The Frustrated Jesus: A Call for Christian Revolution

In response to the numerous requests, we are printing the following sermon, given by Mark A. Hanna, youth director of Arvada United Methodist Church, on August 29, 1971.

Some 17 or 18 years ago there was a small boy who found the professional world terribly exciting.  Among his toy collection was the usual toy doctor's kit which had the usual candy pills, toy stethoscope and all, but he also added a unique medical tool of his own.  At the very bottom of the bag he carried a small gold colored gun which he mercifully used on those patients he couldn’t save. Then he would run to his room, change costumes, and reappear ready to provide his deceased patient with the most decent of all burial services.  Wanting to follow in the footsteps of his Minister father it seemed that the funeral service was the most logical place to jump into the ministry.

It was only eight years ago that the same boy came up to this church when it was brand new and practiced his organ lessons at this console.  But there were times when the call of the pulpit was far stronger than the call of the keyboard, so long and glorious sermons were delivered to an imaginary congregation while the organ lesson suffered a critical blow.

And now here I am, supposedly ready to deliver the first real sermon of my lifetime.  A lot has happened between now and the time I used to shoot my patients to get them into a funeral service.  My crew-cut sort of got away from me; I've decided to spend my time with one girl now instead of the usual three or four; and I've also learned that a minister has a good chance of accomplishing more change through a worship service than through a funeral service. I will tell you now that the imaginary congregations that sat in this sanctuary eight years ago were much easier to prepare for as they rarely expected anything except what came to my mind at the moment,

This is a childhood dream finally come true and I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. Nevertheless I find it more of a challenge than I had first thought it would be. I'm sure that everyone giving their first sermon would want it to be a real earth-shaker, a revolutionary presentation that would create immediate transformations of goodness and brotherhood around the world. And yet to my own way of thinking, all of those things have already been presented from this pulpit and in a fashion far superior to what I can do. The concepts of Love, Brotherhood, and the Christian Life are certainly not new to this congregation and I honestly have nothing new to offer in any of those areas. So what does today's new preacher have to talk about?  If I may this morning, I would like to attempt to answer that question.

In preparing for this morning's meditation, one point became increasingly clear as I worked. I am still at the point in which I must refer to my knowledge of the subject because I just haven't lived enough years to include all the other points of referral that I need. So I would ask you this morning to excuse me if it sounds as though I am introducing a lot of personal opinion because that is what I am doing, only because I am not far enough along in life to do anything else. But I would also ask you as a congregation this morning to look past these innate shortcomings and try to see the message I am trying to get across.

I have been fortunate enough to have spent the last three years of my life as a college student (among other things). I have been given an opportunity to learn and question which is granted to relatively few people of the world's population. I would like to share with you some of the things that I have learned these past three years. I doubt that any college students entering classroom doors within the past 5 years have not had an opportunity to learn that some 50% of the world's population is undernourished or starving. My freshman year the headlines were concerned with Biafra; since then it has been Pakistan, the West Indies, India, the Mideast, and the Far East. In fact, you really don't have to be a college student at all to have some idea of what was going on in the world around us. War, poverty, and starvation have become commonplace in this world of ours and in most cases are being treated as such.

But for myself I have a hard time figuring out what I can do as an individual to remedy such massive and complex problems, especially when I have not been specifically educated to deal with such problems and also when they are problems that exist to a great extent on the other side of our globe.

And so it seemed only right, in addition to being logical, to turn my attentions to the problems that face us on our home front.  At present, the United States has a 10% illiteracy rate. Daily you and I are living amidst the controversy of human equality, financial feasibility, and political possibilities. There are people right here in our own great country that are starving to death because there is no food to eat. There are people in our country who can't afford or can't buy the home of their choice because of the color of their skin. The long-hairs are out to overthrow the short-hairs and the establishment is out to crush the new left. There are hawks who would eagerly assault the doves, but there are also the doves who want nothing more than the destruction of the hawks.

Dr. Valdez, of Metropolitan State College of Denver, has acquired documented proof that the Pentagon has constructed a number of top-secret confinement camps across our country with orders that, at the moment the Pentagon determines a national racial crisis exists, all people with Spanish surnames, all blacks, and all people who have associated themselves with anti-war movements, as well as all Chicanos and Indians, be rounded up and placed in these camps. The entire program is based upon the theory that federal troops will be able to handle these minority groups which compose approximately 20% of our national population. I would hope you know that I am not here this morning to argue whether or not such conditions are right or wrong, ethical or unethical. I am only using them to help paint a picture for us this morning, a picture of the world that is outside our front doorstep.

I quickly learned that to think of curing the ills which exist within the boundaries of our country is just about as feasible as attempting to right the entire world.   Again, I had to recognize that our country is too big, too complex for one individual to correct the situation.  I have confidence there are enough good people in the world that, if one person could change the situation, it would be better by now.

As you can see, the scope of my interviews is being limited sheerly through the process of Education. I had sent out in the beginning to save humanity and am now left with nothing but what sits outside of my door step. But again, my education did anything but disappoint me. Recent studies made by the Sociology Department of Metropolitan State College show that there are approximately 140,000 men in the Denver area who find themselves alienated from the social world. Many are what we would term Winos, our City's hopeless alcoholics. Many more are simply men who no longer have any ties with the outside world. There are about 70,000 such women in the same situation in our city. Combined, the total is a city larger than Arvada of men and women who have no home, no family, no future, nothing to look forward to but another day of loneliness and misery. Our 7th grade day camp this past week had an opportunity to visit the Protestant Inner-City Parish. They soon discovered that the Denver Chicano Community is far from happy with their present situation. But they also learned the policemen and others are not overly pleased with all of the developments that take place in the Chicano community. The education cycle and the poverty cycle in Denver are viciously intertwined. 75% of Denver's lower-income students will not graduate because they dropped out, and the 25% that do graduate will have the equivalent of what has been psychologically determined as a 9th grade education, unable to compete in the college world. Thus, the poverty creates the uneducated, and the uneducated create more poverty.

By now, the process has become routine. The problems of a situation are realized, but they are always so massive, so complex,  I know it would be useless for me to attempt to remedy them on an individual basis.  At the same time, it's difficult these days for anyone to find associates for any cause. Only this time, the situation was a little different. It was beginning to actually scare me a little bit. The situations I just described don't exist on the other side of the globe , they aren't situations confined to the larger urban areas of our country, they are human trials which confront people everyday, people who live no more than 10 miles from our own community. This concept began to take hold of me as I took the time to walk through our Denver slums to see where these people had to live their lives. It became too real for me as I was stopped by a wino who wanted to talk, but his mind was so destroyed by the years of alcohol that his mind could no longer serve him to put his thoughts into coherent words. I was being confronted with the stark reality of problems being right next door, and again not being able to really do anything about them on an individual basis.

It seemed as though my own community was the only place left to attempt to do my work, that of making people happy. It didn't seem like much of a challenge. It didn't have nearly the significance that saving the world would have had, but I had been shown it was all that was left. Once again, I also found myself in the position of being wrong. It would seem in a community such as ours, where want has basically been eliminated, that happiness wouldn't be much of a challenge. But instead, the challenge seemed all the greater. I'm sure I don't have to tell you about the drug abuse, the alcohol abuse, the sexual immorality and so on, that exist right next door to each one of us. In Denver this year, 50 to 75% of all the marriages will end in divorce within  5 years. And that figure is growing. It was also interesting to me that as the income figure increases, so does the divorce rate. In our community, there is an almost insane obsession with material possessions. We have so much more than nine-tenths of the rest of the world, and yet we don't have enough. In the suburbs, I am sure it is common knowledge that 95% of the air pollution that is choking our city is caused by the automobile, and yet daily most of us come into that freeway parade of one-man-to-a-car going downtown, rather than face the inconvenience of an ecologically sound system.

It was beginning to sound like a broken record to me, and I am sure it is beginning to sound like a broken record to you this morning. Even the challenge of making my home community a happier place for everyone had become too large, too complex, too complicated. I had succeeded in nothing but creating another problem without a solution, nothing but making myself one more unhappy person in a seemingly unhappy world.

I had reached the end of the route; there was no other place I could turn.  Apparently I was unable to find anyone whom I could really help. I was unable to find any problem I could really solve.  I was to the point of giving up my cause and joining what seemed to me to be a meaningless journey through the span of life.

And then, after a time for thinking, a time for putting things back into perspective, it became obvious to me that there was a problem area I had refused to recognize, and there was one solution to which I had refused to pay attention.

My entire perspective toward life, it's problems and solutions, was focused from myself outward. I didn't hold myself responsible for the 50% of the world that was undernourished or starving. I realized it was a problem, and that people should get busy and do something about it, but I never considered myself one of those people. Such was the case, and I found it to be true in every situation no matter which one I applied it to. I was concerned, but I was concerned about everyone but myself. Now, this to me was an interesting situation. As a student of Psychology and Behavioral Science, the fact I had acted in this way, that I had thought in this way, wasn't really too surprising. Since that moment, I've tried to watch others and I find I am not alone. What did bother me was why did I view the problem in that fashion to begin with?

I found my answer to that question was a result of the solution I had really refused to look at. I have grown up in the church. I have attended Sunday school regularly since I was old enough to go. I have been a member of every church choir, I have been a Cadet, I have been a Sunday school teacher, I have attended worship regularly, and yet... I don't think I have ever tried to live a good, honest, Christian day in my life! Shocking? To say the least. Since I've come to that realization, I've spent a good deal of my time trying to figure out why. And I think I have come upon the answer: I have not yet learned how to love my fellow man, how to love my brother. I have not yet realized my own worth, and thus was not able to realize the worth of any other life.

I have tried to imagine what things would look like to the man called Jesus if he could return to this world today. The bitter hatred that brings men to war has become acceptable through the means of rationalization. We now have acceptable reasons to destroy live in mass, reasons that leave us feeling no guilt for that which we have done. We have come to the point where we can rationalize the hungry, the poor, the sick and the oppressed. We have good, sensible reasons for all of those things.

And yet, 2000 years ago a Nazarene gave us simple, good guidelines which would lead to a different way of life. My friends, I can honestly say to you that if Jesus Christ himself stood before us this morning, he would feel frustrated as to how to communicate the Christian way of life to us. Are there any more beautiful, simple ways to tell of the kingdom of love than The Beatitudes which we heard this morning? Jesus wasn't quoting verses of scripture that they might be written down in a book called The Bible. He was trying to tell the crowds on the hill that day how each one of them could make this a beautiful world to live in. “I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly,” was his clear and simple way of describing his mission.

Yes, Jesus would be frustrated were he here this morning. In plain and simple Hebrew he supplied the groundwork and the blueprints of a better society. And yet 2000 years later, he would walk a world in which it is hard to find anyone who really feels they are loved. Six months ago, if I had been asked, I would have said I was a Christian, and perhaps even a good one. But now I must admit to myself and to you, I have fallen so short of this calling that it hurts deep down inside. I carry the same prejudices, the same hatreds I have always carried. I absolutely refuse to forgive unless I am sure I will also be forgiven, and even then sometimes I refuse. I don't love those who don't love me, and there are many times I don't love those who do love me. To simplify what I am trying to say: I don't love!

A friend of mine recommended I read an article in the publication Psychology Today. In it, two psychologists proposed they are about to concretely and scientifically define the phenomenon of love. Since I am majoring in this area, I read it with great interest. With my limited knowledge in the area, I had to agree they were perhaps upon the brink of discovering what the phenomenon of romantic love was all about. They have proposed that when certain emotional states create a defined chemical balance in the body, then the human organism is ready to “fall in love love.”  If this emotional and chemical state occurs in the presence of one who could be considered a partner in love, then the emotional and chemical transaction is complete and the couple falls in love.

I am sure it is not news to many of you that many prominent sociologists and psychologists feel one of the most threatening institutions in the world today is that of ‘romantic’ love. I don't think it is really any wonder that today's divorce rate is what it is. Just start looking around at some of the reasons people have for getting married. Basically, many of today's marriages, as well as friendships and associations, are nothing more than an emotional and chemical state of affairs. Unless there is something to supercede that state, it quickly reveals that it is temporary and it decays.

I mention all of this simply that we might have a clearer, less confused idea of what kind of love Christ was talking about. His is a love of humanity, as well as humans. The love that Jesus speaks of binds not only man and woman, but it binds man with man, woman with woman, and adult with child. It knows no boundaries, no limitations, no definitions. The kingdom of God is love, and should we learn how to love one another, we shall know the kingdom of God!

So, how do we put this solution into practical application? To love is to love totally, and that means a love of life. In other words, we need to love all that surrounds us.

The Indian culture of the United States differed from ours in that they felt the ground, the trees and the skies we're living just as much as they were. It alarmed them that the white man felt all of these things to be inanimate and without life. Of course, as the process of time has shown, if we had but known but a little of the reverence for everything that surrounds us, the ecological problems that face us today might have been figments of the imagination.

Another of the social ills which I am sure has concerned all of us, is the flood of pornographic devices which have saturated our community. X-rated movie houses, magazine stores and nightclubs have sprouted up overnight. I think it is easy for all of us to see that these institutions are manifestations of a sordid and perverted outlook toward love and sex, but, at the same time, are we really aware of how true love can remove this thorn from our flesh?

While I was attending Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, I watched with some interest as Omaha citizens set out to combat the x-rated theater that had come to their community. It is understandable that parents irate and they felt immediate action needed to be taken. Their very first step was to threaten the movie by means of legislation. Any of you who have been following similar situations in other communities will know that this is the common means of combating the pornographic outbreak. Among many, there is a cry for federal censorship and discrimination so the element might be removed from their community.

The interesting facet of this problem, though, is to look at what is actually going on in the community. The first and most obvious point is if no one were paying enough money to make pronography profitable, pornography would no longer have any means by which to exist. In the Omaha situation, no one wanted to get personally involved, but they wanted ‘someone out there’, in the form of federal laws and government, to remedy the situation. It would be an important part of my message to you this morning to say this is not the way true reform is achieved. We are on the brink of breaking our federalized form of government to pieces, simply because we feel it can be moral, law-abiding, and yes, even loving. We are too busy with the important matters of the day to be bothered with such routine matters as where our children are and why.

I feel it is safe to say that in the field of psychology it is becoming increasingly obvious that a child is nothing but the product of his family situation. It is not the producer’s fault that a boy pays $4 to see an x-rated flick but it is the fault of the family who doesn't even love the boy enough to know where he is or what he is doing. And if this analogy is carried into the larger context, the negligent or unaware family is the fault of the entire community, because they didn't love that family enough to care about them.

The pornography case is only a small and isolated one. As I tried to show us earlier in this message, we've got a lot of things that need to be taken care of. And I would hope that it is starting to become apparent that we can remedy these ills if only we’ll start loving in the Christian sense.

And there is the biggest ‘if’ I’ll say this morning. Jesus gave us the solution long before many of the problems existed, and yet it still lies dormant in our society. Please do not misunderstand. I do not criticize this morning, I only share my concerns. As much as I would want to be, I am well aware that I am not a part of the Love Generation, because if there is such a thing as a Love Generation, it is so small and so rare, I haven't come in contact with it.

My friends, I've grown up in front of and with many of you who are here this morning I'm not saying we haven't tried, or haven't sincerely wanted a better world, but this morning I'm calling everyone here to join me in the start of a Christian Revolution!  Believe me, that call applies just as much or more so to me as it does to any of you. Earlier I spoke of the family and their effect upon the child. When a young child is constantly conditioned not to speak to strangers, it doesn't surprise me at all that when he gets to high school he finds it hard to speak to anyone. We all find it hard to love a stranger, especially when we haven't found how to love the person who sits in the pew next to us every. I asked a question earlier in the hour and I have attempted to answer it. What does today's new preacher have to talk about? To be sure, nothing new! There's a message floating around in the air today that is 2000 years old. Since men first heard it, they have written it, they have talked about it, they have analyzed it, they have interpreted it! Today, we are at the point we must begin to live it and as it was originally intended.

Alvin Toffler, in his book Future Shock, talks about the 800th lifetime. He makes his point in the following fashion: if the last 50000 years of man's existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each, there have been about eight-hundred such lifetimes. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last 70 lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last 6 lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last four has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last 2 has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life have been developed within the present, the 800th lifetime.

Toffler clearly and validly argues that we are upon a threshold in Destiny, we are in the making of something totally new. It is up to each of us here this morning to make that new era one of Christian love. But to do it, we must do it now in a way that's very much like a person deciding whether or not to commit suicide. As long as a person continues to debate whether or not he will take his own life, he is safe, for there is really no question in his mind he wants to live. The person who no longer wishes to live rarely lets anyone know until after he is gone, for he actually knew that death was his answer.

This morning we must decide whether or not to live. It is no longer a matter to be put off to the future. It is, of course, a matter of priorities. As long as I continue to worry more about money, what kind of car I drive, where I live and what I wear, I continue to decide the Christian life is not for me. But I pray that the day is coming in my life when I will choose to set aside my earthly possessions and strength to bring the kingdom of love to Earth.

For those of you this morning who are children, continue in your ways, for Christ was right when he said you are the kingdom of heaven. You know only love, and you must be taught the ideas of prejudice, discrimination, and hate. And those of you this morning who are teenagers, get with i!t Put your age of Aquarius to work: give up the little cliques, the idle gossip about your classmates, and get down to the work of loving your fellow man. For those of us who are adults, our road is perhaps the hardest. It seems as though we will lose all those things we have worked so hard to gain, and that is not an easy task. But if we can have the faith and the confidence to dream and know of a better world, it will make our transition from self-centered hate to outreaching love an easier one.

I cannot say for sure that all I have spoken this morning is truth; I only think it is.  Again, I call for Christian Revolution! I plead for a change in our ways! To change with love is to change together, and if we are together in the spirit of true brotherhood, it can only make our task that much easier.