NATIONAL AWAKENING

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. 1s. 60:1 What ought to happen in this concrete and confused world, if Christ rose from the dead, and if in him we shall all rise again? He conquered sin and death absolutely, and he conquered them representatively, potentially, for us.

Can we set about to make conquest of the sin that is destroying the world about us today, and the death which is always its wages? Our light is come in the Risen Christ; the glory of the Lord is risen upon us. How may we as a people arise? How may this land of ours have a national resurrection? .. .

The first step is not resurrection, it is crucifixion. You never really get what Easter means if you haven’t been through Good Friday with Christ. It is the crucifixion of pride, narrowness, stupidity, ignorant prejudice, intolerance, fixed viewpoints about other people, laziness, lack of vision, self-satisfaction, con- ventionality that we need. There is no resurrection without crucifixion.

The reason Christ’s Cross is so central is that there is a cross at the center of life anyway: either God’s will is crucified on it so that our will may prevail; or our will is crucified on it so that God’s will may prevail... . You say, What can I do in national resurrection? I am only one person: it will take thousands. What can I do? . ..

The first thing we can do is to face 114 our own responsibility: admit that we make this country what it is, and might make it what it should be, if we would put behind us the practice of hoping somebody else would do it... . The next thing is that we recognize that only God can make us different. Only God can give us the sharpened sense of sin we need if we are to see wherein we are part of the world’s need. . . .

Third, many of us are in need of someone to help us. see ourselves as we are, to see how we might become an answer instead of a problem in this nation... . Fourth, we need to make a decision. Christ in Galilee decided to go down to Jerusalem and risk death. In Gethsemane on Thursday night he decided he would go through with death for the sake of changing and redeeming the world.

We have got to decide. . . . Fifth, we need training in the next steps of obeying God in everything, and so we need company. Only in companies can we work out our problems together, and only in companies can we make the world believe that God has the answer to its needs.