Carlyle Marney - "Our Present Higher Good" (November 5, 1972)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(choral music) | 0:02 | |
(organ music) | 0:47 | |
(choral music) | 1:59 | |
- | Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father, | 2:50 |
and from the Lord Jesus Christ. | 2:53 | |
Christians are a people who would be men | 2:57 | |
and women who sees things as they are, | 2:59 | |
who call things by their right names. | 3:03 | |
Whose work is valid, and whose world is whole. | 3:06 | |
Here as we worship together, we hear the word | 3:12 | |
that tells us what we were meant to be, and we stand before | 3:15 | |
the one who has created us and given us life. | 3:20 | |
And here also before the presence of his holiness. | 3:25 | |
We confront our denied discipleship, | 3:28 | |
our weak idolatries, and our faithlessness. | 3:32 | |
But it is also here that we hear the word | 3:36 | |
of repentance and of hope. | 3:39 | |
For Jesus' words to Jerusalem speak also to us. | 3:42 | |
I am to come to call the righteous, | 3:47 | |
but sinners to repentance. | 3:50 | |
Let us confess our sins before each other, | 3:53 | |
and to God, our Father. | 3:57 | |
Let us pray. | 3:59 | |
Almighty and most merciful God, | 4:06 | |
we thank you for this opportunity of confession and renewal. | 4:10 | |
Some of us have carried about with us the burden of memory | 4:17 | |
and regret, of failure and remorse, | 4:21 | |
and it has sapped our vitality and made us languid | 4:26 | |
in service and feeble in witness. | 4:29 | |
Help us now, God, to acknowledge our transgressions, | 4:34 | |
and to face with utter honesty the evasions, | 4:39 | |
compromises, and cowardices of which we have been guilty. | 4:43 | |
We believe it is your will for us to rise, | 4:49 | |
to higher life, to learn from the mistakes of the past, | 4:51 | |
and to live in firm dependence upon your grace. | 4:57 | |
To this end, we open our lives anew, | 5:02 | |
to the coming of your searching light. | 5:06 | |
You remember the words of our Lord when he said: | 5:11 | |
judge not, that you be not judged. | 5:13 | |
Well God, our heavenly Father who shines upon the evil | 5:18 | |
and the good, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust, | 5:22 | |
forgive us our hasty discriminations, we ask. | 5:27 | |
Forgive us if we label men, | 5:31 | |
if we substitute slogans for thought, | 5:34 | |
and estimate our fellows without | 5:38 | |
firsthand knowledge of them. | 5:40 | |
Forgive us when we fail to see people, | 5:43 | |
because we are preoccupied with abstractions like law, | 5:46 | |
and justice, and tradition. | 5:50 | |
Forgive us when we are more intent on being right | 5:54 | |
than on being reconciled. | 5:58 | |
Forgive us, too, when we refrain from judgment, | 6:01 | |
for the wrong reasons, through fear of recrimination, | 6:04 | |
or a lack of sensitiveness. | 6:08 | |
Oh God, whose justice demands truth in our inward parts, | 6:13 | |
and whose anger is upon the uncaring, | 6:17 | |
have mercy upon us. | 6:21 | |
Forgive us our complacence with killing. | 6:24 | |
Rebuke our shrugs at poverty and war, | 6:28 | |
as though we could do nothing about them. | 6:31 | |
Confront us who can feed and protect our own children, | 6:35 | |
that we rest not until all parents can feed | 6:39 | |
and protect their children. | 6:42 | |
Oh God, our Father, we pray your forgiveness | 6:48 | |
for the sins of our hearts and our wills. | 6:49 | |
For not thinking deeply. | 6:54 | |
For being often too intense. | 6:57 | |
For being inattentive to your word, and to your voice. | 7:00 | |
For the lack of feeling and intercession | 7:06 | |
for the needs of our families. | 7:08 | |
For the oppressed, for the hungry, | 7:11 | |
for those in temptation and those without hope. | 7:14 | |
We ask your forgiveness for ignoring other people. | 7:20 | |
For taking ourselves too seriously. | 7:25 | |
For sins of exhibition and for sins of inhibition. | 7:29 | |
For failure to think and pray and act deeply | 7:33 | |
for the mission and unity of the church. | 7:37 | |
For trying to imprison you in words and institutions. | 7:41 | |
Oh Lord, forgive what we have been, | 7:47 | |
sanctify what we are, and order what we shall be. | 7:51 | |
That we may delight in your will, | 7:58 | |
and walk in your ways, through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 8:00 | |
Amen. | 8:06 | |
Hear this good news. | 8:12 | |
To be a Christian, a member of Christ's body, | 8:14 | |
is to be established already, here and now in this world, | 8:17 | |
in a state of reconciliation, which at once accepts | 8:22 | |
oneself and embraces the whole world. | 8:27 | |
To be a Christian is to receive and know | 8:32 | |
and participate in the unconditional, extravagant, | 8:35 | |
inexhaustible, expendable love of God. | 8:40 | |
For all that he has made and called into being. | 8:44 | |
In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. | 8:49 | |
Glory to God. | 8:53 | |
Amen. | 8:55 | |
(organ music) | 9:11 | |
(sweeping organ music) | 10:04 | |
(epic choral music) | 10:33 | |
(soaring choral music) | 12:14 | |
(uptempo choral music) | 16:00 | |
(somber choral music) | 20:16 | |
- | The Lord be with you. | 20:59 |
Let us pray. | 21:02 | |
Let us offer unto God a prayer of thanksgiving, | 21:06 | |
for the gifts that are ours. | 21:10 | |
Oh God, invisible and eternal, | 21:15 | |
you of a thousand names, but ever the same in mercy, | 21:20 | |
and in love, we praise you for creation and all its power. | 21:24 | |
For the things made in the beginning, | 21:32 | |
the things that have come in the harvest season, | 21:35 | |
we lift our praise and our thanksgiving, oh God. | 21:38 | |
Our five senses praise you, our father, | 21:45 | |
for large autumn sights, for brisk air, | 21:50 | |
for sounds within sounds, and gifts within gifts. | 21:55 | |
We thank you for suffering transformed, | 22:01 | |
we thank you for sorrows comforted, | 22:05 | |
and for joy extravagantly given. | 22:08 | |
Oh God, we praise you for the small places of peace | 22:13 | |
in our lives. | 22:16 | |
A child at play, | 22:19 | |
hands honestly at work. | 22:22 | |
Love in the eyes of a friend. | 22:25 | |
Forgiveness in the words of an enemy. | 22:29 | |
A parent who listens when we speak. | 22:34 | |
We glorify you, our Father, | 22:39 | |
that undergirding all Earth's teeming life, | 22:40 | |
all its chaos and calm, | 22:45 | |
all its clamor and its silence, | 22:48 | |
there is your peace, awesome, | 22:52 | |
amazing, and eternal. | 22:56 | |
Oh Lord, amidst all this color, we thank you | 22:58 | |
for the rhythms of our life. | 23:01 | |
We praise you for the rhythm of seasons. | 23:04 | |
For warm noons and cool nights. | 23:08 | |
For sunset and sunrise, | 23:12 | |
and for the new moon. | 23:15 | |
We praise you, oh God, our Father, | 23:18 | |
for the rhythm of the cycle of the seasons, | 23:21 | |
for the cycles of the octaves, | 23:23 | |
the cycles of the leaves and the cycles of the spirit. | 23:26 | |
Oh Lord creator, we thank you for birth, | 23:35 | |
and for rebirth, for childhood and parenthood, | 23:39 | |
for man and for woman, for light and life to come. | 23:44 | |
For the cycle of salvation and the rhythm of life | 23:51 | |
by which we live, and move, and have our being. | 23:55 | |
Oh Lord, we thank you especially in this place, | 24:05 | |
and at this time, that we are called into the fellowship | 24:08 | |
and service of Jesus Christ, and that he is able | 24:12 | |
and willing to use us to proclaim the kingdom of his love. | 24:16 | |
We thank you that we are called to use the work | 24:22 | |
of our hands, the opportunities of professional | 24:24 | |
and business life, the vocation of parenthood, | 24:28 | |
of son-ship, and of home-building to share with others | 24:33 | |
the love of Christ, that has come to us. | 24:38 | |
We thank you that we are called into discipleship, | 24:43 | |
to extend his healing reign. | 24:48 | |
To keep alive the conscience of the world, | 24:51 | |
and to carry out his commission to go | 24:54 | |
and proclaim the kingdom of God | 24:57 | |
to all men and to all nations. | 25:00 | |
And now we lift before you, oh Lord, our Father, | 25:06 | |
a responsive prayer of intercession for our world, | 25:10 | |
for our brothers and our sisters in need. | 25:16 | |
And our supplications for ourselves. | 25:20 | |
Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church, | 25:25 | |
that we all may be one. | 25:29 | |
Grant that every member of the church may truly, | 25:33 | |
and humbly serve you. | 25:36 | |
(congregation replying) | 25:39 | |
We pray for all bishops, priests, and deacons. | 25:42 | |
(congregation replying) | 25:46 | |
We pray for all who govern and hold authority | 25:50 | |
in the nations of the world. | 25:53 | |
(congregation replying) | 25:56 | |
Give us courage to do your will, | 26:00 | |
in all that we undertake. | 26:02 | |
(congregation replying) | 26:05 | |
Have compassion on those who suffer | 26:07 | |
from any grief or trouble. | 26:10 | |
(congregation replying) | 26:12 | |
Give to the departed eternal rest. | 26:16 | |
(congregation replying) | 26:19 | |
We praise you for all your saints who have entered into joy. | 26:23 | |
(congregation replying) | 26:27 | |
Let us pray in silence for our own needs, | 26:32 | |
and those of others whom we know. | 26:36 | |
Almighty God, to whom our needs are known before we ask, | 26:47 | |
help us to ask only what accords with your will, | 26:53 | |
and those good things which we dare not, | 26:57 | |
or in our blindness cannot, ask. | 27:00 | |
Grant us for the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 27:03 | |
Amen. | 27:08 | |
- | The lesson appointed for today comes from Job, | 27:18 |
the 19th chapter, and the second chapter of the Philippians. | 27:20 | |
Oh that my words were written. | 27:26 | |
Oh that they were inscribed in a book. | 27:28 | |
Oh that with an iron pen and lead, | 27:31 | |
they were graven into rock forever. | 27:34 | |
For I know that my redeemer lives, | 27:37 | |
and at last, he will stand upon the Earth. | 27:40 | |
And after my skin has been thus destroyed, | 27:44 | |
then without my flesh, I shall see God. | 27:47 | |
Whom I shall see on my side, | 27:50 | |
and my eye shall behold, and not another. | 27:53 | |
My heart faints within me. | 27:57 | |
Few say: how we pursue him! | 27:59 | |
And the root of the matter is found in him. | 28:02 | |
Be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment | 28:06 | |
of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment. | 28:09 | |
Have this mind among yourselves, | 28:20 | |
which you have in Christ, Jesus. | 28:23 | |
For though he wasn't the form of God, | 28:25 | |
and did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, | 28:27 | |
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, | 28:31 | |
being born in the likeness of man, | 28:35 | |
and being found in human form, | 28:38 | |
he humbled himself and became obedient unto death. | 28:40 | |
Even death on a cross. | 28:44 | |
Therefore, God was highly exalted, | 28:47 | |
and bestowed on him the name which is above every name. | 28:49 | |
And that at the name of Jesus, | 28:54 | |
every knee should bow, in heaven and on Earth, | 28:56 | |
and under the Earth, and every tongue confess | 29:00 | |
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. | 29:03 | |
Here endeth the lesson. | 29:07 | |
(organ music) | 29:09 | |
(melodic choral music) | 29:19 | |
- | Let us affirm our faith. | 29:53 |
We believe in God who has created and is creating, | 29:55 | |
who has come in the true man, Jesus, | 30:01 | |
to reconcile and make new. | 30:04 | |
Who works in us and others by his spirit. | 30:07 | |
We trust him; he calls us to be in his church, | 30:11 | |
to celebrate his presence, to love and serve others, | 30:16 | |
to seek justice and resist evil, | 30:21 | |
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, | 30:24 | |
our judge and our hope, in life, in death, | 30:28 | |
and life beyond death, God is with us. | 30:33 | |
We are not alone. | 30:37 | |
Thanks be to God. | 30:39 | |
- | On a street of a nearby village, | 30:54 |
we ran into the president of a neighboring institution | 30:57 | |
earlier this morning. | 31:01 | |
And President Friday said, twas not a bad day | 31:04 | |
to preach at Duke, considering yesterday. | 31:07 | |
I answered: any day is a good day to preach at Duke, | 31:12 | |
in spite of the fact that I no longer produce sermons | 31:17 | |
like a weekly run of sausages, | 31:21 | |
but there are enough of my permanent, beloved community here | 31:25 | |
to make me ache to say a new, or an additional, | 31:30 | |
or an advanced word. | 31:35 | |
You see, I've had my five years on Wolf Pen Mountain, | 31:39 | |
waiting for God to say something. | 31:44 | |
And God has had ample time to tell me, | 31:47 | |
and I have clawed and climbed and sawed and mowed | 31:51 | |
and chopped and waited, and even prayed, | 31:56 | |
but God has been as silent as if I were Elijah, on Sinai. | 32:00 | |
I really am very sad about this. | 32:06 | |
I really had hoped, but the inscrutable, | 32:09 | |
mysterious silence has simply | 32:14 | |
pushed me back upon resources, | 32:17 | |
people, books, memories, ideals, I already had. | 32:20 | |
I report with candor and regret, no new equipment. | 32:26 | |
Does this mean then when I come here, | 32:33 | |
that I am doomed anew, simply to repeating | 32:37 | |
condensed gruel we have fed each other before? | 32:42 | |
Not at all. | 32:47 | |
For if God has not moved, I have. | 32:49 | |
I have moved past and out of my | 32:55 | |
30-year preoccupation | 32:59 | |
with man, the unconscious. | 33:01 | |
It was a good preoccupation, necessary for me, | 33:05 | |
and unendingly helpful; I have stood with my hat in my hand | 33:10 | |
before a competent psychiatrist, psychologist, | 33:15 | |
sociology, art, history, drama, to say: | 33:17 | |
correct me my notions of man. | 33:20 | |
And it was a good preoccupation, | 33:24 | |
and I now know for you that | 33:27 | |
there is a cellar set of drives | 33:31 | |
behind you; Freud must be pleased that he is established. | 33:35 | |
The unconscious is relevant and determinative. | 33:41 | |
I now know that all leaders, especially religious | 33:45 | |
and political ones, who are warped and twisted, | 33:49 | |
are warped and twisted by their warped and twisted loyalty | 33:53 | |
to a warped and twisted leader, | 33:57 | |
and the little battalion of their family. | 33:59 | |
I know now that all people revert to the stance they took | 34:03 | |
in their primal groups, when they are under pressure, | 34:08 | |
and that all of us use masks and lies and humor | 34:12 | |
and subterfuge and transference and mirrors | 34:17 | |
as means of escape from the need to reveal the self. | 34:20 | |
I know now that few of us really love the self. | 34:26 | |
And that many of us have been trapped in an endless round | 34:30 | |
of pseudo-self disclosure, naval gazing, | 34:35 | |
or as Luther calls it: curvatus in se | 34:39 | |
But I also know that the end of this process | 34:44 | |
may well be a kind of health, an experience of community, | 34:47 | |
a new self-love, a new understanding, involvement, | 34:52 | |
commitment, and a kind of undeniable human dignity. | 34:58 | |
The end may be, for some, a kind of exhibitionism, | 35:03 | |
a faddish and destructive progression from group to group, | 35:07 | |
of half-born persons, hoping for the highly unlikely. | 35:12 | |
Enough of that has happened to make me ask: | 35:17 | |
were we criminally wrong? | 35:21 | |
Did we follow, these 30 years, a will o' the wisp? | 35:25 | |
Did we lead the folk into a demonic cul de sac, | 35:30 | |
where each turns in on each? | 35:34 | |
Did we really abandon what gospel is about? | 35:37 | |
I still think not. | 35:42 | |
Rather, we learned, did we not, | 35:45 | |
that group is of the essence of humanhood. | 35:48 | |
There is no way from I to thou | 35:53 | |
that does not add up to an us-hood. | 35:57 | |
We learned, did we not, that church happens | 36:03 | |
anywhere the group is really such that | 36:07 | |
it's safe to be me. | 36:11 | |
And that the Lord, Christ, still appears on the road | 36:14 | |
between folk. | 36:18 | |
We learn that being Christian and being human | 36:21 | |
are the same high thing, and that guilt | 36:25 | |
and insufficiency | 36:30 | |
and self-hate fall away on the road to humanhood, | 36:32 | |
and I can love me only as I love us, | 36:36 | |
and come to see that | 36:41 | |
some of the us's love me too. | 36:43 | |
This is enough to have learned for now, | 36:48 | |
from the Freud combine, but there's more, | 36:51 | |
a great deal more, a whole lot more. | 36:55 | |
We were wrong if we stopped with inner declaration | 36:59 | |
and self revelation, for there is more. | 37:03 | |
And I have moved out of and into a new concern | 37:09 | |
with man as responsible, able, | 37:14 | |
agent of a higher selfhood. | 37:18 | |
Whatever you are, you are more than a set of determining, | 37:22 | |
shaping memories. | 37:27 | |
Really now, your parents are only here for today, | 37:30 | |
and their voices are growing weaker. | 37:33 | |
Really now, you are more than a childish and warped loyalty | 37:37 | |
to a warped loyalty, long abandoned in your romance-ified | 37:42 | |
childhood, you have moved to town, you're a big girl now. | 37:47 | |
Your memories, real enough, are memories only. | 37:54 | |
And you work, worth, witness humanhood | 37:58 | |
to accomplish in the present. | 38:03 | |
Having orchestrated the voices from behind you, | 38:07 | |
there is a being to be for the future, for you, | 38:11 | |
and this task, I'm convinced, calls for a higher notion | 38:16 | |
of self, higher than my preoccupation | 38:22 | |
with the unconscious can provide. | 38:26 | |
Which is to say: knowing these things about myself, | 38:31 | |
accepting these things about myself, | 38:36 | |
coping with these things about myself, | 38:39 | |
I set out to make something of myself. | 38:43 | |
Bildung a structured form, life, | 38:48 | |
and history, | 38:53 | |
a drama, a play, an episode, | 38:55 | |
I've become consciously | 38:59 | |
directed by the tip of my iceberg that shows best. | 39:01 | |
But the direction I take | 39:06 | |
is deliberately toward the recovery | 39:10 | |
of a set of myths. | 39:14 | |
We threw away myth too soon. | 39:18 | |
We demythologized too fast. | 39:23 | |
For man, myth-bearer | 39:28 | |
and myth-born, | 39:33 | |
always is as sick | 39:35 | |
when he absolutizes reason, | 39:38 | |
as he is insane | 39:42 | |
when he worships unreason. | 39:44 | |
The higher self is available to us only through | 39:48 | |
our immersion in a set of reasonable myths. | 39:52 | |
And what are these myths I must buy, or re-buy? | 39:59 | |
What is the composition of that dream | 40:05 | |
I must reify, | 40:08 | |
live out, for me? | 40:11 | |
Number one is the myth, in spite of all my experience | 40:14 | |
with the unconscious, | 40:18 | |
the myth that I am a conscience. | 40:20 | |
I really am, before or after the election, | 40:25 | |
I am a conscience. | 40:30 | |
Number two is the notion from Plato and earlier | 40:35 | |
that will and passion are | 40:39 | |
forces of the ego, I direct. | 40:43 | |
I drive will and passion. | 40:48 | |
Number three, from dear Frederick Denison Myers, | 40:53 | |
is the myth that I am under a law to love. | 40:56 | |
Paul Tillich noted the emergence in the '40s | 41:04 | |
of a new form of Christianity, in the context | 41:07 | |
of a person and community that I am, | 41:10 | |
he said it was to be expected and prepared for, | 41:13 | |
but not yet to be named. | 41:18 | |
Let us name it now. | 41:21 | |
Let us name it here. | 41:24 | |
When my power, my will and passion, | 41:26 | |
serve my sense of justice, conscience. | 41:31 | |
I am loving. | 41:36 | |
When my love really guides my use of power, | 41:39 | |
will and passion, I serve justice. | 41:45 | |
And when my love and my commitment to justice | 41:50 | |
are rightly connected, I have true power. | 41:55 | |
Or, when conscience, justice, and will | 42:00 | |
are properly related, I really love. | 42:05 | |
And when loving and willing go together, I am just. | 42:10 | |
And when will and conscience go the same road, | 42:16 | |
I have power. | 42:20 | |
Put this, all this, as a capstone overlay, | 42:24 | |
dominant feature of my profile, | 42:30 | |
landmark of my landscape, | 42:34 | |
over my acceptance of the pit from which I was dug, | 42:37 | |
and the goal is in sight. | 42:43 | |
Humanization. | 42:47 | |
Full humanity, as Abraham Maslow called it, | 42:49 | |
and what Jesus Christ is | 42:54 | |
comes within my grasp. | 42:57 | |
My high self is present to me, and all these others | 43:02 | |
are fellow diners at a feast. | 43:07 | |
For here, I am home at last. | 43:11 | |
I not only like me, I love me, | 43:14 | |
and hence I can love you, good or bad. | 43:17 | |
And the wine and the bread of our daily daily, | 43:22 | |
become condiments of life as feast, | 43:26 | |
in such a company of the glad and the human | 43:29 | |
become so satisfying to me that when some distasteful, | 43:33 | |
ungodly, ludicrous and overwhelming | 43:38 | |
outsider like Herod, | 43:42 | |
the king, sends for me to come to him, | 43:45 | |
I can, with total assurance, say as Jesus said: | 43:48 | |
go tell that old she-fox that I'm here at supper today, | 43:53 | |
shall be here tomorrow, and the next day. | 43:58 | |
I intend to go to Jerusalem. | 44:01 | |
Let him meet me there if he wishes to see me. | 44:03 | |
Given this strong an "I", | 44:08 | |
this conscience, will, and love, | 44:11 | |
based upon an acceptance of the self. | 44:14 | |
However, it's still not enough. | 44:18 | |
For much has happened in our time to dissipate the person. | 44:21 | |
The person cannot make it to personhood, | 44:28 | |
apart from communion. | 44:31 | |
And community is at a premium here and now. | 44:34 | |
Indeed, there may not just now be a new and confident word. | 44:39 | |
Quite the contrary. | 44:45 | |
In our contemporary situation, all the old words, | 44:47 | |
especially that old 12th century word, acedia, | 44:52 | |
the word for sloth, all the words are back onstage. | 44:56 | |
And whether it has been with dust with Dostoevsky | 45:02 | |
and Konrad and Kafka and Freud, | 45:05 | |
or Plato or Santayana, Nietzsche, | 45:06 | |
the new madness has taken the visions in hell | 45:09 | |
of the old masters and vulgarized them as chic. | 45:14 | |
And Beckett and Leonesco and Sangille | 45:19 | |
are all old-fashioned now. | 45:22 | |
The masters are out of date, now. | 45:24 | |
The masters of invective have lost their usefulness, now. | 45:27 | |
Over against the pop madness of tarot cards | 45:31 | |
and astrology and occultism and drugs, | 45:35 | |
and the tragic comic Satan cults, | 45:38 | |
and the farthest out symbol of the madness revolution, | 45:41 | |
which is Charlie Manson praying to be dead in the head. | 45:45 | |
Over against such a backdrop, | 45:50 | |
is there a current word to be said? | 45:53 | |
Let me offer to this man of love and will and conscience, | 45:58 | |
who has examined his own innards and come to accept them, | 46:04 | |
let me offer as the content of a new and confident word, | 46:08 | |
an old and not yet heard word, | 46:13 | |
the myth of a common | 46:16 | |
good to be worked for. | 46:19 | |
I can hear you now, | 46:23 | |
across the miles that separate us, | 46:26 | |
that old saw, common good? | 46:29 | |
That old subterfuge of politicians? | 46:34 | |
That old banner of a worn-out, Burke-ian aristocracy? | 46:37 | |
That old chimera communism fostered and festered | 46:42 | |
over the heads and guts of a billion, 400 million people. | 46:46 | |
A common good? | 46:51 | |
Whom do you kid, friend? | 46:53 | |
That old, dead American dream. | 46:56 | |
That old utopian fraud, it's as dead as freshman courses | 46:59 | |
in ethics and as moribund as legal morality, | 47:05 | |
there is no common good! | 47:09 | |
Nature won't stand for it. | 47:11 | |
Maybe so, but, | 47:14 | |
common good is the myth that made Western Civilization | 47:17 | |
a civilization, it's the myth that holds every political, | 47:22 | |
social, moral, economic, and religious entity together, | 47:26 | |
west of the Euphrates, west of Abraham, even west of God. | 47:30 | |
It's the old, 2,500-year driving force behind | 47:36 | |
everything that is worth doing and keeping, | 47:41 | |
since the fall of Troy or the end of Darius the Persian. | 47:43 | |
Common good is the kernel of the German tribal, | 47:49 | |
(speaking German), which means now: freedom. | 47:54 | |
Upon which every Western enterprise, | 47:58 | |
from economic to heavenly is nourished. | 48:01 | |
It's the gut dream of European expansion, | 48:04 | |
it's the justifiable motif of every emigration | 48:07 | |
and every immigration of all the white lemmings | 48:10 | |
of tribal Europe, it's the only justification | 48:14 | |
of all the revolutions, charters, documents, | 48:17 | |
pronouncements, political organizations, | 48:21 | |
and religious bureaucratizations, from King John of England | 48:23 | |
to Gandhi of India and Mao of China. | 48:27 | |
It is the great, unrealized, forever elusive, | 48:30 | |
utterly attractive dream, common desire, | 48:34 | |
longest hope of mankind. | 48:37 | |
It is what all Christendom would have been about, | 48:40 | |
if Christendom had ever been Christian. | 48:44 | |
It is a common good, the notion without which, | 48:48 | |
says Flewelling, the sins of our children | 48:53 | |
would long since have accomplished our destruction. | 48:56 | |
But who really talks about it, | 49:00 | |
or takes it seriously anymore? | 49:02 | |
Literally no one, except the kind of man who seeks | 49:06 | |
and gets high political office. | 49:11 | |
And what he means by the common good, | 49:15 | |
is so fragmented as to have dissipated its meaning. | 49:19 | |
For by common good, the politico, locally and nationally, | 49:23 | |
means: casa nostra. | 49:28 | |
He means our house, our barrio, our corral, | 49:31 | |
our county, our precinct, our family, | 49:35 | |
common good means my club, my firm, my foundry, | 49:39 | |
my property, my principles, my theologies, | 49:43 | |
my institutions; common good means our community, | 49:47 | |
our sideboards, and prejudices and misjudgments. | 49:52 | |
Our thing, he means, when he says the common good, | 49:55 | |
he means our thing, the whole thing, | 50:00 | |
which and with respect of which we are willing to say | 50:04 | |
to any who buy our localisms: try it, you'll like it! | 50:07 | |
But to which our neighbor may say: I ate the whole thing, | 50:12 | |
and I thought I was gonna die. | 50:17 | |
I had a different teacher here. | 50:22 | |
I had a different political teacher here. | 50:25 | |
Arthur Murphy, professional philosopher. | 50:29 | |
Chairman at Cornell, Washington and Texas. | 50:34 | |
Lonely bachelor, challenger for debate with any of them, | 50:38 | |
Whitehead to Dewey. | 50:42 | |
Dead of a liver ailment in his 50s. | 50:44 | |
Modest, separated, rare. | 50:47 | |
No Christian, and hence, probably utterly Christian. | 50:50 | |
Among his papers, the best work of his life, | 50:54 | |
a presidential address to the American Philosophy Society | 50:58 | |
at Toronto, during the McCarthy sea of troubles, | 51:02 | |
in which he spoke of the common good as a myth | 51:07 | |
to be recovered, lest we die. | 51:12 | |
But there's something in our way, here. | 51:18 | |
You and I have lived all our political lives | 51:22 | |
in a situation of managed credulity. | 51:25 | |
What we can believe is managed for us. | 51:31 | |
The atmosphere is politically managed to preserve | 51:36 | |
the emotional power of words that sound like reasons, | 51:39 | |
but will not bear the examination of good minds. | 51:44 | |
We have so many saviors in North Carolina, too. | 51:48 | |
Too, the appeal is always on behalf of shared ideals, | 51:54 | |
common goods, with wordy enticements, | 52:00 | |
so that the problem becomes: I can't identify the ought. | 52:03 | |
For description is not justification, | 52:10 | |
and command is not justification, | 52:13 | |
and party loyalty is not justification, | 52:15 | |
and verbal promises in a situation where the believing | 52:18 | |
power is managed is prima fascia a distortion of the ought. | 52:22 | |
Because what I ought in a situation is not the "is" | 52:27 | |
of group approval or aversion. | 52:32 | |
Because what is right is just not what is dominant opinion, | 52:35 | |
because moral authority in the service of a common good | 52:39 | |
is just not what most folks think. | 52:43 | |
There are fewer uglier forms of cynicism | 52:47 | |
than that of politicians who, having demoralized | 52:52 | |
the public mind with fear, suspicion, | 52:57 | |
and misrepresentation, then acclaim the voted result | 53:00 | |
as the moral judgment of the community. | 53:05 | |
What makes a thing common good is not what everybody wants, | 53:10 | |
when each wishes to please himself, | 53:15 | |
or when all have been made submissive to the same pressure. | 53:17 | |
Common good is that interest | 53:22 | |
that can justify itself | 53:26 | |
as public and universal, | 53:29 | |
on terms of equity that apply to all. | 53:32 | |
Most of us have lived our lives in a situation | 53:40 | |
of managed credulity, where we hardly think at all. | 53:43 | |
Hence genuine agreement on a common good | 53:48 | |
becomes impossible. | 53:52 | |
But on the other hand, | 53:55 | |
community in search of a common good | 53:57 | |
for all, which is characterized | 54:00 | |
by processes of rational | 54:04 | |
self-controlled inquirer and behavior, | 54:06 | |
and common purposes, faithfully served, | 54:10 | |
and pledges kept, and hope for goods achieved | 54:14 | |
in action together, means that the attitudes of conscience | 54:19 | |
and will and love and the action resulting there from, | 54:24 | |
give you genuine community. | 54:29 | |
And when this happens, those who speak the language | 54:32 | |
of a common good do not deceive themselves. | 54:37 | |
It can be served, | 54:42 | |
and the commitment to make my love, | 54:45 | |
will, conscience, ideals, | 54:49 | |
good in action | 54:53 | |
is the only guarantee of the worth of the ideal. | 54:55 | |
To recover the myth of a genuine common good, then, | 55:02 | |
said Murphy, long ago, and I lift it from him, | 55:07 | |
we must work with such moral understanding as we have, | 55:11 | |
with men who like ourselves | 55:17 | |
are sometimes knaves or fools. | 55:20 | |
Within a social process in which the quest for better | 55:24 | |
understanding is always faced by obstructions | 55:29 | |
which no amount of well-wishing or speaking can remove. | 55:33 | |
But, wherever in this disparate, | 55:39 | |
shared enterprise, | 55:43 | |
wherever we do the best we can, | 55:46 | |
in the service of the best we know, | 55:50 | |
and know what we are doing, | 55:54 | |
the work of a common good | 55:58 | |
does go forward. | 56:01 | |
And what do we Christians say to all this? | 56:05 | |
We do have a commitment. | 56:11 | |
Commitment in the sense of John McMurray, | 56:14 | |
Michael Polanyi, Teilhard de Chardin, Richard Niebuhr, | 56:17 | |
Jesus Christ. | 56:22 | |
Our commitment rests on a realizable | 56:24 | |
idea, ideal. | 56:28 | |
It is the crowning idea of a good for all men. | 56:32 | |
That's worth my life, | 56:38 | |
because it would be full humanization | 56:40 | |
a vast en-manning, | 56:45 | |
a new race of man. | 56:48 | |
A coming of a kingdom of God, | 56:51 | |
which is a local possibility. | 56:54 | |
Always it's a local possibility. | 56:58 | |
If we could climb out of our corrals and barrios, | 57:01 | |
into a truly common quest. | 57:06 | |
Ecologically, it involves a legitimate notion of creation. | 57:12 | |
Sociologically, it involves a legitimate awareness | 57:18 | |
of a redemption that is in process. | 57:22 | |
And its consummation calls for an undying | 57:26 | |
commitment to a common good. | 57:31 | |
It rests on the myths of conscience and will and love, | 57:35 | |
or of love and power and justice. | 57:41 | |
In my service to a common good, | 57:44 | |
and apart from some such | 57:48 | |
view of the self, and the selves, | 57:51 | |
and society, | 57:56 | |
we are something less than men. | 57:58 | |
But with this inner awareness that it's okay to be me, | 58:04 | |
committed to love and conscience and will | 58:09 | |
in the service of a good for all, | 58:12 | |
some of us here, present in the local barrio, | 58:16 | |
might make it yet to a manhood | 58:21 | |
that matters eternally. | 58:25 | |
In a communion of men and women who matter eternally, | 58:28 | |
for Jesus's sake. | 58:34 | |
Let us pray. | 58:37 | |
Grant insight and grace, lord of our lives, | 58:42 | |
to any here who seek a way | 58:46 | |
to serve thy common good, | 58:50 | |
through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 58:53 | |
Amen. | 58:55 | |
(organ music) | 58:58 | |
(choral music) | 59:33 | |
(organ music) | 1:01:35 | |
(sweeping choral music) | 1:02:41 |