Calvin Synod Herald, 1983 (83. évfolyam, 2-4. szám)

1983-04-01 / 2. szám

CALVIN SYNOD HERALD-5 —

REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA

Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge gave the 1982 George Washington Honor Award to the Rev. Béla Szigethy for this sermon delivered at the First Presbyterian Church, Rolling Bay, Washington, on July 4, 1982.

“TRUTH AND FREEDOM”

“Jesus then said 'If you continue in my word, you ... will know the truth, and the truth will make you free ... I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin ... If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed"' (John 8:31, 32, 34, 36).

1. Writing this sermon on the subject of freedom, — and I ask you to bear with me —, I could not help but recall that from December 1918 through October 1940, for 22 years, together with another four million Hungarians, I was forced by the Versailles-Trianon peace treaty (actually, a peace dictate) to live under the oppressive and exploiting rule of the so-called successor states. To give you one of the milder rules forced upon us by the Romanians to whom Transylvania, one third of dismembered Hungary was given by the western powers, — in my 99% Hungarian speaking hometown we were not allowed at the post office and other public places to speak Hungarian but only Romanian. Another instance, when I married my wife in 1938 and took her to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, where I had organized a Hungarian Reformed congregation and built a church, as we, husband and wife walked in the streets and, naturally, conversed in Hungarian, we quite often were rudely shouted at, “vorbeste romaneste,” speak in Romanian. Such were just “minor” violations of our human rights, and at this time I do not want to speak about the major ones, which were many. Then, in the fall of 1940, northern Transylvania was returned to Hungary, and since our hometowns were in that area, we repatriated there and enjoyed our religious and national freedom. At the end of World War II, when northern Transylvania was again ceded to Romania, rather than to go back to the state of oppression and by then Communist rule, I accepted the mission given me by the president of the Reformed Church in Hungary, to go to Western Europe and organize the church activity among the hundreds of thousands of displaced Hungarian Protestants, which activity, eventually, brought us over to the United States of America.

After 22 years of a kind of slavery, I did not want to lose my freedom again. It is then natural that I deeply understood the poet Sándor Petőfi, who during the fight of independence of Hungarians in 1848 — 49, against the then oppressing rule of the Austrian Habsburgh dinasty wrote this, his shortest poem:

“Freedom, love,

These two I want.

For my love I sacrifice my life;

For freedom, I sacrifice my lovel'

I also deeply understood what Patrick Henry meant by saying,

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. ”

I also understood what the signers of the Declaration of Independence meant when in 1776 they concluded the document in this sentence:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

Certainly, none of these would agree with those who gullibly nowadays often say, “Better red than dead!” Freedom! Yes, political freedom, religious and cultural freedom. Yes, economic freedom, for which so many came to America! Yes, human freedoms which can be appreciated to an increased measure by those who were deprived of them for some time. Here in America, we certainly have plenty of reasons to be grateful for such freedoms, not forgetting that there has been a precious price paid for those freedoms and that freedom is never cheap, but costly, yet worth the cost, and longed for by all people, because God built that longing into every human heart.

This is the first thing I wanted to touch upon today. But today I want to mention some other aspects of freedom, too.

2. Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.”

Knowing the truth, one of its greatest teachings is the realization that human life has its limits, limitations, borders, which must not be violated.

We can exist only in the atmosphere, which we artificially must take with us even when we succeed in flying in space. Again, exposed to too low or too high temperature, we die. We can remain healthy or alive at all, only if we introduce into our system the right elements and in the right amount. We must observe the physical and chemical limits of human life or else we suffer and die. So we are enclosed within the limits of earth’s atmosphere, a few degrees of temperature, certain kinds and amounts of nourishment. Is that freedom?

We must observe the laws of earthly life to procreate, to grow, to develop. Is that freedom?

Nations and empires must observe certain moral laws or else, moral decay will demolish them as it happened to the mighty Roman Empire.

Wherever we turn our attention we must see that human and earthly life has its limits, and freedom exists within those limits.

Jesus knew the truth when he rejected the crazy, satanic idea of jumping down from the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, ignorantly expecting that he would be supported by the angels of God. Said he, “Do not tempt the Lord your God,” do not ignore the limits of human existence. Similarly he rejected the satanic ideas of instantly turning stones into bread or conquering the earth by subjecting himself to the worship of the devil, which is the erroneous human mind. He clearly knew that he had to stay within the orderly limits of human life. He was not “free” to say or do crazy things, because