Arthur James Armstrong - "How Wide the Wall" (February 9, 1975)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(soulful music) | 0:03 | |
- | Let us pray. | 3:47 |
Oh God, will make us glad with the weak remembrance | 3:50 | |
of the resurrection of thy son our Lord, | 3:57 | |
give us this day such blessing through our worship of thee, | 4:01 | |
that the days to come maybe spent in thy service, | 4:07 | |
through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 4:12 | |
(choir sings harmoniously) | 4:18 | |
To recognize the holiness and grace of almighty God, | 10:18 | |
makes us also aware of our condition as persons. | 10:26 | |
Let us offer unto God our confession, | 10:33 | |
and let us do so, knowing that God's grace precedes, | 10:38 | |
surrounds, and suckers us, let us pray. | 10:45 | |
God be merciful to us for we are sinners, | 10:54 | |
we are tired of concession with self, | 10:58 | |
show us ways of finding you | 11:02 | |
and of finding our brothers and sisters, | 11:05 | |
and of finding ourselves more truly in worship of you | 11:08 | |
and in service to all people. | 11:13 | |
We are sick of the injustice and cruelty | 11:16 | |
of which the whole world groans. | 11:20 | |
We hear the cries of the oppressed | 11:23 | |
and remember the desperate anxiety | 11:26 | |
of those who face this year without employment, | 11:29 | |
victims of the world's greed, | 11:33 | |
give us wisdom and grace | 11:36 | |
to establish justice between people. | 11:39 | |
God be merciful to us for we are sinners. | 11:42 | |
God has forgiven you, | 12:19 | |
God has accepted you, | 12:21 | |
lift up your hearts in gratitude and hope. | 12:25 | |
(soft piano plays) | 12:36 | |
(choir sings harmoniously) | 13:08 | |
- | The first scripture lesson for today | 17:00 |
is from the 13th book of Romans, the first four verses, | 17:03 | |
listen for the word of God. | 17:08 | |
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, | 17:13 | |
for there is no authority except from God. | 17:17 | |
And those that exist have been instituted by God. | 17:22 | |
Therefore he who resists the authorities, | 17:27 | |
resists what God has appointed, | 17:30 | |
and those who resist will incur judgment. | 17:34 | |
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. | 17:39 | |
Would you have no fear of him who he in authority? | 17:46 | |
Then do what is good and you will receive his approval | 17:51 | |
for he is God's servant for your good. | 17:56 | |
But if you do wrong, be afraid, | 18:02 | |
for he does not bear the sword in vain. | 18:06 | |
He is the servant of God | 18:10 | |
to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. | 18:13 | |
The second scripture for today | 18:25 | |
is the 13th chapter of Revelation, the first four verses, | 18:28 | |
listen for the word of God. | 18:34 | |
And I saw a beast rising out of the sea | 18:39 | |
with 10 horns and seven heads, | 18:44 | |
with 10 diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name | 18:46 | |
upon its heads. | 18:50 | |
And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, | 18:52 | |
its feet were like a bears | 18:56 | |
and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. | 18:58 | |
And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne | 19:02 | |
and great authority. | 19:06 | |
One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound | 19:09 | |
but it's mortal wound was healed. | 19:12 | |
And the whole earth followed the beast with wonder. | 19:15 | |
Men worshiped the dragon for he had given his authority | 19:20 | |
to the beast and they worshiped the beast saying, | 19:25 | |
"Who is like the beast? | 19:30 | |
And who can fight against it?" | 19:33 | |
Here ends the readings for today. | 19:37 | |
(soft piano plays) | 19:40 | |
(choir sings harmoniously) | 19:49 | |
- | Let us affirm together central elements of our faith. | 20:23 |
We are not alone, | 20:29 | |
we live in God's world, | 20:31 | |
we believe in God who has created and is creating, | 20:33 | |
who has come in the true man, Jesus | 20:39 | |
to reconcile and make new. | 20:43 | |
Who works in us and others by his spirit. | 20:46 | |
We trust him. | 20:50 | |
He calls us to be his church, to celebrate his presence, | 20:52 | |
to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, | 20:57 | |
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, | 21:03 | |
our judge and our hope, | 21:07 | |
in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. | 21:10 | |
We are not alone, thanks be to God. | 21:17 | |
The Lord be with you. | 21:22 | |
- | And with your spirit. | 21:25 |
- | Let us pray. | 21:26 |
Oh God, father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, | 21:41 | |
hear our cry unto thee and renew our trust | 21:49 | |
that we may live, move and be in the world with confidence. | 21:57 | |
When we face cruelty, pain and suffering, | 22:08 | |
our spirits falter and our hearts grow cold, | 22:14 | |
we are fearful and desperate. | 22:20 | |
Be thou, oh God, very near to us and to others who tremble, | 22:26 | |
who hurt, and who cry. | 22:32 | |
Comfort us and heal us of our afflictions, | 22:38 | |
renew our strength, | 22:46 | |
put the wings of the eagle to our spirits | 22:49 | |
that we may fly to the presence and abide in thy company. | 22:53 | |
And there let our trust be renewed | 23:00 | |
and our hope rekindled. | 23:04 | |
Let us offer prayers for our world, | 23:11 | |
for the hungry, the hurt, and the lost. | 23:16 | |
Oh Lord, be with those in need and help us to meet that need | 23:25 | |
as individuals and as a nation. | 23:32 | |
Let us offer prayers for peace. | 23:41 | |
In a world which continues to pulsate | 23:49 | |
with the ravages of inhuman strife, | 23:51 | |
give to leaders a vision of peace | 23:55 | |
for Vietnam, Cambodia, Peru, the near East, Ethiopia, | 24:00 | |
oh God, we pray for mercy and peace | 24:15 | |
and a reconstruction of life. | 24:20 | |
Let us pray for the poor and those out of work. | 24:29 | |
In a world where money is necessary for life, | 24:37 | |
be thou with those who are without, | 24:41 | |
those who are unemployed, | 24:45 | |
those who lack the necessities of life. | 24:49 | |
Help us to find policies and personal concern | 24:56 | |
deep enough to alleviate this situation. | 25:00 | |
And let us pray for ourselves. | 25:09 | |
Dear God, make us sensitive to the needs of our world, | 25:14 | |
make us good disciples of thy spirit, | 25:21 | |
persons whose faith is renewed | 25:25 | |
and whose mission is the extension of thy gracious love. | 25:28 | |
And this we pray in the spirit, and in the name of Jesus, | 25:36 | |
as we also pray the prayer which he taught us, | 25:44 | |
our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, | 25:49 | |
thy kingdom come, | 25:55 | |
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 25:58 | |
Give us this day our daily bread | 26:03 | |
and forgive us our trespasses | 26:06 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 26:09 | |
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, | 26:14 | |
for thine is the kingdom, and the power, | 26:20 | |
and the glory forever, amen. | 26:24 | |
We welcome to our pulpit today, Bishop James Armstrong | 26:41 | |
of the Dakotas area of the United Methodist Church. | 26:48 | |
It is with pleasure, with unusual anticipation, | 26:56 | |
and prayerful support that we hear. | 27:03 | |
- | First, could I ask a moment's indulgence. | 27:17 |
Harold Bosley, intimately associated with this university, | 27:23 | |
and this chapel across the years, | 27:29 | |
within recent weeks, has died. | 27:33 | |
He first came to my attention when I was a college student | 27:38 | |
and he was the dean of this divinity school. | 27:43 | |
He has inspired me across the years, I love the man, | 27:47 | |
and would appreciate it because of his special relationship | 27:54 | |
to you and all you represent, | 27:58 | |
if we could have a moment of silent, grateful, remembrance, | 28:01 | |
let us pray. | 28:07 | |
Amen. | 28:24 | |
We are moving through the eve | 28:28 | |
of a bicentennial celebration. | 28:33 | |
Already being exposed to, | 28:37 | |
we face a certain onslaught of patriotic sermonizing, | 28:41 | |
editorializing, opinionizing, | 28:50 | |
in the gathering atmosphere of this celebration | 28:56 | |
it is of tremendous importance I think | 28:59 | |
that we go back to those roots of our beginnings | 29:03 | |
and better understand the doctrine | 29:10 | |
of the separation of church and state, | 29:13 | |
which one famed American jurist of another generation | 29:17 | |
called the greatest contribution | 29:21 | |
the United States has offered the world. | 29:24 | |
The word God does not appear in the constitution. | 29:33 | |
John Adams in an impertinent moment said, | 29:38 | |
"Let us not pretend that those who framed our government | 29:42 | |
had had interviews with the gods | 29:45 | |
or were inspired by heaven." | 29:47 | |
It is altogether possible he overstated his case. | 29:52 | |
From the beginning, most of those responsible | 29:56 | |
for framing the constitution | 29:59 | |
were persons of religious sobriety. | 30:01 | |
An element of God consciousness has continued | 30:05 | |
in public servant hood across the generations. | 30:08 | |
Two presidents as different as Franklin Delano Roosevelt | 30:12 | |
and Dwight D. Eisenhower could pray before the nation | 30:15 | |
as they led it in conversation. | 30:19 | |
Justice William O. Douglas, | 30:23 | |
who has sat on the Supreme Court longer than any other, | 30:25 | |
writing an opinion some 25 years ago said, | 30:29 | |
"The institutions of our nation presuppose a divine being." | 30:33 | |
But all of this being true, | 30:40 | |
the fact remains that those who framed the government | 30:43 | |
were sufficiently suspicious to create a doctrine | 30:47 | |
of the separation of church and state, | 30:52 | |
a phrase that does not appear in the constitution. | 30:56 | |
They insisted that a wall, | 31:00 | |
albeit a porous wall of separation | 31:03 | |
existed between the fundamental institutions of society, | 31:09 | |
church and state, | 31:13 | |
be erected permitting interaction between the two | 31:16 | |
without domination of the one by the other. | 31:20 | |
And all of this was based on a very healthy skepticism. | 31:25 | |
On the one hand, they and sensitive spirits across the ages | 31:29 | |
have understood that the state can be and has been | 31:36 | |
an enemy of the free human spirit. | 31:41 | |
Now there's confusion, contradiction, ambivalence | 31:44 | |
in the Bible at this point, | 31:48 | |
we found it in the reading of scripture | 31:51 | |
just a few moments ago. | 31:52 | |
Paul on the one hand insisted that all authority | 31:54 | |
comes from God | 31:57 | |
and therefore it is the responsibility of the citizen | 31:58 | |
to yield to that authority come what may. | 32:01 | |
On the other hand, John of Patmos | 32:05 | |
writing from his prison isolation | 32:07 | |
insisted that such authority, that such power, | 32:10 | |
is identified with the beast | 32:13 | |
and later he called a government, a particular government, | 32:15 | |
his Roman government, the mother of harlots. | 32:19 | |
Each overstated the case. | 32:24 | |
Paul later appeared to modify his position, | 32:27 | |
when arrested for civil disobedience, | 32:30 | |
he rationalized his activities | 32:33 | |
by appealing to the highest magistrate of his small land | 32:35 | |
saying, "I have not been disobedient | 32:40 | |
to the heavenly vision." | 32:43 | |
Nor was the state as bestial as John suggested. | 32:46 | |
It was an add mixture as each of us | 32:51 | |
is an add mixture of good and evil. | 32:53 | |
Carl Becker, the famed historian, | 32:58 | |
helping us better understand our own traditions, | 33:00 | |
reminded us that American people traditionally | 33:04 | |
have not regarded the state as an enemy, exactly. | 33:07 | |
Perhaps it's kind of a friendly enemy, | 33:13 | |
made up of public servants chosen by us from our ranks | 33:16 | |
to perform our tasks for us. | 33:21 | |
But we built certain safeguards into the system | 33:25 | |
so that we limit those serving us to terms of office, | 33:28 | |
and he said, "We can always turn the Rascals out." | 33:31 | |
We sometimes forget where we came from. | 33:36 | |
This nation of ours was born | 33:40 | |
in the cradle of a bloody revolution, | 33:43 | |
a rebellion against the tyranny of an oppressive governor. | 33:47 | |
George III was the villain. | 33:53 | |
Most of us have read and some remembered the early lines | 33:56 | |
of the declaration of independence. | 34:00 | |
Few of us have pursued that declaration | 34:04 | |
through its bill of particulars. | 34:07 | |
To read the charges leveled against the King of England. | 34:10 | |
This one who we said had plundered our seas, | 34:13 | |
ravaged our coastline, burned our cities, | 34:18 | |
and destroyed the lives of our people. | 34:21 | |
The skepticism that seemed to come bubbling to the surface | 34:26 | |
during the U-2 incident in the Bay of Pigs | 34:29 | |
and the Bay of Tonkin Resolution and Watergate, | 34:31 | |
is as old as the Republic is old. | 34:35 | |
For we have known as others before us that power corrupts, | 34:39 | |
that absolute power corrupts absolutely, | 34:45 | |
and that when power is concentrated in few hands, | 34:49 | |
it presents temptations difficult to withstand. | 34:54 | |
The 20th century has underscored and italicized that fact. | 35:01 | |
One afternoon, just a few months ago, | 35:07 | |
my wife and I walked through Dachau, | 35:10 | |
the heinous concentration camp of Nazi Germany. | 35:15 | |
Went through the museum. | 35:20 | |
Saw all those wall-sized, | 35:22 | |
black and white photographic panels | 35:24 | |
depicting the indescribable inhumanity of that era | 35:29 | |
of our common life. | 35:37 | |
The piles of the dead were there. | 35:39 | |
We saw the places where prisoners had been hung | 35:42 | |
or hang themselves, the places where they had been shot. | 35:45 | |
We saw the shower stalls erected so that poison gas fumes | 35:49 | |
could be poured upon the waiting victims. | 35:54 | |
We saw the crematorium, the ovens, | 35:58 | |
where persons living and dead | 36:01 | |
were placed in a churning inferno, | 36:04 | |
we saw the smoke stacks were wisps of yellow smoke, | 36:07 | |
symbolizing all that remained of human bones and flesh | 36:12 | |
rafted out across a city of 1 million people. | 36:16 | |
It was government, a demonic state that did that. | 36:21 | |
In this century, we have seen the most remarkable | 36:28 | |
geo-political phenomena of human history. | 36:32 | |
In half a century, communism has embraced half a globe. | 36:38 | |
For too long this land burrowed its head in the sand | 36:45 | |
and refused to acknowledge what was happening | 36:48 | |
in the People's Republic of China. | 36:50 | |
There has been massive land reform. | 36:55 | |
Jobs, education have been provided, | 36:59 | |
nearly 1 billion people plagued by seasonal ravages | 37:03 | |
of starvation year after year have been pulled back | 37:07 | |
from the brink of that ultimate physical disaster, | 37:12 | |
and yet who among us would suggest that individual freedom | 37:17 | |
as we think of individual freedom | 37:21 | |
exists in the People's Republic? | 37:23 | |
The Soviet Union was able to rest Mother Russia | 37:27 | |
from the tyranny of the czars | 37:31 | |
but there followed blood purges, slave labor camps, | 37:33 | |
the rape of Eastern Europe, | 37:37 | |
the oppression or suppression of dissent, | 37:40 | |
the persecution of Soviet Jews. | 37:45 | |
Nor do we in this nation, | 37:49 | |
with the memory of the incineration of 100,000 persons | 37:54 | |
in Hiroshima and Indochina and Watergate, | 37:59 | |
have any right to cluck in self-righteousness. | 38:06 | |
A few more than 100 years ago it was a south Carolinian | 38:12 | |
who coined the phrase manifest destiny, | 38:15 | |
suggesting that the United States of America | 38:19 | |
was to be a God appointed political Messiah | 38:22 | |
for the remainder of the world. | 38:26 | |
The Monroe doctrine simply claim this hemisphere | 38:31 | |
is our very special province. | 38:34 | |
Following World War II, we were convinced | 38:38 | |
that we had every right to police the world | 38:41 | |
to impose our peculiar values on the remainder of the world, | 38:44 | |
to evaluate every other system of thought | 38:49 | |
and governmental structure on the basis of our commitments, | 38:52 | |
and we were very religious about it all. | 38:57 | |
And there emerged as vividly as at any time past, | 39:01 | |
a form of civil religion that still reigns among us. | 39:07 | |
It was assumed and is by many still assumed | 39:15 | |
that a plethora of congressional prayer breakfasts | 39:19 | |
and governors' prayer breakfasts | 39:23 | |
and pious petitions addressed to the almighty | 39:25 | |
from distant spaceships proved our holiness. | 39:28 | |
It was assumed that worship services in the White House | 39:36 | |
proved our goodness. | 39:39 | |
It was felt that hands placed upon Bibles | 39:44 | |
when oaths of office were taken, | 39:46 | |
and sacred words inscribed on coinage, | 39:48 | |
and pious phrases inserted in state oaths of allegiance, | 39:52 | |
one nation under God proved our holiness. | 39:58 | |
And yet all the while, minorities struggle for their rights, | 40:05 | |
pockets of poverty haunt the land, | 40:15 | |
welfare policies and programs humiliate and pauperize | 40:21 | |
the unfortunate in our midst. | 40:29 | |
Decisions made on Wall Street and in Washington | 40:32 | |
further separate the haves from the have-nots | 40:37 | |
as the unprincipled and unethical receive favors | 40:40 | |
as the victims are more victimized. | 40:45 | |
National priorities are awry, as we are told | 40:50 | |
we must take in our belts and develop new lifestyles | 40:56 | |
but at the same time must provide this year | 40:59 | |
another $300 million for continuing insanity in Indochina. | 41:02 | |
And we the taxpayers without any voice in the matter, | 41:09 | |
are told we must continue to arm virtually every side | 41:13 | |
in every conflict around the world. | 41:16 | |
George Orwell's 1984, with its vision of a big brother | 41:20 | |
looking down over our shoulders, | 41:29 | |
with electronic surveillance and an omnicompetent government | 41:34 | |
is present grim possibility. | 41:41 | |
How grateful we can be that those who came before us | 41:48 | |
said the Congress of the United States | 41:54 | |
shall not establish any religion | 41:56 | |
or prohibit the free exercise thereof, | 41:59 | |
that we shall have freedom of speech and press and assembly, | 42:03 | |
there shall be governmental responsibility and redress. | 42:06 | |
For in this insistence upon checks and balances | 42:11 | |
and the free expression of the human spirit, | 42:15 | |
we at least have certain implicit guarantees | 42:18 | |
against tyranny. | 42:23 | |
But you see the skepticism wasn't reserved | 42:26 | |
to government alone. | 42:28 | |
It was understood by them and sensitive spirits before | 42:31 | |
and since that the church as well can be, has been | 42:34 | |
an enemy of the free human spirit. | 42:38 | |
Medieval popes with their armies and intrigues | 42:43 | |
and criminal alliances, | 42:51 | |
with their holy wars and unholy inquisitions | 42:54 | |
sought to impose their interpretation of the truth | 42:59 | |
upon all surrounding person and territory. | 43:03 | |
The reformers were little, if any better some of them. | 43:07 | |
Martin Luther's statements against the Jews | 43:12 | |
fed the flames of antisemitism in Hitler's third right. | 43:15 | |
He once said, "My conscience is bound to the word of God." | 43:20 | |
But his rebellion against authority was limited | 43:24 | |
almost exclusively to the religious sphere, | 43:27 | |
so that during the Peasants' Revolt, | 43:32 | |
he turned his back up on the peasants and said, | 43:34 | |
"The princes are God, the people are Satan. | 43:39 | |
I would rather side with the princes if wrong | 43:45 | |
than the people if right." | 43:48 | |
John Calvin, iron-fisted dictator of Geneva, | 43:53 | |
burned heretical ideas in the person of Servetus | 43:59 | |
at the stake, | 44:03 | |
and so that you will know of my complete objectivity, | 44:06 | |
John Wesley was a Tory through and through | 44:08 | |
who took the dimmest possible view | 44:15 | |
of the American revolution. | 44:20 | |
Our forefathers came to these shores | 44:24 | |
seeking religious liberty | 44:27 | |
and then soon forgot why they come. | 44:28 | |
So Boston had its laws against the Quakers | 44:31 | |
and Salem had its witch hunts, | 44:34 | |
Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, William Penn, | 44:36 | |
were unusual because they were exceptions. | 44:40 | |
They believe that the tolerance, the freedom, | 44:42 | |
the individual liberty they claimed for themselves | 44:45 | |
should be extended to each and all alike. | 44:48 | |
It would be grand if we could say that | 44:58 | |
following the expression of the declaration of independence | 45:01 | |
and the guarantee of the bill of rights, | 45:04 | |
the church had not been an oppressive presence | 45:08 | |
in this country, that cannot be said. | 45:12 | |
For 175 years or so, people like me and most of you | 45:18 | |
rode very high in the saddle. | 45:26 | |
Ours was a nation | 45:30 | |
dominated by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, | 45:31 | |
the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, the Ku Klux Klan, | 45:38 | |
and many other movements and moods reflecting that | 45:41 | |
which they represented believed that blacks and Catholics | 45:44 | |
and foreigners should be kept in their respective places. | 45:50 | |
From the beginning, there was a close tie | 45:58 | |
between evangelical Protestantism and public education, | 46:00 | |
so that the celebrations and the festivals | 46:06 | |
of the religious community we know best | 46:09 | |
became the common festivals and celebrations | 46:12 | |
of public education. | 46:15 | |
We saw no inconsistencies and that certainly no wrong | 46:18 | |
because we were not Jewish, we were not Hindu, | 46:22 | |
we were not Muslim, we were not non-believers. | 46:24 | |
And then the Supreme Court, | 46:29 | |
offered its judgements with reference | 46:32 | |
to particular kinds of prayers in the public schools | 46:34 | |
and there arose and immediate den and hue and cry, | 46:38 | |
because many of us did not fully understand | 46:44 | |
that freedom of religion means exactly that, | 46:47 | |
and that one group does not have a right to impose | 46:52 | |
its judgements upon all others. | 46:56 | |
The faith statements and the festivals | 47:01 | |
of every religious community in this country | 47:03 | |
are not only tolerated but are encouraged by law. | 47:08 | |
But, that same law insists that the faith statements | 47:14 | |
and festivals of any particular religious group | 47:19 | |
dare not be considered the normative standard | 47:24 | |
for all others, and that's what the separation is all about. | 47:28 | |
Some of you here can remember the poisonous venom | 47:38 | |
that was spewed into the national psyche | 47:45 | |
during the presidential election of 1928. | 47:49 | |
It was not until 1960 that a Roman Catholic | 47:54 | |
could be elected president of the United States. | 47:58 | |
During the early years of this century, | 48:04 | |
a band of militant Protestants | 48:07 | |
in the name of an enlightened approach to personal behavior | 48:10 | |
and public responsibility, | 48:16 | |
made possible the passage of the 18th Amendment | 48:19 | |
and Prohibition. | 48:22 | |
Prohibition failed because one group cannot impose | 48:25 | |
its moral standards upon the whole. | 48:29 | |
Now the abortion debate rages. | 48:33 | |
Will the metaphysical, philosophical view | 48:39 | |
of the personal life of the unborn fetus | 48:45 | |
held by a particular religious community | 48:50 | |
be imposed upon the rest of the nation as a whole? | 48:55 | |
An executive director of the US Catholic has said, | 49:01 | |
"No religious group, no matter how powerful, | 49:05 | |
no matter how numerous, has a right to apply | 49:10 | |
its political muscle to all other persons in the land." | 49:12 | |
It is only right and natural | 49:21 | |
that persons have high ethical commitment and ideal | 49:24 | |
seek to persuade their surroundings | 49:29 | |
to adopt their commitments and ideals, | 49:32 | |
we would be less than committed | 49:35 | |
if we did not seek to do that. | 49:37 | |
But this kind of advocacy must | 49:41 | |
within the framework of responsibility | 49:44 | |
ever be faithful to the limitations | 49:46 | |
imposed by a bill of rights on the one hand | 49:48 | |
and the spirit of the faith we proclaim on the other. | 49:52 | |
What then should our stance be | 49:57 | |
in a nation honored for the separation of church and state? | 50:02 | |
Well, what is the biblical standard? | 50:10 | |
Must there be an absolute divorce? | 50:14 | |
There has not been, there cannot be, | 50:17 | |
the wall is a porous wall | 50:19 | |
permitting interaction between the two. | 50:22 | |
Joseph was the prime minister of Egypt. | 50:26 | |
Moses stood before the mightiest monarch of his day | 50:31 | |
and cried, "You let my people go." | 50:35 | |
And when the cry fell on deaf ear, | 50:39 | |
he went back to those people in bondage | 50:41 | |
and he organized them and he led them in their slave revolt. | 50:44 | |
Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, | 50:49 | |
cried out against war crimes and atrocities | 50:55 | |
against carrying vanquished enemies off into slavery, | 50:58 | |
against selling the poor for a pair of shoes, | 51:03 | |
against the corruption and the opulent | 51:07 | |
lifestyle of the nouveau riche, | 51:09 | |
against courts that were unrighteous | 51:13 | |
and princes that were pampered. | 51:16 | |
They on some occasions, | 51:19 | |
some of them shared in decisions of state craft, | 51:21 | |
but they always stood in the name of God | 51:24 | |
where they stood to pronounce their judgments upon policies | 51:27 | |
and patterns of behavior that seemed to violate | 51:31 | |
his absolute holiness. | 51:35 | |
From the beginning, | 51:39 | |
clergy and those of from religious conscience in this land | 51:40 | |
have participated in the evolution of the Republic. | 51:44 | |
They were present in the framing of the Mayflower Compact, | 51:48 | |
preachers joined pamphleteers and patriots | 51:52 | |
in preparing the soil of the colonies for revolution. | 51:55 | |
John Witherspoon, Presbyterian minister, | 52:00 | |
mentor of James Madison | 52:02 | |
signed the declaration of independence. | 52:04 | |
Bishop Matthew Simpson was friend, confidant, | 52:08 | |
advisor of and to president Abraham Lincoln. | 52:12 | |
They have been there from the beginning as reformers, | 52:17 | |
abolitionists, voices for temperance, prophets of a new day, | 52:21 | |
seeking to reflect the will of God | 52:27 | |
as they understood that will in the midst of distress | 52:30 | |
and the crisis of a real world. | 52:35 | |
It was in 1970 that 16 members of the clergy | 52:44 | |
ran for national office of one sort or another, | 52:49 | |
that was a new wrinkle. | 52:55 | |
Andrew Young, uniquely gifted United Church of Christ | 52:58 | |
clergyman from Atlanta was defeated that year, | 53:04 | |
was elected two years later. | 53:09 | |
Father Robert J. Drinan, Jesuit priest, | 53:12 | |
former Dean of the Boston College Law School | 53:17 | |
was elected that year. | 53:20 | |
You saw him serving on the judiciary committee | 53:22 | |
as youthful followers carried big banners | 53:25 | |
on the night of his victory that read, | 53:27 | |
"Our father who art in Congress." | 53:30 | |
In 1972, Bill Hudnut, Presbyterian friend | 53:36 | |
was elected Republican Congressman | 53:40 | |
from the 11th district of Indiana, | 53:43 | |
he was defeated in 1974. | 53:47 | |
But much more important | 53:51 | |
than this kind of personal involvement | 53:52 | |
in the body politic itself, is the commitment of all of us, | 53:55 | |
as Christian citizens to improve the quality of life | 54:02 | |
of our time in our land. | 54:08 | |
I've been involved in this sort of thing for a long time. | 54:15 | |
Remember when I was a very, very young preacher in Florida, | 54:19 | |
George Smathers and Claude Pepper | 54:25 | |
were contesting one another | 54:27 | |
for the senatorial nomination of their party, | 54:28 | |
and Congressman Smathers was saying one thing about race | 54:33 | |
in the cosmopolitan county of Dade on the Gold Coast | 54:37 | |
and quite another thing in Lake County and Orange County | 54:41 | |
in Central and Northern Florida. | 54:44 | |
I wrote him a stinging letter and got a response saying, | 54:47 | |
"I am surprised that you would write such a letter | 54:51 | |
on the letterhead of your church." | 54:54 | |
In 1954, when the Supreme Court handed down | 54:58 | |
its desegregation decision, | 55:02 | |
the combined civic clubs of Jacksonville, Florida | 55:06 | |
wanted three points of view presented, | 55:08 | |
the extreme point of view, segregation, | 55:11 | |
the moderate point of view, | 55:14 | |
and the pro-Supreme Court point of view. | 55:16 | |
They found a former gubernatorial candidate | 55:19 | |
who was more than willing to present | 55:22 | |
the extreme point of view, | 55:23 | |
and the state attorney general was available | 55:26 | |
to present the moderate point of view, | 55:28 | |
but they couldn't find anyone until they got | 55:31 | |
to the very bottom of the barrel | 55:33 | |
and found an associate pastor | 55:35 | |
on the staff of a downtown church | 55:37 | |
to present a pro-Supreme Court point of view, | 55:39 | |
and oh, the mail that followed. | 55:43 | |
"You ain't fit to be no Methodist preacher, | 55:47 | |
run this niger lover out, out quick." | 55:49 | |
One of the gentle missive suggested. | 55:53 | |
In Indiana, where I was privileged to serve | 55:57 | |
for more than 10 years, I was on the mayor's committee | 56:01 | |
on human rights, on housing, | 56:04 | |
on the community relations service council, | 56:07 | |
on the platform committee for the state of Indiana | 56:10 | |
of my party, | 56:13 | |
was involved in reform politics at the municipal level | 56:15 | |
that led eventually to the election of Richard Lugar | 56:18 | |
as mayor, who was one of the keynoters | 56:21 | |
of the 1972 Republican National Convention. | 56:24 | |
And since going to the Dakotas I've continued an involvement | 56:28 | |
in public life that led just a few months ago | 56:32 | |
to partisan efforts on behalf of our senior senator | 56:36 | |
in his reelection campaign. | 56:40 | |
And I addressed the state convention, | 56:43 | |
and was seen on certain TV slots | 56:47 | |
in the company of the senator and his wife here and there, | 56:50 | |
the largest church in the area | 56:53 | |
had a group of indignant members | 56:55 | |
who felt that I was completely out of line | 56:58 | |
and they met one evening while I was in Europe | 57:00 | |
attending a peace conference, | 57:03 | |
and 125 of them signed a petition | 57:05 | |
suggesting that I returned to what they called | 57:08 | |
the normal behavior of a churchman | 57:10 | |
and stop my activities in what they called | 57:14 | |
political and other secular affairs. | 57:16 | |
And I came back and attempted to address the situation | 57:22 | |
by going to the church and meeting with them | 57:26 | |
and talking with them. | 57:28 | |
By issuing a statement suggesting that a clergyman | 57:30 | |
does not surrender his citizenship | 57:33 | |
at the moment of his ordination, | 57:35 | |
by reminding them and others | 57:38 | |
that the United Methodist Church is a free church, | 57:40 | |
the United States of America is a free land, | 57:43 | |
and that I would continue as I prayed they would continue | 57:46 | |
to exercise that freedom as prayerfully and responsibly | 57:50 | |
as I knew how. | 57:55 | |
There must be interaction between our communities | 57:58 | |
and disciplines if the land as a whole is to prosper. | 58:02 | |
But how grateful we can be that a wall has been thrust down | 58:08 | |
between the two institutions, so that one cannot dominate, | 58:14 | |
cannot silence the other. | 58:19 | |
We're on the eve of a bicentennial celebration. | 58:24 | |
We must understand that both church and state | 58:28 | |
can be tyrannical. | 58:31 | |
We must forswear any approach to political utopianism | 58:34 | |
on the one hand or ecclesiastical triumphalism on the other, | 58:38 | |
but rather rejoice in the fact that we are God's colony | 58:44 | |
in man's world, | 58:47 | |
that as free spirits with consciences | 58:49 | |
bound to the word of God | 58:52 | |
we can try to address both church and state | 58:53 | |
in the name of humanity. | 58:56 | |
That righteousness and justice might prevail, | 58:59 | |
and that this land and all of the lands of the earth | 59:04 | |
might be fairer, brighter places, | 59:08 | |
as God's will is done in our midst, | 59:11 | |
even as it is in realms beyond. | 59:15 | |
- | Let us pray. | 59:23 |
God help us to be Christian citizens, | 59:31 | |
patriotic without apology, | 59:41 | |
but loyal to thy living word above all other allegiances | 59:46 | |
of life. | 59:50 | |
These things we pray in the name of Christ, | 59:54 | |
who died for the least among us, amen. | 1:00:00 | |
(soft piano plays) | 1:00:08 | |
(choir sings harmoniously) | 1:00:50 | |
- | Oh God, most merciful and gracious, | 1:08:57 |
of whose bounty we have all received, | 1:09:01 | |
accept this offering of thy people. | 1:09:04 | |
Remember in thy love those we've brought it | 1:09:08 | |
and those for whom it is given. | 1:09:12 | |
And so follow it with high blessing | 1:09:16 | |
that it may promote peace and goodwill among men, | 1:09:20 | |
and advance the kingdom of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, | 1:09:24 | |
amen. | 1:09:30 | |
(soft piano plays) | 1:09:32 | |
(choir sings harmoniously) | 1:09:57 | |
Dismiss us now oh Lord, with thy blessing | 1:13:11 | |
and accompany us ever with thy grace, | 1:13:16 | |
that we may henceforth live in peace, | 1:13:20 | |
love and holiness through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. | 1:13:24 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:13:33 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:13:38 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:13:43 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:13:57 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:14:06 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:14:18 | |
(bell chimes) | 1:14:32 | |
(soft piano plays) | 1:14:46 |
Item Info
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