Part 5 (1/2)

As those of you who have been here on other Good Fridays know, I give that my own interpretation. Some say that I am wrong: that when Jesus Christ said ”Woman, behold thy son,” He meant He was directing her attention to His friend, St. John, who would be a son to her now that He was going away. Perhaps. But I like to think the other way: that He was revealing to that mother of His the thing that should justify her motherhood, and her faith, and her love. He was saying, as it seems to me, things like this:

”Behold, your Son, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh. Known and yet unknown. The Son whom the angel announced to you long ago among the Judean hills. The things that you have treasured and pondered in your heart must be brought out now to allow G.o.d to open to you their hidden meaning. For I am your Son, your first-born. In these years of wonder and strangeness I have not forgotten the love and care and protection given me. Through you I grew up in the knowledge of the Scriptures and the love of G.o.d's House. No, I have not forgotten those years in the carpenter's shop in Nazareth, and the laboring for daily bread.

Neither was it easy to break away, and leave home, but G.o.d called me, and deep down in your heart you were glad that G.o.d chose me--it was the confirmation of all that the angels had whispered in your heart. You were proud of me, sure that G.o.d had somewhat in store for me that had never been known in the world, never known to the mothers of other sons. And then murmurs came to you of opposition, of the hostility of men high up in the synagogues, weird reports of my deeds, and strange teachings, and finally all that I said and did seemed to go against the authority and sanctions of your religion, and you were fearful of my mind. And now I have come to this disgraceful end. This cross is the fruitage of those thirty years spent with you and in the fulfilling of G.o.d's pleasure. This fruitage of the Cross is not the fruitage that G.o.d gives to the sons of evil as seems to be the just fruitage of these thieves crucified beside me. In reality this Cross is the crown of my life, and some day the world will see it, and take Me unto itself, and the Cross will have become a throne.”

It is the word of justification and comfort that Jesus gives the broken-hearted Mary. It is the word of G.o.d to woman. ”Now we see through a gla.s.s darkly, but then face to face.” In Jesus, the son of Mary, we see what the world will be like 'when the years have died away.'

It was on these special occasions that he so frequently was inspired.

Easter Day, for instance, with its many services and huge congregations stimulated him to the utmost, and to many of us it seemed as if we stood in one of the vestibules of immortality, certainly in the temple of this man's faith. He preached at both the eight and the eleven o'clock services, and each time with undiminished vigor and clarity of thought.

In the interim, he personally greeted all the paris.h.i.+oners who remained after the first service for breakfast in the parish house.

Frank Nelson loved the ministry, and his convictions glowed and radiated pervasively. Innumerable scenes flood the memory, and I recall an ordinary Sunday which included the early celebration of the Holy Communion at eight forty-five A.M.; an address to his Chapel Cla.s.s at nine forty-five; and a sermon at eleven o'clock; in addition to all these he went, in the afternoon, to a labor union memorial service.

There he repeated the morning's sermon from the text, ”The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” It was the fruit of all his ministry to the bereaved, and of his penetrating, sympathetic insight into the loneliness and devastation of death's inroads. As he brought the Christian faith to bear upon the problem, he imparted by clarity of thought and eloquence of words as well as by accent and genuineness of emotion that cert.i.tude which is possible only for one who himself possesses that which he proclaims. This sermon was a notable example of Phillips Brooks' definition of preaching, ”Truth conveyed through personality.” The few notes here included give only a glimmer of the range of his thought, and do not adequately convey the personal factor which made one want to rise up and call him blessed:

Men have ever striven to conquer death, and never succeeded.

Christ too died and though He rose from the dead, He did not return to this life and take up its habits and tasks again. St.

Paul was not thinking of overcoming death in this way, but rather of the new consciousness and gift of power that Christ has given men. Christianity is a conquering power. Faces what appears to be the impossible, what experience declares to be impossible, but does so with the word that ”all things are subject to Christ.”

”We see not yet all things put under him--but we see Jesus.”

There is nothing that may not become subject to the spirit of man through Christ.

Christ facing human problems: the fear of G.o.d's wrath, superst.i.tions arising from doubt of G.o.d's moral goodness, sickness, sorrow, hopelessness, sin, worldliness, bitterness of spirit and mind, suffering, and at last conquering death as an enemy by His resurrection.

Death's mastery over us is not a physical thing. It is its power over our spirits, its apparent defeat of hope, of work begun, of love entered into, of faith laid hold upon, and the bitterness that is the fruit of that defeat. Through Christ the power of achievement was strengthened, and released by death. We resent death perhaps--reason for shrinking is that so impersonal and physical a process should be able to overcome a spiritual consciousness and experience. We resent always the victory of a lower over a higher order. (Feb. 28, 1926)

Frank Nelson combined a happy idealism with common sense, and when the occasion moved him to inspired utterance, he drew upon the deep wells of his being, and spoke without effort as waters flow from a fountain. This quality characterized many of his speeches, such as the one in Music Hall after the Armistice of 1918 which he himself considered his best, and those at Masonic gatherings when men flocked to drink in his words and to be in his presence. He overshadowed other speakers, and what Henry Ward Beecher said of another is doubtless applicable to Mr.

Nelson: ”When he speaks first, I do not care to follow him, and if I speak first, then when he gets up I wish I had not spoken at all.”

The worth of so much preaching troubled him at times, and he too had his darker moments. Sometimes he paced up and down Howard Bacon's study never saying a word, or perhaps bursting out in boyish petulance, ”When I am down, the parish is down. Why can't they stay up?” At a staff meeting one morning he told the incident of an organization that had requested him to address them, and when he asked on what subject, the reply was ”Oh! just talk!” He pa.s.sed this off as a sort of reflection on his fluency of words.

Preaching was desperate business to him because ”the burden of the Word of the Lord” lay upon him, and if he rose to great heights, he also was dashed down to the depths. To preach for forty years from the same pulpit is an exacting task, and the net result of such an experience is no better summed up than in the remark of a humble paris.h.i.+oner by whose house he was walking one morning with Frederick C. Hicks. It was Monday, and the woman was hanging out her wash. Mr. Nelson said, ”Let's stop and ask her what she remembers of my sermon.” The good soul was non-plussed, and could not recall even his text. And then with a leap of inspired insight she said, ”But Mr. Nelson, this cloth is whiter every time I pour water over it.” Perhaps this is the lasting effect on every humble soul who patiently waits as G.o.d communicates His truth in earthen vessels.

People came to be in Frank Nelson's presence. He never let them down. He had said of William S. Rainsford's preaching: We came here as church people, professing the faith, and as ”we sat before him we saw poured forth the reality of the thing we had professed to believe in ... He took us to whom religion was a profession, and made it a pa.s.sion.”

Christ Church people find these words set up poignant echoes of a day when they sat before Frank Nelson and heard the living Word of G.o.d.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] _Central Anglicanism_, Charles W. Lowry, Jr. _The Witness_ May 27, 1943. Used by permission.

[14] _The Servant of The Word_, Farmer p. 6, Charles Scribner's Sons.

Used by permission.

[15] Farmer in his brilliant book, _The Servant of the Word_, makes this illuminating comment on preaching: