Wilson O. Weldon - "On Being Unanimous" (June 18, 1972) / Duke Chapel Recordings / Duke Digital Repository

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Testing one, two, three, (blows into mic).

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Testing, one, two, three.

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Testing, testing.

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(Orgelbüchlein: In Dir Ist Freude, BWV 615 plays)

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Friends, brothers, and sisters in Christ,

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we have come here to a house of worship

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that has been set side for us to use in this way.

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We've come here for Christian fellowship

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and to grow in the things of God.

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And it is imperative for us

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to cleanse our hearts and souls regularly of the impurities,

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which come in inevitably,

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in a life like this and in a world like this.

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But may we now reverently bow our heads

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for our prayer of confession.

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Almighty God, our heavenly Father,

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we offer our prayer of confession

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because we are unnecessarily deficient and we know it.

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We could have done better at a lot of points

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and our failure to do so

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has made us justifiably uncomfortable.

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The only way we can honestly get comfortable

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about our past sins is to confess them to you

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in the presence of one another and ask for your forgiveness.

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We admit that we often ask the wrong questions.

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When we are faced with a decision about right and wrong,

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we frequently ask what our friends think about it,

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rather than asking what Jesus thinks about it.

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We often get our priorities mixed up.

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We substitute sleeping for worship.

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We try to make a name for ourselves

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at the very time we should be trying

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to heal the wounds of mankind.

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We put our money in the wrong places.

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We seem to be able to afford almost everything

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that comes along, and then we tell the church,

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we are out of funds.

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Oh Lord, we are sinners

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in the way we get our priorities mixed up.

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As we confess our sins together,

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we are aware that the particulars

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of our sinfulness are not the same.

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Some of us are guilty of holding on to stuffy old notions

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about our Christian faith,

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which we're not willing to reexamine

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in the light of scripture

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or with the aid of the Holy Spirit.

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Others of us are not at all stuffy,

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but we sensationalize everything about our Christian faith.

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Instead of making sure that we are truly Christian,

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we always make sure we are truly sensational.

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But although the particulars of our sinning are different,

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we all unite in our failure to seek first your will

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and your righteousness.

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So now we ask forgiveness,

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we pray for restoration.

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We ask love and acceptance.

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We pray for a new chance, not merely to do better,

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but by Your grace to do a lot better.

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In Jesus name we offer our prayer, Amen.

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Hear now the comforting words of the scriptures,

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"Who is like unto God, that pardons inequity

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and passes by the transgression of His heritage?

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He retains not His anger forever

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because He delights in mercy.

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He will turn again and have compassion upon us;

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He will tread our inequities under foot

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and cast all our sins into the depths of the sea."

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Let it be.

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Now this being true,

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brings to our hearts the impulse of gratitude

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because of what God has done for us.

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May we express our gratitude in unison as we use the words

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that have been written by Leonard Walcott.

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Let us pray our prayer of thanksgiving.

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Oh God, we have been so noisy,

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each of us chirping away at our own opinions,

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at our own preferences.

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We've been putting to others in a box, boxed in the adults,

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teenagers, kids, we've turned each other off

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and left ourselves alone in the clutter of our noise.

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Help us God to be quiet and watch and listen,

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to watch and listen to what you really are,

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to watch and listen to what each other really is.

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Each one, a person, a gift from God to the rest of us,

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so that we too can become persons.

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We thank you God for each other.

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We thank you God. Amen.

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(organ music)

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♪ Sing to Jehova ♪

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♪ Sing to Jehova ♪

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♪ Sing to Jehova ♪

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(indistinct)

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♪ Sing to Jehova ♪

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♪ Sing to Jehova ♪

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♪ Glory and power ♪

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♪ Glory and power ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Sing to Jehova ♪

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♪ Sing to Jehova ♪

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♪ The glory of His holy name ♪

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♪ Pray unto the Lord God ♪

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♪ Pray unto the Lord God ♪

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♪ In the beauty of holiness ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ All the nations fall on their knees ♪

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♪ As we praise to ye ♪

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♪ Sing praises, sing praises to thy holy name ♪

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♪ Sing praises, sing praises to thy holy name ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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Those of you who take this study of the Bible seriously

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will remember that Paul in his letter to the Romans

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has a rather extended treatise

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on the subject of law and grace,

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which begins at about the fifth chapter

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and runs on through chapters eight and nine.

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The lesson this morning,

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is taken from the heart of that treatise.

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It's in the seventh chapter, beginning at the 15th verse.

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I read from the Moffatt translation.

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"I cannot understand my own actions.

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I do not act as I want to act,

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on the contrary I do what I detest.

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Now when I act against my wishes,

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that means I agree that the law is right.

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That being so it is not I who do the deed,

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but sin that dwells within me.

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For in me, that is in my flesh, no good dwells, I know.

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The wish is there, but not the power of doing what is right.

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I cannot be good as I want to be,

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and I do wrong against my wishes.

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Well, if I act against my wishes,

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it is not I who do the deed, but sin that dwells within me.

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So this is my experience of the law,

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I want to do what is right, but wrong is all I can manage.

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I cordially agree with God's law so far as my inner self

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is concerned, but then I find quite another law

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in my members, which conflicts with the law of my mind

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and makes me a prisoner of sin's law

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that resides in my members.

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Thus left to myself, I serve the law of God with my mind,

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but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin.

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Miserable retch that I am,

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who will rescue me from this body of death?

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God will, thanks be to Him

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through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen."

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(organ music)

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The Lord be with you.

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Let us pray.

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Eternal Spirit, Father of Mercies, God of all comfort,

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we lift our prayers to you,

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asking you to keep us reminded of the hope of the world.

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That we may not be overborne

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by its disasters and its confusions.

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Lord God, omnipotent, the beginning and the end,

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you are still God.

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Before you no evil can permanently stand,

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no lie finally triumph.

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Grant it in our generation,

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the kingdoms of this world shall become

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the kingdoms of your Christ.

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That men shall beat their swords into plowshares

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their spears into pruning hooks.

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May we in this hour of worship, have our faith in you

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and in your eternal purposes renewed.

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Let not our confidence or our devotion fail

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because of the fury of the wicked when they boast themselves

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in the day in their pride.

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And so we pray, Holy God, that in this sanctuary,

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joy may come to unhappy souls.

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That celebration may be a reality,

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that illumination may dawn upon the uninspired,

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that courage may come to the crushed,

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hope to the frustrated.

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Now in this time of devotion,

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may we be equipped by thy grace,

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to meet life, to face death,

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to fight the good fight, to keep the faith,

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to finish the course.

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Therefore, do we pray you to clarify our sight,

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so that we can see how small are the issues

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which we sometimes mistakenly think are big,

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so that we can see how great are the issues

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for which Jesus lived and died.

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Grant unto us oh God, who worship here,

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a generous portion of the character of Jesus.

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Give us His indignation against sinful living,

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and His unbounded love for sinners.

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We pray for enough of His grace

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to make us persuasive witnesses for His gospel.

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So from this time of worship,

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send us out to be better campus citizens,

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more understanding roommates,

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more respectful sons and daughters,

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wiser fathers and mothers, true scholars,

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courageous prophets, responsible leaders, good followers.

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Most of all, faithful disciples of your son,

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our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name

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and in the words of whose prayer we now pray together,

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saying "Our Father who art in heaven

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hallowed be thy name.

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Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth

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as it is in heaven.

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Give us this day our daily bread

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and forgive us our trespasses

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as we forgive those who trespass against us,

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and lead us not into temptation,

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but deliver us from evil.

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For thine is the kingdom and the power

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and the glory forever, Amen.

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"I don't do the good I want to do.

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Instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do."

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In this year of 1972, a year of national elections,

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it is well to be reminded that in a deliberative body,

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it is possible to receive a vote of unanimity

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or to receive less than unanimity.

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This fact is a fact concerning your life and mind,

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the goal and the possibility of becoming unanimous,

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and also the equally possible fact of living

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with a divided self.

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We see it in so many, so many aspects of life.

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We see it in the relationship of a husband and wife,

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so many differences, and yet the possibility

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of unanimity of purpose.

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Some years ago before there were so many conveniences

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in the modern form,

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a young couple were struggling to relate themselves

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each to the other.

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The wife kept at asking her husband to assist her

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in the wiping of the dishes.

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He constantly declined, usually finding it very desirable

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to sit in the rocking chair and read the paper.

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One day when she had renewed the request,

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he put down the paper and said, "Listen, darling,

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I'll make you a proposition.

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If you will show me anywhere in the Bible

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where it says that a man ever wiped a dish,

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I promise to help you from now on."

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He had underestimated his wife

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because she took off her apron and hurried

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and picked up her muchly marked copy of the Bible,

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came back and with a smile on her face

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that only a wife can have when she knows she's about

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to win a victory, said, "Listen, big boy.

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Here it is in 2 Kings 21:18.

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'And I will wipe away Jerusalem even as a man wipes his dish

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and turns it upside down.'"

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We see it in another application and this time

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from a recent item in the "New York Times",

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Ben Clyburn startles his recital audience.

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It took a while for Ben Clyburn and his audience

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to settle down at his Carnegie Hall recital

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on last Wednesday night,

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Many in the full house were startled and some annoyed

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when Mr. Clyburn opened the program

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with the "Star Spangled Banner".

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One woman in a stage seat,

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pointedly refused to rise and a few listeners, even hissed.

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Here it is, whether you'll find it in the home,

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or whether you'll find it in the area of the arts,

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there is the very real possibility

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of wide differences and diversity,

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and so it is in a land of democracy.

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This is to be recognized, and this is to be appreciated.

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But let me this morning, ask you to join with me

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in a few moments of meditation concerning the importance

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of keeping in mind that you and I can move

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in the direction of becoming unanimous.

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Indeed, it is a part of the order of our universe

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that there should not be ultimately the reign of diversity

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as much as there should be the reign of unanimity.

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We call our universe a multiverse and not a chaos.

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Why do we have a policeman on a busy traffic street corner?

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It is in order to have some kind of orderliness.

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Why are the seats in this church sanctuary faced

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in one direction or towards some center?

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It is not because one person is more important than others,

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but it is simply if you are to have an assembly,

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in order to be an ordered assembly, it must be orderly.

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I resist the temptation in the these moments to suggest,

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in fact, the corporate problems and the greed issues

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of mankind are ultimately personal ones.

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I sort of react negatively

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when a speaker suggests this.

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I think that the disharmonies in our world

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are ultimately the manifestation of the disharmonies

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which we find within our own selves.

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And yet what I am seeing in these moments is

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that we need to keep in mind

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that if you and I as individuals

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are to make some kind of lasting contribution

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to the solution of the great social issues

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of the current era,

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it is equally important for us to keep in mind

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the importance of putting our own selves together.

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Is it not true that each one of us needs some kind

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of United States within?

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And so it is in this passage of scripture,

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the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

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We find this man expressing,

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frankly and lucidly, his perplexity.

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(indistinct)

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"I was a strange sort of fellow puzzled

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and baffled by my own behavior.

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Sometimes it seemed, I was like two people

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or several different persons.

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I wanted to do one thing and I found myself doing another.

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I wanted to live by the law of God.

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And yet I found myself living on a lower level,

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which I consciously disapprove.

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One part was going in one direction and another was going

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in the opposite."

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So Paul cries out to a modern generation,

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"Who can set us free from this lack of unanimity within?"

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Note one thing that this is highly important

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when we look at the study of the mind.

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In the last half century especially,

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the interest of man concerning the workings

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of the mind has been uppermost in our studies.

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We ask, "What is it?"

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And it is all together too fustle an answer to say that,

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"It is the soul, the spirit, the psyche."

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Because when we face this two-legged creature called man,

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before a searching mirror,

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one soon discovers that he or she is not what appeals

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on the circus, but is deeply mysterious

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and is a deeply puzzled mixture of diverse interest.

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Let me put it this way.

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How many men are there in one man?

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How many moods does one woman express in any 24 hour period?

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If you want an interesting experience,

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sit down some evening and seek to jot the answer

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to this kinds of question.

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It is most meaningful.

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How many combinations of temperament

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do we put together in any one day?

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How many persons are living in this minute

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to a world of personality that is called the self

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of the psyche of the soul.

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Psychiatry has taught us that it is not easy

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to probe the depths of the world.

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Anyone who flies in a plane over a city like New York,

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looks down and sees a multitude of lights.

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But one does not see that deep down beneath these lights

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which appear are all sorts of other lights and all sorts of,

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of experiences in hotels, in streets, in subways.

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People, good and bad, burglars and bandits,

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and yet deep down underneath the city

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which is seen only from the plane,

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there is so much going on in the lower levels.

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Irving Stone has recently written the story of Sigmund Freud

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in his interesting volume titled, "The Passions Of The Mind"

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in which he tells the struggles

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that this scientist went through,

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as he sought to go down and to probe something

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of the meaning of this wide diversity of responses.

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Someone has said that Freud went down deeper,

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stayed down longer and came up dirtier.

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I do not share that appraisal.

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And yet here is the problem, is it not?

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The problem of making one self unanimous,

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of getting one self together.

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Long, long years ago, Plato talked about it.

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He said that each human being is like a rider,

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sitting in a chariot, driving a team of two horses,

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one, a white horse, and one, a black horse.

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And he said it was the purpose of the driver

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to keep the black horse from running away

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and destroying the chariot as well as the driver.

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Helpful metaphor, as far as it goes,

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but it doesn't go far enough.

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It would be nearer the truth to say that most of us

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are like a whole herd of wild horses,

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from stampeding and from running loose,

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is the business of our ultimate decision.

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Did not Jesus talk about this in the Sermon On The Mount?

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Using the metaphor, "A house divided

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against itself cannot stand."

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He knew what it was because all around Him were people

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who outwardly religious, outwardly pray beautiful prayers

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yet had a part of their being attuned to the praise

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of their fellow men.

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One hand reaching in one direction

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and another hand reaching in another.

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Jesus said, pointedly and helpfully,

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it can't be done.

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You can't go north and south at the same time,

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no person can serve two masters,

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but look at it for a moment from another aspect.

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And that is that medicine is discovering today

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as is revealed in practically all

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of our are great medical centers,

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including our great medical center at Duke,

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that it is possible to minister to bodily needs

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only in terms of ministering to the whole person.

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Dr. James Fisher some years ago, wrote a book,

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entitled "A Few Buttons Missing"

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here in when he says,

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"Of the thousands of emotionally disturbed,

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the people I have observed in more than a half century

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of medical practice,

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I believe that the most frequent denominator among them

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has been a lack of worthy purpose in life.

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A lack of ambition,

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to be of some useful purpose in society,

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to make some definite unselfish contribution to the world."

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Well, long before this psychiatrist discovered this truth,

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Jesus said, "Listen, put something first,

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put some high theme first in your life,

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seek ye first the kingdom of God."

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There's an item from another daily newspaper,

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quotes, "Religion is said to help some addicts to quit,

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an intense involvement in religion may be better

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than methadone in helping some addict

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to share their heroin inhabits

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according to the government's top drug abuse official."

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He says, Dr. Jerome Jaffe,

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"We have seen some remarkable changes in addicts

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with a varied number of religious approaches.

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People when they find the cause,

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when they commit themselves to something

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has come to be a means and a method

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of changing their habits."

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So I ask in this moment

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to look at it from still another aspect,

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and that is the tensions which are all together frequent

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in our lives, call them moral tensions if you want,

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call them what you will.

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The label is not too important.

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There is a pull that the old theologians said

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was the pull of God.

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And there is that other pull

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that some of the older theologians said

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was the pull of Satan.

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However you want to explain it, it is there.

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We are inclined to live, shall we say in life's sanctuary,

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but we are all so inclined to live in life's cellar.

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Alfred Tennyson in that Victorian world,

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which most of us today do not look upon with great relish,

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talked about the ghost of the beast

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of letting the ape and the tiger in us die.

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Well, most of us have to deal with more of an ape

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than a tiger don't we?

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Some of us are having trouble with a mule.

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Some of us are having trouble with a donkey.

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Some of us are having trouble with a peacock.

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Some of us are having trouble with some kind of a creature,

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which is a cross between a rooster and a wolf.

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We have a whole menagerie of animals residing within us.

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A friend of mine, a minister, one Sunday

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was talking especially to the children in his congregation.

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And he referred to the fact

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that we are so much like animals

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and he gave some demonstration.

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The following week, this minister in his home lost

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his temper and his little girl came running up to him

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and said, (laughs) "Tiger, tiger, tiger."

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And he paused and reached down and lifted his child

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into his arms and said, "Yes, darling, in all my life,

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I've been fighting that tiger and by the grace of God,

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one of these days, I'm gonna whip him."

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It might be well for some of us this morning,

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even before we leave the chapel,

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to make some kind of similar confession.

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Gerdy said that it was a shame that he was just one person.

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He said that he possessed in him all the materials

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to be both a rogue and a gentleman.

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Well, there is a mingling of the dust and deity in us.

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And there is upon our battle to you,

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the struggle between Babylon and the New Jerusalem,

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which is another way of saying that we need to deal

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with this quest for unanimity.

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And of course, this is what the Bible has been saying

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all the time about salvation and about conversion.

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And if some of the old words of theology turn us off today,

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I remind you that medicine, psychiatry and psychology

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has been picking up the equivalent at the same time,

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that theology has been discarding some of these ideas.

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And talking about the integration of personality.

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the reorientation of the self,

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the orchestration of impulses.

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So here it is, what are we gonna do about it?

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Quickly let me offer two or possibly three suggestions.

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One is, it seems to me that no matter how sophisticated

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we are, no matter how learned we may be,

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no matter what our status in life may be,

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we need to face up to the fact that there are two words,

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largely lost from the vocabulary of the modern church,

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and yet very needful words, yield and surrender.

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Our generation, your generation and mine

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have boasted about independence and I'm all for that.

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But the essence of any great religion is ultimately

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the willingness to surrender to one Lord,

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to one God, to one concept.

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I give you just one illustration,

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it comes from another century from the life

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of Charles Stewart Parnell,

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who ruled as an uncrowned king of Ireland for 10 years.

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Here's what his theographer says,

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"He had defeated all of his enemies.

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Forster had been crushed, the Pope had been repulsed,

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Gladstone had been conquered, the Tories were shaken,

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the liberals had been scattered, no war, no party, no force,

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which had come into conflict with him had escaped unscathed.

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England feared him, Ireland worshiped him,

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but alas, win men ride with him now.

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They say, 'From behind the misty Wicklow Hills appeared

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the man of destiny whom Ireland had been waiting

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for a quarter of a century,

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whom she has regretted ever since.

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Here, the curtain fell we see his mother bending over

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his silent form, pouring out her grief over a disgrace

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and a failure upon which the world

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would have little and no mercy.'"

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Why?

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Charles Stewart Parnell tried to allow

40:26

for two rulers within him.

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He lost even as you and I will lose

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if we choose to do the same.

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My second suggestion is as paradoxical as it may sound,

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and as contrary to my major thesis as it may appear,

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is that if we are to move in the direction

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of becoming unanimous,

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it is highly important to keep the element of protest

40:57

and descent, wherein when we see wrong and evil,

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that we will be willing to respond in a struggle against it.

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Many illustrations, but I choose the words

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from the late Adlai Stevenson,

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who in speaking to a graduating class at Smith College said,

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"While I'm not in favor of maladjustment,

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I view this cultivation of neutrality,

41:29

this breeding of mental neuters,

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this hostility to eccentricity and controversy

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with grave misgivings.

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One looks back with dismay," said Mr. Stevenson,

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"At the possibility of a Shakespeare,

41:46

perfectly adjusted to the bourgeois life

41:51

in Stratford on the Avon."

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To a John Wesley contently administering

41:59

a country parish, to a George Washington going across

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the Atlantic to London to receive a barony

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from George III, or Abraham Lincoln in Springfield

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with nary a concern for the preservation

42:18

of a crumbling union.

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You see any one of these noble figures

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could have accepted adjustment,

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but he would've missed the glory,

42:30

which came to each one,

42:33

some large measure of unanimous living.

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And then there is this third one,

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and it may sound as an anti climax, I do not intend it so.

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I intend it to be the essence and the basis

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of all that I've been saying.

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When there is the call to respond to the ethic of love,

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you are well along the way to becoming unanimous.

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For every time we express love,

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there will be the manifestation more and more

43:16

of a United States within,

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for you see hate is a dirty four letter word,

43:24

how much obscenity of hatred there is in the hearts

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of the unloved and the unloving.

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"I do not fear," says the poet, "to walk the lonely road,

43:40

which leads far out into the sullen night.

43:44

Nor do I fear the rebel wind tossed sea that stretches on

43:48

would fall beyond the might of human hands or human loves.

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It is a sound of song.

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It is the hate touched soul that I dread, the joyless heart,

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the unhappy faces in the streets.

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The smoldering fires of unforgiven slights.

44:13

These do I fear, not night, nor surging seas,

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nor rebel winds, but hearts unlovely and unloved.

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So it is that when one decides

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to forgive someone who has slighted you,

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someone who has misjudged you or wronged you.

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It is then that you and I move in the direction

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of becoming unanimous."

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Well, if you want it from the Old Testament,

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here it is in the stately words of Isaiah,

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"Seek ye the Lord while He may be found,

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call ye upon Him while He's near,

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let the wicked forsake his way

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and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

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Let him return unto the Lord,

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and he will have mercy and abundantly pardon."

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Here is the message which ought always

45:25

to be very, very personal.

45:29

It may be that some of us here this morning,

45:32

for some of us here this morning,

45:34

what we need most of all is some kind of fresh commitment.

45:37

There may be someone here who is laboring at his studies,

45:43

at his or her work daily and finds no lasting satisfaction.

45:46

You need some kind of fresh surrender.

45:53

You need a new conversion.

45:57

There may be women here today who are finding

46:00

their lives boring and tedious.

46:03

What you need is this direction of unanimity,

46:08

which may be a rededication to the high vows

46:13

in your marriage.

46:20

There may be those who are drinking too much,

46:23

who gamble too much, who spend too much, who play too much,

46:25

and are finding that not one of these over indulgences

46:28

are bringing real joy and peace.

46:32

What do you need?

46:34

You need some kind of new commitment.

46:36

There may be marriages on this campus

46:42

where relationships have cooled.

46:44

Nothing is left except the ashes of polite indifference.

46:47

Your need is to express

46:53

the control of some kind of forgiving love.

46:56

There's an old story about a rabbi being asked

47:01

by his disciples, "When a man ought

47:04

to make his peace with God?"

47:06

He reflected for a moment than answered, "A man oughta make

47:09

his peace with God just before he dies."

47:13

And his disciples said, "Well, master,

47:18

we don't have the slightest idea when we are gonna die."

47:20

"Exactly," he said, "So do it now."

47:24

Do it now, some fresh commitment towards becoming unanimous.

47:29

Let us pray.

47:38

Save us our Father, save us from ourselves,

47:42

from our divided selves.

47:47

Save us in spite of our broken selves,

47:49

storm the beaches of our little worlds,

47:53

invade the tiny islands of our self sufficiencies,

47:56

establish over us a sovereignty beyond

48:01

this (indistinct), Amen.

48:05

(organ music)

48:22

(solemn organ music)

50:46

(upbeat a capella organ music)

51:32

(organ music)

56:20

-

Oh mighty God, we present ourselves and our offerings here

57:42

at your altar with a prayer that we may be unified

57:46

in dedication and service to you,

57:50

that this money and that our energies may help to bring

57:54

about a unified world through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

57:58

Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ

58:10

be with us all, Amen.

58:13

(church bells tolling)

58:16

(organ music)

58:33

(feet stomping)

1:00:04

(feet stomping)

1:01:41

Wilson O. Weldon - "On Being Unanimous" (June 18, 1972)

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1. Wilson O. Weldon - "On Being Unanimous" (June 18, 1972)

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Wilson O. Weldon - "On Being Unanimous" (June 18, 1972)

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