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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, April 25, 1968
The Power Of The Resurrection—In Us
THE SOUTHERN CROSS is grateful to the Rev. Hal B.
Lloyd, pastor of the Germantown Community United
Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pa. for his permission to
publish the following excerpts from his Easter sermon, telecast
nationally by the Columbia Broadcasting System on April 14.
★ ★ ★
Today (Easter Sunday) is a great day in the Christian church,
because it is the day when we can shout to the heavens about
the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Today we are
talking about power, and by that we mean the power of God to
enter into human life and to bring changes which we could
never bring. The power to bring life out of death; the power to
bring love and mercy out of sin and evil; the power to bring
good human relationships out of terrible conflict; the power to
bring hope for the future out of hopeless tragedy. And if you
understand the import of these changes in human life, you will
understand why we sing Hallelujah when we talk about the
resurrection of Christ.
Our Bible passage today is the story of Jesus coming back to
life on Sunday morning after having been killed on Friday 1
afternoon. That was the particular event which revealed that
God has this power. But the text that I am using today to
describe how we receive the power is in the book of Philippians
in the New Testament, Chapter 3, verse 8. It says,
“For His sake I have thrown everything in my life
away... in order that I may feel the power of His
resurrection . . . and share in His suffering.. . and be like Him
in His death . . . .and be raised from death into new life.”
That is the way we receive the power in our own lives which
Jesus had in His life.
But notice that it says that we can have this power only if we
are willing to give up the kind of power which we think we
already have and to suffer the same kinds of things Jesus
suffered and to die as He did and then to come back to a new
life with the new power that we were looking for in the first
place. There isn’t any other way to get it. If we think we can get
it by some short cut, we are bound to be disillusioned. The only
way to have the power of the resurrection is to “Throw away
everything, share in His sufferings, be like Him in His death, and
then be raised from death into life.”
If we are willing to suffer the same kinds of things that He
suffered, then we shall have the same kind of power He had.
For example, if we are willing to admit that inside our own
hearts most of us are trying to run our own lives our own way
instead of letting God run them, and if we are willing to let our
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own wills die in order that His will may live within us, then the
power of a secure inner life with a sure outward direction in life
will be ours, and when we die we will live with God forever.
But those are big ifs. If we are willing to admit that we have
been doing it wrong inside our own hearts all the time, then we
can have power. But who is really willing to do that? I am not
very often, and I would suppose that you are not very often,
because it is a humiliating thing to have to sit and think that I
have really been wrong inside my heart. There is something in
human nature that usually makes us try to do the opposite, to
sit and think how we can justify whatever we have been doing in
our hearts, to insist that we were right all the time and find
arguments to prove why we were right. That’s the way the
human spirit inside us usually works.
Now what our text says is that in order to have the power of
God which raised Jesus Christ from the dead, we have to reverse
that tendency inside our hearts and be willing to lay our wills
out on the table and let them be swept away and suffer the
humiliation that that involves. That is a way of dying, really,
and it is as hard as can be. But it is the only way to get God’s
power.
Or let us look at a wider area of our lives, not just in our own
hearts in relation to God, but in own family life and community
life in relation to other people whom we live with all the time. I
think our text is saying that if we are willing to admit that in
personal human relationships we often hurt other people by
trying to dominate their lives, and if we are willing to give up
any control we might have over them and truly to take our
hands off their lives, then the power of good warm genuine
human relationships will be ours, and we will feel as though we
are alive with other people in he family or in the neighborhood.
Much of the trouble in family life and in community life and
in organizations like our schools or our churches or our
neighborhood groups comes from so many people trying to run
other people’s lives in many different little ways.
This kind of sinful attempt to dominate other people’s lives
does much more harm in human relationshios than we
ordinarily like to think. It hurts people’s feelings, it stifles their
growth, it limits their intellectual development beyond repair.
And certainly it makes any genuine human freindship between
us and the person we are dominating impossible.
If we are willing to admit that as groups in society we often
set up systems of power which hurt other people, and if we are
willing to give up some of our groups’ power in order that other
groups may be free to exercise their power in their way, then
peaceful and good relationships among groups of people in our
nation and among nations in the world will be possible. But this
requires a sacrifice, a suffering, and a death of group egos or
national pride or racial pride, and most of us find it terribly
difficult to sacrifice tthat kind of pride.
False group pride is one of the most terrible forms of evil
that there is, This is what is wrong with our race relations in
America. In our entire history almost all white people have had
a false and evil pride in their own imagined superiority, and they
have built the entire structure of the nation around this evil
idea, and the result has been the horrible pain which we have
inflicted upon black people and the terrible, but in a certain
sense wonderful, conflict that we are now engaged in in our own
country. White group pride has dominated our nation, and this
is the source of the whole trouble. Not until we kill this will we
ever have new life in our nation.
Of course the problem is that most of us white people still do
not realize this, or if we do realize it, we much prefer to shut
our eyes and shut our minds to it and to barrel along as though
it were not so.
How can we help most white Americans see the evil effects
of the white power system that permeates and dominates the
entire social and political and economic structure of America? I
don’t know. If I knew, I would say it quickly, and we could all
immediately solve the problem. But certainly one of the ways is
to talk about it openly so that we can at least expose ourselves
to the idea and talk about it and debate it and see where that
takes us.
The Quakers are good at this. The Quakers often say things
out loud that all of us ought to realize are true but most of us
don’t like to think about. At a Quaker meeting down in Black
Mountain, North Carolina, in July of 1967, a woman named
Martha Ragland talked about this evil effect of white power in
this way. She said,
“Even if we don’t knowingly participate in efforts to keep
Negroes from having access to opportunity and power, we are in
fact partners in,the enterprise by our silence, and by our
acceptance of the assumption that Negroes are indeed second
class citizens, and, after all, ought to be grateful for all the
progress that has been made in recent years.
“This basic assumption by white America constitutes an
arrogance which is so widely accepted among whites that it isn’t
even recognized, as was revealed when a reporter asked an
astronaut that obscene question, “Would you mind going into
space with a Negro?” I think to most white people that seemed
like a perfectly natural question. But keeping that a natural
question is a typical example of white power.”
That kind of thing permeates American society, and it is that
that has to be killed in us white people before we can ever have
the power of the resurrection in our country.
Our text says, “I have thrown everything away in order that I
may share in His sufferings and be like Him in his death.” And
that is what we need to do in race relations. The problem is with
white people; it isn’t with black people. The problem is not the
threat of riots by black people; it is the fact of cruel and
arrogant power by white people - even nice white people
exercise this cruel and evil power most of the time. White pride
and arrogance has twisted and crushed and destroyed the lives
of black people in the whole history of our nation. And what
has to happen is that white people will look at themseleves and
kill that evil thing in themselves. And stop the hurt and violence
which they are doing most of the time to black people in the very
structures of our society in every part of our country. If they can
do that, then the power of a new kind of life can come to us in
America. The problem is whether or not white people are going to
do that in time, and I am not sure that they are.
But the promise of our text is that if they do, then a whole
new joy and life will open to us all.
Church Called White, Racist
(Continued from Page 1)
function in conjunction with
the prevailing attitudes of the
black community,” they said.
One of the most serious
failures to recognize change,
they pointed out, is in the
area of black militancy.
Violence has been
condemned and “has even
been specified as ‘Negro
violence’ as though there
were a substantial or
significant difference between
violence in the black
community and that which
has occurred consistently
throughout the history of the
U.S. and of the world,” they
said.
The U.S., they said, has
used violence to achieve its
ends. “Black people are
encouraged to fight abroad
for white America’s freedom
and liberty. We are now
asking why it is not moral to
fight for his liberty at home.”
The statement recognized:
-“The reality of militant
protest.
-“That non-violence, in
the sense of black
non-violence hoping for
concessions after white
brutality, is dead.
-“That the same principles
on which we justify
legitimate self-defense and
just warfare must be applied
to violence when it represents v
black response to white
violence.
-“The appropriateness of
responsible, positive
militancy against racism as
the only Christian attitude
against any social evil.”
The Church will be totally
rejected by black society-as
it is being rejected now by
black youth- “unless the
Church, by an immediate
effective and total reversing
of its present practices,
rejects and denounces all
forms of racism within its
ranks and institutions, and in
the society of which she is a
part,” they asserted.
In order to make its
ministry effective, they said,
the Church “must begin to
consult the black members of
the Church, clerical, Religious
and lay.
“It must also begin to
utilize the personnel
resources of black Catholics
in leadership and advisory
positions in the whole
Church, and allow them to
direct for the most part, the
mission of the Church in the
black community,” they
added.
‘‘It is especially
important,” they continued,
“that financial resources
channeled into the work of
the Church in the black
community be allocated and
administered by black
Catholic leadership,” they
said.
The caucus made nine
demands:
-1. “That there be black
priests in decision-making
positions on the diocesan
level, and above all, in the
black community.
--2. “That a more
effective utilization of black
priests be made. That the
situation where the majority
of black priests are in
institutions be changed; that
black priests be given a choice
of assignment on the basis of
inclination and talent.
-3. “That where no black
priests belong to the diocese,
efforts be made to get them
in.. .
-4. “That every effort be
made to recruit black men for
the priesthood. Black priests
are better qualified for this
recruitment at a time when
the Catholic Church is almost
irrelevent to the young black
man.
--5. “That dioceses
provide centers of training for
white priests intending to
survive in black communities.
--6. “That within the
framework of the United
States Catholic Conference, a
black-directed department be
set up to deal with the
Church’s role in the struggle
of black people for freedom.
-7. “That in all of these
areas black Religious be
utilized as much as possible.
--8. “That black men,
married as well as single, be
ordained permanent deacons
to aid in this work of the
Church.
-9. “That each diocese
allocate a substantial fund to
be used in establishing and
supporting permanent
programs for black leadership
training.”
The statement was
adopted during three days of
meetings in which, said
caucus chairman, Father
Rollins Lambert of Chicago,
“there was considerable
conflict over the statement’s
militancy.”
Father Lambert said the
caucus hoped its statement
would have two effects:
First, that it might
influence the bishops’
meeting in St. Louis.
Second, “that it will bring
home to white Catholics the
situation which exists and the
frustration of black priests
trying to minister effectively
in the black community.”
He charged that many of
these priests are restricted by
their bishops and by “others
who hold influential positions
in the Church.’’ The
statement, he said, could be
considered a call to end those
restrictions.
“Black priests are asking
for a greater role within the
Church,” he said. While
integration is a “Christian
objective, a degree of
separatism may, of course, be
necessary to enable black
men to finally achieve true
integration,” he added.
Many of the caucus’
demands were echoed by
white priests throughout the
three-day conference--
particularly calls for a
permanent diaconate,
recruitment of more Negro
priests and the speeding up of
their Gaining.
Father Lambert said this is
a hopeful sign. Also hopeful,
in the eyes of Father Herman
Porter, Rockford, Ill., is his
own conviction that
Archbishop Dearden will
present the caucus paper to
the bishops in St. Louis, “and
support it.”
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It is a remarkable thing that when we give up our own pride
or our own ideas or our own ambitions or our own prejudice,
and suffer the humiliation of letting those things die in us, then
God can get some things done. I wonder if I dare illustrate that
by pointing out that in the past two weeks, as soon as President
Johnson gave up any plans for another term in office, the
possibilities of immediate peace in Vietnam began to appear. Or,
as soon as Martin Luther King was killed, Immediately a civil
rights bill got through Congress. Perhaps those incidents say
essentially the same thing that our text says.
When you are willing to kill something in you, then you
begin to have the power to get good things done. What do you
have to kill in yourself? What do I have to kill in myself in order
to share Christ’s sufferings and be like him in his death and be
raised from death into life?
Whatever it is, let’s do it, let’s kill it, and get the power of
new life in our hearts, in our families, in our country.
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