“What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”

(Mark 10:17)

 

Did you ever hear the story of the man who invented the first safety match and what happened to him? No, he didn’t blow himself up — but he made a miscalculation equally disastrous to himself and to his venture. For this ingenious Yankee inventor who perfected the safety match early in the 19th century, long before the Swedes ever thought of the safety match, with characteristic Yankee enthusiasm and enterprise went right to work and built a big factory with a view to going into large scale production. He located his plant on the banks of a stream expecting to run it with water power. But, he built a water wheel too big for the stream to turn. He sadly gave up the whole project. His clever invention of the safety match never went into manufacture, and the poor inventor was soon forgotten. (Steward Holbrook — Lost Men in American History)

The story of the man who built the water wheel too big presents a parable for us all to ponder for it points up a miscalculation, disastrous in organization, we see again and again.

Everywhere we look there is evidence of the water wheel too big in the business world. There is the story of the super salesman “who sold an elaborate filing system to a manufacturing concern. Six months later he called to ask how it was working. ‘Splendidly,’ said the manager of the company. ‘It is efficient beyond our hopes.’ ‘Fine,’ said the salesman, ‘And how is business?’ ‘Oh,’ said the manager, ‘we have had to give up business in order to look after the filing system.’”

With terror, we behold that our gifted scientists have built a wheel of their invention so large that the stream of our spiritual power is unable to turn that wheel constructively. It threatens daily to topple and crush us. Our inventive technical experts have made their Frankenstein. We’ve built our Babel.

Last Friday we were startled to hear the ominous news from the Middle East that our American delegation, on their triumphant peacemaking tour, had promised to the Egyptians both American technical know-how and American material for releasing atomic power for peaceful purposes. Immediately from all sections came the probing questions: How can we be sure that atomic power capabilities in Arab hands will be used for peace and not for war? Of course, we know we can’t be sure, as the Canadians of late discovered with their gift of atomic capabilities to India. We’ve built the wheel too big in destructive atomic power and we keep passing it around to people who, like ourselves, have not a spiritual stream of sufficient strength to turn it constructively.

Even in the church we find wheels too big for the existing stream of religion to turn. “So much of the planning at the top level is listing things that ought to be done, if the congregations had any desire to do them. Multiplication of boards and committees — wheels within wheels of enmeshing committees — while the chief need of many churches is not for bigger wheels, but for a rise in the stream.”

The General Assembly of our denomination is meeting in Louisville, Kentucky this week. The whole structure of our church’s organization will be under careful scrutiny. We have a new and sizeable wheel in the General Executive Board that hasn’t been turning too smoothly. Sometimes it seems hardly to turn at all. The commissioners to the Assembly will be very busy tinkering with that mechanism. That is all very necessary. But most important of all is that we, the members of local congregations, pray for an outpouring of the very spirit of God that will be a veritable flood, and that this divine river of God may flow through our lives and burst through the sinful habits and selfish extravagances, and fearful enslavement to our past securities, which have been damming up the swelling floodtide of God’s redeeming love that He wills should flow through the channels of His people and His church.

The evidence is that among the earliest Christian churches more attention was paid to the stream than to the water wheels. Here is an excerpt from the record in the Book of Acts: “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people … And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

But the story of the wheel too big points up not only a serious organizational problem we have confronting us almost everywhere we turn today in business, government, church and school — but it is also a parable of our most pressing personal problem.

What was really wrong with the rich young ruler who came to Jesus imploring the Master to set him straight? Morally he was all right — “he had kept all the commandments from his youth up.” Financially, he was a success. He was rich and so was free from life’s pressing cares over material security. Socially, he had arrived. As one of the rulers in Israel, he had position and power and prestige. But the rich young ruler is unhappy and frustrated. His soul is swept with a sense of uncertainty and dissatisfaction. Coming to Jesus he pleads, “Good teacher, tell me what good thing I can do to inherit eternal life.”

What’s wrong with the man? Jesus knows. He sees immediately that he has built a wheel too big for the stream of his life to turn. See what the great physician prescribes: “If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what you hast, give it to the poor, and come, take up thy cross and follow me.” The man has acquired an unwieldy mass his spirit cannot manage. Instead of his managing it, it managed him. In his case, it had stopped, stymied him altogether in his life purpose. Just like the fellow who built the water wheel too big and never made a match. So Jesus says to the perplexed man that if he really wants to enter into life, the unlimited joy of abundant living, he will have to get rid of the wheel he’s built too big. “Go sell what thou hast and give to the poor.” And then the Master gives him the invitation to discipleship (which alone can raise the level in his personal stream of spiritual power). “Come, take up your cross and follow me.”

Let none of us be so unperceptive, so dull of wit, as to think that it is only the person who goes after and gets big money who builds the wheel too big for the stream of his spiritual life to turn. The man who has built up such a demanding professional practice in order to make a living for himself and his family that he has no time really to live; the woman who has perfected such a system of orderly and up-to-the-minute housekeeping with all the latest gadgets that the house really keeps her and there is no time nor place in that dwelling for the family’s enjoyment of their home; the young person who has built such an enormous round of recreational activities that there is nothing left of his soul to recreate — all these have built the wheel too big.

How often we see the man who has more money or land to manage than he has spirit to use it, generously, unselfishly, in stewardship to God! How often we find a man or a woman possessing more power and prestige than he or she has spiritual grace to administer with moderation and sympathy and humanitarian helpfulness!

With what cutting power does this ancient word come to the modern commercial and industrial city who measures her greatness in numbers of diversified manufacturing plants, who computes her power in her outlay of dollars for weekly payrolls, whose concept of culture is cash. Our condition? What is it? Why, we’ve built the wheel too big for the little trickle of our spiritual life to turn. The people perish in the arid desert sands of materialism.

Soren Kierkegaard said: “If an Arab in the desert were suddenly to discover a spring in his tent and know that he would always be able to have water in abundance, would he not consider himself most fortunate? When a man whose physical being is always turned towards the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside himself, finally turns inwards and discovers that the source is within him — not to mention his discovering that the source is his relation to God — should he not also consider himself fortunate?” But the rich young ruler turned away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. So enamored was he of the big wheel he had built, he would rather keep it, listless, unmoved, unproductive, rather than undergo the spiritual change which could raise the level of power in his life.

Now, for most of us, our personal problem of the wheel too big which keeps us from the kingdom is a creation not of our miscalculated careful building, but rather of our miscalculated careless piddling; not of one wrong choice made, but of innumerable refusals to make any choice.

We have imagined that we can have and take anything and everything with us on the journey of life. We reach out greedy arms to grasp all within our embrace — both our lowest lusts, basest desires, and our most chaste dreams. We want both the harlot and the dear wife. We would get if we can, the world, the flesh, the devil, and God the Father also. So we muddle along into the horrible miscalculation of throwing together a wheel too big, and the spiritual stream of life refuses to turn it and we are miserable for our dreams are dashed.

But the law of life is not “both-and” but “either-or”. Not only is this the divine law recorded in the Holy Scriptures, but it is also the unvarying psychological law written deep in the human soul. We will not face up to what Soren Kierkegaard called “the either-or-ness” of life. This gloomy thinker, with the keenest of insight into our psychological and spiritual problems, insisted that to live, people must choose. So persistently did he write on this theme, that on the streets of Copenhagen, Kierkegaard was addressed by his fellow citizens as “Old Either-Or”.

“Either-or,” cries Kierkegaard. ‘Either-or’ is the word at which the folding doors fly open and the ideals appear. O blessed sight! ‘Either-or’ is the pass which admits to the absolute. God be praised. Yea, ‘Either-or’ is the key to heaven. ‘Both-and’ is the way to hell.”

Now this is not a very pleasant manner of speaking to us — a bunch of people who call themselves Christians and look always outward to find the materialists and the secularists and the humanists. It is always, in our view, the other fellow who’s got his wheel too big, who needs to choose not “both-and” but “either-or”, and so go without. Not us, oh, no.

It is always that we are seeing Christ coming to some rich young ruler and making this categorical demand of him to unload — to renounce his double-mindness — to stop building his wheel too big. Oh, when will our eyes be opened to see that it is to us that Christ is coming? That He is confronting us with the everlasting choice which we must make, either to enter His Kingdom by laying all down and taking up our cross and following Him, or turning sadly away.

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

Here we are, Lord, come into Thy house again. We come from many places and with different needs. We come with varying motives.

Some of us are here, Lord, simply because of habit. We’ve been trained to go to church on Sunday. For some of us this is a strange, new experience and we come with our burdens and anxieties, hoping that in Thy presence there is really to be found forgiveness and release from tension and defeat, and hope for despairing hearts.

Some of us have come because we love the quiet beauty of this place where the clamor of life is shut out and our souls may be bathed in the cool waters of worshipful song.

Some of us have come because we love Thee, O Lord, and the house of Thy abode; and because we love Thy people who gather here and whose encouraging handclasp and caring words and courageous struggle nerve us for what we must face.

Some of us have come to this place and this hour, Father of Mercies, for the purpose of running an errand unto Thee for someone else: to lay before Thee the problem of a hard-pressed friend; to pray Thy healing for a sick dear one who suffers; to ask Thy comfort for those whose sorrow in great loss we share; to ask especially today for Thy Spirit’s presence with the commissioners to our church’s General Assembly as they gather in Louisville, Kentucky this week; to pray for our President and his advisors in the Middle East, that they may have Thy blessings as ambassadors for peace and a safe journey home.

Look upon us, Lord. Behold us as we are. Consider all our needs and grant to us separately and together our heart’s desires, according to Thy mercy and wisdom, what will be beneficial to us and conducive to the building of Thy everlasting Kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord, who taught us to pray, saying:

 

INVOCATION

O Thou Eternal Spirit, in whose eternity our little day is set, lift us above the strife and evil of this passing time that beneath the shadow of Thy wings we make take courage and be glad. So great art Thou, beyond our utmost imaginings, that we could not speak to Thee didst Thou not first draw near unto us and say, “Seek ye my face.” Unto Thee our hearts would make reply, “Thy face, Lord, will we seek through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Savior.” Amen.

PRAYER OF DEDICATION

Our giving of these gifts and offerings, O Lord, is our small and tardy response to Thy continuous and overflowing stream of mercies to us. From Thee we receive all things: life and food and shelter and loving companions and our eternal salvation through Thy Son, Jesus Christ. With all Thy giving, O God, withhold not Thy Spirit’s presence from us that we may have also to offer unto Thee: pure hearts and watchful minds and unstained bodies to the glory of Thy great name. Amen.

• Scripture Reference: Mark 10:17-31 • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : Ambition; Distraction; Lack of Focus; 665 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: n/a • First Preached: 9/10/1950 • Last Preached: 10/24/1982 • Rating: 2 • Book/Author References: Lost Men in American History, Stewart Holbrook; , Soren Kierkegaard