Meaning In Thunder 7/13/47

Scripture: John 12: 23-32

Text: John 12: 29; “The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered; others said, an angel spoke to him.”

Two people whom I knew and loved had sharply different attitudes toward many things, which fact was something of a trial to their family unity. I know, for the two were my grandfather and my grandmother. Living on a frontier farm where life was rugged, and social pleasures few, their one method of getting over the great prairie distances, much too far to walk, was by saddle horse or in a wagon drawn by a team of horses. Grandfather liked a good horse. He was not at all averse to letting a spirited and untrained mount buck him until it learned beyond equine doubt that he would not be dissuaded from his purpose to ride it somewhere. Grandmother feared even the gentlest horse, and would sometimes give up the chance to go to one of the rare social gatherings of the frontier, which she dearly loved, because of her dread of mounting a horse or riding behind the beasts.

Grandfather rather liked the noise of a summer thunderstorm - and of course welcomed every drop of raiin which fell from the clouds on the too-often parched land of South Dakota. He would sleep in tranquil peace through a really sharp summer night’s storm, or look out at it through the window with curious interest. But grandmother hated and feared the storm. Thunder was a torture to her soul; and lightning threw her near to panic. When a storm approached, she gathered up the children and descended to the storm cellar, after the (always futile) pleading with grandfather to come too. While grandfather looked into the flashing and crashing night to see what he could see, or finished his sleep in confident peace, grandmother whiled away the time of the storm singing hymns with the drowsy children in the cellar. She never was able to make much sense out of thunder, and feared it with almost uncontrollable dread.

There are a great many people who fear, and hear, more thunder than they need to -- and there are many who see no meaning in it, whether it be the bluster of a summer shower or the mighty sounds of a world in spiritual storm. It seems to many, that our generation of human life has had more than its share of thunder. Some of us are upset by it; some of us are unimpressed and stolid about it; and some look for its meaning. Certain of the politicians shout to interpret the crowd’s whim. Some nations fire great guns, release heavy bombs, exploding the atom over land or sea, underground or overhead; twice over oriental cities in warfare. We have not lacked the sound of thunder in our time.

Is it just noise and confusion and terror, signifying nothing other than the determination of headstrong humans to subdue or annihilate each other? Is this a confusion, setting aside the contention that there is under God, an order of right to be upheld, and wrong to be opposed? There are plenty of people today who, despite their surface protestations, suspect that life is mostly thunder without meaning.

But some say, “An angel speaks.” Some people try to see, beyond the thunder, the meaning of the storm -- it may be that they seek life’s meaning in spite of the thunder, looking for the voice, or spirit, that makes living comprehensible rather than chaotic. Perhaps this is a characteristic which distinguished the “ordinary” person from the “outstanding” person. Some said that it thundered; others said “an angel spoke.”

There are those who live only at the obvious surface of life, hearing the tumult and the shouting, not bothering to comprehend what life means and where it leads. There are others who search deeper, look farther, see more clearly; and to them comes the gift of understanding the meaning in the thunder.

(1) A boy may make a ukulele out of an open box and several stretched rubber bands. A little more ambitious urge finds him stretching a length of catgut across a cigar box and devising a bow of stretched horse hair, which, after a rub with rosin, he scrapes over the gut to “see how it works.” A grown craftsman may do the same thing on more skillful and accurate scale to produce a violin and bow, and whoever sees the thing, and hears the sound, perceives the noise - not so much thunder as “squeak.” And to some, a symphony may be not much more than a combination of squeaks, toots and rhythms - just jazz very poorly done.

But others perceiving something unmeasured and unseen, will say that the symphony is great music. The music, conceived in the soul of some composer, coming through the thunder of the orchestra and in its artistry, is the real meaning, not even understood by some; but known and loved by others. Some said that it thundered; others that an angel spoke.

(2) We scan the news headlines, and have thrown at our eyes the details of critical events taking place about us. Is it just the working out of human rivalry and bitterness? the good fortune or catastrophe of nature’s caprice? the rivalry and bitterness of economic competition? the jealous nationalism of whole countries refusing to offer some of their own immediate prestige for the permanent benefit of the world? Or is there to be perceived, rather, the struggle-to-be-born, of a new world of justice, peace and order? Some say it thunders ominously, incomprehensibly, hopelessly. Others say an angel speaks.

(3) Some say that nothing ever changes, particularly that evil never changes. Men once slew one another with stone axes. Now they use gunpowder and economic strangulation. Or they are willing to atomize their neighbors. But other men will say that there is in the world a spirit moving for good; reconciling men to their neighbors; redeeming our human shortcomings; building - despite frustration and pitfall - the Kiingdom of Heaven. Some say it thunders, others that an angel speaks.

(4) The distinction is pathetically present in the way people interpret Christianity. Some say it is an opiate, taking the fight out of people who ought to be warring for their survival; that its church is an outworn institution; that it is not much more than a collection of superstitions about a personal myth; that it is a pleasant habit which need not be taken too seriously or let too frequently interfere with the regular business of life; that it is a matter of choice, a private affair of concern to certain individuals and of no consequence to others; that getting enthused about it is eccentric and somewhat ridiculous.

There are others for whom Christianity is the very meaning of living. There have been men and women of many generations who have lived in the Christian faith and have died for Christianity; who have sacrificed deeply of the so-called business of life in order to advance the cause of Jesus Christ; people who have seen in Jesus the one whom God sent to make clearer the fundamental right and purpose of living, that is more than just human or mortal. There are men and women who see in the church, and what it stands for, the one sure hope for humankind - an institution that is stirring with the purposes of God even over the handicap of lethargic, contented, indifferent, unseeing, even wayward, people in its membership. Even about Christianity, some say, “O it thunders a bit;” others say, “an angel speaks.”

Had you and I been among those on the occasion described in today’s scripture reading, would we have been among those who said that it thundered? Or would we have said, “An angel speaks?” In the events of our time, do we feel only the difficulties, see only the blackness of clouds, perceive nothing but confusion in which we live like one cowed in a corner, concerned only with self? Or do we thrill to great actions, look through clouds for meaning, perceive the order that is born out of confusion’s struggle, lay hold on the faith that brings mortals through trial as men! Some hear only thunder; others the voice of angels!

Of course, to hear an angel’s voice one has to be looking for something. There has to be a mood of expectancy, whether it be looking for wheat harvest after sowing the seed, or only looking for a lost golf ball. One trouble with a good many of us is that we have ceased expecting to find significance in what goes on around us. We have stopped expecting that God will make his will known to us if we wait and watch for it. And when we expect nothing we hear nothing except thunder. We are the unsuspecting, possibly curious Moses looking at a bush fire, rather than the receptive, perceiving, worshipping Moses bowing before a mystery being made clear.

Says the poet Browning:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

Yet only he who seeks takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

And, beyond the mood of expectancy, there must also be an amount of personal discipline.

A Frenchman does not come to the United States expecting to get much out of conversation with Americans unless he sets himself to learn English. No more does a sensible American expect to learn much in France without learning how the French talk! [I learned my French on a 33 rpm record. But when I got to Paris I found that everybody talks at 78 rpm].

God speaks to us, but we cannot understand, nor comprehend, the ultimate significance of life unless we undertake the discipline which Christian living and thinking requires. It is small wonder that so many of us hear no more than thunder, when we refuse to set ourselves to the study of God’s word and the history of his revelation; when we decline regularity and sincerity in our worship of Him. We need expect no angel voices to speak to our children unless we point out to them from earliest childhood, and expect them to attend to study of, the Bible, the church statements and practice of belief, and the history of Christian action. Sunday School, or its equivalent, is not an option, but a discipline for all those who may hear more than the thunder of future years. [Adult discipline]

Finally, to comprehend the real significance of life requires a starting point, something axiomatic, unmoveable, dependable, around which the rest of life may be ordered. For the physicist, one unchanging fact, by which he reaches toward understanding of other related facts, is the speed of light. By his knowledge of the speed of light, he measures other phenomena which he seeks to comprehend.

For the Christian, the one thing by which he measures all other events and phenomena, is the revelation of God given by Jesus Christ. Without the Christ, many men hear only thunder. But through him men hear the voices of angels and see the light of heaven on earth.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, July 13, 1947 (Union Service.)

C.W.M.A. (at Wisconsin Rapids) January 13, 1948

Wisconsin Rapids, July 26, 1964