James T. Cleland - "Classroom and Chapel" (January 26, 1969)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(soothing music) | 0:03 | |
- | Grace be to you and peace from God our Father | 0:59 |
and the Lord, Jesus Christ. | 1:03 | |
One of the happiest things that can occur to a pulpiteer, | 1:08 | |
is to be asked to repeat a sermon. | 1:14 | |
Chaplain Wilkinson has been at me for some time | 1:19 | |
to give a second hearing to a sermon preached | 1:23 | |
from this pulpit in March, 1958. | 1:26 | |
He commented generously | 1:33 | |
that it should be preached every four years, | 1:34 | |
once for each undergraduate student generation. | 1:38 | |
With such encouragement | 1:45 | |
and knowing that last week was going to be a week that was, | 1:48 | |
I am yielding to his wish, hoping that you will be glad | 1:53 | |
he asked for this sermon again. | 1:59 | |
The question underlying the sermon is, | 2:03 | |
what is the relationship | 2:08 | |
between the undergraduate classroom in religion | 2:10 | |
and the university service of worship in the chapel? | 2:15 | |
What is the relationship | 2:20 | |
between the undergraduate classroom in religion | 2:21 | |
and the university service of worship in the chapel? | 2:24 | |
It is obvious that there are some students | 2:30 | |
who cannot accept both the critical study of the Bible, | 2:33 | |
and the content of this service. | 2:39 | |
They therefore reject one or the other, sometimes both. | 2:44 | |
There are other students who accept both but in isolation. | 2:52 | |
For them, there is no relationship | 3:01 | |
between the dissecting room | 3:03 | |
where spiritual autopsies are conducted, | 3:06 | |
and the public affirmation of God and His Christ. | 3:10 | |
There are yet others who manage to run corridors | 3:16 | |
between the two, | 3:21 | |
watching the interplay of study upon devotion | 3:23 | |
and of adoration upon research. | 3:28 | |
And there are even those mature souls | 3:32 | |
who can worship in the classroom and study in the chapel. | 3:37 | |
Well, let's look together at least phenomena, | 3:45 | |
the classroom in religion and the chapel. | 3:47 | |
What's the purpose of each? | 3:50 | |
Does each have anything to say to the other? | 3:52 | |
What's the job of the classroom in religion? | 3:58 | |
It is the same as that of most other good classrooms. | 4:02 | |
The objective search for truth in a given field. | 4:09 | |
It is the attempt to discover the agreement | 4:17 | |
between the facts submitted and the conclusions drawn. | 4:20 | |
The purpose is not to make the learner religious. | 4:27 | |
It is to make him or her, a student of the data of religion. | 4:35 | |
Able to observe, to compare, to select, | 4:43 | |
to reject and to construct hypothesis, | 4:49 | |
which will integrate the material scrutinize. | 4:53 | |
Such a student gains knowledge about religion. | 4:58 | |
Its origins, its development, its influence on | 5:05 | |
and its susceptibility to contemporary culture, | 5:10 | |
it's radical and its conservative tendencies, | 5:15 | |
its place in the history of men and of ideas. | 5:19 | |
So instead of reading one chapter of the Bible per night | 5:25 | |
as requested by father, or required by mother, | 5:29 | |
as a filial spiritual duty, | 5:34 | |
the student begins to ask questions | 5:38 | |
and to frame answers, tentative but plausible. | 5:42 | |
Why is there a double story of creation | 5:49 | |
in the first pages of Genesis? | 5:54 | |
In one man and woman were created together | 5:57 | |
as the climax of creation, | 6:03 | |
in the other man was made the first of all creatures | 6:06 | |
and woman was made as a last resort, literally a side issue. | 6:13 | |
Now why? | 6:22 | |
Why are there varying accounts of the number of animals | 6:25 | |
taken into the arc by Noah? | 6:29 | |
Why? | 6:33 | |
So untentatively realizes | 6:35 | |
that Genesis may be a composite volume | 6:38 | |
added to, edited and reedited. | 6:41 | |
And one begins to talk learnedly or pedantically | 6:45 | |
about the J, E and P documents. | 6:50 | |
And there's one more. | 6:55 | |
If Isaiah lived around 740 to 700 BC, | 6:58 | |
why is he so well acquainted with the conquest of Cyrus | 7:07 | |
whose dates are 540 BC, 200 years later. | 7:14 | |
Did he foresee and foretell | 7:21 | |
the possibility of a return from exile 200 years in advance? | 7:25 | |
Or were there two Isaiahs, as a matter of fact, | 7:33 | |
scholars now think there were at least three. | 7:38 | |
Now the reason they say this is not to upset you | 7:42 | |
or your grandmother, | 7:46 | |
but because such a hypothesis seems to make more sense | 7:49 | |
of the chronological, historical | 7:55 | |
and theological discrepancies, | 7:58 | |
than the assumption that one man back in the eighth century | 8:01 | |
could write in such a variety of ways | 8:06 | |
over such a spread of years. | 8:10 | |
Why do you think the Romans are whitewashed? | 8:13 | |
And the Jews are blackwashed in the book of Acts? | 8:17 | |
I don't know, but I know one reasonable guess | 8:23 | |
to account for it. | 8:27 | |
Acts may have been prepared by Paul's friends | 8:30 | |
for his lawyers | 8:38 | |
when he appeared before the Supreme court in Rome, | 8:41 | |
on the charge of being a public nuisance | 8:46 | |
to the Roman empire. | 8:50 | |
Therefore the Jews are blackwashed, | 8:53 | |
the Romans are whitewashed. | 8:55 | |
It's a guess. | 8:56 | |
You'll make much more out of the book of the Revelation | 8:58 | |
if you stop thinking about it as a photograph | 9:02 | |
of a hot shimmering, metallic heaven, | 9:05 | |
full of noisy almost nonstop singing, | 9:09 | |
and consider it as a pep talk to the faithful | 9:14 | |
in a time of persecution | 9:19 | |
around the end of the 1st century AD. | 9:22 | |
This is the job of the classroom, | 9:26 | |
not to make your faith or break your faith | 9:29 | |
but to help you understand the books of the Bible | 9:33 | |
in their own time and in their own environment. | 9:37 | |
The test is truth. | 9:42 | |
Now, if you're a devout person that shouldn't scare you | 9:45 | |
for God is truth. | 9:49 | |
The search may lead to Him, it can. | 9:51 | |
But whether it does or not, | 9:56 | |
the classroom's job is still the search for truth. | 9:59 | |
The purpose is evaluation, the technique is study, | 10:07 | |
the method is contemplation and the outcome is tested truth. | 10:13 | |
But tested truth which is willing to be retested, | 10:20 | |
ready to be retested. | 10:27 | |
Now of course, | 10:30 | |
there may be two unpleasant byproducts of such study. | 10:31 | |
One, is an ivory towerish detachment which fails to realize | 10:36 | |
that the biblical men and women so loved and so lived, | 10:42 | |
that they killed and died for these biblical ideas | 10:47 | |
we now study and quote, "Religion", end of quote. | 10:52 | |
When objectivity becomes insensitiveness | 10:57 | |
and contemplation is metamorphosed into torpidity, | 11:01 | |
then these dry bones won't rise again. | 11:06 | |
The other byproduct is quite the opposite. | 11:10 | |
It is an impassioned allegiance to a tentative hypothesis | 11:15 | |
which shocks the orthodox | 11:21 | |
and causes letters to be written to the trustees. | 11:23 | |
Take for example, the problem of Judas Iscariot. | 11:28 | |
The suggestion that he was money crazy | 11:33 | |
does not seem to fit all the facts. | 11:36 | |
De Quincey an English essayist of the 19th century | 11:40 | |
popularized a German hypothesis | 11:45 | |
which ran something like this. | 11:48 | |
Judas was the only disciple | 11:51 | |
who appreciated the possibilities | 11:54 | |
in the messianic preaching of Jesus, | 11:58 | |
especially its apocalyptic implications. | 12:00 | |
Meaning what? | 12:05 | |
Well, this, God would literally send thousands of angels | 12:07 | |
to initiate and institute the kingdom of God | 12:15 | |
if Jesus would but give the sign for its inauguration. | 12:19 | |
But Jesus couldn't make up His mind. | 12:27 | |
He suffered from the Hamlet cramped, | 12:31 | |
"To be or not to be, that is the question." | 12:35 | |
So Judas decided to force his hand. | 12:40 | |
He would betray Jesus to His enemies | 12:44 | |
and then the angelic forces would swing into action. | 12:47 | |
The kingdom would be established, | 12:52 | |
Jesus would reign and Judas would be rewarded as the agent | 12:54 | |
in the divine cataclysm. | 13:00 | |
The plan backfired. | 13:04 | |
There was no supernatural intervention. | 13:06 | |
Jesus was crucified for high treason | 13:10 | |
and in remorse, Judas committed suicide. | 13:14 | |
Now that's an interesting hypothesis. | 13:20 | |
If I were Judas, I would brief De Quincey | 13:23 | |
to appear as counsel for the defense | 13:26 | |
before the bar of heaven. | 13:28 | |
But you can imagine the consternation | 13:31 | |
among the Orthodox elect. | 13:34 | |
If that were promulgated by a freshman or a sophomore | 13:37 | |
as the gospel according to Duke, | 13:41 | |
no, hardly according to Luke. | 13:46 | |
The job of the classroom is the search for truth. | 13:51 | |
Come whens it may, cost what it will. | 13:56 | |
Now what's the job of a chapel? | 14:03 | |
It's different from that of a classroom. | 14:07 | |
For one thing, it is not primarily the place | 14:10 | |
where one sets out on an objective search | 14:14 | |
for the true data about religion. | 14:18 | |
The chapel is that portion of space, fittingly enclosed, | 14:23 | |
where at a given time a company of like-minded people | 14:31 | |
may gather to express corporately | 14:37 | |
their commitment to the God revealed in the religion | 14:41 | |
which they have accepted. | 14:46 | |
The public worship of God is an active dedication | 14:49 | |
of rededication to Him who is the be all | 14:54 | |
and the end all of the worshipers. | 14:59 | |
Now there is a place in the service for teaching, obviously | 15:03 | |
but not in the first part of the service. | 15:11 | |
Sunday by Sunday, the service opens with the vision of God | 15:17 | |
as we are called again and again into His presence. | 15:22 | |
And because of His majesty, we revere Him, | 15:26 | |
and because of His holiness, we confess our creature hood | 15:30 | |
and our sin to Him. | 15:35 | |
And because of His love, we are corporately grateful | 15:38 | |
that we are allowed to stand in good relations with Him. | 15:42 | |
Now only after that is sensed and acknowledged, | 15:47 | |
do we move on to the sermon, | 15:54 | |
to an examination of what His truth and His intentions | 15:57 | |
mean for us in our day to day living. | 16:00 | |
Moreover, this is not primarily | 16:05 | |
a matter of the use of the intellect, our brains, | 16:07 | |
our gray matter though they're involved. | 16:11 | |
It's a commitment of the whole man, | 16:14 | |
heart, mind and will cognition and emotions. | 16:17 | |
This is total entrustment. | 16:21 | |
The outcome is not knowledge about God but knowledge of God. | 16:25 | |
Sometimes referred to as faith in God. | 16:32 | |
I think the contrast is somewhat comparable | 16:36 | |
to the difference between a study of friendship, | 16:39 | |
like Ciceros De Amicitia. | 16:43 | |
And the appreciation of a friend | 16:47 | |
like the relation of David and Jonathan. | 16:51 | |
Now the religion recognized here in chapel | 16:55 | |
is that which centers in the God | 16:58 | |
preeminently revealed in Jesus Christ, | 17:00 | |
and in the activity of His Holy Spirit. | 17:04 | |
It's somewhat different | 17:08 | |
from that to which most of us have been accustomed, | 17:10 | |
in that, it is consciously | 17:14 | |
and officially interdenominational. | 17:17 | |
Hence, it is inevitably eclectic. | 17:21 | |
Bach Chorales, Methodist hymns, | 17:26 | |
Episcopal collects and Presbyterian exposition, | 17:31 | |
are carefully interwoven, or haphazardly tangled. | 17:37 | |
Ad Majorem Gloriam Dei. | 17:43 | |
Nevertheless, the central fact is clear. | 17:48 | |
God as found in the Bible interpreted by the Catholic church | 17:51 | |
and reformed in the Protestant heritage, | 17:58 | |
Him, we worship. | 18:03 | |
Him, we know. | 18:06 | |
Him, we seek to worship more worldly | 18:09 | |
and know more surely. | 18:14 | |
Now don't let the fact of this commitment scare you, | 18:18 | |
it's in line with much of our lives. | 18:21 | |
We are committed people to the UN, to the USA, | 18:23 | |
to one of the major political parties | 18:30 | |
after some splintered group. | 18:32 | |
To dear old Duke, to fraternity or sorority, | 18:34 | |
to black power. | 18:40 | |
We cannot live without commitment. | 18:42 | |
We can debate and argue and propose and amend, | 18:46 | |
but regularly comes the chairman's voice, | 18:52 | |
"It is now time to vote." | 18:55 | |
Even though we long for more evidence | 18:59 | |
or desire more discussion, | 19:02 | |
life has a habit of saying, "Cast you vote. | 19:04 | |
"Vote on the knowledge you have | 19:09 | |
"with the wisdom you have acquired. | 19:11 | |
"And remember, action follows the vote." | 19:14 | |
We have to be committed to something | 19:20 | |
if we claim to be alive. | 19:23 | |
So the chapel is different from the classroom. | 19:25 | |
One comes here making certain affirmations. | 19:28 | |
It's the business of the chapel | 19:34 | |
both to explain and to interpret these affirmations. | 19:36 | |
But before they are evaluated, expounded and applied, | 19:41 | |
they are affirmed. | 19:47 | |
I wish we had in our order of worship | 19:49 | |
an affirmation of faith. | 19:53 | |
Now I know that many of us bulk | 19:57 | |
at the thought of standing and declaring the apostles creed. | 19:59 | |
I certainly wouldn't want that done | 20:03 | |
without a series of sermons on it first. | 20:06 | |
Now the important word in born of the Virgin Mary, | 20:11 | |
is born, not virgin. | 20:15 | |
That the resurrection of the body | 20:20 | |
is not the resurrection of the flesh, | 20:23 | |
certainly not according to St. Paul. | 20:26 | |
But the continuation of one's personality after death, | 20:30 | |
so that you is still you. | 20:35 | |
There could be an interesting study | 20:40 | |
of whether Jesus descended into hell | 20:41 | |
with the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, | 20:45 | |
or declined to do so with the Methodists. | 20:48 | |
But we do need an affirmation of faith. | 20:53 | |
It would remind us of what the chapel stands for, | 20:57 | |
the commitment of the whole person to God | 21:01 | |
as He is understood in the reformed Christian tradition. | 21:04 | |
For a man's chief end is not to study religion, | 21:09 | |
not even to study the Bible, but to glorify and enjoy God. | 21:13 | |
But let's go one step further. | 21:19 | |
Both classroom and chapel have a valid place on this campus, | 21:22 | |
a necessary place | 21:27 | |
according to the trust deed of the university. | 21:29 | |
Each by itself is good | 21:32 | |
but each an empathy with the other is better. | 21:34 | |
The chapel needs the classroom. | 21:40 | |
Now, will you please remember I say that? | 21:43 | |
The chapel needs the classroom, | 21:47 | |
because faith alone can become self deceived, | 21:52 | |
unwilling to stand the test of objective analysis. | 21:58 | |
The shoddy pulpit needs the rebuke | 22:04 | |
of the disciplined rastrum. | 22:08 | |
It's wise to be able to give reasons | 22:12 | |
for the faith that is within us. | 22:14 | |
The classroom tells the chapel | 22:18 | |
that it may be good to be devout | 22:20 | |
but it's better to be honest and devout. | 22:23 | |
It says, do not forget | 22:28 | |
that an addition to the power of the committed heart, | 22:31 | |
it is well to have the balance of the train head. | 22:35 | |
Sound biblical study will define and refine, | 22:41 | |
prune and curl, cultivate and enlarge | 22:47 | |
the doctrine we learn at our mother's knee | 22:51 | |
and make it somewhat more in keeping, | 22:54 | |
with the rich learned heritage of the faith. | 22:57 | |
But the classroom needs the chapel. | 23:02 | |
There's always the danger with the stress and knowledge | 23:07 | |
they will grow the unlovely attitude of arrogance. | 23:10 | |
I've watched able scholars | 23:13 | |
shatter the religious confidence of immature students | 23:16 | |
by their merciless pounding | 23:22 | |
on the facts discovered by the scholars, | 23:24 | |
in complete oblivion of the spiritual hurt | 23:27 | |
and heart wariness of the bewildered pupil | 23:31 | |
as he moves into the no man's land of biblical criticism. | 23:35 | |
It may be factually accurate that the miracles of Jesus | 23:41 | |
can be understood in scientific terms | 23:46 | |
or else explained away. | 23:49 | |
But the wise teacher who himself because of chapel | 23:53 | |
knows the joy of commitment will ask, | 23:59 | |
"What manner a of person was Jesus, | 24:02 | |
"who made such an impression on His followers, | 24:08 | |
"that they could not explain Him in ordinary terms | 24:13 | |
"but had to resort to miraculous to account for Him, | 24:19 | |
"to account satisfactorily for Him?" | 24:24 | |
It's not difficult to show the confusion | 24:29 | |
and the contradiction in the evidence for the resurrection. | 24:32 | |
But a teacher who has sensed the joy of an Easter service, | 24:38 | |
will go on and talk about the perennial horror of death, | 24:43 | |
what Saint Paul called, the last enemy. | 24:47 | |
And reveal how the whole Christian movement | 24:50 | |
found its reason depth in the unshatterable conviction | 24:54 | |
that Jesus was not holden of death. | 24:59 | |
And with the ensuing hope for the believer, | 25:04 | |
in such a classroom, the student will begin to be willing | 25:07 | |
to wrestle with the confusions and the contradictions | 25:11 | |
of the biblical records. | 25:14 | |
Because he has confidence in the goodwill, | 25:16 | |
as well as in the professional competence of the teacher. | 25:20 | |
And such a teacher will be the Pauline phrase become flesh, | 25:27 | |
speaking the truth in love. | 25:31 | |
We're very fortunate at Duke that there is a rapprochement | 25:34 | |
between the chaplain and classroom. | 25:39 | |
Our pulpit is regularly filled by professors. | 25:42 | |
Of the 38 Sundays during the current academic year, | 25:49 | |
here are the figures, | 25:53 | |
omitting chaplains, Wilkinson and Paul, and myself. | 25:56 | |
14 by our own professors, | 26:00 | |
three by visiting preachers who are teachers. | 26:04 | |
And two of the three Methodist bishops who came | 26:09 | |
were academicians. | 26:13 | |
Now that's 50% of the preachers are teachers. | 26:14 | |
And you know about myself, I spent 40 years in the classroom | 26:19 | |
until I retired last June. | 26:25 | |
Here, we properly speak of classroom and chapel | 26:28 | |
rightly conjoined. | 26:34 | |
I think our Lord would give Duke his blessing at this point. | 26:36 | |
He came teaching and preaching, | 26:42 | |
and He would've sympathized with you who are undergraduates | 26:47 | |
in your effort to deny neither the study of, | 26:51 | |
nor the commitment to religion. | 26:56 | |
Because when He was a boy, | 27:00 | |
He stayed once for three days in the temple, | 27:02 | |
His Father's house. | 27:08 | |
Why we may assume that He worshiped, | 27:11 | |
the record tells us that He sat among the teachers, | 27:14 | |
listening to them and asking them questions. | 27:18 | |
And the record concludes with the statement | 27:24 | |
that Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature | 27:28 | |
and in favor with God and man. | 27:34 | |
Perhaps Duke is trying to repeat that in its motto, | 27:37 | |
Eruditio et and Religio. | 27:45 | |
Let us pray. | 27:53 | |
Oh, God who art worthy to be worshiped. | 27:58 | |
And whose revelation of thyself is worthy to be studied. | 28:02 | |
Direct us to be at home in both classroom and chapel, | 28:10 | |
as different rooms in the same house | 28:16 | |
that our mind and heart may be at one with each other, | 28:21 | |
to thy praise and our delight. | 28:27 | |
Amen. | 28:32 | |
(soothing organ music) | 28:40 | |
(slow organ music) | 31:05 | |
(woman singing in foreign language) | 31:41 | |
(upbeat organ music) | 35:23 | |
Eternal God, giver of every good and perfect gift, | 38:32 | |
who seekest above all thy gifts to give thyself to us. | 38:37 | |
Grant that with these token gifts of our hands, | 38:43 | |
we may more fully give ourselves in joyous obedience | 38:46 | |
and service through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 38:50 | |
And now may the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ | 39:00 | |
be with us all. | 39:03 | |
Amen. | 39:05 | |
(bell ringing) | 39:11 | |
(upbeat organ music) | 39:29 |
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