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In a few minutes, the regular Sunday morning worship service at the Glendale Presbyterian Church will begin. I am here in the tape room, the side of the sanctuary, to pass along a few words to you before the formal act of worship has its beginning. And as I stand here in this room with the tape crew all about me, I notice eight doughnuts here on the counter,

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probably for their "in-filling" during the course of the time of worship. And I'm reminded of a poem that I learned a long time ago, which goes like this, "As you travel on through life, brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole." In an essence, that's what I'm trying to say this morning. There are a lot of people

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who see only the holes, the weak places in life. There are others who see the sweetness of life. I hope that these words will bring sweetness to you, and will enkindle in you a desire to enjoy life to the full, the way God intends us to enjoy it. God bless you, my friend.

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Let us continue in worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to John, the eleventh chapter, beginning the reading at the verse which is numbered 38. Let us be upstanding for the hearing of God's word. The scene is in Bethany. Lazarus has died. Mary and Martha have summoned Jesus

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to the place, and he stands with them before the tomb of Lazarus, beginning the reading at the thirty-eighth verse. "Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, 'Take away the stone.' Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, 'Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has

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been dead four days.' Jesus said to her, 'Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?' So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, 'Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe

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that thou didst send me.' And when he had prayed this, he cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. And Jesus said to them, 'Loose him, and let him go.' Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in

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him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, 'What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.' But one of

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them, Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year, said to them, 'You know nothing at all. You do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.' He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and

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not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on, they took counsel how to put Jesus to death. And may God bless to us this reading from his word. Please be seated. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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The name of Hyru Onoda made headlines around the world this last week. He was the Japanese soldier who surrendered in the Philippine Islands almost thirty years after the Second World War had come to its end. He was the man who, when Japan surrendered, refused himself to surrender, and has, for the last three decades, been tied fast to a conflict already

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over. A man who for thirty years has been in retreat, the gear shift of his life in reverse. The kind of person of whom one could say there wasn't any real excitement in his life, for he was living in the past that was dead. He was a person who had no "we" in his experience. Now I think all of us have at one time or another met people who are

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at least in attitude like Hyru Onoda, individuals who are living in dead yesterdays, all of their hopes entombed in failures that are part of the past, mummified by memories that don't have any real relevance to today. And when you meet these kinds of people, and when you seek to deal with them, you find they take the "joy" out of life. They

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take the "X" out of the word "experiment." They add E-R-A-L to the word "fun" and make it a funeral. They, in fact, take all of the "we" out of your life. I think they are personified in the person of Lazarus as he appears in the New Testament. Like Lazarus, many of these people believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. And like Lazarus,

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they have died. He died in the flesh, they have died in the Spirit. Jesus comes ready to loose them and set them free, to bring them to new life again. Lazarus accepted the invitation of Jesus and came forth. But these individuals, without any "we" in their lives, still wrapped in the trappings of old ideas, they somehow don't hear or

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do not at least respond to that invitation. And consequently, they are in their grave clothes still. Like the mummy in the horror movies of twenty years ago, they stagger through life looking for others to choke the joy out of. Now some of these individuals are the way they are because they are tied to past expectations.

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Did you hear about the fellow who was standing on a pier watching a man fish? And the man who was fishing was pulling out of the water one fish after another. Every time he got a fish that was longer than ten inches, he threw it back in the water. And every time he got a fish that was shorter than ten inches, he kept it. And the man observed this for

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a while and then he went over and he said, "Why is it you throw back the big ones and keep the little ones?" And the fisherman looked up at him and said, "Well, you see, the bottom of my frying pan is only ten inches wide." Well, there are some people, you see, who are so locked into the frying pans of yesterday that they throw all the big ones back into

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the sea again. And some of these people who are tied in the grave clothes of the past are tied that way for just that reason. They're limited by yesterday's expectations. And some of the people who are caught this way are wrapped in the funerary trappings of fear. There's an old legend about a man driving a cart to the city of Constantinople

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and he saw a hideous old woman beside the road hobbling along and he offered her a ride and as they rode toward the city he asked her her name and she said, "My name is Cholera." And when he heard the name he was filled with fear and ordered her down from the cart and she wouldn't go and he was afraid to touch her. She said, "You will take me on, but I

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will make to you this promise. When I get to Constantinople I will kill only twelve and if I kill more than twelve then you may take this dagger which alone can end my life and you may plunge it into my heart." So not wanting to do so but having no other alternative he took her to Constantinople and within a few days hundreds were dying. He sought her

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throughout the city, finally found her and raised the dagger to end her life but she said, "Hold. I killed only twelve. Fear has killed all the rest." And there are a lot of people who put to death their best ideas, their best hopes and their best dreams because they are afraid. No, we in their living because they fear. And there are some people who are

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entombed in yesterday because of emotional immaturity. There's a very fine book which recently reached the stands by Hugh Downs, the noted television personality, entitled "Potential, the Way to Emotional Maturity." And in that book Hugh Downs makes the point that those who keep themselves locked into yesterday are basically immature, at least

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from an emotional perspective. They have a store of memories like a child's and they have no sense of responsibility to tomorrow, which is also typical of children. The mature individual Downs goes on to point out is the one who understands yesterday only in terms of what it can contribute to now and who looks forward to tomorrow only in terms of how now

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will prepare the way for a better tomorrow. That he calls maturity. And I think his point is a valid one. I've pondered this many times in my own life, how it is that when I am in the hospital or in the home of the shut-in, visiting the individual who constantly bewails their state, cries, loses emotional control, that individual breaking into tears like fountains

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at difficulties which are sometimes not much compared with the difficulties of others, that individual is indicating what Downs is talking about, a basic and foundational emotional immaturity. It's typical of those who are entombed in yesterday. Now notice please that these individuals who have no "we" and excitement in their lives,

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they're of no particular age group. I am not talking now about the old or the middle-aged or the young. For these individuals are in all age groups. The most exciting human being that I know is 78 years old. And I think that one of the dullest personalities I have ever encountered happens to be 16 years old. Stand by the Matterhorn down in Disneyland and look

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at the line of people waiting to get on. Some are old and some are young. And those afraid of the thrill of the ride, some are old and some are young. Age doesn't have anything to do with being tied tight to yesterday. And another thing to notice is that these people in general are utterly unaware of their own condition. And that's not surprising.

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I mean when Lazarus came forth out of the tomb, his face was covered with the claws of the mummy. So their eyes are covered and they don't recognize where they are or what they are. Now for the last three weeks we have been talking together about joy and how Jesus wants us to have joy in our lives. His command is that his joy might be in us and

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that our joy might be full. And we've looked at some of the things that tend to rob us of joy and how we can combat those things. We looked at tension and we noted how resting in God, never verbalizing our tensions, refusing to hold bitterness and anger within us and giving ourselves to the discipline of prayer defeats tension and gives us joy. We talked

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about pressure and how if we are to defeat pressure and its negative effect upon joy, we have to deny disorder in our lives and then with the time which we find that we now have, invest that time in periods of recreation out in the world of nature and in times of quietness and stillness. That's the way to gain joy in the face of pressure. We talked

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last week about emptiness and we discovered that the way in which to overcome emptiness is to grasp God's purpose for your life and to invest yourself in that purpose no matter what the risk is and to hold on to the victory God offers. That's the way to gain joy over emptiness. But what do you do when you encounter the kind of individual who doesn't rest in

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God, who constantly verbalizes his negativities, who holds bitternesses and hardnesses within him, who denies order in his life and practices disorder, who does not get out into the world but sits in tune in old ideas. What do you do when you encounter the person who's not interested in risking anything for God or for anyone else? How do you deal with people

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who take the "we" out of life? They can end your joy too. Make no mistake about it, we are commanded to deal with these people. You will remember from this story of Jesus and Lazarus that when Lazarus came from the door of the tomb, Jesus' next word was not addressed to Lazarus but to the crowd. Jesus said, "Loose him and let him go." Well, how do you let

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those kind of people go? How do you loose them? How do you deal with people who take all the "we" out of life? Well, I think the first thing that you do is to love them because they very much need it. I think it's very tender to notice that when Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus, he wept. The shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept. Only two words,

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but there's a tremendous amount of truth in it. Jesus had compassion for Lazarus in the midst of his death experience. So we are to have compassion and love for those, even those, who have no "we" in their lives. And that means that we are to look upon them not in terms of what they are, but in terms of what they can be. Jesus always did that. And he

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always approached people in that light, in the light of love. There's a physics professor here in Southern California whose name is Floyd Baker, and he teaches some very difficult courses in a major university in our part of the country. Now his technique at the beginning of every semester with his students was this. He started off by telling them that this course

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was one of the toughest courses in the school, and further that they had to pass that course if they were going to go on to more advanced courses in physics. And further, that he was the only one who taught the course, and therefore they had to pass it from him, and they need not expect that they could go to some other professor and get by him. And finally, that

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fully 50% of them were going to fail no matter how hard they studied, so they better start studying right away in order that they might be part of the 50% that made it. And his prophecies inevitably proved to be correct. 50% of the students failed every year. And then Floyd Baker became a Christian. And he suddenly recognized that when Jesus met people, he

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did not meet people in hardness, he met them in love. He did not meet them in a closed state, he met them in an open state. He did not meet them this way, he met them this way. And so Floyd Baker went into his classes and he said something like this. Now you've heard about this being a tough course, and it is because we've got a lot of material to gather,

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and a lot of material to master. But I've been teaching this course for a long time, and I can help you pass this course. And I'm ready to help you pass this course. And I'll do anything I can to enable you to pass this course. And between you and me, nobody can stop us from passing this course. Now here's what's most significant. Without changing

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his grading procedures in any way, shape, or form, the incidence of passing the course jumped from 50% to 96%. Now I'll admit, sometimes when you come up against these people who have no "we" in their lives, the stink of death is pretty heavy upon them. But you've got to love them still. And you've got to go at them with positive words and positive

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thoughts and positive actions. Because that's what they most need. Now the second principle to bear in mind is this. Labor to bring them into relationship with other people who are unbound, with other people who are free. You see, individuals who are locked tight into yesterday, individuals who are tied up in mummified memories, have a tendency to get

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together. It's the old cliche, "birds of a feather flock together." And they reinforce one another in their negativities. They reinforce one another in not taking any risks. They counsel one another never to venture out into the deep water, but to stay here, close, confined within the walls of the tomb. What's important in releasing them is to bring them out of

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that experience to meet some people who are free. I heard a man give a lecture about ants once. And he said that no single ant will ever starve in an anthill. Because as long as there is any food at all, ants share it. Now to that degree, ants are superior to human beings. But they're not superior to Christians. Because Christians, whom I understand to be

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free and dynamic and adventurous personalities, they will share that free and dynamic and adventurous spirit. That's what Jesus means when he says to those gathered around Lazarus, "Loose him and let him go. Share the freedom, share the joy, share the life, share the enthusiasm, share the beauty, which is yours." I know what it's like to be bound. Two summers ago,

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I landed at 5 o'clock in the morning in the Kinshasa International Airport, which is about half the size of the Burbank Airport. It's in the heart of Zaire, which used to be called Belgian Congo in Africa. I got off the plane and as far as I could see, I could not see any face that was the same complexion as my own. It was dark there. Now they don't have

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any signs in that airport. And besides that, everyone present spoke either Chaluben, Bakuta, or French. I don't happen to be conversant in any of those tongues. To add to the difficulty, I was supposed to catch a flight somewhere else and there were no signs up to tell you where to catch the flight. And also, in that culture, they have no sense of the line. In

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other words, no one ever lines up for anything. You just crowd in. And here are three windows with approximately 400 people converging on them. Everybody waving his ticket, trying to get the attention of those on the other side of the barrier. At one point, I was caught between a black woman who I would estimate weighed 450 pounds and a woman on the other

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side who was magnificently pregnant. And I felt like a two-page tract between two brass bookends. I really didn't think I was going to get out of it alive. Now I had all the same feelings which belong to those who are wrapped in the funerary trappings of rigidity and closeness. I felt like a little child who was lost. That's emotional immaturity.

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I felt afraid. I thought the whole trip was blown and that I never was going to get out of that airport. And I found myself also very much caught up in a lack of expectation. I really didn't have any hope. And then all of a sudden I heard someone say, "I say, Yank, can I help you?" I don't know if that man expected me to kiss him or not, but that's

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what happened. And he led me out of there to another room where a group of people were gathered together and we had all gone through the same experience and he would plunge out into the group and bring us back. And after a while, refreshing one another, encouraging one another, laughing at one another's mistakes, one of the fellows, a little guy, a man who

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must have been 70 years old, stood over at the front of the crowd and said, "Well, group, shall we now press on into the interior?" And we did. We were brought out of the enslaving experience by being with the group who felt freedom. Bring the bound person into the brotherhood of the unbound.

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Third principle. Make it as easy for your Lazarus as you can. So people who are afraid and people who are without hope tend to become very defensive. They don't want to give up their old ideas. That's all they've got, so they're going to hang on to them with absolutely everything they have. Like a little girl who said she didn't want to taste watermelon.

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And her big sister said, "Now, how do you know you won't like it? You've never tried it. At least take a taste. Maybe you'll like it." She said, "Bal, that's just what I'm afraid of. If I tasted it and liked it, then I'd eat it and I'd hate it." Well, there are some people who respond that way.

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Jesus kept coming again and again to the home of Lazarus. It was the last home he visited before he went to the Last Supper and to the cross and to his home in heaven. Jesus kept coming back and surrounding that man with love like he always surrounded people. When he met that woman at the well, he didn't come on hard, he came on easy. When he dealt with

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Peter, he didn't come on hard. Even his words of censure were always tinctured with words of encouragement. Don't focus on the mistakes these people have made. Don't major on the fears which are part of their experience. Approach them in terms of what can be. Did you notice that when Hyru Onoda, this Japanese soldier, surrendered this last week,

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that his surrender was treated with the greatest dignity? The president of the Philippines came to the act of surrender. Nationwide television was there. The man was escorted in. He was treated with dignity and with respect. And when he handed over his sword, the president of the Philippines, Marcos, took the sword and immediately handed it back to him and

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then put his arms around him. Make it as easy for Lazarus as you can. And one other principle. Make sure that as you are working with this bound person, that you don't get caught up in his grave clothes. I think it's very important to notice that as soon as Jesus had brought Lazarus out of that tomb, he got out of the cemetery. There

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were those about, you know, who immediately reacted to what he did by planning his death. From that day on, the scripture says, they took counsel as to how to bring Jesus to death. But he did not stay there waiting to die. He left that place. He did not stay in the fellowship of those shrouded minds. So yes, we are to go to our bound up people,

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our people who take the "we" out of life, and we are to love them where they are, and we are to bring them insofar as we are able into the fellowship of other free people, and we are to make this growth in them as easy as we possibly can. But in all of this, we are to be aware of the fact that we are susceptible to being trapped into that kind

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of thinking, and being susceptible to it, we must be alert. Please turn your cassette to the other side. I was flying from Seattle. It was about two o'clock in the morning. Our plane was coming down to Los Angeles International Airport. It was foggy, but I'd seen it much worse.

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We were on our approach. I looked out the window. I could see the fog, and then I could see through the fog. I could see the street lights. I could see the lights that led into the airport, and then I could even see the white painting on the airstrip below, and the marks of the brakes of the airplane, which are there. And I turned to the person next

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to me, and I said, "Well, we're home." And just then, the pilot pulled the plane up, stood it on its very end. So everything on the sides of the plane came flying out, and we were all thrown against our safety belts, and I bear the bruises still, how hard we were thrown against those things. All that weight suddenly reversed. And we were diverted

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and had to land at Burbank, and I still don't understand exactly why, but that seemed to me to be a parable of what can happen to us, so we can go down into ministry to those who are bound. But we must be ready at any moment when we discover anything is wrong, and we are ourselves beginning to become trapped as they are trapped, to pull out of that,

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to shake the dust of that off our feet, to not let ourselves be choked by that kind of mummified ministry. The thing that will tip you off to when you're getting into a dangerous place is when you begin to see all the troubles in your life as being the result of what other people are doing to you or saying to you. As soon as you begin to feel that all your

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hardships find their beginnings in somebody else and not in you, as soon as you begin to feel that you are right and everybody else is coming down on you, when you start to feel like that, watch out. You're in trouble. Get to some situation where you can be lifted out of that kind of self-pity into the freedom of being open and honest and risking again.

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A few years ago in New York City there was a great trial. Eleven communists were on trial for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States. You young people will remember the trial of the Chicago 7. That trial was really not much when compared with the trial of these eleven so long before. And there was no indignity, no act of arrogance

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and belligerence and contempt perpetrated by those Chicago 7 that wasn't anticipated by the New York 11. The judge on the bench was a man named Harold Medina. And for seven months he sat there while they accused him of everything, called him everything, did everything they could do to force him to call that trial into a mistrial. He argued for

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seven months. His life was threatened. The lives of his children were threatened. The lives of his wife were threatened. And finally at the end of seven months, one day he left his courtroom and as he was leaving the courtroom he was overcome with dizziness. And he went into a little ante room and he laid down and he began to cry. He said, "God, I can't do

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it. God, I cannot go back into that courtroom. They're trapping me. I'm sinking to that. I cannot do it." And then he later wrote, "Not with any roar of drums or sound of trumpets, but in great silence he felt a deep peace come over him and flood into every fiber of his being." And fifteen minutes later he got up and he went back into that courtroom and

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he conducted that trial magnificently until its end a month and a half later. When he found himself in that situation he cried out! And the cry was heard. And he was given the strength from the reservoir that he needed. That leads me to conclude these words to you this morning with thanksgiving to God and with thanksgiving to many of you. You see,

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you know what it is, a lot of you, to deal with people who try to take the "we" out of life. We've had to confront that together. I remember in 1968 when I came our church had a debt and we were way behind in paying it. Some people brag about our financial condition at that time. The bank was knocking on our door for the money and we were behind in paying.

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And there were some people who said we couldn't pay it, but you, most of you, said we can pay it. And we paid it. And then some families came and they said we don't like where that nursery is up there on the second floor because there's only one wooden staircase to get up there. There's no place for those children to get out and there are no adults near them.

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That's a dangerous place to have a nursery. We think it should be moved. And so we talked about it and we decided as a congregation of God's people that we would do that. There were some of course who said we could never afford that, you can't do that kind of thing. But we did it. And then someone said vacation Bible school only lasts two weeks in the summertime.

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We think we ought to have a program that lasts all summer and that reaches hundreds of kids instead of dozens of kids. And there were people who said now you just can't run that kind of program because our young people aren't interested in serving in that kind of program and you won't be able to get enough youngsters to come to support that kind of thing. That

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just can't be. But the free people in this congregation, they said oh no, we can do that. And they did it. And someone said now look, in the Glendale Presbyterian Church or in Glendale for that matter, you just don't get involved in black ministry. I mean talk about other things if you want to but don't talk about black ministry. And H. and Terry just

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stood here and I could see from the looks on so many of your faces what a joy you felt in knowing that we were a part of their lives and that we are a part of the Mendenhall ministry and that we are engaged in five other ministries to black and brown congregations and organizations around this country. And our college kids came one night and said we want to put on

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a program against the Vietnam War. And some people said we can't have a program against the Vietnam War. Why there will be a lot of people who will get up and walk out of this church on account of it. And there were other people that said we are free and we must allow other people to be free. And so we had the program. And whether you agreed with it or

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disagreed with it, it was a good program. And nobody got up and walked out. Or at least if they did, they were so unknown in the life of the church that their absence has to this day not been noted. And then we had an earthquake. And some people said well roll it up and file it away. GPC is something of the past. And others said oh no, this is a great opportunity.

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Now we can go out and do things we haven't been able to do before. And the free thinkers again in the life of this congregation carried the day. And if you want to see the evidence of that, when you walk out the front door, look straight ahead. There's the future. And what can come out of that is beyond our imagining. You, the unbound, the unbound, the unbound

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those looking up and out, those with we in their lives willing to risk for the love of God and the love of man, you've done that. And I'm tremendously grateful for having been a part of you at the time when you did those things. For it's a joyous thing to be untied. And it's a joyous thing to untie other people. And that's our ministry. In love to set all

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men free. To put some we in their lives. A couple years ago the Los Angeles Times said this is one of the livest congregations in Southern California. Well, I feel constrained to say this morning, Los Angeles Times, you ain't seen nothing yet. Let us pray. We thank thee for the freedom which belongs to us in Jesus Christ. And we pray this morning, our

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Father, for those who have not yet found that freedom. Grant that we might go to them in love. Grant that we might go to them in gentleness. Grant that we might bring them into such contact with those who are free that they themselves will be free and discover what an exciting thing the life of faith can be. Oh God, keep us adventurers for the sake of Jesus. Amen

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and Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]