Beeson podcast, Episode 411 Dr. James Earl Massey September 25, 2018 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. From time to time, your life intersects with someone that really is deserving of the word "great". We use that word a lot loosely and it doesn't mean a whole lot. But Dr. James Earl Massey was a great servant of Jesus Christ, had tremendous influence on me, on Dr. Smith, on Beeson Divinity School, and on the kingdom of God. We were privileged, Dr. Smith and I, to participate in his home-going service at the church he founded in 1954 in Detroit, Michigan, the Metropolitan Church of God. It was a great celebration, Dr. Smith- Robert Smith Jr: Yes, it was. Timothy George: ... just to hear testimony- Robert Smith Jr: Yes, it was. Timothy George: ... from people who had known him and walked with him. We're going to listen today to what was the last sermon he preached here at Beeson in Hodges Chapel. He preached many, many times for us, probably more than anybody else in the whole history of our school. But this was the final sermon he gave. He speaks with great depth and insight as he always does, but also with tremendous passion in this particular sermon. Dr. Smith, can you tell us about it? Robert Smith Jr: Helmut Thielicke wrote a book, a little exercise for young theologians. This message is a little guidance for Christians. The word "guide", "guidance", and "guiding" are used 28 times in this sermon. 28 times. He says, "The meaning of our faith and the assurance of where our faith can take us is when we follow the guidance that God is giving." Dean George, this was, as you said, his last sermon at Beeson Divinity School. I know you wanted to open up a door for him to come in April if he was able to come. He was not able. Robert Smith Jr: But it's as if he is a mystic like his father in ministry, Howard Thurman. He is in the sermon, I think, glimpsing at the grave and gazing at the glory. I really see that constantly, and often saying, as he has said to us, the best is yet to come. We were born for more than mortality. There is more that ought to be and scripture tells us that there's more that will be. It's his last will and testament to Beeson Divinity School. Robert Smith Jr: He often spoke about coming back to Beeson, but he leaves us with this. I think that he's ushering us in this sermon into the presence of God for the purpose of worship, and worship was important for him. He hated entertainment. He wanted real worship. The three functions that he's taught all of these years that there ought to be in every sermon, proclamation is there, teaching instruction is there, and then inspiration is there. Robert Smith Jr: His favorite psalms were Psalm 73 and Psalm 32 and you see him specifically bringing up certain emphases and holding them up for examination. The title, Lead, Kindly Light, taken from John Henry Newman's hymn, well, Dr. Massey is a concert pianist and he's playing music for us, not only the major chords, but also the minor chords. His theme, thematic with specific emphases on verses of scripture. Experiential, testimonial, yeah. He would say and he shows, "You don't preach beyond your experience," he says. Robert Smith Jr: So, here's a man who knows what it's like for he and his wife to have five miscarriages and for him to be born miraculously when God providentially leads a woman over to make sure that his mother who was pregnant with him is doing okay and is able to deliver the other baby. Very passionate. I'll never forget this, Dean George. I hear him once again saying, "Forgive me for raising my voice, but I'm feeling this," or, "Ah. I wish I could tell it like I feel it, but I know it's true anyhow." Robert Smith Jr: Well, providence is the guiding principle throughout the sermon. You and I know he's such a wordsmith. You and I know what he uses choice words. He says more buy saying less and very eclectic by bringing in poetry and bringing in scripture and bringing in personal individuals who have made a great impact for the kingdom of God. This is the message that will always claim our attention because I think he's saying, "Bye bye, but not so long. I will see you in the morning." Timothy George: That's great. I want to mention a new book. It's a book of writings by Dr. Massey called Views from the Mountain: Select Writings of James Earl Massey just off the press from Aldersgate Press, edited by our friend, Barry Callen and Dr. Curtiss Paul DeYoung. It's a great collection of Dr. Massey's writings and I commend it to you. Let's go now to Hodges Chapel and hear the final sermon of James Earl Massey preached at Beeson Divinity School. James Massey: 71 years ago, shortly after my conversion, I was reading Psalm 32 and I had a holy moment of realization when I came to verse eight, for in the words that appear in verse eight, I heard my name spoken and God addressing me, "I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go. I will guide you with My eye upon you." I immediately committed my life to be guided. Shortly afterward, I was reading Psalm 73, an earlier believer's affirmation about being guided. When I came to verse 24, I saw what that earlier believer was affirming about his own experience and I saw the ultimate purpose for being guided. James Massey: Verse 24, "You are guiding me with Your counsel and afterward, You will receive me to glory." Those two psalms are my favorite psalms. The theme of guidance that appears in the verses I have quoted have given me steadiness across the ensuing years. We humans are chronic mistake makers when left to ourselves. We need wisdom from beyond ourselves in order to live as we should and develop as we were designed to develop. God has offered us counsel so that that can happen. But the counsel must be received with openness and followed with trust if it is to work in our interest. James Massey: I can still remember across the chasm now of more than 50 years when our seminary professor, who was also the dean at Overland Graduate School of Theology at that time, Dean Roger Hazelton would say to us, "God has a controlling interest in the course of our living from day to day. It is an interest on which we can rely and with which we may in some real measure cooperate." I took him seriously because I was experiencing this already. God has a controlling interest in your life. How are you cooperating with Him? If you do, there are certain benefits. James Massey: I like the way Helmut Thielicke has put it in his autobiography, Notes from a Wayfarer. He confessed as a Christian believer that he has lived with a divine curiosity of a person who has discovered the new and the unknown, not only of something that is hidden, but at the same time, something that is secure. It happens through guidance. The fact that God has given me, along with millions of others, guidance has given me the comforting courage to live. At 85, every day, I awaken with a joy of life, wanting to go on because I believe the best is yet to be. James Massey: Earlier in the century, the last century, Paul Laurence Dunbar composed and published a very celebrated poem that he entitled with one word: Life. Short, but pungent, here is the message. "A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in, a minute to small and hour to weep in, a pint of joy to a peck of trouble, and never a laugh but the moans come double. And that is life." He was lamenting the hard and admittedly tragic existence he was experiencing as the Black son of former slaves. But notice the next section of the poem. "A crust in a corner that love makes precious, with a smile to warm and tears to refresh us, joy seems sweeter when cares come after, and a moan is the finest of foils for laughter. And that is life." James Massey: How different the two views. Both are emotional, both are existential, but only one is essential because Paul Laurence Dunbar was voicing the Christian faith that had helped him to view life from above and not from below. How do you see your existence today? God's counsel is offered to one and to all and to those who receive it with openness on a certain day at a certain hour in a certain place, perspective comes. Insight happens. Answers are received. Meaning is shared. Relief is experienced. Direction is given and courage to live inspires you for yet another hour. That's what happens when you accept guidance. James Massey: Now, this assurance of guidance has blessed my life, my continuing pilgrimage, with so many experiences, which help me to affirm the future in the way that I just described to you that I face it every day. I shared some of those experiences several years ago in publishing my own autobiography, Aspects of My Pilgrimage. In it, I also shared a story that my mother related to me about how God's guidance was responsible for my not being stillborn. Here's the story as my mother told it to me. James Massey: On January 3rd, 1930, Friday night, a saintly widowed member of the family church was at choir rehearsal and while singing in the choir, rehearing the hymns to be sung for the following Sunday, she felt impressed to go by the Massey home after choir rehearsal ended and see how Sister Massey was doing because Sister Massey was near the end of a very troublesome pregnancy. The widow's anxieties were partly eased when she neared the house, which was four blocks away from the church, and she saw no light in the front windows of the house. So, she went on to her own home two blocks further. James Massey: Assuming that all was well inside, she felt at ease. She had obeyed. But the next morning, the impression came again. Go and see how Sister Massey is doing. So, she put her feet out in the snowy streets. It had snowed again and she came those two blocks and when she got there, George Wilson Massey Sr. was not there. He had gone two blocks away from the house to the grocery store to telephone the family doctor because his wife was in crisis. She went on into the house when she arrived and there she found Elizabeth Massey and knew what the distress was. James Massey: She took hold of a child's foot she saw protruding. She readily located the other foot. She was a midwife. She then gave a needed turn to the rest of the child's body and extricated the child, discovered that the umbilical cord had wrapped around the child's neck and it could not go any further. So, she assisted the delivery process. When Dr. Henderson arrived, the birth crisis had been brought under management and the child was breathing on his own. I was that child. If it had not been for a woman obeying a guiding God, I would not be here today. James Massey: I learned very early that it is always important to ask for guidance and to accept the guidance and to follow the guidance with obedience because guidance can be someone's ticket into life or someone's best passage from life. I learned very early that that circumstances of one's life do not matter when guidance is given to them because guidance helps you manage those circumstances, whatever they are. I learned early that guidance can be a life or death issue for the person who receives it or for someone who is touched by the life of the one who receives it or rejected it. James Massey: How are you managing the guidance God grants you? You see, there is guidance from God to bless your pilgrimage and mine. All of us need it. All of us can have it. We need only to accept it and obey it. It is never withheld from us. It is a gift. "I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go. I will guide you with Mine eye upon you." God is speaking to every one of us. William Cullen Bryant voiced it well in many of the works that he wrote. In 1815, Bryant was 21 years old and was just recovering from a recent illness and was not yet fully into the work of his life. James Massey: At 21, who is fully into the work of their life? Be encouraged, seminarians. Give yourself time. Give yourself time and give God time. Don't rush it. Having gone through this, he was feeling forlorn and depressed and lost. He was out walking one evening near the village where he was to spend the night and he noticed in the rosy splendor of the darkening sky a solitary bird wining its away along the now shadowy horizon. He watched until the bird was lost to his view in the distance. James Massey: He did not know from where the bird was headed. He did not know from which the bird had come. But he noticed that the bird seemed to have a surety in its flight. As he contemplated this, perspective happened, insight came, and a poem resulted, To a Waterfowl. You remember the poem? Perhaps you'll remember the affirmation that Bryant stated as he thought about the bird's directive flight. "There is a power whose care teaches thy way along that pathless coast. The desert in the illimitable air, lone wandering but not lost." James Massey: How lonely do you feel as you live? You see, life is a very lonely existence. But you're not lost when you're guided. Forgive me for raising my voice, but I'm feeling this. Then there's that other affirmation that he soon added and it is perhaps, in my view, the most passionate utterance in poetry about personal faith and divine guidance. Here's that line. "He who from zone to zone guide through the boundless sky thy certain flight, in the long way that I must tread alone will lead my steps aright." I'm so convinced of this because of all the years it has happened for me that I face every day with joy and gladness. James Massey: I have said this before. I say it again because it bears upon what I'm preaching about now. My wife and I in the course of our 60-some years of marriage have lost five children in the course of our togetherness. But I have never asked God why. Oh, I know some of you are saying, "The psalmist did. The prophets did." Yes. But I've learned from their mistakes. You see, since they came, Jesus has come, and because Jesus has come, we have much more life than they had. I don't have to ask God why. That's not my business because he's guiding. James Massey: Now, this kind of steadying faith has come to some only after they've sought it when pressured by dire circumstances as they lived. John Henry Newman was one such struggler. Born in 1801, he was the son of a London banker. He was born about 14 years after William Cullen Bryant, who was born in 1815, as I mentioned. John Henry Newman was like William Cullen Bryant. Very studious, very deeply religious, tidy in mind, and excelled as a college student. Newman chose the priesthood as his vocation, like many of you have chosen the ministry. I hope you were guided to choose it because if you were guided to choose it, you'll never run into anything you cannot manage. James Massey: But here he was, young Newman, facing ill health, subject to moods of sadness, and he often suffered dark nights in his soul. In 1833, he was traveling abroad in Italy and he had another period of illness and was able to travel back to England for several weeks. So, he was lonely, he was aching to get back home, and he was impatient about not being actively involved in ministry. So, like William Cullen Bryant, he was forlorn and lost. That's the way he felt. His sensitive spirit bore this burden. James Massey: But one night on a boat, he saw a dark cloud in the sky and above the clouds was a light that finally broke through the cloud. In that light, he sensed with his sensitivity the caring heart of God. So, he penned the prayer lines we know and sing as the hymn, Lead, Kindly Light. Here is what he wrote in that first self-revealing verse. "Lead, kindly light, amidst the encircling gloom. Lead thou me on. The night is dark and I'm far from home. Lead thou me on. Keep thou my feet. I do not ask to see the distant scene. One step enough for me." James Massey: What have you been asking God for? How much of your life do you want to know before it happens? How much do you need to know? How much does any one of us need to know? If God is guiding, that's all we need to know. One step enough. But out of a contrite heart, he went on to write another stanza. "I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou should lead me on. I love to choose and see my path. But now, lead thou me on. I love the garish day and spite of fears, pride ruled my will. Remember not past years." James Massey: What has God had to work on in dealing with you? What roadblocks have you put in God's path as you've been living? Newman later became a leader and hero in the influential Oxford movement and his sermons and his tracks for the times that he wrote not only attracted widespread attention, but helped to convince many minds and helped to convert many lives. He finally became a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church because he felt that the Catholic Church at that time was nearer to the church as he understood from his reading of the New Testament. James Massey: Now and again, we are blessed to sense the meaning of our faith. It happens momentarily. It happens in moments of prayer. It happens in moments of worship. It happens in moments when the word is being preached. Notice I said the word is being preached. I did not mention the word "sermon". We're getting a lot of sermons these days, but not a lot of the word. If you go into the ministry, vow before God never to entertain the people and never to lead a worship in which the theme is entertainment. Much of so-called worship in our time is only entertainment and people are not getting guidance. James Massey: It happens when the word is preached. It happens when some dark experience comes into our life and the council of scripture confirms to us that God is still in control. Then we sense the meaning of our faith. But it's only momentarily. We wish it would last and last and never fade. But it does not stay as we are perceiving it in that moment and we wish for more. We long for God as he is. That's what Psalm 73 is all about. The psalmist understood this and he cried out, "My soul is thirsting for God, for the living God." Then he asked the question, "When shall I come and behold the face of God?" James Massey: Have you ever found yourself longing for God? I mean longing for God? All the while, the psalmist was mindful of God's unseen presence and so he said, "Nevertheless, I am continually with You, You holding my right hand. You're guiding me with Your counsel and afterward, You will receive me to glory." What an expectation. That's my expectation. I faced it before in the hospital more than once. But that's the assurance that steadies me. The best is yet to be. That's what calms my spirit when some cherished friend dies, as Dr. Gardner Calvin Taylor died just a few days ago. James Massey: We are mortal. We die. But we were born for more than mortality. We're living souls and we sense that there is more that ought to be and scripture tells us there is more that will be and we yearn for it, especially when pressed by our mortality. We who trust in the atoning work of Jesus Christ need not be like the poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, many whose poems are replete with dark, dark feelings about death and dark, dark feelings about our vulnerability as humans. James Massey: Listen to these lines from her Dirge Without Music. "I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the cold ground. So, it is and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind. Into the darkness, they go, the wise and the lonely, crowned with lilies and with laurel, they go. But I am not resigned. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave, gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind. Quietly, they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know, but I do not approve and I am not resigned." How dark she felt and how much light was shining on the path of that ancient pioneer, Job. James Massey: "Though He slays me, yet will I trust Him. Ah. I know that my Redeemer lives and even though the skin worms destroy this body, yet in flesh, I shall see God." What is your faith about the future? Ah, the best is yet to be. You see, God must be praised because through his grace given to us in Jesus Christ, death has been abolished and life and immortality has been brought to life through the gospel. So, the happenings of this present life do not make me believe, make me as a believer feel ashamed. They do not make me feel humiliated. They do not make me feel chagrined because I know there is more to life than dying, and I know that's the next step for me. James Massey: I know it, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory. Death is swallowed up in victory. You see, there's more to come for the believer. There's glory that's going to come. He will receive me to glory, that chabod. We can't explain it. It's just something we experience it, that Stephen saw when he was facing death in the pit when the stones were being hurled at him. You see, there was one figure that he saw that gave him the courage to keep looking up. Scriptures tell us that that one figure is described in scripture as sitting at the right hand of God. James Massey: But on that occasion, Stephen said, "I see the son of man standing." Ah. You can so live that Jesus is going to stand when you die. Ah. I wish I could tell it like I'm feeling it. But I know it's true anyhow. Helmut Thielicke voiced it rightly in that same autobiography to which I deferred earlier, written when he was 75 years old. As Christians, we are certain that the lifespans allotted to us is only the advent of still greater fulfillment. We were born not to die, but to live. The guidance God grants to you and to me is offered to us where we are because of where we are to get us from where we are to where we need to go. James Massey: At that guaranteed time and in that most prepared place, where in the words of Paul, we will know fully, even as we have been fully known. So, let me close with the last stanza of the hymn, the last stanza that John Henry Newman wrote, not the last one that was added by someone else. "So long thy power has blessed me. Sure it still will lead me on o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent till the night is gone. And with the morn, those angel faces smile, which I have loved long since and lost awhile." James Massey: I long to see the ones who taught me as a boy, who gave their lives to help my faith, who used their energy to encourage me. I long to see them again. I long to see that great crowd of witnesses. When you come into this chapel, don't take it lightly. Look up and let your faith be strengthened. This artistry is not by whim or by circumstance. It was planned to help us understand the meaning of our faith and the assurance of where our faith can take us if we follow the guidance that God gives. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast, with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.