Thomas G. Long - "Does It Really Count?" (April 16, 1989)

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-	Some years ago, when I first stood in this pulpit,	0:04
	I felt a tremble of excitement and a thrill.	0:08
	I feel it again today.	0:12
	I don't think that goes away in this place.	0:14
	It's a magnificent place to be,	0:16
	to be a part of this community at worship.	0:19
	When Will invited me to be here today,	0:22
	he said in the letter, now, let's be candid.	0:25
	People don't always like preachers	0:29
	and they are not always enthusiastic about sermons	0:31
	but I will guarantee you this.	0:35
	If you will come and preach in Duke Chapel	0:38
	on April 16th, after your sermon,	0:41
	they will dance in the sanctuary.	0:44
	(audience laughing)	0:47
	I had no idea he would build a stage for it	0:52
	but he's a man of his word and it's good to be here.	0:57
	Carol Norton read the lesson	1:01
	from the Gospel of John for today.	1:03
	I lift up these words from it.	1:05
	The sheep hear my voice and they follow	1:09
	and no one will be able	1:14
	to snatch them out of my hand.	1:17
	Last month, a remarkable announcement	1:23
	startled the scientific world.	1:26
	Two chemists, one in Utah, the other in England,	1:30
	claimed that they had been able to create,	1:36
	in a six inch jar of water,	1:39
	at normal pressure and room temperature,	1:42
	a nuclear fusion reaction.	1:46
	Well, if they've done it, it's startling news indeed.	1:52
	In fact, they've created what amounts	1:55
	to a perpetual motion machine.	1:57
	They said, four times as much energy came out	2:00
	of that reaction as they put into it.	2:04
	This is Nobel prize-winning stuff.	2:07
	If they're right, they've turned the key	2:11
	in the first lock to a whole new	2:14
	source of energy for the world.	2:16
	In addition, however, to raised hopes and expectations,	2:21
	other scientists in the world also had some raised eyebrows.	2:25
	They were skeptical.	2:30
	If they've actually done it,	2:32
	why didn't they publish it like everybody does?	2:33
	Where are the results?	2:36
	Where are the data?	2:38
	What are the controls on the experiment?	2:39
	This one doesn't count.	2:41
	It's not valid until it's demonstrated	2:43
	in a much more public way,	2:46
	until what they say they did in their laboratory,	2:50
	I can do in my laboratory	2:52
	and others can do in their laboratories,	2:54
	it's not worth the paper the press releases	2:58
	are printed on, it doesn't count.	3:00
	So, for the past couple of weeks,	3:03
	scientists all around the world have been scrambling	3:05
	to see if they can repeat the experiment.	3:08
	We tried it and it worked, said an excited Texas A&M.	3:12
	Well, we tried it and it didn't work, growled a cynical MIT.	3:18
	It looks like we're in for a long	3:24
	and intriguing debate on this one	3:26
	but it is absolutely clear that a claim	3:28
	of this sort does not count	3:32
	unless it is provable in public,	3:35
	unless what one scientist claimed	3:39
	to have observed and seen in the laboratory	3:41
	over here can be observed and measured	3:44
	in the laboratory over there, it doesn't count.	3:47
	Once we leave the laboratory, however,	3:54
	it is not quite so clear and simple	3:57
	to be able to determine what counts and what doesn't.	4:00
	What validates a human life?	4:07
	All of us want our lives to count,	4:11
	so what makes for a life that counts?	4:14
	What tells us that a life has been lived	4:16
	truly or falsely, wisely or foolish?	4:19
	Look at me.	4:23
	I've obviously made some decisions,	4:25
	vocationally and personally, that have gotten me	4:27
	into a situation like this today.	4:30
	You've made some decisions too,	4:35
	that have gotten you where you are.	4:37
	How do we know whether your life or mine is a wonder	4:41
	or a waste?	4:48
	And whose life counts for more,	4:50
	a president's or street person's?	4:54
	An unborn child or a pregnant woman	4:56
	whose pregnancy threatens her life?	5:00
	An astronaut or a third grade teacher?	5:03
	A social worker nobody knows who makes 25 grand a year	5:07
	or a center-fielder who delights millions	5:11
	and pulls down millions?	5:15
	Where are the controls?	5:18
	Where are the data?	5:19
	Who counts, where is the laboratory of human worth?	5:21
	Well, look, I am a preacher.	5:26
	I am preaching a sermon	5:28
	and I know what I am supposed to say.	5:29
	What I am supposed to say about this,	5:33
	is that the laboratory of human worth	5:35
	is not in any of the superficial measures of human life,	5:38
	it's in the mind and eye of God	5:41
	and that when you strip away all the doer's profiles	5:44
	and the BMW's and the high salaries	5:47
	that human beings use to count worth among themselves	5:50
	and get down to the real theological issues,	5:54
	God counts all human beings of equal worth.	5:56
	The social worker and the center-fielder,	6:01
	they're just the same in the eye of God.	6:04
	Even the prisoner on death row is worth	6:08
	just as much love, just as deeply cherished,	6:12
	just as profoundly by God	6:15
	as Saint Augustine or Mother Teresa.	6:17
	I'm supposed to say that	6:24
	and I will, I suppose.	6:27
	I do believe it is true.	6:29
	God is no respecter of persons.	6:32
	All human life is worthy to God	6:34
	but if that is the only truth we have,	6:36
	that is at best a half and distorted truth	6:39
	because as a matter of fact,	6:45
	everybody in this room is not only created equal	6:47
	in the eyes of God but is also given by God,	6:51
	the freedom to make choices.	6:54
	None of us is perfectly free of course	6:57
	but we do make choices.	7:00
	We walk in this path or that one.	7:02
	We live out of that vision or another one.	7:05
	We serve this power or some other power.	7:08
	And if human willing and freedom	7:13
	are to mean anything at all,	7:15
	then it also means	7:17
	that those choices matter.	7:19
	It is possible to be a good steward of your life	7:25
	and it is possible to waste it.	7:28
	It's possible to be a saint	7:32
	and it's possible to be a fool.	7:36
	How do we know what really counts?	7:41
	Well, when the writers of the book,	7:48
	Habits of the Heart, were combing	7:50
	across the American landscape,	7:52
	interviewing American people about their values	7:55
	and styles of living and their views of themself	7:58
	and community, they discovered that when American people	8:01
	outgrow the measure of human worth,	8:05
	counted according to salary and title on the door	8:08
	and not everybody outgrows that,	8:13
	but when some Americans do outgrow that,	8:14
	the only recourse that they feel they have to judge	8:18
	what counts and what is worthy	8:21
	is their own internal moral compass.	8:24
	In fact, one of the people they interviewed,	8:28
	a woman they call Margaret Oldham said this,	8:30
	what counts in life really boils down,	8:34
	I suppose, to my own sense of values,	8:36
	the goals that I set for myself.	8:40
	You can't go around in life,	8:42
	trying to please other people all the time.	8:44
	What really counts is when you're able to satisfy yourself	8:46
	or as Darryl Strawberry puts it more simply,	8:51
	you got to play this game from within yourself.	8:54
	But the writers of Habit of the Heart	9:00
	also noted that even the Margaret Oldhams	9:02
	of the world know that when all is said and done,	9:04
	to trust only one's moral compass,	9:09
	to measure oneself only against one's self	9:13
	and the self's values is finally,	9:16
	lonely, and idiosyncratic.	9:19
	And so, people then try to move outside themselves	9:24
	for some standard of measure.	9:28
	How do we know what counts in human life?	9:30
	Ah, I know what counts in human life.	9:32
	You can't always tell in the moment	9:35
	whether a life is worth something or not.	9:38
	I mean, look at the Wright brothers.	9:40
	Look at Robert Fulton.	9:41
	You can't always know whether there's wisdom	9:42
	or foolishness in a life but history will tell the tale.	9:45
	The passing of time when all is said and done,	9:50
	will sift the wheat from the chaff	9:52
	and then we'll know which lives have been lives	9:55
	and which have been foolish.	9:59
	As Richard Nixon is one to put it,	10:01
	the Congress almost impeached me	10:04
	and the media crucified me but history will vindicate me.	10:06
	Well, is it true?	10:13
	Does history have the power to tell us	10:16
	what counts and what doesn't,	10:19
	who is wise and who is foolish?	10:22
	The stage manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town	10:27
	is at one point in the play, introducing the audience	10:31
	to the little town of Grover's Corners.	10:35
	He guides the audience from place to place	10:39
	in the town and then at one point,	10:42
	he turns to the audience and reflects.	10:44
	You know, Babylon once had	10:46
	two million people in it	10:51
	and all we know about 'em is the names of their kings	10:55
	and the records of a few wheat contracts	10:58
	but every night, they all sat down to supper.	11:03
	People came home from work and the smoke curled	11:06
	up the chimney just like here.	11:10
	All history knows	11:15
	is the names of their kings	11:19
	and a few records of wheat contracts.	11:21
	Did their lives count	11:26
	or didn't they?	11:30
	Back in 1964, the city of Cleveland	11:34
	was in turmoil.	11:38
	The Board of Education in Cleveland had just announced	11:41
	an ambitious new school building project	11:44
	but if you put the new schools on a map	11:50
	of the city of Cleveland, some said,	11:53
	you were easily able to determine	11:56
	that this new building program was racist in motivation.	11:58
	The new schools were going in affluent white suburbs	12:03
	while the inner-city schools were being left to decay.	12:06
	So, protest groups arose to try to alter	12:11
	the plan or maybe even stop the construction	12:14
	and one day, out at one of the new school	12:17
	building sites, a protest group showed up.	12:20
	One of the members of the group,	12:25
	a young Presbyterian minister,	12:26
	in order to try to stop the construction,	12:29
	lay down in front of a bulldozer.	12:32
	The bulldozer operator did not see the man.	12:37
	He was not malicious. He simply did not see him.	12:42
	People were calling out to him, stop, stop,	12:47
	but of course, with the roar of the diesel motor,	12:50
	he couldn't hear them.	12:53
	He thought they were simply announcing	12:54
	their political agenda, so the bulldozer rolled on	12:56
	and crushed the young man to death.	13:01
	That was 25 years ago.	13:08
	Most of those schools have been built,	13:11
	the city of Cleveland has gone on to other issues	13:13
	and hardly anyone remembers that incident.	13:18
	In fact, the day after it happened,	13:21
	the Cleveland newspaper said it was a tragic waste	13:23
	and now that history has indeed pretty much forgotten it,	13:27
	did that life count	13:34
	or not?	13:38
	History alone cannot tell us.	13:42
	How do we know what counts?	13:50
	Well, there is a wonderful scene	13:55
	in John Updike's novel, A Month of Sundays.	13:57
	In this scene, the protagonist,	14:01
	Thomas Marshfield, a bad boy minister	14:04
	who is in a home for wayward ministers,	14:08
	is playing poker with the other boys at the home.	14:12
	Now, this particular kind of poker	14:17
	involves putting all of the cards	14:19
	in your hand face up on the table	14:22
	except for one card which you and you alone see.	14:25
	Now, in this particular round,	14:31
	the cards that Marshfield had lying face-up	14:33
	on the table, were incredibly strong.	14:36
	He had an almost invincible hand showing	14:39
	and so, one by one, all of the other	14:43
	betters dropped out of the game.	14:46
	Too much for me, I'm out.	14:48
	Except for one other player,	14:51
	a stutterer named Fred,	14:54
	whose hand showing on the table	15:00
	was absolutely miserable	15:03
	but nonetheless, he kept betting.	15:07
	Every time Marshfield would call him and raise him,	15:12
	he would match and raise back.	15:14
	Back and forth, the betting went,	15:16
	until there was all the money at the table on the table.	15:20
	The stakes were incredibly high	15:23
	and the time came for the showdown.	15:25
	Fred turned his one remaining card face-up	15:29
	and it too was an impoverished little card.	15:33
	Incredibly, idiotically, Fred had risked everything	15:40
	he had on an incredibly bad hand.	15:44
	In fact, mathematically speaking,	15:48
	there was only one card in the whole deck	15:50
	which technically speaking	15:53
	could have made Marshfield's hand the loser to Fred's.	15:54
	It was the card that Marshfield in fact held.	16:00
	As Marshfield looked at the card and looked at Fred,	16:07
	two things, he said, occurred to me.	16:10
	Fred was crazy and he had won.	16:13
	He had risked everything, not on a reasonable faith	16:19
	but on a virtual impossibility and he had been right.	16:23
	Now, Updike, I think is writing a parable	16:29
	and not only that, I think the community	16:33
	that first received and read the Gospel of John	16:36
	would have recognized that parable	16:40
	and would have identified with that wager,	16:42
	for they too had risked everything,	16:46
	not on a reasonable faith but on the virtual	16:49
	impossibility that what they had seen	16:52
	and heard in Jesus Christ was more true	16:56
	than all of the powerful hands	17:00
	that had been dealt to the world around them.	17:03
	That what it meant to count in life	17:08
	could not be determined by being true to oneself	17:10
	but by oneself being true to what one heard	17:16
	and saw in Christ, that history	17:20
	would not validate or reward it,	17:23
	that history in fact had said a thunderous no	17:25
	to this Christ and that, as a matter of fact,	17:29
	there were no laboratories,	17:33
	no standards, no data to demonstrate	17:35
	that they had made the correct wager,	17:39
	only a promise, the sheep	17:41
	hear my voice.	17:45
	In the story, that Carol read to us,	17:50
	the religious leaders want more.	17:52
	If you are the Christ, show us plainly.	17:54
	Get it out in the laboratory.	17:58
	Plainly demonstrate where we can measure	18:00
	and test so that we can know that what we are trusting	18:03
	is true before we have to take the risk	18:06
	of stepping over the line and believing it and living it.	18:09
	I wish that were true too, don't you?	18:14
	But there is only the presence	18:19
	and the voice.	18:22
	The sheep hear my voice	18:25
	and they follow	18:31
	and that's what counts.	18:34
	As the young preacher, standing in the river,	18:37
	in Flannery O'Connor's story, says to the young boy	18:40
	about to be baptized into Jesus Christ,	18:43
	as a word of warning and promise, you'll be different.	18:46
	You'll count.	18:54
	Now, the sheep hear my voice.	18:59
	How is that so?	19:01
	We do not have the good shepherd	19:04
	walking beside us each day,	19:06
	whispering shepherd-like sayings into our ear.	19:08
	Go this way, do that, follow me here	19:11
	but neither did the readers of the Gospel of John.	19:15
	It's far more ambiguous than that.	19:20
	All they had was the story,	19:23
	which they told to each other and the expectation	19:25
	that if they listened and watched,	19:29
	that every now and then, life would open up	19:32
	with its wonder of God's truth,	19:36
	that the curtains would pull back	19:39
	and they would see a truth deeper than the world's wisdom	19:41
	and hear a voice more compelling than the world's call	19:44
	and then they would have to decide, do I trust that voice?	19:49
	Do I trust that truth?	19:53
	Do I follow that presence or do I rake in my chips	19:55
	and say, too much for me,	20:00
	go on without me?	20:04
	I read recently about a woman	20:08
	who gave her life to teaching brain-damaged children.	20:10
	Every year she had a class	20:15
	of brain-damaged children ranging	20:18
	from moderately to severely afflicted.	20:20
	One year, she decided it would be a good thing	20:25
	for them and for the community	20:27
	if they would stage a production of My Fair Lady.	20:29
	It never occurred to her (laughs), it never occurred to her,	20:33
	since she had become so immune	20:38
	to the world's way of viewing these kids,	20:41
	to the world's judgment on her class,	20:43
	it never occurred to her not to give the leading part	20:46
	to a young girl in her class who wanted it desperately,	20:50
	even though she was confined to a wheelchair.	20:54
	Never occurred to her not to give her the part.	20:59
	It also never occurred to her that on opening night,	21:03
	when with great effort, she wheeled herself	21:08
	to the center of the stage and turned	21:11
	and in a halting but beautiful soprano, sang,	21:15
	I could have danced all night.	21:20
	I could have spread my wings and done	21:24
	a thousand things I've never done before.	21:26
	Never occurred to her	21:30
	that the audience would weep,	21:33
	for in that moment they had seen a truth	21:39
	deeper than the world's wisdom,	21:42
	heard a voice more compelling	21:46
	than the world's voices	21:50
	and they had to decide what is true, what counts.	21:53
	The rubber and steel of the wheelchair,	21:57
	the verdict of hopeless on this life,	22:00
	or were they hearing the truth	22:05
	that there is a power more redemptive,	22:07
	a value more saving,	22:11
	a truth more compelling that makes even,	22:14
	I could have danced all night into a holy hymn.	22:18
	The sheep hear my voice	22:27
	and they follow.	22:33
	No GRE scores, no SATs, no GPAs	22:36
	to confirm we've made the right choice.	22:39
	No brass plaques along the way to say well done,	22:41
	just the voice and the wager.	22:47
	She was an elderly woman.	22:54
	She was in a congregation in the inner city.	22:56
	She walked to church every Sunday	22:59
	because she lived a couple of blocks away	23:01
	in a project that was deemed	23:03
	to be the most violent and dangerous in the city	23:05
	but in that project,	23:10
	her apartment was seen to be a sanctuary.	23:11
	If you were hungry, there was always	23:14
	an extra bowl of soup on stove.	23:16
	If you needed an ear, she was ready to listen.	23:18
	If you were the victim of violence in your apartment,	23:21
	her place was a safe haven and a refuge.	23:24
	Day and night there were knocks on the door,	23:28
	strangers, she always opened and welcomed,	23:29
	even at great risk to herself.	23:33
	She'd been mugged several times,	23:34
	robbed a number of times but day and night,	23:37
	she opened her door.	23:39
	Her minister said, I look out at her on Sunday morning	23:41
	and I wonder to myself, how can she do it?	23:44
	I know she believes this stuff but she must get tired.	23:46
	She must be afraid but she does it day in and day out.	23:50
	One night, he said,	23:56
	we had had an evening service at the church.	23:57
	I had cut off the lights after the service	23:59
	and was locking the church door	24:01
	and I saw her walking down the litter-filled,	24:03
	grimy sidewalk to her apartment,	24:07
	heading into that place which was full of violence	24:10
	but was her mission field and her home.	24:14
	I was surprised, he said, to see as she walked,	24:17
	that she held her hand up like this.	24:21
	I wondered what it meant and then I heard her voice	24:26
	cut the night with this old hymn.	24:29
	Precious Lord, take my hand.	24:35
	Lead me on, lead me on.	24:39
	Foolish or the truth?	24:46
	The sheep hear my voice	24:52
	and no one, no one	24:56
	can take them out of my hand.	25:01
	Amen.	25:07

Item Info

Title:

Thomas G. Long - "Does It Really Count?" (April 16, 1989)

Description:

What is the measure for determining whether a human life has been lived truly or falsely, wisely or foolishly? There is no scientific rule of measurement for this questions, only a wager that what we have seen and heard in Christ (through the story of the Gospel) is the truth. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Sermon start time: (Part 1) 00:04. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 25:10.
Key quotation: “What it meant to count in life could not be determined by being true to oneself but by oneself being true to what one heard and saw in Christ…History would not validate or reward it…history, in fact, had said a thunderous ‘No’ to this Christ…There were no laboratories, no standards, no data to demonstrate that they had made the correct wager, only a promise: ‘The sheep hear my voice.’”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4891255h

Date:

April 16, 1989

Speaker:

Long, Thomas G., 1946-

Biblical Book:

John

Chapter and Verse:

John 10:27-28

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0429
ref8603_11n
uachapelsermaud
duke:320976
dcrau001361
ark:/87924/r4891255h
4ac2dccf-a6c9-4cc3-b416-f54e0d9d5dfd

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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