Decatur Daily Democrat, Volume 61, Number 87, Decatur, Adams County, 12 April 1963 — Page 6

PAGE SIX

Christians Glory In Cross Os Christ

Religion in America By LOUIS CASSELS United Press International To non-Christians, the most baffling aspect of the Christian faith is its attitude toward the death of Jesus Christ. One might reasonably expect Christians to recall with shame and mourning the fact that the founder of their church was executed as a- common criminal. Instead, they commemorate the anniversary of His crucifixion every year. And do they call it “Black Friday?” No, they call it “Good Friday.” Year-round, they flaunt from their altars golden replicas of the gibbet on which Jesus met His agonizing and ignominius death. M Their chief service of worship is " built around symbols of His broken body and spilled blood. And they call this service the Eucharist—or “thanksgiving.” Glory In Cross It appears that Christians actually do, as they say in one of their hymns, “glory in the cross of Christ.” Why? The question goes to the heart of Christian faith. For it can be answered only in terms of a belief which Christians have held with great assurance since the time of the first apostles, but which they still find very difficult to define or explain. St. Paul expressed the belief simply but profoundly when he told the Corinthians: “Christ-died for our sins...and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Use Metaphors New Testament writers, including St. Paul, use perhaps a dozen different metaphors in their attempt to describe what Christ accomplished for mankind on Calvary. They speak of His death as a sacrifice, an expiation, a propitiation, for the sins of men. They depict Christ as standing in man's stead, accepting the punishment which man deserves for his willful wrongdoing. They speak of man as being saved, ransomed, redeemed, or delivered from his just fate because of Christ’s intervention on his behalf. In attempting to capture a great mystery within the dry language of dogma, theologians have sometimes made it sound as though God were some kind of vehge-

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EASTER SUNDAY SERVICES TWO MORNING WORSHIP SERVICES 8:30 A. M. and 10:30 A. M. The Chancel Choir will sing at both services and the Intermediate Girls Choir will sing for the First Service and the Dulcet Choir will sing for the Second Service. SUNDAY SCHOOL __ 9:30 A. M. FIRST METHODIST CHURCH CORNER FIFTH and MONROE STREETS A. C. UNDERWOOD, Pastor

ful ogre who had to be appeased by a sacrificial offering of innocent blood. This is exactly the opposite of the Bible's teaching, which points to the cross of Christ as the ultimate proof and supreme demonstration of Gods forgiving love for all of his human creatures. God Himself Acts How can this be? The teaching makes sense only if it was God Himself who was acting in and through Christ. And this, of course, is precisely what Christians believe. As usual. St. Paul put it more succintly than anyone else has managed to do: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." God could not ignore man’s sins, or treat them as unimportant. To do so would have demeaned both God and man, and would have made a mockery of the moral law. True ..forgiveness is never a cheap and easy thing: It is always costly to someone, either the one who forgives or the one who is forgiven. What God said to men in the enacted parable of Calvary was: Your sins are real and ugly, and have estranged you from me. But I love you in spite of your hard hearts and selfish ways. I will pay the price of your folly. I will do the suffering which must be done if there is to be a genuine reconciliation. And what is required of man? Only that he respond to the reconciling act in humility and gratitude, and open his own heart to his fellow man. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins,” says the First Letter of John. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Give Easter Play At Church Sunday — Sunday evening at 7 o'clock, the young people of the Decatur Missionary church will present the Easter play entitled “The Broken Arc.” This will be a full length three act play. The play centers around Mary Melrose; a victim of polio, who comes home from the hospital to find her father and mother bitter over her loss of a normal life. Their attitude increases her own feeling of hopelessness, and their overly-protective manner towards Mary makes their other children feel unwanted. When they cotne in contact with another family who has met the same situation in an entirely different way, their lives undergo a great change. They realize that the spiritual ingredient of faith had been lacking in their home life, and the Melrose family returns to God and the church. This play carries a two-fold message: first, that faith and hope can lighten any adversity: and second, that without religion a family drifts apart. Parts will be played by Judy Courtney, Linda Stevens, Kenny Reed, Pam Strahm, Dan Johnson, Patty Beam, Janet Gray, Janet Rupp, and Bill VonGunten. The play is being directed by the youth sponsors, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Reynolds and Mr. .and Mrs. Donald Sprunger. The public is invited to attend this special Sunday evening Easter treat.

Rural Churches PLEASANT MILLS BAPTIST CHURCH Joe Current, Interim pastor 6:00 a.m. — Union Sunrise Easter. Communion service with the Methodists at the Methodist church. 9:30 a.m. — Sunday school Lowell Noll, Sunday School Superintendent. 10:30 a m. — Morning worship. Sermon by Joe Current. Read Collosians. ST. PAUL MISSIONARY CHURCH (2 miles East and 2 miles North of Monroe) Robert R. Welch, pastor 6:00 — Sunrise Service at the Adams Central H. S. gym. 9:15 — Morning Worship. 10:15 — Sunday School. Wednesday 7:00 — Prayer meeting and Bible study. 7:00 — M. Y. F. and Children’s Bible hour. PLEASANT DALE CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN Dolar Ritchey, pastor Sunday School 9:30. Oscar Geisel, superintendent* Director of Children’s Work, Barbara Barger. Morning Worship 10-30. Sftrnon subject, "Our Victorious Saviour.” Guest minister, Rev. Galen T. Lehman. Evening services 7:30. Sermon subject, “A Faith That Saves.” The Choir will render several numbers. , Prayer meeting Wednesday evening 7:30. SALEM UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST Evangelical and Reformed H. E. Settlage, minister 9:00 Sunday School. Classes for all age groups. 10:00 Easter Communion Servive. Sermon, “Living like Immortals.” 7:30 The Easter J?antata, “Redemption’s Song,” by Fred B. Holton, will be given by the Adult Choir. Saturday 10 to 11 o’clock — Children’s Choir Rehearsal. MOUNT PLEASANT METHODIST (2 miles west of Decatur) Donald W. Orr, Minister 9:15 a.m. — Sunday schoool. Classes for all ages. 10:15 a.m. — Easter Worship Service. Sermon: “Something Must Have Happened Here.” MOUNT TABOR METHODIST (2 miles north of Pleasant Donald W. Orr, Minister 9:15 a.m. Worship Service. Sermon: “Victory.” 10:00 a.m. — Sunday School. 7:30 p.m. each Wednesday — Bible Study. MONROE METODIST CHURCH Claude McCallister, minister 6:00 a.m. Sunrise Service at the Adams Central School. 9:30 a.m. Morning Worship. 10:30 a.m. Church School. There will be no evening service. Wednesday 7:30 p.m. Annual Church Conference with Rev Donald Bailey, District Superintendent in charge. There will be no Mid-week Prayer service or adult choir practice. RIVARRE U.B. CIRCUIT Stanley Neuenschwander, pastor MT. VICTORY Chalmer Brodbeck, Sunday School Superintendent. Morning Worship 9:30. Sunday School 10:30. Prayer Meeting, Wed. 7:30. MT. ZION Roman Sprunger, Sunday School Superintendent. Sunday Schoool 9:30. Morning Worship 10:30. C. E. 7:00. Prayer Meeting, Wed. 7:30. The Self-Denial Offering will be taken up on Easter. Everyone is to bring their Dime-folders. WMA branch meeting will be held at the Decatur ÜB. church on, Wednesday and Thursday April 17-18. Everyone will be welcome. If you have something to sell or trade — use the Democrat Want ads — they get BIG results.

THE DECATUR DAILY DEMOCRAT. DECATUR, INDIANA.

SALEM METHODIST Joseph Gibson, pastor Easter Worship Service at 9:15. (note the change of time. The Membership Class will be received into the church at this service. Midweek service Wednesday at 7:30. Ehe 1 tetameUond Untteno Sunday School Lemons He Lives Lesson for April 14, 1963 Bible Mat, rial: Mark 15:42 through U:s. Devatlaaal Raaila,: Matthew 28:110. 10-30. (CHRIST is risen! That will be . said countless thousands of times this Easter day. If the human race has not wiped itself out by this day, there will be millions of Christians throughout the world who say this amazing sentence with thankful joy. I The words should W never become commonplace. Jgta> jGgrPl Consider what the " :'l earl y Christians ® meant by this. All the first ChristF kZavJI believers were '■wF M Jews; and at that ■ A !■ time they all beDr. Foreman Ueved that somehow, somewhere, many if not all human beings who had died since the human race began, would come to life again. “Many of those who sleep in the dust shall awake,” was the way they put it. (Daniel 12:2.) As we would put it, they believed in a kind of delayed immortality. If you had asked the ordinary pious Jew of Jesus' day, “Where are the dead, now?” he might have said, “Asleep in the dust,” or “Among the others in the shadow-world of the grave.” Ha live*! But after the first Easter Sunday, the Christians did not go around saying, “Christ is asleep in the dust! Christ is a ghost among ghosts!” Those are far from comforting thoughts. What the Christians said was, “He is risen!” which means, if it means anything, “He lives!” And they didn’t mean “in heaven.” They myant right here, where they had seen Him and spoken with Him. It is true, after a time He disap- 1 peared and was seen on earth in the old way no more. But that did not depress those Christians. They never knew how to explain it, and they did not try. But what they had seen, they had seen, and nothing ever shook them out of the conviction: Jesus lives! To put this in another way; The characteristically Christian way to think about Jesus Christ is as a nowliving person. He lives in memory, He lives on the pages of history. Books have been written to show that Jesus was a real historical character; but that is not the point. Past tenses have never been enough for a Christian speaking of Christ. True, He was and He did thus and so. But it is more important to remember that He is and He does so and so. Read through the New Testament and you will find that Christ is in the past tense in the gospels, because they are dealing with history. The rest of the New Testament speaks of Jesus mainly in the present. He Ilves! Another way to look at this Easter-faith of the church is to emphasize that little pronoun HE. He lives. The early Christians could see a difference between the Jesus they knew before Calvary and the Jesus they knew after the resurrection. The difference was great enough so that they sometimes did not recognize Him at first. Nevertheless when they did break through their hesitations and believed what they saw, it was never as a stranger that they saw Him. If the man next door to you is a man you know little of except that he is a friendly grey- . haired man who always has a pleasant word for his neighbors and works on his yard on Saturdays,—and then one day you discover he is a superior court judge, you may be taken aback; you may not recognize him with his robes on up there on the bench- But it’s the same man. So the Jesus, whose living-forever the church celebrates at Eastertide, is the same Jesus we read about in the pages of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Not somebody better or different, but Himself. HE lives! “Risaa In yea” “If Christ be risen in you,—” so begins a famous chapter in Colossians. This seems at first like a strange way to think about the Resurrection. Not as a historic event outside us, like most events, but an event that happens inside us. Is this a miracle? Perhaps it is. But perhaps it is what God intended for us all along, that we should not be burial-grounds in which the thoughts and the love of Christ are laid away, but resurrection places, from which Christ rises every day, not once In a lifetime,—rises to think in our thoughts, hope in our hopes, work in our work; or rather rises in us so that we have to say at last, All the good in me is not mine but His!

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ST. PAUL LUTHERAN Preble Norman H. Kuck, pastor Early service 8.15 a.m. Sunday school, Bible class 9:15 a.m. Late service 10 am. ST. LUKE UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST Dr. Meredith Sprunger, interim pastor Worship service 9 a.m. Sunday school 10 a.m. ZION LUTHERAN CHURCH (Friedbeim) A. A. Fenner, pastor 9 and 10:30 a.m. Easter morning services. * 10:15 a.m. Sunday School and Bible Class. Tuesday 8:00 p.m. Walther Leaguers’ meet at School Hall. 8:00 p.m. Lutheran Women Missionary League meeting in Church Lounge. Wednesday 8:00 a.m. School resumes after Easter vacation. 8:00 p.m. Choirs will meet. Thursday 8:00 p.m. Bible Class will meet, everyone welcome. Friday 8:00 p.m. Meeting of the Adult Club. UNION CHAPEL EVANGELICAL UNITED BRETHREN “Serving this Community for over a Century’ Kenneth P. Angle, Pastor Tom Gaunt A- S. SupL Sunrise services — 6:00 a.m. This will be a Communion service and the Youth wDI assist. Devotions before we study 9:30 a.m. The Church at study 9:30 a.m. Lesson . Hieme — “Christ is Risen.” The Church at Worship 10:30 a.m. Sermon Theme “He is Alive!” Anthem — By Work and Win Choir. “Christ, the Lord is Risen Tqday,” by Wesley. Some will take their vows of membership. There will be no Evening services. Monday — 8:00 p.m. The Board of Trustees will meet. Tuesday— 7:30 p.m. Cottage Prayer time at the home of Mr .and Mrs. Arnold Roughia, of 515 Stratton. Miss Frieda Williamson will be the leader. Wednesday Pastor’s Class at parsonage — 3:15 p.m. ’’Good News Cliub” meets at — 7:30 p.m. Bible Study, prayer time — 7:30 p.m. This is for youth and adults. Thursday Union Chapel Men’s Club meets — 7:30 p.m. The Commission of Devotional T .ife, is in charge. Rolland Gilliom, chairman. Friday Willing Workers meet at 7:30 p.m. Saturday Pastor’s beginner class meets at the church — 1:00 p.m. Youth for Christ — 7:30 p.m. This meeting will be at the First Baptist church. Thought — “Christ Lives!” “Do Ybu?” If you do, tell it; if you don’t seek Him until you find Him. PLEASANT MILLS METHODIST Joseph Gibson, patter Easter Services Union Sunrise Service at 6 a.m. at the Methodist Church, with the Baptist Church of Pleasant Mills and the Salem Church. The Communion service will be at this hour. The pastor of the Baptist church will give the message. Sunday School at 9:30 a.m. Easter Worship Service at 10:30 with the reception of the Membership Classes into the Church. WREN CIRCUIT E. U. B. A. N. Straley, pastor BETHEL 6:30 a.m. — Sunrise Service. 9:30 a.m. — Sunday School. 10:30 a.m. Morning Worship. Sermon: “Because He Lives.” WOOD CHAPEL 9:30 a.m. Sunday School. 10:30 a.m. Prayer Service. 7:30 p.m. Evening Worship. Easter program. Thursday Bethel—8:00 p.m. Prayer meeting. Wood Chapel — 8:00 p.m. Prayer meeting and Youth Fellowship. If you have something to sen or trade — use the Democrat Want ads — they get BIG results.

CHRIST IS RISEN Rev. James R. Meadows Suppose the silence of the tomb in which the crucified Lord was laid had never to this hour been broken — no angelic message, no meeting with the glorified Christ, no Pentecost, no evidence that his death was more availing for sin than that of any other man! Suppose that we could make pilgramages to the sacred tomb and look upon the mummified form in which so great a Spirit bad lived! What tears of despair we might shed to think that this purest, noblest and mightiest of all souls had come to an end more terrible than any mortal ever experienced! Deeper than the darkness which settled over the crucifixion scene would be our spiritual darkness had the claims of Jesus to be the Lamb of God, the sin bearer, been met with utter silence from heaven. We little comprehend the depth of meaning in the words, “He is not here. He is risen.” Not only is it the Father’s acceptance of His sacrifice, and hence the basis of the believer's justification — not only does it furnish positive assurance of life beyond—but it gives the child of God an Intercessor at DICK'S TV SERVICE D. C. “Dick” AMBBAUGH Tie Dierkea Street Phoae 3-2096 LAWSON Heating — Plumbing Appliances Sales and Service Phone 3-3026 1835 W. Monroe BL U No Answer Call 3-4530 GERBEB’F" WBBNI PRICE MEN’S WEAR QUALITY CLOTHING for MEN and BOYS 101 N. 2nd St Phone >-<lls CLARK W. SMITH BUILDER “A Complete Home Building Service” HAMMOND FRUIT MKTS., INC. Fresh Fruits * Vegetables 240 N. 13th St**" Phone 1-3701 ffi .Sheets furniture 150-152 S. 2nd St. Phone 3-2602 Decatur KELLY’S Fabric-Care Center Dry Cleaning — Laundry Fur Storage Coin Operated Laundry & Dry Cleaning 427 N. 9th St. Decaiut FEDERAL LAND BANK FARM LOANS Thomas E. Williams, Mgr. Rose M. Gase, Field Office Clerk 216 S. 2nd St. Phone 3-J784 SMITH DRUG CO. 149 N. 2nd St Phone 3-3614 Your Rexall Drug Store “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.” Psalms 122:1. REYNOLDS ELECTRIC “FOR THE BEST At CLAIM TIME” BURKE INSURANCE SERVICE 239 N. Uth St. Phone WO6O

the throne of God who guarantees the eternal security of all who have come unto God by Him. Have we rightly estimated the importance of the resurrection life of Christ? Os all the festivals observed by men, Easter is the most beautiful and most joyous. Nature herself joins in the celebration. Annually she re-enacts the wonder and the glory of resurrection by releasing new life from winter graves in the thawing earth. Spring bursts forth with Easter. Life is never more beautiful in this dawning of the year. The pure white of lilies everywhere on display, the soft green of new grasses,' the deep coloring of spring flowers—all add their harmonious note to the significance of the day and of the season. We thank God today that Jesus came forth from the tomb! THIS WEEK’S BIBLE VERSE “He is not here: for He is risen, as He said. Come see the place where the Lord fey.” — Matthew 28:6. Fleet-Wing Products BEAVERS OIL SERVICE, INC. Dependable Fmw Berries G. M. C. Sates t Service NEW and USED TRUCKS Evans Sales & Senice 126 a. IM at The HS-Way WMMss Osart, om of Indiana’s leading trailer courts. is located on highway U. 8. 17 near the south city limits of Dscatur. Ind. A modern laundry, outdoor playground, now indirect lighting, picnic area, a recreation building and a tennis court ere provided for the convenience residents. JOHNSON’S STUDIO Candid' Weddiags Portraits, Commercial, Baby A Confirmation. Ron Film Developing-All Kinds. 110 8. Itth BL Decatur | Milter’s Grocery Groceries, Fresh Fruit, Vegetables, Meat, lee Cream •37 N. 2nd St. Phene 3-33*7 ROTH ELECTRIC Home Komfort Insulation Electric Heat A Wiring FREE ESTIMATES Phone 6-5161 Monroe, Ind. 5 BULLDOZING Land Clearing — Earth Moving Excavating LAWRENCE GALLOGLY Decatur, Jed. fiPSaA saaamj! hast las IDC BCCOnG Duel Ifi DCVCT as good as the best. Try Our Ready-Mix Dial 3-2561 Decatur Ready-Mix Corp. ADAMS COUNTY Farm Bureau Co-op Berne - Williams - Monroe Pleasant Mills - Geneva Everything fas Farm Auppliee Troon’s Poultry Market Fresh Dressed Poultry Fresh Eggs — Free Delivery Phone 3-3717 Phone 3-3181 Deeatar, fed. '

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