the baptism, and we miss life; escape the struggle, and we miss the Kingdom; escape the agony, and we miss the ecstasy. It was only from the cross that Jesus could say, "It is finished." Mission accomplished!
Kierkegaard suggested, "The wound of the world is kept open so God can continue to heal it." The wound of the world is truly open in every generation, so that it can be progressively healed by those of us who move with redemptive love in the midst of the world. What is happening now is just as crucial as what took place under Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Paul, Luther, and Wesley. We, too, are in the redemptive struggle. God continues to hammer out his kingdom in each New Age. The book of Hebrews suggests that the prophets of old did not fully enter into accomplishment; without us, they are not complete. We, without the striving of future generations, are not complete.
I am speaking now as a Christian to Christians. The world obviously has other standards (and the world knows no lasting ecstasy). Only humanity knows the ultimate in suffering; only humanity knows the ultimate in joy. This is brought to focus in Christian experience, wherein the faith process is realized, the power is felt, and eternal things are realized in time and space. Jesus found his Gethsemane in a garden. The Christian discovers his Gethsemane at the point where he touches the agony of the world and, either draws back in selfishness, or moves forward in redemptive healing through faith and disciplined love.
An insight into this process is revealed in T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral: Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is about to be murdered by the King's emissaries. Hearing the Baron's approach in the hallway, the priests cry out, "Bar the door! Bar the door!" But Thomas cries back, "Unbar the doors! Throw open the doors! I will not have the House of Prayer, the Church of Christ, the Sanctuary, turned into a fortress. The church shall protect her own in her own way ... the church shall be open, even to our enemies ... Now is the triumph of the cross. Now open the door, I command it, Open the door!" I have a baptism with which to be baptized.
It is in the stuggle that the grace of God is known in faith, as we walk confidently into the world in an investment of love. Today the Christian church stands at the crossroads with a baptism with which to be baptized, and it is straightened until this be accomplished. This will have to be worked out in the lives of the members of local congregations in tens of thousands of villages, towns, and cities throughout America and the world. The renewed Body of Christ is sent to purify a demonized and paganized world, to exorcise, to cast out a contemporary idolatry to which humanity bows down, even unto death. We must actualize - in our behavior - the vitalities and values of faith and hope through disciplined and empowered love. Then shall "The morning stars sing together." Then shall we know the mystery of joy that comes from God, out of struggle, as God refashions the world through our obedience. "This is the Day the Lord hath made;" let us struggle and be glad in it.
We watch as the Children of Israel struggle through the wilderness. But they have received God's Blessing, and they are on the way to the Promised Land.
We behold ourselves in our struggling and striving through our own contemporary wilderness, but we too have received God's command and God's Blessing. We are on our way!
And the Lord said, "Speak thus to my people: 'The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.' And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them."
Herein is the power and the glory - the agony and the ecstasy - "until the day break, and the fever of life is over, and we are home at last."
