L. Gregory Jones - "We Do See Jesus" (October 8, 2000)

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-	Our Gospel lesson this morning	0:06
	is from the Gospel according to St. Mark 10:2-16.	0:07
	"Some Pharisees came and to test him they asked,	0:14
	"Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?	0:17
	"He answered them, what did Moses command you?	0:20
	"They said, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate	0:24
	"of dismissal and to divorce her.	0:26
	"But Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart,	0:29
	"he wrote this commandment for you.	0:32
	"But from the beginning of creation,	0:34
	"God made them male and female.	0:35
	"For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother	0:38
	"and be joined to his wife,	0:41
	"and the two shall become one flesh.	0:42
	"So they are no longer two, but one flesh.	0:45
	"Therefore, what God has joined together,	0:48
	"let no one separate.	0:50
	"Then in the house,	0:53
	"the disciples again asked Him about this matter.	0:54
	"And He said to them, whoever divorces his wife	0:57
	"and marries another commits adultery against her."	1:00
	"And if she divorces her husband and marries another,	1:03
	"she commits adultery."	1:05
	"People were bringing little children to Him	1:08
	"in order that he might touch them.	1:10
	"And the disciples spoke sternly to them.	1:12
	"But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them,	1:14
	"let the little children come to me, do not stop them.	1:18
	"For it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.	1:22
	"Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive	1:26
	the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.	1:29
	"And he took them up in His arms,	1:33
	"laid His hands on them, and blessed them."	1:35
	This is the word of the Lord.	1:38
-	Thanks be to God.	1:41
-	Let us pray, Gracious God may the words of my mouth	1:44
	and the meditations of all of our hearts	1:52
	be acceptable in thy sight.	1:54
	O Lord, our strength and our redeemer, Amen.	1:57
	We live in a world of people offering answers	2:07
	to unasked questions.	2:10
	We see it, especially during a political campaign season,	2:13
	when people even as we are gathered here for worship	2:18
	are appearing on the talk shows	2:21
	where well intentioned questioners meet the press,	2:22
	or this week, we'll ask a question to which the candidates	2:26
	or their spokespeople offer whatever they came to say	2:30
	regardless of the question.	2:33
	Periodically a persistent questioner	2:36
	will repeat the question again,	2:38
	to which the spokesperson repeats what they came to say	2:41
	regardless of the question.	2:44
	But it's not only in political worlds	2:48
	where we run into those problems, it's also in the church	2:50
	where all too often people of faith	2:54
	offer answers regardless of the questions.	2:57
	We know what the answers are supposed to be	3:00
	and we don't bother to listen to what the question is	3:03
	that's being asked.	3:05
	One Sunday morning the pastor had gathered the children up	3:08
	at the front of the altar, for a time with the children.	3:11
	And the pastor said to the children,	3:15
	"Now what I'm thinking of is brown, has a bushy tail	3:17
	"and gathers corns around him every fall.	3:20
	"What am I thinking of?"	3:23
	And after a while of silence,	3:25
	finally a little boy at the back raised his hand	3:27
	and he said, "I'm sure the right answer is Jesus,	3:29
	"but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me."	3:32
	(congregation laughs)	3:34
	All too often, we want to offer answers	3:41
	without attending to what the question is.	3:45
	And yet we are gathered here this morning, in this chapel,	3:49
	and on this weekend in which we recall with thanksgiving	3:54
	the founding of Duke University,	3:58
	because we believe that in some sense,	4:00
	the right answer is Jesus.	4:04
	And we need to try to ponder what the question	4:08
	and questions are, to which that is the response.	4:10
	We gather in this chapel	4:16
	because the founding of Duke University,	4:18
	and the founders of Duke University	4:21
	were predicated on the presumption	4:23
	that learning and faith go together, "Eruditio et Religio"	4:25
	And so it was with foresight and farsightedness	4:31
	that the Duke family wanted this glorious chapel	4:35
	which soars to the heights and lifts our imagination to God,	4:38
	would be at the center of the university,	4:42
	geographically and also be the heart of the university.	4:44
	And that the Divinity School would be directly to its right,	4:49
	the first professional school established	4:52
	because they had a conviction	4:56
	that knowledge and Faith, when brought together	4:59
	respond to the deepest questions	5:02
	and when either is left separate from the other,	5:05
	it is to the detriment of both.	5:08
	And I suspect that it wasn't simply	5:12
	because they lived in North Carolina,	5:14
	in a time of a Protestant culture	5:17
	that they recognize the linkage of knowledge and faith.	5:20
	For we see even in this day, when there are so many changes,	5:25
	the resilience of those questions that are coming back to us	5:30
	about how we understand the relationship	5:34
	between faith and knowledge.	5:40
	After all, St. Augustine put it	5:43
	more than a millennium and a half ago,	5:46
	"Our hearts are restless,	5:49
	"until they find their rest in thee, oh God.	5:51
	We have tried over the course of the 20th century	5:56
	in various and complex ways, to find ways to avoid	6:00
	the intersection of faith and knowledge,	6:04
	we've tried putting our faith in weapons,	6:06
	we've tried putting our faith in technology,	6:09
	we've tried putting our faith in consumer goods,	6:11
	we've tried putting our faith in ourselves.	6:13
	And each time we fall short	6:15
	and greater and greater destruction comes.	6:18
	And so it is that on this weekend,	6:23
	we celebrate the founding, and the founders,	6:25
	and the continuing commitment of the men	6:30
	and women of this university,	6:32
	to sustaining the questions at the heart	6:34
	of the intersection of faith and knowledge,	6:37
	of faith and learning "Eruditio et Religio."	6:42
	And in our lesson from Hebrews this morning,	6:48
	we come to the perhaps most important question	6:52
	that could be raised, the question of the Psalmist	6:55
	from Psalm eight, that the writer to the Hebrews	7:00
	lifts up and now puts into the context of his own ladder.	7:03
	"What are human beings that thou art mindful of them,	7:08
	"mortals, that thou dost care for them?"	7:14
	What does it mean to be human?	7:19
	How do we understand human life?	7:23
	It's a basic question,	7:29
	in some ways a very simple and straightforward question,	7:32
	and yet it addresses the greatest complexities that we face.	7:35
	In recent months, we've discovered	7:41
	how to map the human genome,	7:43
	and even as we look forward to all the advances in knowledge	7:45
	that that provides, and the hope for therapies	7:48
	and other interventions that can make our life better,	7:51
	that can help us with the environment,	7:54
	we also know the dangers that it presents.	7:56
	Unless we continue to ask that question,	8:00
	"What are human beings, that thou art mindful of them,	8:04
	"mortals that thou dost care for them?"	8:10
	In our institute on care at the end of life,	8:15
	we grapple with that question	8:17
	as we look at people who in their dying days,	8:19
	whether in a neonatal ward or at the end of a long life,	8:21
	struggle and fear the isolation	8:25
	and the abandonment of others,	8:27
	whether they're no longer a human being	8:30
	because they're no longer a productive consumer.	8:32
	They're no longer able to work,	8:37
	or because the pain seems like it could be overwhelming.	8:40
	We try to bring people together to look at the question	8:46
	of how to care faithfully and effectively	8:48
	to bring doctors, and nurses,	8:51
	and social workers and clergy together.	8:52
	Because we believe that human beings	8:57
	are made for relationship with God and with one another.	8:59
	Studies have shown that after pain management,	9:04
	after wanting to find a way to control the pain	9:06
	in their dying days, the second thing they want most	9:08
	is peace with God, a sense of spiritual completion	9:12
	and a sense of reconciliation with God	9:15
	and with their families and loved ones.	9:18
	Universities are great places to sustain the question	9:22
	of what human beings are like,	9:27
	and when we do it in a context	9:30
	that opens up the horizons of who God is,	9:31
	and how God is related to the world,	9:35
	and why we were created in the image and likeness of God,	9:37
	it becomes an opportunity to bring together	9:41
	advances in research, with humane care,	9:44
	that nurture our lives and sustain us.	9:51
	"What are human beings without us,	9:55
	"that that thou's mindful of them,	9:57
	"mortals that thou dost care for them."	10:00
	The Psalmist puts the context of what it means to be human	10:04
	in relation to God, in a majestic way.	10:09
	But notice how often we turn it into a source of cynicism.	10:13
	Somebody's caught with pornography, and what's their excuse?	10:18
	"Well, after all, I'm only human."	10:22
	Somebody is caught dumping toxic waste into a river	10:25
	without any regard for the people who live down the river,	10:28
	much less succeeding generations, and what do they say?	10:31
	"Well, after all, I'm only human."	10:33
	People abuse and destroy other people	10:38
	and they say, "Well, after all, we're only human."	10:40
	Why don't we look at the people whose lives	10:45
	truly are a little lower than the angels,	10:49
	who live good and holy lives.	10:53
	Why don't we look at them and say,	10:57
	"Well, after all, they're only human."	10:58
	Why don't we look at Benjamin Newton Duke,	11:01
	who despite his own physical frailty,	11:04
	worked so hard for Duke University,	11:07
	who never turned away a needy Methodist preacher,	11:10
	who supported children's homes and hospitals	11:13
	and even in the 1920s,	11:15
	was reaching out and supporting black colleges in a time	11:17
	when that would have been unthinkable to so many.	11:21
	Why don't we look at his life and say,	11:24
	"Well, after all, he's only human."	11:26
	Why don't we look at the mother working the second	11:30
	or the third shift, to try to save up enough money	11:33
	to send her daughter to college	11:36
	so that she could be the first generation to go to college,	11:38
	and have a sense of hope	11:41
	for a better life of the expansive ways	11:42
	in which learning and faith can go together	11:45
	to create a better world.	11:47
	Why don't we look at that mother and say,	11:49
	"Well, after all she's only human."	11:51
	Too often in universities as well in other settings,	11:56
	we turn the question of what human beings are like	12:02
	into a refuge for cynicism,	12:06
	rather than as an opportunity to sustain communities of hope	12:09
	of discovering ways to connect a love of learning	12:15
	and a desire for God	12:19
	that becomes manifested in care for other people,	12:20
	both near and far.	12:24
	"What are human beings,	12:28
	"that thou dost is mindful of them,	12:30
	"mortals that thou dost care for them."	12:32
	The writer to the Hebrews	12:36
	does indeed end up answering that question	12:38
	by saying the right answer is Jesus.	12:42
	But he does it in a very rich and complex way.	12:46
	In the context of asking that question,	12:50
	he then says we don't see everything.	12:52
	The world is so complex, as this university is complex	12:55
	that people are off studying most minute, scientific data	13:00
	at the same time that people are reading Dante's "Paradiso"	13:06
	The writer to the Hebrews says we can have the confidence,	13:14
	that it all holds together in Christ.	13:17
	As the writer puts it, we do see Jesus, and in seeing Jesus	13:22
	we see a way to live through the questions	13:29
	and to sustain ourselves even in the midst	13:32
	of all that we do not know.	13:35
	We do see Jesus, we need that sense of learning,	13:40
	simply to understand some of the moves	13:48
	that the writer to the Hebrews makes,	13:50
	occupies a lot of our attention	13:53
	over in divinity school classrooms,	13:55
	learning the Hebrew of Psalm eight	13:58
	and the Greek of the opening verses of Hebrews	14:00
	and the ways in which the rhetorical beauty	14:04
	of those passages can't really be translated.	14:06
	But then to look at those opening words,	14:11
	God spoke to our ancestors in many in various ways	14:15
	by the prophets, and in the last days	14:18
	has spoken to us through the Son.	14:20
	How do you understand what it means to see Jesus	14:24
	in that way, to understand the complex relationship	14:26
	between this passage and these passages	14:31
	in the Old Testament and the New Testament,	14:33
	and how to see Christ as the fulfillment	14:35
	of the hopes of Israel without displacing Israel	14:38
	in the kinds of ways that lead to destruction.	14:42
	It takes time and study,	14:47
	and then when you are presented	14:51
	with the interrelation of the passages for this morning,	14:53
	we do see Jesus in conjunction with that difficult passage	14:58
	from Job which the President read a few moments ago,	15:02
	Job, that powerful book that points us	15:06
	to all the suffering in the world.	15:10
	Indeed, what Simone Weil would have called something deeper	15:15
	than suffering, a sense of affliction,	15:18
	of the pain, of the separation	15:21
	that comes from the most acute oppression and isolation.	15:24
	The ways in which Job found himself sitting out	15:29
	on the ash heap, wondering why he was being cast aside.	15:32
	Those times in all of our lives	15:40
	when darkness seems to overwhelm us,	15:42
	when we're afflicted and feeling despair and isolated,	15:45
	wondering if there's anyone who cares.	15:49
	Have you ever thought of the miracle that is a hospital,	15:53
	where people care for those are in intense suffering,	15:58
	that we don't simply abandon people.	16:02
	But the nurses, and physicians, and clergy,	16:05
	and families, and caregivers, go and are present,	16:08
	and sit, and hold hands and sing, and pray with such people.	16:11
	Well, the writer to the Hebrews says,	16:17
	"We see Jesus perhaps in the midst of His suffering."	16:19
	That the glory and honor that is Christ's,	16:26
	is not a glory and an honor of simply discovering	16:30
	that you've won an esteemed academic prize	16:34
	or that you have pride of place in a great university.	16:37
	But it's also in solidarity with all those who suffer.	16:43
	And maybe even that very difficult Gospel passage	16:49
	this morning, about divorce	16:52
	is at least in part an attempt to point out	16:56
	that in a world in which we are so prone	16:59
	to perpetuating brokenness, and division,	17:02
	and destructiveness, that God's intention	17:05
	is for reconciliation, for faithfulness,	17:11
	for finding ways to bring people together in communion,	17:16
	a vision of us connecting with one another,	17:20
	that we see Jesus in the miracles	17:23
	of when people do forgive and reconcile,	17:25
	when people do it, give and receive hospitality.	17:29
	When in the midst of pain,	17:33
	we continue to offer presence to one another.	17:37
	The questions are real,	17:44
	and at their heart they have to do	17:46
	with what human beings are	17:49
	and what it means to be mindful of them.	17:51
	The assurance that we have in this chapel	17:55
	is that God has created us in God's own image and likeness.	17:58
	And that God in Christ has forgiven us	18:04
	and set us free from all that which binds and divides	18:07
	and destroys for the sake of bringing us together,	18:10
	to care for one another, to reach out to one another.	18:14
	And that is at the heart of this university	18:20
	which over 75 years, from its time being transformed	18:24
	from Trinity College into Duke University,	18:29
	throughout the legacy of both Trinity and Duke University,	18:32
	there has been that convergence of an outrageous ambition	18:35
	and an extravagant faithfulness	18:39
	that brings faith and learning together	18:41
	for the sake of the pursuit of that truth,	18:45
	which heals, which redeems, which liberates.	18:50
	We do see Jesus whenever we see human beings	18:57
	who are living faithful lives,	19:01
	who are seeking truth above self interest,	19:05
	who are reaching out to others.	19:08
	This weekend even as we remember all	19:12
	that has been accomplished over 75 years,	19:15
	we also celebrate a gift,	19:18
	that has been given in part to help further	19:22
	Duke's relationship with the community of Durham,	19:25
	to reach out in service to a community nearby	19:29
	even as we also seek to be of service throughout the world.	19:32
	We do see Jesus in the work	19:37
	that goes on in the laboratories,	19:42
	in the seminar rooms,	19:44
	in the ways in which graduates go forth from this place	19:47
	to serve and make this a better world.	19:52
	And it's no accident that the heart of this university	19:55
	should be a chapel, and a Divinity School	20:00
	that emulate that motto "Eruditio et Religio"	20:04
	75 years ago when the Dukes established the indenture	20:11
	that made this Duke University,	20:18
	they also formally maintained a strong linkage	20:21
	to the Methodist Church.	20:25
	Over the years Methodist have cared deeply about education	20:28
	and some of our sister institutions around the world	20:32
	have trained and educated some of the greatest people	20:35
	of the last century.	20:39
	My wife Susan and I were privileged to go to South Africa	20:42
	this summer, as part of the Divinity schools efforts	20:45
	to establish a partnership	20:48
	with the churches in South Africa.	20:49
	While we were there, we traveled to some of the places	20:52
	where Methodist institutions of higher education	20:56
	had been founded.	21:00
	They were places that educated some of the greatest people	21:03
	who have transformed South Africa.	21:07
	People like Robert Sobotka, Peter Storey and Nelson Mandela.	21:10
	The apartheid government	21:17
	saw that these Methodist institutions were a challenge	21:19
	to their unjust ideals,	21:24
	because they represented that bringing together	21:26
	of faith and learning and justice, that would be a risk.	21:29
	And so they shut down those schools	21:34
	and confiscated their land.	21:36
	And it was with pain that we looked at the police complexes	21:39
	and the commercial institutions	21:44
	that had been thrown up on land	21:46
	that had been previously devoted to education.	21:47
	But then we went and we saw some instances	21:53
	of what they call the chain of hope.	21:57
	Over the last several years,	22:00
	The Methodist Church of Southern Africa	22:03
	has started more than 60 pre-schools	22:05
	in and around Johannesburg,	22:08
	as a way of reestablishing their commitment to education,	22:10
	pre-schools and the churches that bring together	22:14
	faith and learning for the youngest of children	22:16
	in the conviction that we cannot afford any more cynicism,	22:19
	but we need to be establishing communities of hope.	22:22
	We went to see that chain of hope,	22:26
	pre-schools and some large churches,	22:30
	and also in some of the townships.	22:34
	In one township of Ivory Park,	22:38
	every time they start a new congregation to worship God,	22:40
	they simultaneously start a pre-school	22:45
	and they also start a program of economic empowerment,	22:49
	a chain of hope.	22:54
	As we visited one of those pre-schools,	22:56
	the pastor said to me,	22:58
	"I'd like to come to the United States and study	23:01
	"because some of the questions we're trying to address	23:03
	"about leadership and about the future of the church	23:06
	"and the future of education	23:09
	"are questions that really need complex study,	23:10
	"I hope we'll be able to do that."	23:15
	Because they recognize what's at stake.	23:18
	We are blessed at Duke,	23:23
	to have had visionary founders and men and women	23:26
	of extraordinary leadership over 75 years,	23:29
	who have been committed	23:34
	to furthering the linkage of faith and learning.	23:37
	Why do you think Nelson Mandela	23:42
	has been such a powerful leader?	23:45
	Well, after all he's only human.	23:47
	Why would these people establish these pre-schools	23:50
	and this chain of hope,	23:53
	in the midst of so much suffering,	23:56
	Well, after all they're only human.	24:00
	"What are human beings, that thou dost care for them."	24:05
	In the midst of our lives,	24:12
	let us ourselves aspire to the true humanity	24:16
	that we see glimpsed in Jesus Christ.	24:20
	In faithfulness to God,	24:23
	that our learning and our living	24:26
	might always cultivate a community of hope	24:29
	because we do indeed see Jesus.	24:34

Item Info

Title:

L. Gregory Jones - "We Do See Jesus" (October 8, 2000)

Description:

Sermon start time: 01:44. Sermon end time: 24:38.
Seeing Jesus in the lives the faithful provides us a vision for what it means to live in the face of all of the seemingly unanswerable questions. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “As the writer puts it, we do see Jesus, and in seeing Jesus we see a way to live through the questions and to sustain ourselves even in the midst of all that we do not know.”

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4df6kh7p

Date:

October 8, 2000

Speaker:

Jones, L. Gregory

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 CS-1034
ref10225_a59
uachapelsermaud
duke:320693
dcrau001678
ark:/87924/r4df6kh7p
b23c68c4-96de-49c5-b712-8cb2ad27383e

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