Robert E. Cushman - "Lift up Your Hearts" (April 13, 1958); Waldo Beach - "The Anatomy of Integrity" (May 4, 1958)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Heavenly Father, as we bring this money | 0:04 |
presented here on the alter for the financial support | 0:07 | |
of our far-flung program, | 0:11 | |
we pray that thou would surround with thy grace, | 0:14 | |
the Edgemont Community Center, | 0:17 | |
the students who study in foreign universities, | 0:20 | |
and our campus religious program here at Duke, | 0:24 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 0:28 | |
(soft piano music) | 0:35 | |
- | Let us pray. | 0:59 |
Oh God may the word | 1:04 | |
which is spoken in this place this day, be thy word. | 1:06 | |
And may it find reception in good and honest hearts, | 1:13 | |
that thy will may be better done among us. | 1:19 | |
And that thy glory be advanced throughout the whole earth, | 1:23 | |
through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. | 1:28 | |
Easter day has come and gone. | 1:39 | |
And today we find ourselves in the afterglow | 1:43 | |
of that great event. | 1:48 | |
Yet every Sunday is the Lord's day. | 1:52 | |
It is as Dr. Cleland said last week, | 1:57 | |
a celebration of Easter all over again. | 2:02 | |
And it has been so from the early church days | 2:07 | |
of the Christian Church. | 2:10 | |
Christian worship is centrally, | 2:14 | |
a celebration of praise and thanksgiving, | 2:17 | |
a time of rejoicing and the resurrection of our Lord. | 2:21 | |
And for this reason, | 2:29 | |
the New Testament is full of doxologies. | 2:30 | |
The doxologies reflect the joyous and triumphant note | 2:35 | |
of early Christian worship. | 2:39 | |
And this note of triumph is echoed | 2:42 | |
in the peerless words of Saint Paul, | 2:44 | |
in that glorious 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians, | 2:49 | |
the sting of sin is death, | 2:54 | |
and the power of sin is the law. | 2:58 | |
But thanks be to God who giveth us the victory | 3:02 | |
through our Lord Jesus Christ. | 3:05 | |
And then the Petrine epistles, | 3:10 | |
which I read to you as the morning lessons. | 3:12 | |
It also takes up the refrain, | 3:16 | |
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 3:19 | |
who according to his great mercy, | 3:24 | |
begat us again unto a living hope, | 3:28 | |
by the resurrection of Christ from the dead | 3:32 | |
unto an inheritance incorruptible, | 3:35 | |
that fadeth not away. | 3:39 | |
No, I do not think that we should allow Easter to slip away | 3:44 | |
and to become lost amidst the insistence | 3:50 | |
and encompassing concerns of our common days | 3:53 | |
without searching further into its meaning, | 3:58 | |
we need its meaning. | 4:01 | |
For Easter we are confronted by the truly momentous event | 4:04 | |
I believe, in our history. | 4:09 | |
An event which has for 2000 years | 4:14 | |
given the controlling perspective | 4:17 | |
and the depth dimension | 4:21 | |
to the life of Western man. | 4:23 | |
It is an event which by its sheer impossibility with men, | 4:29 | |
can only be referred to the wisdom and power of God. | 4:35 | |
And this was what the early Christians | 4:41 | |
were always asserting, | 4:43 | |
that their faith was as Saint Paul declared, | 4:46 | |
"Not in the wisdom of men, | 4:50 | |
but precisely in the power of God and in none other." | 4:53 | |
And therefore, Peter cries aloud, | 5:00 | |
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 5:04 | |
who according to his great mercy, | 5:09 | |
begat us again unto a living hope." | 5:11 | |
Obviously it was which from the beginning, | 5:17 | |
was the substance and content of the doxoogical message | 5:22 | |
of the early Christians. | 5:28 | |
Their faith was not in what was possible | 5:31 | |
according to some general view, | 5:35 | |
some philosophical conception of the universe, | 5:38 | |
some scientific or quasi-scientific conception of things, | 5:41 | |
their confidence rested upon what God had done. | 5:47 | |
God had acted redemptively in the ministry of Christ. | 5:54 | |
Victoriously, paradoxically victoriously | 6:00 | |
in the sacrificial death of Christ. | 6:04 | |
And triumphantly and reassuringly, | 6:08 | |
in the resurrection of Christ. | 6:12 | |
And of these things as Saint Peter declared | 6:15 | |
in the first Christian sermon of these things, | 6:18 | |
we are witnesses they said. | 6:23 | |
Knowing this example, | 6:27 | |
than mysterious configurations of events, | 6:29 | |
to this apostolic community | 6:35 | |
God had shown his hand decisively. | 6:37 | |
In this sublime fragments of man's own history, | 6:42 | |
which at the same time | 6:47 | |
was somehow strangely also God's history, | 6:49 | |
God has manifested his purpose. | 6:53 | |
And it was the purpose to rescue | 6:57 | |
a self destroying human existence | 7:00 | |
from ultimate moral defeat | 7:04 | |
and spiritual stultification and directionlessness. | 7:08 | |
Is it not fitting therefore that the Sursum Corda | 7:18 | |
to be among the most ancient words of Christian worship, | 7:23 | |
Christian common worship. | 7:27 | |
The priest cries out to the assembled congregation, | 7:30 | |
"Lift up your hearts." | 7:34 | |
And out of hearts rejoicing in hope, | 7:36 | |
the people shout back with one accord, | 7:39 | |
"We lift them up onto the Lord." | 7:42 | |
This is the thanksgiving. | 7:46 | |
This is the eucharistia, | 7:49 | |
which is called forth by the events of Easter. | 7:52 | |
And it is Easter with its manifest triumph | 7:56 | |
of the power of righteousness | 8:00 | |
over the power of sin and death, | 8:02 | |
which has its light back upon Christmas and Advent. | 8:05 | |
The people that sat in darkness had seen a great light. | 8:11 | |
Upon those dwelling in the shadow of death, | 8:16 | |
the light had shined. | 8:19 | |
The eternal recurrence, | 8:22 | |
the endless cycle of life and death was broken through, | 8:24 | |
direction was given to human life. | 8:29 | |
It gained dimension and depth and an open end, | 8:33 | |
an open end towards God. | 8:39 | |
And man's feet were guided into the way of peace. | 8:42 | |
And it was now true for these people, | 8:47 | |
that as Saint John the evangelist declared, | 8:50 | |
Christ was the way, and the truth, and the light, | 8:53 | |
for he was the resurrection of the light. | 9:02 | |
Now these things at least suggest if they do not spell out, | 9:09 | |
the kind of hope that long ago burst upon the world | 9:15 | |
and literally revolutionized its structure | 9:19 | |
and men's conception of it's structure, | 9:23 | |
and also men's conception of their destiny. | 9:26 | |
But what about us? | 9:32 | |
Do we pause long enough in the headlong mirage | 9:37 | |
of our daily existence? | 9:40 | |
Our everlasting preoccupation with the things | 9:44 | |
that lie at hand, | 9:47 | |
do we stop long enough really to ask ourselves, | 9:50 | |
what would our world be like, | 9:54 | |
if this hope had never been? | 9:59 | |
Now again, suppose it were just not there, | 10:04 | |
never had been there, | 10:07 | |
a world immersed in its own round of care, | 10:11 | |
unrelieved by hope other than its self would give. | 10:16 | |
A world that knew no acceptance of death in obedience to God | 10:21 | |
and no resurrection as God's responding vindication | 10:27 | |
of that obedience. | 10:33 | |
Well, obviously we would not be gathered here | 10:37 | |
to celebrate the Lord's day. | 10:39 | |
And this magnificent here, these aspiring arches, | 10:43 | |
that have embodied the Christian hope chiseled in stone | 10:49 | |
and others liked them, these would not have been. | 10:54 | |
The world of men we suppose, would still be here, | 11:01 | |
still anxious, still tired of itself, | 11:06 | |
and burdened with the weight of it's own baffled existence. | 11:11 | |
The state might still be winning adherence | 11:17 | |
to a life of world transcending apathy. | 11:22 | |
The oriental religion, | 11:30 | |
might by now have convinced most of mankind, | 11:32 | |
that existence is allusory | 11:37 | |
and certainly devoid of any essential goodness. | 11:39 | |
And certainly the ever recurring apostles of hedonism | 11:44 | |
would be at their old game. | 11:48 | |
Gather ye rose buds while you may. | 11:52 | |
And if the experimental method | 11:57 | |
which came to flower in our 16th and 17th century, | 11:59 | |
if the experimental methods at all that had to birth it, | 12:04 | |
would in his great achievements | 12:08 | |
have been hailed as the Messiah, perhaps, | 12:10 | |
and many would have been worshipers at its shrine. | 12:13 | |
Yes, if the Easter perspective upon human life and destiny | 12:19 | |
had never been given, | 12:24 | |
we may suppose that the world of man, | 12:26 | |
however vastly different its history, | 12:29 | |
would still be here. | 12:32 | |
Still restlessly questing, and doubtless. | 12:36 | |
Still just as reluctant to receive God's answer | 12:40 | |
as it is now to receive and accept | 12:45 | |
the one that has been given. | 12:47 | |
And that answer is the perfect obedience of Christ's cross, | 12:51 | |
and God's decisive indication of that obedience | 12:57 | |
in the resurrection. | 13:00 | |
It is possible. | 13:04 | |
Is it possible? | 13:06 | |
A lot of pride. | 13:09 | |
Men are willing to receive any answer | 13:11 | |
to the riddle of existence | 13:14 | |
they do not contrive for themselves. | 13:16 | |
And in that event, | 13:21 | |
will they have to be satisfied | 13:24 | |
with no adequate answer at all? | 13:27 | |
So it behooves us, in the Christian tradition, | 13:34 | |
it behooves us to consider the possibility | 13:40 | |
that an answer has been given and received. | 13:44 | |
And that is visible sign is the unbroken | 13:49 | |
and continuous line of Christian history within is straight | 13:52 | |
and Christian faith and Christian witness tell the truth. | 13:59 | |
It is almost impossible for us who are | 14:06 | |
whether we will or no inheritors | 14:10 | |
of the Christian view of life and the world. | 14:12 | |
It is virtually impossible for us to divest ourselves | 14:14 | |
of our religious and intellectual inheritance, | 14:21 | |
and so to view the world as really devoid of the gospel, | 14:25 | |
really devoid of the gospel. | 14:30 | |
Yet it was out of such a world, | 14:35 | |
a world to which the gospel had not yet come. | 14:38 | |
It was out of that world | 14:42 | |
that the first Christians were born, | 14:44 | |
born into a new world. | 14:46 | |
And it was a new birth. | 14:51 | |
A birth into a world of expanded and extended horizon. | 14:55 | |
A world suddenly and unexpectedly glorified. | 15:03 | |
And as the rendering of the clouds | 15:11 | |
lets the light of heaven shine through, | 15:12 | |
so the world of human existence | 15:15 | |
was denominated and given meaning | 15:17 | |
as light was shed upon it by the ministry | 15:20 | |
and the resurrection of Christ. | 15:23 | |
And Mark puts it, | 15:28 | |
"The veil of the temple was rent | 15:30 | |
and God's purpose was no longer hidden | 15:35 | |
in the inscrutable darkness of the Holy of Holies." | 15:39 | |
And the sun of righteousness had arisen | 15:45 | |
with healing in his wing. | 15:47 | |
And for those of us who share in this Christian perspective, | 15:50 | |
the doxology of Peter | 15:55 | |
is the suitable word of praise and thanksgiving, | 15:56 | |
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ | 16:01 | |
who begat us again unto a living hope | 16:06 | |
by the resurrection of Christ from the dead | 16:11 | |
unto an inheritance incorruptible." | 16:16 | |
Now, if you are still with me, | 16:23 | |
you will be asking or ought to be asking | 16:28 | |
what is the special nature of this hope? | 16:31 | |
And you will be happy it has to be answered | 16:37 | |
that it takes the whole of the New Testament to tell, | 16:39 | |
and the apostolic fathers, | 16:46 | |
and the whole of church history, | 16:50 | |
and it even takes you, to tell | 16:55 | |
what that hope is. | 17:00 | |
The Pete's Ryan doxology is a confession, a confession, | 17:05 | |
and it does venture to frame | 17:13 | |
the nature of this hope in a word. | 17:16 | |
The content of the hope | 17:21 | |
is said to be an inheritance incorruptible. | 17:23 | |
But in order to grasp what is meant | 17:31 | |
this inheritance has, I think I'm sure, | 17:33 | |
to be contrasted with its opposite, | 17:36 | |
an inheritance corruptible. | 17:41 | |
An inheritance corruptible. | 17:45 | |
This is the really deep going contrast | 17:49 | |
that finds expression in all serious efforts | 17:53 | |
to uncover, to lay bare | 17:58 | |
to understand the crisis in human life, | 18:00 | |
from the opening chapters of Genesis | 18:04 | |
to Melville's Moby-Dick | 18:06 | |
or Dostoyevsky's Crime and Cunishment. | 18:08 | |
It stands disclosed. | 18:13 | |
This antithesis stands disclosed | 18:15 | |
equally in the tragedies of Sophocles | 18:18 | |
or in that stark tragedy of today | 18:21 | |
that broke into the headlines last Easter Sunday morning, | 18:24 | |
"Cheryl Crane is held on charge of murder | 18:31 | |
in a terror driven impulse to protect her mother | 18:36 | |
from the impending violence of an outrage lover." | 18:40 | |
That's the story. | 18:48 | |
Was it ever clearer in Ezekiel's words | 18:53 | |
that the sins of fathers and mothers | 18:56 | |
are visited upon their children. | 18:58 | |
In the tangled mesh of ignominious deeds | 19:03 | |
we become involved and we involve others | 19:06 | |
and sin in genders sin. | 19:09 | |
We have an inheritance corruptible. | 19:14 | |
On the one side at the new sheet, there are the captions, | 19:18 | |
"The Lord is risen." | 19:22 | |
Christians celebrate Easter. | 19:24 | |
Tar Heels praise the risen Christ. | 19:27 | |
And on the other side on the same page in sharpest contrast, | 19:31 | |
is the inheritance corruptible, | 19:37 | |
"Lana Turner's daughter slays mother's suitor." | 19:41 | |
But corruption does not always display itself so plainly. | 19:50 | |
And we turn to an inside page, | 19:55 | |
to learn that the Presbyterian church general assembly | 20:01 | |
is under pressure from within the church, | 20:04 | |
to reverse its too liberal position on the race issue. | 20:08 | |
And then there is the fact which is open to everybody here, | 20:17 | |
that every effort of university faculties | 20:24 | |
to get reconsideration of policies | 20:27 | |
governing admission to the university, is frustrated. | 20:29 | |
We have, and there is, an inheritance corruptible. | 20:41 | |
And I think Saint Paul May be honored in the thesis | 20:49 | |
that the wages of sin is death, | 20:52 | |
but that the free gift of God, | 20:57 | |
to those who are not too arrogant to receive it | 20:59 | |
is eternal life. | 21:01 | |
And this is what the doxology exalts in, | 21:05 | |
as the Christian knows himself to begotten to a living hope | 21:08 | |
an inheritance incorruptible that fadeth not away. | 21:14 | |
But I do not know that the pure joy of this inheritance | 21:21 | |
can really be grasped, | 21:25 | |
by an age that estimates the goods of life | 21:28 | |
in terms of the satisfaction of desire, | 21:31 | |
conveniences, and Cadillac, and dual exhausts. | 21:36 | |
Or in terms of better things | 21:44 | |
for better living through chemistry. | 21:47 | |
An inheritance incorruptible | 21:52 | |
is not likely to touch us deeply. | 21:54 | |
Those of us who are mainly engrossed in the pursuit of goals | 21:57 | |
inherited and purveyed to us by a culture | 22:02 | |
that rebels in the unexamined life | 22:07 | |
and glories in standard brands. | 22:09 | |
And so we are yet to acquire the inheritance corruptible. | 22:16 | |
And this as Plato, | 22:22 | |
even Plato, the pagan philosopher, well knew, | 22:23 | |
this man's first habitation. | 22:29 | |
We become the prisoners of the cave. | 22:33 | |
The cave we fashioned for ourselves. | 22:35 | |
The cave of our fabricated realm of ends. | 22:39 | |
And so long as this is unshaken and intact, | 22:43 | |
and despite the wings of a divine or discontent, | 22:47 | |
which even Plato knew, | 22:50 | |
we content ourselves with a system of meanings | 22:52 | |
that organizes itself into a pattern, | 22:55 | |
largely determined by unscrutinized | 22:59 | |
and tyrannical interests, | 23:02 | |
which we chance to have. | 23:04 | |
And therefore it is not often in any generation, my friend, | 23:09 | |
especially in prospering times, | 23:15 | |
that men are brought to race with sustained seriousness | 23:19 | |
the question, "What after all | 23:22 | |
is the meaning of this round of days, | 23:24 | |
this human existence of ours?" | 23:27 | |
Either we are prone to assume we have the answers | 23:31 | |
and all the neat cliches of our time, | 23:35 | |
or else we resolutely evade the ultimate question. | 23:38 | |
For a long while now we have been inclined to say, | 23:45 | |
only questions we can answer a lot of things we can, | 23:49 | |
with a certain kind of method. | 23:54 | |
And we call that science. | 23:56 | |
And we have had some real confidence from those answers. | 23:59 | |
But it is a brave man | 24:05 | |
who can really face the question and stay with it. | 24:08 | |
Where does life come out? | 24:12 | |
It is a brave man, or else it is a man at bay, | 24:15 | |
and under the constraint of necessity, | 24:20 | |
a man like my Macbeth, faced with a dreadful outcome | 24:22 | |
of his violent experiment in self determination, | 24:26 | |
who in his frustration asks | 24:32 | |
and then spits out his vituperative answer | 24:36 | |
about life's meaning, | 24:39 | |
"It is full of sound and fury signifying nothing." | 24:41 | |
And so he had made it an inheritance corruptible. | 24:48 | |
But for most, however, | 24:55 | |
it is seemingly possible to postpone | 24:57 | |
confronting the ultimate question of life's meaning | 25:01 | |
with any seriousness, | 25:04 | |
until the shadows of life's little day | 25:06 | |
began to close about us. | 25:08 | |
And we can no longer dismiss the fact, | 25:11 | |
that as the Psalmist said, | 25:14 | |
"All flesh is grass. | 25:15 | |
And as the flower of the field so it flourishes | 25:17 | |
and the wind passes over it and it is gone." | 25:22 | |
Then it is no longer possible | 25:27 | |
to defer the question of life's meaning. | 25:31 | |
Here's all the world a stage | 25:36 | |
and all the men and women only players | 25:39 | |
who have their exits and their entrances. | 25:42 | |
If so what is the plot? | 25:47 | |
Is it a farce? | 25:51 | |
Is it a comedy? | 25:54 | |
Or is it a tragedy on relief? | 25:56 | |
And who is the plot? | 26:00 | |
And the hour of vans extremity, | 26:03 | |
whether in the expectation of death or in the certainty | 26:08 | |
that he has irremediably botched | 26:12 | |
and disfigured the canvas of his life | 26:15 | |
sometime if he is fortunate. | 26:18 | |
The ultimate questions confronts of man | 26:22 | |
in it's dark inescapability | 26:25 | |
and all the palliatives of the herd, | 26:27 | |
and all the pseudo securities of graceful living, | 26:31 | |
they come as nothing. | 26:34 | |
Now what does the Christian answer? | 26:40 | |
That's why I was preaching this sermon, or trying to. | 26:47 | |
The Christian answer to the ultimate question | 26:53 | |
about the drama of life, | 26:57 | |
and of human history, | 27:00 | |
is given in the startling pronouncement, | 27:05 | |
"He is not here. He is risen." | 27:10 | |
And it is this which is echoed | 27:16 | |
in all the doxologies of the New Testament | 27:17 | |
that find in this display of God's sovereign power. | 27:22 | |
The only ultimate answer to the ultimate question | 27:28 | |
and man's hope. | 27:32 | |
Blessed be God therefore, | 27:35 | |
who according to his great mercy, begat us again, | 27:37 | |
unto a living hope, | 27:43 | |
unto an inheritance incorruptible, | 27:45 | |
that fadeth not away. | 27:49 | |
And if we marvel at the unfaltering, the vibrant, | 27:51 | |
and the exalting faith of the ancient church, | 27:57 | |
which was able to produce markers, | 28:01 | |
then we should remember that the resurrection was to them, | 28:05 | |
not only an objective deed of God, | 28:10 | |
it was also something in which men participated | 28:14 | |
so that it was to them the source of transformation | 28:19 | |
at newness of life. | 28:24 | |
It was the ground of transition | 28:26 | |
from an inheritance corruptible | 28:29 | |
to one that was incorruptible. | 28:32 | |
The resurrection meant death to sin, and new life. | 28:35 | |
According to Saint Paul its fruits, you know them. | 28:40 | |
Its fruits were love joy, peace, long suffering, | 28:43 | |
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. | 28:50 | |
And in these fruits of the spirit, | 29:00 | |
the church possessed already, | 29:03 | |
an earnest of the resurrection life. | 29:06 | |
As fellow sufferers with Christ, Christians were United | 29:10 | |
to the undying life of God | 29:14 | |
that intruded itself into the midst of time. | 29:17 | |
For them the resurrection then was not only a spectacle | 29:22 | |
to behold with astonishment or unbelief. | 29:26 | |
It was the hand of God extended to man and his extremity, | 29:31 | |
the hand, which they grasped. | 29:35 | |
And then too, | 29:41 | |
we should remember that the world they knew | 29:43 | |
was still God's world. | 29:49 | |
How strange? | 29:51 | |
It was in his keeping, how morrow? | 29:55 | |
And if he was not deprived of his sovereignty, | 30:01 | |
the creation was God's creation | 30:05 | |
and subservient to his purpose. | 30:07 | |
The so-called laws of nature had not been codified by men | 30:10 | |
to contest God's sovereignty. | 30:15 | |
An order of the world there was, | 30:19 | |
but it was God's order and at God's disposal. | 30:22 | |
And since it was of his making, | 30:26 | |
it was subject to his purpose. | 30:29 | |
And his purpose was the freedom and emancipation of man | 30:32 | |
from stultification of life. | 30:38 | |
And the first Christians, | 30:41 | |
not only shared the resurrection life, | 30:43 | |
they discovered in the match list ministry of Jesus, | 30:47 | |
perfected in his death and glorified in his resurrection, | 30:52 | |
the divine pattern which gave its meaning | 30:57 | |
to the riddle of human existence. | 31:00 | |
In this fragment of history, man's history, | 31:04 | |
the Christ history, the meaning of all history, | 31:08 | |
suddenly for them came into focus. | 31:12 | |
It was disclosed decisively in God's vindication | 31:16 | |
of the practical obedience of the cross. | 31:22 | |
And Jesus himself had prepared their understanding. | 31:27 | |
He had taught them, | 31:33 | |
that he who would save his life, shall lose it, | 31:35 | |
but he who loses it for God's sake, shall find it. | 31:39 | |
This our Lord had done. | 31:46 | |
He had placed life back into the hands of him who gave it | 31:49 | |
and with whom there can be no losing it. | 31:55 | |
And this is our opportunity also | 32:00 | |
where there is death to sin, | 32:06 | |
to all that is contrary to God, | 32:09 | |
there there is union with God, | 32:12 | |
and where there is union with God, | 32:14 | |
there is life everlasting. | 32:17 | |
Therefore, lift up your hearts. | 32:25 | |
Amen. | 32:32 | |
Let us pray. | 32:35 | |
Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead, | 32:44 | |
our Lord Jesus, | 32:48 | |
that great shepherd of the sheep, | 32:50 | |
through the blood of the everlasting covenant, | 32:53 | |
make you perfect in every good work to do his will, | 32:57 | |
working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, | 33:02 | |
through Jesus Christ, | 33:07 | |
to whom be glory forever and ever. | 33:10 | |
- | About this time of year, | 33:32 |
a curious anomaly shows up over in Allen building. | 33:35 | |
At the admissions office, | 33:42 | |
is a cluster of eager, scrubbed youth, | 33:45 | |
who are models of decorum and propriety, | 33:49 | |
whose one apparent aim in life | 33:54 | |
is to be admitted to Duke University. | 33:56 | |
While down the hall, at the Dean's office, | 34:00 | |
is another cluster of youth, | 34:05 | |
who are nervous for a different reason. | 34:08 | |
They've gotten into some kind of trouble, | 34:12 | |
by some violation of community regulation. | 34:15 | |
And what's curious here is the reversal. | 34:20 | |
After such an enormous effort, | 34:24 | |
expended by them and their parents to get in, | 34:27 | |
some students, once in, | 34:32 | |
seem to spend their time devising ways to get shipped out. | 34:35 | |
But this is only a kind of symptom, | 34:42 | |
and it applies only to a small minority. | 34:46 | |
Of a problem arising on many, a university campus, | 34:52 | |
the problem of student integrity. | 34:58 | |
It may not be easily visible under hearts and flowers. | 35:03 | |
And perhaps it's not quite polite | 35:09 | |
to air it on a festive occasion | 35:12 | |
like mother-daughter weekend. | 35:16 | |
And it may be that deans and house counselors | 35:19 | |
are the ones immediately and harshly aware of this. | 35:22 | |
But it affects us all, who are members, | 35:29 | |
one of another in this community, | 35:33 | |
in which what each of us does in little or big ways, | 35:38 | |
strengthens or tears the fabric of our common life. | 35:43 | |
Now the trouble is that among a good number of students, | 35:52 | |
there seems to be a kind of habit | 35:56 | |
of casual irresponsibility. | 35:58 | |
A kind of moral slovenliness, | 36:03 | |
a way of clipping coins and cutting corners | 36:07 | |
across the lawns of honesty. | 36:12 | |
It shows up in common destruction of property, | 36:16 | |
in little discourtesies and inconsiderateness, | 36:21 | |
in elaborate time wasting, | 36:27 | |
in cheating on examinations and papers, | 36:31 | |
in infractions of rushing rules, | 36:35 | |
in all the ancient dull devices of window breaking | 36:40 | |
and sign painting, that somebody has to clean up, | 36:45 | |
in all the tricks of beating the classroom racket, | 36:50 | |
and in some recent tragic incidents, | 36:55 | |
which are very sobering indeed. | 37:01 | |
And one difficult feature of this picture is that, | 37:07 | |
when a student is called | 37:10 | |
for this kind of community irresponsibility, | 37:13 | |
he sometimes displays no particular sense of trouble | 37:18 | |
or remorse even beneath his toughly exteriors. | 37:23 | |
"I just happened to get caught." | 37:28 | |
He's apparently developed no built-in conscience | 37:33 | |
by which he measures his own action. | 37:37 | |
And from the rest of us, who don't get caught, | 37:41 | |
but somehow don't like it, | 37:47 | |
the response is generally a bewildered tolerance, | 37:50 | |
"Live and let live. | 37:55 | |
It's none of my business. | 37:59 | |
I'm my brother's keeper?" | 38:02 | |
Such a shrugging tolerance | 38:06 | |
is more often a polite name for inner uncertainty, | 38:08 | |
that a respect for conscience is differences. | 38:13 | |
There's no intention here of a sociological study | 38:20 | |
of juvenile delinquency on Methodist flats. | 38:23 | |
Artists suggest that this is kind of a Gothic | 38:30 | |
or Georgian's kid role. | 38:35 | |
(congregation laughs) | 38:39 | |
As a matter of fact, | 38:41 | |
a breakdown of student integrity | 38:44 | |
is an American college phenomenon, | 38:46 | |
probably less troublesome here than elsewhere. | 38:50 | |
But what is important, | 38:55 | |
and so far as we do have this nagging worry around the edge, | 38:58 | |
is to probe first into the fly, | 39:03 | |
what's the inner source of this moral deterioration | 39:06 | |
and hence the ties conscience. | 39:13 | |
One root cause, probably the main one, | 39:19 | |
lies in the ideal that is strong among us, | 39:25 | |
the hero image, who personifies our cherished values, | 39:30 | |
the values too of our culture, | 39:37 | |
in a world in which appearances are made everything, | 39:40 | |
where the packaging is more important than the product. | 39:46 | |
The first doctrine of our heroes creed, | 39:52 | |
is a profound belief in justification by adjustment. | 39:56 | |
Above all, he seeks to fit in, to conform, | 40:03 | |
to be accepted by the crowd, | 40:07 | |
to be one of the boys. | 40:11 | |
He is educated in all the social skills, | 40:14 | |
all the business graces, | 40:20 | |
whereby he can make his way through fraternity connections | 40:22 | |
in the organizational jungle he confronts after college. | 40:26 | |
And here and hereafter, | 40:32 | |
he aims to be a cool operator, | 40:35 | |
a smoothie, | 40:40 | |
a perfectly round edge. | 40:42 | |
The word smooth is an exact adjective. | 40:46 | |
No rough edges. | 40:51 | |
No angularity. | 40:54 | |
And the opposite is a square, | 40:58 | |
who is outside man, | 41:02 | |
because he doesn't fit, too edgy. | 41:05 | |
An extremely square square is called, | 41:11 | |
I understand, a cube. | 41:16 | |
(congregation laughs) | 41:19 | |
And this is a fate worse than death. | 41:21 | |
This hero image affects our moral life at every turn. | 41:29 | |
Because moral choices are made by the simple criteria | 41:33 | |
in what will fit in. | 41:36 | |
We always act to please our public, our friends. | 41:39 | |
And what we do in private are only rehearsals | 41:44 | |
for our next public appearance. | 41:48 | |
Our inner self-worth then is only a kind of echo | 41:52 | |
of the crowd's voice. | 41:56 | |
Perhaps this gives us one clue at least, | 42:01 | |
to the kind of moral confusion, | 42:05 | |
which leads into moral irresponsibility. | 42:07 | |
For if adaptability is the rule of life, | 42:13 | |
then how do you act for different audiences, | 42:18 | |
different publics? | 42:23 | |
Or when your public is pickle, | 42:27 | |
is what's expected by the gang in the dorm | 42:32 | |
or by another group at the Methodist students center, | 42:35 | |
and another by the Dean's office, | 42:40 | |
and maybe in the back of my mind, | 42:44 | |
by those folks back home. | 42:47 | |
Or at least I may have experienced some minor twinge | 42:51 | |
of conscience in certain circumstances where I'll say, | 42:54 | |
"Oh, if my dear old mother could see me now." | 42:58 | |
Suiting these different publics, it's difficult, | 43:04 | |
calls for quick change acts. | 43:10 | |
A symbol for this common situation might be a weather vane, | 43:14 | |
which is long on adaptability, | 43:20 | |
but short on inner resolution. | 43:22 | |
And is to be consulted only for the prevailing winds. | 43:27 | |
Perhaps a better symbol is the chameleon, | 43:33 | |
the animal who changes his color, | 43:37 | |
according to the color he's on. | 43:40 | |
The notorious chameleon who perished in the attempt | 43:45 | |
to traverse a scotch flood, | 43:48 | |
(congregation laughs) | 43:52 | |
is really a kind of symbol | 43:55 | |
for the Duke student who often loses his soul | 43:59 | |
trying to traverse the Scotch flood of college. | 44:02 | |
The problem resolves itself | 44:08 | |
into a problem of accountability. | 44:11 | |
To whom or to what am I ultimately accountable? | 44:15 | |
And the answer to this question | 44:23 | |
will decide the answer to the question, who am I? | 44:25 | |
What is the center of myself? | 44:28 | |
The college answer seems to be, the crowd. | 44:32 | |
I am made in the image of the crowd. | 44:37 | |
Social pressure compels my action. | 44:42 | |
But since the crowd is a chorus of conflicting voices, | 44:47 | |
I always find myself divided and uncertain, | 44:52 | |
double minded, lacking an inner, sure, single criteria. | 44:57 | |
And the end result usually, | 45:05 | |
is to do as the others do only more so | 45:07 | |
to outdo the neighbor in being unholier than thou. | 45:12 | |
To be more, one of the boys, | 45:18 | |
than all the other boys. | 45:23 | |
And as this calls for cheating on exams to beat the racket. | 45:27 | |
Oh, not as a regular thing, but just in this pinch, | 45:33 | |
then it's all right. | 45:40 | |
If this calls for making nocturnal infernal rackets | 45:42 | |
in the dorm, | 45:46 | |
then that's what's to do and out to do. | 45:49 | |
If this be something of the anatomy of duplicity, | 45:55 | |
which lies beneath our habits of easy virtue, | 46:00 | |
then what's the way of achieving moral integrity, | 46:05 | |
sort of steady reliability? | 46:09 | |
Which is as good in act as in word, and promise. | 46:14 | |
Which treats campus property, and the self, | 46:20 | |
and the neighbor, with consideration. | 46:25 | |
Which carries through on a committee job. | 46:31 | |
All of the qualities which maintain the quality | 46:36 | |
of our common life. | 46:42 | |
How do you create integrity? | 46:44 | |
Some would go at it outwardly, | 46:50 | |
say, "There ought to be a law, | 46:52 | |
let's tighten up on restrictions, | 46:55 | |
more severe penalties, | 46:58 | |
closer proctoring, | 47:01 | |
more campus cops, | 47:05 | |
more traffic lights on Myrtle drive | 47:08 | |
and more purity lights on east campus." | 47:13 | |
(congregation laughs) | 47:16 | |
Now, while it's plain enough | 47:21 | |
that some kind of outer legislation is necessary, | 47:24 | |
legalism doesn't get at the problem at all. | 47:29 | |
It never creates integrity. | 47:34 | |
In fact, it makes matters worse. | 47:38 | |
And this is the curse of the law. | 47:41 | |
Because in setting up boundaries and fences | 47:44 | |
and rules and punishments and fines, | 47:46 | |
it enhances the lure of the forbidden. | 47:49 | |
Any law is an invitation to see how far I can come | 47:55 | |
to the edge of the law without breaking it. | 47:59 | |
Set up a system of cuts, first cuts. | 48:06 | |
And most everybody will take pains | 48:10 | |
to be sure to use up all their cuts, to be law abiding. | 48:12 | |
(congregation laughs) | 48:18 | |
All that legalism can do is to set the outer boundary | 48:21 | |
that cannot produce the integrity | 48:24 | |
which is obedience to the unenforceable, | 48:27 | |
which is true and faithful when no one is watching. | 48:32 | |
A Christian prescription for irresponsibility, | 48:40 | |
the way to integrity is both very simple and very subtle. | 48:45 | |
Integrity, Christianity would say, | 48:53 | |
is the fruit of the sense of living in the presence of God, | 48:58 | |
A Lord transcendent of the crowd, | 49:04 | |
but inexorable and inescapable, | 49:08 | |
closer than breathing | 49:13 | |
further than the uttermost parts of the sea, | 49:16 | |
unto whom all hearts are open, | 49:21 | |
all desires known from whom no secrets are hidden. | 49:23 | |
For Christian ethics, | 49:31 | |
the prime dialogue of the self is not with other selves | 49:33 | |
but with a divine self, | 49:38 | |
with encountered in privacy and in public, | 49:41 | |
but who does not judge by appearances, | 49:46 | |
who is the unseen proctor of the human heart. | 49:50 | |
It is first to him that we are accountable. | 49:56 | |
He is our real public. | 50:01 | |
And justification in his sight is our real peace. | 50:06 | |
This is the Lord of the Psalmist, of our morning's lesson. | 50:14 | |
Laura Dhaka searched me and known me. | 50:20 | |
Thou knowest when I sit down | 50:25 | |
and when I rise up. | 50:27 | |
Thou discernest my thoughts from afar. | 50:30 | |
Thou searchest out my path and my lying down | 50:34 | |
and art acquainted with all my ways. | 50:39 | |
This is the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. | 50:44 | |
Who's running battle with legalism, the laws, | 50:50 | |
was in the name of inward righteousness, | 50:57 | |
which gives arms secretly obedient to it's hidden Lord | 50:59 | |
who sees in secret | 51:06 | |
and who rewards in secret. | 51:07 | |
The ground of integrity is the awareness of a living | 51:12 | |
and morally serious God. | 51:15 | |
For integrity means singleness, wholeness, | 51:19 | |
is over against division, duplicity. | 51:25 | |
And if our duplicity arises out of our attempts | 51:31 | |
to justify ourselves to many voices in the crowd, | 51:33 | |
to be obedient to different Lords | 51:38 | |
or different sectors of our existence, | 51:42 | |
then at the heart of integrity | 51:47 | |
is obedience to a single Lord, | 51:50 | |
sovereign of all the sectors of our existence. | 51:53 | |
In attempting to understand what integrity is, | 52:00 | |
we would do well to take a second look | 52:05 | |
at the Puritan culture | 52:09 | |
and the Puritan character | 52:12 | |
which lie not many generations back | 52:14 | |
in our immediate heritage. | 52:18 | |
The word Puritan does not have much charm | 52:22 | |
with Joe college weekend in sight. | 52:28 | |
It tells a sniffling kind of legalism | 52:33 | |
of moral's fussiness, | 52:37 | |
from which a Duke student is quite glad to be emancipated. | 52:41 | |
To the organization man on campus, | 52:46 | |
whose flat topped and well-heeled | 52:52 | |
the Puritan looks like a square. | 52:56 | |
But there was something in the Puritan character, | 53:01 | |
which even its critics acknowledged | 53:07 | |
and which organization man seems to lack. | 53:10 | |
That is a kind of built-in integrity. | 53:15 | |
He was a person of principle, | 53:21 | |
of scrupulous and tender conscience. | 53:24 | |
He would do what he thought was right | 53:29 | |
whether or not anybody on earth was looking | 53:32 | |
or anybody approved. | 53:35 | |
If you study pure arts and culture | 53:41 | |
you will discover that the sinews of his integrity | 53:43 | |
were a sense of living under the awesome majesty | 53:46 | |
of a divine eye, | 53:50 | |
to whom he was daily and finally accountable. | 53:54 | |
No Dean's office. | 53:59 | |
No dormitory regulation to hold in line | 54:01 | |
but an inner discipline, | 54:05 | |
which knew itself weighed and judged | 54:07 | |
by the Lord of the universe. | 54:10 | |
As the Puritan, Jeremy Taylor wrote, | 54:14 | |
"Nothing rules a man in private, | 54:18 | |
but God and his own desires." | 54:23 | |
But these give laws in a wilderness | 54:28 | |
and they accused in a cloister. | 54:32 | |
Note that this trend social source of conscience | 54:39 | |
is not anti-social in results, | 54:43 | |
exactly the opposite. | 54:46 | |
From the vertical awareness of accountability to God, | 54:50 | |
follows consideration for community, for property, | 54:54 | |
for one's own self. | 54:59 | |
For the God who is encountered | 55:03 | |
is the God who requires justice and mercy, | 55:06 | |
not the fugitive and cloistered virtue, | 55:10 | |
but a public integrity. | 55:14 | |
It is spontaneously considerate | 55:18 | |
and sensitive to human need and variation, | 55:22 | |
as a kind of reflex action of faith. | 55:27 | |
And it treats property, buildings, lawns, and gardens, | 55:33 | |
with a sense of trusteeship, | 55:40 | |
because property is sacred to God for human use. | 55:42 | |
But now in our midst and in our hearts, | 55:51 | |
this position would be countered by the good Freudian | 55:56 | |
or the free man of the 20th century. | 56:02 | |
He won't buy this line. | 56:05 | |
Sounds much too dark, too narrow, negative. | 56:08 | |
"What conscience?" he asks. | 56:14 | |
But a twinge of the diaphragm, | 56:17 | |
a cerebral vestige of our ancestors alarm. | 56:21 | |
Who wants to feel that he lives under the Google-ish eye | 56:28 | |
of some staring God? | 56:33 | |
Who wants to be haunted by the terrifying eyes | 56:35 | |
like those in the face in the top of the window | 56:39 | |
over the radar? | 56:43 | |
He will say, | 56:46 | |
"Let's get our kids out from under such super ego, | 56:48 | |
be free to be ourselves." | 56:52 | |
The Christian idea of theonomous integrity is I think, | 56:56 | |
wiser than the autonomous freedom of man on his own | 57:00 | |
or by a strange turn. | 57:06 | |
It is the autonomous man who ends up in tyranny. | 57:12 | |
The crowd self is anxious, | 57:18 | |
head ridden by the conflicting demands of his public. | 57:23 | |
Christian integrity is glad and free | 57:29 | |
because obedient to a single unchanging Lord. | 57:35 | |
It's free from crowd dictation. | 57:41 | |
It's course is not set by immediate wind or waves, | 57:45 | |
but by the sure stars which lie beyond. | 57:53 | |
It is freed from the curse of the law, the rules, | 57:59 | |
because it measures itself by the law of love | 58:05 | |
and is the fulfillment of the law, | 58:11 | |
against which Saint Paul says, "There is no law." | 58:14 | |
Christian integrity in short, | 58:20 | |
is not itself the end but the fruit of a life lived | 58:24 | |
from out of a deep center. | 58:30 | |
The center of obedience to a God | 58:34 | |
who requires one thing only, love. | 58:36 | |
This love takes a different turn. | 58:43 | |
Here it means courtesy to the maid | 58:47 | |
in the dormitory corridor. | 58:52 | |
There, it means respect for grass, | 58:55 | |
or a reserve book, | 59:00 | |
or the opposing team. | 59:03 | |
Here it means a refusal to cheat on an exam. | 59:07 | |
So no one but God notices the refusal. | 59:12 | |
There it means fair for the person of the date | 59:18 | |
who is not a body to be made, | 59:26 | |
but a self to be honored. | 59:30 | |
Integrity is not legalism. | 59:35 | |
It cannot prescribe ahead of time | 59:38 | |
what's to be done or not done. | 59:40 | |
It can only prepare for decision. | 59:44 | |
But the one thing needful is a heart which can say, | 59:47 | |
"Search me oh God and know my heart. | 59:52 | |
Try me and know my thoughts | 59:58 | |
and see if there be any wicked way in me. | 1:00:02 | |
And lead me in the way everlasting." | 1:00:06 | |
Words, which can come to every campus decision | 1:00:12 | |
with the prayer so often repeated within this chapel | 1:00:21 | |
and forgotten outside in the sight of the crowd. | 1:00:28 | |
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart | 1:00:35 | |
be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, | 1:00:42 | |
my strength and my Redeemer. | 1:00:49 | |
Let us pray. | 1:00:57 | |
Now unto him, | 1:01:09 | |
that is able to keep you from falling | 1:01:10 | |
and to present you faultless, | 1:01:14 | |
before the presence of his glory, | 1:01:16 | |
with exceeding joy, | 1:01:19 | |
to the only wise God our savior be glory and majesty, | 1:01:22 | |
dominion and power, both now and ever more. | 1:01:27 |
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