McMurry S. Richey - "A Tough New Breed of Servant - Minded Christians" (March 28, 1965)
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Transcript
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(soft instrumental music) | 0:04 | |
- | A tough new breed of servant minded Christians. | 0:21 |
Embarrassing as it may be in an academic community, | 0:28 | |
I can no longer footnote those telling words, | 0:32 | |
I've forgotten their source. | 0:36 | |
But the words themselves seem unforgettably indicative | 0:40 | |
of a fresh emergence in our time. | 0:45 | |
A sort of updating of that ancient word, | 0:51 | |
"Behold, I am doing a new thing. | 0:55 | |
"Now it Springs forth, do you not perceive it?" | 0:59 | |
Actually, the original expression was a tough new breed | 1:05 | |
of servant minded ministers. | 1:10 | |
But isn't every Christian, every real Christian | 1:14 | |
a minister, that is a servant for God to man. | 1:19 | |
- | But if authority for that expression is forgotten, | 1:28 |
there's no lack of authority for the theme itself. | 1:32 | |
The Old Testament is gratefully aware | 1:36 | |
of God's creating and redeeming work in the past | 1:38 | |
but even more is it concerned to see and respond | 1:43 | |
to God's new deeds in the living present. | 1:47 | |
And these new deeds involve, especially the servant people | 1:53 | |
of God, for the nations. | 1:59 | |
Climatically the suffering servant, | 2:02 | |
portrayed in those incandescent passages in the latter part | 2:05 | |
of the great book of Isaiah. | 2:11 | |
Thus the sublime prophet of those magnificent utterances | 2:15 | |
could celebrate the glory and awesome majesty | 2:20 | |
of the Lord who created the heavens, spread forth the earth | 2:23 | |
and gives life and spirit to all his people. | 2:27 | |
He could envision the servant of the Lord | 2:31 | |
who in God's spirit would work faithfully, heroically | 2:33 | |
undiscouragingly, till he has established | 2:38 | |
justice in the earth. | 2:42 | |
He could call God's people to become such servants | 2:45 | |
to and praise and enter into God's new redeeming deeds. | 2:49 | |
"I the Lord, I have called you in righteousness. | 2:55 | |
"I have taken you by the hand and have kept you. | 2:59 | |
"I have given you as a covenant to the people, | 3:02 | |
"a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, | 3:05 | |
"to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, | 3:09 | |
"from the prison, those who sit in darkness | 3:11 | |
"Behold, I am doing a new thing. | 3:15 | |
"Now it Springs forth. | 3:19 | |
"Do you not perceive it?" | 3:21 | |
And it was such a conception of amazing new ministry | 3:25 | |
of self-giving discouragingly for the world of man in need | 3:31 | |
that the early church remembered its Lord | 3:38 | |
to have undertaken as he applied to himself | 3:41 | |
another passage from Isaiah. | 3:44 | |
"The spirit of the Lord is upon me | 3:48 | |
"because he has anointed me | 3:50 | |
"to preach the gospel to the poor. | 3:52 | |
"He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives | 3:55 | |
"and recovering of sight to the blind. | 3:58 | |
"To set it Liberty those who are oppressed, | 4:01 | |
"to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." | 4:04 | |
So does a New Testament perceive | 4:08 | |
and respond to the new things God is doing. | 4:11 | |
So does the apostle Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ | 4:15 | |
exalt over the embodiment of God's saving servanthood | 4:21 | |
in Jesus Christ through whom he says, | 4:26 | |
we have received grace and apostleship | 4:29 | |
to bring about the obedience of faith | 4:33 | |
for the sake of his name among all the nations. | 4:35 | |
So does a whole New Testament, fairly throb | 4:38 | |
with passage after vibrant passage, testifying to such faith | 4:42 | |
and faithfulness in service as a servant church | 4:48 | |
of a serving Lord spread the gospel abroad. | 4:53 | |
Can we still today hail God's doing | 4:59 | |
of new things through his people. | 5:05 | |
Do we see God at work calling | 5:10 | |
and sending forth his servant people embodying | 5:12 | |
his spirit in their brave and resolute establishment | 5:17 | |
of justice in the earth, | 5:21 | |
in their serving as a light to the nations, | 5:24 | |
a liberator of man from blindness, darkness, and oppression. | 5:27 | |
Have the people of God become the followers of Jesus Christ | 5:32 | |
who came not to be served, but to serve? | 5:35 | |
To proclaim his liberating gospel in word and deed, | 5:40 | |
that the power of God for salvation | 5:45 | |
may work his new things in the world today. | 5:47 | |
There is no lack of reasons to say no. | 5:53 | |
And honesty calls for us to acknowledge | 5:59 | |
what many a sharp critic and skeptic may thrust. | 6:04 | |
The postwar religious revival seems to be dying down | 6:11 | |
they say, and indeed it does now appear | 6:15 | |
to have been more than superficial. | 6:19 | |
Church membership growth rates are declining. | 6:22 | |
Fewer are entering the ordained ministry. | 6:25 | |
Society seems more unabashedly secular, | 6:29 | |
more resistant to the voice of preachers and churches. | 6:34 | |
Religion some feel is on the retreat | 6:38 | |
before the secular schools and courts. | 6:42 | |
Moral standards of the churches seem more openly | 6:45 | |
and profitably floated. | 6:48 | |
Critics, sharp critics use such terms as dull | 6:51 | |
and irrelevant and stuffy and club like, communion like, | 6:56 | |
for us of the churches, | 7:03 | |
or see us as a burdensome institution | 7:06 | |
rather than his servants of God for his mission | 7:10 | |
to the world of needy men. | 7:14 | |
Indeed a devastating article just recently summed up | 7:17 | |
some of the sociological and psychological research | 7:20 | |
with which we are painfully familiar | 7:24 | |
and showed how the great Protestant Catholic | 7:27 | |
and Jewish movements, which teach love, mercy, | 7:30 | |
justice, equality, inward courage and peace | 7:37 | |
actually had bio research, statistics, | 7:41 | |
more anti humanitarian attitudes and bigotry | 7:47 | |
and hostility and anxiety | 7:54 | |
than those who were not prophetedly religious. | 7:57 | |
Are we really the servant people of God for others? | 8:02 | |
No wonder then that some keen young intellectuals | 8:08 | |
stridently proclaim that Nietzschean doctrine | 8:11 | |
that God is dead. | 8:15 | |
That religion is dead, that the churches are dead. | 8:18 | |
Yet there is more to be said. | 8:23 | |
And this sermon is to say some of that | 8:26 | |
perhaps not so much as a sermon | 8:31 | |
as a sort of counter witness, a yes, but pointing | 8:33 | |
to the perennial new activity of God springing forth. | 8:41 | |
Do you not perceive it? | 8:45 | |
As I was preparing to speak this word | 8:49 | |
that came back to mind an impression | 8:53 | |
from a stirring book just after the Second World War, | 8:55 | |
by an ethically, sensitive, brilliantly, | 9:00 | |
literary, young war time reporter, | 9:04 | |
we know him better now, Eric Sevareid, | 9:08 | |
who put his recollections in a book | 9:12 | |
with an intriguing title, "Not So Wild a Dream." | 9:14 | |
And that title came from a quotation | 9:20 | |
which I vaguely remember something | 9:22 | |
like this, "Published tidings that piece is not so wild | 9:24 | |
"a dream as those who profit by postponing it declare." | 9:30 | |
If that enshrined a more hopeful dream | 9:37 | |
than the troubled present augers, | 9:43 | |
it also signaled the resistant human factors | 9:47 | |
but that's not my main recollection this morning. | 9:53 | |
It was rather that Eric Sevareid returning from wars, | 9:56 | |
horrors, and scenes of desperate human need, | 10:01 | |
found American audiences eager to hear | 10:05 | |
a firsthand report of what was going on, | 10:09 | |
but were quick to turn away into trivial talk | 10:14 | |
when the pathos of human devastation and need | 10:19 | |
threatened their consciences too much. | 10:25 | |
The American people were afraid | 10:29 | |
of being suckers, concluded Sevareid. | 10:32 | |
They could not risk getting involved | 10:36 | |
with the world's hurt. | 10:39 | |
Two comments, first, he was wrong. | 10:42 | |
They did get involved as witness the enormous, unprecedented | 10:47 | |
response to human need in the Marshall Plan | 10:54 | |
and in extensive relief programs, | 11:00 | |
not only by government, but by churches | 11:04 | |
and people to people. | 11:06 | |
Second, there is a remarkably sensitive, ethical concern | 11:09 | |
again today, much like Eric Sevareid's own youthful idealism | 11:15 | |
and hurt over others in sensitivity. | 11:22 | |
A profound growing sense of responsibility. | 11:26 | |
A concern to help, to serve, to do whatever can be done | 11:31 | |
to meet the needs of suffering people. | 11:35 | |
To get involved in service. | 11:38 | |
Granted that she was politicking at the time | 11:42 | |
as everyone else was Lyndon Baines Johnson had a point | 11:45 | |
when she spoke last fall of the volunteer generation | 11:50 | |
with its 10,000 overseas in the Peace Corps | 11:55 | |
and it's 8,000 in Washington in Summer Government Service. | 11:59 | |
Come alive is too good a slogan to waste on a bottle of pop. | 12:04 | |
In the words of Sargent Shriver, the other night | 12:10 | |
discussing beginnings of the anti-poverty program, | 12:13 | |
it's really inspiring to see how the people of America | 12:17 | |
if given a chance will respond to human need. | 12:21 | |
Let us be careful then of too dark a picture | 12:27 | |
but also let us be careful of too sanguine expectations | 12:33 | |
or glib generalizations. | 12:38 | |
Newsweek's recent survey of campus, 65 | 12:41 | |
for all its limitations and trying to characterize | 12:46 | |
several million unique students, | 12:49 | |
reminds us of their variety and warns against seizing | 12:53 | |
on such terms as explosive, | 12:58 | |
twisted, cool, or committed generation. | 13:02 | |
We are not second guessing Newsweek or its severe critics | 13:10 | |
about American students or youth in general, | 13:14 | |
but witnessing today to what some perhaps few | 13:19 | |
are discovering in the way of servanthood | 13:26 | |
as the meaning of their lives | 13:30 | |
and thereby exemplifying the new things | 13:33 | |
of God springing forth again in our time. | 13:36 | |
And it is inspiring to observe young people | 13:41 | |
resolving the glorious though perilous, disorganization | 13:45 | |
and reorganization of adolescent years | 13:51 | |
in the direction of servanthood for others. | 13:56 | |
Shall we specify? | 14:01 | |
There are the Duke students who served in Project Nicaragua, | 14:04 | |
teaching, doing artwork, coaching, music, | 14:09 | |
social service, building a clinic, the Duke doctors | 14:16 | |
and nurses giving their summers there. | 14:21 | |
There are Duke students and many others, | 14:24 | |
ours are simply representative of the hosts, | 14:27 | |
taking on the burdens of justice indeed in Selma | 14:31 | |
and Birmingham or Chapel Hill or Durham. | 14:37 | |
They're young theological students, Negro and white | 14:42 | |
entering into ministry across racial lines | 14:47 | |
or choosing the slums rather than the comfortable suburbs | 14:51 | |
and the high steep churches for their ministry. | 14:56 | |
There are students spending their summer | 15:01 | |
in work camps and community centers, | 15:03 | |
in volunteer tutoring, in work | 15:07 | |
with underprivileged children. | 15:11 | |
There are the North Carolina Fund volunteers | 15:14 | |
even more this year than last about whom one of our Duke | 15:16 | |
student wives, a supervisor said last year, | 15:22 | |
that she had never encountered such an inspiring group | 15:25 | |
of young people in all her life. | 15:29 | |
There are the VISTAs, volunteers in service to America | 15:31 | |
with more volunteering these first five months | 15:35 | |
than even for the Peace Corps in its enthusiastic beginning. | 15:39 | |
They're the countless older people who share the vision | 15:45 | |
and dedication of these young people | 15:49 | |
and the many younger ones who take a like spirit | 15:52 | |
into their own more conventional work or study as servants. | 15:55 | |
But this is a tough new breed of servant minded Christians | 16:04 | |
and of some who would not want the term | 16:11 | |
Christians linked with their names. | 16:13 | |
They are an intellectually tough minded group. | 16:18 | |
Some of them theologically insightful | 16:25 | |
and critical of our traditional terms and concepts | 16:30 | |
seeking for new and better ways of representing | 16:35 | |
the realities we've tried to symbolize, | 16:38 | |
often disturbingly revolutionary. | 16:42 | |
They are an ethically tough yet sensitive crowd, | 16:47 | |
realistic if not at the beginning, they will be | 16:53 | |
when they confront and experience the compromises, | 16:59 | |
the phoniness, the acculturation, | 17:04 | |
and yet the need for a decision | 17:08 | |
and they're ethically and spiritually sensitive enough | 17:11 | |
that they would not want us glossing over what they're doing | 17:15 | |
as if we were unaware that they like us, | 17:21 | |
have mixtures of movies and failures constantly. | 17:25 | |
They are a socially concerned generation in politics, | 17:31 | |
in race reform, in poverty work, in education. | 17:39 | |
They are coming freshly into knowledge | 17:43 | |
of the power structures of our community | 17:46 | |
and the need to work through political life | 17:49 | |
for the securing of rights and justice and change. | 17:54 | |
And they're becoming freshly aware of all the resistance | 17:59 | |
of prejudice and privilege and ignorance | 18:04 | |
including that and those they serve. | 18:11 | |
They are some at least and others will increasingly | 18:16 | |
be a spiritually disciplined | 18:19 | |
and tough generation knowing the depths | 18:22 | |
of need in their own lives, as well as the lives of others. | 18:27 | |
And what we see of God's new deeds, this living God at work | 18:34 | |
in these young people, we see also stirring in our churches | 18:39 | |
as we become unhappily dissatisfied with what we are. | 18:45 | |
And remember that it has been the genius of the church | 18:51 | |
when it was really the church always to be open, | 18:53 | |
to reform, to reconstitution of its inner life | 18:59 | |
and outer service. | 19:05 | |
This is a tough new breed of servant minded Christians. | 19:11 | |
And there are two quotations with which I close | 19:18 | |
that put freshly on our mind the thought | 19:21 | |
and the name of two such representatives. | 19:25 | |
One of them is that disturbing young William Stringfellow | 19:28 | |
who makes his best friends so disturbingly angry. | 19:33 | |
"To become and to be a Christian he says, | 19:38 | |
"is not at all an escape from the world as it is | 19:41 | |
"nor is it a wistful longing for a better world | 19:44 | |
"nor a commitment to generous charity | 19:47 | |
"nor fondness for moral and spiritual values | 19:50 | |
"whatever that may mean nor self-serving positive thoughts | 19:53 | |
"nor persuasion to splendid abstractions about God. | 19:57 | |
"It is instead the knowledge | 20:02 | |
"that there is no pain or privation | 20:03 | |
"no humiliation or disaster, no scourge or distress | 20:06 | |
"or destitution or hunger, no striving or temptation | 20:10 | |
"no wail or sickness or suffering or poverty | 20:14 | |
"which God has not known and born for men in Jesus Christ. | 20:17 | |
"To become and to be a Christian then | 20:24 | |
"is to have the extraordinary freedom to share the burdens | 20:27 | |
"of the daily, common, ambiguous, transient, | 20:31 | |
"perishing existence of man. | 20:36 | |
"Even to the point of actually taking the place | 20:38 | |
"of another man, whether he be powerful or weak, | 20:40 | |
"in health or in sickness, clothed or naked, educated | 20:45 | |
"or illiterate, secure or persecuted, complacent | 20:50 | |
"or despondent, proud or forgotten, housed or homeless, | 20:54 | |
"fair or hungry, at liberty or in prison, young or old, | 21:00 | |
"white or Negro, rich or poor," soul, William Stringfellow. | 21:06 | |
And the other, Dag Hammarskjöld who in his book of markings | 21:13 | |
sort of spiritual autobiography included these words. | 21:20 | |
"I don't know who or what put the question. | 21:26 | |
"I don't know when it was put | 21:30 | |
"I don't even remember answering. | 21:32 | |
"But at some moment I did answer yes | 21:35 | |
"to someone or something. | 21:38 | |
"And from that hour, I was certain that existence | 21:41 | |
"is meaningful, and therefore my life | 21:43 | |
"in self-surrender had a goal. | 21:46 | |
"From that moment, I have known what it means | 21:49 | |
"not to look back and to take no thought for the morrow. | 21:51 | |
"Led by the Ariadne's thread of my answer | 21:56 | |
"through the Labrinth of life, | 21:59 | |
"I came to a time and place where I realized | 22:02 | |
"that the way leads to a triumph, which is a catastrophe. | 22:05 | |
"And to a catastrophe, which is a triumph | 22:09 | |
"that the price for committing one's life would be reproach. | 22:12 | |
"And that the only elevation possible to man | 22:16 | |
"lies in the depths of humiliation. | 22:18 | |
"After that, the word courage lost its meaning | 22:21 | |
"since nothing could be taken from me. | 22:26 | |
"As I continue to along the way, | 22:29 | |
"I learned step by step, word by word, | 22:31 | |
"that behind every saying in the gospels stands one man | 22:35 | |
"and one man's experience. | 22:40 | |
"Also behind the prayer that the cup might pass from him | 22:42 | |
"and his promise to drink it. | 22:46 | |
"Also behind each of the words from the cross. | 22:49 | |
"In our era," he said again, "the road to holiness | 22:54 | |
"necessarily passes through the world of action." | 22:59 | |
Teach us good Lord to serve thee as thou deservest, | 23:13 | |
to give and not to heed the cost, | 23:18 | |
to strive and not to seek for rest, | 23:21 | |
to fight and not to heed the wounds, | 23:24 | |
to suffer and not to seek for reward | 23:28 | |
except knowing that we do thy will. | 23:30 | |
And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 23:34 | |
the love of God, the communion of the Holy Spirit | 23:38 | |
be with all, amen. | 23:44 | |
(bells ringing) | 23:50 | |
(instrumental music) | 24:07 |
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