“Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion”

Isaiah 52:1

11/11/45

The prophet of Israel was making a fight to preserve the hero in his nation’s soul when he cried: “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the Holy City.”  For two generations Israel had languished in the degradation of a foreign slavery.  Hope for release was waning.  The people were dejectedly dreaming, stupefied in spirit, dulled in mentality, resigned to a bestial existence.  Suddenly there came among them a man crying, “Wake up, wake up, put on thy strength, put on thy beautiful garments.”  Was this not a cruel taunt?  What strength had these poor captives to put on?  Why did he mockingly cry, “put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the Holy City,” when the Holy City lay in ruins and her former inhabitants wore the dusty rags of bondage?

Ah yes, but to this prophet Israel’s strength then as always, was not her political prowess or military might, but her faith and her righteousness.  Her beautiful garments were not the costly robes of rich merchants nor the royal purple of David’s heirs.  The beautiful garments of Zion were her deeds of justice, her humanitarian practices, her visions of truth, her love of the Lord, her assurance of high and noble destiny.  These were the beautiful garments of Zion, the Holy City of God, which the Prophet calls her to put on.  His words are no taunt.  They are a clarion call to dulled minds and dejected souls to awaken to their former assurance of God in their lives.  He is pleading with a lifeless nation to be loyal to the royal within her soul – to throw not out the hero in her soul.

Throughout the length and breadth of our nation there was heard, not so many months ago, the cry, “Wake up, Wake Up, America.  Put on thy strength.” And “Wake Up, Wake Up, America,” became the slogan for arousing a slumbering nation to arise and defend herself.  How heroically this people responded is now imperishably written in the blood, sweat and tears of our war years.  The citizenry of America waked up and put on their strength of high idealism and self-sacrifice.  They worked and saved and did without and cheerfully bought bonds and paid high taxes, not too cheerfully, but they paid them nevertheless.  Business and industry awoke and put on their strength of miraculous mass production.  American labor and management, in laudable cooperation, in perfect synchronization, made of this nation the arsenal of democracy.  We speedily armed the world to fight the tyrants.  But none responded so magnificently to the cry, “Wake Up, Wake Up, America,” as did the youth of this land.  They left school and home and factory and shop, and all the joys and securities of life in this good land, and went away to war.

Whenever I gaze upon this graceful trellised stonework of our church tower, silhouetted against the sky, invariably the thought that comes to me is of the sacrifice of the men and women of this church who went out from us and for us.  And I breathe a prayer of thanksgiving for them and a petition of protection for them.  Whenever I see our church tower, I think of them, for always ringing in my ears are Winifred Lett’s familiar lines:

                                    I saw the spires of Oxford

                                                As I was passing by,

                                    The grey spires of Oxford

                                                Against a pearl-gray sky:

                                    My heart was with the Oxford men

                                                Who went abroad to die.

                                    The years go fast in Oxford,

                                                The golden years and gay,

                                    The hoary colleges look down

                                                On careless boys at play.

                                    But when the bugles sounded war

                                                They put their games away.

                                    They left the peaceful river,

                                                The cricket-field, the Quad,

                                    The shaven lawns of Oxford

                                                To seek a bloody sod –

                                    They gave their merry youth away

                                                For country and for God.

So, on this day of remembrance, when we reverently remember the sacrifice – the courage – the high idealism of our young men who have fought and died in two great world wars – when we gratefully honor them –

                                    Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

                                    Or Knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,

                                    Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair

                                    And what my quiet us in a death so noble.

                                                                                    (John Milton)

Ah, yes, when the cry was raised among us, not many months ago, “Wake Up, Wake Up, America, Put on they strength. Defend thyself!” we as a people responded splendidly.

But now, today, this Armistice Day, which falls significantly upon a Sunday in the dawning day of peace, the prophetic voice is crying again in the wilderness of our national life, “Awake, Awake, put on thy strength O America.  Put on thy beautiful garments, O Daughter of the West.”  And well may the prophetic voice be raised among us again – for we are again, so soon, in desperate plight.  With the war won and victory in our grasp we are drifting rapidly into dangerous waters.  Our common life is torn with economic unrest, disunity, bitterness, class and racial strife.  Our citizenry, loyal and patriotic and restrained before the specter of national disaster, in the hour of victory have become selfish and proud and little in spirit.  When fighting for mere existence, we got along with our national allies, but with victory won we have grown narrowly isolationist again.  With a malicious willfulness we are destroying the very things our heroes fought to preserve.

And so, God’s prophets of our day are crying unto us, “Awake, Awake, put on thy strength, O America, lest thy sons shall have died in vain.”  Hear John Mackay, the President of Princeton and the prophet of Presbyterianism – “We would do well to remember that ancient word of Scripture that it is righteousness, not power, that exalteth a nation.  Divorced from justice, power, through backed by the cosmic energy which has lately been discovered, can only destroy.”

General Douglas MacArthur at the occasion of the Japanese surrender, prophetically proclaimed, “We have had our last chance.  Our problem basically is theological, and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advance in science, art, literature, and all the material and cultural developments of the past 2000 years.  It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”

Throughout the length and breadth of our nation there was heard the cry, “Wake up, America, Wake up.” It became the slogan for arousing a nation to defend herself.  This waking up process stirred up the commonwealth to make its supreme productive effort.  In current popular opinion America’s strength lies in her ability to produce.  We believe that America is strong because she is very productive, because she can turn her vast industrial resources into the production of materials of war.  Therefore, she has strength.  Have we forgotten that long ago Plato said that goodness, by which he meant intelligence and character, was the best weapon a state could have?  Have we forgotten that this wise old Greek said; “The due reward of an idle beast, fattened in sloth, is to fall prey to another beast, one worn to skin and bones through toil hardily endured?”

Oh hear the prophetic voice crying to our nation:  “Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O America. Thy true strength is in thy faith and righteousness, even now, as in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Huguenot refugees.  Guard thou the hero in thy soul, be loyal to the royal within thyself.  Passion for justice, knowledge of truth, love for humanitarian service, assurance of high destiny – these were the qualities of spirit which made thee great, O America.  Of these are the very essence of thy soul.  In thy soul is thy strength.  If it languish, and perish, and die, all is lost.  Awake, awake, put on thy strength.”  Oh, that this prophetic voice of the Lord could sweep through this land of ours to wake up America as she ought to be waked up.

The awakening, if it comes, must begin with you and me.  And where is our strength of the spirit and of God?  Where is the hero in our souls?  When injustice was done – did we brave the criticisms of the powerful and strive for redress?  While the poor and the oppressed have been perishing in their desperate need have we championed their cause?  Or have we callously continued in our accustomed luxuries until we feel no more prick of conscience, which used to come when we indulged?  When lies passed for truth did we keep a coward silence?  Have the popular sins of our daring generation, little by little, laid hold of our lives?

Richard Lewellyn in his delightful story, How Green Was My Valley, told with bitterest remorse of how the ugly slag brought up from the collieries in his beautiful Welsh home gradually grew into a great pile until it covered up and blotted out his dear green valley.  It filled the bubbling brook where as a boy he swam and fished.  It crept up the side of the hills where the daffodil grew and crushed their golden glow.  The mounting gray and black slag pile choked out the trees and finally pushed over the houses of the colliery workmen.  It grew and grew until it overran everything and destroyed all that was beautiful and good in that dear green valley.

Even thus can the slow encroachments of evil gain ascendancy in the soul of man and in the soul of a nation until the hero is thrown out – until the true strength of man is shackled in bitterest bondage – until the light of the spirit is put out.

As in the days of the Babylonian Bondage, so today does the voice of the prophet come to us, a spiritually impoverished people: “Awake, awake, put on thy strength.”  But how, we cry, “How can we put on the strength of the Lord and His righteousness.  How can we rise and shake loose the fetters of our enslavement to the powers of evil and darkness.”  It can come only through the divine touch in our lives.  Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit saith the Lord.”

And yet the beginning may be simple and something with which we can do.  It may begin with the simple sense of need – of need of cleansing – of God.  There was once a day of crisis in Jerusalem.  For Uzziah, the father of his people, the great statesman on whose wisdom the people leaned, was dead.  Everyone felt lost.   A young man went to the Temple to pray for God to raise up a leader.  He felt a great need for God in the life of his nation. And the Lord touched his life and said to him, “You’re the leader I need.”  He replied, “But I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”  Yet the Lord touched and cleansed his life and sent him out, in His strength.  And it all began with a simple sense of need for himself and for his country.

In the days of chivalry, when a young squire was to be knighted, he spent the whole preceding night in some cathedral, alone, face to face with God.  And it was from that holy presence he rode out to his adventures and high endeavors.  The young knight felt that he was not equal to the task alone.  God clothed him with the Strength from on High.  He awakened the hero in his soul.

Or, it may chance that our awakening – our being clothed with the strength of God, may begin in a very natural way, with the feeling of a noble confidence being placed in us.  In these times the hope and confidence of multitudes of people are entrusted to men who have never felt before that others were looking to them for great achievements.  Well, the recognition of that confidence placed in us by others may be the beginning of God’s awakening in us the hero in our soul.

Jean Valjean, in Hugo’s novel, was released from prison and the dreadful galleys, a hardened criminal.  He felt that the hand of everyone was against him.  A good Bishop befriended him and took him into his home only to be repaid by Jean’s stealing his silverware.  When Jean was caught by the officers, the Bishop did not demand Valjean’s prosecution, but gave him not only the stolen silverware but also the silver candlesticks which belonged with it, saying, “Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good.   Use this silver to become an honest man.”  Years later, when Jean Valjean was a respectable citizen and the leading man of his community, he realized that Christ had come to him through the confidence and faith placed in him by the good Bishop.

This was certainly Jesus way of dealing with people in order to awaken them to their best.  What confidence he placed in men, and through it clothed them in the strength of God to raise up the hero in their souls.  He picked twelve men of humble birth, mediocre ability, and almost no cultural training, and upon them laid the responsibility to found his church.  And they rose to the heights – eleven did – and the traitor’s heart was broken in remorse.  Zaccheaus, the little man who was hated by his fellow countrymen, responded immediately when Jesus showed his confidence in him, and even the woman taken in adultery was not too far gone to win the Master’s hope and faith and confidence.

What confidence Christ has placed in you and me – While we were yet sinners he died for us.  He went to the cross in the faith that his confidence in us and love for us would awaken in us our noblest self – so that God might clothe us in His strength that we, through faith, should claim Him as our Savior.

PRAYER OF INVOCATION –

“O God of Peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength; by the might of thy spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God: through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  (Book of Common Prayer)

PRAYER OF INTERCESSION –

Blessed, O Lord, is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire before thee.  My flesh and my heart faileth: But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Gratefully we remember before thee, this day, O God, all those who in time of war fought the good fight and especially those who laid down their lives for us, for our country, and for the liberty of the world.  In sorrow and pride and thankfulness, we remember them.  Stir up within us, O Father, the determination to serve with our lives the same dear cause of freedom and justice and brotherhood for which they so willingly died.  Cleanse and guard us from whatever would shame their memory, and make us worthier of the blood shed for us – theirs and thine.

In simple trust we commit into thy continual care those young men and women dear to our hearts yet in the service of our country and away from home – some near, some far.  And now as we dispatch to them our written messages of love and warm friendship across the miles of land and sea that separate us from them, we humbly beseech thee to dispatch thy angel messengers of light and mercy to their side to work thy wonders of grace and protection upon them and about them.  Hear our prayers for Jesus sake.