Stuart C. Henry - "The Unlearned Lesson" (April 23, 1961)
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Transcript
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(church choir singing) | 0:03 | |
- | Let the words of our mouth | 0:23 |
and the meditations of our heart | 0:25 | |
be acceptable in thy sight, | 0:28 | |
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. | 0:31 | |
Amen. | 0:35 | |
Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, | 0:47 | |
the hand of Rome lay heavy upon the world. | 0:53 | |
It was a world which Caesar had built. | 0:58 | |
It was a world of order and security. | 1:02 | |
If you had asked the average man | 1:07 | |
to identify for you the individual of significance | 1:09 | |
in the world and in that age, | 1:13 | |
he surely would not have chosen | 1:16 | |
the child of obscure Jewish parents | 1:19 | |
who had been born in the outpost of the Empire. | 1:23 | |
Rather, he would have pointed to Augustus. | 1:27 | |
And Augustus was indeed a most unusual person. | 1:31 | |
As a youth of only 18, | 1:36 | |
he had become Caesar's heir. | 1:39 | |
He had been tenacious and unlovable. | 1:42 | |
And yet almost at once, | 1:45 | |
he set himself to the business of state-craft. | 1:47 | |
And almost at once, he began successfully | 1:52 | |
to shore up the foundations of a government and an empire, | 1:55 | |
of which through half a century, | 2:00 | |
he was to be the significant architect. | 2:02 | |
If you remember about him, | 2:07 | |
that he allowed Cicero's head to be hung in the Forum. | 2:09 | |
Or if you recall that he drove Antony and Cleopatra | 2:13 | |
to their separate deaths. | 2:17 | |
Then do not forget, | 2:20 | |
that in the place of revolution and internal dissension, | 2:22 | |
he brought order and peace to men | 2:26 | |
by making Egypt a part of the Roman Empire. | 2:29 | |
Dominions that had been convulsed with conflict | 2:34 | |
now entered into an era that turned out to be | 2:38 | |
a two-century period of peace. | 2:42 | |
And Augustus did it. | 2:46 | |
He did it with laws and security and craft and care. | 2:48 | |
Moreover, he stabilized the currency. | 2:53 | |
He beautified the Imperial City. | 2:57 | |
He gave solidity to the organization of administration. | 3:00 | |
And men looked with wonder at him. | 3:04 | |
And it was understandable, surely, | 3:07 | |
that men did not notice the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth | 3:10 | |
in the world, | 3:15 | |
for it was Caesar's world. | 3:16 | |
It was the world of Augustus, | 3:19 | |
the world of might and strength and order and security. | 3:21 | |
The citizens of Caesar's kingdom, | 3:27 | |
who had so lately been subjected | 3:30 | |
to the scars and the buffeting of conflict in civil war, | 3:32 | |
now enjoyed a very rapid recuperation. | 3:36 | |
They were astonished at their wealth, | 3:41 | |
which had come so shortly on the heels of destruction. | 3:43 | |
And they were charmed when they reviewed their history. | 3:48 | |
And they began to indulge in that special form of idolatry, | 3:52 | |
which is manifest in men | 3:57 | |
who regard themselves and their nation | 3:59 | |
as the special object of heaven's pleasure. | 4:03 | |
They had no time for the proverbs | 4:07 | |
and the parables of an itinerant carpenter teacher | 4:10 | |
who spoke of a kingdom of another sort | 4:14 | |
than that of this world. | 4:17 | |
Rather, they read of the magnificence of their own Empire | 4:20 | |
in the graceful verses of Virgil. | 4:25 | |
They had no time nor the wit | 4:29 | |
to understand the history of Luke. | 4:31 | |
They read the history of Livy. | 4:34 | |
And this suggested to them | 4:37 | |
that the world that they knew of might and things | 4:39 | |
was the real world. | 4:43 | |
Verily, He came into the world, | 4:46 | |
and the world knew Him not. | 4:50 | |
They took no note of Jesus or of His appearance | 4:53 | |
or of His idea. | 4:58 | |
Augustus died, | 5:01 | |
as all men will, | 5:03 | |
and yet in a measure, his work outlived him. | 5:05 | |
So that it was not enough to say | 5:09 | |
that Jesus was born in the world of Caesar Augustus. | 5:12 | |
It was the world of Caesar which continued, | 5:17 | |
while the days of His flesh endured ire and longer. | 5:21 | |
The ordeal of the Church's childhood | 5:26 | |
was accomplished under the shadow of the Caesars. | 5:29 | |
And the saints found often, whether they would or not, | 5:34 | |
that they were indeed members of Caesar's household. | 5:37 | |
For it was while the Caesars still held man enthralled | 5:43 | |
that the little community of Christianity | 5:47 | |
spread through Jerusalem and Judea and Sumeria, | 5:51 | |
and by the effort of Paul, | 5:56 | |
into the whole of the Mediterranean world. | 5:58 | |
And the world knew it not. | 6:01 | |
For the world of importance was Caesar's world | 6:03 | |
and not the world of Christ. | 6:07 | |
And yet in due course, | 6:11 | |
the time came when Caesar's world had to look | 6:14 | |
at the world of the crucified. | 6:18 | |
Here you see the long line of them, | 6:22 | |
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, | 6:26 | |
Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and all the rest. | 6:30 | |
The procession passes as silent and is unreal as a dream. | 6:35 | |
And yet they were real in their own day, these Caesars, | 6:39 | |
and they were men too. | 6:43 | |
And they began to be degenerate, | 6:45 | |
to be guilty of duplicity and of wickedness. | 6:48 | |
And often as not, | 6:51 | |
they began to see themselves, and certainly, | 6:53 | |
men in the Empire could see the evidences of some distress | 6:56 | |
that might soon come upon the world that they knew. | 7:01 | |
They were distressed and they were frantic. | 7:05 | |
You see, actually what had happened was, | 7:08 | |
that by the time the Roman Empire | 7:11 | |
was driven to look at this rising community of Christianity, | 7:13 | |
Rome herself | 7:18 | |
was no longer the secure organization that she had been. | 7:20 | |
In the early days, when the Empire was young | 7:25 | |
and when Christianity was new, | 7:29 | |
it had been a simple and an easy thing | 7:31 | |
to ignore these wild, irrational Christians, | 7:35 | |
who would have no part in a pagan holiday, | 7:39 | |
who deplored the gladiatorial games. | 7:42 | |
And it was stupid enough to treat women and children | 7:45 | |
and slaves and foreigners and criminals | 7:49 | |
with a great measure of kindness. | 7:53 | |
In the end, it had been easy. | 7:55 | |
But time came when their numbers were multiplied | 7:58 | |
and their ranks were increased, | 8:02 | |
and Rome had to look at them. | 8:04 | |
And by this time, | 8:06 | |
though Rome was not yet mortally ill, | 8:07 | |
the signs of her sickness were already upon her. | 8:11 | |
There was dissension within the Empire. | 8:15 | |
There was the honeycomb of corruption | 8:18 | |
underneath her shaft foundations, | 8:21 | |
which were beginning already to crumble. | 8:23 | |
There was at the gates of her border | 8:26 | |
the clamor of barbarians | 8:28 | |
who were just waiting for the opportunity to overrun her. | 8:30 | |
And Rome was frantic. | 8:34 | |
And so she began to look about her, | 8:35 | |
searching for some culprit | 8:38 | |
whom she might blame for her faults, | 8:40 | |
some culprit beyond herself. | 8:42 | |
And she decided that it was the Christians | 8:44 | |
who were responsible. | 8:47 | |
Oh, it was not a logical thing to do, | 8:49 | |
but it was in its way a plausible thing for them. | 8:52 | |
The Christians were still at this point | 8:56 | |
relatively few in number. | 8:58 | |
They were still relatively poor, | 9:01 | |
and ironically, relatively pure, | 9:03 | |
so the church was. | 9:07 | |
And yet these Christians were so courageous. | 9:08 | |
They were so ardent and so zealous | 9:11 | |
that they seemed to be everywhere. | 9:13 | |
And Rome, looking for some explanation | 9:17 | |
for this night that was creeping upon her, | 9:19 | |
decided that it was the Christians who were at fault. | 9:22 | |
These men would not worship Caesar. | 9:25 | |
These men would not bear arms in his service. | 9:28 | |
These men were growing in strength. | 9:31 | |
Rome herself was becoming weak. | 9:34 | |
There seemed to the Roman mind | 9:36 | |
some connection between the two circumstances. | 9:38 | |
And in the beginning, | 9:42 | |
it had been simply some faults | 9:44 | |
that they laid at the Christian's door. | 9:46 | |
But once they had started, | 9:48 | |
it was easy to blame the Christian for everything. | 9:50 | |
Or as Tertullian reminds us, | 9:54 | |
"If the Tiber rises to the city walls, | 9:56 | |
or if the Nile fails to flood the fields, | 10:00 | |
or if there is pestilence or famine or disease, | 10:03 | |
the cry is always, 'The Christians to the lions.'" | 10:07 | |
And so during a succession of increasingly undistinguished, | 10:11 | |
except for their vice, Caesars, | 10:15 | |
there was along with the murder | 10:17 | |
and the intrigue and the sedition, | 10:19 | |
the persecution of Christians. | 10:21 | |
And Rome that had at first taken no note of Christ, | 10:24 | |
except casually and routinely to execute Him, | 10:27 | |
now made every effort to discredit Him. | 10:32 | |
But it was the same old story of too little and too late. | 10:35 | |
Christ had come into the world of the Caesars | 10:40 | |
and the Caesars had taken no notice of Him. | 10:43 | |
And now his kingdom was growing | 10:45 | |
and the Caesars tried to destroy Him, | 10:48 | |
and they could not. | 10:50 | |
They had waited too long and now He was too strong. | 10:52 | |
They looked at Him too late. | 10:56 | |
And so by the fourth century, | 10:58 | |
Constantine saw that the Christians were of some strength, | 11:01 | |
that it would be well for him to curry their favor. | 11:05 | |
They were, indeed, the only cohesive force in the Empire | 11:09 | |
for which he had fought. | 11:13 | |
They were numerous and they were strangely united. | 11:15 | |
These Christians and their bishops | 11:18 | |
were always in communication with each other. | 11:20 | |
Something that was done in the Church of Alexandria, | 11:23 | |
in a matter of weeks, might be discussed in northern Gaul | 11:26 | |
or in Greece. | 11:30 | |
They circulated letters. | 11:31 | |
They visited among themselves. | 11:32 | |
They were indeed an empire within an empire. | 11:35 | |
And so he began to show them favor | 11:39 | |
and to grant them privilege. | 11:41 | |
Now, he himself delayed his baptism | 11:43 | |
almost to the hour of his death. | 11:46 | |
But the canny and the shrewd men of the world | 11:49 | |
were not themselves deceived by what was happening. | 11:52 | |
They understood that Christianity was now | 11:56 | |
being made the darling of the Empire. | 11:59 | |
On the face of it, it seemed no more | 12:02 | |
than that the grandson of a Serbian tavern-keeper | 12:04 | |
had invited the church to climb upon his chariot | 12:08 | |
and drive with him through the gates of Rome | 12:11 | |
and to go to the very palace itself. | 12:14 | |
And yet there was much more than that that had happened. | 12:16 | |
The bishops and the prelates, | 12:19 | |
they of course were delighted. | 12:21 | |
After centuries of ignominy, | 12:23 | |
after disgrace, after ridicule, after persecution, | 12:25 | |
it was pleasant to be in the position of power. | 12:28 | |
Caesar had finally given the church security. | 12:32 | |
Could the church do any less | 12:35 | |
than to offer Caesar her sanction? | 12:37 | |
Once men had been marked as sinners | 12:40 | |
and excluded from the communion of the church, | 12:43 | |
if they took up arms to bear them. | 12:46 | |
And now they were stigmatized as sinners | 12:48 | |
and kept from communion if they laid them down. | 12:51 | |
Caesar had become the friend of the church, | 12:54 | |
and so it now behooved the church to become | 12:57 | |
the friend of Caesar. | 12:59 | |
You see, while this was happening, | 13:01 | |
there was more than a change in outward circumstance. | 13:03 | |
Something was changing | 13:06 | |
within the very nature of the church herself, | 13:08 | |
within the very concept of her faith, | 13:11 | |
and within the very understanding of her Christ, | 13:13 | |
if we can judge by the creed which she confessed. | 13:16 | |
When the Gospel was first proclaimed, | 13:21 | |
a wandering mendicant | 13:24 | |
had gone barefoot along the sun-baked hills of Galilee. | 13:26 | |
And he had spoken to men in simple, understandable language | 13:31 | |
of truths which they could understand. | 13:35 | |
He spoke to them about torn garments | 13:38 | |
and grains of mustard seed. | 13:42 | |
He discussed the habits of swine | 13:44 | |
and the routine of the kitchen. | 13:46 | |
He used to walk through the fields. | 13:48 | |
He stopped in the marketplace. | 13:50 | |
He waited by the seashore while men mended their nets. | 13:53 | |
He was a man as they were a man. | 13:56 | |
And now by the time of Constantine, | 14:00 | |
men rose week after week | 14:03 | |
and chanted together with the solemnity of a curse | 14:06 | |
their belief that this Christ to whom they gave allegiance | 14:10 | |
was God of God, | 14:14 | |
Light of Light, | 14:16 | |
Very God of Very God, | 14:17 | |
begotten not made. | 14:19 | |
It all seemed grand and awful and metaphysical and remote. | 14:22 | |
And so it was. | 14:27 | |
Time was, | 14:29 | |
when He who had proclaimed the Gospel | 14:30 | |
had talked to men in terms of the commonplace of life. | 14:32 | |
And when He wanted to tell them | 14:36 | |
what the kingdom of God was like, | 14:37 | |
he took a child, | 14:39 | |
and doubtless a dirty child, | 14:41 | |
and put him in their midst. | 14:43 | |
But now, the vicar of Christ the king upon this Earth | 14:45 | |
moved in stately ritual. | 14:49 | |
And now he united, too, in the singing of hymns, | 14:52 | |
which described how this Christ | 14:56 | |
was a presence before whom the cherubim with sleepless eye | 14:58 | |
veiled their faces and cried, one to another, | 15:02 | |
"Holy, holy, holy!" | 15:05 | |
Do you see? This is what it had come to. | 15:08 | |
There was a Galilean, | 15:10 | |
there was a Nazarene carpenter | 15:12 | |
who was easily ignored in the time of Augustus | 15:14 | |
when He made his appearance. | 15:17 | |
And now by the time of Constantine, | 15:19 | |
there is a figure, grand and awful, | 15:22 | |
who is near impersonal. | 15:25 | |
And a judge, | 15:27 | |
high and exalted in the shadowy domes of heaven, | 15:28 | |
who is locked in the logic of the creeds, | 15:31 | |
and sometimes of no more worth | 15:34 | |
than the symbol which describes the outward beauty | 15:36 | |
of this sanctuary ornament | 15:40 | |
but is locked in its own leaded glass. | 15:42 | |
Once there was a man, | 15:45 | |
and now there is an idea, remote and removed. | 15:47 | |
And so it comes to this, whom do I choose? | 15:51 | |
And where is salvation to be found? | 15:54 | |
In the Jesus of Nazareth? | 15:56 | |
In this historical man | 15:58 | |
who grew hungry and tired and thirsty | 16:01 | |
and who had to borrow money to pay his tax? | 16:04 | |
Or do I find salvation | 16:08 | |
in this power transcendent | 16:10 | |
and lofty, elevated and removed and remote? | 16:13 | |
This awful judge incarnate? | 16:17 | |
This Christ | 16:20 | |
who sits beneath the shadowy dome of all eternity, | 16:21 | |
and whom I may not even look upon | 16:24 | |
and dare not contemplate | 16:27 | |
because surely I could never understand Him? | 16:28 | |
There is a contemporary historian | 16:33 | |
who has reminded us | 16:36 | |
that if we will not learn the lesson of history, | 16:38 | |
we are condemned to repeat it. | 16:42 | |
And what he says to us has part to our own situation now. | 16:44 | |
For the lesson of history that we have not learned | 16:49 | |
and the truth that we have not absorbed, | 16:53 | |
is the lesson of the incarnation. | 16:55 | |
That this choice that we have made for ourselves, | 16:58 | |
and it is often offered to us, | 17:01 | |
is an arbitrary and unnecessary and even evil choice. | 17:03 | |
For the point of the Gospel is this. | 17:08 | |
That this Jesus of Nazareth was the timeless Christ. | 17:11 | |
And that this transcendent, timeless Christ | 17:16 | |
was manifested in the Jesus of history. | 17:19 | |
Will you not stop and consider? | 17:23 | |
Look, if you will, at the Gospels and read the record, | 17:26 | |
and both these truths | 17:29 | |
are woven into the fabric of the pattern here. | 17:31 | |
You cannot read the Gospel and miss the fact | 17:34 | |
that He is timeless, | 17:37 | |
that He is eternal. | 17:39 | |
Look, if you will, at how the very story begins. | 17:41 | |
The fact that He was born | 17:44 | |
while his mother was upon a journey | 17:46 | |
is no poignant detail of a fetching story. | 17:48 | |
There is a deep and abiding wisdom here, | 17:52 | |
for here, if we but have the understanding to see it, | 17:55 | |
is underscored the fact | 17:58 | |
that no provincial locality may lay claim to Him. | 18:00 | |
This one came into existence | 18:05 | |
as his mother was upon a journey. | 18:07 | |
It is more that ruthlessness and transience, | 18:10 | |
here is one who belongs to no certain place or time. | 18:13 | |
Here is one who belongs to all the ages. | 18:17 | |
So that one says of Him correctly in a poem | 18:20 | |
in seeking for a gift, | 18:22 | |
If I had a coat to fit a no year old, | 18:24 | |
one who belongs to no time or place. | 18:28 | |
Or again, He himself said it, | 18:30 | |
The foxes have holes. | 18:33 | |
The birds of the air have nests. | 18:35 | |
But the Son of Man, | 18:36 | |
he belongs to all the ages and to all eternity. | 18:38 | |
Or look as you read the parables, | 18:41 | |
of all the literary forms that we know, | 18:43 | |
these are the other stories | 18:45 | |
that are transparent to universal truth, | 18:47 | |
for their details know no generation. | 18:50 | |
These are stories that could have happened anywhere, | 18:53 | |
that have happened everywhere. | 18:57 | |
A certain man had two sons, | 19:00 | |
and the younger of him said unto his father. | 19:02 | |
Or again, a sower went into the fields to sow. | 19:05 | |
But these are the eternal situations of our own existence, | 19:08 | |
and we recognize ourselves in the timeless telling of them. | 19:12 | |
We know eternity because we have seen it | 19:17 | |
in this story of the Gospels. | 19:19 | |
And when you come to the account of His death, | 19:21 | |
there you see again, | 19:24 | |
eternity reflected in the details that are given us. | 19:25 | |
As His birth was announced | 19:29 | |
by the confluence of stars in their courses, | 19:30 | |
so all nature reflects the tragedy of the crucifixion | 19:33 | |
and here, for instance, the sky darkens, | 19:37 | |
the mountains tremble, | 19:40 | |
and the earth yawns in quivering quake. | 19:42 | |
And so we know eternity in time. | 19:45 | |
Yes, you read the Gospels and see that He is timeless, | 19:48 | |
and never more do you understand it | 19:51 | |
more surely or more clearly | 19:53 | |
than in the reading of this day's lesson. | 19:55 | |
When you learn that at that time before the worlds existed, | 19:58 | |
in the countless eternity of God's mind, | 20:02 | |
he was existing eternally before anything was made. | 20:07 | |
Eternal without end. | 20:13 | |
Timeless. | 20:15 | |
Universal. | 20:16 | |
Yes, He is timeless. | 20:17 | |
And historical. | 20:20 | |
Look again, | 20:22 | |
and see if you do not stumble over the fact | 20:23 | |
of the historicity of Jesus. | 20:26 | |
Lately, it has been fashionable for many men | 20:28 | |
to run down the trails of quest, | 20:31 | |
seeking for the identity of the historical Jesus. | 20:33 | |
And many men have found much, | 20:37 | |
and many have found nothing. | 20:39 | |
Now, we submit to you that we would not depreciate ever | 20:41 | |
the erudition of men | 20:45 | |
who seek to know what the historical Jesus is. | 20:46 | |
And we are ourselves committed to the fact | 20:50 | |
that they have given us many insights. | 20:52 | |
And often as not, we agree with them. | 20:55 | |
And yet we are continually driven to confess this, | 20:58 | |
that we cannot read the fact of history | 21:02 | |
without seeing that here was historical fact. | 21:05 | |
And when all the accretion of legend is pared away, | 21:08 | |
there is still the hard core of truth | 21:11 | |
that here within the stream of history, | 21:15 | |
as scandalously particular and as definite | 21:17 | |
as to be able to be measured | 21:20 | |
by the page of a calendar or the face of a map, | 21:22 | |
was a man, as you are a man, | 21:26 | |
who at a time and place interrupted history. | 21:28 | |
Cardinal Newman has wisely reminded us | 21:32 | |
in the "Grammar of Assent," | 21:35 | |
that men do not let themselves be martyred | 21:37 | |
for the sake of a logical conclusion. | 21:39 | |
Men let themselves be sent to their death | 21:42 | |
because of an historical experience that they have had, | 21:45 | |
when they have met eternity. | 21:49 | |
And so it was with these men. | 21:50 | |
We cannot with certainty | 21:54 | |
describe the circumstance of that meeting. | 21:56 | |
And surely we cannot say with definition | 21:58 | |
exactly what the nature of the one whom they met was. | 22:01 | |
But we can never deny that they did meet Him. | 22:04 | |
Look at them and you see them at the time of the cross, | 22:08 | |
and they have run fighting for their lives | 22:11 | |
to hide in the Galilean hills. | 22:14 | |
And only a few terrified women | 22:16 | |
have waited to watch how He should die. | 22:18 | |
And then we meet them | 22:20 | |
and we see them and see them again. | 22:22 | |
And they have become irresolute. | 22:25 | |
They have become resolute | 22:27 | |
and dauntless in the face of death. | 22:28 | |
They have become themselves resilient | 22:30 | |
in time of persecution, | 22:32 | |
not because of a conclusion that they have drawn, | 22:34 | |
but because of an historical experience | 22:38 | |
that they have known. | 22:40 | |
And the very fact that there is a church, | 22:42 | |
the very fact that these men went out | 22:44 | |
and turned the world upside down, | 22:47 | |
says that they had met not an idea, | 22:49 | |
but an historical man. | 22:52 | |
And so here it is. Will you have it? | 22:54 | |
This is the lesson that we have not learned, | 22:56 | |
that Jesus is the Christ | 22:59 | |
and that the Christ is Jesus. | 23:01 | |
And so long as you keep Him, | 23:03 | |
and so long as I keep Him as a wandering teacher, | 23:05 | |
appealing and good and kind, | 23:09 | |
who in his youth was unjustly accused and sent to his death, | 23:12 | |
we shall be moved to the depths of sacrifice | 23:17 | |
and nobility of which human nature is capable. | 23:20 | |
And yet we shall not find | 23:23 | |
that this history has touched our history, | 23:25 | |
touched it so radical that it could be said of Him, | 23:28 | |
He was tempted in all parts, like as we. | 23:32 | |
One of those verses that means exactly what it says | 23:35 | |
and is shattering in its implication. | 23:39 | |
So long as we see Him only as an historical individual, | 23:42 | |
when we have shut ourselves out from the understanding | 23:46 | |
that this history | 23:49 | |
and His history becomes the part at which we touch Him | 23:51 | |
and the occasion | 23:55 | |
through which we become heirs to this transcendent love | 23:56 | |
that moves the sun and the other stars. | 24:00 | |
So long as we have kept Him a historical figure alone, | 24:03 | |
we have denied ourselves redemption. | 24:08 | |
And so long as we have made Him | 24:11 | |
a transcendent and a metaphysical Christ alone, | 24:13 | |
then what we have done | 24:17 | |
is to substitute speculation for salvation. | 24:19 | |
And we have never known that this power | 24:23 | |
that created and redeems and sustains the cosmos | 24:25 | |
can become translucent in our own situation, | 24:29 | |
and like even the simplest thing that we do, | 24:33 | |
incandescent with eternal understanding | 24:35 | |
and with vital truth. | 24:39 | |
Or will you have it | 24:41 | |
in all eternities? | 24:43 | |
Doubtless, we shall compare | 24:45 | |
the million alien gospels | 24:48 | |
in what guise He tread the Pleiades, | 24:51 | |
the Lyra, | 24:54 | |
the Bear. | 24:55 | |
O my soul, prepare to read the inconceivable, | 24:57 | |
to scan the million alien forms of God, | 25:02 | |
when in our turn, we show the stars | 25:05 | |
the one whom we call man. | 25:08 | |
Or can you say it another way and even more simply? | 25:10 | |
That God, out of all eternity, | 25:14 | |
so loved the world and this world of man, | 25:17 | |
that He sent his, before all ages, timeless Son, | 25:21 | |
to be incarnate in the flesh, | 25:26 | |
and to walk with men and before men, | 25:29 | |
that they, finding their own situation, | 25:32 | |
touched by his experience | 25:35 | |
and by his knowledge, | 25:37 | |
might, kept in his love and acknowledging his power, | 25:38 | |
find it for them and even here and now, | 25:42 | |
the life eternal became possible and became real. | 25:45 | |
He so loved the world | 25:49 | |
that all who believed on Him | 25:51 | |
might not perish but have eternal life. | 25:54 | |
This is the lesson that we have not learned, | 25:57 | |
that Jesus is the Christ, | 26:00 | |
and that the Christ is Jesus. | 26:02 | |
There led the doorway into the kingdom of God | 26:04 | |
swings upon the hinge of the incarnation. | 26:07 | |
And until you have learned this lesson, | 26:10 | |
and until I have accepted this truth, | 26:12 | |
we have not known what salvation is. | 26:15 | |
But once this has become real to us, | 26:18 | |
then in this power and in this strength, | 26:20 | |
we have walked in the truth and in the light and the beauty | 26:23 | |
that He knows | 26:27 | |
and that He has given unto us. | 26:28 | |
Almighty God, | 26:34 | |
grant unto us | 26:37 | |
that we may through the experience | 26:40 | |
of meeting in our own fragment of time | 26:44 | |
the eternal Christ, | 26:48 | |
an understanding that eternity | 26:51 | |
in terms of the days of His years | 26:55 | |
and the knowledge of our time, | 26:59 | |
come finally ourselves | 27:02 | |
into membership of His kingdom | 27:06 | |
and into the glory of the life eternal, | 27:09 | |
which begins not in some remote and far-off time, | 27:13 | |
but in our own age | 27:19 | |
and in our own hearts, | 27:22 | |
if we accept the truth | 27:25 | |
and the reality of Christ incarnate. | 27:27 | |
We stand. | 27:34 |
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