Magyar Egyház, 1958 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1958-05-01 / 5. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 9 THE MESSAGE OF WHITSUNDAY A Pentecost or Whitsunday message from the Presidents of the World Council of Churches will be read from pulpits of churches around the world on Pentecost Sunday, May 25, 1958. The message signed by the World Council’s seven presidents is a greeting addressed to Protestant, Anglican , and Orthodox churches in fifty nations and signed by the six presidents: the Rev. Dr. John Baillie, Edinburgh, Scotland; Bishop Sante Uberto Barbieri, bishop of the Central Conference of the Methodist Church in Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia; Bishop Otto Dibelius, Bishop of Berlin and Brandenburg, Evangelical Church in Germany; Metropolitan Mar Thoma Juhanon, Mar Thoma Syrian Church, Travancore, India; Archbishop Michael, Greek Archdiocese of North and South America; and Bishop Henry Knox Sherill, presiding bishop, Protestant Episcopal Church, New York; and by the honorary president Dr. George K. A. Bell, recently retired Bihop of Chichester. We celebrate today the first Christian Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out upon all flesh — “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia. Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians.“ (Acts 2:9-11). The Spirit is a Spirit of unity. “They were all together in one place” and the Spirit “rested upon each” (Acts 2:2-3). Let us then always pray that the spirit of unity in faith may prevail amongst us, in accordance with the last prayer on earth of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit is a Spirit of power. “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). Weak-willed as we are and lacking in resolve, the Gospel would be of little avail to us, if it merely instructed us how best to order our lives and our societies, but did not provide the enablement to act accordingly. At the first Pentecost men and women were lifted far above their ordinary selves, and in their weakness were made strong to do and to endure many things for which the Church still daily praises God. The Spirit is a Spirit of witness. He both bears witness Himself and inspires us to Christian witness. Part of the promise of the first Pentecost was, “You shall be my witnesses... to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). It was on this day that the world mission of the Church began. Concern for the work of Evangelism is a necessary condition of its enjoying such blessings. Moreover, our witness must be “to all the world” and “to every creature.” We must not stop short of “the ends of the earth.” Today, then, let us not only commemorate that marvelous outpouring of the Spirit on the first Pentecost long ago, but let us seek by God’s grace to recover the unity that was then so manifest, the power that was enjoyed, and the zeal for world-wide evangelism that then filled every heart. “And above all these” let us “put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:14). As we join in prayer to this end, may God’s richest and most enabling blessing fall upon us. Obligation vs. Obligation Many years ago Jesus told His disciples “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, mother, and wife, and children . ... he cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26), for / have come not to send peace, but sword, for I am come to set a man against his father, and the daughter against her mother . . . and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household (Matt. 10:34-36).” Upon reading these words many of us are ready to jump to the conclusion that Jesus requires us to hate our families, and also, that He was a destroyer of family ties. On the contrary, He was very much in favor of family relationships, for among His teachings He blessed the children (“Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not” - Luke 18:16); He taught us to refer to God as Our Father (Matt. 6:9), and at the crucifixion He gave His mother into the care of His beloved disciple (John 19:27). Also, in this instance the word “hate” is not to be taken in the literary sense of the word; but rather, it means “to love less”. Those men (and women) who choose the ministry as their profession are, at one time or another, tempted to go against this Great Demand of Christ — for after all, are we not all human beings? And since we are such, we are all tempted at various times in various ways. The obligation which a minister takes upon himself is a great one, even more so than his obligation to family, friends, and sometimes even his enemies. This does not mean that he should forget his obligations to society as a man of God, but it does mean that his obligations and duty to God and Christ come first, last, and always. No man can serve two masters (Luke 16:13). It has to be one or the other. Many of us are like that rich young man who came to Jesus to inquire about eternal life; that is, we ar not sure of how to attain life everlasting, or are not aware of the fact that eternal life does not mean unending earthly existence; but rather, it is that new phase of our earthly life which we possess when we dedicate our wills and lives to God and His service. We are so very often content to put Christ last and everything else first; or, to be more direct — we put our material obligations ahead of our spiritual and Christian responsibilities. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Greater love hath not Jesus when He laid down His life for us as His Obligation. The least that we as Christians can do is to be true followers and servants of Christ and realize that our Christian duties and obligations come before and above all else; even before our own comfort and well-being. Emery Karmazsin.--------------0-------------LETTERS FROM AMERICA President Eisenhower has said that achieving a just peace is “the urgent task of all thinking people everywhere... There will never be enough diplomats and information officers at work in the world to get the job done without help from the rest of us.” You can take part in this People-to-People Program. Your letters to friends and relatives abroad are one of the simplest and most effective means of winning the fight for peace and a free world.
