Creighton Lacy - "Therefore, Choose Life" (January 14, 1962)

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-	This day, all of you, before the Lord your God.	0:04
	According to a popular Jewish legend,	0:10
	the rabbi of a little European town in the 18th century	0:12
	abruptly called the people together one day	0:16
	to hear an important announcement.	0:18
	They grumbled about stopping their work,	0:21
	about leaving their household chores,	0:23
	about interrupting their play,	0:25
	but when they finally assembled in the village square,	0:28
	this is what the beloved rabbi said.	0:30
	"I have asked you to close your shops and leave your homes	0:34
	to come here,	0:38
	because I have a news of great importance	0:39
	which cannot be delayed for even another hour.	0:43
	And this is my announcement.	0:46
	I wish to announce that there is a God in the world."	0:49
	This was long before Nietzsche	0:56
	and other cynics have proclaimed that God is dead,	0:58
	long before our age of scientism and positivism,	1:02
	when even student correspondence in the "Duke Chronicle"	1:06
	would contradict the rabbi.	1:09
	His was an age of faith	1:11
	when his hearers did not doubt the truth of what he said.	1:13
	Then why assert it in such dramatic and disruptive fashion?	1:17
	Simply because the people of his village	1:22
	were behaving as if had forgotten the fact.	1:26
	They talked about God, they went to the synagogue,	1:29
	they professed their belief and they said their prayers,	1:33
	but they acted as if God were dead,	1:36
	and according to this story,	1:41
	they understood the meaning	1:42
	and purpose of the rabbi's action	1:44
	without any sermonizing.	1:46
	Do we?	1:49
	Most of you, I expect, have gone fairly regularly to church	1:52
	and been active in the MYF for the BTU or their equivalent.	1:55
	You may be too old to say your prayers	2:00
	by childish repetition at your bedside,	2:02
	and too young to have learned the necessity	2:06
	of saying them in some other form,	2:08
	but you believe, most of you, that God exists.	2:12
	If you sometimes rebel against him	2:16
	or ridicule his outmoded ideas,	2:18
	you thereby acknowledge his reality.	2:22
	Like Gideon in the new play by Patty Chayefsky,	2:25
	you may wish God would disappear,	2:29
	or you may deny your love for him,	2:31
	but you do these things with the knowledge	2:34
	that he is standing there upstage,	2:36
	even though only you can see and hear him.	2:39
	In the scripture lesson read this morning	2:45
	from the 29th and 30th chapters of Deuteronomy,	2:47
	Moses was making an imperative announcement	2:50
	to the Israelites,	2:53
	the offer of a renewed covenant	2:55
	between the Lord God and his people.	2:57
	For 40 years, they had wandered in the wilderness,	3:00
	often grumbling,	3:03
	trusting more in a golden calf than in Yahweh.	3:05
	Now they were ready to enter the Promised Land.	3:09
	Moses, old and feeble,	3:12
	had been told that he was not to cross the Jordan,	3:14
	but must give up his Lee leadership to Joshua.	3:17
	This was his last exhortation	3:20
	before his final valedictory hymns.	3:22
	Just as our news media over the past week	3:26
	have been summarizing the year behind	3:28
	and appraising the year ahead,	3:31
	just as the President will soon deliver a report	3:33
	on the State of the Union	3:36
	and call for further crucial decisions in our nation,	3:38
	so Moses sought to remind the Hebrews of their heritage	3:43
	and of their responsibility.	3:47
	Let us look at a few verses from that covenant message.	3:51
	First comes a summons to gratitude and appreciation.	3:56
	Despite the signs and wonders,	4:00
	the victories and prosperity which they had seen,	4:02
	the Israelites had failed to realize	4:04
	what protection and blessing God had bestowed upon them.	4:07
	If we look back as a nation,	4:13
	as a university,	4:16
	as individuals,	4:18
	with any sense of thankfulness, of relief, of satisfaction	4:20
	of progress made or tragedy averted,	4:24
	we are all too ready to claim the achievement for ourselves,	4:29
	to discount the divine purpose at work.	4:33
	As Moses put it,	4:36
	the Lord has not given you a mind to understand	4:38
	or eyes see or ears to hear.	4:41
	As we should put it	4:46
	with our 20th-century theology and psychology,	4:46
	the Lord has given us a mind and eyes and ears,	4:50
	but we too seldom use them to gain insight into his will.	4:54
	Then Moses thunders,	5:00
	for no quavering, senile voice could proclaim these words,	5:02
	"You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God.	5:08
	The heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers,	5:15
	all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives,	5:17
	and the sojourner who is in your camp,	5:21
	both he you hews your wood and he who draws your water,	5:24
	that you may enter into the sworn covenant	5:28
	of the Lord your God."	5:30
	The challenge consists of two poles	5:34
	in constant dynamic tension.	5:36
	On one hand, the word of warning reminds us	5:39
	that every act, every thought lies open before God.	5:43
	No secret sin, no private pride	5:49
	escapes the judgment of the Lord.	5:53
	No regular church attendance cancels out the dishonesty,	5:56
	the vulgarity, the selfishness of our weekday conduct.	6:00
	On the other hand, God's promise shines forth	6:06
	as the supreme enticement for faithful living,	6:09
	that he may establish you this day as his people,	6:13
	and that he may be your God, as he has promised you.	6:18
	Furthermore, this is a cooperative adventure.	6:23
	No Jonah and no astronaut can travel	6:27
	beyond the reach of God's power and love.	6:30
	The membership is not restricted to the good guys	6:34
	with our education, or our color.	6:36
	It includes those who sweep our floors and deliver our mail,	6:41
	and even those who hand out the grades a few weeks hence.	6:46
	Still more startling,	6:50
	the covenant which God holds out to his people	6:52
	may be accepted by those godless Russians	6:55
	or by that hell-raising fraternity next door.	6:58
	Nor is it with you only that I make this sworn covenant,	7:02
	but with him who is not here with us this day,	7:07
	as well as with him who stands here	7:11
	with us this day before the Lord our God.	7:13
	Yet even though this is an inclusive fellowship,	7:19
	no single person gets lost in the mob.	7:22
	In one of the earliest accounts	7:27
	of individual responsibility,	7:28
	Moses warns, "Beware lest there be among you a man or woman	7:30
	or family or tribe,	7:36
	whose heart turns away this day from the Lord our God	7:37
	to go and serve the gods of those nations.	7:41
	Lest there be among you a root	7:44
	bearing poisonous and bitter fruit,	7:46
	one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant,	7:50
	blesses himself in his heart, saying,	7:53
	"I shall be safe,	7:56
	though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart."	7:57
	How often do we glory in a nonconformity	8:02
	that rejects the faith as well as the practice of the herd?	8:06
	Or conversely and perversely,	8:11
	we seek safety from ourselves	8:14
	by becoming the organization man lost in a lonely crowd out.	8:16
	But Moses declares that the Lord will not pardon him,	8:23
	but will single him out from all the tribes of Israel	8:26
	for all the curses written in this book.	8:29
	By now both you and I are uneasily aware	8:34
	that these threats and promises	8:37
	which Moses conveys from the Lord	8:39
	are couched in exceedingly general terms.	8:41
	Oh, the consequences are clear enough.	8:45
	The whole land, brimstone and salt, and a burnt-out waste,	8:47
	unsown and growing nothing,	8:52
	where no grass can sprout,	8:55
	an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah.	8:57
	The Old Testament writers must have had superhuman insight	9:02
	into nuclear holocaust,	9:05
	for they certainly had experienced	9:07
	no such total devastation.	9:09
	Alternatively, for those who keep the commandments,	9:13
	God will make you abundantly prosperous	9:17
	in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body,	9:19
	and in the fruit of your cattle,	9:22
	and in the fruit of your ground.	9:24
	And he will make you more prosperous	9:26
	and numerous than your fathers.	9:27
	But God's expectations from us,	9:31
	the requirements of obedience are not so explicit.	9:35
	Here again, Moses offers a word of significant insight.	9:39
	The secret things belong to the Lord our God,	9:44
	but the things that are revealed belong to us	9:49
	and to our children forever,	9:52
	that we may do all the words of this law.	9:54
	The secret things belong to the Lord.	10:00
	Life retains an area of mystery,	10:05
	where science and materialism	10:07
	and human reason cannot penetrate.	10:09
	If erudition assumes an ultimate omniscience for man,	10:13
	then and then only can it dispense with religion.	10:18
	For religion does not, as some would have us believe,	10:22
	represent the worship of man's ignorance	10:25
	or his fear of the unknown.	10:28
	Rather, it acknowledges a transcendent reality	10:31
	which creates the miracle of human thought,	10:34
	and at the same time,	10:38
	preserves eternal secrets.	10:41
	The Christian who claims to know	10:45
	the totality of God's nature and purpose and will	10:46
	is as presumptuous,	10:51
	nay, as blasphemous as the scientific materialist	10:54
	who denies any supra-rational truth.	10:57
	I avoid the term supernatural,	11:02
	because faith and hope and love and truth and beauty	11:04
	are as natural to the source of all being	11:11
	as any physical objects we can see and measure.	11:13
	Equally obvious and equally important,	11:19
	beside the realm of mystery,	11:22
	the secret things which belong to the Lord our God,	11:24
	lie the things that are revealed	11:28
	for us and our children forever.	11:31
	Although they are created and given by God,	11:34
	Moses says that they belong to us	11:37
	and those who come after us.	11:40
	There are people, pious religious people	11:43
	who fear to take possession of scientific revelations,	11:46
	who believe that man ought never	11:49
	to have unlocked the secret of the atom,	11:51
	or that medical discoveries	11:54
	are a violation of God's natural world.	11:55
	How tragic an error.	12:00
	Likewise, others sincerely believe	12:03
	that nothing has been revealed to man	12:05
	about the nature of God,	12:07
	or more commonly that the Lord reveals himself	12:09
	only in Jesus of Nazareth or the biblical record.	12:12
	The discovery of ancient manuscripts or Dead Sea Scrolls	12:17
	or more accurate translations are repudiated.	12:21
	The wisdom and experience of scholars and saints	12:25
	down through the centuries are rejected	12:28
	on the ground that it is not for man to tamper	12:32
	with the revelation of God.	12:35
	Moses knew better.	12:38
	He knew that the Lord works in manifold ways	12:41
	to communicate his majesty and his love to man.	12:44
	I believe that he would assure us today	12:49
	that the miracles of the laboratory and of outer space,	12:50
	the profound insights civil electronics and psychology	12:55
	have been given to us and to our children	12:59
	by an almighty God,	13:03
	but there is a final clause to the paragraph,	13:06
	a condition and a purpose of God's revelation,	13:11
	that we may do all the words of this law.	13:15
	The goal of learning is not learning itself,	13:21
	nor is it omnipotent power.	13:23
	Much has been revealed to us	13:26
	and much more will be revealed in the years ahead	13:28
	in order that we may effectively fulfill our covenant,	13:32
	in order that we may serve our fellow man,	13:37
	in order that we may recognize	13:41
	and choose the more abundant life.	13:44
	In Moses' own words,	13:48
	the things that are revealed to us	13:49
	are not for the purpose of knowing,	13:52
	and this applies as crucially to theological insight	13:54
	as to scientific discovery,	13:57
	but that we may do.	13:59
	Here we have betrayed the covenant most frequently	14:03
	and most flagrantly.	14:08
	As Protestants, as Democrats, as moderns,	14:12
	we often rebel against external authority,	14:15
	but then, because responsibility seems too heavy	14:19
	for us to bear alone,	14:22
	we shift its weight to heredity or environment,	14:23
	to our genes or our emotional traumas.	14:27
	Occasionally, in pious desperation,	14:30
	we cast our burdens on the Lord,	14:33
	not in any attitude of loving trust,	14:35
	but in the belief that he is far away and unconcerned,	14:38
	or ought to shoulder the blame for the mess we are in.	14:41
	"Ah, no," says wise old Moses.	14:46
	"This commandment which I command you this day	14:49
	is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.	14:52
	It is not in heaven that you should say,	14:57
	"Who will go up for us to heaven and bring it to us,	15:00
	that we may hear it and do it?"	15:02
	Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say,	15:05
	"Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us,	15:08
	that we may hear it and do it?"	15:11
	But the word is very near you.	15:14
	It is in your mouth and in your heart,	15:17
	so that you can do it."	15:22
	You can do it.	15:26
	No scientific determinism,	15:28
	no philosophical fatalism,	15:32
	no theological predestinarianism	15:34
	can abolish the human experience of freedom	15:37
	or the moral responsibility that stems from it.	15:41
	Family and teachers, the Bible and the church,	15:47
	friends and foes may help to cultivate	15:51
	that inner conscience,	15:54
	but the Word of God is planted in each receptive heart.	15:56
	It is not written in any secret code to mislead us,	16:01
	and God does not ask of anyone the impossible.	16:05
	He asks only that we acknowledge his Lordship	16:10
	over every aspect of our lives.	16:13
	To be sure, that his a radical choice.	16:17
	See, I have set before you this day life and good,	16:20
	death and evil.	16:25
	We need not take the alternatives	16:29
	too literally or materially.	16:31
	In the centuries after Moses,	16:33
	the Jews learned that God's chosen people	16:35
	were often chosen for suffering and sacrifice,	16:38
	rather than for victory and prosperity.	16:42
	On the other hand, we dare not dismiss	16:46
	the symbols of life and death too lightly,	16:48
	for the death which comes to a people who forsake the Lord	16:52
	to follow false gods	16:55
	may be quite literal and quite real.	16:57
	A nation which dies morally, culturally, spiritually	17:01
	will have little power or little concern	17:07
	to resist physical or military death.	17:10
	This choice is a solemn covenant,	17:15
	so solemn that Moses	17:18
	calls on heaven and earth to witness it.	17:19
	It represents a voluntary pledge of allegiance.	17:23
	God does not coerce,	17:27
	but he does warn an inevitable consequence,	17:30
	that if you are drawn away to worship other gods	17:33
	and serve them,	17:36
	you shall perish.	17:37
	The idols of nationalism and racial prejudice,	17:40
	of campus popularity and moral relativity	17:43
	are so transient,	17:48
	so transparent	17:50
	that intelligent beings ought not to be readily deceived.	17:51
	An ancient Hebrew legend records that,	17:56
	back in Ur of the Chaldees,	17:58
	young Abram's father found one of the household idols	18:00
	smashed to pieces,	18:04
	with a telltale sledgehammer lying nearby.	18:06
	He called his son to account,	18:10
	and the boy soberly explained that the big God	18:12
	had gotten angry at the little god, and beaten him to death.	18:15
	"Ridiculous," his father retorted.	18:19
	Didn't Abram know that a plaster figure had no emotions,	18:21
	no strength,	18:25
	no life with which to slay his neighbor?	18:26
	"Then why," asked little Abram, "should we worship him?"	18:30
	Must we wait until our mortal gods of fame and fortune,	18:36
	our worship of sex and success collapse into rubble	18:41
	before we recognize their hollow fraud?	18:46
	Therefore, choose life, pleads Moses,	18:50
	knowing full well, as he remarks soon afterward,	18:54
	that many will turn aside from the way of the Lord,	18:56
	act corruptly, and do what is evil.	18:59
	Therefore choose life.	19:04
	Choose for this new year	19:08
	the values, the standards,	19:09
	the associations, the occupations	19:13
	which God offers,	19:17
	for that means life and length of days,	19:19
	or better yet, richness of days and fullness of life.	19:24
	Moses had spent 40 years	19:29
	and scores of pages in the Old Testament	19:31
	laying down an elaborate code of behavior.	19:33
	Today, we ignore his dietary laws	19:37
	and scoff at long lists of abominations.	19:39
	We even subject the 10 Commandments	19:43
	to critical scrutiny and sometimes reinterpretation.	19:45
	But here at the end of his days,	19:50
	Moses offered a simpler criterion	19:52
	for followers of divine commandments,	19:54
	loving the Lord your God,	19:58
	obeying his voice,	20:00
	and cleaving to him.	20:03
	Obedience here means more than submission to a set of rules,	20:06
	a strict adherence to stern commands,	20:10
	for as we have already seen,	20:13
	the voice of God is not far off,	20:15
	not in heaven or beyond the sea.	20:17
	It is in your heart and mine.	20:21
	Responsibility and freedom are seldom easy,	20:25
	not even for those who misunderstand them as license.	20:29
	But we have the assurance	20:33
	that the obligation is not too hard,	20:34
	that it has been given to us,	20:38
	that it is very near,	20:40
	that we can do it, if we will.	20:44
	In one African tribe,	20:49
	the same word doubles for to hear and to obey.	20:50
	Parents and teachers know full well that in our language,	20:55
	there exists the wide chasm between hearing and obedience,	20:59
	between knowing the right and doing it.	21:03
	That gulf exists in our theological vocabulary	21:07
	and in our ethical response.	21:11
	At the beginning of this sermon,	21:15
	I made reference to the new Broadway hit "Gideon,"	21:16
	which can be found in a rather unlikely place,	21:20
	the December issue of "Esquire" magazine.	21:23
	As a drama, it can great beauty and great force.	21:27
	As an insight into human nature,	21:32
	it represents significant truth,	21:34
	but if an amateur critic may venture an opinion,	21:37
	it goes astray in its fundamental presupposition	21:40
	about the nature of God.	21:44
	Patty Chayefsky implies that for God to be God,	21:47
	to display his authority and his power,	21:51
	it is necessary to nullify man,	21:55
	to deny any meaning or value or freedom	21:58
	for human personality.	22:02
	The playwright is correct, of course,	22:05
	in realizing that no self-respecting man	22:07
	can love that kind of God,	22:10
	no matter how sincerely he may try,	22:12
	Against such a jealous tyrant,	22:16
	the mere affirmation of selfhood, of personal integrity	22:18
	becomes inevitably perverted into pride, ambition,	22:22
	the attempt of man to become God.	22:27
	But that is not the Christian experience.	22:31
	Some of you,	22:36
	intellectually alert or religiously Orthodox, or both,	22:36
	will have noticed by now that the name of Jesus Christ	22:41
	has not been mentioned.	22:44
	Of course not.	22:46
	Moses had not heard of it.	22:47
	Neither had Gideon.	22:49
	But Moses revealed the deeper insight,	22:51
	for Gideon knew only a domineering God,	22:54
	demanding love from his servants,	22:57
	but granting them no freedom.	22:59
	The God of Moses was also a jealous God,	23:02
	a ruler who expected to be obeyed,	23:05
	who rewarded and punished according to his laws,	23:08
	but in offering his people a covenant,	23:12
	he conceded their freedom	23:16
	and their right to accept or reject.	23:17
	Choose life and good and blessing	23:21
	by loving the Lord your God,	23:26
	obeying his voice,	23:28
	and cleaving to him.	23:31
	To the logical Old Testament mind,	23:34
	Moses' God may sound more enigmatic,	23:36
	more inconsistent than Gideon's.	23:38
	After several frustrating attempts,	23:41
	Gideon confesses his inability	23:42
	to love a God who overrode all human emotion and initiative.	23:45
	Moses, on the other hand, clung blindly but loyally	23:50
	to his insistence on a God who could be loved,	23:53
	who could be embraced,	23:57
	who could be obeyed out of faith instead of fear,	24:00
	the kind of a God, in other words, revealed in Jesus Christ.	24:05
	The end of a story,	24:11
	which neither Moses nor Gideon could see,	24:12
	the beginning of the story for every genuine Christian	24:16
	is the conviction that somehow, in inexplicable fashion,	24:19
	God came into human life life to prove his concern for it.	24:24
	He did not come like Gideon's angel, swathed in black,	24:30
	invisible to other mortals,	24:34
	fading away whenever he grew displeased.	24:36
	He did not come to pulverize human personality,	24:40
	to annihilate man's freedom,	24:44
	to force love under penalty of death.	24:47
	Rather, the God of Jesus Christ revealed himself	24:52
	to bring more abundant life,	24:55
	to offer the gift of grace and forgiveness,	24:58
	to bestow unmerited love.	25:02
	The covenant he makes with man	25:07
	presupposes a measure of creativity	25:09
	for the creature as well as the creator,	25:12
	a response of faith to the act of salvation.	25:15
	You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God,	25:21
	as you do at each new year,	25:28
	or each new day,	25:32
	as you do in the sacrament of holy communion,	25:35
	as you do on the threshold of every moral choice.	25:39
	Therefore, choose life,	25:44
	turning to the Lord your God	25:47
	with all your heart and with all your soul,	25:49
	trusting in the assurance which Moses reiterates.	25:52
	Be strong and of good courage,	25:56
	for it is the Lord who goes before you.	25:59
	He will be with you.	26:02
	He will not fail you nor forsake you.	26:05
	Amen.	26:10
	The Lord bless you and keep you.	26:20
	The Lord make his face to shine upon you	26:24
	and be gracious unto you.	26:26
	The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you,	26:29
	and give you peace	26:33
	this day and forever more.	26:35

Item Info

Title:

Creighton Lacy - "Therefore, Choose Life" (January 14, 1962)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4sb4204x

Date:

January 14, 1962

Speaker:

Lacy, Creighton

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0168
ref5542_0i5
uachapelsermaud
duke:627980
dcrau002182
ark:/87924/r4sb4204x
94cbb2bd-747b-449e-b06a-ec5d6c87799d

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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

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Creighton Lacy - "Therefore, Choose Life" (January 14, 1962)

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Creighton Lacy - "Therefore, Choose Life" (January 14, 1962)

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