Edgar C. Reckard - "Good News Is No News" (April 17, 1966)

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	(cool music)	0:03
Preacher	May I ask your attention to two brief passages,	0:34
	one from the old Testament, one from the new.	0:38
	In the 10th and 11th chapters of the book of prophet Isaiah,	0:42
	behold, the Lord the God	0:47
	of host will loop the bows with terrifying power,	0:49
	the great in height will be hewn down	0:54
	and the lofty will be brought low.	0:58
	He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an ax,	1:01
	and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.	1:06
	There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,	1:11
	and the branch shall grow out of his roots.	1:16
	And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.	1:20
	And a part of the passage that was read	1:27
	as our new Testament lesson from the 24th chapter	1:28
	of the gospel according to St. Luke,	1:31
	they remembered his words,	1:36
	and returning from the tomb they told all this to the 11	1:38
	and to all the rest.	1:42
	Now it was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna,	1:45
	and Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them,	1:48
	who told this to the apostles.	1:52
	But these words seemed to the apostles an idle tale,	1:55
	and they did not believe them.	2:00
	In the name of the father, and of the son,	2:04
	and of the holy spirit, Amen.	2:06
	This is as you know perfectly well,	2:12
	the Sunday after Easter often referred to as low Sunday.	2:15
	referring not only to the attendance	2:21
	at churches and chapels,	2:24
	but more especially to the spirits of men.	2:25
	And if we take seriously the ancient wisdom	2:29
	of the liturgical year,	2:32
	we shall in this season following Easter	2:34
	give our thought a particular direction.	2:37
	for in lend preceding Easter,	2:41
	we are reminded the time is appropriately one	2:44
	in which our minds and spirits are directed	2:47
	toward the meaning of suffering, and defeat,	2:51
	and death, in the midst of life and all its turbulence.	2:54
	In the weeks following Easter,	3:00
	the liturgical calendar reminds us,	3:03
	we ought to attend to, and celebrate the meaning	3:06
	of life and all its turmoil,	3:11
	in the midst of evil, and defeat, and dying.	3:16
	So these two passages I have read	3:23
	and to which I direct your thoughts,	3:26
	remind us that it is God's perennial nature	3:28
	to produce the evidences of new life in the midst	3:32
	of the appearances of death.	3:37
	For after the storm that destroys the forest we are told,	3:41
	a shoot comes forth from the stump.	3:45
	That strikes me with a special vividness this year	3:50
	because I have been trying	3:53
	to deal with a eucalyptus stump in my garden,	3:55
	which persists in putting up shoots in spite	3:58
	of all my efforts to kill it out.	4:01
	And it looks like I may have to devastate	4:03
	that whole area in order to get rid of it.	4:05
	But this is the imagery that the prophet puts	4:08
	in our minds here, that out of the remnants	4:11
	of the stumps that are left after a storm,	4:14
	God sends up new shoots.	4:17
	But the new Testament lesson,	4:20
	reminds us of how obtuse faithful people often are	4:22
	in discerning that God is about his perennial business	4:27
	of producing new life in the midst of destruction.	4:32
	So in this new Testament Easter story all the males,	4:38
	all of the especially privileged	4:43
	and trained disciples of Jesus,	4:45
	regarded the news of the resurrection as an idle tale.	4:47
	And it was left to the women to take seriously	4:52
	the possibility of a radical and indeed unique thrust	4:55
	of God's purpose in man's history.	4:59
	Did you ever think of how humiliating it is	5:03
	that the early church recognized,	5:07
	indeed it had no alternative to recognizing.	5:11
	That the principle first witness to the resurrection,	5:14
	was a highly psychotic woman of questionable reputation.	5:18
	Unfortunately, it was not the last time	5:23
	that it has been left to such as this	5:27
	to recognize the points at which God purposes are at work.	5:29
	Well, this whole line of thought in my mind was developed	5:35
	as I considered coming back here to this university	5:38
	and this state today.	5:43
	You will know from your programs that my home now is	5:46
	in Southern California, in the Los Angeles megalopolis.	5:50
	Whereas a way 'cause recently said,	5:54
	one can get up every morning of the year,	5:57
	throw open the windows and listen to the bird's cough.	5:59
	(congregation laughing)	6:02
	But in spite of the fact that Southern California	6:08
	is now my home, I count this part of the United States	6:10
	and especially the Appalachian foothills	6:15
	as one of my spiritual and intellectual homes.	6:18
	And along with this area, I count the British Isles,	6:22
	in particularly England, as a second beloved intellectual	6:26
	and spiritual home.	6:32
	Last year my family and I were on sabbatical,	6:35
	once again, living in Britain a country of so many friends,	6:38
	the birthplace of one of our sons.	6:41
	And as I thought of coming here,	6:45
	our experience last year reoccurred.	6:46
	And many of the observations we had made seemed	6:52
	to be a mirror image of what I knew I would be returning	6:55
	to when we returned to this country and especially	7:00
	as I return to this part of the United States.	7:03
	As far as the life of the churches in the British Isles,	7:07
	and the life of the churches in this country are concerned,	7:11
	they present one now with mirror images of each other.	7:14
	In England, the church is legally established,	7:19
	but now it is largely disestablished	7:24
	as far as the cultural and intellectual life	7:28
	of the country is concerned.	7:30
	In the United States and especially in this part	7:33
	of the United States, the church is legally disestablished,	7:35
	but it is still largely, culturally,	7:40
	and intellectually established.	7:42
	That is to say we still expect the forms and concepts	7:45
	of our culture to be informed by Christian ideas and values.	7:49
	I invite you now to reflect with me for a few moments	7:56
	on this contrast I have presented to you.	8:00
	But let me share with you first briefly,	8:04
	a suggestion of the rest of what I want to say.	8:06
	The first thing I want to say to you in simple form is this.	8:11
	That the present situation in much of the world,	8:16
	and especially in Western Europe,	8:19
	poses to the life of the church a more serious threat	8:22
	than most of us in this country recognize	8:26
	or like to recognize.	8:30
	It has now become vividly possible that Western culture	8:32
	might become not a reformed Christendom,	8:38
	but a quite different culture altogether.	8:42
	The second thing I want to say to you is	8:47
	that the churches' response to this situation has been	8:49
	in my judgment insensitive and inadequate.	8:53
	The church has failed really to take to account the fact	8:59
	that to most of the Western world,	9:04
	it is no longer true that the Christian faith comes	9:07
	as a release and a joy.	9:11
	For most of the Western world it is now the fact	9:15
	that good news of the gospel is no news.	9:17
	And having reflected in that way,	9:24
	I then want to ask briefly what can be discerned that you	9:26
	and I who try to live as faithful Christian people	9:31
	in this time, and especially in a university community	9:36
	might try to do as Christians.	9:41
	This whole line of thought develops in my mind	9:46
	because one Saturday last when I took a couple	9:48
	of my sons off to do some brass rubbing	9:51
	in a rather out of the way parish church in Oxfordshire.	9:53
	Here we were in an ancient, and beautiful,	9:57
	and once important church that had now fallen	10:01
	into dampness and decay.	10:05
	Near the lectern, the roof leaked a bit	10:08
	and there was water standing on the floor.	10:11
	And the only evidence that any service had been held	10:13
	in the place recently were the partially burned candles	10:16
	on the altar.	10:20
	And as we stood there, my mind went to a poem	10:22
	of a very interesting	10:26
	and I think important contemporary English poet	10:27
	by the name of Philip Larkin,	10:30
	who one day wrote a poem that went like this.	10:32
	He called it "Church Going," and he says,	10:37
	once I'm sure there's nothing going on I step inside,	10:39
	letting the door of thud shut.	10:43
	Another church, matting, seats, and stone, and little books,	10:45
	sprawling of flowers cut for Sunday brownish now.	10:50
	Some brass and stuff up at the holy end.	10:55
	The small neat organ and a tense musty unignorable silence,	10:58
	brewed God knows how long.	11:04
	Hatless I take off my cycle-clips in awkward reverence,	11:07
	move forward, run my hand around the front.	11:11
	From where I stand the roof looks almost new,	11:15
	cleaned or restored.	11:19
	Someone would know I don't.	11:21
	Mounting the lectern I peruse	11:24
	a few hectoring large scale versus, and pronounce,	11:26
	here endeth much more loudly than I'd meant.	11:31
	The echoes snigger briefly.	11:35
	Back at the door I sign the book,	11:37
	donate an Irish sixpence reflecting	11:40
	that the place was not worth stopping for.	11:42
	Yet, stop I did, in fact I often do	11:46
	and always end much at a loss like this,	11:50
	wondering what to look for.	11:53
	Wondering too, when churches fall completely out	11:57
	of use what we shall turn them into.	12:00
	If we shall keep a few cathedrals chronically on show,	12:03
	their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,	12:07
	and let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.	12:11
	Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?	12:15
	A shape less recognizable each week, a purpose more obscure.	12:18
	I wonder who will be the last, the very last,	12:22
	to seek this place for what it was.	12:26
	One of the crew that tap and jot	12:29
	and know what roods-lofts were, some ruin-bibber.	12:32
	Randy for antique or Christmas-addict,	12:36
	counting on a whiff of gown-and-bands	12:40
	and organ-pipes and myrrh.	12:43
	That poem of Larkin, simply reminds us	12:47
	that it has become possible for sensitive	12:49
	and intelligent Englishman,	12:53
	realistically and without bitterness to think	12:57
	of the possibility of an England without the church.	13:00
	And this is rather temperate.	13:06
	On occasion, the attack upon the church and its influence	13:09
	on the culture and thought of England,	13:14
	becomes much more direct.	13:16
	And the church is seen to be not only irrelevant	13:18
	in the long future but dangerous in the immediate present.	13:20
	When critic wrote in a Sunday newspaper last winter,	13:25
	it seems to me that the fundamental difficulty	13:28
	in basing our standards on Christianity is	13:30
	that we are thereby preaching a doctrine of self-sacrifice.	13:32
	The Bible does indeed contain a great deal of wisdom,	13:37
	but to proclaim as a perfect model a man who chose	13:40
	to be crucified for the sake	13:43
	of others does not set a healthy example for society.	13:45
	I believe that the sickness of our presence society is due	13:50
	to the unconscious belief that we must sacrifice ourselves.	13:53
	And so one can read this criticism sweeping	14:00
	and perhaps slightly hysterical claims	14:03
	that the church is responsible for international warfare	14:06
	and for racial injustice.	14:09
	These critics hold that, now the time has come	14:12
	when we must not only contemplate	14:16
	the slow death of the church,	14:18
	but must do all possible to hasten its decay.	14:21
	And this is true not only in England,	14:26
	it has long been true in France, and in Scandinavia.	14:28
	And you must be deaf if you do not hear it	14:33
	to be increasingly true and increasingly loud	14:35
	in the United States.	14:38
	This is all said by the critics of the church ,	14:41
	with an increasing sense of certainty.	14:43
	And for any of us to hold that there is	14:47
	an alternative possibility	14:49
	the future seems to these critics,	14:51
	a mark that one is either a hopeless sentimentalist	14:54
	or a simple fool.	14:58
	The second thing I want to say is this.	15:05
	The response of the church to this situation has all too	15:08
	often been insensitive and inadequate.	15:12
	One must say first that most of the church	15:16
	and most Christian people have simply gone	15:19
	on about their housekeeping and bookkeeping without noticing	15:21
	that it lives in a day when a revolution is demanded.	15:26
	Without noticing that it lives in a day	15:30
	when God's storms break down the mighty trees.	15:32
	And hopefully from the stumps there come up new sprouts.	15:37
	One Sunday last spring,	15:42
	sons and I had been camping near Bath Abbey.	15:43
	And we went into the Abbey for Sunday morning service.	15:46
	Across the nave from me there was a handsome monument.	15:49
	And after the service, I went across to read what it said.	15:52
	And there on the monument it said about the man.	15:55
	His aims were steadfast, his mind original,	15:58
	his work prodigious, the achievement worldwide.	16:02
	His life was ordered in service to God and duty to man.	16:06
	And that was a monument to Sir Isaac Pitman,	16:11
	the inventor of shorthand.	16:13
	Now I tell you to most of the world,	16:15
	it seems that the church has spent	16:18
	its time admiring such achievements,	16:20
	and memorializing such trivial accomplishments	16:23
	in extravagant pros.	16:27
	But even when our response has not	16:30
	been so wildly out of scale as that,	16:32
	it has still been inadequate.	16:35
	We hear a great deal of rather desperate talk	16:37
	about the importance of communication	16:40
	and the improvement of communication.	16:42
	And it has assumed that theologians	16:45
	and preachers have a message that they wish to communicate,	16:47
	which they themselves by	16:51
	and large understand perfectly well.	16:52
	But the truth is,	16:55
	it seems to me that we are all children of our time.	16:56
	Theologians and preachers as well	17:00
	as all the church going people in the non-church masses.	17:01
	And none of us sees the Christian message exactly	17:06
	as it first came into the world.	17:09
	And the first essential step in discussing the problem	17:12
	of communication therefore is always to investigate it,	17:14
	what it really is we want to communicate.	17:18
	And when we start seizing upon that problem,	17:23
	we know that we are in a revolutionary	17:28
	and reformatory situation.	17:31
	In Christian thought,	17:34
	in trying to present to the world what it is	17:36
	that the church believes, we can no longer afford to go	17:38
	on talking about options that are irrelevant	17:42
	and seem to be irrelevant it to the world about us.	17:45
	You probably have heard the story of a little girl	17:50
	who was given in her Sunday school lesson the verse	17:52
	to love one's neighbor as one's self,	17:55
	is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.	17:57
	And she responded not unnaturally,	18:02
	whoever thought it wasn't.	18:05
	And we not only speak in this irrelevant way,	18:09
	but when we come to the very heart of the faith,	18:13
	and begin thinking as we do in this season about with	18:16
	what we want to say to the world about our Lord himself,	18:19
	we speak in ways that are almost certainly misleading.	18:24
	The casual secular ear, heres in our language	18:29
	almost exactly what we do not want it to hear.	18:35
	It hears about an ancient myth of a God who	18:40
	for a short time assumed human guise	18:44
	and moved about mysteriously among men.	18:47
	And we say to them, here is the gospel, take it or leave it.	18:52
	And the world says fair enough, and leaves it.	18:58
	The shape of speaking meaningfully	19:03
	to the world about our Lord must now be one of speaking not	19:06
	in metaphysical language any longer,	19:09
	but of speaking in terms of the problems	19:13
	that make up a satisfying human existence for all men.	19:16
	Well, I've been saying and I leave the point now,	19:23
	that the church simply must adjust its thinking to an era,	19:25
	in which it is no longer the world's judge,	19:30
	it is no longer the world's mentor,	19:34
	it is no longer even its kept priest.	19:38
	Well, what are we as Christian people to do	19:45
	and say in the midst of this rather gloomy picture I've	19:47
	been presenting for the first Sunday after Easter?	19:50
	Well, the first thing I suppose is simply to recognize	19:54
	that this is the quality of our age and accept it as such.	19:58
	One of the happy things is	20:03
	that God does not require others success.	20:05
	He requires faithfulness.	20:08
	And this is going to	20:11
	be a period of failures and frustrations.	20:12
	But it's also a period of exciting possibilities.	20:15
	One English convert to Christianity wrote last year,	20:19
	I cannot imagine a more enjoyable time to be a Christian	20:23
	for while the holocaust is sweeping away much	20:27
	that is beautiful and all that is safe	20:30
	and comfortable and unquestioned.	20:32
	It is relieving us of mounds of Christian bric a brac,	20:34
	and the liberation is unspeakable.	20:40
	And so we live in a time	20:44
	of new stirrings theologically and liturgically.	20:46
	And one of the exciting things	20:49
	about living out one's christian faithfulness	20:51
	in the midst of a university,	20:53
	is that this university community stands	20:55
	on the frontier of the life of the mind,	20:58
	but also of the like of the spirit.	21:01
	And it is here above all else	21:03
	in a community like this that the new shoots	21:05
	of life are up to be discerned and celebrated.	21:08
	In January, in our own chapel in Claremont,	21:15
	we celebrated for the first time there	21:18
	the taze Eucharistic liturgy, the holy communion according	21:21
	to the right of this group of reformed monks in France.	21:24
	And here I as a Presbyterian,	21:29
	and one of my assistants as a congregationalist	21:31
	and the other is an Episcopalian with permission	21:33
	of our churches were celebrating this together.	21:35
	And as we did so, in a right that tried to catch up all	21:40
	it could of Orthodox and Catholic tradition,	21:45
	the sermon was being preached by a Roman Catholic monk.	21:48
	There you see as an exciting possibility.	21:53
	One of the stirrings that give to our time of destruction	21:55
	and defeat some of its possibilities.	21:59
	My own observation for what it is worth to you,	22:04
	is that new meaning of the faith, and new hope and joy come	22:06
	when the renewed life of worship in the Christian community	22:12
	is combined with a renewed life of service.	22:16
	That is to say,	22:20
	if the church is really to be disestablished,	22:21
	then we ask nothing of the world about us,	22:26
	but the right to live.	22:31
	And when we have asked and been given the right to live,	22:34
	then we move into the world to do its work	22:36
	and to meet its need without even making	22:40
	upon it the claim of gratitude.	22:43
	And when that possibility grips us,	22:47
	and first I hope in communities like this,	22:50
	then we shall begin.	22:53
	I am confident to discern the points where the new shoots	22:54
	of hope break through the torn ground.	22:57
	At the end of that poem of Larkins with which I began,	23:05
	he writes this.	23:09
	He's been wondering about who the last person to understand	23:11
	that building will be and he writes,	23:15
	or will he be my representative, bored, uninformed,	23:19
	knowing the ghostly silt dispersed,	23:24
	yet tending to this cross of ground through suburb scrub	23:28
	because it held unspillt so long and equitably,	23:31
	what since is found only in separation.	23:35
	Marriage, and birth, and death, and thoughts of these,	23:38
	for which was built this special show.	23:42
	For though I have no idea	23:46
	what this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,	23:47
	it pleases me to stand in silence here,	23:50
	a serious house on serious ground it is,	23:54
	in whose blent air all our compulsions meet are recognized	23:58
	and robed as destinies.	24:03
	And that much, never can be obsolete,	24:06
	since someone will forever be surprising a hunger	24:10
	in himself to be more serious	24:14
	and gravitating with it to this ground.	24:16
	Which he once heard was proper to grow wise in.	24:19
	If only that so dead lie roundabout.	24:24
	Larkin promises us that there always will	24:29
	be serious people to raise these questions.	24:32
	I myself wonder whether we can even hope for that.	24:37
	But the God of Easter, who brought	24:42
	from the dead the new life in Christ,	24:45
	will bring new life breaking forth	24:50
	in that form or in some other.	24:53
	God grant to us in this season,	24:58
	that the good news of resurrection life breaking forth	25:01
	in the midst of an alien world may not be	25:04
	for us also an idle tale, but the clue to hope and joy	25:06
	in the midst of all that life may hold, of discouragement	25:14
	and defeat in our time.	25:18
	Let us pray.	25:22
	Almighty and merciful father,	25:36
	restore our souls in Jesus Christ.	25:38
	Give us the spirit of him who dwelt among man	25:42
	in great humility and was meek and lowly of heart.	25:44
	Let our love and charity be as abundant as our joy,	25:48
	that our hearts may be tendered to all need.	25:53
	And our hands give freely for his sake.	25:57
	Grant finally that being rooted and grounded	26:01
	in the mystery of the word made flesh, we may receive power	26:03
	to overcome the world, and gain the life eternal,	26:07
	through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.	26:12
	Now into God's gracious mercy and keeping,	26:17
	I commit you the God of peace	26:20
	that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus	26:22
	that great shepherd of the sheep,	26:25
	through the blood of the everlasting covenant	26:27
	make you perfect in every good work to do his will.	26:30
	Working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight.	26:33
	Through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever.	26:38
	Amen.	26:42

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Title:

Edgar C. Reckard - "Good News Is No News" (April 17, 1966)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4wd3v303

Date:

April 17, 1966

Speaker:

Reckard, Edgar C.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0334
ref5873_bhy
uachapelsermaud
duke:628418
dcrau002331
ark:/87924/r4wd3v303
15990b00-0271-48e5-9f1f-daeb448f188b

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Edgar C. Reckard - "Good News Is No News" (April 17, 1966)

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