Will Campbell - "The Least of These" (February 6, 1977)

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-	Duke University Chapel, service of worship,	0:03
	fifth Sunday after Epiphany Day, February 6th, 1977.	0:06
	(quiet organ music)	0:13
	(lively organ music)	0:24
	(bright organ music)	1:19
	(choir singing)	3:43
	(organ music)	5:01
	(choir singing)	5:38
-	With the promise and certainty	9:22
	that God is loving and forgiving,	9:26
	we find the courage to make our confession	9:30
	before God and our neighbors.	9:35
	Let us pray.	9:38
	Oh, holy God, hear our prayers.	9:41
	We confess that we have been inattentive	9:45
	to your word and your voice,	9:48
	that we have failed to think and pray and act	9:52
	for the mission and unity of your church,	9:56
	and that we have often tried to imprison you	9:59
	in words and institutions.	10:02
	Forgive us for thinking we have the whole truth.	10:06
	For our lack of feeling and intercession	10:10
	for the needs of our families,	10:13
	the oppressed, the hungry, the sick,	10:16
	and those without hope.	10:19
	For our uncritical attitude to our old membership	10:22
	and our society of (mumbles).	10:26
	For our cynicism,	10:29
	which refuses to recognize the hope which is ours,	10:30
	as is your presence among us.	10:35
	O Lord, forgive what we have been,	10:38
	sanctify what we are, and all that what and shall be,	10:42
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	10:47
	Amen.	11:00
	God is forgiving.	11:03
	You are forgiven.	11:05
	And if God can forgive you and your neighbor,	11:09
	then you can forgive yourself and your neighbor.	11:14
	Live from this day as a new member of God's family.	11:18
	Amen.	11:24
	(gentle organ music)	11:30
	(choir singing)	12:23
-	Will you all please rise	14:25
	for the reading of the Gospel Lesson?	14:26
	(crowd rising)	14:29
	When the son of man comes in his glory	14:35
	and all the angels with him,	14:38
	then he will sit on his glorious throne.	14:40
	Before him will be gathered all the nations,	14:44
	and he will separate them one from another	14:47
	as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,	14:50
	and he will place the sheep at his right hand,	14:54
	but the goats at the left.	14:57
	Then the king will say to those at his right hand,	15:00
	"Come, O blessed of my father,	15:03
	"inherit the kingdom prepared for you	15:06
	"from the foundations of the world.	15:08
	"For I was hungry and you gave me food.	15:11
	"I was thirsty and you gave me drink.	15:14
	"I was a stranger and you welcomed me.	15:18
	"I was naked and you clothed me.	15:21
	"I was sick and you visited me.	15:24
	"I was in prison and you came to me."	15:27
	Then the righteous will answer him,	15:30
	"Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee?	15:33
	"Or thirsty and give thee drink?	15:36
	"And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee?	15:39
	"Or naked and clothe thee?	15:43
	"And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?"	15:45
	And the king will answer them,	15:50
	"Truly I say to you,	15:52
	"as you did it to one of the least of these,	15:54
	"my brethren, you did it to me."	15:57
	Here ends the reading of the scripture.	16:01
	(bright organ music)	16:04
	(choir singing)	16:13
-	Let us affirm what we believe.	16:47
	We believe in God,	16:51
	who has created and is creating,	16:54
	who has come in the truly human Jesus	16:57
	to reconcile and make new.	17:00
	We trust God, who calls us to be the church,	17:03
	to celebrate life and its fullness,	17:08
	to love and serve others,	17:11
	to seek justice and resist evil,	17:14
	to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen,	17:17
	our judge and our hope.	17:21
	In life and death and life beyond death,	17:24
	God is with us.	17:29
	We are not alone.	17:30
	Thanks be to God.	17:33
	The Lord be with you.	17:35
	(crowd mumbles)	17:37
	Let us pray.	17:38
	Oh, holy and loving God,	17:47
	we give you thanks for life and love,	17:50
	for all the simple joys of life,	17:55
	for all common and uncommon responsibilities	17:59
	which enlarge our souls.	18:03
	We bow before the mystery of your presence	18:07
	and of all of your creation.	18:11
	We feel, O God, that we and your whole creation	18:14
	are groaning in travail.	18:19
	We are deeply troubled of the plight	18:24
	of so many of your children.	18:26
	We give you thanks for the dedication of your people	18:29
	who have worked together to see	18:33
	that some people will not be cold this winter.	18:36
	Give us the stamina to continue to work together,	18:40
	responding and responsible to those who need us.	18:45
	Quicken our conscience that no one will have to die	18:52
	to mobilize us.	18:57
	Open our hearts and our eyes	19:01
	that we may feel and see	19:04
	those who reach out in desperation	19:08
	and those who are too weak or too frightened	19:12
	to risk reaching out.	19:15
	And may our response, O God, always be	19:19
	as to a brother or a sister	19:23
	so that we will not destroy those who are in great need.	19:26
	Give to our leaders the vision and the ability	19:33
	to work for more permanent changes	19:36
	so that no one will have to be cold or hungry	19:39
	or oppressed or destroyed.	19:43
	Hear us now as we pray for those who are sick,	19:48
	for those who are facing death,	19:53
	and for those who care for the sick and the aged.	19:56
	For those who are facing decisions and responsibilities	20:04
	and pain and loneliness, which are too much to bear alone.	20:09
	For those who feel separated from you and your love.	20:15
	And we lift to your loving care	20:22
	those we love who are separated from us.	20:25
	May they be supported by the certainty of our love	20:29
	and by your sustaining spirit,	20:34
	for you have made your dwelling among us,	20:38
	and you are present wherever we live.	20:42
	We cling to this grace.	20:47
	Help us to honor your presence.	20:49
	Give us wisdom and strength to build each other up	20:53
	into your city on this earth, the body of Christ,	20:57
	a world fit to live in today	21:03
	and forever.	21:07
	And hear us now as we pray the prayer of our Lord.	21:10
	Our Father who art in heaven,	21:15
	hallowed be thy name.	21:19
	Thy kingdom come.	21:22
	Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	21:24
	Give us this day our daily bread	21:29
	and forgive us our trespasses	21:33
	as we forgive those who trespass against us,	21:35
	and lead us not into temptation,	21:38
	but deliver from evil.	21:42
	Thine is the kingdom,	21:44
	the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.	21:46
	Amen.	21:52
	We will not continue the wood-cutting project this week.	21:55
	And speaking on behalf of all the groups	21:59
	who have been responsible for this project,	22:01
	I want to thank all who have helped	22:04
	make this one of the most important efforts	22:06
	in the Duke-Durham community,	22:09
	working together to respond to a local crisis.	22:11
	And as you know,	22:15
	people came from Chapel Hill and Raleigh and Fayetteville	22:16
	to join us in this effort.	22:20
	Groups will continue to, in their collection of money	22:22
	for the emergency-fuel fund.	22:26
	This week, Duke Circle K,	22:29
	with the support of Sanders Florist	22:31
	and Operation Breakthrough,	22:34
	is sponsoring a sale of carnations.	22:36
	Two thirds of the money you will spend	22:39
	when you buy a beautiful flower	22:41
	will go to the emergency-fuel fund.	22:43
	Please note the announcements in your bulletin,	22:48
	particularly this is the first Sunday of the month.	22:52
	We will celebrate holy communion in Memorial Chapel	22:54
	immediately after the service,	22:58
	and this evening at 8:15,	23:00
	Sam Hammond will play a concert on the Aeolian organ.	23:02
	And then note that on this coming Saturday,	23:07
	you have the opportunity to hear Will Campbell	23:10
	and Jim Cone in a dialogue at 6:00	23:13
	in the Divinity Student Lounge.	23:17
	We are pleased that Will Campbell	23:22
	is the person to begin our Theologian in Residence Program.	23:24
	In his gentle way, he has opened our eyes	23:28
	to new dimensions of Christian living and responsibility,	23:31
	and through his loving actions and words,	23:35
	we have heard God's voice come to us.	23:38
	But Will may be remembered longest here	23:42
	as the person who has the record	23:45
	for cutting the most wood in the Duke forest.	23:46
	It would have been hard for us to have found	23:50
	another theologian in residence	23:52
	who could have matched this particular feat.	23:54
	Will, we're glad you're gonna be here two more weeks,	23:58
	and we look forward to hearing the Word again today.	24:02
-	Good morning.	24:13
	Everybody ought to be good for something.	24:18
	And there's nothing wrong with being good	24:24
	for running a chainsaw.	24:26
	This is something, isn't it?	24:34
	I want to try this morning to make	24:37
	a few simple points	24:40
	and to speak briefly about my understanding	24:44
	of the Gospel, the Good News.	24:46
	Jesus said on one occasion,	24:51
	"In as much as ye have done it	24:56
	"unto one of the least of these,	24:57
	"you have done it to me."	25:00
	18 years ago last September,	25:06
	I sat one night in a modest house	25:10
	in Little Rock, Arkansas.	25:12
	The man I was visiting was old, and he was black.	25:15
	That day, two of my friends and I	25:20
	had walked down to the schoolhouse with his daughter.	25:24
	Her name was Elizabeth Eckford.	25:29
	We had walked to school with her	25:33
	because she and eight of her young friends	25:34
	were going to the schoolhouse for the very first time	25:39
	in that previously all-white school.	25:43
	And because the governor of her state and his state	25:48
	had stationed a battalion of troops around the schoolhouse	25:54
	with tanks, and automatic weapons, and air cover,	25:58
	and chemical weapons to protect Central High School	26:02
	from this horrendous onslaught.	26:06
	The children did not succeed in entering the school,	26:10
	despite our presence.	26:15
	I was there visiting this man, I suppose in my naivete,	26:19
	to say that I was sorry.	26:25
	His voice was calm, his manner was polite.	26:30
	I was white, he was black.	26:34
	He said that he had been present in Elaine, Arkansas	26:38
	some decades earlier,	26:41
	had seen state troopers gun down men and women and children,	26:43
	many of them with cotton sacks still on their backs,	26:47
	really because they owned some land	26:50
	which had been found to be valuable and the state wanted it.	26:52
	He said that he had heard Dr. King speak,	26:57
	that he did not like violence,	27:01
	but he spoke of his 17-year-old daughter as "my baby."	27:05
	And he said, "I am armed.	27:10
	"I am an old man, my life is over.	27:13
	"If anybody harms my baby, I will kill them."	27:16
	This anecdote to say	27:23
	that 18 years ago,	27:26
	as a young, fairly young,	27:29
	Christian preacher from Mississippi,	27:32
	I suddenly knew that civilization as we know it	27:37
	would not survive.	27:42
	And should not survive.	27:45
	Even though at the time, I did not revel at the thought	27:47
	of hearing my own epitaph.	27:51
	I knew that we would play out the drama,	27:55
	perhaps taking much longer than my own lifetime,	27:58
	but that with the emergence of the third-world countries	28:03
	throughout the world, most of which are	28:07
	non-white,	28:12
	civilization as we knew would not survive.	28:13
	And I thought also as I sat there,	28:18
	still in my naivete,	28:21
	"in as much as ye have done it unto the least of these,	28:24
	"ye have done it unto me."	28:27
	Perhaps the most blatantly racist thought,	28:31
	perhaps the most blatantly racist text,	28:35
	which could have been going through my white head,	28:38
	because in that moment the least thing I could think of	28:41
	was an old black man.	28:46
	Five years ago, I was spending a week	28:50
	with a friend of mine who heads up	28:55
	what I call the Maoist wing of the Ku Klux Klan.	28:57
	I call it the Maoist wing because he had split	29:02
	with the United Klans of America as being revisionist.	29:04
	He was considered by the FBI	29:12
	to be an extremely dangerous man.	29:14
	His wife was seriously ill,	29:18
	and my mission in the home was to help take care of her,	29:20
	finding nothing in the scripture	29:26
	which exclude the sick of any ideology.	29:29
	I had asked him earlier in the evening	29:35
	what his organization, the Ku Klux Klan, stood for.	29:38
	He replied quite calmly,	29:44
	"Well, it stands for peace and harmony and freedom."	29:46
	I supposed I was not quite ready for that response.	29:56
	But being educated,	30:00
	I decided to play a little Socratic, fun game with him	30:03
	and ask him the very profound question	30:08
	which we sometimes ask people when we are stalling for time,	30:10
	"And what do you mean by peace and harmony and freedom?"	30:14
	(audience laughs)	30:17
	And he replied, "I mean what you mean.	30:20
	"Uh, if you don't know what the words mean,	30:26
	"there's a dictionary. "Look 'em up."	30:31
	A bit pushy, I thought, but it was my game.	30:37
	And I knew that I was holding the good cards	30:42
	and would play them one by one until he folded.	30:45
	In other words, I said, "You define the words." Yes.	30:50
	Who defines the words you use?	30:54
	When you use a word, it's your word.	30:58
	You know what it means.	31:00
	That to suggest that all language is a symbol	31:04
	and nothing more than a symbol.	31:08
	And I was ready to make my play.	31:11
	"Alright, the Ku Klux Klan	31:14
	"stands for peace and harmony and freedom.	31:17
	"You admit that you define the words.	31:20
	"Now,	31:25
	"what means are you willing to use	31:28
	"to accomplish those glorious ends?"	31:33
	"Oh," he said, "I see now what you're getting at.	31:38
	"The means we're willing to use are murder, torture,	31:43
	"threats, blackmail, intimidation, guerrilla warfare,	31:46
	"whatever it takes."	31:50
	And then he stopped, and I stopped,	31:51
	for I knew that I had set a little trap for him	31:53
	and cleverly had let him snap the trigger	31:55
	until he continued again.	31:58
	"Now, preacher, you tell me what we stand for in Vietnam."	32:00
	We being at that time in the middle of that great tragedy.	32:06
	And it took no genius to know who had fallen into the trap,	32:09
	for we all knew what we stood for there,	32:14
	for peace and harmony and for freedom,	32:17
	and we knew that we defined the words,	32:20
	that we did not let, ask, the Vietnamese	32:22
	north or south to define them.	32:25
	And the means we were willing to use	32:28
	and are still willing to use,	32:30
	in our policies throughout the world,	32:33
	were precisely those he had described.	32:35
	That to say that we are a nation of Klansmen.	32:40
	Later in the evening, he was showing me his new...	32:48
	Klan robe.	32:52
	Very proud of it, as all of us who wear robes are,	32:55
	or we wouldn't wear them.	33:01
	His was a crimson red,	33:06
	and he had a hood that was made of fine satin.	33:08
	And here's a man who is almost violently anti-intellectual.	33:14
	As he says, "Show me a Ph.D. and I'll show you a communist.	33:18
	"Show me a master's and I'll show you a socialist,"	33:22
	and so on down the line, till	33:24
	(audience laughs)	33:26
	I suppose a	33:27
	a Duke A.B. would rate about a	33:30
	Jake Javits republican, or something like that.	33:35
	(audience laughs)	33:38
	And strutting around the room, he'd said,	33:42
	"What do I look like, preacher?"	33:46
	I said, "You look like a Harvard professor."	33:49
	(audience laughs)	33:52
	"Colors and all."	33:54
	This my friend denied with considerable embellishment,	33:57
	and I said, "Now, I am not rich by any means,	34:02
	"and I'm not much of a gambler,	34:05
	"but I would make you a bit of a wager	34:07
	"that the next time	34:10
	"there is an academic procession near you,	34:11
	"particular one with a divinity school," I named one,	34:14
	"go at the last moment and get in line.	34:21
	"And I'll make you a little wager	34:27
	"that the marshal will not challenge you.	34:29
	"That no one will know the difference."	34:34
	And he said something then	34:37
	that's bothered me for a long time.	34:38
	He said, "Yes, they would know the difference there,	34:43
	"because my robe has a cross on it."	34:49
	That to say whatever you might want it to say.	34:57
	It says different things to me at different times.	35:00
	This morning it raises in my mind certain questions	35:04
	about the matter	35:08
	in which we have intellectualized the Gospel.	35:08
	Categorized it in terms of critical and post-critical eras.	35:12
	Theologized it.	35:18
	Complicated it with the trappings of academe	35:20
	to make it intellectually respectable	35:24
	in the company of the learned,	35:26
	rather than letting it remain the scandal,	35:29
	stumbling block, and laughingstock it was and is.	35:33
	It reminds me of something I have known for a long time.	35:39
	That the more academic and sophisticated	35:43
	a faith becomes,	35:48
	the more it takes on the coloration of the world about it.	35:50
	That every time a group of Christians have moved	35:56
	from a brush arbor,	35:59
	from the catacombs to a brush arbor,	36:01
	from the brush arbor to a wooden-frame building,	36:06
	from a wooden-frame building to a brick structure,	36:08
	to God knows what after that,	36:11
	each time it has moved along the way,	36:15
	it has lost something.	36:18
	It gave up something it believed about Jesus	36:20
	and never seems to get it back.	36:24
	And as I set there in this man's house,	36:28
	though I thought again, pridefully,	36:30
	self-righteously, "in as much as ye have done it	36:38
	"unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me."	36:41
	Still, you see, letting the culture	36:46
	define and decide what the least of these are.	36:49
	Little over a year ago,	36:56
	I sat in a tiny courtroom in Newport, Tennessee.	36:57
	Two of my friends had been arrested	37:05
	and sentenced to 30 days in prison	37:08
	for handling rattlesnakes in a church service.	37:12
	The purpose of the little	37:18
	non-organization for which I worked,	37:21
	called the Committee of Southern Churchmen,	37:25
	is to try to have some kind of administry	37:28
	to the various and sundry alienated minorities	37:30
	in American culture as best we can.	37:33
	Klansmen and other poor whites,	37:36
	people who get put in jail	37:39
	whether handling snakes in church or not,	37:41
	poor black people and draft resistors,	37:44
	prisoners of all sorts are among those.	37:46
	Now most often they minister more to us than we do them,	37:51
	but that is always the case.	37:54
	My purpose in being there was twofold.	37:56
	One, simply to be with these families as prisoners.	37:58
	And two, to take them a modest purse,	38:02
	which we had collected,	38:04
	since they do not get paid to preach as most of us do.	38:06
	Now, after the conviction, the case was being appealed,	38:12
	and the judge was trying to persuade them,	38:15
	"Please, please, fellas, if you just promise	38:17
	"not to pick up any more snakes,	38:20
	"I won't make you serve this thing.	38:25
	"We know it's going to be appealed through the courts."	38:26
	And my friends were more than a bit confused	38:31
	at these proceedings,	38:36
	not being versed in the finer points of the law	38:37
	and criminal justice, or injustice.	38:40
	And finally one of 'em said, "But, judge,	38:44
	"we don't, we don't decide when we gonna lift up serpents.	38:48
	"We do it only when we're anointed by the spirit to do it."	38:54
	And the judge was not sure what they meant by this,	39:01
	for he was equally unversed	39:04
	in the finer points of the scriptures.	39:07
	So he asked the bailiff to go out and get a dictionary,	39:10
	so he could read to them what the word anoint meant.	39:14
	And then he couldn't remember	39:19
	whether anoint had one N or two,	39:21
	(audience laughs)	39:23
	but he found it and said, "Now, anoint, anoint means,"	39:24
	and he slow and deliberately read from his authority,	39:30
	"Mr. Webster says that to anoint	39:33
	"means to pour oil on, to consecrate as if to heal.	39:36
	"Is that what you're talking about?"	39:40
	And there was some confusion on the part of my friends,	39:43
	and finally without realizing the profundity	39:47
	of what he was saying,	39:49
	one of them pleaded, "But, judge, but, judge,	39:53
	"we don't live by Mr. Webster.	39:58
	"We live by the Bible,	40:02
	"and we already know what anoint means."	40:04
	That to say that Christians in our day have,	40:09
	for the most part, permitted society,	40:13
	permitted the culture to choose what our authority will be.	40:18
	Caesar, you tell us what is right.	40:24
	You tell us when we can kill and when we can't.	40:27
	When we can lock up and when we can't.	40:30
	That also to say	40:36
	that the cults and the sects of rural and urban America,	40:39
	the storefronts and little concrete block houses,	40:43
	up the (mumbles) and hollows, Appalachia,	40:47
	and throughout the region,	40:49
	the holy rollers and sin shouters of cabin row	40:52
	are more to be praised than scorned.	40:57
	For despite some unpleasant side effects	41:01
	from handling copperheads and drinking strychnine,	41:06
	when placed alongside the side effects,	41:11
	the sickness unto death,	41:13
	brought into the region by New England missionary churches,	41:15
	which have now become the mainline,	41:19
	steeple-structured institutions throughout the land,	41:21
	equating the Christian faith so often	41:26
	with civilization as we know it,	41:29
	the first church of St. Pitston's Coal by the bank	41:33
	taking their cue from culture, from society,	41:36
	becoming little more than a class in sixth-grade civics.	41:40
	Taking their authority not from the Bible,	41:45
	but from Caesar. And those things considered,	41:51
	then the handling of reptiles looked pretty harmless,	41:55
	because the handling of the reptilic idols	41:59
	of civilization as we know it, of culture, of society,	42:03
	the copperheads of Caesar and culture,	42:08
	which we consecrate as sacred,	42:10
	these are the demons to be cast out.	42:13
	That also to say	42:17
	that I know	42:22
	I won't ever pick up a copperhead or rattlesnake,	42:26
	'cause I went to college,	42:31
	went to the university, went to theological school.	42:33
	But the rationale for the primitive cultists,	42:39
	lifting up serpents is not to venerate it,	42:43
	as is so often thought, but to conquer the evil	42:47
	which it represents. And I know	42:50
	that each time I participate in an organized,	42:56
	structured, heavily institutionalized,	43:01
	steepled religious service in America,	43:05
	that I am handling a far more deadly reptile	43:10
	than my unlettered brothers have	43:16
	in handling their rattlers, cottonmouths, and copperheads.	43:19
	And I also know	43:24
	that my record in conquering that evil	43:26
	is not as impressive as theirs.	43:29
	I won't ever pick up any snakes. I'm educated!	43:34
	I know that Mark 16:17 and following	43:39
	is a latter edition to the text.	43:42
	Though they neglected to tell me	43:46
	how it did finally get there.	43:48
	I won't ever pick up any reptiles.	43:51
	And way down deep inside,	43:55
	I wish that maybe, sometime,	43:58
	perhaps, I could.	44:02
	Sitting there in that tiny courtroom,	44:08
	as I beheld this quiet strength and courage,	44:13
	this flaunting of their commitment	44:17
	into the face of Caesar's judges and system,	44:18
	this tenacious determination to obey God	44:21
	rather than Caesar, I had the haunting feeling	44:25
	that I had not yet discovered the least of these	44:30
	of whom Jesus spoke.	44:36
	Who then are the least of these?	44:40
	What is the least thing you can think of this morning?	44:44
	Is it a black man, old and stooped,	44:49
	willing to walk into the face of a regiment	44:51
	of tanks and machine guns and automatic rifles	44:53
	with a tiny, one-shot weapon in defense of his baby?	44:56
	Is it a poor white who knows that something	45:01
	is dangerously and radically wrong,	45:03
	but picks the wrong enemy in the efforts to correct it?	45:05
	Is it the illiterate Appalachian working themselves	45:09
	into a frenzy, flinging rattlesnakes and cottonmouths	45:12
	over their heads to say to the world,	45:15
	"There is a power higher than you.	45:18
	"We must obey God rather than you.	45:21
	"Lock us up if you will,	45:25
	"but you really can't control us."	45:28
	Is it Gary Mark Gilmore screaming epithets	45:31
	through the bars at us? Taunting us, mocking us?	45:34
	Telling us that we can kill him in revenge	45:38
	for his own killings,	45:40
	but that finally we will have put ourselves	45:42
	only on his level, becoming like the things	45:45
	we claim to detest?	45:49
	Or is the least of these none of these things?	45:53
	I don't know what Jesus was talking about.	45:58
	Sometimes the least thing I can think of	46:03
	is church bureaucrats,	46:05
	residing over their altar fires and tea parties	46:08
	in the midst of suffering and death.	46:11
	Big spires and steeples	46:14
	costing millions upon millions of dollars	46:16
	and casting their physical shadow	46:18
	upon slums, and whores, and pimps, and addicts,	46:21
	and drunks, and thieves, and rat-infested tenements,	46:24
	with the fingers and toes being gnawed	46:28
	off the young and the elderly.	46:31
	Investments and holdings and agencies	46:34
	whose profits are made from the manufacturer	46:37
	of instruments of death.	46:39
	Could that be the least of these of whom Jesus spoke?	46:43
	Could the least of these be summarized	46:48
	and symbolized by the giant statue	46:50
	each of us walked by as we entered this place this morning	46:53
	and which we will pass again as we depart?	46:55
	Could that be the least of these?	47:00
	Whatever	47:06
	the least of these may be,	47:09
	we have the words of Jesus	47:12
	that as we relate to them, we relate to him.	47:15
	Now I don't like that. I don't like it at all.	47:20
	I want an enemy.	47:24
	I want something or someone I can identify,	47:27
	point to, cast out, scream at, blame	47:29
	for the suffering and injustice	47:33
	that stalks and haunts the land.	47:35
	Even as we do that,	47:39
	there are some other words	47:41
	which best had give us pause.	47:43
	Some other words from this book,	47:46
	which say God was in Christ	47:50
	making everything cool between us and himself.	47:53
	And between us and us, all of us, the least of these,	47:58
	summarized in the words of a country song,	48:04
	"You can't find the one to blame,	48:08
	"it's too smart to have a name."	48:10
	'Cause it ain't flesh and blood we fight with,	48:14
	it's powers and principalities	48:16
	and Armageddon can't be far away.	48:19
	Words of St. Paul which say, "God was in Christ."	48:23
	And then the most radical verse,	48:28
	the most maddening, infuriating to me	48:30
	passage in the whole Bible,	48:33
	"No longer holding your misdeeds against you."	48:35
	God, I wouldn't have done that.	48:41
	I would have held onto somebody that I'd have popped them.	48:43
	I would have made some exceptions.	48:47
	I would have said, "God was in Christ	48:50
	"no longer holding your misdeeds against you	48:52
	"unless you head up the textile industry.	48:55
	"Or unless you kill civil-rights workers."	49:01
	I'd have done it that way.	49:05
	Ah, Mr. Jesus, I like it when you say,	49:11
	"And reconcile to old black men	49:15
	"with daughters facing hostile truths." That's cool.	49:18
	I like it when you say, "I'm reconciled to poor whites	49:22
	"and Kluxers and people whose ideologies	49:25
	"may differ from my own,	49:27
	"and yet from whose loins I sprang." I like that.	49:29
	I like it when you tell me I'm reconciled	49:34
	to the sin shouters of (mumbles),	49:36
	hurling poisonous reptiles through the air.	49:39
	I like that.	49:41
	But don't tell me I'm reconciled to the likes of all this.	49:42
	That's what he said. "God was in Christ	49:51
	"no longer holding our misdeeds against us."	49:55
	No exception.	49:58
	That's the good news,	50:01
	that it is the old man and governor Faubus in Little Rock.	50:03
	It is the grand dragon of the KKK,	50:08
	and those they claim to oppose.	50:11
	It is the snake handlers and the judges	50:14
	who send them to prison.	50:18
	It is me and the church bureaucrats	50:19
	my guts tell me are living in heresy,	50:24
	all holding hands and singing,	50:28
	"Jesus Christ is Lord, hallelujah."	50:30
	Cheap grace, you say.	50:34
	Four people this week had wanted to talk to me about	50:37
	what Jesus seemed to be saying is cheap grace.	50:41
	Well, what's the going rate of grace these days?	50:45
	What are you getting around here for a pound of grace?	50:48
	If there's a price on it, it isn't grace.	50:54
	It's a commodity.	50:57
	Cheap? No, not cheap.	50:59
	Price is a lowly Galilean, hanging on a cross	51:04
	outside a city, looking much like our own.	51:10
	That's what I believe. My time is over.	51:15
	Amen.	51:19
	(wistful organ music)	51:30
	(choir singing)	52:15
	(ominous organ music)	54:14
	(choir singing)	56:41
	(hopeful organ music)	1:02:54
	(choir singing)	1:03:15
-	Oh, holy and loving God,	1:04:24
	we offer you these gifts	1:04:27
	as symbols of our lives.	1:04:31
	Guide those who are responsible for their use	1:04:34
	that they may express your love and concern	1:04:38
	for the well-being of all of your creation.	1:04:42
	And we offer you our lives.	1:04:47
	Use them that your love and work	1:04:50
	may be expressed through us	1:04:54
	and the ordinary and the routine of our lives.	1:04:56
	This we pray in the spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.	1:05:01
	("Amazing Grace" on organ)	1:05:12
	(choir singing)	1:05:42
-	The grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ,	1:08:42
	the love and fellowship of God and the holy spirit	1:08:46
	be with us all now and forever more.	1:08:53
	(choir singing)	1:09:03
	(ominous organ music)	1:10:09
	(audience applauds)	1:19:55

Item Info

Title:

Will Campbell - "The Least of These" (February 6, 1977)

Description:

We have largely allowed the Gospel, and the scope of whom we believe is included in its message of grace, to be determined by the authority of society and American culture. The "least of these", and the grace offered them through the Gospel, often confronts and affronts our "educated" sensibilities. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Sermon start time: (Part 1) 24:13. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 51:11.
Key quotation: “We have intellectualized the Gospel. Categorized it in terms of critical and post-critical eras. Theologized it. Complicated it with the trappings of academe to make it intellectually respectable in the company of the learned, rather than letting it remain the scandal, stumbling block, and laughingstock it was and is.”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4kk94t20

Date:

February 6, 1977

Speaker:

Campbell, Will

Liturgical Calendar:

Epiphany

Biblical Book:

Matthew

Chapter and Verse:

Matthew 25:31-40

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0877
ref6954_3k9
uachapelsermaud
duke:321028
dcrau001819
ark:/87924/r4kk94t20
22afd3b6-a428-4fec-8945-ae6018de33fd

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

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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.

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Will Campbell - "The Least of These" (February 6, 1977)

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Duke University Archives