William Crompton Bennett - "What Threatens You?" (August 11, 1974)

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	(upbeat piano music)	0:03
-	Let us prepare our hearts and minds,	8:54
	for the worship of God, let us pray.	8:57
	Oh God of peace, who has taught us	9:07
	that in returning and rest, we shall be saved	9:11
	in quietness and confidence shall be our strength.	9:15
	By the might of life spirit lift us we pray thee,	9:21
	into thy presence where we may be still and know again,	9:26
	that thou art God.	9:33
	In this hour of worship grant us the amendment of life	9:37
	a far perspective on near events	9:45
	and the strength and consolation of thy Holy Spirit, amen.	9:51
	♪ Praise to the God the Almighty the king of creation ♪	10:05
	♪ All might, so great for me is my eternal salvation ♪	10:15
	♪ Glory to Him now to His eternal glory ♪	10:26
	♪ Join me in my house of salvation ♪	10:35
	(upbeat piano music)	10:46
	We come into the presence of the Holy one of Israel,	13:46
	anxious over many trivial things,	13:51
	blind to the needs of neighbor near and far,	13:56
	quick to blame others and excuse ourselves	14:02
	sinners who deface the very image of God in us.	14:08
	Let us therefore in honest contrition,	14:14
	join in the prayer of confession. Let us pray.	14:18
	We confess oh God, our lack of commitment to a better world.	14:25
	Our desire for gasoline and electricity and luxury,	14:32
	more than our love for people's lives and needs,	14:38
	are indifference in the midst of crisis in our country,	14:42
	our fear of change and our blind obedience to power.	14:48
	Our fatalism that all politics are immoral and unjust	14:53
	and our inability to fulfill our good intentions,	15:00
	have mercy on us oh God, we pray, amen.	15:04
	Oh God of grace,	15:31
	Whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting,	15:34
	grant us we pray thee thy forgiveness,	15:39
	for those sins which corporately and privately,	15:44
	we hold in thought now before thee,	15:48
	and the cleansing assurance of thy pardon,	15:53
	through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.	15:59
	(upbeat piano music)	16:05
	(singing inaudibly)	16:29
	The scripture lessons are selected versus,	18:45
	from the Psalm 27,	18:52
	and from the eighth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans.	18:55
	"The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?	19:05
	The Lord is the stronghold of my life,	19:13
	of whom shall I be afraid?	19:17
	One thing have I asked of the Lord,	19:21
	that will I seek after?	19:25
	That I might dwell in the house of the Lord	19:29
	all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord,	19:31
	and to inquire in His temple.	19:38
	I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord	19:43
	in the land of the living.	19:48
	Wait for the Lord, be strong.	19:52
	Let your heart take courage.	19:56
	Yes. Wait for the Lord."	20:00
	And from Paul's letter to the Romans,	20:09
	"who shall separate us from the love of Christ?	20:15
	Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine,	20:20
	or nakedness or peril or sword?	20:24
	As it is written for thy sake we are being killed	20:30
	all the day long.	20:33
	We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.	20:36
	Know in all these things,	20:40
	we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us,	20:44
	for I am sure that neither death, nor life,	20:50
	nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present,	20:55
	nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depths,	21:00
	nor anything else in all creation,	21:06
	will be able to separate us from the love of God,	21:10
	in Christ Jesus our Lord. Here the lesson ends.	21:16
	(upbeat piano music)	21:23
	Let us join in the affirmation of faith.	22:05
	We are not alone.	22:13
	We live in God's world.	22:16
	We believe in God who has created and is creating,	22:18
	who has come in the true man Jesus,	22:25
	to reconcile and make new,	22:28
	who works in us and others by His Spirit. We trust Him.	22:32
	He calls us to be in His church, to celebrate His presence,	22:39
	to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil,	22:45
	to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen,	22:52
	our judge and our hope in life, in death,	22:56
	in life beyond death, God is with us.	23:02
	We are not alone. Thanks be to God.	23:07
	The Lord be with you.	23:12
Congregation	And with your spirit.	23:15
-	Let us pray.	23:16
	Let us pray first in thanksgiving.	23:34
	Almighty God, the author of all life,	23:41
	and the guardian of all creation,	23:47
	Whose law reaching to the farthest star,	23:51
	and to the innermost depths of the heart of man,	23:57
	is the drive and the stay of the whole universe.	24:03
	We give thee thanks in You for thy gifts,	24:12
	which we enjoy at thy hand,	24:17
	for the holiness of thy beauty in earth and sky,	24:23
	and all the moving mystery of creation,	24:28
	for the beauty of thy holiness,	24:32
	in the lives of those who live by thy commandments,	24:36
	we would be grateful.	24:42
	Grant unto us we pray thee.	24:46
	Such a quickened sense of thy majesty,	24:50
	that we may learn to walk our ways with a reverent joy,	24:56
	and deal with our neighbor in justice and mercy,	25:04
	that in us thy laws may be honored and thy name be praised,	25:10
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	25:17
	Let us pray for our nation.	25:25
	Almighty God, Lord of the nations,	25:32
	who's inexorable law it is that we are to do justly,	25:39
	love, mercy, and walk humbly before thee.	25:44
	We pray for our nation, in time of crisis,	25:51
	and loss of nerve.	25:58
	Renew in our public life we pray thee,	26:04
	The sense of integrity and civility,	26:08
	that words may be trusted,	26:15
	and deeds done accountably to thee and the common good.	26:18
	Grant to our new leader of state courage and calm,	26:28
	and open candor and a tender conscience,	26:37
	that our ship of state may move out of troubled waters,	26:45
	onto the sure course of our true destiny again,	26:52
	and that we may enjoy the blessings of responsible freedom.	27:01
	These things we ask in the spirit of Him who taught us	27:11
	now to pray.	27:18
	Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.	27:21
	Thy kingdom come.	27:28
	Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	27:30
	Give us this day, our daily bread.	27:35
	And forgive us our trespasses,	27:38
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	27:41
	And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,	27:45
	for thine is the kingdom and the power,	27:51
	and the glory forever, amen.	27:55
-	I ask your indulgence for changing the direction	28:18
	of the sermon from the topic listed this morning.	28:26
	The events of the past 10 days,	28:32
	rather preclude the personal nature of the topic	28:35
	listed in the bulletin,	28:41
	and seem to me at any right to call for a larger perspective	28:44
	let us pray.	28:50
	Almighty and most merciful God,	28:54
	grant us we beseech thee, the height and the light,	28:57
	and the insight of an honest faith,	29:04
	required for a true perspective,	29:08
	through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.	29:12
	Some of us think that we have lived,	29:26
	through the most ruthless of times, ruthless.	29:30
	A great many of us see ourselves as cultural floaters,	29:36
	cut loose from the past, drift us into a blank future.	29:43
	We even call ourselves many of us now people,	29:51
	for that is all we firmly believe in, now.	29:57
	And indeed if one has no joy in one's heritage,	30:04
	and no faith in one's destiny, all one has left to go on	30:09
	is whatever's going on in the present.	30:15
	Which is the flimsiest of flimsies.	30:21
	No wonder therefore, so many of us run threatened.	30:25
	So many of us run skittering and helter-skeltering about	30:32
	like daffy dragonflies, trying to find,	30:37
	"where the action is," whatever that means.	30:41
	And therefore we have so very little to keep us steady.	30:45
	No believable past to inform us,	30:49
	no believable future to inspire us,	30:52
	just the shaky present to flounder around in,	30:55
	looking for something called love, joy, peace,	31:00
	three floating words that have lost their old meanings	31:05
	and haven't found any new ones.	31:09
	Therefore, Therefore many of us are threatened,	31:12
	by what we believe to be an era of making due,	31:18
	making out, a present tense time, a throwaway time,	31:24
	a scary time, calling for even seemingly demanding	31:30
	its multifarious and therefore uncontrollable narcotics.	31:36
	A time with small hope for,	31:43
	and even less desire for eternity,	31:45
	especially if there's any chance of eternity being a rerun,	31:49
	of our time.	31:55
	Now if it is viewed our time,	31:58
	if it is viewed as a cheap, junky, trashy time,	32:02
	with no heritage worth speaking of,	32:07
	and no destiny worth living for it is small wonder,	32:09
	That so many of us feel so threatened so much of the time.	32:15
	But I say to you here this morning,	32:21
	there have always been others.	32:22
	There have always been others who have refused to join in,	32:26
	the floating, the sort of flat some and jet some set.	32:30
	They have always been others who refuse to join in	32:36
	the I nothing but a trash bin routine.	32:39
	They have always been others who have said	32:43
	and said it very steadily,	32:45
	I come from a noble past. I do.	32:48
	I am headed into a purposeful future. I am.	32:52
	And I have both the intelligent faith and the common sense,	32:56
	to make it come true.	33:02
	Now because of these cuify old fashioned,	33:08
	but quality matters.	33:11
	We still have a most livable world and a viable hope.	33:15
	Indeed the last 10 days of American history,	33:22
	have confirmed my confidence in that.	33:26
	In short from the start,	33:30
	they have always been the clerical crowd	33:33
	the swill set on the way down the drain.	33:35
	Indeed there's not a century,	33:40
	in which you could not have joined them in the sewer,	33:43
	that is nothing new to mankind.	33:46
	But, But there's the other crowd too.	33:48
	And it's a moral choice you and I have to make.	33:54
	Old Testament to man's choosy this day whom you will serve,	33:59
	is as contemporaneous as it ever was.	34:04
	Indeed any day for the past some thousands of years,	34:07
	has been a perfectly good day to be down and out.	34:10
	And conversely any day, including and especially today,	34:15
	is a perfectly good day for courage to start anew.	34:22
	And the choice is as clear and open as it ever was	34:28
	both for persons and for the nation.	34:33
	You see there has never been a time	34:38
	when someone wasn't swan singing,	34:40
	you know stop the world I want to get off,	34:43
	or possibly carrying a placard reading	34:46
	"tomorrow is canceled, signed God,"	34:50
	or agreeing with old G "The Whoop" song,	34:55
	that we are indeed creatures with ferocious ideas,	34:58
	and criminal prejudices which we have inherited	35:02
	from our Barbara's forefathers,	35:05
	or agreeing with Mark Twain who said that	35:08
	he wasn't worried about the future,	35:11
	because with politicians like ours,	35:12
	it can't possibly get any worse,	35:14
	or agreeing with Huxley Senior,	35:17
	who put it all succinctly in just three words,	35:20
	as he was most capable of doing.	35:23
	"Man he asked, man he's damned period."	35:26
	Well, what about it so?	35:35
	Is there no worthwhileness in our humanity?	35:37
	No stability to it?	35:40
	The pronouncements of world statesmen often seem uncertain.	35:42
	There is schemes for world peace,	35:45
	peace with anything resembling justice and honor,	35:49
	seem fraught with uncertainty.	35:51
	There is a great deal of anxiety	35:54
	about the outcome of the human race, ecologically,	35:56
	genetically, economically et cetera, et cetera.	36:00
	And always where there is anxiety,	36:05
	and you know this in your personal experience,	36:07
	where is anxiety there is inevitably indecision.	36:09
	As soon as you are all anxious and worried,	36:13
	you are indecisive, you cannot make up your mind,	36:16
	and wherever there is anxiety and indecision,	36:19
	there is inevitably fatigue.	36:22
	When you are worried and indecisive	36:25
	you are soon weary, bone weary,	36:27
	and you take yourself off to the physician,	36:31
	or the psychiatrist.	36:34
	Now then what is true for you?	36:38
	For your family is true for the great family of nations.	36:40
	That is to say too many hot and cold running wars	36:44
	for too long, Too many broken treaties,	36:47
	too many accords turning into discords.	36:51
	Too many small time crimes	36:56
	and too many scandals in high places.	36:58
	"So we are tired," writes the poet.	37:04
	"We are tired, we cannot reach the top.	37:07
	We are tired. We want to stop."	37:10
	Now I tell you, there is a sense of tiredness in the world.	37:15
	We are in it.	37:17
	And anxiety and indecision and fatigue lead where?	37:19
	Lead inevitably to despair.	37:25
	Anxiety and indecision and fatigue,	37:30
	they are always the forerunners of despair.	37:33
	To the feeling that we've will never reach the promise land,	37:38
	and that every struggle only brings a new defeat.	37:41
	One of our contemporary playwrights,	37:45
	wrote in a letter to a friend,	37:48
	"sometimes life wearies the hell out of me.	37:50
	And what about the christians?	37:58
	You do remember the christians? That's us.	38:01
	Or rather they are we, we are they.	38:05
	Therefore do we christians change our old hymn,	38:09
	rise up oh men of God to serve the king of kings?	38:13
	Do we change it into something like,	38:16
	sit down you old fools? You can never of a thing.	38:18
	Well it is a choice, a moral choice that you have to make.	38:23
	We can sing that swan song if we want to,	38:28
	we can believe that we are nobody, going nowhere,	38:30
	and join the crowd going down the drain if we like,	38:34
	and many will, and many do.	38:37
	Act on the assumption as a person or as a nation,	38:42
	that you are on the way down and out, and you are.	38:47
	But let me tell you something,	38:55
	that if you decide on despair.	38:57
	If you decide on despair let me tell you an open secret.	39:01
	If you decide on despair, history is against you.	39:07
	As a graduate student told me a couple of years ago	39:12
	when I was sort of doomsing all around the church,	39:15
	he said, "you listen to me buddy boy,"	39:19
	graduate students have a way of talking to you like that.	39:22
	"You listen to me buddy boy," he said,	39:25
	"if the human race were ever going to run out on itself,"	39:28
	he said, "it missed a fine fat chance,	39:31
	at the collapse of ancient Babylon,	39:35
	or the defeat of Egypt, or the fall of Greece,	39:38
	of the sack of Rome."	39:39
	But somehow he said,	39:42
	"the race has not listened to you doomsday boy,	39:43
	and has kept right on running,	39:46
	and isn't likely to quit in our time."	39:47
	And of course he was right.	39:53
	Even at so later date as the 15th century,	39:56
	the Nuremberg Chronicle.	39:58
	And there's a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle,	40:00
	over in the rare book room.	40:02
	I hope you will go and look at it, if you haven't already.	40:03
	In the 15th century, the Nuremberg Chronicle,	40:07
	as many of you recall,	40:10
	left only a very few blank pages at the end of his history,	40:11
	just five or 10 blank pages.	40:15
	For he thought the poor old world of the 15th century,	40:19
	was about all over with and a page or two would suffice	40:22
	for all the history there was to be ripped.	40:26
	But no, the ailing world struggled on	40:31
	through the 16th to the seven 17th century.	40:36
	The 17th century which it would seem to me,	40:39
	saw more revolution and persecution and prejudice and plague	40:42
	more general blood letting and lawlessness,	40:45
	than the Nuremberg Chronicle I ever dreamed of.	40:48
	Indeed things were so bad in the 1650s,	40:52
	our ancestors who hadn't already died,	40:55
	should logically have all committed suicide.	40:57
	But here we are to prove they did not. They survived.	41:01
	And they did survive because they have always been	41:07
	men and women of courage, of honesty, of integrity,	41:12
	men and women who never give up,	41:20
	Who live and always hope against hope,	41:23
	so that for example in Leicestershire in 1653,	41:27
	there was a man who did a very curious thing.	41:31
	He built a church.	41:35
	There was no time for church building, but he built a church	41:38
	and there is a bronze marker to this day,	41:40
	to his memory which reads,	41:42
	"sacred to the memory of sir Robert Shirley Barnet,	41:47
	whose singular praise it was,	41:52
	to have done the best of things, in the worst of times,	41:55
	and hooked them in the most calamitous."	42:00
	To have done the best of things, in the worst of times,	42:05
	and hook them in the most Calamitous.	42:08
	You see, they have always been these Robert Shirleys.	42:10
	They have always been good men of sound mind	42:16
	and honest behavior, politicians included among them.	42:20
	They have always been aristocrats of the spirit	42:25
	plain ordinary people and world statesmen,	42:30
	aristocrats of the spirit, not created by the image makers,	42:33
	not promoted by the public relations people,	42:38
	but simple honorable men and women,	42:42
	because they were what they were,	42:46
	doing the best things in the worst of times,	42:50
	and filled with hope even in the midst of corruption,	42:54
	and or calamity.	42:57
	They have been like stubborn old Saint Paul,	43:00
	"redeeming the time just because the days are evil."	43:04
	They have like Robert Browning's happy warrior,	43:11
	been able to greet the unseen with a cheer	43:14
	As for the church.	43:22
	Well as for the church they have always of course	43:24
	been Voltaires ready to pronounce the church doomed or dead.	43:27
	But every age has provided for the church.	43:34
	Every age has produced men and women	43:38
	of lively and true character,	43:43
	based on an honest and humble faith who revived the church.	43:47
	I recall, let me recall to you	43:52
	a little bit of your church history.	43:54
	When the church was skeptical and worldly,	43:57
	and indifferent to the poor,	43:59
	there have always been those who brought it back	44:01
	to the Lordship and to the life of Jesus Christ.	44:04
	There were the Cluniacs in the 11th century	44:08
	and the 11th century was a bad century.	44:10
	There were the distortions in the 12th century,	44:14
	and the 12th century was bad century.	44:16
	They were the Franciscans in the 13th	44:19
	the brotherhood of the common life in the 15th	44:20
	there was Rasmus in the 16th that were Lutheran,	44:22
	there were Calvin, and the church is as alive and well,	44:24
	and living today around the world,	44:28
	in the midst of ferment and ceaseless change,	44:31
	as it has ever been.	44:34
	And as for the great world out there,	44:39
	as for this great world in which we live,	44:43
	there is the expanding universe of man himself.	44:47
	There is the never ending frontier of man's science,	44:53
	and of the human spirit.	44:58
	There is the never ceasing literary and artistic creation	45:00
	of the human mind.	45:05
	And to cap it all there is I do most firmly believe,	45:08
	there is very much alive today,	45:14
	among the plain people of the world,	45:18
	as among most of its leaders,	45:20
	a growing sense of the true brotherhood of nations.	45:21
	So one can be threatened and go down the drain,	45:30
	if one jolly well wants to.	45:32
	But I do indeed think as a christian and as a world citizen,	45:36
	that this is a great time to be alive.	45:43
	That this is as challenging a moment as in a century,	45:49
	in man's so short history.	45:54
	I only wish I could live a little longer,	45:58
	just to see, to see.	46:03
	Though I hope the promised land will always be	46:08
	just around on the bin that man's striving will never cease.	46:13
	Therefore if you are young,	46:21
	remember the words of words worth about another age?	46:25
	Bliss said he, it was to be alive,	46:30
	but to be young was very heaven.	46:34
	Well for the young I think to be alive today is very heaven.	46:41
	And if you are growing old hold onto the words of the aging,	46:47
	Victor Hugo, "winter is on my head," said the old man,	46:54
	"but spring," spring he said, "is ever in my heart."	47:01
	Now the christian can well do this,	47:11
	for we remember the words of the Sisson Cohan,	47:16
	"lift up your hearts."	47:21
	We lift them up unto the Lord.	47:26
	So may it be, Let us pray.	47:34
	Before Almighty God,	47:48
	let us remember the words of the 27th Psalmist,	47:52
	wait on the Lord. Be of good courage,	47:57
	and He shall strengthen thine heart.	48:02
	Wait I say on the Lord.	48:05
	And before Almighty God,	48:11
	let us recall the words of St. Paul,	48:12
	"for I am persuaded that nothing,	48:16
	neither life nor death, nor things present,	48:21
	nor things yet to come.	48:26
	Absolutely nothing shall ever be able separate us	48:30
	from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."	48:36
	In the name of the Father, and of the Son,	48:45
	and of the Holy Spirit, amen.	48:49
	(upbeat piano music)	48:57
-	Accept oh Lord these gifts of our hands,	1:00:50
	together with the renewed courage of our hearts,	1:00:54
	as token of our citizenship in thy kingdom,	1:00:59
	through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.	1:01:04
	(upbeat piano music)	1:01:09
	Now may the peace of God, which passeth all understanding	1:05:52
	keep your hearts and minds,	1:05:57
	in the knowledge and love of God,	1:06:00
	and of the son Jesus Christ our Lord	1:06:03
	and the blessing of God Almighty Father, Son and Holy Spirit	1:06:07
	be among you and remain with you always, amen.	1:06:13
	♪ Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen ♪	1:06:24
	(bell ringing)	1:07:28
	(upbeat piano music)	1:07:42

Item Info

Title:

William Crompton Bennett - "What Threatens You?" (August 11, 1974)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4vt1mq9p

Date:

August 11, 1974

Speaker:

Bennett, William Crompton

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0720
ref6639_am0
uachapelsermaud
duke:628013
dcrau002692
ark:/87924/r4vt1mq9p
abdc470b-6912-4e29-8b1b-bfa35f1fba33

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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William Crompton Bennett - "What Threatens You?" (August 11, 1974)

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