Clyde O. Robinson, Jr. - "Recovering Our Hearing" (August 6, 1978)
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- | Duke University Chapel service of worship | 0:05 |
August 6, 1978. | 0:08 | |
(organ music) | 0:13 | |
(choir singing) | 12:31 | |
(organ music) | 13:02 | |
(congregation singing) | 13:35 | |
- | Let us corporately confess our sins. | 16:05 |
Lord you made the world and everything in it. | 16:11 | |
You created the human race of one stock | 16:15 | |
and gave us the Earth for your possession. | 16:18 | |
- | Break down the walls that separate us | 16:22 |
and unite us in a single body. | 16:25 | |
- | Lord, we have been divisive in our thinking, | 16:30 |
in our speech and in our actions. | 16:33 | |
We have classified and imprisoned one another. | 16:37 | |
We have fenced each other out by hatred and prejudice. | 16:41 | |
- | Break down the walls that separate us | 16:46 |
and unite us in a single body. | 16:49 | |
- | Lord, you mean for us to be a single people, | 16:53 |
ruled by peace, feasting in freedom, | 16:57 | |
freed from injustice, truly human, men and women, | 17:01 | |
responsible and responsive in the life we lead, | 17:07 | |
the love we share, the relationships we create. | 17:11 | |
- | Break down the walls that separate us | 17:16 |
and unite us in a single body. | 17:20 | |
- | Lord, we shall need ever new insights into the truth, | 17:25 |
awareness of your will for all humanity, | 17:29 | |
courage to do what is right, even when it is not allowed, | 17:34 | |
persistence in undermining unjust structures | 17:39 | |
until they crumble into dust, | 17:43 | |
grace to exercise a ministry of reconciliation. | 17:46 | |
- | Break down the walls that separate us | 17:51 |
and unite us in a single body. | 17:54 | |
- | Lord, share out among us the tongues of your spirit | 17:59 |
that we may each burn with compassion | 18:04 | |
for all who hunger for freedom and humanness, | 18:07 | |
that we may be doers of the word | 18:10 | |
and so speak with creditability | 18:13 | |
about the wonderful things you have done. | 18:16 | |
- | Lord, direct in us we would not discern | 18:20 |
and equip for us the service and reconciliation | 18:24 | |
and liberation in your world. | 18:28 | |
- | Let us now each make our own personal confession | 18:33 |
to almighty God. | 18:36 | |
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance | 18:53 | |
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. | 18:57 | |
Our sin we have acknowledged. | 19:02 | |
Our desire for forgiveness we have declared. | 19:05 | |
Our longing for amendment we have proclaimed. | 19:10 | |
Praise God for his miracles of pardon, | 19:14 | |
restoration and strengthening in righteousness. | 19:17 | |
To him be all honor and glory, amen. | 19:22 | |
Let us give thanks for God is good | 19:30 | |
and God's love is everlasting. | 19:34 | |
- | Thanks be to God who creates us. | 19:37 |
Thanks be to God whose tender love redeems us. | 19:40 | |
Thanks be to God whose presence sustains us. | 19:45 | |
- | I am sure many of you | 19:56 |
will want to greet our guest minister | 19:57 | |
at the end of the service today | 19:59 | |
and I would ask that you | 20:01 | |
would move to the rear of the chapel | 20:03 | |
and greet him near the front door | 20:05 | |
as we will be having a communion service | 20:08 | |
in the memorial chapel immediately following the service. | 20:09 | |
Let us pray. | 20:16 | |
Prepare our hearts O Lord to accept thy word. | 20:24 | |
In this moment guide us by thy holy spirit | 20:29 | |
so that in thy light we may have vision, | 20:36 | |
in that truth we may find freedom, | 20:41 | |
and in they will we may discover thy peace | 20:47 | |
through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. | 20:52 | |
The reading from the Old Testament | 21:00 | |
is from the 11th chapter of Genesis, verses one through 10. | 21:02 | |
And the whole earth was of one language, | 21:10 | |
and of one speech. | 21:14 | |
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, | 21:16 | |
that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; | 21:19 | |
and they dwelt there. | 21:23 | |
And they said one to another, | 21:25 | |
Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. | 21:27 | |
And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. | 21:34 | |
and they said, go to, let us build us a city and a tower, | 21:40 | |
whose top may reach unto heaven; | 21:47 | |
and let us make us a name, | 21:50 | |
lest we be scattered abroad | 21:52 | |
upon the face of the whole earth. | 21:54 | |
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, | 21:57 | |
which the children of men built. | 22:01 | |
And the Lord said, | 22:04 | |
behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; | 22:07 | |
and this they begin to do: | 22:13 | |
and now nothing will be restrained from them, | 22:16 | |
which they have imagined to do. | 22:18 | |
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, | 22:21 | |
that they may not understand each other's speech. | 22:27 | |
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence | 22:32 | |
upon the face of all the earth: | 22:35 | |
and they left off building the city. | 22:38 | |
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; | 22:41 | |
because the Lord did there | 22:45 | |
confound the language of all the earth: | 22:47 | |
and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad | 22:50 | |
upon the face of all the earth. | 22:53 | |
These are the generations of Shem: | 22:56 | |
Shem was an hundred years old, | 23:00 | |
and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood. | 23:02 | |
May God bless the reading of his holy word. | 23:07 | |
(organ music) | 23:14 | |
(choir singing) | 23:54 | |
Our minister of the word this morning | 25:46 | |
is no stranger to the Duke community, | 25:47 | |
the Reverend Clyde O. Robinson Jr. | 25:50 | |
served as Presbyterian Campus Minister here at Duke | 25:52 | |
from 1966 to '69 | 25:56 | |
during which time he performed a significant ministry | 25:59 | |
to both students and faculty. | 26:03 | |
His formal education was at Davidson College | 26:06 | |
and Union Theological Seminary in New York | 26:09 | |
followed by pastorates in Raleigh and Winston-Salem. | 26:12 | |
Since 1969 Clyde as served as Eastern Region Secretary | 26:17 | |
for the United Ministries in Higher Education | 26:22 | |
bringing his expertise and wise counsel | 26:26 | |
to that area of the church's life. | 26:29 | |
We welcome Clyde Robinson back home | 26:32 | |
and we look forward to his preaching this morning. | 26:35 | |
The New Testament lesson is from the second chapter | 26:40 | |
of the book of Acts. | 26:43 | |
When the day of Pentecost had come, | 26:49 | |
and they were all together in one place, | 26:51 | |
Suddenly a sound came from heaven | 26:54 | |
like the rush of a mighty wind, | 26:56 | |
and it filled all the house where they were sitting. | 26:59 | |
And there appeared to them tongues as of fire | 27:03 | |
distributed and resting on each one of them. | 27:06 | |
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit | 27:10 | |
and began to speak in other tongues | 27:15 | |
as the Spirit gave them utterance. | 27:17 | |
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem | 27:21 | |
Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. | 27:24 | |
And at this sound the multitude came together, | 27:29 | |
and they were bewildered, | 27:33 | |
because each one heard them speaking in his own language. | 27:35 | |
And they were amazed and wondered, saying, | 27:41 | |
"Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? | 27:44 | |
"And how is it that we hear, | 27:49 | |
"each of us in his own language? | 27:50 | |
"Parthians and Medes and Elamites | 27:53 | |
"and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, | 27:56 | |
"Pontus and Asia, | 28:01 | |
"Phrygia and Pamphylia, | 28:03 | |
"Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, | 28:05 | |
"and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, | 28:09 | |
"Cretans and Arabians- | 28:13 | |
"we hear them telling in our own tongues | 28:15 | |
"the mighty acts of God." | 28:17 | |
And were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, | 28:21 | |
"What does this mean?" | 28:24 | |
And then there follows the sermon of Peter, | 28:28 | |
proclaiming the mighty works of God | 28:31 | |
and the sermon ends with the words, | 28:34 | |
"Let all the house of Israel therefore | 28:38 | |
"know assuredly that God has made him | 28:40 | |
"both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." | 28:44 | |
Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, | 28:50 | |
and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, | 28:54 | |
"Brethren, what shall we do?" | 28:57 | |
And Peter said to them, | 29:00 | |
"Repent and be baptized every one of you | 29:02 | |
"in the name of Jesus Christ | 29:06 | |
"for the forgiveness of your sins, | 29:08 | |
"and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. | 29:10 | |
"For the promise is for you and for your children | 29:14 | |
"and for all who are far off, | 29:18 | |
"everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him." | 29:20 | |
And he testified with many other words | 29:24 | |
and exhorted them, saying, | 29:27 | |
"Save yourselves from this crooked generation." | 29:29 | |
So those who received his word were baptized, | 29:33 | |
and there were added that day about three thousand souls. | 29:38 | |
And they devoted themselves | 29:42 | |
to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, | 29:44 | |
to the breaking of bread and the prayers. | 29:47 | |
And fear came upon every soul, | 29:51 | |
and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. | 29:54 | |
And all who had believed were together | 29:58 | |
and had all things in common. | 30:00 | |
And they sold their possessions and goods | 30:04 | |
and distributed them to all, as any had need. | 30:07 | |
And day by day, attending the temple together | 30:11 | |
and breaking bread in their homes, | 30:14 | |
they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, | 30:17 | |
praising God and adding favor with all the people. | 30:21 | |
And the Lord added to their number day by day | 30:26 | |
those who were being saved. | 30:29 | |
Thanks be to God for his glorious word. | 30:34 | |
(organ music) | 30:39 | |
(choir singing) | 30:51 | |
- | It's been nearly 10 years now | 31:56 |
since I began to wander the southeast | 31:58 | |
like an itinerant bureaucrat | 32:01 | |
and throughout all those years | 32:06 | |
I've remembered Robert Frost's words | 32:08 | |
about home being that place where | 32:11 | |
when you have to go there, they have to take you in. | 32:15 | |
I guess, in spite of the fact that | 32:19 | |
Duke University is not my school, | 32:21 | |
nor is the divinity school my theological school | 32:24 | |
nonetheless this has been home for me | 32:29 | |
and in the person of people like Fran Philips | 32:31 | |
and Helen Crotwell and Bob Young | 32:35 | |
and numbers of other friends, I have over those years | 32:38 | |
found that kind of support and strength | 32:41 | |
that becomes doubly and triply important | 32:45 | |
if your life is spent in being a consultant and a helper, | 32:48 | |
but one who fundamentally really has no home. | 32:53 | |
It is therefore good to be here with you this day. | 32:58 | |
I've rarely ever laughed so hard, | 33:05 | |
or come so close to crying | 33:08 | |
as I did Friday night a week ago. | 33:10 | |
A couple in another state | 33:15 | |
in whose home Louise and I were staying | 33:17 | |
told us the story of how they had | 33:20 | |
put their wallpaper on their kitchen ceiling | 33:24 | |
and of how close they had come that night, respectively, | 33:27 | |
to homicide. | 33:31 | |
As one might expect of thoughtful, professional people, | 33:34 | |
they had approached that job | 33:39 | |
knowing that it would be onerous, | 33:41 | |
with great intentionality and careful planning | 33:43 | |
in which they had systematically assessed | 33:47 | |
their respective skills and talents | 33:49 | |
and assumed appropriate individual responsibilities | 33:52 | |
within the larger task. | 33:55 | |
Specifically, that meant that | 33:58 | |
the short one was to cut the paper | 34:00 | |
and spread the paste on it, | 34:02 | |
and the tall one was to do the measuring | 34:05 | |
and then apply the paste covered paper to the ceiling. | 34:08 | |
As they tell the story, things went very well for a time. | 34:13 | |
The measuring, the cutting, | 34:17 | |
and even the application of the paper | 34:19 | |
moved along uneventfully over about half the ceiling, | 34:21 | |
and then it happened. | 34:26 | |
The paster had been a bit to sparing with the paste | 34:29 | |
and the paper began to peel down from the ceiling | 34:33 | |
behind the paperer. | 34:35 | |
The short one was too short | 34:38 | |
to reach the ceiling to repaste the paper | 34:39 | |
and so the tall one, | 34:43 | |
standing on the only available stool that could be reached | 34:44 | |
was quickly draped both fore and aft | 34:48 | |
like a Christmas package | 34:50 | |
in sticky green and yellow floral design, | 34:54 | |
no bow, but well wrapped. | 34:57 | |
Communication, they say, initially intensified, | 35:00 | |
and then quickly broke down all together | 35:05 | |
and the project was abandoned until, as they say, | 35:08 | |
the stars were more auspicious. | 35:10 | |
Now we laughed, but it was partly to keep from crying | 35:15 | |
because we remember in our family, | 35:19 | |
all too well that night some six years ago | 35:21 | |
when we decided to cut a mail slot in the front door | 35:24 | |
and ended up 30 minutes later | 35:28 | |
sitting in the entrance hall floor yelling, screaming, | 35:30 | |
and physically struggling | 35:33 | |
for the control of an electric drill. | 35:35 | |
We, our ceiling papering friends, | 35:39 | |
and, I suspect, most of you | 35:43 | |
know all too well at least at one maybe superficial level | 35:46 | |
the human dynamics that inform the story | 35:51 | |
of the Tower of Babel | 35:54 | |
that Fran read in our hearing a few minutes ago. | 35:56 | |
The story is a parable in that it represents | 36:01 | |
a single point of truth about humankind, | 36:06 | |
about our mothers and our fathers, about you and me. | 36:10 | |
How in our pride and our fear | 36:14 | |
we lost the ability to hear one another | 36:16 | |
and became alienated and separated. | 36:20 | |
You remember how the story goes, | 36:26 | |
come let us build a city | 36:29 | |
and a tower with its top in the heavens, | 36:31 | |
and make a name for ourselves, | 36:35 | |
or we shall be dispersed all over the earth. | 36:37 | |
A tower with a top in the heavens, | 36:42 | |
a name for ourselves. | 36:46 | |
Do you hear the pride? | 36:50 | |
That quality that draws its identity from the superlative? | 36:53 | |
Biggest, best, most beautiful, | 36:59 | |
fastest, strongest? | 37:02 | |
And of course they were, oh, they were indeed. | 37:06 | |
Shinar your remember, | 37:11 | |
is another name for the land of Babylon. | 37:13 | |
And Babylon in its day was the acme of the civilized world. | 37:17 | |
Most likely you recall | 37:22 | |
its political and military reputation. | 37:24 | |
There is within the Scripture lesson this morning | 37:27 | |
reference to their advance technology. | 37:30 | |
They molded their bricks | 37:32 | |
and bound them together with slime, with bitumen. | 37:34 | |
There's ziggurats, their towers, | 37:39 | |
huge pyramidal towers rising often seven terraces | 37:42 | |
from the center of the temple area, | 37:46 | |
crowned with shrines | 37:49 | |
where the religious and cosmological expression | 37:51 | |
of the height to which | 37:56 | |
they thought their civilization had risen. | 37:57 | |
In their pride they saw themselves as having, | 38:02 | |
by their virtue and their accomplishment, | 38:05 | |
almost ascended to heaven | 38:09 | |
and become nearly as gods. | 38:12 | |
They were a proud, a proud people. | 38:16 | |
And we know too well from our experience and from the record | 38:22 | |
that pride makes it hard to hear. | 38:25 | |
There is in pride a kind of | 38:30 | |
preoccupation with being better than, | 38:31 | |
and therefore with demeaning, scorning, | 38:35 | |
emphasizing the distance from, the difference, | 38:39 | |
maintaining the chasm them that separates the best | 38:44 | |
which somehow, inexplicably, | 38:48 | |
is usually associated with ourselves | 38:51 | |
from the smallest, the ugliest, the slowest, | 38:55 | |
the weakest, the worst. | 38:59 | |
How can we hear what we cannot stoop to notice? | 39:04 | |
How can we listen to those who are beneath us | 39:10 | |
and somehow not worthy of us? | 39:13 | |
And beneath Babylon's beauty was cruelty and oppression, | 39:19 | |
the violence and the vice | 39:23 | |
by which it was sustained in power. | 39:25 | |
Beneath Babylon's beauty were | 39:28 | |
the unheard cries of the people it had despised | 39:30 | |
and exploited and ground under foot like dust. | 39:34 | |
We may get something of the flavor | 39:40 | |
if we hear the words that David McCullough wrote recently | 39:45 | |
in his book about the building of the Panama Canal | 39:48 | |
called The Path Between The Seas, | 39:52 | |
in which he reminds us how easy it is | 39:55 | |
not only not to hear those we think to be beneath us, | 39:58 | |
but also how simple it is not even to see them. | 40:03 | |
He writes, in the popular picture of life | 40:07 | |
in the canal zone as it emerged | 40:12 | |
in hundreds of magazines and newspaper articles, | 40:14 | |
that vast force of black men and women | 40:18 | |
who were doing the heaviest, most difficult physical labor, | 40:21 | |
some 25,000 or 30,000 human beings, | 40:25 | |
they don't even know how many there were, | 40:30 | |
could be but very faintly seen. | 40:33 | |
As individuals they had no delineation whatsoever. | 40:37 | |
They were there only as part of the workaday landscape. | 40:41 | |
That they too were making a new life in an alien land, | 40:45 | |
that they too were raising families, | 40:50 | |
experiencing homesickness, fear, all too often illness, | 40:52 | |
or even exhilaration in the success of the work, | 40:57 | |
was almost never inferred. | 41:00 | |
In the United States the public had little if any conception | 41:04 | |
of the part played in the Panama is by pioneers | 41:08 | |
who were neither American nor white, | 41:11 | |
or how very small numerically | 41:15 | |
the white American force was by contrast. | 41:18 | |
To judge by many published accounts, | 41:23 | |
the whole enormous black underside | 41:26 | |
of the Panamanian zoning and caste system | 41:29 | |
simply did not exist. | 41:33 | |
When I read that I wondered | 41:37 | |
if, had we been able to hear them all these years, | 41:40 | |
and I never even thought about their being there, | 41:44 | |
would we have heart them saying, | 41:48 | |
if we had been able to hear them, | 41:49 | |
we bought it with our malaria ridden bodies, | 41:52 | |
we built it with our calloused hands, | 41:57 | |
we, not you, own it. | 42:00 | |
Would have brought a different note | 42:04 | |
into the discussions of the year past. | 42:06 | |
But in fact we neither heard nor saw them, | 42:10 | |
they were dismissed in our prideful nationalism | 42:13 | |
and they were as unseen | 42:17 | |
as have been the ethnic under classes in our cities, | 42:19 | |
noticed only to pity at best, | 42:23 | |
to exploit at worst, | 42:26 | |
and always, somehow, to fear. | 42:29 | |
For you see, fear so often accompanies pride, | 42:35 | |
it did in Babylon, the record tells us, | 42:40 | |
I suspect it does for most of us. | 42:44 | |
The Babylonians stood with wagon circled against dispersal. | 42:48 | |
They feared the uprisings of those that they had oppressed. | 42:54 | |
They feared the onslaught of rival nations, | 42:57 | |
they were always on the looking for their weak spot. | 42:59 | |
And then too, | 43:04 | |
prideful nations are filled with prideful people | 43:05 | |
who, somewhat like high school seniors, | 43:09 | |
each compete with the other for the superlatives, | 43:12 | |
each being fearful of being surpassed. | 43:15 | |
And so within that society there was a sense of | 43:19 | |
there being danger within the camp as well as without. | 43:21 | |
I think most of us know what that's like too. | 43:27 | |
If you're like I, | 43:31 | |
then we all have been reared and schooled, | 43:33 | |
most of us at least, on competitiveness. | 43:36 | |
The slogans of our political campaigns | 43:40 | |
again reflect our fears about our national security, | 43:42 | |
about our schools, about our neighborhoods, | 43:47 | |
and now as Proposition 13 so clearly indicates, | 43:51 | |
about our standard of living and our pocketbooks. | 43:56 | |
I believe that both our difficulty in hearing | 44:01 | |
and our fear of those who are different from us | 44:05 | |
are dramatically and tragically underlined | 44:09 | |
by the remarkably different emotional responses | 44:12 | |
that we made 10 years ago to the deaths at Kent State, | 44:17 | |
who were our kind of people, | 44:22 | |
as opposed to those that occurred at Jackson State, | 44:25 | |
which somehow in the media and in our hearts | 44:28 | |
was never quite the same. | 44:31 | |
Or the different kind of response that we make | 44:34 | |
when we're reminded as we have been this year | 44:37 | |
about the genocide of the European Holocaust | 44:41 | |
as over against that response we make | 44:45 | |
to the genocide in present day Cambodia. | 44:48 | |
Why is it that we hear one cry | 44:53 | |
and do not hear another? | 44:57 | |
Why do some differences seem to make such a difference? | 45:00 | |
Somehow those we have diminished or dismissed | 45:06 | |
we do not hear, | 45:10 | |
we do not know, we only fear. | 45:12 | |
The ancient biblical writer explains | 45:19 | |
the babble of languages to be heard around the globe | 45:22 | |
and the scattering and alienating of the nations | 45:27 | |
as God's act of judgment upon prideful people. | 45:31 | |
Here they are he says in the passage in Genesis, | 45:38 | |
one people with a single language | 45:42 | |
and now they have started to do this, | 45:45 | |
henceforward nothing they have a mind to do | 45:49 | |
will be beyond the reach. | 45:52 | |
Come, let us go down and confuse their speech, | 45:55 | |
so they will not understand what they say to one another. | 45:58 | |
The parable of the tower then, | 46:03 | |
tells us how it is with people | 46:05 | |
whether they be in families trying to work together | 46:08 | |
to make their homes more attractive or functional | 46:10 | |
or in nations corporately seeking to elevate the power | 46:15 | |
or even the beauty of their slice of civilization. | 46:18 | |
One commentary put it like this: | 46:24 | |
humankind's noblest endeavors are bound to fail | 46:27 | |
and its high-souled idealism is doomed to vanish | 46:31 | |
in face of the harsh reality of its own twisted nature. | 46:34 | |
Whatever we set our hand to | 46:40 | |
becomes distorted by our lust for power, | 46:42 | |
by our uncontrollable vanity, | 46:46 | |
by our overweening pride. | 46:49 | |
The dice are loaded against us, | 46:52 | |
not by our stars or our fate | 46:54 | |
but by our corrupt will. | 46:59 | |
So at the end of the story of the Tower of Babel | 47:03 | |
in the 11th chapter of Genesis | 47:06 | |
there is a kind of dark depression | 47:10 | |
that judges the possibilities of humankind. | 47:14 | |
Not hearing one another, we cannot come together. | 47:19 | |
Separated by pride and fear, | 47:23 | |
we argue and struggle and war with one another. | 47:26 | |
But into the dark despair | 47:35 | |
represented by the parable of the Tower of Babel, | 47:38 | |
thank God, | 47:40 | |
there shines the light of new possibility | 47:42 | |
a light that beams out of the story of Pentecost. | 47:46 | |
Again, you remember the scene. | 47:51 | |
The disciples are in Jerusalem following the crucifixion | 47:53 | |
and their experience of the risen Christ. | 47:57 | |
Pentecost, the Jewish Feast of Weeks, has come. | 48:01 | |
Suddenly and dramatically, | 48:04 | |
the promised gift of the spirit is fulfilled, | 48:07 | |
and in that cosmopolitan crowd, | 48:10 | |
people from Rome to Mesopotamia, | 48:13 | |
that is from all parts of the known world, | 48:15 | |
heard the ecstatic utterances of the disciples | 48:18 | |
in their own language. | 48:20 | |
They heard, they understood, | 48:23 | |
they responded with empathy and enthusiasm. | 48:26 | |
Think how different the story is from story of the tower. | 48:31 | |
There's no talk recorded for us about their achievement | 48:36 | |
or their self preservation, | 48:41 | |
the focus instead is on what God has done in the life | 48:44 | |
and death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. | 48:47 | |
They're pictured as being amazed and perplexed, | 48:51 | |
but there seems to have been no fear | 48:54 | |
in spite of extraordinary experience. | 48:55 | |
Those who gather around the apostles | 48:59 | |
are pictured as being open to one another, | 49:01 | |
able to acknowledge their sin, | 49:04 | |
oh how threatening that is, | 49:07 | |
and to turn away from it, they are unintimidated | 49:09 | |
by the sarcastic contempt of the larger crowd. | 49:13 | |
And far from becoming confused, | 49:17 | |
or misunderstanding one another, | 49:19 | |
or coming near to being scattered, | 49:21 | |
they hear one another. | 49:24 | |
No longer blocked by pride or fear | 49:27 | |
they begin to meet together | 49:30 | |
and to build a common life. | 49:31 | |
Remember the things they do. | 49:35 | |
They listen to the apostles teach. | 49:38 | |
And I thought, you know, humble people | 49:42 | |
can sit at the feet of those from whom they can learn | 49:45 | |
and not feel put down | 49:47 | |
unlike prideful people. | 49:50 | |
They shared the common life, | 49:53 | |
that is to say they began to discover | 49:55 | |
how to look for what binds people together, | 49:58 | |
rather than for what separates them and drives them apart. | 50:02 | |
They broke bread together | 50:06 | |
and you can be sure that no one sat below the salt. | 50:08 | |
And they prayed, | 50:13 | |
somehow bowing for the creator God | 50:15 | |
punctures all the balloons that pride can inflate. | 50:19 | |
And again, and not surprisingly, | 50:24 | |
the recovery of hearing that they experienced | 50:27 | |
seemed inexorably to issue in compassion | 50:31 | |
and in that biblical perspective | 50:35 | |
that defines and understands justice | 50:37 | |
as the meeting of the needs | 50:41 | |
of the least of our brothers and our sisters. | 50:43 | |
We read and you remember | 50:48 | |
that all whose faith had drawn them together | 50:50 | |
held everything in common. | 50:53 | |
They would sell their property and possessions | 50:56 | |
and make a general distribution | 50:59 | |
as the need of each required. | 51:01 | |
Now those words don't necessarily represent | 51:06 | |
a biblical prescription | 51:09 | |
for how society ought to be organized, | 51:10 | |
but they do tell us | 51:14 | |
that when pride and fear disappear, | 51:15 | |
and the gifts of hearing and unity are received, | 51:19 | |
the focus in the lives of individuals | 51:24 | |
and in the life of the community | 51:27 | |
shifts and need begins to matter the more | 51:29 | |
even as ownership begins to matter the less. | 51:35 | |
Pentecost then, I would propose, is a paradigm. | 51:41 | |
A paradigm of the turning upside down of the Tower of Babel. | 51:46 | |
William Neil put it this way: | 51:51 | |
whereas by pride and perversity | 51:55 | |
human beings are unable to understand their neighbors | 51:59 | |
and to cooperate with them | 52:02 | |
in building up a civilization that will last, | 52:03 | |
by the power of the spirit, | 52:07 | |
the curse of Babel is reversed | 52:11 | |
and people of all nations find themselves | 52:14 | |
bound by a common understanding of God's will in Christ. | 52:17 | |
In that paradigm, the story of the birth of a new community | 52:23 | |
of those whose hearing has been restored | 52:27 | |
there is, I believe, hope for you and me, | 52:30 | |
for our families and for the nations of the world. | 52:33 | |
Now let me say that again | 52:40 | |
because sometimes the point is missed. | 52:41 | |
The hope carried in the story of Pentecost | 52:46 | |
is not hope just for isolated individuals | 52:50 | |
who are saved out of the world, | 52:53 | |
or even for the Christian community, that is for the church. | 52:56 | |
Rather it is a universal hope, | 53:00 | |
or a hope for the universe, | 53:02 | |
for the entire created order. | 53:05 | |
Hear what Paul says in his letter | 53:09 | |
to God's people in Colossae. | 53:11 | |
He says: the Son is the image of the invisible God, | 53:14 | |
his is the primacy over all created things. | 53:20 | |
In him everything in heaven and on earth was created, | 53:24 | |
even thrones and sovereignties and authorities and powers. | 53:27 | |
The whole universe was created through him and for him. | 53:32 | |
Through him God chose to reconcile | 53:39 | |
the whole universe to himself, making peace | 53:41 | |
through the shedding of his blood upon the cross, | 53:46 | |
to reconcile all things, whether on on heaven or in earth, | 53:49 | |
through him alone. | 53:53 | |
All things reconciled, | 53:56 | |
peace for the whole universe | 53:58 | |
through the sacrifice of Christ. | 54:01 | |
In the New Testament the word for peace | 54:04 | |
carries forward the Old Testament notion of shalom | 54:07 | |
which connotes a state of wholeness | 54:12 | |
that touches all of life, health, prosperity, security, | 54:15 | |
society and nature in harmony, | 54:20 | |
people standing in covenant before God. | 54:22 | |
The images that come to mind are the lion and lamb | 54:25 | |
peacefully sleeping side by side. | 54:28 | |
The notion of plowshares being made out of swords | 54:31 | |
and spears being turned into pruning hooks. | 54:35 | |
The vision of peace, I would submit, | 54:39 | |
represents God's intention not just for individuals, | 54:42 | |
not just for the church, | 54:47 | |
but for the whole created order. | 54:49 | |
I believe that God is at work in the church and in the world | 54:52 | |
to bring that vision, which was glimpsed at Pentecost, | 54:55 | |
which is sometimes approximated in the church | 54:59 | |
and sometimes elsewhere, into fulfillment. | 55:01 | |
Rachel Henderlite, | 55:06 | |
who is the president of the Consultation on Church Union, | 55:08 | |
I believe had that vision before her when she said recently: | 55:12 | |
there is the flow of life and love from God to the world | 55:16 | |
that moves to Christ then. | 55:20 | |
And then if the church be ready, | 55:23 | |
it moves through the church to the world | 55:24 | |
binding all together into one family. | 55:26 | |
This is the unity we seek. | 55:29 | |
The church's mission | 55:32 | |
is to tell the world about this love of God, | 55:35 | |
and to call them into this unity with God. | 55:38 | |
The church's oneness is a sign | 55:42 | |
of the coming oneness of humankind, | 55:44 | |
which in turn is dependent on the love of God | 55:47 | |
and is a response to the love of God. | 55:50 | |
Duke's professor John Westerhoff | 55:54 | |
I believe was caught by the same hope | 55:57 | |
when, while being honored at Saint Andrews College | 56:00 | |
here in North Carolina recently he said: | 56:03 | |
our mission should be clear. | 56:06 | |
It is to risk living in and for a vision, | 56:09 | |
a vision for the world in which God's kingdom of peace, | 56:13 | |
justice, liberation, equity, unity | 56:18 | |
and the well-being of all has come. | 56:23 | |
A vision of the church truly Catholic, truly reformed, | 56:27 | |
a church which is a sign, a symbol, | 56:31 | |
a paradigm of the gospel. | 56:34 | |
That gospel, that good news, I tell you, | 56:38 | |
says that we are ultimately heard, | 56:44 | |
that we can hear, that we have no need for our pride, | 56:47 | |
that our fears are unfounded. | 56:53 | |
It challenges our sectarianism, our provinciality, | 56:56 | |
the denominational complacency that is so much in the way, | 57:02 | |
the chauvinism that separates us one from another. | 57:06 | |
It calls us to work for unity in the church | 57:11 | |
for the sake of humankind. | 57:14 | |
It calls us to be stewards of the created order, | 57:16 | |
rather than exploiters. | 57:19 | |
It calls us to listen for the cries of others | 57:22 | |
and to give ourselves to the cause of peace and justice. | 57:26 | |
Therefore let us pray. | 57:32 | |
Open our ears, O God | 57:42 | |
that we may hear one another | 57:44 | |
and in that hearing experience | 57:48 | |
what it means to live in relationship and in peace. | 57:51 | |
And then push us out, God, | 57:57 | |
and make us to be advocates for the unity of humankind | 57:59 | |
and for peace and justice around the world. | 58:05 | |
For we know that Christ died not just for us or our kind, | 58:09 | |
but that the world might be reconciled unto you. | 58:14 | |
Through Jesus Christ, amen. | 58:20 | |
(organ music) | 58:26 | |
(choir singing) | 58:49 | |
- | Let us affirm what we believe. | 1:00:30 |
- | We believe in God who has created and is creating, | 1:00:34 |
who has come in truly human Jesus | 1:00:40 | |
to reconcile and make new, | 1:00:43 | |
who works in us and others by the spirit. | 1:00:47 | |
We trust God who calls us to be the church, | 1:00:51 | |
to celebrate life and its fullness, | 1:00:56 | |
to love and serve others, | 1:00:59 | |
to seek justice and resist evil, | 1:01:02 | |
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, | 1:01:06 | |
our judge and our hope. | 1:01:10 | |
In life, in death, in life beyond death | 1:01:13 | |
God is with us. | 1:01:18 | |
We are not alone, thanks be to God. | 1:01:20 | |
- | The Lord be with you. | 1:01:26 |
- | And with you too. | 1:01:29 |
- | Let us pray, be seated. | 1:01:31 |
Almighty God, creator of the universe, | 1:01:47 | |
we give you thanks for all that you have made. | 1:01:52 | |
For the rain which waters the earth, | 1:01:58 | |
for the summer season which provides fresh food to eat, | 1:02:02 | |
for all your works which fill our senses | 1:02:08 | |
with your goodness and loving kindness, | 1:02:11 | |
we would now draw near and consecrate ourselves to your word | 1:02:16 | |
and to your perfect will. | 1:02:21 | |
Enlighten our hearts to know you | 1:02:26 | |
and love you. | 1:02:29 | |
Give us strength to do what we have to do | 1:02:33 | |
and do not remember the sins we commit. | 1:02:38 | |
Remember how easily we fall, | 1:02:45 | |
your followers are weak by nature, weak in ability, | 1:02:49 | |
and the evil in us is hidden. | 1:02:55 | |
Save us from frequent alienation | 1:03:00 | |
and estrangement from drawing near to you. | 1:03:03 | |
Strengthen us with your strength. | 1:03:09 | |
Give to us all the light of your consoling presence. | 1:03:13 | |
Conform us to the truth of your word in faith | 1:03:20 | |
and keep us obedient | 1:03:25 | |
to the teaching of our Lord, Jesus Christ. | 1:03:27 | |
God, creator and savior, | 1:03:33 | |
you have gathered the church of your Christ | 1:03:37 | |
from the whole world. | 1:03:39 | |
Support her that she may everywhere bear witness faithfully. | 1:03:42 | |
By your grace enable us to go from this service of worship | 1:03:50 | |
to serve you in both comfortable and difficult places. | 1:03:55 | |
We believe that you are the true salvation | 1:04:02 | |
of our brothers and sisters who are oppressed. | 1:04:05 | |
Deliver all who are in prison for their faith | 1:04:10 | |
in Russia, in the Middle East, in Mexico, | 1:04:14 | |
yes, even here in our own country and in this city. | 1:04:21 | |
Help us to heed the words of Christ himself, | 1:04:28 | |
to minister to all in bondage of any kind. | 1:04:32 | |
Comfort all who have lost heart, | 1:04:40 | |
whose days are dark and despairing. | 1:04:43 | |
Lift up all who are lonely and abandoned | 1:04:48 | |
so that they may acknowledge your living, loving presence. | 1:04:52 | |
Grant peace to persons now physically ill | 1:05:00 | |
and especially to those who are dying. | 1:05:05 | |
May they know your great compassion | 1:05:10 | |
and experience the power of your resurrection. | 1:05:13 | |
Teach us how to reveal the love of Christ | 1:05:19 | |
to those who have lost health and hope in these days. | 1:05:21 | |
Oh God, we pray for peace in our world, | 1:05:32 | |
for all persons in power, | 1:05:36 | |
that they may use their authority | 1:05:39 | |
to become servants of justice | 1:05:41 | |
so that peace may reign among the nations of the world. | 1:05:45 | |
We ask that they, and we, | 1:05:51 | |
may continually gain a deeper reverence for human life, | 1:05:54 | |
for relationships lived in harmony with each other | 1:06:01 | |
and with you | 1:06:05 | |
so that we can truly become ministers of reconciliation | 1:06:07 | |
wherever we are. | 1:06:12 | |
Dear Lord, creator of all, | 1:06:17 | |
accept the prayers offered this morning | 1:06:21 | |
by the church of Christ. | 1:06:24 | |
Bring us all to your kingdom. | 1:06:28 | |
Power and transform us by your grace. | 1:06:32 | |
Gather us into the unity of your love. | 1:06:36 | |
Through Christ, your son, | 1:06:41 | |
who has taught us to pray together, | 1:06:44 | |
- | Our Father, who art in heaven, | 1:06:48 |
hallowed be thy name, | 1:06:52 | |
thy kingdom come, thy will be done | 1:06:54 | |
and earth as it is in heaven. | 1:06:58 | |
Give us this day our daily bread | 1:07:02 | |
and forgive us our trespasses, | 1:07:05 | |
as we forgive who trespass against us, | 1:07:08 | |
and lead us not into temptation | 1:07:12 | |
but deliver us from evil | 1:07:15 | |
for thine is the kingdom and the power | 1:07:18 | |
and the glory forever, amen. | 1:07:22 | |
(organ music) | 1:07:34 | |
(choir singing) | 1:09:50 | |
(organ music) | 1:12:10 | |
(congregation singing) | 1:14:06 | |
- | Almighty God, | 1:15:09 |
for our very lives we give thanks. | 1:15:12 | |
Use these evidences of the work of our human hands | 1:15:15 | |
and use us in thy service for thy glory, amen. | 1:15:19 | |
(organ music) | 1:15:30 | |
(congregation singing) | 1:16:16 | |
Let us pray. | 1:19:38 | |
Now to him who is able to strengthen you | 1:19:41 | |
according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, | 1:19:44 | |
according to the revelation of the mystery | 1:19:49 | |
which was kept secret for long ages | 1:19:51 | |
but is now disclosed | 1:19:54 | |
and through the prophetic writings | 1:19:56 | |
is made known to all nations, | 1:19:57 | |
according to the command of the eternal God | 1:20:00 | |
to bring about the obedience of faith, | 1:20:02 | |
to the only wise God be glory forever | 1:20:06 | |
through Jesus Christ, amen. | 1:20:09 | |
(choir singing) | 1:20:17 | |
(organ music) | 1:21:23 | |
(chattering) | 1:24:06 |