- Sunday Worship Service, December 2, 1979, Duke Chapel. ("Organ Sonata No.5 in C major, BWV 529 by Bach, Sebastian") ("Organ Sonata No.5 in C major, BWV 529 by Bach, Sebastian") (faint chattering) ("Organ Sonata No.5 in C major, BWV 529 by Bach, Sebastian") ("Organ Sonata No.5 in C major, BWV 529 by Bach, Sebastian") (congregation chattering) ("Organ Sonata No.5 in C major, BWV 529 by Bach, Sebastian") ("Organ Sonata No.5 in C major, BWV 529 by Bach, Sebastian") (choir singing "Beautiful Savior") ("O Little Town Of Bethlehem" by Phillips Brooks) 

- You may be seated. Let us humbly confess our sins unto almighty God. Oh God, Lord of us all help us to acknowledge our own weakness. Our minds are darkened and by ourselves we cannot find and know the truth. Our wills are weak and by ourselves we cannot resist temptation or bring to its completion that which we resolve to do. Our hearts are fickle and by ourselves we cannot give to you the loyalty which is your do. Our steps are faltering and by ourselves we cannot walk in your straight way. So this day we ask you to enlighten us, to strengthen us, to guide us that we may know you and love you and follow you all the days of our life through Jesus Christ our redeemer. Let us confess and silence I will personal sins against God and neighbor. And now believe these words of the psalmist. For as the heavens are high above the Earth so great as God's steadfast love toward those who fear God. As far as the East is from the West so far does God remove our transgressions from us. Through the love of our almighty God our sins are forgiven. Let us forgive one another. Let us forgive ourselves. Let us give thanks for God is good and God's love is everlasting. 

All: Thanks be to God whose love creates us. Thanks be to God who's mercy redeems us. Thanks be to God who's grace sustains us. I extend a warm welcome to each one of you today. You who are present here and the chapel and those who listen to the service on the radio. We are very glad you have chosen to worship with us. On this Sunday we are celebrating the international year of the child and we want to thank the children from the Fayetteville Street School who are assisting the ushers today. We also welcome their families to the service. During this week a number of events have been planned by the Durham committee for the international year of the child. We would ask that you watch her daily paper for the schedule of workshops and other events. Many of you are familiar with the wood project of past years to provide fuel to persons who cannot afford the high prices of heat these days. Added to the wood project is another for this year. The coal project. Duke University is making available at a great greatly reduced rate coal that needs to be moved. The plan is to bag the coal and distribute it to those persons who need fuel for the winter and cannot buy it at the going rate. Bags have been donated. Picks and shovels have been donated. Trucks have been donated to move the bags of coal. What we need are people who will bag the coal. If you would like to help in this project, please be at the chapel on Saturday at 9 a.m. or at 1 p.m. Buses will take you from the chapel to the work site. The Pastoral Care Nurture Community Committee needs at least 25 families to adopt 50 incoming January freshman for the spring semester. No specific time commitment is involved. Just a willingness to be available for support during the students initial adjustment at Duke. If you're interested in participating in this program and are listening to the radio, you may call the chapel and leave your name and address and the number of students you would be willing to accept. For those of you here in the congregation, an insert is included in the bulletin for you to complete and leave in the box near the desk at the back of the chapel. Names and addresses of students will be sent to you before January. I would call your attention to the Nativity carvings in the transept to my left. These figures an original design work hard by Stan Kozynski of High Point North Carolina. The wood is White Oak to match the core of the chapel. The 14 statues given to the chapel by the C. Tom Latimer, Junior and Eleanor Sue Powell-Latimer and their children include Mary, Joseph, the Christ child, to Shepherds, five sheep, three wise men who are depicted as Mongolian, a Syrian and Hindu and a rather large angel. I invite you to view these carvings following the service. The Advent wreath is an old Christian custom originating with the Lutherans in Germany. The circle of evergreen reminds us of God's eternal never ending presence with us. Before candles one for each week and Advent reminds us of the coming Jesus Christ the light of the world which we receive anew this Advent season. The four candles are lavender in color symbolizing the penitence of the season. The fifth one, a white candle is the Christmas candle which symbolizes light and life coming to us in Jesus Christ. The first candle of the Advent wreath is lighted today. These candles were hand molded for the chapel by Mrs. Rufus Powell. Holy Communion will be served immediately following the service and the Memorial Chapel to my right. All of you wishing to partake of the Lord's Supper are welcome, and now we welcome to the pulpit today the Reverend Dr. Thomas A. Langford, Dean of the Divinity School here at Duke University. We welcome him back to this pulpit and look forward to the message he will bring us. Let us continue our worship of Almighty God. (choir singing "Sing to the Lord a New Song") 

- Let us pray. Oh thou eternal wisdom whom we partly know and partly do not know. Oh thou eternal justice when we partly acknowledge but never wholly obey. Oh thou eternal love whom we love a little but fear to love too much open our minds that we may understand. Work in our wills that we may obey. Kindle our hearts that we may love thee in the name of the word incarnate Jesus Christ Our Lord, amen. The gospel lesson for today is taken from the second chapter of Matthew verses 13 through 18. Please stand for the reading of the gospel. "After they had gone, an Angel of the Lord appeared "to Joseph in a dream and said to him rise up, "take the child and his mother and escape with them "to Egypt and stay there until I tell you. "For Herod is going to search for "the child to do away with him. "So Joseph arose from sleep and taking mother "and child by night, he went away with them to Egypt "and there he stayed until Herod's death. "This was to fulfill what the Lord had declared "through the prophet, I called my son out of Egypt. "When Herod saw how the astrologers had tricked him, "he fell into a passion and gave orders for the massacre "of all children in Bethlehem and it's neighborhood "of the age of two years or less corresponding with the time "he had ascertained from the astrologers. "So the word spoken through Jeremiah the prophet "were fulfilled. "A voice was heard in Ramah wailing in loud laments. "It was Rachel weeping for her children and refusing "all consolation because they were no more." Here ends the reading of the lesson. All praise and glory be to God. (organ music) (congregation singing) 

- The first Sunday in Advent has been chosen for the observance the day of the year of the child. In sorrow I have chosen the account of Herod's slaughter of the innocents for our text. The horror of mothers crying over their children's quietness, the thrust of political power through defenseless homes, the blood-stained cobblestones, the imperial disregard for childhood's tenderness, these horrors are not a thing of the past, they're also present in our time. At this Advent let us with sensitivity hear the babies cry. Let us be responsive to that call for attention and care and love. The man who perpetuated the original deed was Herod. Herod the Great he called himself and people thought he was not misnamed. He was a type of and we admire and aspire to be. Let me tell you a bit about him. An Edomian and not a Jew by birth Herod followed his father to the rulership of a territory in the Near East in the year 44 BC, but he spent much of his time in Rome and learned to play the game of Roman political roulette. In sequence and this was a time of great turmoil, he supported Pompeii, then Julius Caesar, then Cassius, then Antony, then Augustus. These were remarkable shifts. Always ahead by one step of the death of an old friend, he made new alliances. From the smoke of every battle, he came out on the side of the victor. For this nimble-footedness he was eventually made king of a larger territory in Palestine. Roman by citizenship, he was Hellenistic in spirit. Herod is listed on the roll of the perpetual managers of the Olympic Games. He was also a great builder and constructed the Third Temple in Jerusalem. A temple of which even the Pharisees who were his enemies would say no one has seen anything beautiful until they have seen the Temple of Herod. He lowered taxes. He increased trade. He was benevolent to the poor. He added new territory. He was great, but with all of his greatness he was all so insecure and fearful and scheming. One commentator has said he lived in a perfect bedlam. There was constant tension among the women in his lives. Cleopatra of Egypt, his wife Mariamne, his mother-in-law Alexandra and his totally unscrupulous sister Salome. He finally killed his mother-in-law and he was suspicious of all of his children fearing that they wanted to take his throne. Of him, Caesar Augustus once said better it is to be Herod's pig than Herod's son for this man who was nonreligious had more scruples about his Jewish citizen's religious sensibility than about the welfare of his own children. It was this Herod, this magnificent, frightened outwardly renowned, inwardly riven man who heard the wise men say that a child was born who was destined to be the King of the Jews and he reacted in typical fashion asking where the birth might be. He ordered his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all of the children two years of age and under. This is what came to be called the Slaughter of the Innocents. So Herod's soldiers murdered in the streets of Bethlehem and let us once again hear the children cry. There he was Herod, Herod the Great, friend of Caesar, ruler of a nation afraid of a child. How obvious a flaw in so grand a appearance. The exposed tendon was not in his heel but in his heart. W.H. Auden in his For the Time Being a Christmas Oratorial explores the inner feelings of Herod. He depicts him as a frustrated man rationalizing his actions. He is appalled at what the wise men have said. They thought that a king even a God have been born. Why, says Herod, this is a disease that can ruin the empire. Reason will be lost. Materialism overcome idealism. Pity will take the place of justice. This cannot happen. Civilization must be saved in self-justification he cries in Auden's words, I've worked like a slave. Ask anyone. I read all official dispatches without skipping. I've taken elocution lessons. I've hardly ever taken bribes. I've tried to be good. I'm a liberal. I want everyone to be happy and with such self-pity and desire for the common good, he ordered the soldiers to massacre the babies and time passes and everything remains the same. Look at our proud world. We who thought that we could put a man on the moon that we can solve all of our problems, look at our proud nation. We who thought that more cars and more games and more money would bring a better life. We are Herod. Builders of sacred places, athletic patrons, Savvy politicians, tax conscious and slaughterers of the innocent. It's obvious isn't it? Look at Cambodia if you're able. Time Magazine reports the story this way. Mrs. Curtis stopped first in a patch blue and white plastic tent full of small children who are lined up sitting on straw mats and three neat rows. They were unaccompanied minors. The official euphemism for orphaned and they were eerily silent showing neither tears nor smiles. The first lady bent over and whispered to a girl about six, but the child stared back uncomprehending. When she left the tent waving, only one child responded with the traditional Indonesian wai greeting which involves holding the hands together in a praying position under the chin. I find that I can't really look at the TV or the magazine or newspaper pictures. The horror is too great and it continues, and who is to blame? Their neighbors? Even their own people? We are horrified, but remember we have slaughtered our share of children in that part of the world. Look around the Earth. The black babies of South Africa who are systematically deprived, the children of the near East who were caught in refugee camps and pitched battles, the Indian children of Brazil, the babies of the barrios of Mexico City. We look around us and turn away and cry until our strength is spent for there all around us is a Slaughter of Innocence. Let us hear these babies cry. Then with slow reluctant move we turn to our own nation and now I speak more uncomfortable words for here again is Herod the Great, monarch of the world, magnificent in raiment, generous in gesture and slaughterer of innocents. And I shall be direct. Not in order to assign personal guilt. Only God can judge such guilt and God is just in judging, but we are guilty both individually and corporately and God's judgment is upon us. If God were not also merciful, there will be no hope. So I begin the recounting by saying that all of us cast ourselves on God's mercy. Are there hungry children in our nation? Well I'm pleased to report some good news. Since 1967 when the fact of hunger can to our national consciousness, there have been improvements. Food stamps have grown from 288 million to six billion dollars. The number of people participating has increased from 2.8 million to 16 million. Free or reduced-price lunches for poor children have grown from 42 million to 1.2 billion dollars. Childcare and summer food service for children provide food now for three million children a day as opposed to 140,000 children in 1968. Supplemental feeding for women, infant and children has grown rapidly from 14 million dollars to 550 million dollars serving some six times as many persons today. These are remarkable statistics and of them we can be proud, but there are in North Carolina 1,245,397 persons who qualify for food stamps and only 37% of those people participate. In other states it's as low as 20%. There are still people especially children who are hungry in our nation and the deprivation continues, but what of broken homes? A first grade teacher in a school in Durham said recently that for the last three years more than 50% of the children in her class are from broken homes. Another first grade teacher from a town close by reported that she had had the same percentage in her class and they both spoke of the nervous anxiety of the last hour of every school day when these first graders became anxious about who will come and what would happen. Some marriages are perhaps best not continued. Some divorces make life possible but in our effort to understand one set of relationship, let us not forget others and let us pretend that much damage is not done. With all we do add to the bruising of children there are so many, many migrant children inner city children, and neglected children in our nation that there continues a slaughter of the innocents and let us hear those babies cry. Continue to look. Our sensate culture which deals in child pornography, our brutal culture where child abuse is common, our child neglect while both parents pursue their chief vocations. Two weeks ago Dr. Peter English of the Duke Medical Faculty gave a report of unwanted children. This was one of his illustrations. A young mother and her mid-twenties recently visited the Pediatric Outpatient Clinic at the Duke University Medical Center with her children ages five and eight. She had an unusual request. Her life had changed she said and she thought her offspring would be better off in an orphanage. In fact she plan to drop them off at one later that week and she wanted doctors to give them a physical examination. Dr. English call child abandonment and age-old problem that remains with us in this community. There are others. More subtle and acceptable forms. The denying of childhood as parents fulfill their own ego needs in events that can range all the way from Little League ball to dance classes and indeed in numerous other ways we continue the Slaughter of the Innocents, and there's abortion. As with divorce, there may be situations which require such a solution, but it is not to be done as though there is no cost. For it can be and at times it is a Slaughter of the Innocents. The list is appallingly long. A culture may well be judged in terms of how it treats its children. If so, we not only stand under judgment, we are found wanting. Let us on this day at least hear the babies cry. But this is Advent and we remember that first Christmas. A child was born. The massacre was not total. In the night a couple of escaped with a baby. Listen to that baby's cry. In the dark night, there is a cry of hope. It is a sign of God's providence. God gives us more newborn and we hear the cry for affection and care. We are given special responsibility for the innocent, the weak, the vulnerable, the little people, those unable to care for themselves. The cry of the Christ child must mingle with the cry of all of God's children. The breath of hope must mix with the breath of pain. Listen to that baby's cry, not slaughter, but the salvation of the innocents is our task. Children, our children, the world's children have been given to us to protect and nurture and love. For a new child has been born, a new voice joins the others, a new life can issue forth. The Christ child's voice mingles with the voice of all children and today let us hear those babies cry. Amen. ("Away in a Manger") 

- Let us affirm what we believe. 

All: We believe in God who has created and is creating. Who has come in the truly human Jesus to reconcile and make new. Who works in us and others by the spirit. We trust God who calls us to be the church to celebrate life and its fullness, to love and to serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen, our judge and our hope in life, in death, in life beyond death God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God. 

- You may be seated. The Lord be with you. (congregation responds) Let us pray. Lord of the Advent, holy invader, times comforter, oh Blessed Trinity. In thee all that ever was and is and shall be is made for shining. So do we praise thee. Word of light to our darkness, word of peace to our warfare, word of love to our fear and so do we bow before thee with thankful hearts. We thank thee oh God our grace for life and light and all things good. We thank you for work and for play and for the opportunity to do both. We thank you for all the good provision of your providence by which we are nourished from day to day. We think the for every pure and lovely joy with which you have enriched our lives. Eternal God we thank thee for those whom we love and who make this world meaningful to us. For the one who is closest to us as close as our own body, our husband, our wife, our children, our parents, all those who have been given and entrusted to us. Oh God you are not indifferent to our joy and suffering. Your deepest care is for our lives and our blessedness. Our peace is your peace. We thank you that you are so vulnerable in all your people. Oh God our parents, oh holy one who cares for all your children hear our prayers this day for those in the world with special needs. We pray for those held hostage in Iran. Be with them in their uncertainty and fear and be with their families in their waiting and they're hoping and God our only hope, our help in times of trouble, be with us all in these troubled times. Help us to admit our past wrongdoing and present guilt. Be with both sides in the struggle. Do not let the threats multiply or power be used without compassion. May your word rule our words so that claims may be settled peacefully. Hold back impulsive persons, less desire for vengeance overwhelm our common welfare and oh Lord we pray this day for the hungry. Those are world away and those in our own cities and rural slums who's suffering accuses us and denies the provision you have made for us all in this ample world. Constrain us in our use of the world's goods we pray and give us new wheels and new ways to reach out toward those who need us. Oh God hear our prayer this day for the sick and dying. Be with them in their suffering and bring them to new life. Merciful God by your power people are healed. Give strength to doctors, nurses, and technicians who staff hospitals and homes for the sick. Make them brave to battle our last enemy trusting your power to overcome death and pain and crying. May they be thankful for every sign of help you give and humble before the mystery of mending grace. Oh God, fountain of all truth and all knowledge, as the end of this academic semester draws near, we pray for those teachers and learners among us. Help them to be both dedicated and compassionate in their endeavors and keep them ever mindful of your grace. Your grace which enables every good work and accomplishment and is able to transform every weakness and failure. Oh Lord on this special day we pray for our children and our children's children for all who will be born after us. We pray that we will not give them stones instead of bread and that we will not leave them poor but instead leave them freedom and peace, and oh God we pray for all people of all ages for all who young and old belong to each other and go through life together. We pray that we may are for and respect each other. That we may not be divided but may with one mind and by your grace try to achieve holiness and wholeness. Finally oh Lord, we remember that today begins the season of Advent. Once again we approach the birthday of your Clarion child, your suffering servant, your messenger Christ. Once again we make a place for him however cluttered it may be with the pieces of our broken dreams, with unfinished resolves and fragments of love. Once again the bed we lay for him as as poor as any manger, but oh God we pray he will come among us nonetheless. That his goodness will take hold in our hearts, his grace and fact our wills and his glory once more capture our imaginations. Hear our prayers oh God eternal. For they are offered in the name of Jesus Christ. The one who comes to us as a child and a servant in the one who taught us to pray saying, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen. (organ music) (choir singing) (choir singing) ("All Creatures of Our God and King") 

- Oh God, before the gifts you have given us our gifts pale into insignificance. We are almost ashamed to bring these gifts because they cost us so little and yet we know that just as you accept us that we be unworthy, you also accept our gifts. Increase our vision and enlarge our compassion that we might embrace all the world's needs as those which demand a response from us so that in this world there shall be celebration, amen. Let us pray together a litany for children. Eternal God, you who love us as both father and mother we pray today for all the children of this world. (congregation responds) By our love we are blessed with children through the miracle of birth as members of the human family we rejoice in all children everywhere. Never let us neglect children, but help us to surround them all with faith so that they may know that they are your children. (congregation responds) For all children, for all among us who are defenseless and small. (congregation responds) For all young people for all of your among us who are confused or disillusioned. (congregation responds) For those to whom children are born and those who accept as their own children who have been born to others. (congregation responds) For those in our society who have direct personal contact with our young, the social worker, the teacher, the librarian, the guidance counselor, the policeman, the judge, the doctor. (congregation responds) For children here in this land and those in distant places who are hungry, mistreated, abused, neglected, not giving the chance for a happy childhood. (congregation responds) For those children who through death or separation know brokenness in their homes. (congregation responds) For those children who have been orphaned or abandoned. (congregation responds) For those young people in trouble in our society whom we label delinquent. (congregation responds) Oh God guard the laughter of children. Bring them safely through the storms which can engulf childhood. Do not let us be so preoccupied with our purposes that we fail to hear their voices or fail to pay attention to their special vision of the truth, but keep us with them ready to listen and to love even as in Jesus Christ you have loved us your grown-up seeking children. (congregation responds) (organ music) (choir singing) 

- Go forth into the world in peace. Be of good courage. Hold fast to that which is good. Render no one evil for evil. Strengthen the fainthearted. Support the weak. Help the afflicted. Honor all persons. Love and serve the Lord rejoicing all ways in the power of the Holy Spirit. In the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all both now and forevermore. (choir singing amen) (organ music) (faint chattering) (banging) 
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