Albert T. Mollegen - "The Biblical Drama" (April 16, 1961)

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-	Let us pray.	0:21
	In the name of the Father, and of the Son,	0:25
	and of the Holy Ghost, amen.	0:28
	I shall probably frighten you	0:38
	when I tell you what my text is.	0:42
	Well, it is the whole Bible,	0:47
	indeed, all of the classical Christian creeds	0:51
	and the church here.	0:55
	Well, let me comfort you.	1:00
	I shall do it in the appointed time.	1:03
	It may encourage you to know that I have done it before.	1:07
	I do this because once in a blue moon,	1:16
	it is good in a university chapel	1:21
	to see the wide sweep of Christianity	1:24
	as over against its individual and concrete details.	1:28
	It is good to look at the beauty	1:34
	and the massive grandeur of a forest,	1:36
	instead of contemplating the individual beauty	1:42
	of single trees.	1:46
	Now the native language of Christianity	1:51
	is story language, narrative.	1:55
	It can of course, be put in propositional form of truth.	2:01
	The language of philosophy of being.	2:09
	It happens to be part of my stock and trade	2:13
	to put Christianity like that to complicated people	2:17
	who got out of Christianity in the complicated way,	2:22
	and have to get back into Christianity the complicated way.	2:25
	But that is not the native language of Christianity.	2:31
	Because Christianity is what God has done,	2:36
	continues to do, and will do.	2:40
	And the language which speaks of action	2:46
	is narrative or story language.	2:51
	So the Bible begins God created them	2:56
	in the beginning God.	3:00
	The Christian doctrine of creation says,	3:05
	that the royal universe is called into being out of nothing	3:09
	by the creative action of God.	3:17
	And that if the living God turned His attention	3:21
	and His energy away from the universe	3:24
	it would be nothing God created.	3:29
	Now unless we are very careful,	3:36
	we will evade the meaning of this great doctrine	3:40
	by seeing it primarily as a statement	3:45
	about something that happened a long long time ago,	3:50
	in the beginnings of things.	3:54
	It is not that primarily at all.	3:58
	God created is the answer	4:03
	to the highest and deepest question that you have.	4:06
	The question of the meaning of existence.	4:14
	The question that the French existentialists	4:20
	are asking and asking and asking	4:23
	in the deepest possible way.	4:27
	One might put it like this,	4:31
	"what in the world are you people doing out there?"	4:35
	I don't mean in this chapel,	4:40
	at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina at this hour.	4:44
	I mean something more profounder than that.	4:51
	For in the scale of evolution	4:59
	you are a peculiar kind of animal.	5:01
	A human animal, a rational animal,	5:05
	an animal with what we call a self transcending mind,	5:09
	and you are stuck on the side	5:15
	of a cooling star this planet,	5:17
	by a queer kind of cement that we call gravity.	5:21
	A cooling star which is welling in orbit	5:27
	around a hot star as part of a solar system,	5:32
	which is an infinitesimal	5:39
	part of a galaxy.	5:43
	The Milky Way is our galaxy,	5:46
	which itself is a part of a universe	5:49
	with an unknown number of galaxies,	5:53
	all of which hangs out there which I'll say,	5:57
	in cribbed and limited space, or in infinite space.	6:01
	Now what in the world are you doing out there?	6:07
	Then they make cool chills run up and down your back.	6:12
	When you go to the edge of the universe and look out	6:15
	and up and down into the abyss,	6:18
	why are you here?	6:24
	I am an Episcopalian so I can use British understatement,	6:29
	it is the most embarrassing predicament.	6:33
	Now the Christian doctrine of creation is the answer	6:44
	to your existence question mark,	6:48
	what are you doing there?	6:52
	You and everything exists for no other reason	6:54
	than that the living God wanted something	7:00
	other than Himself upon which to bestow His love.	7:04
	That's the only excuse you have for existence.	7:12
	The only excuse men have for living together	7:16
	in human society.	7:19
	For building systems of justice.	7:22
	For striving against injustice.	7:25
	For building skyscrapers,	7:29
	and satellites, and space proving ships.	7:32
	And that love in which existence is grounded	7:39
	and from which it derives.	7:43
	That law we Christians say is phrased for us	7:46
	in Christ, In the agony and bloody sweat,	7:51
	in the cross and passion,	7:56
	in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.	7:59
	That's why you're here.	8:04
	Can I use some of the modern jargon?	8:07
	The Christian doctrinal creation is the existential answer	8:10
	to the problem of existence.	8:16
	It involves your all existence, it tells you why	8:18
	you were made in the love of God,	8:23
	and the meaning of your life	8:25
	is to respond to that love of God.	8:28
	So the story begins God created.	8:32
	And it can be said in the simple story language	8:36
	of the early chapters of the Book of Genesis.	8:39
	Or it can be said	8:43
	in the very sophisticated scientific language	8:45
	of modern astrophysics,	8:49
	as Dr. William G. Pollard,	8:51
	down at Oak Ridge is able to put it.	8:55
	Then the story goes on, God made man in his own likeness,	9:00
	in his own image.	9:03
	And that means that man has freedom.	9:06
	And because man has freedom, he can sin and he did sin.	9:10
	Now what is sin according to the Bible?	9:18
	Oh, it's not merely lying around in the gutter drunk,	9:22
	that's only a very crude and grotesque form of sin.	9:26
	According to the Bible the essence of sin lies	9:33
	in one's pretension to be God.	9:37
	One seeks to usurp the place of God in the universe	9:41
	and to set the image of self.	9:45
	In short, sin is rebellion	9:49
	against God, human selfishness.	9:52
	We do it not only as individuals,	9:58
	but we do it as great masses of mankind.	10:01
	We do it as nations, and as cultures,	10:06
	and as civilization, and as economic systems,	10:11
	and as human cultures.	10:16
	Marxism is a massive illustration of the self-exploitation	10:21
	of a particular race,	10:26
	the supreme race destined to rule over every other race.	10:30
	The deification of a race, the pretension to be God.	10:37
	Now we can see this Christian understanding of sin	10:45
	in the great Caesaristic figures of history.	10:51
	In the Hitlers and in the Stalins,	10:55
	in the great movements like Communism and Marxism.	10:59
	But what about American middle class people,	11:05
	academic people, professors, and students,	11:11
	and lawyers, and doctors, and butchers,	11:15
	and bakers, and candle stick makers?	11:17
	Well first, we must not mistake lack of power for goodness,	11:22
	weakness is not goodness.	11:28
	And so I'm fond of using an illustration of an ordinary sin	11:33
	to show that pretension to be God is the root of sin.	11:37
	Let's take telling a lie, just a significant falsehood	11:44
	Perhaps you know how it goes.	11:52
	Sooner or later the lie runs into the structure of reality.	11:56
	And then the liar has to do only one of two things,	12:00
	he can do only one of two things.	12:03
	He can say, I lied and start over again.	12:07
	Or he can try to make original falsehood stand up	12:11
	and that requires the second falsehood.	12:14
	And logically the second one requires the third,	12:18
	and the third of fourth, and the fourth of fifth.	12:21
	And we began to build a whole universe of lies	12:25
	around our original lie.	12:30
	We've gone in the God business creating universes.	12:32
	All sin is the potential to be God,	12:37
	usurping the place of God and setting there	12:42
	the image of self whether it be the magnified self	12:46
	of a race, or a culture, or a system, economic or political.	12:50
	On the other side of the Biblical doctrine of sin	12:57
	is that it's always tyranny over God's creation.	12:59
	To play God over other people,	13:06
	over God's animal world,	13:10
	over the botanical world,	13:13
	over the earth itself.	13:17
	In terms of our illustration of the lie,	13:23
	there is no earthly reason for telling a lie is there?	13:26
	Unless you get somebody to believe it,	13:31
	and so you coaxed them into your fictitious universe	13:34
	as over against God's real universe.	13:37
	You play God and you play God over some of God's creatures.	13:41
	So men ransacked the earth in avarice and greed,	13:49
	and leave destitute soil to be blown away	13:54
	by the dust storms,	13:59
	playing God over the fertility of God's soil.	14:02
	Well, the story says man sinned	14:08
	and sin is universal.	14:11
	And so the goodness God's creation was spoiled.	14:14
	Not destroyed, but spoiled, bent and twisted by the son	14:19
	of men as group pits itself against group	14:24
	in self deification and enmity towards others.	14:29
	But the story still goes on.	14:36
	God was not foolish enough to know that man	14:39
	would not misuse his freedom.	14:42
	And so he began again,	14:46
	the great period of the preparation, the old Testament time,	14:49
	preparation for the great redemption.	14:53
	The original advent season of human history preceding	14:56
	the Christmas times.	15:01
	Profit by profit, and sage by sage,	15:04
	and century by century, and teacher by teacher,	15:09
	he prepared the law and the prophets,	15:14
	so the preparation.	15:18
	Not everybody knows what happened	15:21
	when man understood himself	15:24
	in the light of the law and the prophets.	15:26
	For the law said, "Thou shall love the Lord thy God	15:30
	with all of thy being, and thine neighbor as thyself."	15:34
	And the prophet applied this to voting	15:41
	and to justice immediately in the now-time of any people.	15:44
	Man was forced to respond,	15:53
	which Saint Paul say in the seventh chapter	15:57
	of his letter to the Romans.	15:59
	"Yes, I know in the very depth of my being	16:02
	I know somehow that I ought to love God	16:06
	with all my being.	16:12
	And that I ought to love my neighbor as myself.	16:14
	And then love all the wrestle for justice and peace	16:18
	between nations and within society and among races.	16:22
	I know, but the simple fact is that I do not.	16:28
	How can a self-centered person will himself	16:34
	with the self-centered will into loving God more	16:40
	than himself and loving others as much as himself.	16:44
	Since it is the very center of our being which is corrupted,	16:49
	Since it is the very self which is selfish,	16:54
	the self cannot lift itself off of its center	16:58
	and make God the center.	17:02
	I with a mind, said St. Paul,	17:05
	give ascent to the law of God.	17:09
	But there is another principle in me which wars against	17:13
	the law of my mind.	17:16
	My problem is not, how can I save myself?	17:19
	Obviously the infected eye cannot save itself.	17:24
	My problem is, who will deliver me from of the body	17:29
	of this death?"	17:34
	Perhaps you remember how Jesus said it	17:38
	in the 10th chapter of the gospel according to Saint Mark.	17:41
	When He said, "It's harder for a rich man	17:46
	to get into the kingdom of God	17:48
	than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle."	17:50
	Now that's impossible.	17:54
	And his disciples said in great bafflement,	17:57
	"We rather understood from the Old Testament	18:03
	that riches, prosperity is the sign of divine favor.	18:06
	Now you say that a rich man cannot get	18:15
	into the kingdom of God.	18:17
	Who then can be saved?	18:19
	Who then can be saved?"	18:23
	Jesus said, "Nobody,	18:26
	with men it is impossible."	18:32
	That is, nobody in and of and by themselves.	18:36
	With men it is impossible	18:41
	but not so with God.	18:45
	For with God all things are possible,	18:49
	even your salvation and mine.	18:53
	With God even that is possible.	18:56
	One man knew this.	19:02
	When he knew how utterly and ridiculously futile	19:06
	it is to rely upon his own self-centered self.	19:10
	And what's pitched forward on tiptoe expecting the coming	19:14
	of Messiah, the new act of God, the coming of the savior	19:19
	then he was ready and Christ could come.	19:25
	It is true of love is it not?	19:33
	Every kind of love, family love, romantic love,	19:35
	between this campus and Old Trinity campus,	19:40
	every kind of love.	19:43
	But it cannot be given because it is commanded.	19:46
	Imagine a Duke male senior walking down	19:53
	to Old Trinity campus and saying to the brunette	19:56
	of his choice, "Thou shalt love me."	19:59
	Maybe she should,	20:05
	but he won't wait	20:08
	and he knows better.	20:12
	So he comes a wooing,	20:15
	he comes a courting.	20:20
	And the good news, the gospel Christianity is	20:23
	that God came a wooing, God came a courting man.	20:30
	He united with himself a human nature likened	20:38
	to all things unto unto our human nature, say without sin.	20:41
	So that a first century Jew, Jesus of Nazareth,	20:47
	who spoke in Aramaic, who lived in Palestine,	20:52
	in the first third of our Christian era,	20:57
	a man flesh and blood became	21:02
	the sacramental manifestation of God himself.	21:08
	What is the sacrament?	21:11
	The outward and visible manifestation	21:14
	of the inward and the invisible.	21:16
	So the humanity, Jesus Christ becomes the outward	21:20
	and visible manifestation of the invisible God.	21:23
	He who has seen me says that you had in Christ,	21:29
	has seen the father.	21:33
	And so Jesus is God in action on the human level.	21:36
	Great Archbishop Sed Abramos of Sweden last generation said,	21:44
	that God reached His hand into sinful human history	21:49
	to lift man into unity with himself,	21:54
	reunion reconciliation with God.	21:58
	He did, His hand came back bloody	22:02
	and that hand was Christ.	22:07
	That is the essence of the Christian doctrine	22:11
	of the incarnation and the adornment, the atonement,	22:13
	in the words and deeds of Christ come, Christ ministering,	22:19
	Christ healing, Christ casting out demons	22:23
	that curing not only illness,	22:27
	Christ crucified and Christ risk in that action,	22:29
	God loved man into an answering love.	22:35
	We love him because He first loved us in Christ come,	22:40
	Christ crucified for us, Christ risen for us.	22:46
	So the love of God strikes in and literally lifts us	22:52
	out of the love of self in response,	22:56
	and when we love God we love	23:02
	those for whom God loves, our brothers,	23:03
	every man regardless of his condition	23:08
	or the color of his skin,	23:14
	every man is one for whom Christ died.	23:16
	And my stake with the living God,	23:20
	my relationship with the living God is that stake	23:22
	according to how I treat that other man	23:26
	for whom Christ died.	23:29
	And then in this reconciled relationship with God,	23:33
	this new reunion effected wrought weight done	23:38
	by the coming of Christ.	23:42
	God pours the whole power of His personal influence.	23:44
	That's what we mean by the Holy Spirit.	23:49
	We are up to Pentecost in the church here	23:51
	on the last part of the great classical priests,	23:54
	or the Book of Acts, and the Epistles, and the Bible,	23:59
	the great community of the living spirit of the living God,	24:02
	the communion of the Holy Spirit.	24:07
	And since that spirit is the spirit of Christ	24:10
	we can call the community in which that spirit dwells,	24:12
	the body of Christ which is this church.	24:16
	This week Christians say is the first installment,	24:21
	this common life in the spirit of God,	24:23
	in our togetherness as the Christian church.	24:26
	This is the first installment of the final victory	24:29
	that shall surely come, the consummation of all things.	24:33
	And this is true for a very simple reason,	24:38
	all power derives from God.	24:42
	There is no power that can successfully pit	24:46
	itself against him.	24:51
	God is the victory the final victory,	24:53
	and we who participate in the very life, the spirit of God,	24:58
	all certain are participating in that final victory.	25:04
	And so we say it in portrait,	25:08
	the Christ who came in humility, in agony and bloody sweat,	25:11
	in the passion of self-sacrificial love	25:16
	comes again in majesty and glory, and His reign is expressed	25:20
	in every nook and cranny of the universe.	25:25
	And we are raised up and participate in that,	25:29
	in the singing dance of the harmony of the whole creation,	25:32
	praise and obedience of the creator who made it.	25:38
	That is the good news.	25:43
	That is the biblical drama.	25:47
	And we may become participants in that drama,	25:50
	praise be to thee, oh God, let us pray.	25:55
	Assist us, oh, mercifully with our power	26:09
	oh, Lord God of our salvation.	26:15
	That we may meditate with joy upon the mighty acts	26:19
	by which thou has given us the life and immortality,	26:23
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	26:28
-	Today's sermon was delivered	26:35
	by the Reverend Dr Albert T. Mologen,	26:36
	Professor of New Testament language and literature,	26:38
	Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria Virginia.	26:41
	His sermon was entitled "The Biblical Drama".	26:45
-	Back to the studio in our (indistinct)	26:49
	Featuring our loved member today.	26:53
	Thank you and good night.	26:55

Item Info

Title:

Albert T. Mollegen - "The Biblical Drama" (April 16, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4cn73149

Date:

April 16, 1961

Speaker:

Mollegen, Albert T.

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0140
ref5484_lgr
uachapelsermaud
duke:628389
dcrau002158
ark:/87924/r4cn73149
fff5679a-42e6-4bb3-a80d-b1591474ea5a

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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

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Albert T. Mollegen - "The Biblical Drama" (April 16, 1961)

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