Preacher Unknown - Good Friday Service Part 3 (April 12, 1968)
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Transcript
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(liturgical music) | 2:46 | |
- | We have something to celebrate. | 4:59 |
God lives, God loves. | 5:02 | |
We are here to say it and to be it to one another, | 5:06 | |
the Lord be with you. | 5:12 | |
Let us pray. | 5:16 | |
The most merciful Lord. | 5:23 | |
We are those who have not wished anything to happen. | 5:26 | |
Many years, we have lived quietly | 5:31 | |
succeeding and avoiding notice | 5:35 | |
living and partly living | 5:38 | |
there have been oppression and lust after power. | 5:42 | |
There have been poverty and affluence. | 5:48 | |
There have been petty discrimination and major injustice. | 5:53 | |
Yet we have gone on living and partly living. | 5:59 | |
We do not wish anything to happen, | 6:05 | |
but now a great fear has come upon us. | 6:10 | |
We are afraid in a fear, which is hard to know, | 6:14 | |
which is difficult to face, which none fully understands. | 6:19 | |
We are not clean. | 6:26 | |
We cannot remove that which has dirtied us | 6:29 | |
not we alone nor the house nor the city, | 6:35 | |
but the whole world is unclean. | 6:40 | |
Our lives are unreal, unreal, and disappointing. | 6:44 | |
The prize is given the essays written, | 6:50 | |
the grades and degrees bestowed, the sympathy shared | 6:55 | |
all has become less real passing into unreality. | 7:02 | |
The end of time has indeed come upon us. | 7:09 | |
It is finished. | 7:13 | |
We admit that this is our life. | 7:18 | |
We call upon thy promise, Oh Lord, | 7:22 | |
to return to those who confess, | 7:25 | |
to create a new clean hearts within us, | 7:29 | |
break through our walls of unreality, | 7:35 | |
bring wholeness to our partial living. | 7:40 | |
Bring hope to our finished lives, | 7:45 | |
bring love and justice to comfort our great fear. | 7:50 | |
We now indeed have something to celebrate. | 7:59 | |
where there is death like that of Martin Luther king, | 8:04 | |
like that of rioting men, | 8:10 | |
there is life of non-violent students | 8:13 | |
and of hardworking negotiators. | 8:19 | |
Where there is mistrust and separation | 8:23 | |
both within our university and beyond, | 8:26 | |
there are now signs of common purpose | 8:30 | |
and action toward full humanity for all men. | 8:34 | |
Where there are words about love and services of worship, | 8:39 | |
there are now bodies on the line and acts of praise and joy. | 8:44 | |
Lord, we receive this new world, this new creation | 8:52 | |
and in response to what we have heard and seen | 8:59 | |
and to what we know ourselves to be. | 9:03 | |
We began a new, we offer ourselves to thee | 9:06 | |
and to the world, which is thy known. | 9:12 | |
Grant us therefore a tenaciousness | 9:16 | |
that will not let go until the final battle closes | 9:19 | |
and a nonchalance | 9:25 | |
that the final battle does not depend on us. | 9:26 | |
These are our prayers | 9:32 | |
in the name of him who gave his life for us | 9:35 | |
and who still lives. | 9:40 | |
Even Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 9:43 | |
Amen. | 9:46 | |
(liturgical music) | 9:53 | |
- | The reading is from gospel. | 13:08 |
According to John chapter 17 and chapter 19, | 13:10 | |
Jesus looked up to heaven and said, | 13:19 | |
Father, the hour has come, | 13:21 | |
glorify thy son that the son may glorify thee | 13:25 | |
for thou has made him sovereign over all mankind, | 13:31 | |
to give eternal life to all whom thou has given him. | 13:35 | |
This is eternal life to no thee who alone are truly God | 13:39 | |
and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent. | 13:48 | |
I have glorified thee on earth | 13:54 | |
by completing the work which thou gave me to do. | 13:56 | |
And now father glorify me in thy own presence | 14:01 | |
with the glory which I had with thee before the world began, | 14:06 | |
I have made thy name known to the man | 14:14 | |
whom thou give me out of the world. | 14:16 | |
They were dying. | 14:20 | |
Thou give them to me. | 14:22 | |
And they have obeyed thy command | 14:24 | |
now that they know that all thy gifts | 14:28 | |
have come to me from thee. | 14:30 | |
For I have taught them all that I learned from thee, | 14:33 | |
and they have received it. | 14:36 | |
They know with certainty that I came from thee | 14:39 | |
they have had faith to believe that thou send me | 14:43 | |
And from chapter 12 | 14:51 | |
now is the hour of judgment for this world. | 14:54 | |
Now shall the prince of this world be judged and driven out. | 14:58 | |
And I should draw all men to myself. | 15:04 | |
When I am lifted up from the earth. | 15:08 | |
This he said to indicate the kind of death he was to die. | 15:12 | |
Let us pray. | 15:20 | |
Assist us mercifully with your spirit, | 15:23 | |
Lord God of our salvation, | 15:26 | |
that we may approach his reverence | 15:29 | |
to the meditation of those mighty acts | 15:31 | |
whereby you have given us a new life | 15:34 | |
and the victory through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, | 15:37 | |
Amen. | 15:42 | |
The saying upon which we are to meditate this hour | 15:47 | |
are the words, the gospel, according to Saint John | 15:52 | |
attributes to Jesus, as his last, prior to his death, | 15:55 | |
they are usually translated as it is finished, | 16:02 | |
but this loses the richness of its meaning | 16:07 | |
in the original text, | 16:10 | |
which one might rather translate as it's done | 16:12 | |
or the task has been accomplished. | 16:16 | |
This is the context Jesus is crucified. | 16:21 | |
He commence his mother to his disciple, John. | 16:26 | |
And then the gospel says, | 16:29 | |
Jesus knew that everything had been completed | 16:31 | |
after expressing his thirst, He says, it's done. | 16:37 | |
Then he bows his head. | 16:42 | |
And in the words of the gospel | 16:45 | |
gave up his breath or rather passed on the spirit. | 16:47 | |
This interpretation fits well with what the gospel of John | 16:57 | |
as Jesus say before the crucifixion, | 17:02 | |
the words which are read before. | 17:05 | |
Jesus task was to glorify God among men | 17:09 | |
to reveal God's glory and love to men. | 17:13 | |
This he did throughout his life. | 17:18 | |
He's becoming a humble servant by his mighty signs | 17:22 | |
and as a climax by his faithfulness unto death, | 17:29 | |
the terrible suffering and death of Jesus | 17:37 | |
was a stumbling block to the disciples at first, | 17:40 | |
they were quite convinced that this is the end, | 17:45 | |
that this is the ultimate defeat of their hopes. | 17:50 | |
And so they went back to their old lives. | 17:56 | |
They went fishing, | 17:59 | |
but it turned out that this was not the end, | 18:02 | |
but rather the beginning of a new life | 18:06 | |
manifested in the resurrection | 18:10 | |
and in the new type of community, | 18:12 | |
which Jesus giving of himself | 18:16 | |
and his victory over death created. | 18:18 | |
When the gospel says that Jesus gave up his breath, | 18:24 | |
there's a double meaning to it. | 18:29 | |
It not only means that he literally gave up his life, | 18:33 | |
but also that he passed his spirit of his life | 18:38 | |
on to his disciples, | 18:42 | |
that he gave them the life giving | 18:46 | |
and transforming regenerating spirit, | 18:49 | |
which had animated him throughout his life. | 18:54 | |
This the disciples, sweat | 19:01 | |
realize only in retrospect, of course. | 19:02 | |
The cross, the gallows of the ancient world | 19:08 | |
has become the symbol of the Christian faith. | 19:13 | |
This is very strange when you consider | 19:18 | |
that it was the gallows | 19:21 | |
and that it did stand for death and a terrible death. | 19:23 | |
The cross is a sign of the paradoxical nature of the gospel. | 19:30 | |
Namely that out of death comes life a new life. | 19:35 | |
Not out of every death, of course, | 19:44 | |
this is not a general truism, | 19:47 | |
but an affirmation that out of a life, | 19:50 | |
given in service and faithfulness to death, | 19:53 | |
God brings out a new life. | 19:58 | |
A new life not only for the person who died | 20:03 | |
because God raises him from the dead, | 20:06 | |
but also a new life for those, for whom he died. | 20:10 | |
And for whom the death becomes the Supreme witness | 20:14 | |
of his faithfulness to God and his cause | 20:20 | |
thus it is that a death can have the seed of life in it | 20:26 | |
that it becomes the making of the victory. | 20:31 | |
As Jesus says, in the same gospel, | 20:35 | |
a grain of wheat remains a solitary grain | 20:39 | |
unless it falls into the ground and dies. | 20:44 | |
But if it dies, it bears a rich harvest. | 20:48 | |
It was said of the early Christian martyrs | 20:58 | |
that their blood was the seed of the church, | 21:01 | |
the courage and radiance with which these early Christians | 21:06 | |
met their death was a weakness, | 21:11 | |
which is what the word martyrdom really means. | 21:15 | |
A witness to others and a witness so powerful | 21:19 | |
that it changed the minds and lives of thousands | 21:23 | |
of onlookers in the Roman circus | 21:27 | |
and the Roman stadiums | 21:31 | |
where the Christians were tortured and killed. | 21:32 | |
These martyrs died in a way that people hadn't seen before. | 21:37 | |
They were in an ecstatic rapture | 21:43 | |
because they felt united to their Lord | 21:47 | |
in his suffering and his victory. | 21:50 | |
Once the cross became the chief symbol | 21:57 | |
of the Christian faith, and this took a while, | 21:59 | |
it cease to be a realistic naturalistic type of cross. | 22:04 | |
It was a trophy of victory. | 22:10 | |
And when the figure of Jesus was added to it, | 22:14 | |
it was the figure of the reigning Christ, | 22:18 | |
not the agonizing Christ, | 22:22 | |
the Christ with his arms outstretched to embrace all mankind | 22:25 | |
with his head high and with a crown on it. | 22:31 | |
These early crucifixes well expressed | 22:38 | |
the experience of Christians | 22:41 | |
throughout the first 1200 years of Christendom. | 22:44 | |
Namely, that that man on the cross scored a victory | 22:49 | |
that the vanquished conquered | 22:57 | |
the old hymns about the cross and crucifixion, | 23:02 | |
some of which had been sung here today, in this service | 23:07 | |
express the same mystery that Jesus agony and death | 23:11 | |
was a victorious battle with the forces of evil | 23:17 | |
and of death. | 23:22 | |
That Christ reigns from the tree as they put it | 23:24 | |
Easter and Good Friday are inseparable. | 23:31 | |
One is contained in the other | 23:37 | |
and the early Christians | 23:41 | |
had only one unitive holy day, to celebrate both. | 23:42 | |
The mystery of Christ battle and victory | 23:50 | |
has been reenacted many times in the lives of his followers. | 23:53 | |
In our days, | 23:59 | |
the names of the German fighter against Nazi-ism | 24:00 | |
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the name of Martin Luther king | 24:04 | |
come immediately to our minds, of course. | 24:08 | |
There's a medieval verse which Martin Luther then expanded | 24:14 | |
into a full-scale hymn and back into a Cantata | 24:18 | |
called Christ lay in death, dark prison, | 24:22 | |
a Cantata, which will be performed here tonight, | 24:28 | |
which expresses what I'm after with wounds, | 24:33 | |
which are better than my own. | 24:36 | |
It was a strange and dreadful site | 24:39 | |
when life and death contended, | 24:44 | |
the victory remained with life. | 24:49 | |
The reign of death is ended. | 24:52 | |
Amen. | 24:57 | |
Let us pray, | 24:59 | |
Make alive with your spirit, this your family, | 25:06 | |
for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contended to be betrayed | 25:10 | |
and given up into the hands of wicked men | 25:15 | |
and to suffer death upon the cross | 25:19 | |
for he now lives and reigns at your right-hand Father | 25:22 | |
until the power of evil is overcome for his sake. | 25:26 | |
Amen. | 25:31 | |
(liturgical music) | 25:35 | |
(foot steps) | 28:00 | |
- | It is not easy to love son | 28:12 |
often when you think you love, | 28:15 | |
it is only yourself that you love | 28:17 | |
and you spoil everything, you shatter everything. | 28:19 | |
To love is to meet oneself | 28:24 | |
and to meet oneself, one must be willing to leave oneself | 28:26 | |
and go towards others | 28:30 | |
to love is to commune and it could be commune, | 28:32 | |
one must forget oneself for another | 28:36 | |
one must die to self live completely for another | 28:40 | |
to love hurts, you know, my son | 28:45 | |
for since the fall, listen, carefully son | 28:48 | |
to love is to crucify self for another. | 28:53 | |
Let us pray. | 28:57 | |
Oh God. | 29:00 | |
Now that the shadow of the cross falls across the season, | 29:02 | |
deliver us from the smug assumptions, | 29:06 | |
which hide the eternal depths of mystery from us. | 29:08 | |
If life has been smoothed out for us | 29:12 | |
and it's tragic pain ignored | 29:14 | |
if the great hunger passover is needed and sound | 29:17 | |
and the petty rituals of self-satisfaction, | 29:20 | |
he felt lives had been the raft of the powers in love, | 29:23 | |
which you have shown through the cross, | 29:26 | |
then make plain the deceit and arrogance of such lies, | 29:29 | |
help us in this hour to deeply consider our lives | 29:34 | |
repenting of our sinful carelessness and insensitivity | 29:38 | |
in the midst of this world's pain. | 29:41 | |
Forgive us for the times when we have seen | 29:44 | |
those whom the injustices of the world | 29:46 | |
have bruised and beaten | 29:48 | |
and has passed by on the other side, | 29:50 | |
when we have built around ourselves the walls of privilege | 29:53 | |
within which we might hear the passion of exploded men, | 29:57 | |
the weeping women, | 30:01 | |
and the bitter cry of children robbed of happy youth. | 30:03 | |
When we have seen our nation at war, | 30:07 | |
but have denied our complicity | 30:10 | |
and the resulting death and destruction, | 30:12 | |
fill us now with hunger and thirst for justice, | 30:16 | |
that we may bear glad tidings to the poor. | 30:19 | |
Set at Liberty, | 30:23 | |
all those who are in the prison house of want and sin | 30:25 | |
and be instruments of that peace in our nation, | 30:29 | |
and throughout the world. | 30:32 | |
Open our eyes to the side of your mercy, | 30:35 | |
that through such a vision, | 30:38 | |
we may act in love with undoubtedly faith. | 30:39 | |
Amen. | 30:43 | |
(liturgical music) | 30:54 | |
- | And it was about the sixth hour. | 35:10 |
And there was a darkness over all the earth | 35:13 | |
until the ninth hour and the sun was dark. | 35:16 | |
And in the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. | 35:19 | |
And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, | 35:22 | |
he said, father into thy hands, I commend my spirit | 35:25 | |
and having said those, he gave up the ghost. | 35:31 | |
Now, when the Centurion saw what was done, | 35:35 | |
he glorified God saying, | 35:38 | |
certainly this was a righteous man. | 35:40 | |
Father, into they hands, I commend my spirit. | 35:46 | |
How strong in death are the habits of a lifetime | 35:53 | |
Jesus died precisely as he had lived | 35:58 | |
this seventh word from the cross, | 36:02 | |
uttered in the very moment of death | 36:03 | |
was totally consistent with Jesus life. | 36:05 | |
This commitment to God was, but the renewal of a commitment, | 36:10 | |
which dated back to the time when the boy, Jesus | 36:15 | |
barely old enough to walk with his family to Jerusalem, | 36:19 | |
acted out and expressed his life's highest priority. | 36:23 | |
Being about the business of his heavenly father. | 36:29 | |
Every writer or speaker on the subject of this seventh word, | 36:34 | |
expresses the thought in one way or another, | 36:38 | |
that as we live so shall we die. | 36:41 | |
Dr. Cleland reminds us that | 36:47 | |
where a person's treasure is | 36:48 | |
there will his heart be also | 36:50 | |
and suggest that the last words of all of us | 36:53 | |
will likely be in line with the tenor of our lives. | 36:56 | |
Dr. Clovis Chapo tells of a man | 37:02 | |
who made himself famous in the restaurant business. | 37:05 | |
He established restaurants all the way across the continent. | 37:08 | |
When at lasts, he reached the end of his earthly journey, | 37:13 | |
those nearest to him gathered about his bed | 37:16 | |
to hear his final words, | 37:18 | |
when they bet over him to catch his last whisper, | 37:21 | |
it was this, slice the ham thin. | 37:25 | |
There is humor in that little story. | 37:31 | |
There is pathos, there is a deep and abiding truth. | 37:35 | |
How strong in death, are the habits of a lifetime. | 37:40 | |
It seems to me then that the message from the cross | 37:46 | |
is not so much a lesson in dying as a lesson in living. | 37:49 | |
Christian dying is, but the continuation | 37:54 | |
of full dimensioned Christian living. | 37:58 | |
Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit, | 38:02 | |
this last word from the cross leads us to consider | 38:07 | |
what is to me the most important question | 38:10 | |
facing the Christian Church today. | 38:12 | |
If Christian dying, | 38:16 | |
is but the continuation of Christian living, | 38:17 | |
then what is that? | 38:20 | |
What is the Christian life? | 38:22 | |
Most will say on this and other campuses | 38:27 | |
that the jest the essence of Christian living | 38:31 | |
is service to mankind. | 38:33 | |
But that simply leads to a second question. | 38:36 | |
This is an age in which all men are concerned, | 38:40 | |
or many men are concerned about service to mankind. | 38:43 | |
It is an age of rampant, secular humanitarianism. | 38:47 | |
People are literally falling all over one another | 38:54 | |
to be of service, to bring about racial equality, | 38:56 | |
to bring about social justice, | 38:59 | |
and not just Christians, in fact, regrettably, | 39:02 | |
it sometimes seems that Christians lag behind | 39:05 | |
some non-Christians in showing active concern. | 39:07 | |
What then is Christian living? | 39:11 | |
What sets it apart from secular humanitarianism? | 39:13 | |
First Christian living involves | 39:19 | |
a personal relationship with God, | 39:22 | |
as well as a serving relationship to our neighbors, | 39:25 | |
the secular humanitarians compared with the true Christians | 39:30 | |
and they are few enough are going through life, one legged. | 39:34 | |
Father, into thy hands, I commend my spirit. | 39:41 | |
These last words of Jesus | 39:45 | |
were a quotation from the scriptures from the 31st song | 39:47 | |
he added, but one word to the phrase from the Psalm father, | 39:51 | |
and thus his last utterance from the cross | 39:58 | |
became not only a scriptural quotation, | 40:00 | |
but a prayer as well. | 40:04 | |
It is popular to picture Christ in these days, | 40:07 | |
exclusively as the teacher healer, | 40:10 | |
servant of his fellow men. | 40:12 | |
But let us in fairness, remember | 40:16 | |
that he was a devotional man. | 40:18 | |
He had his 40 days of fasting alone with God | 40:22 | |
in the wilderness. | 40:26 | |
He had his Gethsemane | 40:28 | |
when human companionship was sufficient, | 40:30 | |
neither to sustain Christian life | 40:33 | |
nor to help him face Christian death, | 40:36 | |
a dimension of Christian life, | 40:40 | |
a whole dimension of Christian life | 40:42 | |
shared with followers of other religions, | 40:44 | |
but totally missing from the life of the secular man | 40:47 | |
is fellowship with God. Prayer life, devotional life. | 40:52 | |
A continual cultivation of the awareness | 40:59 | |
that this is our father's world. | 41:02 | |
And that even in the midst of suffering | 41:05 | |
and injustice and indifference and profanity, | 41:07 | |
his purpose somehow is at work. | 41:11 | |
But if the secular humanitarians | 41:18 | |
are going through life one legged. | 41:20 | |
So are countless thousands of people | 41:22 | |
who call themselves Christians, | 41:24 | |
but think of the Christian life solely | 41:26 | |
in terms of prayer, Bible reading, | 41:29 | |
public worship and personal piety. | 41:32 | |
Full dimensioned, | 41:37 | |
Christian living only begins with man's awareness of God | 41:38 | |
and his acceptance of God's grace. | 41:42 | |
It doesn't end there. | 41:45 | |
Man's only proper response to the grace of God | 41:47 | |
is a life of love and service to his neighbors. | 41:51 | |
How can anyone read the new Testament and miss that message? | 41:55 | |
And we teach it in our Sunday schools, | 42:02 | |
but too often deny it by complacent work a day, living. | 42:04 | |
The true Christian cultivates | 42:12 | |
his personal relationship with his heavenly father, | 42:14 | |
but by both word and action, heeds Christ admonition | 42:18 | |
that we love our neighbor. | 42:24 | |
And how do we love our neighbor? | 42:27 | |
The parable of the good Samaritan is Christ's answer, | 42:30 | |
the Samaritan did not respond to his neighbors need | 42:34 | |
by deploring the violent deed | 42:37 | |
that had brought him bloody and torn into the ditch. | 42:39 | |
He did not respond to his neighbors need | 42:44 | |
by speaking words of comfort, | 42:46 | |
and by assuring his neighbor that he would | 42:48 | |
remember him in his prayers. | 42:50 | |
He responded by stopping | 42:53 | |
to bind the wounds of the fallen victim. | 42:55 | |
He took him to a place where | 43:00 | |
he could find medical care and food. | 43:02 | |
And from his own pocket, | 43:05 | |
he took money to defray the cost of this care. | 43:07 | |
How do we distinguish the Christian life | 43:13 | |
from secular humanitarianism? | 43:15 | |
I have said first that the Christian | 43:17 | |
has a dimension wholly missing from the secular life, | 43:20 | |
his relationship with God. | 43:24 | |
Second now, and for these last few minutes, | 43:26 | |
I submit that there are qualities | 43:30 | |
in the Christian's relationship with his neighbor, | 43:32 | |
which properly should and do distinguish the Christian life | 43:35 | |
from the lives of many secular do gooders. | 43:40 | |
First, let me remind you of | 43:46 | |
Ford motor company's popular television commercials, | 43:47 | |
all of which end with the word Ford | 43:50 | |
flashed across the screen, the O formed by the light bulb. | 43:53 | |
The bulb is turned on as the narrator says, | 43:58 | |
Ford has a better idea. | 44:01 | |
Well, I say that Christianity has a better idea. | 44:06 | |
Ask all those who are giving their lives | 44:10 | |
in the service of mankind, why, why are they doing it? | 44:13 | |
See if anyone can come up | 44:20 | |
with a better reason than the Christian reason | 44:22 | |
of all the men who have devoted their lives | 44:27 | |
to the civil rights movement | 44:29 | |
who had a better idea than Martin Luther king Jr. | 44:32 | |
Who's every acts, who's every utterance bespoke his belief | 44:37 | |
that all men are children of God, | 44:41 | |
all men, are children of God, all men are brothers. | 44:43 | |
The Christian concept of mankind | 44:48 | |
is in fact such a powerful idea that frankly, | 44:50 | |
I have trouble believing a man who lives in our society, | 44:53 | |
who gives his life in service to mankind | 44:58 | |
and then tells me | 45:00 | |
that Christianity has nothing to do with it. | 45:01 | |
I simply find it hard to believe. | 45:05 | |
From time to time, | 45:08 | |
we act in behalf of our neighbors for all kinds of reasons, | 45:09 | |
some pretty good, some pretty bad, some indifferent. | 45:13 | |
Sometimes we help others because it is good politics. | 45:20 | |
And thank heavens, it is becoming better and better politics | 45:23 | |
to be interested in the service of mankind. | 45:26 | |
Sometimes we act because the government | 45:30 | |
or foundations give us money | 45:33 | |
to encourage our research and other efforts | 45:35 | |
in behalf of human rights, social justice. | 45:38 | |
Sometimes we act out of fear and coercion. | 45:43 | |
Do we ever act for a better reason | 45:47 | |
than for the reason that we see our neighbor as our brother? | 45:51 | |
So the Christians reason for acting is unique. | 45:59 | |
Second, when the Christian seeks to serve his fellow men | 46:06 | |
by overcoming evil and injustice, | 46:08 | |
he employs quite distinctive tactics. | 46:11 | |
He resists the temptation to return evil for evil, | 46:15 | |
to do so, to return evil for evil is very human, | 46:20 | |
but it is not Christian. | 46:25 | |
The Christian seeks to overcome evil with good, | 46:28 | |
as Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans. | 46:30 | |
His weapon is not the mailed fist of force and violence, | 46:33 | |
but the pierced hand of the cross. | 46:39 | |
His rallying cry is not burn baby burn, | 46:43 | |
but come let us walk in Christian brotherhood. | 46:49 | |
His answer to white racism is not black racism | 46:55 | |
or even such euphemisms for that as black power | 47:00 | |
or black awareness, | 47:06 | |
it is human awareness, human brotherhood. | 47:08 | |
The Christian takes no pride in being a white man, | 47:15 | |
no pride in being a black man | 47:20 | |
immense pride in being a man | 47:24 | |
and the great sin of American civilization | 47:28 | |
over hundreds of years of slavery and segregation | 47:32 | |
is not that American civilization | 47:36 | |
has stamped out pride in being a black man, | 47:38 | |
it is that we have stamped out pride in being a man, | 47:43 | |
a human, a creature of God. | 47:48 | |
It is fashionable in some circles | 47:53 | |
to ridicule such sentiments | 47:54 | |
as I have expressed as too moderate for our day | 47:56 | |
also outmoded, worn out, | 48:00 | |
I submit that the Christian tactic | 48:04 | |
of overcoming evil with good is not moderate, | 48:06 | |
but revolutionary, not outmoded, | 48:11 | |
but only now coming into full power. | 48:16 | |
And it works, oh, how it works. | 48:19 | |
It sweeps right over white and black demagoguery, | 48:23 | |
stealthy snipers, thoughtless looters, and burners. | 48:27 | |
Overall, the forces that seek to divide our people | 48:32 | |
and brings together | 48:35 | |
at the funeral of a great Christian leader, | 48:37 | |
black people and white people united by honest sorrow | 48:40 | |
and by honest hope for a better tomorrow. | 48:46 | |
The story is told of a city away under the Southern cross, | 48:52 | |
which undertook to beautify itself | 48:57 | |
by the construction of an artificial river. | 48:59 | |
A winding channel was dug through the city | 49:02 | |
and connected with an abundant supply of water. | 49:04 | |
And the people rejoiced in the new loveliness of their town. | 49:07 | |
But one day a troublesome water weed appeared | 49:11 | |
in the bed of the stream | 49:15 | |
and flourished to such an extent | 49:16 | |
that the little stream became quite choked. | 49:18 | |
Not even a canoe could pass up or down its surface. | 49:21 | |
And the people were troubled. | 49:26 | |
All kinds of tools were brought in | 49:29 | |
to hack out at the roots of the weeds, | 49:31 | |
but it didn't work. | 49:33 | |
Poisonous chemicals were employed | 49:35 | |
in an effort to eradicate them, but to no avail. | 49:37 | |
One day a genius made a new suggestion, | 49:41 | |
leave the weeds alone. He said, | 49:44 | |
and plant Willow trees on the bank of the stream. | 49:45 | |
The scheme was tried | 49:50 | |
and lo the roots of the Willow trees | 49:51 | |
devoured the substance | 49:52 | |
on which the weeds had been flourishing. | 49:54 | |
The weeds died away of their own accord. | 49:57 | |
And now the drooping and graceful willows | 50:00 | |
and part, a fresh loveliness to the stream. | 50:03 | |
Good can overcome evil. | 50:09 | |
The Christian life is worth living. | 50:12 | |
The shadow of Calvary's cross lies over Bethlehem's manger. | 50:16 | |
These things, life and death cannot be separated. | 50:19 | |
As we live, so shall we die. | 50:23 | |
Christ is our exemplar in life and death. | 50:26 | |
if Jesus had first committed his life to his heavenly father | 50:30 | |
at the moment of death, | 50:34 | |
he would have had no more impact on this world | 50:36 | |
than those two thieves who died one on either side. | 50:39 | |
But Jesus commended his spirit | 50:44 | |
in to the hands of God from the beginning. | 50:47 | |
Throughout his life, he lived a devotional life, | 50:50 | |
carefully cultivating his relationship with God. | 50:55 | |
He lived a life of selfless service to his fellow men | 50:59 | |
serving them equally of high and lower state | 51:03 | |
loving them because they were children of God | 51:07 | |
And his lifelong battle with evil, his sole weapon was good. | 51:12 | |
As he lived, so he died. | 51:20 | |
Father into the hands, I commend my spirit. | 51:25 | |
May we pray. | 51:32 | |
Blessed father, these are troubled times. | 51:35 | |
Look through the triteness of that expression | 51:40 | |
into the honest bewilderment of our hearts and minds. | 51:43 | |
We see that human resources | 51:48 | |
do not cope well with the great problems of our day. | 51:50 | |
We must in life as in death, commend our spirits | 51:54 | |
individually and collectively into thy hands. | 51:59 | |
Give us, | 52:05 | |
we pray the assurance of the personal presence in our lives. | 52:06 | |
The all consuming desire to serve mankind | 52:11 | |
and the courage and the revolutionary spirit | 52:16 | |
to wage our war on evil | 52:20 | |
with personal positive, constructive goodness, | 52:22 | |
practical righteousness, | 52:28 | |
the positive remedy of superior character, | 52:32 | |
superior actions, superior institutions. | 52:36 | |
Amen. | 52:42 | |
- | Go forth in peace to the world. Be of good cheer. | 54:01 |
Hold fast to that, which is good | 54:06 | |
render to no man evil for evil | 54:08 | |
strengthen the faint hearted, support the weak, | 54:11 | |
help the afflicted, honor all men. | 54:15 | |
Love and serve the Lord | 54:19 | |
rejoicing in the power of the holy spirit | 54:21 | |
and the blessings of God almighty | 54:25 | |
the father, the son, and the holy ghost | 54:27 | |
be upon you and remain with you forever. | 54:30 | |
Amen. | 54:34 | |
(liturgical music) | 54:39 |
Item Info
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