Culbert G. Rutenber - "The Church: Relevant or Irrelevant?" (May 25, 1969)
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Transcript
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(hymnal music) | 0:03 | |
(organ music) | 2:47 | |
Priest | Beloved because we are sinners | 6:44 |
in need of confession | 6:47 | |
and also in need of the forgiveness, | 6:50 | |
which comes following sincere repentance. | 6:52 | |
It is good that we come together | 6:58 | |
and recognize that this is our common state. | 7:02 | |
And at the beginning of our time of worship | 7:07 | |
confess our sins before God. | 7:10 | |
So may we join together now in our | 7:13 | |
unison prayer of confession and propriety. | 7:16 | |
Oh Lord most holy, | 7:21 | |
God most mighty, | 7:23 | |
who has found us wanting, | 7:25 | |
and yet has not forsaken us. | 7:27 | |
We confess that we have often witness | 7:30 | |
to our pride and vanity | 7:33 | |
instead of witnessing to thy grace. | 7:35 | |
The peace and joy thou dost offer us, | 7:38 | |
we sold for power and prestige. | 7:41 | |
We have trusted too much in the work of our hands | 7:44 | |
and in the fruit of our laboratories. | 7:48 | |
We have not remembered our total need of thy wisdom. | 7:51 | |
Save us from all sin. | 7:55 | |
We humbly pray through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 7:57 | |
Amen. | 8:02 | |
We may know through the words of scripture | 8:06 | |
that this is no mere formality in which we engage | 8:11 | |
when we do confess our sins, | 8:17 | |
for the Bible tells us that as far as | 8:20 | |
the east is from the west, | 8:23 | |
so far has he removed our transgressions from us. | 8:26 | |
So be it. | 8:31 | |
(hymnal music) | 8:42 | |
(choir sings) | 9:19 | |
Man | This morning scripture lecture | 11:48 |
is from Luke 16, fourth chapter, 16 through 21st verse. | 11:50 | |
Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up, | 11:56 | |
and as his custom was, | 11:59 | |
he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day | 12:01 | |
and stood up to read the scriptures. | 12:04 | |
He was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah | 12:07 | |
and unrolling the book, he found the place | 12:10 | |
where it was written. | 12:12 | |
The spirit of the Lord is upon me | 12:14 | |
for he has consecrated me to preach | 12:17 | |
the good news to the poor. | 12:18 | |
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, | 12:20 | |
to tell the captains they can be free, | 12:23 | |
to tell the blind that they will see again, | 12:25 | |
to let the broken victims go free, | 12:28 | |
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. | 12:30 | |
And folding up the scroll, | 12:33 | |
he gave it back to the attendant and sat down. | 12:34 | |
The eyes of all who were in the synagogue | 12:39 | |
were fastened on him, and he began to say unto them, | 12:41 | |
today, while you are listening, | 12:45 | |
what is written here has come true. | 12:47 | |
(organ music) | 12:52 | |
(choir sings) | 13:00 | |
Priest | The Lord be with you. | 13:32 |
Congregation | Amen. | 13:33 |
Priest | Let us pray. | 13:35 |
All mighty God, our heavenly father, | 13:46 | |
in the quietness of this time, | 13:50 | |
we lift our hearts in thanks to thee, | 13:51 | |
for the blessings which we are mindful of | 13:55 | |
as we approach the end of this academic year. | 13:59 | |
Without any art or design, | 14:07 | |
we simply offer our thanks for teachers. | 14:10 | |
Some of whom have been our professors. | 14:17 | |
Some of whom have been our roommates. | 14:21 | |
Some of whom have been the secretaries on the campus. | 14:25 | |
Some of whom have been our enemies. | 14:31 | |
We've had many teachers. | 14:36 | |
We thank thee for all of them, | 14:39 | |
For every one and for every experience | 14:42 | |
through which we have learned, | 14:44 | |
through which we have come to know of what reality is, | 14:47 | |
some of these experiences have been painful. | 14:53 | |
Some of our teachers have been stern, but now we thank thee. | 14:58 | |
Oh God, we are grateful for books. | 15:06 | |
Through the printed page, | 15:11 | |
many people whom we have never seen have taught us. | 15:13 | |
We are grateful, oh God, | 15:22 | |
for people who have been friends to us, | 15:25 | |
at times, especially, when we have needed friends. | 15:28 | |
And unexpectedly, some of our stern teachers | 15:34 | |
have become our best friends. | 15:38 | |
Oh God, we are grateful for just the simple things. | 15:45 | |
For clean air, for a night's rest, for a good meal, | 15:50 | |
for the changing seasons, | 15:57 | |
the lovely flowers in the gardens. | 16:01 | |
We are grateful for the chapel, | 16:05 | |
for the opportunity it provides for us | 16:09 | |
to come together in common university worship. | 16:12 | |
We thank thee for those who have | 16:17 | |
come from abroad to preach to us, | 16:19 | |
or those in our own community who have preached to us, | 16:23 | |
students, faculty, ministers. | 16:27 | |
We are grateful for everyone who has contributed | 16:32 | |
to the enrichment of our worship of thee, | 16:38 | |
ushers, collectors, choir members, communion assistants, | 16:42 | |
Those who have watched over | 16:50 | |
the little children while parents came. | 16:54 | |
So many, many people have done | 16:57 | |
so very much for all of us, oh God. | 17:00 | |
We are grateful to each other, supremely to thee, | 17:04 | |
for putting thy grace in our hearts. | 17:11 | |
And now, oh God, when we call our eternal father, | 17:16 | |
strong to say you, hear us as we pray for our fellow man. | 17:22 | |
We pray for the seniors who soon | 17:29 | |
shall terminate their college study. | 17:32 | |
May their final days and hours be times | 17:36 | |
when the tangled and fragmentary meanings of an education | 17:39 | |
may come to have a central meaning | 17:46 | |
and a controlling purpose. | 17:49 | |
May Jesus Christ be lifted up | 17:52 | |
and chosen as the Lord and master of life. | 17:55 | |
We offer onto thee, oh God, | 18:04 | |
our intersessions for the sick and the injured. | 18:05 | |
Beyond any routine prayer, we earnestly beg | 18:11 | |
for health to come to those who suffer. | 18:14 | |
May the great physician be manifest in love and in power | 18:20 | |
to those who are afflicted. | 18:25 | |
Give knowledge and strength to the physicians, | 18:29 | |
give tender care to the nurses, | 18:33 | |
and may extra grace be given to those at home | 18:37 | |
whose tasks are heavier because | 18:42 | |
of the illness of a loved one. | 18:44 | |
Our great and loving father, | 18:50 | |
we offer our prayers on behalf of our fellow student, | 18:52 | |
Michael Mahoney, who died unexpectedly. | 18:57 | |
We pray thee to comfort his friends here on campus, | 19:04 | |
and his parents. | 19:10 | |
May all of us learn from his death how uncertain life is, | 19:14 | |
that we may make good use of every moment, | 19:22 | |
consecrate the good things in his life, | 19:29 | |
to the welfare of his friends, his family, and loved ones. | 19:33 | |
Our father, we offer our prayers for | 19:45 | |
the students of our university | 19:48 | |
who are to go out to work this summer, | 19:52 | |
to earn money for their study in the fall. | 19:55 | |
For those who shall labor in the war against poverty, | 20:01 | |
for the students who are to go | 20:07 | |
to Bolivia and Nicaragua to serve, | 20:09 | |
or those around the world in various vocations, | 20:16 | |
whether still students of Duke or our graduates, | 20:20 | |
who are seeking to relieve suffering | 20:25 | |
and to bring hope, and to cure problems, | 20:28 | |
and to witness to the good news of Jesus Christ | 20:32 | |
to the poor and the dispossessed, | 20:37 | |
uphold their hands and cheer and inspire their hearts. | 20:41 | |
Oh God, we pray also for our representatives | 20:50 | |
at the United Nations and at the Paris Peace Conference. | 20:55 | |
May they be firm in the right as though dost | 21:01 | |
give them to see the right. | 21:04 | |
May they find support in working | 21:05 | |
for a world of peace and justice. | 21:08 | |
And just now, we pray especially that some new light | 21:12 | |
may dawn upon those who are seeking a solution | 21:15 | |
to the tortured problems of Vietnam | 21:19 | |
and the other troubled areas of the earth. | 21:23 | |
And to that end, we pray thee, the Lord of the church, | 21:28 | |
for the strengthening of the movements for unity and sanity, | 21:31 | |
which are stirring within the body of Christ. | 21:36 | |
Bless all Catholics, all Orthodox | 21:40 | |
and Protestant enterprises, | 21:44 | |
which are seeking to bring harmony and oneness | 21:47 | |
to the body of Christ. | 21:50 | |
But even, oh God, as we pray for these goals, | 21:54 | |
we are mindful of our own responsibilities | 21:57 | |
in cooperating with thee, and answering thee's prayers. | 21:59 | |
So now we pray for ourselves in this service, | 22:04 | |
that we may be given grace to be faithful, | 22:08 | |
to be unbiased, grace to be intelligent, | 22:13 | |
the grace to be actually honest. | 22:17 | |
We are bold to ask these favors, | 22:23 | |
for we pray in the name of thy son, our Lord Jesus Christ. | 22:26 | |
Amen. | 22:31 | |
And now in the words of our savior Christ, | 22:34 | |
we humbly pray. | 22:38 | |
Our father who art in heaven, | 22:40 | |
hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, | 22:43 | |
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 22:47 | |
Give us this day our daily bread, | 22:51 | |
and forgive us our trespasses | 22:54 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 22:56 | |
And lead us not into temptation, | 22:59 | |
but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, | 23:02 | |
and the power and the glory forever. | 23:05 | |
Amen. | 23:09 | |
Professor | In my early years before I was a professor, | 23:24 |
I was a pastor, and I changed so often | 23:26 | |
the subject of my sermon | 23:30 | |
that one day, one of my young people came up | 23:33 | |
and he said, "Pastor, why don't you put an asterisk | 23:35 | |
after the title of your sermon? | 23:37 | |
And then down at the bottom, | 23:40 | |
do what the railroad timetables do, | 23:41 | |
say subject to change without notice." | 23:43 | |
Course, you young people wouldn't understand this | 23:46 | |
because you don't know what a train is, | 23:48 | |
but that's another problem. | 23:49 | |
I said, and it was printed correctly, | 23:52 | |
that I was going to preach this morning | 23:55 | |
on the church relevant or irrelevant. | 23:56 | |
I'm not going to preach on that. | 23:58 | |
Whether this is a catastrophe or not, | 24:00 | |
it's something that neither you nor I will know | 24:02 | |
whether I would have done better | 24:04 | |
if I've stuck to my original agreement, | 24:05 | |
or whether the change was for the best, | 24:08 | |
no one can say, but at least I'm going to change. | 24:09 | |
Although the scripture reading, which we read, | 24:12 | |
will fit nicely into what I want to say. | 24:14 | |
I would like to turn your attention to one verse | 24:18 | |
so very common that I'm almost embarrassed to quote it. | 24:23 | |
Comes out of Romans 13, | 24:26 | |
where Paul is talking about all of the commandments | 24:28 | |
and he lists some of them, | 24:32 | |
about adultery, and about this and about that, | 24:33 | |
killing, stealing, coveting and so on. | 24:36 | |
If you take any of these and sum them up in one sentence, | 24:39 | |
you have, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, period. | 24:41 | |
Now, this verse has become a particular importance today | 24:45 | |
because of its being focused by two sociologists | 24:48 | |
out of the University of California. | 24:52 | |
Doctors Block and Stark have written a book, | 24:55 | |
the first volume of a three volume projected effort, | 24:59 | |
the first five of which is called "American Piety", | 25:02 | |
and which is an analysis of where the church is today, | 25:06 | |
as they have understood it in their sociological analysis. | 25:09 | |
What they discover is that the church is polarized. | 25:13 | |
It is polarized between on the one hand, | 25:16 | |
a group over here who may call the Orthodox, | 25:19 | |
who believe in personal God, divine savior, and a hereafter, | 25:21 | |
and a group over here who believe in social action, | 25:26 | |
and that is the Christian faith. | 25:30 | |
Now the first group, | 25:33 | |
when they went to analyze the first group, | 25:34 | |
whom they call the Orthodox, | 25:35 | |
the ones who maintain the church, | 25:37 | |
the ones who give to the church, | 25:39 | |
the ones who attend the church, | 25:40 | |
the ones who believe in religious experience. | 25:42 | |
This group is also the one who reject | 25:44 | |
the religious significance of doing good to others | 25:46 | |
and loving your neighbor. | 25:50 | |
On the other hand, you have this other extreme | 25:52 | |
of those who believe in loving your neighbor | 25:54 | |
and they have reduced the whole Christian faith to this. | 25:56 | |
And thus you get a polarization, which raises | 25:59 | |
great questions as to the immediate future of the church. | 26:02 | |
Whether if we are unable to bring these two things together, | 26:05 | |
we are not, in the words of the sociologist themselves, | 26:09 | |
in grave danger of finding the erosion | 26:11 | |
and disintegration of the Christian Church in America, | 26:16 | |
because there is, there, because of the polarization, | 26:19 | |
which apparently seems to be unhealable. | 26:23 | |
Now I want to pick at the second group, | 26:27 | |
because most young people, | 26:28 | |
a good number of young people, belong in it. | 26:29 | |
Love your neighbor as yourself. | 26:33 | |
This is the heart and the essence | 26:35 | |
of what the Christian faith is driving at, | 26:37 | |
and this is where our emphasis ought to be. | 26:39 | |
What is most important is not our idea of God | 26:42 | |
as Block and Stark point out, | 26:45 | |
but whether we have compassion, | 26:47 | |
whether we have a real drive for, for change, | 26:49 | |
a real concern for righteousness, | 26:53 | |
a real concern for justice. | 26:55 | |
Now this interpretation of the Christian faith | 26:57 | |
has a lot of things going for it. | 26:59 | |
For one thing, it has, apparently, certain aspects | 27:01 | |
of the New Testament going for it. | 27:05 | |
For God himself has no problems. | 27:07 | |
He doesn't have any housing problems. | 27:10 | |
He isn't discriminated against by anybody. | 27:12 | |
He has no problem of being turned away | 27:15 | |
from job opportunities. | 27:17 | |
He doesn't need any counseling for an aging process, | 27:19 | |
or for his anxieties. | 27:22 | |
God has no problems. | 27:24 | |
And therefore, God, as soon as the person says, God, | 27:25 | |
God says, man. | 27:28 | |
As soon as the person comes to God, | 27:30 | |
God turns him over to his neighbor, | 27:31 | |
because the neighbor does have problems, | 27:33 | |
and for God's sake, | 27:35 | |
we are involved in the problems of the neighbor. | 27:36 | |
And this is precisely what those want to remind us | 27:38 | |
who said, what is the Christian faith indeed, | 27:41 | |
but love of neighbor. | 27:43 | |
And after all, isn't this the purpose of life? | 27:45 | |
For isn't it love which makes us self-transcendent, | 27:48 | |
love which at the same time that it heightens individuality, | 27:51 | |
breaks down separateness, and in the giving of life. | 27:54 | |
we are never so enriched as when we give ourselves | 27:57 | |
and become ourselves in the process. | 27:59 | |
Is not love of neighbor the meaning of maturity? | 28:02 | |
Particularly if you put in neighbor the idea of enemy, | 28:05 | |
not in the traditional sense, | 28:08 | |
or the common sense, of the obvious sense. | 28:09 | |
But if you put in the enemy | 28:11 | |
as whoever triggers hostility in you, | 28:13 | |
is not this what makes us mature, | 28:15 | |
our ability to love over the hostilities | 28:17 | |
which people create in us? | 28:20 | |
For the meaning of the hostility, | 28:23 | |
the meaning of the maturity of Jesus, | 28:24 | |
was that he was able to love infinitely | 28:26 | |
while being infinitely rejected, | 28:29 | |
and our growing hostility is precisely | 28:30 | |
the development of this process. | 28:32 | |
And is not our Christian ethic rooted and grounded | 28:35 | |
in precisely what Paul said it was? | 28:38 | |
It's rooted and grounded in the reality | 28:40 | |
of a love to a neighbor. | 28:42 | |
A love to a neighbor which permits us | 28:44 | |
to function in such a way | 28:46 | |
that we are ethical and righteous, | 28:48 | |
precisely because we relate correctly and positively | 28:51 | |
to the needs of others. | 28:56 | |
So if anything, that says he, says Paul summarizes, | 28:58 | |
the Old Testament law, | 29:01 | |
it is love thy neighbor as thyself. | 29:04 | |
And what I'm going to do this morning is to say | 29:09 | |
that this is not so. | 29:11 | |
What I'm going to do is not build it, | 29:13 | |
however true it may be, but try to undermine it, | 29:14 | |
not as false, but as inadequate. | 29:17 | |
Because an approach to the Christian faith | 29:21 | |
that defines it in terms of love of neighbor, | 29:23 | |
even if you add love of God and love of neighbor, | 29:25 | |
and leave God in the background like sweet music, | 29:27 | |
while you work with the neighbor, | 29:30 | |
it is still missing something that is central, | 29:31 | |
and something that is, that is irreplaceable | 29:34 | |
within the Christian faith. | 29:38 | |
Now, if we reduce the Christian faith to love of neighbor, | 29:41 | |
we make two assumptions, both of which are questionable. | 29:45 | |
The first assumption is that we know what love is. | 29:49 | |
And the average person who speaks so glibly | 29:52 | |
about love of neighbor, he has no doubt at all | 29:54 | |
that we know what love is. | 29:56 | |
And of course, in a dim, and in a vague, | 29:56 | |
and in an obvious way, some of the more obvious things, | 29:59 | |
we do know what love of neighbor is. | 30:01 | |
Therefore it is not at all surprising | 30:04 | |
that some 20 years ago, when the Lady's Home Journal | 30:06 | |
asked people what was the greatest need of the hour, | 30:09 | |
eight out of 10 of them said, | 30:12 | |
love of neighbor was the greatest need of the hour. | 30:15 | |
And then when the reporter asked that | 30:17 | |
do you feel as though you love your neighbor as yourself, | 30:19 | |
eight out of 10 of them said they did. | 30:22 | |
80% of the country believing that, | 30:24 | |
yes, I love my neighbor as myself. | 30:27 | |
I want a question that we know what love demands | 30:30 | |
in spite of the glibness with which we speak | 30:34 | |
of loving the neighbor. | 30:37 | |
Earlier, earlier this winter, | 30:39 | |
when I was out on the west coast, | 30:41 | |
I told a story that comes from the medieval period | 30:44 | |
and which will help to at least pose the problem. | 30:47 | |
It's the story of a man, a hermit, | 30:52 | |
who set out on a pilgrimage with an angel. | 30:56 | |
Now the angel was in disguise, | 30:59 | |
so he looked like human being, exactly like the hermit, | 31:01 | |
but the hermit knew that it was an angel, | 31:04 | |
and not just a human being. | 31:05 | |
Well, they traveled all day | 31:08 | |
and they got to the evening, | 31:09 | |
and they knocked at the door, | 31:10 | |
and the man was lovely to them. | 31:12 | |
He took them in, gave them hospitality, fed them, | 31:13 | |
put them up for the night. | 31:15 | |
They got up real early the next morning, | 31:16 | |
the angel insisting on it, | 31:18 | |
and before they set out for their day's journey, | 31:20 | |
the angel slipped into the little room | 31:22 | |
where the little infant of the, of the host lay, | 31:24 | |
and he throttled the infant to death | 31:28 | |
while he lay helpless in his crib. | 31:31 | |
And the hermit thought, that's odd, that's very queer. | 31:34 | |
Why would he do this? | 31:36 | |
But after all, he's an angel, | 31:37 | |
and who am I to question him? | 31:38 | |
And so they traveled all day and he said nothing. | 31:39 | |
They came to Eventide, and again, | 31:41 | |
they knocked on a door and again, the man was very lovely. | 31:44 | |
He took them in, and he fed them, | 31:46 | |
and he gave him a nice place to sleep. | 31:48 | |
He showed them his possessions of which | 31:50 | |
his greatest was a beautiful gold goblet. | 31:53 | |
Again, they got up real early in the morning, | 31:56 | |
and before they left, the angel took the gold goblet, | 31:59 | |
which was his host's most precious possession, | 32:02 | |
slipped it under his tunic and off they went. | 32:06 | |
And the hermit said, that's queer, | 32:08 | |
but then, after all, the guy's an angel | 32:10 | |
and who am I to question what he's doing? | 32:13 | |
So they walked the third day, and they came to evening, | 32:14 | |
evening, and again, they knocked at a door. | 32:18 | |
The man opened, and this man was highly abusive. | 32:21 | |
He didn't, he gave them no hospitality. | 32:23 | |
He gave them no food. | 32:25 | |
And after a great deal of argument, | 32:26 | |
he told them, well, if you want to stay, | 32:28 | |
you can stay in the pigsty. | 32:29 | |
So they spent an exceedingly | 32:31 | |
uncomfortable night in the pigsty. | 32:33 | |
They got up the next morning | 32:34 | |
and they went up with the angel's prodding, | 32:36 | |
knocking at the door. | 32:38 | |
And when the host arrived at the door, | 32:39 | |
the angel thanked him for his hospitality, | 32:42 | |
thanked him for his gracious, | 32:44 | |
whipped out from his tunic the beautiful gold goblet | 32:46 | |
that he had stole the night before, | 32:49 | |
or the morning before, and gave it to his host | 32:50 | |
as a token of his appreciation. | 32:53 | |
But by this time the hermit was up the wall. | 32:56 | |
Now, you know, this guy, | 32:58 | |
this guy is supposed to be an angel, | 33:00 | |
but I'm beginning to have grave doubts about this. | 33:02 | |
None of this makes any sense. | 33:04 | |
But again, he didn't say anything. | 33:06 | |
After all, he's suppressed his doubts, | 33:07 | |
until they got lost on a mountain | 33:10 | |
late the next day afternoon, or that particular afternoon. | 33:12 | |
And they met a Saint who was | 33:15 | |
coming from the other direction. | 33:17 | |
And they asked the Saint the way, since they were lost, | 33:20 | |
and he told them the way, | 33:22 | |
and scarcely had he told them the way | 33:23 | |
when the angel took the Saint and pushed him | 33:26 | |
over the precipice where he died | 33:28 | |
screaming on the rocks below. | 33:30 | |
Well this was too much for the hermit, | 33:33 | |
and he began to say in a medieval language | 33:34 | |
which I can't repeat, you know, | 33:37 | |
you get, you get, you get lost. | 33:39 | |
I'll go my way, you go your way. | 33:41 | |
You're supposed to be an angel, but for my money, | 33:43 | |
you're a devil in hell. | 33:45 | |
There's nothing that you've done | 33:46 | |
that's made a bit of sense to me, | 33:48 | |
so let's just forget the whole thing, | 33:49 | |
and you go any direction you want to, | 33:51 | |
and I'll go the opposite direction, whatever that may be. | 33:52 | |
Whereupon the angel said to him now, | 33:54 | |
"You poor, simple mortal. | 33:57 | |
You just don't know what you're talking about. | 33:58 | |
Let me explain it to you. | 34:00 | |
Let's go back over the whole process. | 34:01 | |
All right, that first night, | 34:03 | |
that man was a lovely man that took us in. | 34:05 | |
I got up and I, I, I throttled | 34:07 | |
in his cradle that infant child, | 34:10 | |
and you were horrified. | 34:11 | |
But why did I throttle him? | 34:13 | |
Well, that child was going to grow up | 34:15 | |
to be a very bad man who would not only ruin his own life, | 34:16 | |
but would bring down to heartache and to a sad grave, | 34:22 | |
his father, because of all of the wickedness | 34:28 | |
which he was going to indulge in. | 34:31 | |
And by killing him in his cradle, | 34:34 | |
I have saved both the father and the child | 34:36 | |
from this terrible catastrophe." | 34:38 | |
And I said, "Let's move on to the next customer." | 34:41 | |
He said, "That was the fellow from whom | 34:43 | |
I stole the gold goblet. | 34:45 | |
Now he's a good man too, | 34:46 | |
but he was getting very materialistic. | 34:48 | |
And he was the beginning to think in terms | 34:50 | |
of materialism instead of his own self. | 34:51 | |
Now that I stole his goblet, | 34:54 | |
he'll begin to shape up and fly straight. | 34:55 | |
And he'll be all right, because I gave him a shot." | 34:59 | |
And I said, "This poor Pilgrim | 35:01 | |
that I just shoved over the precipice." | 35:03 | |
"He was on the way to commit a mortal sin. | 35:06 | |
And I have saved him committing that mortal sin. | 35:08 | |
And I have sent him in to his maker's presence | 35:12 | |
with his soul unsullied. | 35:15 | |
As to that fellow last night who put us in the pigsty, | 35:17 | |
he is a thoroughly bad man, | 35:21 | |
and that gold goblet that I gave him will be a trinket | 35:23 | |
that will please him for awhile, | 35:26 | |
but ultimately his soul with fry in Hell." | 35:27 | |
And I told this story, and when I came up, | 35:31 | |
a student came up afterwards and he was very much upset. | 35:33 | |
What I was trying to suggest was | 35:36 | |
that the angel made some sense, you know. | 35:38 | |
By the time he'd explained it, you know, | 35:40 | |
you could say, well, no, there was maybe, | 35:42 | |
maybe, maybe he was doing the right thing, | 35:45 | |
within the confines of his presuppositions. | 35:48 | |
And this was what was bothering the student. | 35:51 | |
He said, "Well, it's all very nice to say this, | 35:53 | |
but, you know, after all, you know, | 35:55 | |
that isn't luck to go killing kids in their, | 35:58 | |
in their cradle, and robbing people of their | 36:01 | |
gold goblets, and pushing pilgrims over precipices. | 36:03 | |
And he had a point. | 36:09 | |
What he was groping for without being able to say it was, | 36:11 | |
that there's a difference between love as motive, | 36:14 | |
which means that our intentions are good, | 36:16 | |
and love as standard. | 36:18 | |
And whatever our intentions may be, | 36:20 | |
what we're interested in when we speak of | 36:22 | |
the demands of love is what is the standard of love | 36:25 | |
whereby we know how to handle the demands of love | 36:29 | |
when we say love your neighbor. | 36:32 | |
Now, this is by no means an ancient problem | 36:34 | |
or a medieval problem. | 36:37 | |
This is a very modern problem. | 36:38 | |
What does love demand specifically? | 36:40 | |
And do we know enough to know how to function | 36:43 | |
when we talk about loving your neighbor as yourself? | 36:45 | |
I spent an afternoon with the hippies in Boston | 36:48 | |
a year or two ago. | 36:52 | |
We had the third largest hippie community in the country. | 36:57 | |
And after a very interesting and very intriguing | 37:00 | |
afternoon with these young people, | 37:02 | |
who were very charming, very articulate, and very appealing, | 37:06 | |
we got up to go, my friend and I, and my friend said, | 37:10 | |
"I'd like to take down your name." | 37:12 | |
So he turned to the only girl who was there, | 37:14 | |
and she said that "Jesse, Jesse Lyman". | 37:17 | |
Oh he said, you're Mel Lyman's wife, | 37:21 | |
who was the head of the community | 37:22 | |
who was sick and not able to be there. | 37:23 | |
She said, "Well, I, and some of the other girls." | 37:25 | |
And I said, "Well, that's interesting. | 37:28 | |
I associated you with Dave over here." | 37:30 | |
"Oh," She said. "I did belong to Dave a while back. | 37:32 | |
This is our child." | 37:35 | |
And she pointed to about a three or four year old boy | 37:36 | |
who had been in and out during the afternoon. | 37:39 | |
Now, you know, what is love? | 37:41 | |
What is love in sexual relations? | 37:43 | |
Is love in sexual relations only possible, | 37:46 | |
as the old people tell us, | 37:49 | |
within a covenant relationship in marriage? | 37:51 | |
Or is love in sexual relationship | 37:54 | |
subject to the ebb and flow of the relationship itself? | 37:56 | |
And who gives the answer? | 37:59 | |
According to one set of presuppositions, | 38:01 | |
then you say one thing, | 38:04 | |
according to another, you say another, | 38:06 | |
and who gives us the knowledge of what it means to say | 38:07 | |
love your neighbor, in this situation, | 38:11 | |
or a multitude of others? | 38:13 | |
Why are some good people pacifists, | 38:15 | |
and some good people are not pacifists, | 38:17 | |
and both of them speak about love of neighbor. | 38:19 | |
The pacifistic speaks about love of neighbor | 38:21 | |
and hangs his whole position on it, | 38:24 | |
And the non-pacifist said, | 38:26 | |
"Yes, but you're loving your neighbor | 38:27 | |
at the expense of your friends. | 38:28 | |
That can't be what love of neighbor is." | 38:29 | |
Now we know that love can be both harsh and firm | 38:32 | |
as well as soft and healing, | 38:34 | |
but who is it to tell us in our human relations | 38:37 | |
when love hurts and when it heals, | 38:39 | |
when love wounds, and when it binds. | 38:43 | |
When in love to protest, | 38:46 | |
and when in love to keep our mouth shut. | 38:48 | |
And this is our abiding and continuing problem. | 38:51 | |
We do not know, in spite of our good intentions, | 38:54 | |
what it is that love demands. | 38:57 | |
We're infinitely divided, and we know only | 38:59 | |
in a fragmentary and partial sense. | 39:01 | |
Now from the Christian standpoint, this is not peculiar. | 39:05 | |
The reason why we don't know is because we're not love. | 39:08 | |
God is love. | 39:12 | |
And if God is love, | 39:14 | |
then it's not surprising that I don't know, | 39:15 | |
except in a fragmentary and partial way, | 39:17 | |
seeing through a glass darkly, | 39:20 | |
exactly what the demands of love are. | 39:22 | |
God is love. | 39:25 | |
This is what Kierkegaard was getting after when he says, | 39:26 | |
"If you say that God is love, | 39:29 | |
then you have to immediately add, | 39:32 | |
therefore he is your mortal enemy." | 39:34 | |
What does he mean? | 39:37 | |
He means that God's idea of love | 39:38 | |
and my idea of love are two different things. | 39:39 | |
My idea of love of God is for God | 39:42 | |
to give me the candy that I want, | 39:44 | |
for God to give me the desires that I hunger for, | 39:46 | |
for God to be permissive so that I can live the life | 39:48 | |
that I want to live, | 39:50 | |
and God comes and says constantly, "No, no, no." | 39:52 | |
So the God comes to me as my enemy. | 39:55 | |
He comes to me as my mortal enemy, says Kierkegaard, | 39:57 | |
because he loves me too much to let me get away with it. | 40:00 | |
In other words, God loves me not for, | 40:02 | |
not for what I, how I behave, | 40:06 | |
but for what I may behave. | 40:08 | |
Not only does he accept me for what I am, | 40:09 | |
but ultimately accepts me for what I may become. | 40:11 | |
And therefore he says no to what I am, | 40:14 | |
because he is more interested in what I may be | 40:17 | |
by his mercy and by his grace. | 40:21 | |
Now, I've tried to challenge the first presupposition | 40:23 | |
that you can hang the Christian faith on love of neighbor | 40:26 | |
by suggesting that because God is love and I am not love, | 40:29 | |
we do not know what love demands. | 40:33 | |
If we knew what love demands, | 40:36 | |
if we were to find out what love demands, | 40:38 | |
we would need a revelation. | 40:41 | |
Now I'm appalled to watch my watch. | 40:46 | |
I certainly didn't mean to go that, that, that long, | 40:47 | |
and that's what happens when you don't, | 40:49 | |
when you don't write it out. | 40:51 | |
Let me move to the second presupposition | 40:54 | |
which I want to challenge, | 40:55 | |
which is that we are able to love our neighbor. | 40:57 | |
And I'll try to cover this very quickly. | 40:59 | |
I don't know how many of you are familiar with | 41:02 | |
Arthur Koestler's, former communist, arrival and departure. | 41:04 | |
Very interesting novel. | 41:09 | |
In there he pinpoints the problem that I'm groping with. | 41:11 | |
When he shows three judgment scenes, | 41:15 | |
I won't give the context. | 41:18 | |
The first judgment scene, the first fella comes up, | 41:20 | |
is a miser, a person that is | 41:22 | |
interested in the salvation of his own soul. | 41:26 | |
And the prosecutor, the prosecutor says, | 41:28 | |
"I charge this man with complicity in every murder | 41:31 | |
and crime past, present, and future." | 41:35 | |
And the defender says, "He wouldn't kill a fly." | 41:38 | |
And the prosecutor roars, "The flies he would not kill | 41:42 | |
have spread pestilence all over the province!" | 41:46 | |
And the judge puts down his gavel and says, | 41:50 | |
"Condemn condemn." | 41:52 | |
Here's a man who tried to love, | 41:54 | |
but he failed to love through sins of omission. | 41:55 | |
The things he did not do caused trouble all over the place. | 41:58 | |
The next fellow before the judge was the commissar. | 42:03 | |
The prosecutor says, "I charge this man with | 42:07 | |
murder, arson and treachery." | 42:10 | |
And the defendant says, "I proudly confess all of my sins. | 42:12 | |
I did it for the cause." | 42:16 | |
And the prosecutor says he, he's, he's, he | 42:18 | |
the word I'm blanking on, | 42:22 | |
oh, he sowed. | 42:23 | |
He sowed evil everywhere he went. | 42:24 | |
And the defendant says, | 42:26 | |
"In order that the harvest might be good." | 42:28 | |
And the judge says, "And have you seen the harvest?" | 42:30 | |
And the defendant says, "Not yet." | 42:32 | |
And the judge says "Condemn, condemn for lack of evidence." | 42:34 | |
Now this is the man who sets out to save the world | 42:38 | |
in a ruthless idealism, which is selective | 42:40 | |
in his love of neighbor. | 42:43 | |
The communist, he knows who he's supposed to love, | 42:45 | |
the proletariat. | 42:47 | |
For the sake of the proletariat, he has to, | 42:48 | |
he has to trample on the rights of the bourgeoisie, | 42:50 | |
all for the greater good of all concerned. | 42:54 | |
And of course, those of us who live | 42:57 | |
in our present generation, recognizing it in our own day, | 42:58 | |
the attitude of your idealistic student, | 43:01 | |
who wants to do precisely the same thing. | 43:03 | |
His idealism gives him his self righteousness, | 43:06 | |
by which he knows all the answers, | 43:09 | |
his ruthlessness comes from the very urge to save, | 43:10 | |
which makes him impatient not to immediately shatter | 43:13 | |
the structures of evil, | 43:16 | |
shatter the structures of evil for a larger good, | 43:18 | |
even though in the process, he has to | 43:20 | |
trample over the rights of all sorts of other people. | 43:22 | |
Now, this is loving your neighbor by selectivity, | 43:26 | |
and surely this isn't what the New Testament meant. | 43:28 | |
But then the third one is the most crucial of all. | 43:30 | |
An old, lean, aesthetic stooped man stands before the bar | 43:33 | |
and the defender says, "This man has given his whole, | 43:37 | |
his whole fortune to help the poor." | 43:41 | |
And the judge says to him, | 43:47 | |
"What did you have for dinner last night?" | 43:49 | |
He said, "A crust of bread and a glass of milk, Your Honor." | 43:52 | |
Not much." | 43:57 | |
Whereupon the prosecutor roars, | 43:59 | |
"While this man ate his bread and guzzled his milk, | 44:01 | |
a child died of starvation in China." | 44:04 | |
And the judge says "Condemned, condemned." | 44:09 | |
Why? | 44:13 | |
Every time you eat a meal your prefer yourself | 44:14 | |
to your starving neighbor, which suggests that there | 44:16 | |
is no way out of the problem of | 44:20 | |
loving your neighbor as yourself, | 44:21 | |
and what we need is to live by forgiveness | 44:23 | |
and by help beyond ourselves, | 44:25 | |
since we seem to be in a cul-de-sac of inability. | 44:27 | |
Now, if one takes these two things by which I ended, | 44:31 | |
if we don't know what love is, we need a revelation, | 44:35 | |
and if we are unable to love our neighbor inherently, | 44:37 | |
because the ambiguity is the place we need forgiveness in, | 44:41 | |
and we need help, | 44:43 | |
then we are able to come back to a new look at Jesus. | 44:44 | |
"Thou shalt call his name Jesus," said the angel. | 44:49 | |
Thou shall call his name Jesus because, | 44:54 | |
because he'll be the world's greatest teacher? | 44:57 | |
No. | 44:59 | |
Because he'll be the world's greatest example? | 45:00 | |
No. | 45:03 | |
Thou shall call his name Jesus, | 45:04 | |
because he shall save his people from their sins. | 45:05 | |
Jesus is a teacher and he is an example, | 45:09 | |
but he is in Christian terminology fundamentally, | 45:13 | |
and essentially, and crucially, he is savior. | 45:15 | |
Why? | 45:18 | |
We twisted a little under that terminology. | 45:19 | |
For savior-hood is precisely what we dodge, | 45:23 | |
but savior-hood, well, savior-hood is related to | 45:27 | |
our need for somebody else to do | 45:32 | |
what we can't do for ourselves. | 45:35 | |
When I was a boy of nine, I almost drowned. | 45:38 | |
I came up with a mouth full of water, water, | 45:42 | |
and I let out a feeble yelp. | 45:44 | |
My brother, who was on the bank and a beautiful swimmer, | 45:46 | |
he heard me cry. | 45:48 | |
He didn't stand there and give me advice about how to swim. | 45:51 | |
I didn't need any advice. | 45:53 | |
I was drowning. | 45:54 | |
He didn't jump into the water | 45:56 | |
and do a beautiful Australian crawl | 45:57 | |
so that I could follow his example. | 45:59 | |
I didn't need any example. | 46:00 | |
I was drowning. | 46:01 | |
He did for me what I couldn't do for myself. | 46:02 | |
He saved me. | 46:06 | |
And the forgiveness and the help, | 46:07 | |
which man needs as a presupposition | 46:09 | |
for loving of neighbor is involved in | 46:12 | |
the savior-hood of Jesus Christ. | 46:13 | |
For what divides the Christian faith | 46:16 | |
from the fine upright, decent humanist | 46:18 | |
is a very simple distinction. | 46:22 | |
For the humanist, love is an ideal, | 46:24 | |
a goal, an objective towards which I strive, | 46:27 | |
and if I find even to some extent, it is human achieved. | 46:31 | |
For the Christian, on the other hand, love is not an ideal, | 46:34 | |
but love is a reality, because God is love, | 46:37 | |
and therefore love as the reality | 46:40 | |
is the deepest reality there is in the universe. | 46:42 | |
Therefore, my job is not to strive towards the goal. | 46:44 | |
I'm dredging up from within myself, | 46:47 | |
that which I only have a dim apprehension of, | 46:49 | |
but the lay hold of thy love, | 46:52 | |
which is already operative, | 46:53 | |
and hook into a love which is already functioning, | 46:55 | |
that I might become a vehicle of a love that is not my own. | 46:58 | |
No, I must go further than this. | 47:01 | |
I must say that if the deepest thing in love, | 47:02 | |
in the universe is love, | 47:04 | |
if the ultimate reality of things is love, | 47:06 | |
the ultimate nature of things, | 47:10 | |
then this love must himself become engaged. | 47:11 | |
And this is what we read in the gospel. | 47:14 | |
Where God and Jesus Christ gets | 47:17 | |
into the middle of our muddle | 47:18 | |
to become dirty with his hands and his feet | 47:20 | |
in the same way in which we are dirty, | 47:22 | |
in order that he might lay healing hands | 47:24 | |
upon our human dilemma, | 47:27 | |
that he might gather into the blackness, | 47:28 | |
into the whiteness of his purity, | 47:30 | |
the blackness of our guilt. | 47:32 | |
That he might release us into the Liberty of love | 47:33 | |
through the renewal and rebirth of love, | 47:35 | |
and thereby be the savior of men, | 47:37 | |
by doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves, | 47:40 | |
and in the process, in the process of redemption, | 47:43 | |
he also makes clear what love is by revelation, | 47:46 | |
because if you want to know now what love demands, | 47:50 | |
you look at what God has done in Jesus Christ, | 47:53 | |
and you say, that's what love is, | 47:55 | |
but you get this from the way in which God | 47:57 | |
has manifested himself by laying a hold | 47:59 | |
of our human problems, and doing what only he could do, | 48:02 | |
and reconciling a world to himself in Jesus Christ. | 48:06 | |
If love is real, then you go one way. | 48:10 | |
If love is ideal, you become a humanist, | 48:14 | |
and there's a world of difference between the two. | 48:18 | |
Do I denigrate love of neighbor by no names. | 48:22 | |
For our Lord himself said that the whole summary | 48:25 | |
of the Old Testament is love God and love your neighbor. | 48:27 | |
The only thing that I say is, | 48:33 | |
that behind that summary, which is what God is after, | 48:34 | |
God purposes and the Old Testament says it, | 48:37 | |
God purposes to create people who are capable of loving God | 48:40 | |
and loving the neighbor. | 48:45 | |
What is this decisive is the manner | 48:47 | |
by which God goes about it. | 48:49 | |
He doesn't stand at a cosmic microphone | 48:51 | |
and give us advice to love God and love the neighbor. | 48:54 | |
On the contrary, he comes in the | 48:55 | |
humility of his servant hood | 48:56 | |
in order to do what only God can do, | 49:00 | |
to change and forgive and release, | 49:03 | |
and create us and renew us in units of life. | 49:07 | |
So that if the Old Testament is summarized | 49:11 | |
by love God and love your neighbor, | 49:13 | |
the New Testament, the New Testament is summarized | 49:16 | |
by saying for Jesus died and rose again, | 49:19 | |
to make it come true, | 49:21 | |
and the whole intent of the Bible is caught in one sentence, | 49:23 | |
love God and neighbor, for Jesus died | 49:26 | |
and rose again to make it true. | 49:29 | |
And there you've got the whole thing. | 49:31 | |
The target, the personality, | 49:34 | |
the intent is the creation of a new man. | 49:36 | |
The method is the gospel. | 49:40 | |
And if we ever forget the gospel, | 49:41 | |
then we have undermined the creation of the new man. | 49:43 | |
No cherub's harder hand must not ache. | 49:53 | |
No cherub's heart of flame could half suffice. | 49:56 | |
Thy known we're bruised and broken | 50:01 | |
for our sake, oh, Jesus Christ. | 50:03 | |
Therefore we love thee, with our faint good will. | 50:05 | |
We wish to love thee, not as here to for, | 50:10 | |
to love thee much, love thee more, | 50:12 | |
and still more, and yet more. | 50:14 | |
For he was wounded for our transgressions, | 50:17 | |
he was bruised for our iniquities. | 50:20 | |
The chastisement of our peace was upon him, | 50:22 | |
but, on that but it pivots the whole hope of mankind. | 50:23 | |
But with his stripes, we are healed. | 50:28 | |
Healed by him who became neighbor to us, | 50:34 | |
that he might bring us to God. | 50:39 | |
Let us pray. | 50:43 | |
Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. | 50:49 | |
Who hath begotten us again onto a living hope | 50:53 | |
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead | 50:55 | |
to an inheritance incorruptible and indefinable. | 51:00 | |
Blessed be God who comforts us in all of our afflictions, | 51:05 | |
who forgives us in all of our iniquities, | 51:09 | |
who strengthens us in all of our impotence, | 51:15 | |
by whose mercies and by whose grace we live. | 51:19 | |
Forgive the sins we do confess to thee, | 51:23 | |
forgive the secret sins we do not see. | 51:26 | |
Grant us, oh God, to love because we have been loved, | 51:30 | |
by a love greater and more unspeakable | 51:36 | |
than our poor language is able to express. | 51:41 | |
We ask it in Jesus name. | 51:48 | |
Amen. | 51:50 | |
(hymnal begins) | 51:54 | |
(choir sings) | 52:33 | |
(man sings) | 55:33 | |
(choir sings) | 56:38 |
Item Info
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