Gerald Lee Wilson - "I and Thou: Inc., Ltd., Blessed" (December 15, 1996)
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| - | The second lesson is from | 0:05 |
| the Gospel according to Saint John. | 0:07 | |
| There was a man sent from God whose name was John. | 0:10 | |
| He came as a witness to testify to the light | 0:15 | |
| so that all might believe through him. | 0:19 | |
| He, himself, was not the light | 0:22 | |
| but he came to testify to the light. | 0:25 | |
| This is the testimony given by John | 0:28 | |
| when the Jews sent priests and Levites | 0:31 | |
| from Jerusalem to ask him, | 0:34 | |
| "Who are you?" | 0:37 | |
| He confessed and did not deny it | 0:39 | |
| but confessed, "I am not the Messiah." | 0:42 | |
| And they ask him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" | 0:46 | |
| He said, "I am not." | 0:51 | |
| "Are you the prophet?" | 0:54 | |
| He answered, "No." | 0:56 | |
| Then they said to him, "Who are you? | 0:59 | |
| "Let us have an answer for those who sent us. | 1:02 | |
| "What do you say about yourself?" | 1:06 | |
| He said, "I am the voice of one crying out | 1:09 | |
| "in the wilderness. | 1:13 | |
| "Make straight the way of the Lord, | 1:14 | |
| "as the prophet Isaiah said." | 1:17 | |
| Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. | 1:21 | |
| They ask him, "Why then are you baptizing, | 1:24 | |
| "if you are needn't the Messiah, | 1:29 | |
| "nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?" | 1:31 | |
| John answered them, | 1:35 | |
| "I baptize with water. | 1:37 | |
| "Among you stands one whom you do not know. | 1:39 | |
| "The one who is coming after me, | 1:43 | |
| "I am not worthy to untie the thong of this sandal." | 1:45 | |
| This took place in Bethany across the Jordan, | 1:50 | |
| where John was baptizing. | 1:53 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 1:56 | |
| - | (congregation) Thanks be to God. | 1:59 |
| - | Let us pray. | 2:10 |
| Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 2:13 | |
| be acceptable in thy sight. | 2:18 | |
| O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. | 2:21 | |
| Amen. | 2:24 | |
| We begin with a scene from our home, | 2:28 | |
| which may have been duplicated in many homes. | 2:33 | |
| Perhaps, even yours. | 2:38 | |
| When our daughter was growing up | 2:42 | |
| and before we became empty-nesters, | 2:45 | |
| the same scene occurred 253 times, it seems. | 2:48 | |
| Our daughter Holly would come to us | 2:55 | |
| with some perfectly ridiculous request | 2:57 | |
| and we being responsible Duke parents would say, "No." | 3:02 | |
| Holly's response would always be the same, | 3:10 | |
| "Why can't I? It's my life. | 3:14 | |
| "I can do with it what I wanna do!" | 3:17 | |
| Being rational, logical, chilled out parents | 3:22 | |
| with a couple of Duke degrees, | 3:26 | |
| our answer was the one we swore before we had a child | 3:29 | |
| that we would never, ever give, | 3:33 | |
| "The answer's no 'cause we said so, that's why." | 3:37 | |
| And then would follow in our household | 3:42 | |
| what the historians might call the era of great sulking. | 3:45 | |
| However, on the 254th or was it the 323rd time, | 3:53 | |
| doesn't make a difference. | 3:58 | |
| We came up with another answer to that question, | 3:59 | |
| "Why can't I do it? It's my life." | 4:04 | |
| We said, simply, "No. | 4:09 | |
| "It's not your life or at least not completely. | 4:12 | |
| "You are the CEO of your life, to be sure, | 4:17 | |
| "but in a real sense, you're just a holding company | 4:21 | |
| "for all of the people who have invested in you." | 4:26 | |
| Though we were rather smugly pleased with that answer, | 4:33 | |
| Holly looked at us like this time we had really lost it. | 4:38 | |
| Then followed, another era of great sulking. | 4:44 | |
| The point was lost on her, | 4:50 | |
| but I hope it's not lost here this morning. | 4:51 | |
| In a real sense, for each of us, | 4:56 | |
| I and thou, me and you, | 4:59 | |
| our lives are not our own to do as we please, | 5:01 | |
| but each of us is a corporation | 5:07 | |
| owned by all of those who have invested in us | 5:12 | |
| over our lifetime. | 5:15 | |
| This, of course, is what John Donne was saying, in a sense, | 5:18 | |
| when he said no man is an island. | 5:21 | |
| A great preacher of another age, Joseph Ford Newton said, | 5:24 | |
| "A person is only half himself, | 5:29 | |
| "his friends are the other half." | 5:32 | |
| And of course, Tennyson's Ulysses, | 5:35 | |
| "I am a part of all that I have met." | 5:37 | |
| On this morning, I want to put some old wine in new stems. | 5:42 | |
| And in so doing, acknowledge our debt | 5:47 | |
| and express our gratitude on this Founder's Day Sunday | 5:50 | |
| and third Sunday in Advent. | 5:54 | |
| If we can think of ourselves as corporations, | 5:59 | |
| then we automatically think of our stockholders. | 6:01 | |
| All of those who've invested in us | 6:05 | |
| over the course of our lifetime, | 6:07 | |
| beginning, of course, with our parents | 6:08 | |
| and our families, and including our spouse, | 6:11 | |
| and all of those throughout our lives. | 6:14 | |
| And in thinking of these stockholders, | 6:18 | |
| we have a dual agenda. | 6:20 | |
| First of all, we want to express our debt of gratitude | 6:24 | |
| and secondly, there's the matter of accountability. | 6:29 | |
| Now let me list a few of the stockholders in me | 6:35 | |
| and thank them, if you will. | 6:38 | |
| I want you to make your own list. | 6:39 | |
| Please wait until the end of the service, of course, | 6:41 | |
| or at least 'til the end of the sermon. | 6:43 | |
| In this university setting, | 6:47 | |
| and on this occasion, | 6:49 | |
| we are especially mindful of the fact | 6:50 | |
| that teachers are, by nature, investors. | 6:53 | |
| They invest in people. | 6:58 | |
| I think of all of those teachers who have invested in me | 7:01 | |
| and those to whom I owe a debt of gratitude | 7:03 | |
| and a reckoning of accountability. | 7:09 | |
| At Duke, such names as Shelton Smith, Stuart Henry, | 7:11 | |
| Jim Cleland, Bill Holly come to mind. | 7:16 | |
| Great teachers, great investors, | 7:20 | |
| great human beings. | 7:23 | |
| And in this context, I keep thinking about | 7:26 | |
| something I read several years ago | 7:28 | |
| and I'm not quite sure | 7:30 | |
| whether it really fits in at this point | 7:31 | |
| or whether it represents the kind of | 7:34 | |
| stream of consciousness thought | 7:36 | |
| that we southerners are so good at. | 7:38 | |
| We may not be able to organize ourselves out of a paper bag, | 7:42 | |
| make that a burlap bag, | 7:46 | |
| but we do know the joys of free association. | 7:47 | |
| At any rate, here it is. | 7:53 | |
| One of the most fascinating books | 7:55 | |
| that I have read in a long time | 7:57 | |
| was John E. Mack's biography of T.E. Lawrence, | 7:58 | |
| Lawrence of Arabia. | 8:03 | |
| Entitled A Prince of Our Disorder. | 8:05 | |
| And in his introduction to this book, | 8:10 | |
| Mack wrote of Lawrence, | 8:13 | |
| and I really think this describes so much of Duke's mission, | 8:14 | |
| "Lawrence possessed, to a unique degree, | 8:19 | |
| "a quality I have called the capacity of enabling. | 8:22 | |
| "He enabled others to make use of abilities | 8:28 | |
| "they had always possessed, | 8:31 | |
| "but until their acquaintance with him, | 8:33 | |
| "had failed to utilize. | 8:37 | |
| "This enabling ranged from helping an airman | 8:41 | |
| "enjoy a day's work to encouraging a people | 8:43 | |
| "and its leader to achieve a revolution | 8:46 | |
| "they could not have accomplished unaided. | 8:50 | |
| "Enabling depends upon a unique kind of relationship | 8:54 | |
| "between the enabler and the enabled. | 8:58 | |
| "In some ways," writes Mack, | 9:00 | |
| "It resembles the relation between a teacher and a student." | 9:02 | |
| There we have it, you know. | 9:10 | |
| Our teachers, our enablers, our investors. | 9:11 | |
| Come to think of it, | 9:17 | |
| isn't this really what's being talked about | 9:18 | |
| in the indenture of Duke University? | 9:21 | |
| Which is reproduced on the bronze plaque | 9:23 | |
| just beyond the chapel here? | 9:26 | |
| Isn't this what's being said when it says, | 9:28 | |
| the indenture says, | 9:30 | |
| "Through changing generations of students, | 9:32 | |
| "the objective has been to encourage individuals | 9:36 | |
| "to achieve to the extent of their capacities, | 9:39 | |
| "an understanding and an appreciation | 9:42 | |
| "of the world in which they live. | 9:44 | |
| "Their relationship to it, their opportunities, | 9:47 | |
| "and their responsibilities." | 9:50 | |
| There's a flip side to this coin also, by the way. | 9:54 | |
| It's expressed very simply, | 9:58 | |
| by Anna in Rodgers and Hammerstein's, The King and I, | 10:00 | |
| when she sings, | 10:05 | |
| "If you become a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught." | 10:06 | |
| How true it is. | 10:13 | |
| If you become a teacher, by your students, you'll be taught. | 10:14 | |
| I think of those students to whom I owe | 10:19 | |
| both a debt of gratitude and accountability. | 10:21 | |
| Bobby and Warren, Alex and Allison, | 10:26 | |
| and Lisa and Logan and Jeff and Sherry, | 10:29 | |
| and Bill and Giovanni, even maybe Takis, | 10:31 | |
| and maybe, even more probable, Arie. | 10:38 | |
| I could go on with my list, as could you, | 10:41 | |
| until this list became longer | 10:44 | |
| than an old testament list of begats. | 10:46 | |
| The point is made, | 10:50 | |
| each of us has a long list of stockholders | 10:53 | |
| to whom we owe a debt of gratitude | 10:56 | |
| and to whom we are in accountable | 10:59 | |
| for what they have invested in us. | 11:01 | |
| And of course, there is the investment made in a us, | 11:05 | |
| a symbol here today | 11:09 | |
| by Washington, Duke, and James Buchanan Duke, | 11:10 | |
| and the continuing investment made by the Duke family, | 11:13 | |
| and the Founder's Society, | 11:17 | |
| and all of those connected with the university. | 11:18 | |
| What do we say on this occasion? | 11:23 | |
| Simply, the second most beautiful phrase | 11:26 | |
| in the English language, | 11:29 | |
| "Thank you. Thank you." | 11:31 | |
| We move on, | 11:36 | |
| continuing the metaphor of the business world | 11:37 | |
| as sort of a convenient peg to hang our thoughts on. | 11:39 | |
| We move on to point out | 11:43 | |
| the fact that each of us | 11:46 | |
| is not only incorporated, Inc., if you will. | 11:47 | |
| To use the words, American business, | 11:51 | |
| but also limited LTD, | 11:53 | |
| as the British world would have it. | 11:56 | |
| When you think about it, the metaphors not a bad one. | 12:00 | |
| We each have our own collection of stockholders, | 12:04 | |
| but each of our stockholders | 12:07 | |
| has only limited liability for us. | 12:09 | |
| Sometimes this concept of limited liability | 12:14 | |
| is one we don't really want to acknowledge. | 12:17 | |
| All too often, we seek to shift responsibility | 12:21 | |
| for our limitations from ourselves to our stockholders. | 12:24 | |
| Not too long ago, I heard a psychologist say | 12:30 | |
| that part of human development, | 12:32 | |
| part of the process of moving into adulthood, | 12:34 | |
| is recognizing our limitations | 12:40 | |
| and our potential within those limitations. | 12:43 | |
| I think this also implies | 12:46 | |
| that not only do we recognize our limitations, | 12:48 | |
| but we also accept responsibility for them. | 12:52 | |
| It may be another slight digression, at this point, | 12:58 | |
| but I can't help but think of Mark Twain's witticism. | 13:02 | |
| There was a man in our town, | 13:06 | |
| whom everyone said had and inferiority complex. | 13:08 | |
| He didn't have a complex, he was just plain inferior. | 13:12 | |
| No, we're all limited in some ways. | 13:18 | |
| We are all inferior in some areas, | 13:22 | |
| that's not the problem. | 13:24 | |
| The problem is accepting responsibility | 13:26 | |
| for these limitations. | 13:29 | |
| But all too often as Dean Willimon pointed out last Sunday, | 13:32 | |
| we resort to a victim mentality. | 13:35 | |
| We pass the buck, we blame others for our limitations. | 13:40 | |
| This occurs in large part, I think, for two reasons. | 13:45 | |
| First, all too often, | 13:50 | |
| we are obsessed with autobiography and forget history. | 13:53 | |
| We see ourselves as exceptions | 13:58 | |
| to the laws of cause and effect. | 14:01 | |
| We live lives as someone has said, of rootless expediency. | 14:04 | |
| But then we want to blame our roots for our failures. | 14:11 | |
| Second, in our own special way, | 14:17 | |
| we reduce the demands on ourselves | 14:20 | |
| and correspondingly raise to unrealistic levels, | 14:23 | |
| our demands on others, | 14:28 | |
| in terms of what we expect them to do for us. | 14:30 | |
| And if it doesn't work out, you see, | 14:34 | |
| we can hold them responsible. | 14:35 | |
| But it doesn't really work that way. | 14:38 | |
| Others can invest in us to be sure, | 14:41 | |
| but their liability is limited. | 14:45 | |
| We are responsible for ourselves. | 14:48 | |
| And so in this convergence of Founder's Day | 14:55 | |
| and the third Sunday in Advent, | 15:00 | |
| we wonder if the two have anything in common | 15:02 | |
| other than the accident of time. | 15:06 | |
| In actuality, they do have quite a bit in common. | 15:09 | |
| Both Founder's Day and the third Sunday in Advent | 15:13 | |
| represent events which have had | 15:17 | |
| a crucial impact on our lives. | 15:20 | |
| Both Founder's Day Sunday and the third Sunday in Advent | 15:25 | |
| are about more than events, | 15:30 | |
| they are about continuing processes | 15:32 | |
| and they remind us of the extent | 15:35 | |
| to which we have been blessed. | 15:39 | |
| On this third Sunday in Advent in the Christian year, | 15:44 | |
| we continue to celebrate the birth | 15:48 | |
| of one destined to make the ultimate investment in us. | 15:51 | |
| We focus on a manger, but in romanticizing that manger, | 15:55 | |
| we sometimes fail to note | 16:00 | |
| that it is a theologically crowded one. | 16:02 | |
| Cradling not only a babe, but also a cross and a crown. | 16:06 | |
| And so we think of this greatest investment made in us | 16:13 | |
| with gratitude. | 16:16 | |
| Or as we read this morning from the Psalms, | 16:17 | |
| the Lord has done great things for us. | 16:20 | |
| We are glad. | 16:24 | |
| Likewise on this special Sunday, we express our gratitude | 16:27 | |
| and acknowledge the extent to which we have been blessed | 16:32 | |
| by the presence of this university in our lives. | 16:37 | |
| History is filled with examples | 16:43 | |
| of people with nerve, but no vision. | 16:45 | |
| Those with vision, but no nerve. | 16:49 | |
| In the founders of this university, | 16:53 | |
| Washington, Duke, and James Buchanan Duke, | 16:55 | |
| and their descendants, | 16:59 | |
| as well as its outstanding leaders, | 17:01 | |
| we have witnessed a unique combination | 17:04 | |
| of both vision and nerve. | 17:07 | |
| What kind of vision? | 17:13 | |
| What kind of nerve did it take | 17:15 | |
| for a man like Washington Duke to offer a century ago, | 17:18 | |
| $100,000 for Trinity College | 17:22 | |
| to open its doors to women | 17:25 | |
| and to place them on an equal footing with men? | 17:26 | |
| All of this in a time and in a region, | 17:29 | |
| where one native writer | 17:33 | |
| could write with little fear of contradiction: | 17:34 | |
| "Men are the suns and women are the moons, | 17:38 | |
| living through the reflective glory of their husbands." | 17:42 | |
| Courage, vision, | 17:46 | |
| in that kind of time, that kind of mentality. | 17:49 | |
| Or the vision and the nerve | 17:54 | |
| involved in the defensive academic freedom | 17:56 | |
| in the John Spencer Bassett affair in 1903. | 17:58 | |
| When Bassett committed what was viewed as civic heresy | 18:02 | |
| and even more sadly, in most quarters, religious heresy, | 18:06 | |
| by questioning prevailing doctrines about race relations. | 18:12 | |
| As Dr. Richard Lischer pointed out | 18:21 | |
| so aptly and so eloquently on this occasion last year, | 18:23 | |
| the vision and the nerve involved | 18:28 | |
| in the creation of the Duke endowment | 18:31 | |
| and the establishing of a university based on faith | 18:34 | |
| in the eternal union of education and religion. | 18:37 | |
| I love that phrase. | 18:41 | |
| The eternal union of education and religion | 18:42 | |
| in a time as Lischer pointed out, | 18:47 | |
| not noted as one of the great ages of faith. | 18:49 | |
| Let me conclude | 18:56 | |
| by relating a personal Duke experience. | 18:59 | |
| One that I think illustrates the enormous | 19:04 | |
| and the lasting impact of the Duke family's investment. | 19:09 | |
| Several years ago, | 19:15 | |
| a day or two before graduation, | 19:18 | |
| I walked over to the pits. | 19:20 | |
| I think the official name now is the Great Hall. | 19:22 | |
| It was blue and white, keeps changing. | 19:25 | |
| The students call it the pits though. | 19:28 | |
| I sat down to have a cup of coffee with a graduating senior | 19:31 | |
| and he was pretty mellow. | 19:37 | |
| He was reminiscing about his four years at Duke | 19:39 | |
| and then he made a comment on his Duke experience | 19:44 | |
| that I'll never forget. | 19:47 | |
| He said, "You know, Dean Wilson? | 19:50 | |
| If the freshman me could meet the senior me, | 19:53 | |
| we wouldn't know each other." | 19:58 | |
| Now think about that. | 20:01 | |
| If the freshman me could meet the senior me, | 20:02 | |
| we wouldn't know each other. | 20:07 | |
| And I thought then, what a return Duke received | 20:11 | |
| on it's investment in this young man. | 20:15 | |
| And I think now, that those comments represent | 20:18 | |
| a far more accurate measure of our success as a university. | 20:22 | |
| A better index of the return | 20:27 | |
| the founders of this university have received | 20:29 | |
| on their investment. | 20:32 | |
| Far better than any list | 20:34 | |
| that appears in US News and World Report, | 20:37 | |
| even though, of course, | 20:40 | |
| we applauded their accuracy and good judgment. | 20:41 | |
| Today, we recognize an event that occurred 72 years ago, | 20:49 | |
| but what we are celebrating is more than an event. | 20:56 | |
| It is a process, a continuing process, | 21:00 | |
| for the long range investment of our founders | 21:06 | |
| was not only indeed, | 21:09 | |
| not primarily in buildings, but in people. | 21:11 | |
| In us. | 21:16 | |
| Amen. Let us pray. | 21:19 | |
| Almighty God, on this day we reach back into time | 21:22 | |
| to two events which stand not still in silent-like stone, | 21:26 | |
| but flow with energy and life like water. | 21:31 | |
| We thank you for the eternal gift of our Lord and Savior, | 21:36 | |
| and for the continuing gift | 21:40 | |
| from the founders of this university. | 21:42 | |
| We are indeed blessed. | 21:45 | |
| Amen. | 21:50 |