Jesus did not kill hate with words, nor even with spectacular deeds. He killed it by submitting himself to the worst it could do. This is why the Cross hangs over every celebration of Christian worship and is never far away from true Christian preaching. For this was the divine answer to the rebellion of men and women against their God and to their hatreds and their fears. When Jesus died, the victim of the very forces that threaten us so terribly today, the power of hate was broken. There was nothing more fearful that it could do—to torture and kill the Son of God himself. And so when his disciples met him on Easter morning and knew that he had come back from the hell through which he had passed for us, they could look back on that Cross as a sign, not of defeat, but of victory. “He has killed hate,” they said. “He is himself our peace.”
The man who wrote these words was no secluded mystic. He knew the hatreds that still raged. Paul himself was the victim of one of the most virulent hatreds that has ever stained the pages of history—the mutual hating between Jew and Gentile. And so he takes this bitter division as an illustration of the killing of hate. Writing as a Jew to Gentiles he says: “Gentiles and Jews, he has made the two one, and in his own body of flesh and blood has broken down the enmity which stood like a dividing wall between them . . . so as to create a single new humanity.” “This was his purpose,” he wrote, “to reconcile the two in a single body to God through the cross on which he killed the enmity.”
“He killed the enmity.” Have we yet learned that we cannot find in the Cross the symbol of our reconciliation to God, the pledge that our sins are forgiven, and that we are accepted in spite of our rebellions, unless we at the same time find there the symbol of our union with every human being, no matter what label they bear? Have we yet learned that the fostering of resentments, prejudices, and petty hates in our heart draws down the shutters on the grace of God that is waiting for us in the Gospel? And do we really believe that there is still no more powerful instrument for dealing with the fearful hostilities that rampage in our world, and in our city, than the Spirit of Christ, the Killer of hate?
A letter arrived in our Church House just as I was finishing this sermon. It was addressed to no particular minister—just to the church. And it contained one sentence: “Dear Sir, What must I do to save my soul from hell?” I’ve no idea what lies behind that cry and have to guess as I answer. But it was like a call from the world of today, from the millions who are not perhaps so worried about the fate of their individual soul, but are being driven to despair by a world that seems hell-bent on the path of hatred, violence, and lunatic destruction. It is still the joyful task of the Church to point to Jesus, the Killer of hate, to insist that there is no technique for saving the world that ignores the grace of God (no matter what our humanist friends may say), and to invite all our contemporaries, no matter what their racial, social, or religious background may be, to discover in Jesus their Savior and their Lord.
We Belong to God
Editor’s Introduction
This back-to-church-after-the-summer sermon finds David Read raising a fundamental question with the congregation. Why are we here? Why return to church when we could be at home in our pajamas reading the Sunday Times? And why remain in church when the culture today is so contentedly and even vibrantly secular?
Belonging to the church, Read suggests, is linked with our sense of belonging to God, and not just any God but the God who made us and redeems us and has fixed a point beyond which we cannot fall—“the solid rock of an eternal love.”
The text for this sermon is taken from the Prologue of John’s Gospel: “He came unto his own . . . ” Read hears these words telling us that we don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to the God who claims us in Christ as his own. Here is the underlying reason for belonging to the church. And when we realize that we belong to God, we are moved to share this discovery with our neighbors. For “his own” includes, Read reminds us, “the entire human family, but there are millions in our world who don’t know it. Shouldn’t we tell them, by what we say, what we do and what we are?”
We Belong To God
A Sermon preached by David H. C. Read at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on September 21, 1986
Text: “He came unto his own . . . ” John 1:11
Readings: Genesis 1:27–31; 1 Corinthians 6:12–20; Luke 12:13–21
Why are we here? What brings together this mixed group of people at this time and in this place? There are so many things each of us could be doing, strolling in the park, pottering about at home, sampling the offerings on the TV screen, or just lying in bed smothered by the New York Times. So what brings us here? In this city and in this generation we can discount the cynical answers that used to be given—it’s a sign of being a respectable citizen, your neighbours will look sideways at you if you’re not a church-goer. Today in New York there are other circles to move in if it’s prestige and reputation you’re after, and your neighbours (if you know who they are) don’t give a damn whether you go to church or not.
For the most part, I believe, we are here because we belong, or want to belong, to a community that believes in God and tries to act on that belief. A living church stands for a working belief in God. After all, the polls tell us that just being an American citizen means belonging to a community that believes in God. About 95 percent say they do. That can mean almost anything, or nothing, and is hard to square with the almost totally secularized society in which we live. A working belief in God means, in the Christian and Jewish tradition, that God is a real factor in all we think and do, that we seek a relationship with him that is as close and personal as that we have with our dearest friend. It means that in the great circle of belonging—belonging to this nation, belonging to a home, a circle of friends, a club or a community—we find, as the lodestar of this mysterious voyage through life, that the most powerful truth is that we belong to God. Such a conviction will inevitably alter the way we confront all the great choices that come our way in life, and the ultimate question mark in death.
Psychologists have said that the two most powerful instincts in human beings are religion and sex. That may account for the fact that when religion loses its grip on society, sex is apt to take over as the reigning god. Some days ago when I was pondering this sermon, I turned on the TV at random. A bad habit, you may say, but this time I was rewarded. There was John Updike, the novelist, being interviewed about his latest book. When I came in he was being asked how he reconciled the strong, religious theme in his novel with the candid treatment of sex. His answer revealed that he saw no discrepancy, and that for him, as a confessed Christian and church-goer, the two great instincts are not necessarily at war but that everything profoundly human is related to our deep sense of belonging to God. On the spur of the moment he put the case flippantly: “People go to church,” he said, “because they want to live forever. They go to bed because they want to feel what it’s like.” As I let that remark sink in I felt I’d like to hear a sermon by Mr. Updike enlarging on my theme this morning! It’s that working, all-inclusive sense of belonging to God, that should be the real reason for allying oneself with a community that seeks above all else to love the Lord our God with heart and mind and all we have, and our neighbor as ourselves.
“He came unto his own.” These words are familiar to church-goers. They come from that perpetually stimulating, illuminating, and puzzling poem we know as the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John. I expect that if I asked one familiar with this phrase what was intended by the words: “He came unto his own,” the answer might be: “It means that Jesus was born a Jew,” or that his message was directed to the Jewish people, or perhaps, as some modern versions actually translate, “He came to his own country.” But the context of these words reveals that the author was not speaking about the historic Jesus: the climactic words—“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” occur some verses later. He is speaking about the Word—which means God revealing himself to the human race, God communicating with his human family. He is speaking about God’s call to the great human family that had wandered away from the Father’s home. For him the Incarnation was the supreme act of God’s parental love, but from the dawn of history to this very moment, God comes unto his own. Everyone—American, French, German, Russian, African, Chinese, prosperous or starving, cultivated or uncivilized,