Part 5 (1/2)

As those of you who have been here on other Good Fridays know, I give that : that when Jesus Christ said ”Wo her attention to His friend, St John, ould be a son to her now that He was going away Perhaps But I like to think the other way: that He was revealing to thatthat should justify her , as it sees like this:

”Behold, your Son, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh Known and yet unknown The Son who the Judean hills The things that you have treasured and pondered in your heart ht out now to allow God to open to you their hiddenFor I am your Son, your first-born In these years of wonder and strangeness I have not forgotten the love and care and protection given e of the Scriptures and the love of God's House No, I have not forgotten those years in the carpenter's shop in Nazareth, and the laboring for daily bread

Neither was it easy to break away, and leave home, but God called lad that God chose els had whispered in your heart You were proud of me, sure that God had somewhat in store for me that had never been known in the world, never known to the mothers of other sons And then h up in the synagogues, weird reports of s, and finally all that I said and did seeion, and you were fearful of raceful end This cross is the fruitage of those thirty years spent with you and in the fulfilling of God's pleasure This fruitage of the Cross is not the fruitage that God gives to the sons of evil as seee of these thieves crucified beside me In reality this Cross is the crown of my life, and some day the world will see it, and take Me unto itself, and the Cross will have become a throne”

It is the word of justification and coives the broken-hearted Mary It is the word of God to wolass darkly, but then face to face” In Jesus, the son of Mary, we see what the world will be like 'when the years have died away'

It was on these special occasions that he so frequently was inspired

Easter Day, for instance, with its ations stimulated him to the utmost, and to many of us it seemed as if we stood in one of the vestibules of immortality, certainly in the teht and the eleven o'clock services, and each tiht

In the interireeted all the parishi+oners who remained after the first service for breakfast in the parish house

Frank Nelson loved the lowed and radiated pervasively Innumerable scenes flood the memory, and I recall an ordinary Sunday which included the early celebration of the Holy Coht forty-five AM; an address to his Chapel Class at nine forty-five; and a sermon at eleven o'clock; in addition to all these he went, in the afternoon, to a labor union 's sermon from the text, ”The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” It was the fruit of all his , syht into the loneliness and devastation of death's inroads As he brought the Christian faith to bear upon the probleht and eloquence of words as well as by accent and genuineness of emotion that certitude which is possible only for one who himself possesses that which he proclaims This sermon was a notable exa, ”Truth conveyed through personality” The few notes here included give only a gliht, and do not adequately convey the personal factor which made one want to rise up and call him blessed:

Men have ever striven to conquer death, and never succeeded

Christ too died and though He rose from the dead, He did not return to this life and take up its habits and tasks again St

Paul was not thinking of overco death in this way, but rather of the new consciousness and gift of power that Christ has givenpower Faces what appears to be the impossible, what experience declares to be is are subject to Christ”

”We see not yet all things put under hi that h Christ

Christ facing human proble frooodness, sickness, sorrow, hopelessness, sin, worldliness, bitterness of spirit anddeath as an enemy by His resurrection

Death'sIt is its power over our spirits, its apparent defeat of hope, of work begun, of love entered into, of faith laid hold upon, and the bitterness that is the fruit of that defeat Through Christ the power of achievethened, and released by death We resent death perhaps--reason for shrinking is that so impersonal and physical a process should be able to overcome a spiritual consciousness and experience We resent always the victory of a lower over a higher order (Feb 28, 1926)

Frank Nelson combined a happy idealism with common sense, and when the occasion moved him to inspired utterance, he drew upon the deep wells of his being, and spoke without effort as waters flow from a fountain This quality characterized many of his speeches, such as the one in Music Hall after the Armistice of 1918 which he his when men flocked to drink in his words and to be in his presence He overshadowed other speakers, and what Henry Ward Beecher said of another is doubtless applicable to Mr

Nelson: ”When he speaks first, I do not care to follow hiets up I wish I had not spoken at all”

The worth of sotroubled him at times, and he too had his darker moments So a word, or perhaps bursting out in boyish petulance, ”When I am down, the parish is down Why can't they stay up?” At a staff anization that had requested him to address them, and when he asked on what subject, the reply was ”Oh! just talk!” He passed this off as a sort of reflection on his fluency of words

Preaching was desperate business to him because ”the burden of the Word of the Lord” lay upon hihts, he also was dashed down to the depths To preach for forty years fro task, and the net result of such an experience is no better summed up than in the re onewith Frederick C Hicks It was Monday, and the wo out her wash Mr Nelson said, ”Let's stop and ask her what she reood soul was non-plussed, and could not recall even his text And then with a leap of inspired insight she said, ”But Mr Nelson, this cloth is whiter every ti effect on every humble soul who patiently waits as God communicates His truth in earthen vessels

People came to be in Frank Nelson's presence He never let the: We ca the faith, and as ”we sat before hi we had professed to believe inHe took us to whoion was a profession, and made it a passion”

Christ Church people find these words set up poignant echoes of a day when they sat before Frank Nelson and heard the living Word of God

FOOTNOTES:

[13] _Central Anglicanism_, Charles W Lowry, Jr _The Witness_ May 27, 1943 Used by permission

[14] _The Servant of The Word_, Farmer p 6, Charles Scribner's Sons