“. . . until we arrive at real maturity – that measure of development which is meant by the fullness of Christ.”

(Ephesians 4:13)

What is our life all about?  What is the meaning of this cycle of birth and growth, and the aging process, and death?  What is the significance of our existence as individuals and our relationship to groups of people and things and ideas, and the people who came before us, and those to come after us?  Why are we given time here on earth, and what is the meaning of the pleasure and the pain, the health and sickness, the thinking and willing and doing in our earthly existence?

Charles Kuralt, in his recent book on his travels in America, tells of overhearing in the Latin Quarter of New Orleans the street conversation of a woman trying to explain to a puzzled tourist why funeral processions in the Crescent City were often led by a band playing Dixie-land music.  “Funerals,” he heard the woman say, “are not a time for crying, but a time for rejoicing – for rejoicing that another poor soul has escaped this vale of tears.  If you can’t rejoice that another poor soul has escaped this vale of tears, at least you can be happy that it wasn’t you.”

Young John Keats, the English poet who was tubercular and died in his twenties, was impatient with people who in sad resignation summed up the meaning of life in the pious pap, “This world is a vale of tears.”  Keats in contempt blurted out to them, “This world a vale of tears?  No!  Call it a vale of soul-making, not a vale of tears.”

Rather than focusing attention on the things people suffer – such as sickness, disappointment, bereavement, guilt, senility and death — in all their debilitating and defeating aspects: Keats fixed his attention on the possibility of the process of growth and development of the human soul through every human experience.  “Don’t call this world a vale of tears; Call it a vale of soul-making!”

Keats is very much like St. Paul who always insisted that in everything there is the possibility of growth and development to a higher and more noble level.  And it is not the pain or the pleasure of the moment that is significant, but the growth potential there.  To the Roman Christians Paul wrote: “We know that to those who love God everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.”  And to his friends at Philippi he wrote: “I have learned to be content, whatever my circumstances may be.”

I like very much that definition of education attributed to Charles M. Fuess of Phillips Andover Academy, “Education is the process of broadening a person’s latent intellectual, artistic, and moral power so as to enable him to develop his capacity for enjoyment, to increase his efficiency and capacity for service, and to enlarge his esthetic and spiritual resources.”

St. Paul had a very definite goal in mind for this soul making process to which all this world’s experiences should contribute: just this – that each one should grow up into the likeness of Jesus Christ.  Nowhere does he express it more plainly than to the Ephesians when he says that our ultimate goal is to “Arrive at real maturity – that measure of development which is meant by the fullness of Christ.”

Everyone of us should be moving toward that goal – But how?

Well, the church has always insisted upon the superlative relevance of one book – the Bible – in the attainment of that goal.  The scriptures contain the revelation of Jesus’ life.  To grow up into this maturity which is the fullness of Christ one must know what the scriptures teach about Him, so the church teaches and preaches the Biblical message.

Once Dag Hammarskjold was questioned by a reporter for a Swedish newspaper who asked: “If you were forced to live alone sometime, completely isolated from the world, on an uninhabited island, with a single book, what book would you choose?”  Hammarskjold answered, without hesitation: “Don Quixote” by Cervantes.”

In later years, after Hammarskjold had become Secretary General of the United Nations and begun to carry heavy burdens of humanity, and when he had progressed much deeper in his own inner spiritual pilgrimage, he was asked by an American journalist to name the three most indispensable books and he replied: “The Bible, Shakespeare’s collected works, and Don Quixote.”

Later still – indeed – in the last days of his life when he went on his fateful mission to Central Africa, Dag Hammarskjold carried a single book with him.  It was found after his death on the bedside table in his room in the African Hotel where he had stayed before the plane crash.  The book was a 17^th century edition of St. Thomas Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ.

The spiritual pilgrimage of Dag Hammskjold should blaze the trail for us in our soul making: our march through all the events of our lives, both pleasant and painful, toward that real maturity which is meant by the fullness of Christ.  From neglect of the Bible, or absolute disregard of it, we must come to the place where the Bible stands high among the literary treasures we prize, and ultimately to the point where the Bible is supremely significant to us, not because it contains the deepest wisdom and the most magnificent moral grandeur, but because it introduces us to a living person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The Daughter of General Moshe Dyan, Israel’s celebrated military genius, once said of her father: “His knowledge of the Bible is amazing.  The Bible for him, and now for us, is a mirror to the country rather than to its religion.  It is our history, our geography, our poetry and fairy tales combined.  My father never forgives a miss quoting and can spend hours figuring out a phrase in it.  Recently he shared with me an interest he has in the particulars of the David-Goliath battles, believing young David to be a good tactician in his choice of weapons and method, and not merely an innocent boy inspired by God.  My father is not a religious man.  My brothers were not Bar Mitzvah, and we have never been to synagogue for prayers, but my Father has respect for believers, and his faith in the greatness of the Jewish people and its civilization takes the form of a religious faith.”

How pitiful a misuse of the Bible.  Knowledge of Biblical geography and history and military tactics and ethnic cultural values have no soul-making power.  Only as the scriptures introduce the Bible student to Him who is the fullness of the God-head, and to that person-to-person relationship that results in growth toward fullness of perfection in Christ, is real soul-making taking place.

But a more serious misuse of the Bible than this is that which goes a step farther in regard for the Holy Scriptures, treating them as a veritable repository of the most excellent collection of moral and ethical precepts and pure theological doctrines – and stores up faithfully in memory all these – but stops short there – never translating the message of the Bible into human action, daily conduct, and making them regnant in all human relationships.

This is the use of the Bible scorned by St. Paul in his second letter to Timothy where he speaks of those who are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (II Timothy 3:7) This is what plagues the church today.  This is a common miseducation in contemporary Christianity: studying, learning, always discussing, philosophizing, but never doing the truth; and therefore never really knowing the truth.  “Truth is in order to goodness,” declared the early Reformers.  This is the logical and the divinely ordained progression.

The first Christian creed was the simple declaration: “Jesus is Lord.” Very easy to learn and say, but not so easy to obey. Yet it is the crucial creed for both obedience and learning.  For those who do not obey Christ, whose Lordship they have not completely acknowledged, have put a ceiling of limitation upon what they can really learn of Him.  They will ever be learning but never able to come to the knowledge of His truth until they do His truth because He is the Lord and Ruler of their lives.  How wise that African woman who, when asked why she was always reading her Bible every day, replied: “Because the Bible is the only book that reads me.”  She had discovered the Scripture’s power to know her, to correct her, and guide her, and empower her to translate its truth into goodness.

St. Paul told his Christian friends at Ephesus that God’s gifts to people differ.  Some have been entrusted with the gift of teaching, some preaching, some prophecy, some messengers or witnesses.  But the purpose of God’s giving these spiritual gifts, both the intrinsic gift and the diversity of the gifts, is to the end that all God’s people might be properly equipped for their Christian life and service – that all might be developed by their common faith and knowledge in Jesus Christ and come at last to that real maturity which is meant by the fullness of Christ.

Matthew Arnold, in his great poem, Rugby Chapel, pictures the meaning of human existence in this vale of soul-making in the imagery of a long procession of people winding across the dangerous wastelands, through countless hazards and catastrophes, moving toward the city of God in the distance.  And Arnold describes his father’s vocation as Headmaster at Rugby as one who was never content just to save his own soul, or the members of his own family, but always leaving his place in the line, going out to round up the wanderers, to encourage and support the stragglers in the turmoil of the wild howling wilderness, that none might be lost, following the example of Christ, ever seeking to save the least, the last, and the lost.

So, Matthew Arnold speaks of his father:

“But thou wouldst not alone

Be saved, My Father! Alone

Conquer and come to thy goal,

Leaving the rest in the wild.

Therefore, to thee it was given

Many to save with thyself;

And, at the end of the day,

O Faithful Shepherd, to come,

Bringing thy sheep in thy hands.”

If this great purpose of God, as described by St. Paul in the imagery of bringing all God’s children to real maturity after the measure of the fullness of Christ, is to be fulfilled it is incumbent upon all of us in the church to concern ourselves for others both inside and outside the fold of the good Shepherd of all souls.

So in the communion of all the saints the evangelistic aspect of our maturing in Christ remains powerful and necessary for us all.  Let us not neglect our ministry there — for they are all needed by our God — “until at last we all arrive at real maturity – that measure of development that is meant by the fullness of Christ.”

PASTORAL PRAYER

God of all power and might, and Maker and Ruler of all people: we praise Thee for this sacred season with its remembrance of our Savior’s soul travail endured for our sakes.  Prepare our hearts by the gospel message for fruitful worship in this sanctuary and for courageous Christian action in the world.

May all teachers and preachers of Thy Word in all the churches of our nation these weeks of Lent be inspired by Thy Spirit to declare the whole counsel of our God to us, rebuking our disobedience, shaming us for our slothful inactivity in concerns of Thy Kingdom, stirring us up to unremitting labor and diligent search for Thy lost.

Most Holy and Sovereign King of kings, we commend our nation to the guidance of Thy wisdom, to the keeping of Thy love.  We humbly thank Thee for all the ways in which Thou hast blessed and guided us to this day.  We are awed and humbled at the mystery and might of Thy providence which has brought our nation to a place of trust and responsibility throughout the world.

Strengthen in each of us a sense of duty in our political life.  May our rulers serve Thee in honesty of purpose and uprightness of life.  May they never forget their accountability to the people whom they serve and to their people’s God.  Save them from losing patriotism in partisanship.  Bless them in their ministry with an ever larger vision of truth, and ever deeper sense of the demands of righteousness.

We lift up to Thee, O Father of all mercies, on the arms of our intercession, our sick and bereaved and trouble loved ones.  Restore, O Lord, to health and abundant living all these so dear to us as now we call their names in the chapel of our hearts.  We offer our prayer in the name of and for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.