Edmund A. Steimle - "As it was in the Beginning" (January 10, 1960)

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-	This past week, by common consent has been set aside	0:15
	as the annual Get Back Down To Earth week.	0:19
	A mild hysteria which always grips us at Christmas	0:24
	and causes us to make our world look as	0:29
	out-of-this-world as possible.	0:32
	A veritable fairy land of lights, and greens,	0:35
	and tinsel, and red bows.	0:39
	That's just about over.	0:43
	The trees and tinsel are down,	0:45
	the lights are out,	0:48
	the music is silent,	0:50
	and the alter and the manger,	0:53
	the star in the manger	0:55
	packed away in the attic for another year.	0:57
	Because now, of course, it's time to get back down to earth	1:01
	again to business as usual	1:03
	and, perhaps, to a little more than usual on campus	1:07
	with mid-years about to sit in grim judgment	1:10
	on the semester just about over.	1:14
	And it's all a little odd, you know.	1:18
	At Christmas, God is just about as practical	1:21
	and down-to-earth as God knows how to get,	1:23
	and we celebrate it by getting just about as impractical	1:27
	and out-of-this-world as possible.	1:30
	Then, after the Christmas holidays are over,	1:33
	when you and I have to get back down to earth again,	1:37
	we pack the symbols of God's getting down to earth	1:41
	away in the attic.	1:45
	Doesn't make much sense.	1:47
	The whole business is a kind of parable	1:50
	of the way you and I are constantly tempeted	1:53
	to look at religion and life.	1:55
	Certainly, we've got life on our hands,	2:00
	no question about that, get up in the morning,	2:01
	go to work or go to classes, plan a career, get married,	2:03
	have children, make a decent salary or marry a man who does.	2:07
	Make some kind of mark in life, get the children	2:10
	through college, pile up some life insurance	2:13
	in old age and security, retire to enjoy your grandchildren,	2:15
	eventually die, and there's life.	2:19
	Now, how about religion?	2:22
	Well, there's church, and prayer, and Sunday School,	2:25
	and carols, and chapel, and Christ,	2:28
	and God, and a strange divinity called the Holy Ghost,	2:30
	and the bible and all that.	2:33
	There's religion.	2:35
	And what's the relation between the two?	2:37
	Is religion to be added to life like pepper, and salt,	2:41
	and paprika, to make it a little more tasty?	2:43
	Or like an additional insurance policy	2:47
	to take of some possible eventuality after death?	2:50
	You might as well, you know, no sense in taking chances.	2:53
	Or is religion, perhaps, an enriching experience?	2:57
	Like a liberal arts course.	3:02
	To make the well-rounded life even more well-rounded.	3:05
	To make life deeper, more meaningful, more positive.	3:10
	Richer.	3:14
	I suspect many of us find ourselves thinking of religion	3:16
	in the popular sense of the word in some such way.	3:19
	You can live with it, you can live without it.	3:21
	Lots of people do, apparently.	3:24
	And if this does reflect something of your attitude	3:28
	towards religion, it's not really so surprising.	3:30
	For here you are at college, faced with a tremendous	3:34
	assortment of interests and activities.	3:36
	First of all, with a choice of a tremendous number	3:40
	of courses and departments.	3:43
	Languages, humanities, physical sciences, social sciences,	3:45
	an almost limitless array and also religion.	3:49
	Some of these courses and departments have some	3:55
	integral relation to each other,	3:57
	but many of them, apparently, have little or nothing to say	4:00
	to each other, recalling the definition William Temple	4:03
	once gave for a university.	4:05
	As a place where a multitude of studies are conducted	4:08
	with no relation between them except those of simultaneity	4:12
	and juxtaposition.	4:16
	Or to use the somewhat racier language of Waldo Beach.	4:18
	The curriculum most students confront is sheer anarchy,	4:23
	like nothing so much as the classic definition of hell,	4:29
	just one damned thing after another.	4:33
	Then, beyond the purely academic interests,	4:37
	you are also faced with a wide variety, of course,	4:42
	of extra curricular activities, sports, music,	4:44
	drama, fraternities, clubs, dances,	4:47
	and religious activities	4:52
	listed on the back of the chapel program.	4:54
	And, beyond that, there is a still further variety	4:57
	of extra, extracurricular activities.	5:00
	Dates, weekends, summer jobs,	5:05
	the time consuming process of pinning and getting pinned,	5:07
	not to mention homes and family and your interests	5:10
	back there at home, which also, probably include religion.	5:13
	Religion, you see, appears all along the line.	5:19
	But always as one alongside of many other	5:23
	interests and activities.	5:28
	And, again, this is not so strange because the college	5:31
	merely reflects, in concentrated form,	5:34
	the compartmentalization of life outside.	5:37
	There may have been a time when the cathedral	5:41
	dominated the town.	5:43
	Symbol of a time when religion dominated all of life,	5:45
	so that the two, religion and life, could scarcely be	5:50
	distinguished one from the other.	5:52
	And some, no doubt, would hold that those were, indeed,	5:55
	the dark ages.	5:58
	But that time is long passed.	6:01
	Life outside the campus is as compartmentalized	6:04
	as you find it here,	6:07
	and religion, if it's present out there at all,	6:09
	is neatly shoved into its own little compartment.	6:12
	As another, as suggested, for the average American,	6:16
	his business is here in the top drawer, center,	6:18
	his family life handy, right in the top right hand drawer.	6:20
	International relations are in the newspaper spread on top	6:24
	and religion is stuck way down in the bottom drawer, left,	6:27
	where, if it's not stuck, he gets it out on Sundays	6:31
	and on Christmas Eve.	6:35
	And we creatures, oftentimes, don't help matters much either	6:38
	when we urge you to give more time, more money,	6:43
	and even, occasionally, your life to the Lord.	6:47
	As if the Lord were concerned only with churches	6:52
	and church work.	6:54
	While time and money or even a life,	6:57
	devoted to a laboratory, or a to a family, or to a business,	7:02
	were somehow outside of God's jurisdiction and concern.	7:06
	What, then, is the answer to this tragic	7:14
	compartmentalization of life, for it is tragic?	7:15
	Both on campus and outside.	7:20
	During a dozen of ministering the students at Cambridge,	7:23
	some of the most deeply troubled were those	7:27
	who simply could not make sense	7:30
	out of the courses they were taking.	7:33
	They didn't seem to have any relationship to each other	7:35
	or to the careers that they were looking forward to.	7:40
	Or, on the other hand, they were confused because	7:44
	the courses they were taking were so closely related	7:46
	to their future careers that college seemed to them	7:49
	like a kind of factory	7:51
	while life passed them by on the outside.	7:54
	Oh, they paid attention to their religion too.	7:58
	At least the ones I knew best.	8:02
	But religion was in its own compartment and only served	8:04
	to add to the general confusion.	8:08
	What, then, is the answer to this tragic	8:11
	compartmentalization of life with religion	8:13
	and life on speaking terms and, perhaps, even	8:15
	courting each other, occasionally,	8:19
	but no marriage in the offering?	8:22
	For some direction, let's go back to a couple of basic facts	8:25
	suggested in the creation story in Genesis.	8:27
	It begins, as you know, with God.	8:31
	In the beginning, God.	8:33
	And, I suppose, no one here is going to quarrel seriously	8:36
	with that; you have to begin somewhere, you might as well	8:39
	begin with God.	8:41
	But...	8:43
	If you begin with a biblical view of God,	8:45
	then certain truths follow.	8:48
	Notice how after every stage in the creation story,	8:51
	there is the constant refrain:	8:53
	And God saw that it was good.	8:56
	And then, after it all was completed comes the summary:	8:59
	And behold it was all very good.	9:02
	The creation story looks on life, all of it,	9:07
	and declares that it is all very good.	9:11
	From the universe expanding at reckless speed every moment,	9:14
	to the tiniest speck of dust caught in the sunlight	9:18
	streaming through a window and everything in between,	9:21
	it means that evil is not inherent in the material world,	9:25
	in alcohol, or tobacco, or money,	9:28
	or uranium, or in man,	9:32
	or in sexual reproduction.	9:37
	God delights in all that he has made.	9:40
	Not only the so-called spiritual realm.	9:45
	But dust, and rocks, and trees, and animals,	9:50
	and fish, all of it,	9:53
	is very good.	9:56
	Not only so,	9:58
	but this material world and everything in it	10:00
	is the visible and tangible evidence of God in action.	10:02
	What we call religion.	10:07
	The heavens declare the glory of God	10:09
	and the firmament showeth his handiwork.	10:12
	This would seem to indicate, in no uncertain fashion,	10:16
	that the material things of this world are not one thing	10:18
	and religion another.	10:22
	To use color in lipstick	10:24
	or to fashion metal into a Jeep is no less religious	10:27
	than to use color in a painting of Christ.	10:32
	Or to fashion metal into the shape of a cross.	10:35
	Suppose, now, we take this a step further and look at it	10:41
	in term of what a man does with his life	10:43
	in terms of vocation.	10:46
	Back there, again, in the creation story,	10:48
	it is made very clear that at the beginning,	10:50
	man is taken into partnership with God.	10:52
	He is made in God's image.	10:55
	The heart of which means, I suppose,	10:59
	that he has made capable of response	11:02
	to the one who created him.	11:05
	Then, because of this unique relationship,	11:07
	he is given dominion over all the created world.	11:10
	I like Carl Sandberg's vivid description of that moment.	11:15
	When God scooped up a handful of dust and spit on it	11:19
	and molded the shape of man, and blew breath into it,	11:25
	then told it to walk.	11:29
	That was a great day.	11:32
	Yet, far more difficult, I suspect, for the 20th century man	11:37
	to accept than the majesty of God and creative of all	11:40
	is the great dream in the heart of God for each human soul,	11:43
	for you in your life.	11:48
	For as God is creator of all this incredible vastness	11:52
	and is Lord over all, so you and I and the rest of us	11:56
	are taken into partnership and made lord	11:59
	over all this created world, having dominion,	12:02
	ruling over it.	12:06
	And, as you know, this dominion over the material world	12:09
	is heady wine.	12:13
	And we have not been slow to exploit it.	12:16
	Man has successfully taken dominion over the productivity	12:20
	of the earth, searched out its underground wealth,	12:23
	subdued the animal kingdom, mastered the air,	12:25
	and the secrets of invisible communication,	12:28
	and currently is probing the depths of the sea	12:30
	and the mystery of the human mind,	12:33
	the control of the atmosphere,	12:35
	the possibility of interplanetary travel,	12:37
	the secrets of energy.	12:40
	And all this,	12:42
	all this, God has willed from the very beginning.	12:45
	No secrets of this physical world,	12:51
	the created world banned by God	12:54
	to this curious and resourceful creature	12:58
	that you are.	13:02
	Man shall have dominion	13:05
	over all the earth.	13:08
	I suspect it's only recently that that thought	13:11
	has actually frightened us.	13:13
	I remember, very vividly, the time when immediately after	13:17
	the first atomic explosion and I was living in Cambridge	13:20
	and the physicists at Harvard and MIT called a meeting	13:24
	because they were afraid	13:29
	of what would be done with what they had discovered.	13:33
	Some indication of their panic may be gained from the fact	13:36
	that they actually asked ordinary, run-of-the-mill preachers	13:39
	like myself to attend.	13:41
	And yet, the discovery and use of the secrets	13:45
	of nuclear fission, too, these were in the original plan	13:47
	of God.	13:51
	At least, so this bible reads.	13:55
	You see, the implications here, not only for those of you	13:58
	who are going into nuclear physics but into biochemistry,	14:00
	or engineering, or buying and selling, or whatever,	14:04
	you are simply doing what God meant, willed man to do	14:07
	from the very beginning.	14:10
	It means there is no possible distinction between	14:12
	what we like to call secular and religious vocations.	14:15
	Is it any less religious to be a physicist or a babysitter	14:21
	than for me to stand up here and preach?	14:26
	God any less concerned?	14:29
	Any less religious to be a secretary or a housewife	14:33
	than to be a missionary?	14:36
	God any less concerned?	14:38
	All vocations are, obviously, religious	14:42
	in the sense that a man gives expression	14:47
	through his vocation to the eternal purpose of God,	14:49
	made clear right at the start of things, religion and life.	14:53
	Not two, but one.	14:58
	At least, that was God's plan,	15:03
	as it was in the beginning.	15:06
	Where, then, does the notion come from that we can	15:09
	even talk intelligibly about the two as if they weren't two?	15:12
	The answer, you'll find, again back in one of those	15:18
	early stories in Genesis.	15:20
	This time, in the story of the Garden of Eden.	15:23
	You remember it, of course, three characters,	15:26
	Adam, Eve and a serpent living very happily	15:28
	in their world which was very good.	15:32
	A veritable garden of Eden in which it had never occurred	15:35
	to them that religion and life were anything	15:37
	but one in the same.	15:40
	Only one thing to mar the tranquility of it all.	15:42
	Actually, two things: a serpent	15:46
	and a forbidden tree.	15:51
	A serpent's question.	15:54
	The question sounded perfectly innocent	15:57
	but it was loaded.	16:01
	The serpent put it to Eve.	16:03
	Hath God, indeed, said	16:05
	that you shall not eat of every tree in the garden?	16:09
	That's all he said, at first.	16:14
	It was enough actually, he didn't have to say anything more.	16:16
	For in that innocent question,	16:19
	a ghost suddenly appeared between religion and life.	16:22
	God was put over there and Eve and her life put over here.	16:27
	Did God really say that?	16:32
	For the first time someone asked,	16:35
	does religion really apply here?	16:36
	And so it has been ever since.	16:42
	Today, we have our sermons and discussions and we sit around	16:45
	echoing the serpent's question.	16:48
	Did God really say that?	16:50
	Or how about Christianity and business, you've got to	16:53
	make a living, you know?	16:55
	And how can you expect to be a Christian and still	16:58
	enjoy life and go out on dates and things like that?	17:00
	Maybe we can fit religion in somewhere	17:03
	as an enriching experience, perhaps.	17:06
	Go to church.	17:10
	Maybe there's something I can take home with me	17:12
	and apply to some problem or other.	17:17
	Hath God, indeed, said?	17:22
	Frightening thing, of course, all this is that	17:27
	God still respects the dominion he gave us	17:29
	and our freedom too.	17:32
	Consequently, man still exercises dominion	17:34
	over all this created world, for good or evil.	17:37
	Providing unimaginable blessings.	17:41
	Think of wonder drugs, and the productive possibilities	17:44
	of atomic power, and the amazing marvels of communication,	17:48
	and scientific agriculture,	17:51
	and the skill to probe deep into the brain	17:54
	of Margaret Bourke-White,	17:57
	to release, as if by magic, the bonds of steel	18:00
	that crippled her hand and fingers.	18:03
	To provide unimaginable blessings.	18:06
	And to provide unimaginable tragedy.	18:11
	Dust bowls, atomic war, slums.	18:16
	Brainwashing, and the nightmare of glutted grain bins	18:22
	on this side of the world,	18:28
	and thousands upon thousands starving on the other side	18:29
	of the world.	18:34
	And our hands tied because of the delict balance	18:36
	of economics.	18:41
	In view of the mess man has made of it all,	18:46
	you'd think God would have been perfectly justified	18:50
	in washing his hands of him and letting him go,	18:51
	quite literally, to hell.	18:54
	I mean, after all,	18:56
	if you were God	18:58
	and this magnificent little creature stood looking up at you	19:01
	with the stench of Buchenwald and Nagasaki in his nostrils,	19:05
	cockily putting the question to you,	19:11
	love your enemy,	19:13
	do good to them that hate you, do you really mean that?	19:16
	You really think it'll work in a world like ours?	19:21
	Have you ever tried living with Jews in New York?	19:24
	Have you ever tried being governed by Negros?	19:29
	Have you ever tried to fight a decent war with the Japanese?	19:33
	Have you ever tried to get along with the communists?	19:38
	Do you really mean it?	19:42
	I suspect, my friends, if you or I were God,	19:45
	you and I would have washed our hands of this	19:52
	magnificent, miserable,	19:55
	always both, magnificent and miserable little creature	19:59
	and let him go, again, quite literally, to the devil	20:05
	but he didn't.	20:08
	He did everything he could think of short of taking away	20:10
	our freedom to win this little creature	20:14
	back from the nightmare which results when religion and life	20:18
	are divorced to the conviction that religion and life	20:21
	are one.	20:24
	And finally, not knowing what else to do,	20:25
	he came, himself, down to earth	20:29
	incarnate in a peasant Jew to make it just as plain	20:31
	as he possibly could	20:35
	and it is here, in Christ,	20:39
	that you see the original plan	20:43
	and purpose of God realized	20:45
	as it was in the beginning,	20:50
	which is why the bible sometimes calls him the second Adam.	20:52
	And here, there is no question of applying religion	20:58
	to life, not in Christ, it sound ridiculous	21:01
	even to suggest it.	21:04
	God's original design and purpose	21:06
	is restored in the incarnation.	21:09
	God getting just about as practical and down-to-earth	21:12
	as God can get in Jesus Christ, religion and life.	21:14
	The spiritual and the material.	21:20
	The divine and the human, in one.	21:23
	Maybe now that the fairyland, out-of-this-world atmosphere	21:30
	of Christmas has been packed away in the attic	21:33
	for another year,	21:35
	and you and I are faced with getting down to earth	21:38
	to try and manage the brittle and, often, brutal realities	21:40
	of life, we can apprehend, more readily,	21:44
	the tremendous impact of what really went on	21:47
	at Christmas, deus incarnotos.	21:52
	God come down to earth to reconcile and heal	21:56
	the brokenness at the very heart of things.	22:01
	I surely do not mean to imply that this is a simple	22:08
	and easy pat answer for God or for us.	22:11
	God knows right up to the agony	22:16
	and the death on a cross that it's not.	22:19
	The rebellion in us,	22:24
	the brokenness runs too deep.	22:26
	Yet, is this not really what Christianity	22:29
	is precisely all about?	22:33
	What it really has to offer,	22:36
	a new life, as we put it so often,	22:39
	a new life in Christ.	22:42
	Or in Paul Tillich's phrase, a new being.	22:47
	And what is that	22:52
	but simply God bending down	22:54
	to heal and restore, to make us whole,	22:58
	or as the bible sometimes puts it,	23:04
	to make us holy.	23:07
	And what is that but a description but a kind of life	23:10
	for when life is like	23:14
	when it's no longer divorced from religion.	23:17
	When religion for you and for me and life,	23:23
	the two are one.	23:27
	As it was in the beginning.	23:33
	Is now and every shall be	23:36
	world without end.	23:40
	Amen.	23:43
	Let us pray.	23:46
	Oh Holy Spirit of God, who, at the first did make thy world	23:54
	to be a home for mankind,	23:58
	we confess with shame that we have turned	24:02
	thy order into confusion.	24:04
	Move, we beseech thee, upon the chaos of our human life	24:08
	and bring order and beauty to life again,	24:11
	that we may learn to live or earth	24:15
	as sons in our father's house.	24:19
	Through Jesus Christ our Lord.	24:23
	Amen.	24:27

Item Info

Title:

Edmund A. Steimle - "As it was in the Beginning" (January 10, 1960)

Description:

In the beginning, religion and life were unified in perfect harmony. It was only with the original sin in the garden that they became sundered and humakind began to struggle to know how to relate religion to their daily lives. In the Incarnation, however, this divide is healed, and God's intended purposes for creation are reestablished. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Sermon start time: (Part 1) 00:15. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 23:46.
Key quotation: “It is here, in Christ, that you see the original plan and purpose of God realized as it was in the beginning, which is why the Bible sometimes calls him the second Adam…God’s original design and purpose is restored in the Incarnation. God getting just about as practical and down-to-earth as God can get in Jesus Christ: religion and life, the spiritual and the material, the divine and the human, in one.”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4q52ft82

Date:

January 10, 1960

Speaker:

Steimle, Edmund A.

Biblical Book:

Genesis

Chapter and Verse:

Genesis 1

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0089
ref5379_43a
uachapelsermaud
duke:321134
dcrau001782
ark:/87924/r4q52ft82
f510aa7e-4000-42a9-9231-6ea432552536

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

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

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In Copyright

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This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Edmund A. Steimle - "As it was in the Beginning" (January 10, 1960)

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1. Edmund A. Steimle - "As It Was in the Beginning" (January 10, 1960)

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Edmund A. Steimle - "As it was in the Beginning" (January 10, 1960)

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