Sl. m ■4 *«*«*■ utStttS- ii m ^i^^ i ^^^ H t* ^^^^^ ^^mm 1 John Kelman ^| Waste B ^^^^Mrl 1^^ ^SSSi tt ^^^ ^Mh' ^^ ^^R ataxtt^ B ^wpp ^^^^ BSsil ^^M « ^BS^^^^SiI^S ^|j*ffiK±82i i^^j^ (5ti|^^jil^'^^^^i$? ^ "^iTt rtMfj'H ^tfT't 3 ^^^^^gpl i^ ^«w! f253 »\ 11 K 2m wo z ^^^^^^K^S 5^ Hp^I^^^^^t ^^^^^^ ^|^^^^^^^;^ffi S I^B ^^^Sl^^^g tTj^ ^^ jJ^ffi^^^S i^^^^^p S ■ IB^^I /9r. W W/ .K2qW32 WASTE JOHN KELMAN D.D. V ^^^F P^\NCifd^ AUG 28 1979 BV42.53 .K21W?" WAST AU6 " '^EOLOGXAL StV^ A SERMON Delivered in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church New York City Sunday, April 3, 1921 By the Pastor, the REV. JOHN KELMAN D.D. Printed by the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church WASTE ''She poured it upon His head:' Matthew 26:7 ''He hath poured out His soul." Isaiah 53:12 IN the exquisite story of St. Matthew we see the woman following her characteristic impulse. Love and forgiveness had made Jesus precious beyond all the world to her, and there was no abandonment of generosity too lavish for her great heart. As her gift was without preparation so it was without after-thought, a thing to remain at the very topmost point of grateful memory, which no need nor poverty that might come to her would ever tempt her to regret. The disciples, whose conduct has been so much criticized, said exactly what might have been ex- pected of them. These fishermen were no judges of perfume, though they were very good judges indeed of poverty. They knew exactly what was in the bag and how far it would go, alike for their needs and their charities. Neither were they judges of refined sentiment, such as moved this woman's heart to her great deed. They were practical men, very masculine indeed — crudely masculine. They had been much troubled by sentimental people who frequently hampered what they took to be their business, but this was really too much. Their margins were always narrow and every penny counted. Here were two hundred pence gone for nothing. So far as they could see there was nothing whatever to show for this most rash expenditure. You will note that it was not only Judas, but also the good disciples who spoke and thought like this. They had much to say for themselves. Thrift is an obvious virtue, especially to unimaginative minds. Political economy was behind them in their sentiment about luxuries of this kind, although they did not know that this was so. Turning now from the woman and the disciples both we find the critics of life echoing their language. If the disciples had much to say for themselves these critics have more to say. There is the obvious wastefulness of nature. Think of the seed scat- tered upon the ground or upon the salt and barren sea. For one seed that takes root and achieves any future whatever there must be countless grains that perish every spring-time. Think of the dust that blows about the world — debris of man's handiwork and of the ancient rocks. Think of the power running to waste in all imagin- able fashions, where water is plunging down a mountain-side or the waves of the sea are rocking. If the critics of nature be poetically minded, they may add to these the enormous waste of beauty that there is in desert sunsets and in mountain flowers, which blaze and bloom by the million with never an eye to see them. It is true that science shows unexpected laws of recovery. Her revelation of the conservation of energy and the transmutation of one form of force into another is a heartening and suggestive thought. Aided by man's arrangements she will turn heat into light and weight into driving power. She will make countless changes of a similar kind, so that what is lost in one form may be gained more or less in another. Yet all compensations are very- partial, and the best machine that man ever made is but a wasteful mechanism. When we come to the human story, the wasteful- ness is not less in extent and is infinitely more terrible in tragedy. It would seem as if the great river of humanity were streaming out forever to the sea, accomplishing but a fraction of its possible purpose, and for the most part futile and inef- fective. Thoughtful writers are continually re- minding us of the wastefulness of history, and com- plaining of the incalculable loss, both to utility and beauty, which has been caused by no necessary law of nature whatsoever, but by the sheer de- structiveness of man in all generations. That no doubt has greatly impoverished the world, but the place at which we meet it is in our own life and experience. Here we are confronted, first of all, with the wastefulness of death. Every- one who took part in the great war was impressed with this more than perhaps with any other ele- ment in it. A visit to the ravaged fields of France and Flanders shows like a walk through some deserted dumping-ground of broken stone and iron and charred remains of wood. The very earth has been torn to ribbons, and everywhere over vast territories the labors of centuries have been reduced to a rubbish-heap. The sea is as full of this trouble as the land, and no thoughtful man can refrain from asking to what purpose is the waste of all those tons of iron and of all the in- ventions and labors of men that lie paving the bottom of so many oceans. Nor is this waste of force and materials only. Throughout all the battle-fields and in the slime of the deepest sea, millions of men, who ten years ago lived lives full of strength and promise, have left their bodies sinking swift to decay. But it is not only the war in which we see this process. Everywhere all around us the story is the same. The infant mor- tality of our cities is one of the most pressing prob- lems of modern civilization. In China and in Europe men and women and their offspring are dying by the million from famine and disease. Some of these have made little contribution to the world, and given little promise of making any if they were spared, but all around us we see the un- regardfulness of death. A great surgeon suddenly cut off carries with him powers and secrets that were ameliorating life and saving it. A great linguist when he dies shuts off from the earth the fruit of a life- time's years of patient study. A great statesman carries to the grave not only the secrets of past diplomacy, but the powers which might have blessed the future world. To make up for such waste, thousands of young men and women will have continually and painfully to toil once more over the same ground in order that some part of the loss may be regained. But one's heart is sore when one remembers the books unwritten and the work undone, and the insensate costliness of it all. But we do not need to think of death in order to realize something of this depressing waste. Life itself is wasteful in countless ways. Vast numbers of people have somehow got into the wrong voca- tion in life and found themselves fixed in situations in which they will never do their best. By some mistaken choice or wrong guidance, by some un- fortunate drift of circumstances, they sHp into their profession without sufficient consideration of their powers. Now they are tied down to condi- tions in which they will never fulfill the richest possibilities of their lives. Upon such people there comes at times a spirit of fierce rebellion, and they envy anyone who is where he obviously ought to be, and is facing tasks for which he is fitted. Similarly, there are countless cases of wasted possibilities of love in homes where some misun- derstanding or lack of appreciation, or neglect of duties, has silenced the voice and killed the ardor of hearts that might have been warm and glad. There are those weakened by long illness and hindered through weary months and years from doing work which calls them continually. Splen- did powers of service are laid aside and in abeyance. The bugles are blowing, but they cannot join the army, and it does not seem as if there were any compensation for them in the inevitable retire- ment to which they are condemned. In all our prisons there is an enormous quantity of cleverness and even of character lost to society. Some sud- den temptation or some set of adverse circum- stances swept the prisoner into crime, and so ruined his chances. It would be impossible to estimate the amount of waste for which this stands in our modern civilization. Besides all this, in quite ordinary places and in unsuspected quarters there are broken- hearted men and women who, from one reason or another, appear to have lost their place in the world and their chance in life. They once aspired to high things, but their souls are slowly dying or being killed within them. When we think of all this — the unrequited love, the lost labor, the wasted powers, the vain anxieties — it would seem as if the majority of human facts were unavailing. Men and women are fighting, toiling, living, dying in the dark, in a struggle which is pathetically brave, but which appears to be as useless as it is courageous. As they watch the waste of vitality, labor, suffering and love, they grow bitter and they say bitter things. Their quarrel is not with pain but with the uselessness of it all. God is great, doubtless, but He is wasteful. There is not even the apparent recovery or the partial recovery which nature shows and science reveals. They have found as yet no satisfying spiritual interpretation for the tragedy of life in which they are involved. With uncomprehending hearts they repeat the old question. To what purpose is this waste? To all these, and to ourselves who have gone among their company when we were silenced by the appalling aspect of life, and when the darkness was falling upon all hope and faith that once en- couraged us, this morning there comes sounding down through the gathering dark a voice from very ancient days. He hath poured out His soul^ it cries. We look around the field of wreckage in which we stand, the wreckage of the broken hopes of men and women, and find one thing still erect amid it all, the tall cross of Calvary. There we see the huge wound and leakage of the world, a waste compared with which all other extrava- 8 gance sinks out of sight. Jesus was wasted. Who valued Him during those priceless years? Who knew the worth of His wisdom, the majesty of His Kingdom, the preciousness of His life? Truly the world knew Him not. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. There upon Calvary the royal wine of His blood was poured out upon the barren sands. He hath poured out His soul indeed. As His blood sank into the ground beneath the cross, so all that He stood for and had striven to do for men seemed to vanish. Never in all the lavish history of the world was there any such spectacle of waste as that of Calvary. Yet the astonished world has discovered that in the end nothing of all that He spent was wasted. Where is the spilt blood of Christ today? Not lost upon the sands of Palestine, but found upon the guilty hearts of countless sinners. Where is the love that seemed so vainly spent upon those who did not want it? It was set free by the cross to reappear in the love and service and sacrifice which are slowly changing the selfish heart of the world. The end is not yet, and there is much to vex and to alarm us still. Yet everjrwhere this is true, that Jesus Christ has set the ocean of God's love flowing, until today it laves every shore. There is no corner in all the world that it has not approached. In every land there are countless men and women who have brought their sin to His healing waters, and the love of God is taking away the sin of the world. They have felt the sorrows of the cross bring Jesus to them in every sorrow of their own. They have brought to Him their broken work and all the dis- couragement of their failure, and been able to take heart again and go on in spite of the knowledge that they would never attain to more than a frag- ment of their purposes. It has touched the death of the world and it is not only His grave that has let its prisoner go free. A voice has cried to all the dead, and life more abundant than the life they lost revitalizes the spirit of believers. Oh, I ap- peal to you, derelict spirits, that feel yourselves flung high and dry above the receding tides of life, that tide of love and hope is risen to your level. The love of Jesus, the love of Calvary, it is lapping round your heart. It will reach you yet, if you will. It is quite evident that all this teaches us a great secret about life. Christ neither lived nor died for Himself alone. As in the resurrection, so it was in all else that He did. He was a first fruit of the race, pouring out His soul in a wastefulness more ap- palling than that which is discouraging and dead- ening faith through all the centuries. He threw Himself away with the very lavishness of God, in a larger and more generous spirit of abandonment than has ever been conceived by man. He has proclaimed to all the victims of life's wastefulness, that, if they will, it pays in the end. In Him we see our- selves written large in this great tragedy that has come upon us all. We too, if we will but catch His inspiration and believe His love, may pour out our soul and know that it is not in vain. It is not lost, that precious sacrifice that you have made. Somewhere in God's great universe it is gathered again and set in its appropriate place. There is no waste of anything at all within the bounds of His faith and love. There is only a lo change into something richer and more precious. Let it go, my brother, my sister — your life and ail its burden of promise and of faith. Let it go, and its disappearing streams will reappear in purer waters and more powerful current in God's good time. Let us return for a moment to the woman of the story. Have we any precious ointment to bring to our dying Master? Can we not join her as she pours the most costly thing she has upon His head? Let us give Him what we have. It is all we can do and it is all He asks. The life that seems wasted, the fortune and wealth, the love and hope. The best economy for these is to spend them all on Him. No labor, life, pain which is given in love to Jesus Christ is really lost. In some cases it may be an active and conscious sacrifice of our own opportunities and possessions for the furtherance of His Kingdom. In other cases it may be simply the acceptance of life as it is, and the willing surrender of much that has been very dear to us. In either case there is in His acceptance no waste at all. / know Whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day. II DATE DUE 1 r CAYLORD PAINTED INUS. A.