James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (January 31, 1965)

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-	Academic corporate life,	0:03
	which received merciless criticism	0:07
	in the editorial columns of our campus newspaper	0:11
	or in the letters to the editor.	0:15
	But one institution seems to be doing a good job	0:20
	judging from the way in which it is left alone.	0:26
	Namely the Quadrangle Pictures.	0:31
	Now that we are given a chance	0:36
	to see the movies we have missed downtown	0:38
	or at home, or overseas.	0:42
	We're given the opportunity to see for a second time	0:46
	those films which impressed	0:50
	or delighted or baffled us.	0:52
	Now recently, the Quadrangle Pictures brought back	0:57
	to a large and awed audience,	1:01
	"The Bridge over the River Kwai."	1:06
	A prize winning picture	1:10
	based on a novel of the same name,	1:12
	written 10 years ago by a French novelist.	1:16
	It's a story of the building of a wooden bridge	1:24
	by British prisoners of war,	1:27
	on the Siam-Burma border	1:31
	to carry the rail road	1:34
	which would enable the Japanese to invade India.	1:36
	Do you remember the triangular contest	1:42
	involving this sadistic Japanese colonel	1:45
	who must have the bridge?	1:50
	The militarily ritualistically correct	1:53
	British colonel, who supervises its building,	1:58
	and the cloak and dagger boys from Calcutta	2:02
	who want to blow it up.	2:07
	Sir Alec Guinness was the British colonel.	2:10
	Your feet are right now,	2:15
	probably tapping out the rhythm of its theme song,	2:17
	Colonel Bogey.	2:22
	Now a second book was written about the River Kwai,	2:25
	in 1962.	2:29
	The author was Ernest Gordon.	2:34
	And the title was, "Through the Valley of the Kwai."	2:37
	It became a best seller,	2:43
	and was translated into at least two foreign languages.	2:45
	It may now be purchased in paperback, and you should buy it.	2:50
	It is a biographical narrative of three and a half years	2:56
	in the prison camp,	3:01
	whose inhabitants actually built the bridge.	3:04
	It was written by a professional soldier,	3:09
	an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.	3:13
	Now let me give you a resume	3:18
	of what happened in that far away place,	3:19
	for "Through the Valley of the Kwai,"	3:24
	is the text of the sermon.	3:28
	The background can be sensed	3:32
	in two or three paragraphs of Gordon.	3:34
	During the four years they were in control,	3:39
	the Japanese military violated every civilized code.	3:43
	They murdered prisoners overplayed by banting,	3:49
	shooting, drowning or decapitation.	3:53
	They murdered them covertly,	3:58
	by working them beyond human endurance,	4:00
	starving them, torturing them and denying them medical care.	4:04
	The survivors built the bridge unwillingly, says the author.	4:11
	At banat point and under the bamboo lash,	4:17
	taking any risk to sabotage the operation	4:21
	whenever the opportunity arose.	4:25
	Lying in the death house,	4:30
	which was the prisoner's name for the camp hospital,	4:33
	Gordon overheard the medical officers	4:38
	discussing his own case.	4:40
	His had the words, malaria, dysentery,	4:43
	beriberi plus some kind of blood infection	4:50
	he can't identify.	4:54
	Oh yes, he's also had an appendectomy,	4:56
	and on top of that, a bad case of diptheria,	4:59
	which left him without the use of his legs.	5:02
	That is the background.	5:07
	Now the first reaction to this kind of existence	5:10
	on the part of the prisoners,	5:13
	was an upsurge of religion.	5:16
	Church services, Bible reading, private prayer.	5:18
	It didn't last,	5:25
	because it didn't work.	5:28
	God declined to be used as a personal expedient.	5:32
	The counter reaction was a widespread self-centeredness,	5:39
	which revealed itself in selfishness, hatred, and fear.	5:44
	Gordon called it, the law of the jungle.	5:49
	Men stole from one another.	5:53
	They cursed so creatively,	5:57
	that they constructed whole sentences	6:00
	in which every word was a curse.	6:03
	And yet the strongest still died.	6:08
	The Wiliest and the cleverest perished with the weak.	6:12
	Gordon wrote a letter to his parents saying goodbye.	6:18
	And then things began to happen,	6:26
	which are told in a chapter entitled,	6:28
	"Miracle by the River Kwai."	6:31
	Some of Gordon's friends built him a hut,	6:34
	where he could sweat out his illness in quiet,	6:39
	and if necessary, die in peace.	6:43
	An Englishman by the name of Dusty Miller,	6:48
	I will remember his name.	6:52
	Dusty Miller came voluntarily	6:55
	and daily to bathe Gordon's putrid ulcers.	6:58
	With the help of another soldier,	7:03
	the officer was nursed back to life.	7:06
	And then stories of voluntary martyrdom	7:10
	began to be whispered.	7:13
	There was the soldier who died of starvation	7:16
	because he gave his rations to a sick friend.	7:20
	There was the soldier who "confessed,"	7:26
	and confessed must go in quotation marks.	7:29
	Who confessed that he had "stolen,"	7:32
	and that must go in quotation marks.	7:35
	He "confessed" that he had "stolen" a missing shovel	7:37
	because he saw that the guard was angry enough	7:40
	to shoot every man in the squad.	7:45
	And because he confessed,	7:51
	that soldier was beaten to death where he stood.	7:53
	And that night when the tools were counted again,	7:58
	no shovel was missing.	8:03
	But listen to the ending of that story.	8:07
	Admiration for the Argyll transcended hatred	8:09
	for the Japanese guard.	8:15
	An Australian was decapitated	8:18
	because he was caught outside the prison fence,	8:19
	trying to obtain medicine from the natives	8:24
	for his sick friends.	8:27
	And his last words to the agitated chaplain were,	8:29
	"Cheer up, padre.	8:33
	It doesn't as bad as all that. I'll be all right."	8:36
	And thus, the law of the jungle was denied.	8:40
	The law of the jungle is not a law for men.	8:45
	Men cannot become a beast,	8:51
	though he may become less than a beast.	8:55
	Now Gordon thought about this.	9:02
	He puzzled to find a common denominator,	9:04
	the two soldiers who cared for him were Christian,	9:06
	but one was a Methodist, the other a Roman Catholic.	9:10
	Was there any word which linked them and the others	9:16
	who had given up the law of the jungle?	9:19
	Could it be love?	9:22
	Does love of neighbor have any relation to love of God?	9:25
	Love from God?	9:30
	A new kind of life was begun in the camp.	9:34
	A discussion group was started by the Australians	9:37
	who wanted to find out what Christianity was all about.	9:41
	Gordon was asked to lead it,	9:45
	because he was a university man.	9:48
	But on one understanding,	9:53
	the lads won't stand for any Sunday school stuff.	9:55
	What they want is the real dingo.	10:00
	Well, they got it.	10:04
	And that class grew into the Jungle University,	10:06
	with a curriculum which offered courses in history,	10:10
	economics, philosophy, mathematics,	10:14
	several of the sciences and at least nine languages,	10:16
	including Latin, Greek, Russian and Sanskrit.	10:22
	An orchestra was formed,	10:27
	and a theater was established.	10:29
	Artificial legs were made for the legless,	10:32
	who in turn made legs for the other legless.	10:36
	Men painted card, pen sketch and gave exhibition.	10:40
	They invented drugs and anesthetics.	10:46
	They manufactured surgical implements.	10:51
	They recovered respect even for the dead.	10:55
	Instead of being chucked into a common pit,	11:00
	each corpse received a personal burial,	11:04
	with a little cross to mark the grave.	11:08
	Casually, quietly,	11:12
	a church was built.	11:15
	A church in the open air, a church that was outdoors.	11:18
	Do you know the name of it?	11:23
	The Church of the Captivity.	11:24
	Here are Gordon's words about it.	11:28
	"The church was a fellowship	11:30
	of those who came in freedom and love, to do three things.	11:32
	To acknowledge their weakness,	11:40
	to seek a presence,	11:43
	and to pray for their fellows."	11:46
	Not for themselves, for their fellows.	11:52
	The confession was Jesus Christ as Lord.	11:56
	That was the only requirement for membership.	12:01
	Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.	12:04
	The church was made up of Methodists, Baptists,	12:08
	Episcopalians, Presbyterians,	12:11
	Congregationalists and former agnostics.	12:13
	Sounds like the duke chapel.	12:17
	(congregation laughs)	12:19
	When the end of the war came,	12:24
	well, let me quote Gordon again.	12:27
	"The incoming liberators, they were American and British.	12:30
	The incoming liberators were so infuriated by what they saw,	12:36
	that they wanted to shoot the Japanese guards on the spot.	12:41
	Only the intervention of the prisoners prevented it."	12:48
	Hectors were spared by their captives.	12:55
	Not an eye for an eye, a limb for limb this time,	13:00
	said these exhausted but forgiving men.	13:06
	And all this happened at a POW camp,	13:11
	near the bridge over the River Kwai.	13:15
	Now, as I read this book,	13:19
	two passages from the New Testament surfaced	13:23
	from my subconscious memory,	13:26
	two which were read as this morning's lesson.	13:29
	Let me quote a verse from each,	13:32
	hoping that you will spot the noun,	13:35
	which is common to both verses.	13:39
	First, "Teacher, we know that you are true	13:41
	and teach the way of God truthfully."	13:48
	That was said to Jesus, probably in sarcasm.	13:53
	And second, "And Paul asked the high priest	13:57
	for letters to the synagogues at Damascus,	14:01
	so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women,	14:05
	he might bring them bound to Jerusalem."	14:11
	The noun common to these two passages is way.	14:16
	W-A-Y.	14:20
	One of the many New Testament names	14:23
	for the Christian manner of life.	14:27
	For the walk and congregation	14:31
	of those who sought to understand	14:33
	and implement the will of God through the teaching of Jesus.	14:36
	In fact, the Way with a capital "W",	14:41
	becomes a designation for the church.	14:44
	But why not?	14:49
	Jesus had called himself the Way,	14:51
	and the church is supposed to be his body.	14:56
	Now such a way has always two complimentary	15:04
	and interacting aspects.	15:07
	One is theological,	15:10
	it's view of God who is conceived of analogically,	15:12
	as a father, rather than as a king or a judge.	15:16
	And the other of course is ethical,	15:22
	living here on earth in a way	15:24
	which is acceptable and satisfactory to such a father, God.	15:29
	Which comes first?	15:37
	For some people, the theological,	15:40
	for others, the ethical.	15:44
	But both would agree that both aspects are needed	15:47
	for a proper explication and application of the way.	15:53
	Some believe first, and act second.	15:58
	For others, action leads back to belief,	16:03
	faith and works.	16:08
	Works and faith never independent, always interdependent.	16:12
	Do you recall that one of the men who helped Gordon	16:20
	was a Methodist?	16:23
	Have you ever thought of John Wesley's followers	16:27
	as the people of the way?	16:29
	Isn't that what Methodist means?	16:33
	Methodist comes from the two Greek words,	16:37
	meta, according to, hadas, the way.	16:40
	Metahadas, Methodist.	16:45
	The name was originally one of several applied	16:49
	by fellow students to John Wesley and his friends at Oxford.	16:51
	It was originally a term of derision,	16:57
	it's no longer a term of derision.	17:00
	Christians are people of the way,	17:04
	in Jerusalem, in Damascus,	17:08
	at Oxford, on the banks of the River Kwai.	17:13
	Now I can almost hear your puzzled reaction to all this,	17:18
	such a way of life may be possible,	17:24
	in fact, it is possible in a closed society,	17:27
	especially one which is small.	17:33
	In the early church, in Wesley's Holy Club,	17:36
	in a prison camp from which death	17:42
	seem to be the only mistake, the only escape.	17:45
	It's possible in the orders of the Roman Catholic Church,	17:49
	in the sale groups within Protestantism,	17:53
	but it is impossible, unfeasible,	17:56
	for the Christian who has to live in contact	18:01
	with the widowed.	18:04
	As most of us have to live.	18:06
	Now let's be fair, the critic has a case.	18:10
	The average church member is too tame	18:16
	or too reluctant or to compromised,	18:22
	to think of living in so thoroughly a Christian way,	18:28
	as those prisoners in the church of the captivity.	18:32
	That fact hit Gordon, when he came back to Scotland.	18:36
	Here is his post-war description of the church in Scotland.	18:41
	"After my return, I had gone to church every Sunday,	18:47
	but what I saw, heard, and saw and heard depressed me.	18:51
	The sermons belong to a different age,	18:56
	they suggested Victorian parlors,	19:00
	elderly people dressed in black,	19:03
	horse hair chairs and ankle micasas.	19:07
	We had seen a vision of far horizons,	19:12
	and caught a glimpse of the city of God in all its beauty.	19:16
	Yeah, there's so little that is extraordinary	19:23
	about much church membership,	19:27
	it's just the religious gloss or luster	19:31
	on our normal secular living.	19:37
	And that is why the church of England	19:41
	has been not untruthfully defined as	19:43
	the conservative party at prayer."	19:47
	Yes, the critic has an argument,	19:54
	but there's another argument.	19:58
	The way it was adopted in the first century and by Wesley,	20:01
	and at the River Kwai,	20:06
	as the only method, of transforming existence into life,	20:09
	of metamorphosing ugliness into beauty,	20:17
	of creating harmony out of discord.	20:21
	And are we really living	20:25
	in a much healthier situation today?	20:27
	What can we do?	20:33
	Oh, there's little that any one of us can do	20:35
	about world problems.	20:38
	Or impersonal social conflict.	20:42
	But there's much we can do within it.	20:47
	The alumni of the Kwai and the other hell camps knew that,	20:53
	that's why some entered the ministry	20:58
	to share with the church	21:00
	the vision they had seen in Thailand.	21:02
	Others became lay members of their local churches	21:05
	for the same reason, others by intention are teachers,	21:08
	welfare officers, doctors.	21:14
	In worship, or in work,	21:18
	they wanted to be in contact with people,	21:19
	and to share the good life they had discovered in prison.	21:24
	Because brethren, it takes only a cup of cold water,	21:29
	a sick visit,	21:37
	a piece of clothing, to get one into the kingdom,	21:40
	if they are given in love.	21:47
	That is the way.	21:53
	And yet blessed we leave this house of God	21:57
	with either a rosy glow or a cynical smile.	22:02
	There's one other thing to be said.	22:08
	You recall Dusty Miller?	22:12
	Who voluntarily bathed Gordon's wounds?	22:15
	What happened to him?	22:20
	Gordon asked that question too,	22:22
	when he was finally released.	22:24
	And listen to this dialogue. Gordon speaks first.	22:27
	"But what about Miller?	22:33
	He got the nip one officer in charge of his party	22:37
	down on him.	22:41
	What had he done wrong?	22:44
	That was it, he hadn't done anything wrong.	22:47
	The jack hated him because he couldn't break him.	22:54
	You know how he was,	22:58
	a good man, if ever there was one.	23:00
	That's why he hated him.	23:04
	What did the nip do to him?	23:08
	He strung him up to a tree.	23:13
	You mean?	23:18
	Yes, he crucified him."	23:20
	The way is not walked in a rosy glow.	23:27
	And there's little about it for the cynic to smile at.	23:33
	It is a way which we believe leads to the new Jerusalem,	23:40
	but across, maybe a waystation on it.	23:44
	It is not a way for idealists.	23:50
	It is a way for realists.	23:55
	A Christian had better be a realist about God,	24:00
	and about his fellow.	24:07
	There's a footnote to be added to the sermon.	24:12
	You know what Gordon the author is doing now?	24:17
	He is no longer a professional soldier.	24:23
	He is now the Dean of the chapel	24:27
	at Princeton University.	24:31
	Amen.	24:37
	Let us pray.	24:39
	Oh God, who has set us in the midst of strenuous days,	24:44
	teach us that we are always life's soldiers	24:49
	expected to serve under the banner of love,	24:54
	and to walk the way of love,	24:59
	as did thy son, even Jesus Christ our Lord.	25:02
	Now under God's gracious mercy and protection	25:07
	do we commit you,	25:10
	the Lord bless you, and keep you,	25:12
	the Lord make his face to shine upon you,	25:17
	and be gracious unto you.	25:21
	The Lord lift up his countenance upon you	25:23
	and give you peace, this day and forevermore.	25:26

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (January 31, 1965)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r41r6s22m

Date:

January 31, 1965

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0282
ref5769_hkv
uachapelsermaud
duke:628076
dcrau002281
ark:/87924/r41r6s22m
6b1c55a2-2568-49b2-b74f-26950bf9ce87

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (January 31, 1965)

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1. James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (January 31, 1965)

Duke University Archives

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James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (January 31, 1965)

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