Bradford S. Abernethy - "A Time for Presence" (April 20, 1969)

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	(church choir singing)	0:05
-	Beloved, may we unite our hearts and our voices	5:22
	in our unison prayer of confession and for pardon?	5:26
	Let us pray.	5:30
	Oh Lord, Holy and Righteous God,	5:32
	we acknowledge before thee,	5:36
	that we do not fear thee,	5:38
	and that we do not love thee above all things.	5:40
	We do not delight in prayer, nor take pleasure in thy word.	5:44
	We do not really love our neighbor.	5:49
	We lack the conscience	5:52
	that should accompany our Christian profession.	5:53
	Our hearts are divided,	5:57
	crossed by doubts, and guilty desires.	5:59
	We accuse ourselves before thee, oh God.	6:02
	We implore thee whose nature and whose name is love	6:06
	to for forgive us.	6:10
	And in forgiving, to heal us,	6:12
	so that in our lives,	6:15
	something will finally be changed, Amen.	6:16
	From the book of Micah,	6:23
	we find words which are comforting	6:25
	to those who are sincerely sorry for their sins.	6:28
	The prophet says,	6:34
	"Who is like unto God,	6:37
	who pardons inequity, and passes over transgression.	6:40
	He does not retain His anger forever,	6:45
	because He delights in steadfast love.	6:49
	He will again have compassion upon us.	6:53
	He will tread our equities under foot.	6:56
	He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea."	6:59
	Amen.	7:04
	(organ pipe music)	7:14
	(church choir singing)	7:55
-	"Now, Moses tending the flock	10:14
	of his father-in-law, Jethro the priest of Midian,	10:17
	drove the flock into the wilderness	10:20
	and came to Horeb, the Mountain of God.	10:23
	An angel of the Lord appeared to him	10:26
	in a blazing fire out of a bush.	10:28
	An angel of the Lord appeared to him.	10:31
	He gazed and there was a bush, all aflame.	10:34
	Yet the Bush was not consumed.	10:37
	Moses said, 'I must turn aside	10:39
	to look at this marvelous sight.	10:42
	Why is the Bush not burned?'	10:44
	When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look,	10:46
	God called him out of the Bush, 'Moses, Moses.'	10:49
	He answered, 'Here I am.'	10:53
	And He said, 'Do not come closer.	10:56
	Remove your sandals from your feet,	10:58
	for the place in which you stand his Holy ground.'	11:01
	'I Am,' He said the God of your father, the God of Abraham,	11:04
	the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.	11:09
	And Moses hid his face,	11:12
	for he was afraid to look at God.	11:14
	And the Lord continue you, 'I have marked well,	11:16
	the plight of my people in Egypt,	11:19
	and have headed their outcry because of their task masters.	11:21
	Yes, I am mindful of their sufferings.	11:25
	I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians,	11:28
	and to bring them out of that land	11:31
	to a good and spacious land,	11:33
	a land flowing with milk and honey.	11:35
	The home of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites,	11:39
	the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.	11:43
	Now the cry of Israelites has reached me.	11:48
	Moreover, I have seen how the Egyptians	11:51
	have oppressed them.	11:53
	Come therefore, I will send you to Pharaoh,	11:55
	and you shall free my people,	11:57
	the Israelites from Egypt.'	11:59
	But Moses said to God, 'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh	12:02
	and free the Israelites from Egypt?'	12:06
	And He said, 'I will be with you.	12:09
	And it shall be your sign, that it was I who sent you.	12:11
	And when you have freed the people of Egypt,	12:15
	you shall worship God at this mountain.'	12:17
	Moses said to God, 'When I come to the Israelites	12:20
	and say to them, 'The God of your fathers	12:23
	has sent me to you.'	12:25
	And they ask me, 'What is His name?'	12:26
	What shall I say to them?'	12:30
	And God said to Moses, 'Ehyeh asher ehyeh.'	12:32
	He continued, 'Thus shall you say to the Israelite,	12:36
	Ehyeh sent me to you.'	12:39
	And God said further to Moses,	12:41
	'Thus shall you speak to the Israelis,	12:43
	the Lord, the God of your fathers,	12:46
	the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,	12:48
	the God of Jacob has sent me to you.	12:51
	This should be my name forever.	12:54
	This my appellation for all eternity.'"	12:56
	(organ pipe music)	13:02
	(church choir singing)	13:09
-	The Lord be with you.	13:58
-	And with your spirit.	14:00
-	Let us pray.	14:02
	Our heavenly Father, in the quietness of this moment,	14:11
	we turn our thoughts to you.	14:16
	We now wish to approach you in prayer.	14:20
	We praise you for the great privilege, which is ours,	14:23
	to bring our human needs to your divine attention.	14:27
	We glorify you that in times past,	14:32
	you have heard of our prayers,	14:35
	and that you have answered them with a loving wisdom	14:38
	greater than ours.	14:40
	Oh God, we thank you that today,	14:43
	as we come here to renew our prayers,	14:46
	there is fresh grace available to supply our necessity.	14:49
	We thank you that we were given enough grace	14:55
	to desire to worship.	14:58
	And we give you thanks that all who seek, find.	15:00
	And that to all who knock, the door of your love is opened.	15:06
	We come acknowledging our unpayable indebtedness	15:12
	to you, oh Lord,	15:15
	because of your unnumbered benefits to us.	15:17
	You have met repentance with forgiveness.	15:21
	You have rewarded our high aspirations.	15:25
	You have strengthened our feeble efforts for right.	15:28
	You have given us the material necessities of existence.	15:32
	We thank you, Almighty God for these,	15:37
	and all other mercies.	15:40
	And now we come to offer unto you our petitions	15:43
	for new blessings.	15:46
	And we pray that you will send these blessings	15:48
	not on upon us and our own people,	15:51
	but upon all your children in every place.	15:55
	Give us hearts which regularly care	16:00
	for all whom you have made.	16:03
	Take away from us those self-centered tendencies,	16:06
	which frequently lead us even to pray chiefly for ourselves.	16:10
	Remove from our hearts, oh God, the sham and pretense,	16:16
	which so often spoil our religious life.	16:21
	Keep us from complimenting the church,	16:26
	while we fail to heed its gospel.	16:29
	Deliver us from pious sounding talk about the Bible,	16:33
	while we ignore your living word.	16:36
	May we not substitute neat prayers in church	16:41
	for genuine communication and confrontation with you	16:45
	in the secret places of our hearts.	16:48
	Oh Lord, let this time of worship be used by your spirit	16:53
	to accomplish these things for which we have prayed.	16:57
	We come now to intercede for our university,	17:04
	asking that the spiritual purposes	17:07
	which motivated its birth, may now strengthen its youth.	17:10
	We ask you to strengthen the leaders of school,	17:16
	of state, and of nation,	17:19
	that your people may be wisely led by inspired men.	17:22
	We pray, oh God, for those who mourn a loved one.	17:30
	We pray for those who have had an accident.	17:36
	For those who seek to regain their health.	17:40
	For those who are aiding the sick, find health.	17:44
	May all who need thy special providence,	17:48
	find it through thy love.	17:51
	Our Father, we pray that you will fulfill	17:56
	the longing of our souls for a vision of you.	17:59
	You have made us in your image,	18:04
	and we cannot be satisfied with our fellowship with you.	18:06
	Our hearts and our flesh cry out for the living God.	18:11
	Give us so to know Christ and His life,	18:17
	at the same mind, which was in Him, may be in us.	18:20
	That we may be in the world as He was in the world.	18:25
	Give us so to know Christ and his death,	18:30
	that we may not glory except in his cross.	18:34
	Give us so to know Christ and the power of his resurrection,	18:38
	that like, as He was raised from the dead	18:42
	by the power of the Father,	18:45
	we also may walk in newness of life	18:47
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	18:51
	Now, remembering the words	18:56
	which Christ has taught us to pray.	18:57
	We say our, Father who art Heaven	19:01
	hallowed would be thy name	19:05
	thy kingdom come,	19:07
	thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.	19:09
	Give us this day, our daily bread	19:13
	and forgive us our trespasses	19:16
	as we forgive those who trespass against us	19:18
	and lead us, not into temptation,	19:22
	but deliver us from evil,	19:24
	for thine is the kingdom,	19:26
	and the power, and the glory forever, Amen.	19:28
-	If a very brief personal word of appreciation	19:49
	may be allowed at this time	19:53
	for the invitation to preach in this chapel,	19:56
	I should like to express it.	20:00
	It is good for those of us who come	20:04
	from small intimate colonial chapels,	20:07
	with small intimate congregations	20:13
	to see how the other half lives.	20:17
	And furthermore, it has never before happened,	20:21
	that when I have preached in the chapel of a friend of mine,	20:26
	that he has been able to provide as the lector,	20:33
	the daughter of another college chaplain,	20:37
	whom I have known for many years.	20:39
	So, for many reasons,	20:42
	I have reason to be grateful	20:44
	for these expressions of Southern hospitality.	20:46
	We had a few friends in for dinner in the evening,	20:52
	not long ago.	20:57
	And since it was a group which in age,	20:59
	at least had long since ceased to be trustworthy,	21:03
	I thought a pencil and paper game	21:08
	might be in order.	21:12
	And one of these was an observation game.	21:15
	Each person was given three minutes to study a picture,	21:19
	the same picture for everyone,	21:25
	knowing that at the end of the three minutes,	21:28
	certain questions would be asked about the picture,	21:30
	which would test their powers of observation.	21:35
	It was a drawing of a house,	21:39
	which judging from footprints entering and leaving the door,	21:42
	had presumably been burgled.	21:49
	And there were clues in the picture as to the time of day	21:52
	the vandalism occurred, whose house it was,	21:56
	in what direction the burglar had fled, et cetera.	21:59
	At the end of the three minutes,	22:04
	time was called and the papers were turned over.	22:06
	And I reached for the printed sheet	22:10
	of questions to be asked.	22:12
	To my great surprise and dismay,	22:15
	I discovered that what I had	22:19
	was the printed sheet of answers.	22:21
	It had been some time since we had played the game,	22:26
	and I had thought to check	22:28
	to see if all the necessary parts were at hand.	22:30
	So, there I was, assembled guests	22:33
	eager to display their powers of observation,	22:37
	and I had answers, but no questions.	22:40
	And obviously, the game took an unexpected turn.	22:44
	As I found it necessary to say,	22:48
	for example, what would question 17 be?	22:50
	The answer to which is yes.	22:54
	(congregation laughing)	22:57
	I must say, it made it a bit difficult to grade	23:01
	to determine which question did the best job	23:06
	of eliciting the answer, yes.	23:08
	But I'm not at all sure, we didn't have a better time	23:10
	than if we had played it straight.	23:14
	Now, this experience will help to account	23:17
	for the particular tack we're going to take this morning.	23:19
	A fairly common, and perfectly respectable,	23:24
	and legitimate type of sermon,	23:28
	is the problem centered sermon.	23:30
	It begins as the game did, by inviting the hearers	23:34
	to observe something that is going on in the world.	23:38
	Can be the state of affairs in Vietnam,	23:44
	or South Africa, or Washington, or New Brunswick, or Durham.	23:46
	It can be the state of race relations,	23:50
	or of contemporary immorality,	23:52
	or this revolting student generation,	23:54
	or almost anything.	23:59
	The listeners are asked to observe something	24:02
	the preacher has observed.	24:05
	They may not see it the way he does,	24:08
	but they will usually not walk out on him.	24:11
	The next stage in this type of sermon,	24:15
	is to focus on one or more questions,	24:18
	which presumably, arise for the hero	24:22
	out of the observations he has just engaged in such as,	24:24
	what is my role as a Christian with respect to Vietnam?	24:29
	Or how can one live serenely	24:35
	in this pressure cooker type of society?	24:39
	Or how can one find viable moral standards,	24:43
	or find what it takes to want to keep them	24:47
	after they have been found?	24:50
	Or how can the university be both a free	24:53
	and a disciplined community?	24:56
	In this stage, you see the observed situation	25:00
	is hopefully brought to assume	25:04
	some kind of personal dimension.	25:07
	The third stage, if the preacher ever gets to it,	25:12
	is the search for, or consideration of possible answers.	25:14
	They are customarily sought in the biblical witness.	25:21
	And it is at this point,	25:25
	that difficulties are up to be most numerous	25:26
	for both preacher and listeners,	25:29
	for it is not easy	25:30
	to span 2000 years or more,	25:33
	and sound convincing in offering a biblical solution	25:36
	to the problem of what the Christian ought to do	25:42
	about Vietnam, or student demonstrations,	25:45
	or any of the other things which he has observed.	25:48
	I'm sure we lose a lot of our listeners at this point.	25:53
	And since that is so,	25:57
	I wonder whether one might experimentally,	25:58
	at least turn the whole method upside down.	26:02
	Instead of saying what answers can we find	26:07
	in the biblical record to questions that confront us.	26:10
	Suppose we were to say, what questions can we find	26:17
	for answers that confront us in the biblical record?	26:23
	Is what means starting with answers,	26:29
	and looking for the questions	26:32
	to which those answers applied,	26:34
	and then seeing whether the questions were still valid.	26:36
	I doubt whether a sermon is the best vehicle	26:41
	for this kind of experiment,	26:45
	but it is the handiest one available to me,	26:47
	at least at the moment.	26:50
	Let me suggest one phrase.	26:53
	There are many others, of course,	26:56
	which might be considered in the category	26:58
	of a biblical answer.	27:00
	The gist or substance of it	27:05
	appears with sufficient frequency	27:07
	that we may consider it	27:08
	one of the Almighty's standard answers.	27:10
	The phrase is, "I shall be present."	27:14
	We meet the phrase of, or if you will, the answer	27:22
	first in the episode of Moses in the Bush,	27:25
	which burned but was not consumed.	27:27
	If you do not recall hearing it	27:32
	in the lesson which was read,	27:34
	it is because there are any number	27:37
	of ways of translating the name of himself,	27:39
	which God gave to Moses, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh."	27:42
	Translated in the King James, "I Am that I Am."	27:49
	In the Revised Standard Version, "I Am Who I am."	27:53
	Martin Buber in his book,	27:58
	Moses makes a persuasive case for rendering it,	28:00
	"I shall be present"	28:03
	A wording which brings out the reality	28:07
	for which the name stood	28:10
	rather than the enigmatic name itself.	28:12
	Appearing first in connection	28:19
	with the calling of an individual,	28:20
	the idea is met soon again	28:23
	in connect with the birth of the Israelite community	28:26
	at their Exodus from Egypt.	28:29
	"I will go before you,	28:32
	a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night."	28:35
	Ezekiel has this word of the Lord	28:41
	for those about to be carried into exile,	28:44
	"I will be to them a little sanctuary	28:46
	in the place where they shall go."	28:50
	The Psalmist reflects his awareness	28:52
	of it in the familiar "23rd Song."	28:56
	And we could pick up the thread of this theme answer	29:01
	at many places in the New Testament,	29:04
	though, here it is often spoken with the accents of,	29:07
	or in respect to Christ.	29:10
	"Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age."	29:13
	"Who shall separate us," say A. Paul,	29:20
	"from the love of Christ."	29:22
	And he is persuaded that nothing in this world	29:24
	or the next, would be able to do that.	29:27
	All of these you see are expressions in one way or another	29:29
	of this basic biblical answer,	29:33
	"I shall be present."	29:37
	Now, what was the question	29:44
	to which this was the answer given?	29:46
	There is I think a sameness about the question.	29:50
	In its simplest form, the question begins, what am I?	29:54
	Or what are we going to do when....	29:59
	That unfinished sentence.	30:06
	Moses, "What am I going to do when my brethren in Egypt	30:10
	want know by what right I have come back	30:14
	to lead them out of bondage, and who sent me?"	30:16
	The Israelites, "What are we going to do	30:21
	when we are on our own in the wilderness,	30:25
	or later in the far country of exile?"	30:28
	The Psalmist, "What am I going to do	30:33
	when I'm face-to-face with the inescapable fact of death?"	30:37
	The disciples, "What are we going to do, Lord,	30:44
	when you are no longer here to show us the way?"	30:47
	St. Paul, "What am I going to do in the event	30:52
	that persecution, and famine, and threats of all kind	30:57
	bear down on me and martyrdom looms?"	31:00
	These were the specific questions to which the answer,	31:05
	"I shall be present" was offered.	31:11
	And the questions all have,	31:16
	the common element of genuine wonder,	31:18
	which verges at times on panic,	31:21
	wonder as to whether man really could hold up	31:24
	in the face of his respective tumultuous surrounding.	31:28
	What remains now, is to inquire	31:37
	whether anyone is asking this sort of question anymore?	31:41
	Can there be any doubt of it?	31:48
	I suspect one does not have to pile evidence on evidence	31:53
	in this kind of congregation,	31:58
	that this kind of question is still with us,	32:01
	what am I going to do when thus and so?	32:05
	Still being uttered in genuine puzzlement	32:11
	and often in near panic,	32:14
	it is voiced collectively and individually.	32:15
	And one may have in mind,	32:20
	the worsening international situation,	32:22
	or a career change, or a family crisis,	32:24
	or impending graduation,	32:27
	or a situation in which one	32:29
	has morally fallen flat on his face.	32:32
	Or academic requirements,	32:35
	which seem out of proportion to one's capabilities.	32:37
	To all intents and purposes,	32:42
	it is the same question we met in the biblical record.	32:43
	What am I going to do when?	32:48
	And this brings us full cycle round	32:52
	to considering the answer again,	32:54
	that strange and perhaps puzzling answer,	32:58
	"I shall be present."	33:03
	Now, this is an unusual answer, admittedly,	33:07
	and on the surface, it is not very satisfactory.	33:09
	If you were to feed a problem to a computer,	33:13
	and it came up with the answer, "I shall be present,"	33:16
	you would have every right	33:20
	to think that someone had been playing around	33:21
	with the circuitry.	33:23
	The very idea	33:26
	of an unseen Presence, capital P,	33:28
	let alone the possibility of its being felt	33:33
	in any recognizable sort of way,	33:36
	has I think to meet two obstacles.	33:41
	One of these, is the reluctance of many in our time	33:44
	to give any house at all, to the idea of the supernatural.	33:49
	An interesting and worthwhile contribution to this issue,	33:57
	is to be found in Peter Berger's new book,	34:01
	"A Rumor of Angels."	34:03
	Professor Berger is professor of sociology	34:06
	at the New School for Social Research in New York.	34:08
	And he subtitles his book, "Modern Society,	34:10
	and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural."	34:14
	It is a book which is concerned basically	34:18
	with a relation between theology and anthropology.	34:20
	"In traditional Christian and Jewish thought," he says,	34:28
	"we begin with God and proceed in despair, or in hope,	34:31
	or alternating between them	34:38
	to consider who or what man is and how he got that way."	34:39
	Now, Berger refers to this as deductive faith.	34:45
	Faith which moves from statements about God,	34:50
	given statements,	34:53
	to interpretations of human experience.	34:54
	And in as much as many today,	34:57
	simply don't find that way of moving	34:59
	congenial or meaningful,	35:01
	he consider there's the possibility of inductive faith,	35:03
	moving from human experience	35:07
	to statements about ultimate reality.	35:10
	Now, he enumerates several human experiences	35:15
	that are so common	35:20
	as to appear to express something fundamental about man.	35:22
	And in these experiences,	35:27
	he feels there may be found what he calls	35:30
	Signals of Transcendence.	35:32
	A very graphic and a very useful phrase, I think.	35:35
	And by Signals of Transcendence,	35:39
	he means, phenomena that are to be found	35:42
	within the domain of our natural reality,	35:45
	but which appeared to point beyond that reality.	35:49
	One basic human trait, for example, in Berger's view,	35:55
	is man's propensity for order.	35:58
	He takes a number of these, this is only one of them.	36:02
	And he uses the example of a child waking up in the night	36:05
	from a frightening dream,	36:09
	crying out in the darkness for his mother.	36:12
	Father will usually do, I might add, he often does.	36:16
	The parent will turn on the light and sit down on the bed,	36:22
	stroke the child's head and say softly, "It's all right,	36:27
	don't be afraid, everything's all right."	36:33
	And if it has been just a bad dream,	36:39
	the child's trust in his world is restored,	36:42
	and he goes back to sleep.	36:46
	Now, parenthetically, I might say here,	36:50
	I don't know how it is with all modern parents	36:51
	of young children.	36:55
	Perhaps there are some who would not turn on	36:57
	the comforting light,	37:00
	and who would announce from the door,	37:02
	"Sunny boy, you have just discovered something basic	37:04
	about life, it's all a bad dream, so get used to it."	37:07
	But I would still wager that such parents are rare excepts,	37:14
	and that for some time to come, yet,	37:20
	little children can count on the light	37:22
	and the reassuring voice, "It's all right."	37:24
	Now, we know perfectly well, everything is not all right.	37:30
	But what keeps the parents word to the child	37:35
	from being a lie, a bear-faced lie,	37:38
	is a deep and often admitted	37:43
	faith in orderliness at the root of things.	37:46
	This kind of experience,	37:52
	one of the most common and routine for parents,	37:54
	provides Berger with one of his Signals of Transcendence.	37:59
	It proves nothing, it points to nothing specifically.	38:04
	It points in the direction of,	38:08
	an ultimate reality.	38:11
	The parent's role is a witness to something ultimately true,	38:15
	pointing to a reality beyond the immediate darkness,	38:20
	and the momentary terror.	38:24
	Through such Signals of Transcendence,	38:28
	one may perhaps come to live more easily in this time	38:31
	with the idea, at least, of the supernatural,	38:37
	A second obstacle that has to be met,	38:44
	if the idea of a Presence is to be accepted,	38:47
	is the proposition that it's truth	38:52
	is going to be apparent only after one has trusted it.	38:53
	Now, this goes against the grain for many.	39:00
	One of the most sacred of academic caws,	39:04
	is that one must first establish the truth of a theory,	39:07
	then and then only, can one trust it.	39:13
	Here, we are suggesting just the reverse,	39:17
	saying that trust must precede	39:20
	the determination of the truth of the proposition,	39:23
	that there is a Presence.	39:28
	Trust is a commodity that is in very supply these days,	39:33
	especially on college campuses.	39:37
	Does it make any sense to trust anyone	39:40
	or anything in these days?	39:43
	For an opinion on the score,	39:48
	I turned to a Labrador retriever pup became acquainted with	39:50
	recently in the summertime.	39:57
	He belonged to a nephew of mine	40:01
	who had brought the pup along	40:03
	when he came to visit his parents	40:06
	who have a cottage near ours on a lake in New Hampshire.	40:08
	The Pup's energy is inquisitiveness	40:14
	is our obvious love of life were exceeded	40:16
	only by his clumsiness.	40:19
	No sooner had he arrived in these strange new surroundings,	40:23
	for he was a city born pup,	40:26
	then he went down to the dock to investigate.	40:29
	At the end of the dock, he stopped	40:34
	and looked into the water.	40:37
	Being a very clear and calm day,	40:41
	he obviously discovered there, a playmate,	40:44
	And the excitement was too much for him,	40:50
	or else his vigorous tail wagging threw him off balance	40:52
	at any rate, he fell in.	40:56
	And, of course, promptly made a beeline for the shore.	40:59
	Subdued, but only slightly,	41:05
	he made for the end of the dock again,	41:08
	and as before, looked down into the water	41:09
	a bit more cautiously this time.	41:12
	The playmate was a bit fuzzier than before,	41:16
	but was undoubtedly there.	41:19
	And once more, with a great yapping,	41:23
	he leaned too far, and fell in.	41:24
	This time, he came ashore more slowly,	41:30
	discovering apparently what fun it was	41:34
	to use those great big pause of his,	41:37
	for the purpose nature intended, to swim.	41:40
	And this time, once ashore,	41:46
	he barely paused for a shake before getting a on the dock,	41:48
	and this time he headed straight and fast for the end	41:54
	and with a tremendous leap,	41:57
	jumped into the water, and headed away from the shore.	41:59
	It was a good 10 minutes before he'd gained to respond	42:04
	to the rather anguished calls from the shore for his safety.	42:08
	He was safe enough.	42:14
	He had discovered that this strange new element	42:17
	could be trusted,	42:20
	and that he was made for the enjoyment of that trust.	42:22
	With humanoids' trust, indeed is a cultivated posture,	42:29
	a posture that involves the acceptance of risk,	42:35
	honest recognition of,	42:41
	and not running away from anxiety	42:43
	about one's self in the future.	42:46
	Setbacks in the exercise of patients.	42:49
	Delay in the perceiving of results,	42:54
	all this, to find the truth of that enigmatic name,	42:58
	"Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh,"	43:03
	I shall be present.	43:07
	Near the end of the last book in the New Testament	43:11
	as nearly its last word we read, "I am Alpha and Omega,	43:15
	the beginning and the end."	43:21
	The first word and the last word, "I shall be present."	43:24
	I was present in creation,	43:31
	I shall be present in consummation,	43:34
	I am present in all the inbetweens.	43:39
	Such and inbetween time,	43:46
	is this, a time for Presence.	43:49
	Let us pray.	43:57
	Lord do thou grant to us courage to support us,	44:03
	patience to restrain us,	44:09
	love to empower us,	44:14
	and a sense of thy presence to accompany us on our way.	44:19
	Into thy hands we command our spirits.	44:27
	Reserve us thine now and evermore	44:32
	through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.	44:37
	(organ pipe music)	44:44
	(church choir singing)	45:22
-	Almighty God who does not need to be enriched	53:38
	with any gifts that we may bring,	53:41
	yet, who loves the cheerful giver,	53:44
	receive these, our offerings,	53:47
	which we present unto you, and with them, ourselves,	53:49
	our souls, and our bodies,	53:54
	as a living and trusting sacrifice,	53:57
	holy and acceptable to you,	54:00
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	54:03
	Now, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.	54:11
	(church choir singing)	54:23
	♪ Amen ♪	54:25
	♪ Amen ♪	54:33

Item Info

Title:

Bradford S. Abernethy - "A Time for Presence" (April 20, 1969)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4639q655

Date:

April 20, 1969

Speaker:

Abernethy, Bradford S.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0479
ref6163_rx2
uachapelsermaud
duke:628201
dcrau002470
ark:/87924/r4639q655
8c981fc0-0dcd-449d-9e24-ae171f97f56f

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Bradford S. Abernethy - "A Time for Presence" (April 20, 1969)

Transcript

Item Info

Duke University Archives

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