Clyde L. Manschreck - Maundy Thursday Service (April 14, 1960)

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	(intro music)	0:03
-	I am reading for our scripture this evening,	0:07
	a portion from the 22nd chapter, of Luke.	0:10
	"And he took a loaf of bread and thank God	0:16
	and broke it in pieces and gave it to them saying,	0:20
	"This is my body,	0:23
	yet look,	0:26
	the hand of the man who is betraying me	0:27
	is beside me on the table.	0:29
	For the son of man is going his way	0:32
	as it has been decreed,	0:35
	but alas for the man	0:37
	by whom he is betrayed."	0:39
	And they began to discuss with one another,	0:43
	which of them it was who is going to do this.	0:45
	Finally, Jesus said,	0:50
	"Oh, Simon, Simon,	0:52
	Satan has obtained permission to sift all of you like wheat.	0:55
	But I have prayed,	0:59
	that your faith may not fail.	1:02
	And afterward you yourself must turn	1:05
	and strengthen your brothers."	1:07
	Peter said to him,	1:10
	"Master, I am ready to go to prison and to death with you."	1:13
	But he said,	1:17
	"I tell you Peter,	1:19
	the cock will not crow today	1:21
	before you deny three times that you knew me."	1:23
	And he said to them,	1:28
	"When I sent you out without any purse or bag or shoes,	1:31
	was there anything you needed?"	1:35
	And they said,	1:37
	"No, nothing."	1:38
	Following is a description of Jesus	1:42
	in the garden of Gethsemane.	1:44
	And then they arrested him and led him away and took him	1:48
	to the house of the high priest.	1:51
	And Peter followed at a distance	1:54
	and they kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard	1:56
	and set about it.	1:58
	And Peter sat down among them.	2:00
	A maid saw him sitting by the fire	2:03
	and looked at him and said,	2:05
	"This man was with him too."	2:07
	But he denied it and said,	2:10
	"I do not know him."	2:12
	Shortly after, a man saw him and said,	2:14
	"You are one of them too."	2:17
	But Peter said,	2:20
	"I am not."	2:21
	About an hour later, another man insisted,	2:24
	"This man was certainly with him too,	2:27
	for he is a Galilean."	2:29
	But Peter said,	2:32
	"I do not know what you mean."	2:34
	And immediately just as he spoke, a cock crowed	2:37
	and the Lord turned and looked at Peter	2:41
	and Peter remembered the words the Lord had said to him,	2:44
	"Before the cock crows today,	2:48
	you will disown me three times."	2:51
	And he went outside	2:55
	and wept, bitterly.	2:57
	In this passage, which I have just read,	3:06
	we have the story of Peter's denial of Christ.	3:10
	And we could spend the next few minutes	3:16
	delving into the meaning	3:17
	of that famous story	3:19
	for it tells us a great deal about the many facets	3:22
	of Peter's character.	3:26
	But during this holy week,	3:29
	one thing in particular impresses me about Peter.	3:31
	And I should like to highlight that one thing.	3:36
	Perhaps it can be best emphasized	3:41
	by going completely outside the biblical narrative.	3:43
	So let your thoughts go back in American history,	3:49
	268 years to the year 1692.	3:53
	In 1692 the Pilgrims had been in this country	4:01
	in New England, 72 years.	4:06
	They had settled Plymouth, Boston, Salem,	4:10
	Andover, Topsfield and the surrounding villages.	4:12
	They were for the most part, quite ordinary people,	4:16
	merchants, farmers, housewives.	4:19
	The Indian uprising which we now know as King Philip's war	4:22
	had recently ended.	4:26
	And the villagers could look forward to peace.	4:28
	But instead of peace,	4:32
	the year 1692 brought horror.	4:34
	During the winter of 1691 and 92,	4:39
	a group of girls and women had been meeting in the parsonage	4:43
	every night, in the parsonage of the Reverend Samuel Parris	4:48
	in Salem village.	4:52
	The winters in New England then as now	4:54
	were long and dryly.	4:56
	And the parsonage meetings provided some excitement.	4:59
	Especially so because the Reverend Parris	5:03
	had recently come from the West Indies	5:07
	and he had brought with him two servants.	5:09
	A man by the name of John Indian	5:13
	and a woman named Tituba.	5:15
	Night after night,	5:19
	these two told strange stories about voodoo,	5:21
	wild animals flying, water turning into blood	5:26
	ghostly shapes appearing in the dark.	5:30
	And soon the meetings were characterized	5:33
	by hysterical actions.	5:35
	Some of the girls at the meeting,	5:41
	crawled under the tables and the chairs	5:43
	made weird sounds and experienced nightmares.	5:45
	Hysteria in that day was associated with evil spirits.	5:50
	And so experts, experts in the gospel	5:55
	we're called in	5:59
	from the surrounding villages	6:01
	to take a look at the afflicted girls.	6:03
	The verdict, witchcraft.	6:07
	Almost overnight,	6:11
	the bewitched children became celebrities.	6:13
	They were talked about from the pulpits,	6:16
	gossiped about in the homes	6:18
	written about in the newsletters.	6:20
	They rised and they convulsed,	6:22
	and otherwise demonstrated	6:24
	whenever experts came to observe.	6:26
	And the great question was, who bewitched them?	6:29
	On February the 29th, 1692	6:33
	in the midst of a storm of thunder,	6:37
	lightning and high wind,	6:39
	three women, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba	6:41
	were arrested on the deadly charge	6:45
	of bewitching the children.	6:47
	The next day, magistrates,	6:50
	Hawthorne and Corwin,	6:52
	arrived and conducted hearings.	6:54
	All of Salem's swarmed into the courtyard.	6:57
	The children were there in the courthouse,	7:01
	moaning and groaning, riding and screaming.	7:03
	During the trial,	7:06
	pinch marks appeared on their arms and legs	7:07
	put there presumably by the accused witches on trial.	7:10
	One of the accused women, turned state's evidence	7:15
	and filled the courtroom	7:18
	with all sorts of tales of black dogs,	7:19
	red cats, yellow birds and horned toads.	7:22
	She had caused warts to appear.	7:26
	Once she had entered a house	7:29
	and held a man helpless on the floor	7:31
	in the shape of a whoopee all night long.	7:33
	As soon as the confessed woman,	7:37
	as soon as the accused woman,	7:39
	confessed that she was a witch,	7:41
	the black spirits, suddenly	7:43
	and entirely stopped tormenting the children.	7:46
	Giles Corey went home that evening	7:51
	a firm believer in witches	7:54
	and he excitedly discuss the events with his wife, Martha.	7:56
	She told him in reply	8:01
	that she thought the whole thing was humbug	8:02
	that the magistrates must be as blind as bats.	8:04
	Two weeks later, on March the 19th,	8:07
	Martha Corey was arrested, charged and convicted.	8:11
	So far no one had been hanged,	8:16
	but excitement began to mount.	8:18
	And on June the 10th,	8:20
	a woman of ill repute who operated a roadhouse	8:21
	solo rum, played shuffleboard	8:24
	and wore a costume consisting of a black cap,	8:27
	black hat and red bodice was arrested.	8:30
	In her defense,	8:35
	she said that she had never seen the devil	8:36
	but obviously, she lied.	8:38
	People said that they had collected money on from her	8:41
	on several occasions,	8:44
	only on turning away from her	8:45
	to find that the money had disappeared.	8:48
	Bridget Bishop, was hanged.	8:51
	That execution opened the flood gates of mania.	8:55
	On July 19th, five more women were hanged.	8:58
	On August 19, five more.	9:02
	On September 22, 8 more victims were hanged	9:04
	making a total of 19,	9:07
	plus, two dogs that were tried and convicted.	9:09
	The 20th victim was Giles Corey.	9:15
	The same one who had quarreled earlier with his wife.	9:19
	At his wife's trial, he had testified,	9:23
	that Martha sometimes muttered things to herself	9:26
	and he did not always understand, what she said.	9:30
	Two sons-in-law bore witness against Martha,	9:36
	but after she was convicted,	9:40
	Giles Corey began to have doubts.	9:42
	He spoke out against this mania	9:45
	only to find himself accused	9:48
	because association with a convicted witch	9:50
	was almost a sure sign of guilt.	9:55
	He refused to plead his case in court	10:00
	because he said he would be convicted by ghosts anyway.	10:04
	So according to an old English law,	10:07
	they piled rocks on him	10:09
	until he should either plead guilty or not guilty	10:12
	or be crushed to death.	10:16
	He died, his chest caved in,	10:18
	two days before his wife, Martha was hanged.	10:22
	George Burroughs, Salem villages second minister	10:27
	was the most celebrated victim.	10:32
	He was accused, even though he was a minister.	10:34
	People testified that they had seen him do	10:38
	strange feats of strength.	10:40
	He could lift a heavy gun	10:42
	by putting his fingers in the barrel.	10:44
	He had married three times	10:46
	and several people testified	10:49
	that the ghost of his former wives, appeared to them	10:51
	declaring that he had murdered them.	10:53
	His greatest crime seems to have been	10:56
	that he believed that he did not believe in witchcraft.	10:58
	Much sympathy was aroused by his hanging	11:02
	but Cotton Mather,	11:06
	a famous minister of the gospel in that day	11:09
	was present at the execution.	11:12
	Riding back and forth on horseback,	11:15
	addressing the crowd, haranguing them	11:18
	and assuring them that Burroughs was an imposter,	11:20
	a certain witch.	11:24
	On the day that Burroughs died,	11:26
	four others were hanged along with him.	11:28
	Well, reaction set in.	11:33
	Some doubted the wisdom of the proceedings	11:35
	after all, why should a person be condemned	11:37
	simply because somebody pigs	11:39
	suddenly went to cirque,	11:40
	our fruit trees did not bear as usual	11:41
	or a child became a unexpectedly feverish.	11:43
	Or because someone said,	11:47
	he had talked with a ghost.	11:48
	Governor, Sir William Phips who had arrived in mid May,	11:51
	had been carried away by the excitement	11:55
	and out of respect for the Mathers,	11:57
	he had authorized the legal prosecutions.	12:00
	But now he had some second doubts.	12:03
	He turned to the clergy of Boston for advice.	12:06
	The clergy at that time was dominated by the Mather family.	12:11
	Richard Mather, an English nonconformist	12:15
	had immigrated to America in 1636.	12:17
	He settled at Dorchester.	12:21
	where in 1639, his son Increase Mather was born.	12:22
	Increase became a distinguished scholar, a theologian	12:27
	and a most influential preacher in Boston.	12:30
	In 1685, he was named president of Harvard college.	12:34
	His son Cotton Mather,	12:40
	was born in Boston in 1663.	12:41
	Cotton's accomplishments in the academic world	12:45
	and in the ministry, surpassed those of his father.	12:47
	In 1689, Cotton had written a book about witchcraft	12:52
	entitled, "Late Memorable Provinces	12:55
	Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions."	12:58
	People were reading that book in 1692.	13:01
	Now in the summer of 1692,	13:04
	governor Phips turned to Cotton Mather especially,	13:06
	asking him to write another book	13:10
	justifying what had happened at Salem.	13:13
	The result, one of the classics,	13:16
	"The wonders of the Invisible World."	13:19
	An account of seven trials, at Salem.	13:21
	Plus the doings of witches in other parts of the world	13:25
	along with an elaborate description	13:28
	of witchcraft in general.	13:30
	It was published in October 1692 in Boston.	13:32
	Cotton Mather declared	13:37
	that God had loosened the devil	13:39
	to bring evil upon the land, for its sinfulness.	13:41
	And that sorcery would have to be guarded against	13:43
	lest more evil, be licensed by God.	13:47
	Now other circumstances discredited the mania.	13:52
	In October, Mrs. Hale,	13:56
	the wife of a minister at Beverly, was accused	13:57
	and no person of same sense thought she was guilty.	14:00
	Her husband had zealously prosecuted	14:03
	or promoted the prosecutions,	14:06
	but the predicament of his wife	14:09
	caused the Reverend Mr. Hale to think that	14:11
	he might have been an accomplice in an injustice.	14:15
	Other ministers were less willing	14:19
	to believe that they had heard in any way.	14:22
	They did not deny that Mrs. Hale was a good woman,	14:26
	but they argued that a good woman could be bewitched	14:30
	and could be used by the devil.	14:34
	Increase Mather, the president of Harvard	14:37
	was called in for consultation.	14:40
	He published a book,	14:42
	a further account of the trials of the New England witches,	14:44
	to which he's added,	14:47
	cases of conscience concerning witchcraft and evil spirits,	14:48
	impersonating men.	14:51
	Increase Mather, president of Harvard,	14:53
	said the devil could assume the shape of a good woman	14:54
	and the good person would have to be treated as a witch.	14:58
	Then the accusers aimed at the wife of the governor	15:03
	and they lost the governor support.	15:07
	Other people of character took action against the accusers,	15:09
	bringing lawsuits against them	15:12
	for defamation of character.	15:14
	One Boston man laid damages at a thousand pounds.	15:16
	And now the accusers	15:21
	affected in the pocket book, took fright.	15:24
	By April of the following year, 1693,	15:28
	when governor Phips was recalled to England,	15:31
	the witchcraft hunt had nearly subsided	15:33
	and people in general were lamenting their errors.	15:35
	But not Cotton and Increase Mather.	15:40
	They looked upon the calm	15:44
	as a reactionary triumph for Satan.	15:46
	In the years that followed,	15:49
	they reasserted their belief in the Salem witches.	15:51
	On September the 10th, 1693,	15:55
	a Boston girl by the name of Margaret Rule	15:57
	was seized with convulsions.	16:00
	And she saw shapes,	16:01
	of the people who had been condemned at Salem.	16:03
	Cotton Mather immediately visited her	16:06
	and declared his conviction that she spoke the truth.	16:08
	Robert Calef, a merchant,	16:11
	published an account of the Boston girl	16:13
	and boldly declared that she was either deluded or imposing	16:15
	and a good whipping might cure her of her convulsions.	16:19
	Partisans of the Mathers, publicly burned the book.	16:23
	And years later,	16:26
	when Samuel Mather wrote the biography of his father Cotton,	16:27
	he sneeringly denounced the views of Calef.	16:31
	Nevertheless,	16:36
	the people of Salem were humbled and repentant.	16:38
	They deserted their minister, Mr. Parris,	16:41
	with whom the persecution had begun.	16:44
	And they actually drove him out of the village.	16:47
	Most of the people,	16:50
	officially associated with the trials,	16:51
	declared their regret.	16:53
	The jurors signed a paper expressing repentance	16:56
	pleading that they had labored under delusion.	16:59
	Many of those who had confessed that they were witches	17:03
	or who had accused others,	17:06
	retracted everything they said	17:08
	and confessed that they were led on by terror.	17:11
	The colony of Massachusetts attempted to make restitution	17:14
	and paid out a total of 578 pounds	17:18
	to the heirs of the unfortunate victims.	17:21
	But the vanity,	17:25
	of superior intelligence and knowledge	17:27
	was so great in the two Mathers	17:30
	that they resisted all conviction.	17:33
	In Magnolia, published in 1700	17:36
	an ecclesiastical history of New England,	17:39
	advertised only last Sunday in the New York Times,	17:42
	as one of America's literary classics.	17:45
	Cotton Mather, repeated his original views	17:48
	on the doings at Salem.	17:52
	He showed no regret for his part in the affair.	17:54
	He made no retractions of any opinions whatsoever.	17:57
	In 1723, 31 years later,	18:01
	he repeated his views again	18:04
	in a chapter on the Remarkables of his father.	18:06
	This can be said,	18:10
	of these staunch pillars of the New England society.	18:12
	They both acted conscientiously.	18:15
	Today now,	18:20
	we can congratulate ourselves	18:22
	that we are no longer superstitious.	18:24
	We have been blessed with the discoveries of science.	18:27
	We know that there are no witches.	18:30
	We know that demons do not fly about at night	18:35
	in the shapes of yellow dogs and black pigs.	18:37
	In this day of enlightenment	18:41
	and due process of law,	18:43
	we can hardly conceive of hanging a person for witchcraft.	18:45
	But if we do not have superstitions,	18:51
	we do have our prejudices.	18:53
	We still condemn a man because of the color of his skin.	18:57
	And we often treat him economically and juridically	19:02
	as if his status were no more than that of a animal.	19:04
	We cook here, why can't we eat here?	19:10
	We still condemn a man because of the shape of his nose.	19:13
	Thousands of real estate contracts	19:18
	exclude those of Jewish origins.	19:23
	The Nazi concentration,	19:27
	camps in which thousands upon thousands of Jews	19:29
	suffered and died.	19:32
	Did not happen 268 years ago in Salem village.	19:34
	This inhumanity of man to man	19:39
	is the product of the enlightened 20th century,	19:41
	our century.	19:44
	No, we're not superstitious.	19:47
	In our intelligence,	19:50
	we have been lured into the comfortable feeling	19:51
	that nothing is wrong with us,	19:54
	or at least not very wrong.	19:57
	By telling ourselves that nothing much is really wrong	20:01
	after all, we do not hang people	20:05
	as they did back in Salem village.	20:07
	We have subtly placed ourselves	20:10
	on the throne of absoluteness.	20:12
	We have trapped ourselves in the feeling	20:15
	that we are normal, good people	20:18
	about as good and right as the next person.	20:22
	After all, no one finally knows what is right or wrong.	20:25
	And in this sin of presumption,	20:29
	we have placed ourselves in the place of God.	20:31
	We act as if there is no God	20:35
	except our own desires and wishes	20:38
	and property rights.	20:41
	The inability of modern man to confess his sinfulness	20:45
	to fall on his knees in penitence	20:50
	is indicative of the absoluteness	20:55
	that modern man has assumed.	20:57
	Now in this,	21:01
	we are not like the vast majority of the people in Salem.	21:02
	We are like Cotton and Increase Mather,	21:05
	who refuse to admit any error at all.	21:08
	We like to identify ourselves with Peter.	21:14
	He was human, very human.	21:18
	Ignorant, narrow-minded and weak, yes.	21:20
	He was unwilling to welcome the Gentiles into the communion.	21:24
	He denied Christ three times before the cock crowed once.	21:27
	We are like Peter in these matters, that's true.	21:32
	Except that, Peter remembered something that we forget.	21:35
	We remember Peter,	21:41
	and we take a kind of pride	21:43
	in pointing to that early disciple	21:45
	who was no better than we are.	21:47
	But, Peter couldn't take any such pride.	21:52
	He went out into the garden and wept bitterly.	21:56
	He remembered that he was a sinful human being	22:01
	who could boast of nothing before God.	22:03
	That night long ago,	22:06
	when it looked as if some trouble might fall up on him,	22:07
	Peter said,	22:11
	"No, no, I don't know this man."	22:12
	Nothing was so important to Peter	22:15
	in those moments of pretense, as Peter himself.	22:17
	He presumed to be the measure of all things	22:22
	in that situation.	22:25
	But Christ looked at him, the cock crowed,	22:27
	and Peter went out into the garden and wept bitterly.	22:30
	It's hard for us to confess	22:36
	our intellectual pride is far from Peter's penitence.	22:39
	It is very close to the spiritual pride	22:43
	of the leaders of the witchcraft hunters.	22:45
	But tonight, let us take a lesson from Peter.	22:50
	And as we kneel at the communion table,	22:55
	not say to ourselves,	22:58
	"Oh Lord, I will never betray you."	22:59
	Let us rather acknowledge that we have already betrayed him	23:04
	and humbly beseech him to forgive us our sins.	23:09
	And more than that,	23:13
	to forgive us,	23:15
	the intellectual pride	23:16
	that whispers to us,	23:18
	we have committed, no sin.	23:20
	(solemn music)	23:40
	The last words of our Lord	25:39
	Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit.	25:42
	In the name of the father	25:49
	and of the son	25:50
	and of the holy ghost, amen.	25:51
	Friend of mine has wisely observed	26:01
	that our time is perhaps the first time in 150 years,	26:05
	when it is really possible,	26:10
	really possible to believe the gospel.	26:13
	Why is this so?	26:18
	Because it seems to me that in our time,	26:21
	every man, every man is truly	26:24
	and really and finally up against it.	26:28
	Up against it.	26:33
	Which is to say,	26:38
	modern man has come to a new and startling awareness	26:39
	that he did not get himself here.	26:44
	That there is that mysterious,	26:48
	outer and final reality of the universe, which is not him.	26:52
	Perhaps the physicist,	27:00
	the frontier physicists are the only people	27:02
	who have really come to a deep inner awareness	27:05
	of this fact and this reality as they stare	27:09
	deeply into the darkness of outer space,	27:14
	and they've had to devise a new mythology and new imagery	27:17
	to speak about their up against us,	27:23
	The modern man as he finds himself	27:31
	squarely up against the not me,	27:33
	has given to him in our time,	27:36
	the possibility of really believing the gospel.	27:38
	And when one comes to this point in his life and experience,	27:44
	there are but two alternatives,	27:48
	only two.	27:51
	One of them is the alternative,	27:55
	the conclusion, at which,	27:59
	the great modern playwright Tennessee Williams has arrived	28:03
	in suddenly last summer.	28:08
	When as you will remember,	28:11
	it is reported that the poet Sebastian	28:14
	saw the face of God,	28:16
	which is to say the face of the final mystery	28:18
	of the universe,	28:21
	the ground of all being.	28:22
	In this fantastic episode between	28:25
	the vultures and the turtles,	28:29
	where every year,	28:31
	when the turtles returned from their nesting,	28:32
	they are devoured,	28:35
	by the vultures.	28:39
	Which is to say that,	28:44
	here at least there's one modern man	28:47
	who has come up against it.	28:49
	And who has said,	28:50
	with a kind of a leap of faith,	28:52
	The ground of being is utterly and finally chaotic,	29:00
	meaningless and absurd.	29:06
	And then as much as we know where at least one man stands,	29:14
	it is a kind of courageous affirmation.	29:17
	Now the other alternative,	29:21
	is the alternative offered to us in the gospel of God.	29:24
	As we apprehend it and are apprehended by it	29:31
	in the event of Jesus Christ.	29:36
	Which is say that alternative	29:40
	in which I conclude and then grasp by the fact	29:44
	that the final mystery of the universe,	29:48
	the ground of my being	29:53
	is ultimately concerned about me.	29:56
	Gives me life and sustains me even now,	30:02
	as I find myself up against it,	30:05
	This does in our time take a gigantically leap.	30:12
	When it has come to this,	30:18
	we may say with Christopher Fry affairs are now soul size.	30:19
	Indeed one wonders how is Christian faith possible?	30:28
	And it is here with this question	30:34
	that we are brought squarely to, the cross	30:36
	and to the last words of our Lord.	30:41
	There has been at this point	30:46
	of the Good Friday drama	30:48
	much misunderstanding among Christians	30:50
	who have reflected on the cross	30:54
	and have seen this to be the symbol of evil.	30:55
	To see this as the symbol of what,	31:00
	in some kind of ultimately dualistic cosmic drama	31:03
	stands for the evil forces.	31:09
	Now this is false and unbiblical	31:12
	and is an intrusion from some kind of modern Gnosticism.	31:16
	And we must get this,	31:21
	straight in our minds and hearts.	31:25
	The cross is the gift of God.	31:27
	It is the very key to his purposes	31:31
	and he would not have it any other way.	31:34
	Justice Eliot reminds us	31:43
	that in Murder in the Cathedral,	31:47
	that the cross is a part of the design of God,	31:48
	just as the blood of every martyr,	31:51
	that is shed,	31:54
	is a part of the design of God.	31:55
	The cross, the crucifixion,	31:58
	it's the gift	32:02
	of the very ground of our being	32:05
	wherein we may be apprehended	32:07
	by the fact that life is good.	32:11
	And we may live,	32:15
	even in a world where there are continually,	32:18
	crosses to be borne and shared.	32:22
	It is in our Lord at this, moment	32:33
	on the cross at which	32:39
	the gospel writer says,	32:41
	the veil or the curtain	32:42
	of the temple was literally torn in two.	32:46
	One of the gospel writers says,	32:51
	in case we miss the point from the top to the bottom.	32:53
	Which is to say anybody could have walked in and torn it	32:58
	from the bottom to the top.	33:00
	But this rending of the veil,	33:02
	which fall once, once,	33:04
	and for all disclosed the Holy of Holies,	33:07
	or as you know, in the Jewish temple,	33:11
	one progressed from the outer court	33:14
	where anybody might sit even a Gentile	33:16
	through the middle courts and finally to the inner court	33:19
	where only the high priest	33:23
	and he only once a year might go.	33:25
	And how with this event	33:29
	and simultaneously with the last words of our Lord,	33:31
	the curtain of the temple,	33:37
	which hid the Holy of Holies,	33:39
	the inner mystery of God,	33:41
	and what he was doing	33:44
	was literally ripped apart from the top to the bottom.	33:46
	So that everybody,	33:52
	even the Gentiles in the outer court	33:55
	might now have access to this inner, fact.	33:57
	That God,	34:05
	is for us.	34:08
	That it is he who gives us, the cross.	34:11
	That it is he who gives us, death.	34:16
	And that therefore, since death is the final threat to life,	34:23
	life is good.	34:26
	Jesus receives the cross,	34:30
	primarily I think and only because	34:34
	He has, the faith.	34:38
	He has been apprehended by,	34:43
	throughout his life the fact,	34:47
	that God is ultimately and finally trustworthy.	34:50
	Worthy of his trust.	34:57
	And it is in the complete union,	35:01
	of his will with the will of the one who sent him,	35:07
	who got him here,	35:12
	that we may indeed calling him	35:16
	the Christ, the son of the living God.	35:18
	Which is to say the one	35:20
	in whom the word about the true meaning of life,	35:24
	is once and for all delivered into history.	35:29
	Father, into they hands I commend my spirit.	35:36
	D.T. Niles, the great Indian evangelist.	35:44
	When speaking to,	35:51
	groups of simple Indian people	35:54
	who have never heard the gospel,	35:57
	reflects, this kind of faith.	36:00
	For he tells them,	36:05
	And we, I'm sure in our sophistication,	36:06
	we'll say that this is a gross oversimplification	36:08
	of the word that comes to us in the Christ event.	36:13
	D.T. Niles says simply this,	36:17
	as he tries to explain his own faith	36:20
	and the faith of our Lord.	36:25
	God made you,	36:27
	God loves you,	36:30
	God died for you.	36:32
	And when you die,	36:34
	you will be with him.	36:36
	Now, whatever that means	36:40
	is up to us to work out, in our style of life as Christians.	36:44
	It may mean that I go here.	36:50
	It may mean that I go there.	36:52
	It may mean that I do this.	36:54
	It may mean that I do that.	36:55
	It may mean that I never know exactly what I am to do.	36:57
	But that in all of this,	37:04
	a one thing I can be certain,	37:08
	that the one who gives me life	37:12
	and the one who gives me death	37:15
	is finally and utterly trustworthy.	37:17
	Let us pray.	37:25
	Almighty God grant that we may	37:35
	not flee from the cross.	37:37
	Deliver us from calling this	37:41
	an evil event and looking forward to, Easter day.	37:45
	For some kind of triumph over it.	37:52
	Grant that we may see in this,	37:55
	mysterious event,	37:58
	by gift to us.	38:02
	grasp us by the inner meaning of this event	38:07
	that we in turn may be able indeed, to participate,	38:14
	not just in some false resurrection,	38:21
	but in the glory of thy cross.	38:25
	Grant that in all things,	38:30
	we may lay hold,	38:34
	of the word about, thy love	38:39
	that we may know above all else,	38:46
	that thou are worthy, of our trust.	38:52
	Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.	39:00

Item Info

Title:

Clyde L. Manschreck - Maundy Thursday Service (April 14, 1960)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4p55jj34

Date:

April 14, 1960

Speaker:

Manschreck, Clyde L.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0099
ref5399_w8z
uachapelsermaud
duke:628576
dcrau002124
ark:/87924/r4p55jj34
d3fb3166-cd3c-4a09-8557-c4217809bc59

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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

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Clyde L. Manschreck - Maundy Thursday Service (April 14, 1960)

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Duke University Archives

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