06/19/49

Father’s Day is perhaps the most insipid of all special days. The American public’s penchant for the multiplication and commercialization of all and sundry occasions has produced some strange and awesome celebrations. We have a Thanksgiving Day, a New Year’s Day, an April Fool’s Day, a Memorial Day, an All Saint’s Day, an All Spook’s Day. We have a Children’s Day, a Mother’s Day, a Father’s Day, and last summer I met in Florida a good woman who was all steamed up over promoting a “Grandmother’s Day”. Well, why not? Everybody else has his day. Why leave grandmother out?

The great majority of these special days we swallow without so much as a wry smile, but Dad’s Day gags us. No amount of advertising ballyhoo has been able to successfully sell this dire day to the American public. Oh, I do see a few bright new neckties in the congregation this morning, but I also notice a very shame-faced, self-conscious smile is being worn with each new necktie. Father’s Day is very embarrassing to Father. He feels about it as Scrooge did about Christmas. “Bah — Humbug!”

But this year the situation is different. There’s a real reason to celebrate Father’s Day this year, for, you see, the day falls in a June that has been designated “Displaced Persons Month,” when Protestants all over America are joining hands to provide homes for the homeless of Europe. Yes, Dad’s Day at last comes into its own, for this year it comes with a man-sized challenge to the fathers of America to rise up and do with a will just what they are most famous for and best equipped to do — to provide homes for the homeless.

Now, there is a lot that Dad can’t do. He can’t sew; he can’t cook; he can’t knit; he’s a poor nurse. What can Father do? Why, if he is any sort of father at all, he can provide a house which Mother makes into a home. Generally, Father is not much of a homemaker, that’s Mother’s genius and job, but he at least provides Mother with those things necessary to make, and to keep functioning, the home.

Do you remember the story of the man who went to call at a neighbor’s house and was met at the front door by the family’s youngest — a four-year-old boy with the most forlorn and lonesome look upon his face? “Why, Johnny,” asked the caller, “what’s the matter? You look like you lost your last friend! Has everybody gone off and left you at home all by yourself?” “Yes Sir,” replied Johnny, tearfully. “I’m all by myself. Mama’s gone to the hospital and left me and Daddy and Sara and Bill and Susie home, all by our self.”

Father is no homemaker, but he can be a home provider. That’s Father’s job. And Father’s Day this year takes on solid, substantial meaning for it comes with a challenge to the Fathers of America to provide for others what they’ve so abundantly and luxuriously provided for their own families. The great danger confronting the average American father on this Father’s Day is not that he will fail to provide sufficiently for his own family, but that he will provide for them too bountifully, pamper them, and fail to meet the opportunity of providing homes for the Displaced Persons of Europe.

Can we, who prize so highly the comfort, the security and the privacy of our homes — can we imagine what it would be like to live with our whole family in just one room — sharing even that one room with another family — and have that one room not in an apartment or a steam heated house — but nothing more than a small 10 ft. sq. curtained off space in a great, cold barn or warehouse — with scores of other families living in each small ten by ten curtained cubicle?

Well, that is just the way nearly a million displaced persons are now living in the crowded D.P. camps of Western Germany, and have been living for the past four years. These are the miserable, unfortunate folks who were snatched from their homes during the last war and sent away into another country to toil in slave labor battalions. These D.P.’s were, and still are freedom loving people because they have refused to return to the slavery they must endure under the tyranny that has taken over in their former fatherland. Today they are still without a home, still behind barbed wire enclosures. They are still without adequate food. They have no country, no job, no love, no meaning of life.

But a few of these Displaced Persons have been finding homes in our fabulous America. Last year it all began when our national Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act which will permit 205,000 of the D.P.’s to come to America and find new homes during 1949 and 1950. Some have already come and are happily settled.

For instance, there is Janis Kraste, who owned a furniture store in Latvia until he lost all his property during the war. Now he is in New York working as a carpenter. Mr. Kraste came over about seven months ago with his eleven-year-old son, Aivar, and his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Mara. His wife died in a D.P. camp a few days after the little girl’s birth. The Krastes live with his sister who came to the U.S. a number of years ago. She takes care of the little girl while the father is at work. Aivar, the son, speaks and acts as if he had lived in America all his life. He is waiting for another birthday so he can become a Boy Scout.

Then there is the Dinvalds family up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who, although they have been in this country only a year, have already managed to save enough to buy furniture for their home and an automobile. They say, “People have been so kind and friendly to us, we never want to move away from this town.”

Away up in Duluth, Minnesota, a small two-and-a half room apartment is the new home of  the Adamson family, but they are very happy with this as it is the first home they have had in many a year. Besides Mr. and Mrs. Adamson there is an eleven-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son who was born in a forced labor camp in Germany. Mr. Adamson is working in a milk processing plant and likes it very much.

Then there is the Darej family from Eastern Europe, who’ve been settled a bit closer to us on a South Carolina plantation. They say they are very happy in their new home and are proud of their newest addition, a youngster born in this country and therefore a citizen of the United States.

And even closer, over in Greensboro, settled only last March, are the Arvid Rosental family, brought over by Mr. Spencer Love of the Burlington Mills. Arvid Rosental was head dryer in the Rigs textile mills before the war and brings highly trained technical skills to his new job in the Greensboro finishing plant.

Yes, America is still a land of opportunity and hope. Homeless, despairing Displaced Persons are in our time finding here the fulfillment of the human heart’s deepest longings for a wee spot that a man’s family can call their own and love and labor in. What this provision of a new home means to the D.P.’s was perhaps best put by Victor Fediai, spokesman for the very first boatload to dock on these wondrous western shores. Though Victor had prepared a long speech, so overcome with gratitude was he that all he could manage were these few simple words: “Today we are liberated from the misery of existence in Europe, and we thank you very much. We are born today the second time in our lives to a new life of freedom, a new life of democracy. We thank you very much.”

Aren’t we proud of our country? Doesn’t it make your heart swell with joy to hear that your fatherland is still providing homes for the homeless?

But of course, you realize, don’t you, that all this resettlement of D.P.’s didn’t happen by miracle. The immigration authorities didn’t just open their doors in New York, Boston, New Orleans, and Galveston and say: “Hey, you D.P.’s over there. Congress says 205,000 of you can come over” — and suddenly they were all settled happily in their new homes from Kalamazoo to South Carolina. No, it didn’t happen that way.

The fact that several thousand displaced persons now enjoy homes and jobs in America has not come about because somebody worked a miracle of magic, but because certain Americans, many of them churchmen, expended toil and sweat in their behalf. No D.P. is released from his European barbed-wire encircled enclosure until one or more Americans in this country have guaranteed to supply for him and his family four things:

1. A home to live in without displacing an American family
2. A job without displacing an American worker
3. Enough cash to pay his transportation from the American port where he lands to his new home in the States
4. The assurance he won’t become a public charge.

Yes, homes are provided in America all right, but only if and when individual Americans stir themselves to provide them. And though a few thousand D.P.’s have already been brought over, this vast humanitarian and Christian project is still only barely begun. It clamors now to be finished. If thousands of other D.P.’s, who aren’t here but who deserve to be here, are ever to get here we must have more Christian men who will act decisively and promptly to give the required assurances to provide homes and jobs. More sympathetic feelings and good intentions will leave these wretched people where they are, their spirits broken, their talents wasted.

The Session in our church has decided that the time has come for our congregation to act decisively and promptly in this matter. A Displaced Persons Committee has been appointed to receive and secure from members of this church the necessary assurances. But just appointing a committee won’t get the job done either. Everyone in the congregation can and must do something. Some can offer a job, in factory or on a farm. Some can furnish a house — either their own home or a house or apartment that belongs to them. Some can give money to help with travel expenses. Some can give furniture and household equipment. Everyone can do something. Tell the Session’s committee what you want to do, and do it now!

What are you going to do about it? Who with a thread of Christian feeling in his soul, who with an ounce of patriotism in his heart, can remain idle and inactive a moment longer before the spectacle of Christian men and women, our brothers in Christ, reduced to the existence of brutes, when just a bit of interest and effort on our part could provide home and health and happiness?

Surely our Christian compassion compels us to undertake this task right now. By the Jericho road of our life lie not just one man, robbed, wounded, homeless, but a million men, women and children, robbed of all their property and possessions, wounded in body and soul and mind by the privations of war. Too long we’ve been playing the part of the priest and the Levite coming up and looking on their distress and then passing by on the other side. When will the Good Samaritan spirit rise within our souls? Have not Christians from the earliest days been those who are given to hospitality? St. Paul commended Stephanas and his household at Corinth because “they made up their minds to devote their lives to looking after Christian brothers.” O my fortunate, well favored, Christian brethren, where is our Christian faith and spirit: “If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, ‘Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, not withstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what does it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead.’”

Surely our Protestant pride prods us to do something. Do you know what they are saying today in the D.P. camps of Europe? They are saying, “It’s tough to be a Protestant.” What do they mean — “It’s tough to be a Protestant?” Just this: if you are a Jewish D.P., your chance of resettlement over that of your Protestant neighbor is just about ten to one. This year, Church World Service has prepared 8,490 Protestant D.P.’s for resettlement in the United States and assurances for only 379 persons have come through from Protestant congregations. Just think of it, over 8,000 Protestants eagerly looking to America for a new home and a new chance and only 379 taken. Does this show that Christian brotherliness means more to Jews and Roman Catholics than it does to Protestants? Whatever it means, the facts are these: while thousands of Jewish and Roman Catholic D.P.’s are being sponsored as new citizens of our nation — our Protestant brothers, who want to come and who would make us good citizens, remain in D.P. camps because we Protestants won’t provide them with a home and a job.

And surely our American patriotism pleads with us in this emergency. More than anything else, the spirit that has made America great has been her open-hearted welcome to those whom old world hates and fears have driven homeless away. In the bright blue waters of New York harbor, on a tiny island, stands the Statue of Liberty, holding aloft her torch, looking calmly, confidently out to sea. Beneath Liberty’s triumphant, welcoming form are carved these words:

            Give me your tired, your poor,

            Your huddled masses, yearning to be free,

            The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

            Send these, the homeless, tempest tost, to me;

            I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Shall we, of our day, repudiate Liberty and her glad, free welcome?

Someone has called the Displaced Persons, “Delayed Pilgrims.” How fitting a name it is! Martin Sommers, writing in the Saturday Evening Post about the D.P.’s he had interviewed says: “Many impress you as the kind of people who made our country what it is today. An investment in Displaced Persons as American citizens of the future would pay us dividends, and putting all humanitarian consideration aside, enlightened self-interest ought to prevail on America to act.”

Every aroused American patriot today is concerned about the Cold War. Every thinking citizen is asking, “What can we do to stop communism?” Here’s what we can do by giving jobs and homes to D.P.’s in America — we can say to all the distressed of the world, “Do not despair. Communism is not your only hope. There is another alternative. Here is a home and security and hope for you and yours in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Lt. Col. Jerry Sage, former Chief Inspector for D.P.’s in the U.S. Zone said: “If I were asked to point out the community which I considered the least susceptible to, and the most thoroughly indoctrinated against Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, I would not take you to the isolated 100% American small town in the Middle West. I would take you to a D.P. center in our zone of Germany. The vast majority of the people in the U.S. definitely dislike these isms, but have not had a great deal of intimate contact with them. The D.P. who describes his being rounded up at night, torn from his family, and brought to Germany to labor, or a D.P. who shows you the tattooed concentration camp number on his arm, is certainly indoctrinated against any form of Nazism, Fascism, or Communism.” If you want to strike a blow for freedom, for democracy, for America — open a door to a new name for a D.P.

So long as there are homes to which men turn

            At close of day,

            So long as there are homes where children are,

Where women stay.

If love and loyalty and faith be found

Across these sills,

A stricken (world) can recover from

Its greatest ills.

So long as there are homes where fires burn

And there is bread,

So long as there are homes where lamps are lit

And prayers are said,

Although a people falters through this dark

And nations grope,

With God Himself back of those little homes,

We still have hope.

                                    Grace Noll Crowell

O Fathers, fortunate Americans, we more than any other men on earth, can provide home for the homeless. But will we? What a glorious challenge is ours this day.

PRAYER FOR DISPLACED PERSONS

Eternal Father, Thou who lovest all Thy children with a Father’s love, we remember today those thousands of Thy children who are displaced — separated from their homes because of war, political strife, and national boundary readjustments. We pray that Thy blessing may be upon all of them, no matter what their creed or national origin may be, as they attempt to hold their families together in the camps of central Europe. Give them, we pray, continued hope and courage, lest they lose faith in Thee and in their families.

We seek Thy forgiveness, for we have not cared for these displaced people as we ought to have done. As a nation, as a church, and as Christian individuals we have neglected and failed them, leaving them miserable in mind, body and spirit. Quicken our consciences for which they are not to blame. Challenge us that we may consider them as Delayed Pilgrims, and, as a duty of love, may we help provide for them here, in this land of freedom, places of shelter, daily work, and some real basis of future happiness and usefulness.

Be with those few fortunate ones in this country, and with those upon the seas coming to places of welcome. Guide and protect them, we pray Thee, and may their journey lead toward a better tomorrow. May they be prepared to enter into a new way of life, eager to make a contribution to the community in which they are resettled.

We would also thank Thee for all those in governmental and voluntary organizations who are helping these displaced persons. We express our gratitude for the action of our President, and certain members of Congress, who are determined to free D.P.’s from their present bondage. May the time soon come when there will be no D.P. camps and when these Delayed Pilgrims will have a new home in a land of hope, peace and security. Amen.

• Scripture Reference: n/a • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : Hospitality; Active Compassion • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: n/a • First Preached: 6/19/1949 • Last Preached: 6/19/1949 • Rating: 3 • Book/Author References: n/a