William H. Willimon - "A Lamp Shining in a Dark Place" (February 21, 1993) / Duke Chapel Recordings / Duke Digital Repository

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Preacher

Duke University Chapel

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on this the Sunday of the Transfiguration.

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This week we begin the Christian season of Lent,

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this 40-day period of reflection and introspection.

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To call your attention to all of the events

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that will be taking place here in the chapel

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through the period of Lent,

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I urge you to keep this list

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and to resolve to participate

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in as many of these worship and growth opportunities

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as possible during Lent.

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Lent begins this Wednesday

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here in the chapel at 8 a.m. and at 5:15 p.m.

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with services of Ash Wednesday.

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This afternoon at five the Boy Choir of Duke Chapel

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will offer the choral Evensong service.

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And this Tuesday at noon and at 7:30

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the internationally-renowned Christian ethicist,

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Dr. James B. Nelson will be holding a series of lectures

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and discussions on spirituality and sexuality,

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and you are cordially invited.

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And now on this Sunday of the Transfiguration,

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let us stand for the greeting.

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The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

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Congregation

And also with you.

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The splendor of Christ shines upon us.

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Congregation

Praise the Lord.

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(organ plays)

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♪ O wondrous sight o vision fair ♪

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♪ Of glory that the church shall share ♪

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♪ Which Christ upon the mountain shows ♪

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♪ Where brighter than the sun He glows ♪

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♪ From age to age the tale declares ♪

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♪ How with the three disciples there ♪

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♪ Where Moses and Elijah meet ♪

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♪ The Lord holds converse high and sweet ♪

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♪ The law and prophets there have place ♪

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♪ Two chosen witnesses of grace ♪

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♪ The Father's voice from out the cloud ♪

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♪ Proclaims His only Son aloud ♪

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♪ With shining face and bright array ♪

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♪ Christ deigns to manifest that day ♪

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♪ What glory shall be theirs above ♪

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♪ Who joy in God with perfect love ♪

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(organ plays)

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♪ And faithful hearts are raised on high ♪

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♪ By this great vision's mystery ♪

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♪ For which in joyful strains we raise ♪

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♪ The voice of prayer the hymn of praise ♪

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-

Let us pray.

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The world is charged with Your grandeur, oh God.

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It flames out like shining from shook foil.

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It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed.

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The Holy Spirit over the bent world broods with warm breast

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and with, ah, bright wings.

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Oh Lord, You transfigured Your Son

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before his disciples on the mountain.

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You spoke to them the Word of Life.

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We too hear Your Word, and like them

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we fall to our knees and worship.

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Breathe into us that we may worship You, Lord God.

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Transfix us in the dazzling light of Him

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who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

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one God now and forever, Amen.

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(whispers) Please be seated.

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Please turn to number 602 in the hymnal

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so that we may pray together The Prayer for Illumination.

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Blessed Lord, You have caused all holy Scriptures

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to be written for our learning.

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Grant us so to hear them,

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read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.

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That we may embrace and ever hold fast

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the blessed hope of everlasting life,

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which You have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ,

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who lives and reigns with You in the Holy Spirit,

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one God for ever and ever, Amen.

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The first reading is taken from the Book of Exodus,

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the 24th chapter starting with the 12th verse.

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The Lord said to Moses,

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"Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there.

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And I will give you the tablets of stone

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with the law and the commandment

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which I have written for their instruction.

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So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua,

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and Moses went up unto the mountain of God.

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To the elders he had said,

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"Wait there for us until we come to you again,

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for Aaron and Hur are with you.

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Whoever has a dispute may go to them."

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Then Moses went up on the mountain,

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and the cloud covered the mountain.

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The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai,

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and the cloud covered it for six days.

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On the seventh day, He called to Moses out of the cloud.

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Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord

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was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain

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in the sight of the people of Israel.

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Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain.

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Moses was on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights.

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This is the Word of the Lord.

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Congregation

Thanks be to God.

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This morning's psalter is Psalm 99,

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found on pages 819 and 820 in the hymnal.

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Please stand and join me in singing

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the psalm and the Gloria responsively.

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(organ plays)

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♪ The Lord reigns ♪

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♪ Let the peoples tremble ♪

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♪ The Lord sits enthroned upon the cherubim ♪

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♪ Let the earth quake ♪

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♪ The Lord is great in Zion ♪

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♪ And is exalted over all the peoples ♪

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♪ Let him praise Your great and wondrous name ♪

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♪ Holy is the Lord ♪

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♪ Mighty ruler lover of justice ♪

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♪ You have established equity ♪

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♪ You have executed judgment and righteousness in Jacob ♪

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♪ Extol the Lord our God ♪

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♪ Worship at the Lord's footstool ♪

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♪ For He is the Lord ♪

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♪ Moses and Aaron were among God's priests ♪

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♪ Samuel also was among those who called on God's name ♪

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♪ They cried unto the Lord who answered them ♪

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♪ Who spoke to them through the pillar of cloud ♪

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♪ They kept God's testimonies ♪

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♪ And the statutes God gave them ♪

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♪ Oh Lord our God You answered them ♪

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♪ You were faithful to them ♪

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♪ Though you were vengeful of their wrongdoings ♪

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♪ Extol the Lord our God and worship at His holy mountain ♪

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♪ For the Lord our God is holy ♪

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♪ All glory be to You creator ♪

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♪ And to Jesus Christ our Savior ♪

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♪ And to the Holy Spirit ♪

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♪ Blessed be His name ♪

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♪ As it was 'ere time began ♪

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♪ His love will remain forevermore ♪

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Cantor

You may be seated.

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This reading is from the Second Letter of Peter,

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chapter 1, beginning with the 17th verse.

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For He received honor and glory from God the Father

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when that voice was conveyed to Him

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by the majestic glory saying,

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"This is my Son,

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my beloved,

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with whom I am well pleased."

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We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven

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while we were with Him on the holy mountain.

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So we have a prophetic message more fully confirmed.

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You will do well to be attentive to this,

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as to a lamp shining in a dark place

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until the day dawns

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and the morning star rises in your hearts.

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First of all, you must understand this,

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that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter

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of one's own interpretation,

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because no prophecy ever came by human will.

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But men and women moved by the Holy Spirit

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spoke from God.

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This is the Word of the Lord.

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Congregation

Thanks be to God.

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The third reading is taken from the 17th chapter

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of the Gospel According to St. Matthew,

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starting with the first verse.

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Six days later, Jesus took with him

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Peter and James, and his brother John

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and led them up on a high mountain by themselves.

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And he was transfigured before them,

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and his face shone like the sun,

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and his clothes became dazzling white.

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Suddenly there appeared to them

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Moses and Elijah talking with him.

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Then Peter said to Jesus,

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"Lord, it is good for us to be here.

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If you wish, I will make three dwellings here.

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One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

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While he was speaking,

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suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them,

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and from the cloud a voice said,

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"This is my Son, the beloved, with Him I am well pleased.

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Listen to Him."

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When the disciples heard this,

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they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.

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But Jesus came and touched them saying,

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"Get up and do not be afraid."

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And when they looked up, they saw no one

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except Jesus himself alone.

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As they were coming down the mountain,

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Jesus ordered them,

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"Tell no one about the vision

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"until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."

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This is the Word of the Lord.

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Congregation

Thanks be to God.

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(organ plays)

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♪ Let Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Let Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Come upon us ♪

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♪ We pray ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Come upon us ♪

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♪ Come upon us ♪

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♪ Come upon us ♪

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♪ Come upon us ♪

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♪ Let Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Let Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Come upon us ♪

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♪ Oh Lord ♪

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♪ Thy holy presence ♪

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♪ Upon us ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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William

Now you had a hint

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of what was coming next

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in the procession.

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As the choir processed in,

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Jim brought in the Bible,

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and the Bible, as we do each Sunday,

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was laid upon the desk,

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and this large book was opened up

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as if to say,

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that this is on the table

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for business today.

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This is our main agenda during this hour,

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this book, this Bible.

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And now you have heard, as usual, the Word read,

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you are ready to hear the Word preached.

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Not my word, the Word.

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You are uninterested in what I've done during my week,

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you're not here to hear cute stories of my boyhood

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or you want no report on the inner struggles of my psyche,

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no, you've gotten out of bed on this dreaded morning

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and you've come down here to be exposed

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to the book, to the Word.

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On Sunday when we congregate, it is this book,

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it is this Bible which gathers us,

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which holds a privileged place in our communication.

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Here in Wittgenstein's words,

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we play a certain language game,

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in which this text is authoritative and others are not.

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We are not free to go rummaging around

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in the latest issues of Psychology Today

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or People Magazine or The New York Times

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for other text.

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No, we must bend all thought, and music and prayer

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to this text which holds during this time,

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it holds sway over us.

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Our text for today,

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no prophecy of Scripture

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is a matter of one's own interpretation,

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but men and women moved by Holy Spirit

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spoke from God.

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You will do well to be attentive to this

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as a lamp

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shining

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in a dark place.

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A Christian and a Buddhist differ to a great extent

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because we have listened to different stories,

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and these stories have their way with us.

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They are very different depictions of the way

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the world is put together.

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A claim is being made every Sunday

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when we open up this book,

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that this book, this Bible and its stories

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are the key to what's going on in the world.

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They are, in John Calvin's words,

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the lens through which we are to look at the world.

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This book brings certain things into focus.

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John's gospel began by saying,

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"In the beginning was the Word."

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The Word.

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And that echoes back to an earlier text in Genesis 1.

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"In the beginning God spoke,

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"and there was light."

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But get your physics.

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Light is a function of the word

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light, enlightenment, like a lamp

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shining in a dark place.

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It comes from the word God speaks,

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and there is enlightenment.

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We are able to find our way in the dark

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only because God speaks, or as Paul said it,

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faith comes through hearing.

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The Christian faith is an auditory phenomenon.

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There may be faiths which you can stumble upon

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by taking long walks in the woods

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or by sitting quietly and you're studying,

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delving into your psyche,

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but Christianity's not one of them.

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This is a faith that comes through the word.

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The Word brings light.

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You would do well to be attentive to this word

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as to a light shining in a dark place.

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Of course I know you, you've got objections.

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You say, "Well if the Bible is a lamp,

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"it must be, to use a biblical image,

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"a lamp hidden under a bushel."

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You say, "Well the Bible is often narrow,

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"it's violent, it's primitive, incomprehensible,

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"disordered, weird."

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I say, "So are you."

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(congregation laughs)

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And maybe we, modern people

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have at last gotten to the

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have at last arrived at the post-modern point

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where we can shed some of our modern arrogance.

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Which has engendered such a limited,

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narrow view of the world, such a parochial vision

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of what is and what isn't.

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And maybe at last we can venture out

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with a kind of post-modern appreciation

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for what Karl Barth called

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the strange,

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new world of the Bible.

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Because the Word creates the world,

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the Word creates worlds.

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Would not have been there without the Word.

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And the Bible doesn't just want to describe the world

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and tell you what you already know,

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the Bible wants to create a world

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that you couldn't have known

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before you heard these words.

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The nerve of modern people

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to adopt a superior attitude toward the Bible.

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We say the Bible is sexist,

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or we say that it is patriarchal

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as if we weren't,

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as if we had somehow risen above all that now.

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It is a lot easier to see

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the Bible's culturally conditioned blinders

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than to see our own.

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The nerve of people

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who live in a land that help engineer

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the deaths of 150 thousand Iraqi children after the war,

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if Harvard doctors be believed.

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The nerve of us to quibble over a few Babylonian babies

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in Psalm 137 as if we had somehow,

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we had somehow risen above all that,

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as if we stand in Olympian judgment

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upon this crude, old book, the Bible.

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And this is a,

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this is a new perspective for me,

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'Cause when I was in seminary,

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I was told that my job as a preacher

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was to stand in the pulpit with a Bible in one hand

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and today's newspaper in the other, that was my job.

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And then I was to labor in about 20 minutes

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to somehow take this old, archaic world of the Bible,

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and in about 20 minutes bring it together

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with the fresh, new, modern world in which we live.

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I thought that was my task.

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The preacher is the one that stands

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with one foot in the first century

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and one foot in the brave, new, modern world.

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Which Martin Marty says is a recipe for a hernia.

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That's a long stretch there.

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Have you noticed the traffic always moved

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in one direction on that interpretive bridge?

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It was always the modern world

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telling the Bible what was what.

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It was the modern world rummaging about in Scripture,

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telling the Bible what was possible and probable

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and permissible and interesting.

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So, I began my theological journey

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with Rudolf Bultmann

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infatuated with then-current existentialism.

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Bultmann took existentialism and made it into a filter,

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and he poured everything in the Bible through it,

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and then he went with whatever seemed

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to go through that filter.

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Noting that Americans are in the market

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for self-centeredness and narcissism,

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Robert Schuller

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sifts the Bible through that sieve of self-esteem

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and renders Jesus into Leo Buscaglia.

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Or feminists, fundamentalists

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say that feminism is the hurdle

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that the Bible's got to jump over

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and then anything that gets over that hurdle is okay.

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In other words we take our modern worldview,

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and if it collides with that of the Bible,

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then so much worse for the Bible.

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But I've decided some 20 years into preaching

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that I ought not to take the modern world too seriously,

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particularly as it seems to be in demise,

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and that my toughest job as a preacher

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is not to make the Bible somehow comprehensible

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to modern people.

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But rather through my preaching

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to render modern people

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imaginative and capable enough

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to hear the Bible.

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And that isn't easy because we modern people are parochial.

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And we're Western and we're limited and we're myopic folk

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whose vision doesn't extend much farther

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than just what has personally happened to us yesterday.

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The Bible, therefore, has rough going among us,

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not because we're so sophisticated and critical

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and astute, whereas the Bible is primitive,

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but rather we are so contentedly naive

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and narrow-minded and dishonest and inexperienced

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that Scripture just naturally strikes us as odd.

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On Sunday, you see, we gather

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to play a peculiar kind of language game.

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The first rule of which is to assume,

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just for 20 minutes or so,

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that the Bible knows more than we do.

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And though we only play the game one day a week,

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my prayer is to get you so utterly disoriented

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in my remaining time with you

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that you might leave here today profoundly dis-eased

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with your modern worldview,

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incipiently suspicious that

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the Bible just might know more about

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what's going on out there

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than we do.

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And sometimes I'm pleased to report

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that even here in a university chapel,

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despite our inherent limitations and temptations,

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even here with a bunch of people

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who've scored around 1400 on the SAT,

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we do manage to confuse a few of them on Sunday morning.

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Someone emerges from the service

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and they're muttering something like,

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"Gosh, I'd never heard anything like that before.

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"That's the strangest, where did you get that?

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"That's the strangest thing I've ever heard."

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I always ask them, "Well where are you from?"

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(congregation laughs)

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It's a South Carolina kind of question.

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(congregation laughs)

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Then when they say, "Des Moines."

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I say, "Well gosh, I think the world may be a shock

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"for you in many ways."

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Don't come out of here telling me

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that you've never heard this stuff before.

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It's the Bible for heaven's sake,

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did you think it was going to be easy?

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This thing is odd, it's surprising, it's difficult.

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It is expansive.

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It's the Bible for heaven's sake.

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What do you expect?

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But because you may have taken a course, say,

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in Old Testament in the Duke Department of Religion

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and think you actually know something about the Bible,

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allow me to list for you just two,

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only two of the Bible's most

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endearing characteristics.

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Point one,

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and I hope you will take this down,

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point one:

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the Bible is about God.

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The Bible is about God and so that means that it's large.

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But then so is God.

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And I don't mean the Bible's big

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in the sense that it has 1237 pages.

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No that's 1662 pages.

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Name me another book

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that starts over with page 1 after page 1237.

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Anyway, I mean that the Bible is big, large,

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in that it is expansive.

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It is not easily defined or pigeonholed.

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Or as St. Augustine said,

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"Scripture is ambiguous,

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"it is polyvalent."

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And most of a university education is designed

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to get you to pigeonhole things

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and to reduce things.

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We modern people are inherently,

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almost incurably reductionistic.

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But if you know anything about the Bible,

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you know it is very tough for me,

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coming from the Bible, to stand up here and say

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something out of, say, Matthew like, "God says,"

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Because then somebody will run loose

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and come up and say, "Well how about in Malachi?"

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The Bible is messy.

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And if you've read the Bible,

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you've found this out for yourself.

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As Shakespeare once said,

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"Even the devil can quote Scripture for his own purposes."

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The Bible is big, large,

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whereas most of us are about small.

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That is that I think a lot of us

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come here on Sunday morning

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the way we come anywhere else,

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desperately hoping to make the world easier

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than it actually is,

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and we want to narrow the thing down,

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and we want to get it smaller,

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something that you can measure out in a teaspoon

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or something that you can reduce

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to four spiritual laws or fully express

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on a bumper sticker or figure out over a weekend.

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Sorry, Campus Crusade, the Bible is just, it's big.

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It's big.

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And the Bible is big not simply because it is so true,

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but because its main subject

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is God.

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The Bible is busy rendering God.

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Not the little God of most of my sermons

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and a lot of your theology,

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not that tame, housebroken, generally nice little Goddy,

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who just thinks the world of us and is dying to be with us,

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I mean this large, living, prickly,

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true God of the Bible.

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See we think that our problem with the Bible

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is that it's so old and it's primitive,

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whereas we are sehr modern.

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But our main problem with the Bible

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is that we come to church,

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as to most anywhere else in the modern world,

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to get a better glimpse of ourselves,

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to receive help with ourselves,

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to continue the only trip that modern people care to take,

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namely a trip deeper and deeper into our own egos.

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But, you can test this out all through the Bible,

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but, generally speaking,

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the Bible,

37:43

is almost always and everywhere about God.

37:46

And it's only secondarily, or even derivatively, about us.

37:50

We come to church thinking that our problem is

37:56

how to be better boys and girls in the dorm next week,

38:00

only to be assaulted by the Bible,

38:05

which asserts that our problem is actually

38:09

the God problem.

38:10

And our problem is not just simply

38:13

that we are strangers to ourselves, which we are,

38:14

but that we are estranged from God.

38:19

And that it's only by meeting God

38:23

that we meet our true selves,

38:25

that we figure out what's going on.

38:26

The Bible longs to provoke

38:29

that kind of meeting among us.

38:32

The Bible is about God.

38:35

And you gotta watch my sermons

38:39

because I will play right into your hands,

38:41

and I will tell you, "You know, now here's three things

38:44

"you need to do next week and here's some social attitudes

38:46

"you need to get cleaned up,

38:48

"and here's how you ought to vote."

38:49

No no, it's about God, big.

38:51

Take me for instance.

38:57

Last spring I had to do a sermon for baccalaureate.

39:00

And I was groping around for something to say

39:04

to the class of '92 as they graduated.

39:07

And from conversations with them,

39:11

I found them to be tentative, concerned about the economy,

39:12

about how to get a job, uptight about the future.

39:16

And so I rummaged about in the Bible,

39:20

and I found very down there in the Book of Numbers

39:23

that story about how the Hebrew children,

39:26

having been freed from slavery in Egypt,

39:30

they journey through the wilderness,

39:33

and they get to the threshold of the promised land,

39:35

the land of Canaan, and then Moses sends out

39:38

two groups of scouts to reconnoiter the land

39:42

and figure out what's going on.

39:44

And the scouts come back,

39:47

and there's a minority report and a majority report,

39:49

and the majority says,

39:51

"We'll never take this place.

39:54

"They're like giants over there, they were huge!

39:56

"They got fortified cities.

39:58

"This is awful!"

40:00

And the people let up a huge lament

40:01

and they say to Moses,

40:03

"We had it better in slavery

40:04

"than we got it out here in freedom.

40:06

"You should've never brought us out of Egyptian slavery.

40:07

"At least we had three meals a day.

40:10

"We loved being slaves.

40:11

"You shouldn't have brought us out here.

40:13

"Food for giants."

40:15

And then there's a minority report, and Caleb says,

40:19

"Look, we can take it. God's with us, let's take it."

40:23

(clears throat)

40:28

And, you see, my sermon was going to be

40:30

a kind of Norman Vincent Peale sort of thing

40:32

about power-positive thinking and we've got to go out

40:34

and face the future, boys and girls,

40:36

and you can take it, you can get a job

40:37

even though the economy's lousy, you can do it.

40:39

But the thing that attracted me

40:42

in reading this story again was God,

40:45

because when the group come back with that bad report

40:49

and all the people start screaming

40:53

about how they wish they were still slaves in Egypt,

40:54

God really gets mad.

40:57

And God says to Moses,

41:00

"I wish to heck I'd never brought them out of slavery.

41:01

"That was the dumbest thing I ever did.

41:04

"I am just sick of these people,

41:06

"and I'm gonna kill all of them."

41:08

And Moses says to the people of Israel,

41:11

"Wait a minute, let me talk to him."

41:14

And Moses goes up on the mountain and says,

41:16

"You don't wanna kill them."

41:19

And God says, "Why the heck not,

41:21

"I'm God I can do any darn thing I wanna do."

41:23

And Moses says, "Well right, but look,

41:24

"Here You are in Canaan,

41:26

"and You've got all these Canaanite gods looking at you.

41:28

"Now how You gonna look to them?

41:32

"Go to all that trouble to bring these people outta slavery,

41:34

"get them out here and then kill them?

41:35

"You'll look like a fool!

41:37

"You don't wanna do that!"

41:38

And God says, "All right, but I'm gonna kill those guys

41:41

"that brought back that bad report."

41:45

And he says, "All right, You're God, do what You wanna do."

41:46

(congregation laughs)

41:49

And

41:50

I thought, you've got to love a God like that.

41:53

Bad temper, irrational,

41:56

have to send Moses up there to reason with Him.

41:58

What a God!

42:01

I wanted to preach that sermon.

42:02

I didn't preach that sermon,

42:06

because I figured they're not here for baccalaureate

42:09

to hear about God, they don't wanna be met by this God.

42:11

They wanna think that they're educated and know something.

42:15

They don't wanna be confused by meeting that kind of God.

42:18

Because the Bible is not about anything

42:26

so simple as nuclear physics,

42:29

but it's about God,

42:33

the Bible's going to be big.

42:35

And as James Sanders says,

42:39

"If you read a biblical text and you say to yourself

42:40

"after reading it, 'Gosh, that's good, that's good,

42:43

"that's what I've always thought,' read it again,

42:45

"you probably misunderstood it."

42:49

(congregation laughs)

42:51

It's the Bible, for heaven's sakes.

42:52

It's God.

42:54

Point number two, and I hope you're getting this down,

42:55

point number two: the Bible is not only about God,

42:57

the Bible is about us.

43:01

The Bible is about us.

43:05

And therefore the Bible is messy.

43:10

Of course, so is our life.

43:14

If you've ever read any of the Bible, you will know

43:18

that it's sort of a weird way of handling reality.

43:21

Books don't follow neatly on one another,

43:25

stuff is repeated for emphasis again and again,

43:29

someone will be talking and then that someone is gone

43:33

and somebody else is talking,

43:35

and Jesus will tell a story

43:37

and the story doesn't end very well.

43:39

In fact, the Bible really doesn't seem to be

43:44

into having endings of stories.

43:47

You could sort of write the words "to be continued"

43:51

after nearly every book of the Bible.

43:56

And maybe that's sort of the point.

43:59

That this isn't a story that is neatly tied up in a bow

44:02

that you can be handed in church and then walk out of here.

44:05

No it's to be continued, that we're not exactly sure

44:07

how things are gonna turn out between us and God.

44:11

The story continues, it continues right in your life.

44:14

It goes on.

44:17

It goes on because this God is living.

44:19

You can't contain this God, this God's on the move.

44:21

And I think that's one reason that we just love the Bible.

44:27

We keep coming back to it week after week.

44:31

Because we've got a hunch

44:36

that the Bible is confusing and mysterious and bubbling

44:39

and wonderful enough to be our story.

44:42

We read about David and his extramarital troubles,

44:46

and we maybe think of ourselves at 45.

44:51

We read about the drunkenness

44:56

and the debauchery of the Philistines

44:57

and we think about last night on west campus.

44:59

We hear how God came to lowly little Mary,

45:04

living in a backwater little town,

45:08

and we read that story about how God came to Mary saying,

45:11

"I'm going to use you to change the world,"

45:14

and women in Durham look up and take heart.

45:17

Alas, the modern world has taught most of us

45:23

to step back from the Bible.

45:26

Step back, treat it like a cadaver on a table,

45:29

pick it apart, look at it, examine it,

45:33

raise questions about it, rummage about in hope of finding

45:35

something with which we can agree,

45:38

because the Enlightenment in the West

45:42

has taught all of us to step back from life,

45:43

to step back from everything and examine it.

45:46

And that is deadly.

45:51

My colleague Rick Lischer notes

45:54

that in the black church, in the African American church,

45:58

having missed the Enlightenment,

46:01

the black church generally reads the Bible

46:05

not by stepping back from the text,

46:07

but by stepping into the text,

46:09

by identifying more closely with all those suffering,

46:13

simple, saved people there.

46:18

It is very typical to black church to sing,

46:21

"Were you there,

46:25

"when they crucified my Lord?"

46:28

I think in our listening to the Bible, in our Bible study,

46:33

we ought to courageously step into the Bible.

46:36

And I love the Bible for that.

46:42

It's our story.

46:45

And the Bible dares to be much more realistic

46:48

about our situation

46:51

than we are.

46:55

And you can spend a lifetime listening to it,

46:58

reading it, figuring it out,

47:01

and you never get too old to be surprised by it.

47:04

Take me for instance.

47:11

Just last week I was reading a story

47:13

I've heard a dozen times where Jesus says,

47:15

"The kingdom of God

47:18

"The kingdom of God is just like a mustard seed,"

47:19

you've heard this story before.

47:22

It's just like a tiny little mustard seed,

47:23

the smallest of all seeds,

47:25

it's just a tiny, tiny little seed.

47:26

But if you put that seed in the ground,

47:29

and you water it, and it germinates,

47:31

and that seed will grow, and that seed will grow,

47:33

and it will produce a weed

47:36

about a foot high.

47:40

And that's the church,

47:43

that's kind of the kingdom of God.

47:44

(congregation laughs)

47:46

Well the disciples say,

47:48

"Well, gosh, Jesus, I mean,

47:50

(clears throat)

47:51

"all right, I mean that's relatively impressive, but..."

47:53

(congregation laughs)

47:56

"We don't enjoy being called a weed.

47:58

"It's not that impressive."

48:03

And Jesus says,

48:05

"Oh, well, God, I guess just looks at stuff

48:06

"differently than you do,

48:09

"and God is impressed by things

48:10

"that you're not impressed by,

48:13

"and the kingdom of God is a weed."

48:15

And you just, you love it

48:19

for being surprised in that moment.

48:22

Call it the Holy Spirit working through the text,

48:24

it's the Bible.

48:27

And if you don't wanna be dislodged,

48:30

if you don't wanna be surprised,

48:31

if you never want to stand before the mirror of truth,

48:33

please, please don't read the Bible.

48:35

The rabbis teach that God,

48:40

having been angered by sloppy reporting

48:45

and years of editorial second-guessing,

48:48

to say nothing of what He had suffered

48:52

at the hands of college professors of religion,

48:54

that God hired a human as a secretary

48:56

and began to dictate His story, this time, "Write."

49:00

Because it's well known

49:05

that although God just loves to talk,

49:07

God hates to write anything down.

49:10

And so for 40 days and 40 nights,

49:12

God paced about the floor with this secretary

49:14

and was dictating.

49:16

And finally, the last word having been spoken,

49:20

God sat down.

49:23

And the secretary finished the last word.

49:28

And he stood up in indignation and he threw down his pen,

49:34

and with the outrage of someone who's been plagiarized said,

49:37

"Wait a minute! This is my story!"

49:42

Amen.

49:50

(organ plays)

49:55

♪ O Word of God Incarnate ♪

50:44

♪ O Wisdom from on high ♪

50:50

♪ O Truth unchanged unchanging ♪

50:56

♪ O Light of our dark sky ♪

51:02

♪ We praise You for the radiance ♪

51:07

♪ That from the hallowed page ♪

51:13

♪ A lantern to our footsteps ♪

51:19

♪ Shines on from age to age ♪

51:25

♪ The church from You our Savior ♪

51:33

♪ Received the gift divine ♪

51:38

♪ And still that light is lifted ♪

51:45

♪ O'er all the earth to shine ♪

51:51

♪ It is the sacred vessel ♪

51:57

♪ Where gems of truth are stored ♪

52:03

♪ It is the heaven-drawn picture ♪

52:09

♪ Of Christ the living Word ♪

52:15

♪ The Scripture is a banner ♪

52:23

♪ Before God's host unfurled ♪

52:29

♪ It is a shining beacon ♪

52:35

♪ Above the darkling world ♪

52:42

♪ It is the chart and compass ♪

52:48

♪ That all life's journey come ♪

52:54

♪ Mid mists and rocks and quicksands ♪

53:00

♪ To You oh Christ it comes ♪

53:06

♪ Oh make your church dear Savior ♪

53:14

♪ A lamp of purest gold ♪

53:20

♪ To bear before the nations ♪

53:26

♪ Your true light as of old ♪

53:32

♪ Oh teach your wandering pilgrims ♪

53:38

♪ By this their path to trace ♪

53:44

♪ 'Til clouds and darkness ended ♪

53:50

♪ They see You face to face ♪

53:56

Reader

The Lord be with you.

54:06

Congregation

And also with you.

54:07

Reader

Let us pray.

54:09

(rustling)

54:11

God of law, prophecy, gospel, grace,

54:21

Your word terrifies us.

54:28

As we enter the pages of the Scriptures

54:32

through which Your word speaks,

54:34

we discover ourselves standing with Peter, James, and John

54:37

on a high mountain.

54:41

You confront us with the dazzling light

54:44

of our transfigured Lord, and we fall to our knees,

54:47

for the illumination reveals us as we are.

54:52

You confront our old identity with a new identity,

54:57

a different story.

55:02

This is my Son, the Beloved, with Him I am well pleased.

55:04

Listen to Him.

55:09

Our world is subverted,

55:11

our lives turned upside down by this new identity.

55:14

We hear the gospel of grace,

55:19

and in joyous awe, we are reborn.

55:21

We cannot be the same, Lord God.

55:26

Your voice calls us to faith.

55:29

By Your grace, hear our prayer.

55:33

In faith we pray for the church.

55:39

You have made us to be the body of Christ,

55:42

diverse in parts but one in witness,

55:46

yet Your light reveals a broken witness.

55:49

By Your grace, may the wounds be healed.

55:54

Make us one, Lord, that the one body in all diversity

55:57

may proclaim the joyous gospel of salvation.

56:02

In faith we pray for the world.

56:07

Ah, Lord, the world.

56:11

War, oppression, famine, disease.

56:14

Everywhere there is anguish, everywhere fear and pain.

56:20

We are overwhelmed, but You, Lord, are a great God,

56:26

infinite in grace and compassion.

56:31

Come and heal our broken world.

56:34

Use us, Lord, Your servants.

56:37

Let us never be content merely to voice concern.

56:40

Your Word reveals our words as empty

56:45

unless we too are willing to take up the cross.

56:49

Come and heal our broken world.

56:53

Lord God, You speak to us.

56:57

In our transfigured Lord we have the prophetic message

57:00

more fully confirmed.

57:03

You speak to us.

57:05

Grant that we may be attentive.

57:09

Grant that the blinding light of your presence in fire

57:12

and dazzling brightness may be reflected in the light

57:16

of our lives.

57:20

Move us by Your Holy Spirit to speak Your word.

57:22

Send us forth from this place,

57:27

and make us brightness in the night-struck world.

57:30

For we ask all these things with fear and trembling,

57:35

with joy and praise, through Your beloved Son,

57:39

our Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

57:44

Praise the Lord.

57:50

Laud the name of the Lord.

57:51

Praise it, oh servants of the Lord, alleluia.

57:53

God gives us life. Let us joyfully offer our gifts to God.

57:56

(organ plays)

58:04

♪ Oh praise the Lord ♪

59:11

♪ All ye the name of the Lord ♪

59:18

♪ Praise Him all ye servants of the Lord ♪

59:27

♪ Alleluia ♪

59:40

♪ Alleluia ♪

59:42

♪ Alleluia ♪

59:45

♪ Alleluia ♪

59:48

♪ Alleluia ♪

59:51

♪ Alleluia ♪

59:59

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:00:04

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:00:11

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:00:20

♪ Praise ye the Lord out of Zion ♪

1:00:24

♪ Praiseth ye the Lord ♪

1:00:34

♪ Who brought us Jerusalem ♪

1:00:39

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:00:54

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:00:57

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:00

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:03

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:06

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:14

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:20

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:27

♪ Oh give thanks unto the Lord for He is good ♪

1:01:33

♪ And his mercy endures forever ♪

1:01:42

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:51

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:54

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:56

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:01:59

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:02:02

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:02:07

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:02:14

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:02:19

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:02:26

♪ Oh give thanks unto the Lord ♪

1:02:32

♪ For His mercy endures forever ♪

1:02:41

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:02:49

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:02:54

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:02:57

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:00

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:09

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:15

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:20

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:35

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:38

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:41

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:44

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:47

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:03:55

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:04:01

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:04:08

(organ plays)

1:04:26

♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪

1:05:35

♪ Praise God all creatures here below ♪

1:05:41

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:05:48

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:05:51

♪ Praise God above ye heavenly host ♪

1:05:56

♪ Praise Father Son and Holy Ghost ♪

1:06:03

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:06:09

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:06:13

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:06:16

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:06:19

♪ Alleluia ♪

1:06:23

William

Gracious God, we thank You

1:06:37

for Your gifts to us, for Your word,

1:06:40

which is to us a lamp shining in a dark place.

1:06:44

We thank you for Your church,

1:06:48

which gathers us and confronts us with your Word.

1:06:50

We thank You for brothers and sisters supporting us,

1:06:54

enabling us to live your Word.

1:06:57

For all the blessings of this world we give thanks,

1:07:01

praying as we have been taught to pray,

1:07:05

Our Father, who art in heaven,

1:07:08

hallowed by Thy name.

1:07:11

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,

1:07:13

on earth as it is in heaven.

1:07:17

Give us this day our daily bread,

1:07:19

and forgive us our trespasses,

1:07:22

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

1:07:24

And lead us not into temptation,

1:07:28

but deliver us from evil.

1:07:31

For thine is the kingdom, the power,

1:07:33

and the glory forever, Amen.

1:07:36

(organ plays)

1:07:40

♪ Word of God come down on earth ♪

1:08:26

♪ Living rain from heaven descending ♪

1:08:32

♪ Touch our hearts and bring to birth ♪

1:08:41

♪ Faith and hope and love unending ♪

1:08:47

♪ Word Almighty we revere You ♪

1:08:56

♪ Word made flesh we long to hear You ♪

1:09:02

♪ Word eternal throned on high ♪

1:09:13

♪ Word that brought to life creation ♪

1:09:19

♪ Word that came from heaven to die ♪

1:09:28

♪ Crucified for our salvation ♪

1:09:34

♪ Saving Word the world restoring ♪

1:09:43

♪ Speak to us Your love outpouring ♪

1:09:49

♪ Word that caused blind eyes to see ♪

1:10:00

♪ Speak and heal our mortal blindness ♪

1:10:06

♪ Deaf we are our healer be ♪

1:10:15

♪ Loose our tongues to tell Your kindness ♪

1:10:21

♪ Be our Word in pity spoken ♪

1:10:31

♪ Heal the world by our sin broken ♪

1:10:37

♪ Word that speaks your Father's love ♪

1:10:48

♪ One with God beyond all telling ♪

1:10:55

♪ Word that sends us from above ♪

1:11:04

♪ God the Spirit with us dwelling ♪

1:11:10

♪ Word of truth to all truth lead us ♪

1:11:19

♪ Word of life with one bread feed us ♪

1:11:26

William

May the great

1:11:40

♪ Lord God You now have set your servant free ♪

1:11:49

♪ To go in peace as promised in Your word ♪

1:12:00

♪ My eyes have seen ♪

1:12:10

♪ The Savior Christ the Lord ♪

1:12:16

♪ Prepared by You for all the world to see ♪

1:12:23

♪ To shine on nations trapped in darkness night ♪

1:12:34

♪ The glory of Your people and their light ♪

1:12:44

(organ plays)

1:12:59

William H. Willimon - "A Lamp Shining in a Dark Place" (February 21, 1993)

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1. William H. Willimon - "A Lamp Shining in a Dark Place" (February 21, 1993)

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William H. Willimon - "A Lamp Shining in a Dark Place" (February 21, 1993)

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