Juanita Bass Wright - "And the Word Was Made Flesh" (December 30, 1979)

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Woman	Sunday worship service,	0:03
	December 30th, 1979, Duke Chapel.	0:04
	(organ music)	5:52
Man	Let us pray.	12:34
	Oh God, we gather remembering that we are thy people.	12:39
	We gather to join in worship as part of	12:44
	our mission as thy people.	12:47
	We gather to receive again the lives we give to thee.	12:50
	We gather to celebrate the known and the unknown	12:55
	because Jesus Christ is Lord, amen.	13:00
	("Hark The Herald Angels Sing")	13:07
-	Blessed and holy are they who mourn	17:03
	for the sin of the world,	17:06
	for their own sins.	17:09
	Blessed and holy are the guilty	17:12
	who mourn and make confession	17:15
	at the mercy seat of God.	17:17
	We are penitent all.	17:21
	Let us pray.	17:25
	Almighty God, we have done little to forward	17:28
	thy kingdom in this world,	17:32
	to foster the community of humankind,	17:33
	and to establish love as the law of life.	17:37
	We have allowed self to blind us, pains to embitter us.	17:41
	We have forgotten that whatsoever is done	17:47
	to one of the least of these thy children	17:50
	is done onto thee.	17:52
	Pardon our shortcomings, forgive our neglect,	17:55
	give us a pure heart intent on pleasing thee.	18:00
	Help us in all our seeking to seek first	18:04
	thy kingdom and thy righteousness	18:07
	and make us come as came thy son Jesus Christ	18:11
	not to be ministered unto, but to minister	18:16
	all which we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	18:20
	And now let us make our personal confession	18:26
	unto almighty God as we meditate in silence.	18:29
	God wipes away the tears.	18:58
	Merciful God gentles the guilty.	19:01
	Friends, hear and believe in Jesus Christ	19:05
	we are comforted, we are forgiven.	19:10
	Let us be gentle and forgiving one to another.	19:14
	Amen.	19:21
	Let us give thanks, for God is good	19:29
	and God's love is everlasting.	19:32
	(congregation praying)	19:35
-	Amen.	19:52
	I bring warm Christmastide greetings	19:55
	to all who worship here today.	19:57
	Those of you here in Duke Chapel	20:01
	and you joining us by radio.	20:04
	This is a recess Sunday in the university's schedule	20:07
	so we want also to remember those of the community	20:11
	worshiping elsewhere today in their hometowns	20:14
	or with friends across the country.	20:18
	The preacher of the morning is	20:23
	the Reverend Juanita B. Wright,	20:24
	assistant minister to the university.	20:27
	And now, let us continue our worship.	20:36
	Let us pray.	20:40
	Thy word, oh God, is like evergreen against the gray hills.	20:45
	Now brighten our wintry hearts and minds	20:50
	with thy written messages of scripture, amen.	20:54
	The Old Testament lesson for the morning	21:05
	is from the Book of the prophet Isaiah,	21:08
	chapter 42, verses one through nine.	21:11
	"Behold, my servant who I uphold,	21:17
	"my chosen in whom my soul delights.	21:21
	"I have put my spirit upon him.	21:24
	"He will bring forth justice to the nations.	21:27
	"He will not cry or lift up his voice	21:30
	"or make it heard in the street.	21:33
	"A bruised reed he will not break	21:36
	"and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.	21:39
	"He will faithfully bring forth justice.	21:42
	"He will not fail or be discouraged	21:46
	"till he has established justice in the earth	21:49
	"and the coastlines wait for his law.	21:52
	"Thus says God, the Lord, who created the Heavens	21:57
	"and stretched them out, who spread forth	22:00
	"the earth and what comes from it,	22:03
	"who gives breath to the people upon it	22:06
	"and spirit to those who walk in it.	22:09
	"I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,	22:12
	"I have taken you by the hand and kept you.	22:16
	"I have given you as a covenant to the people,	22:20
	"a light to the nations.	22:23
	"To open the eyes that are blind,	22:25
	"to bring out of prison from the dungeons	22:28
	"and from prison those who sit in darkness.	22:31
	"I am the Lord, that is my name,	22:34
	"my glory I give to no other,	22:37
	"nor my praise to graven images.	22:40
	"Behold the former things have come to pass	22:43
	"and new things I now declare	22:47
	"before they spring forth, I tell you of them."	22:50
	The epistle from first John, chapter four,	22:57
	verses nine through 16.	23:02
	"And this the love of God was made manifest among us,	23:09
	"that God sent his only son into the world	23:12
	"so that we might live through him.	23:16
	"And this is love, not that we loved God,	23:20
	"but that he loved us and sent his son	23:23
	"to be the expiation of our sins.	23:26
	"Beloved, if God so loved us,	23:30
	"we also ought to love one another.	23:33
	"No man has ever seen God.	23:36
	"If we love one another, God abides in us	23:39
	"and His love is perfected in us.	23:43
	"By this we know that we abide in him,	23:48
	"and he in us because he has given us of his own spirit	23:51
	"and we have seen and testified that the father	23:56
	"has sent his son as the savior of the world.	23:59
	"Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God,	24:04
	"God abides in him and he in God.	24:07
	"So we know and believe the love God has for us.	24:11
	"God is love, and he who abides in love	24:16
	"abides in God, and God abides in him."	24:20
	The gospel is from that according to Saint John.	24:27
	Chapter one, verses one through 14.	24:33
	Let us stand for the holy gospel.	24:36
	"In the beginning was the word,	24:46
	"and the word was with God, and the word was God.	24:49
	"He was in the beginning with God.	24:53
	"All things were made through him	24:56
	"and without him was not anything made that was made.	24:58
	"In him was life, and the life was the light of men.	25:03
	"The light shines in the darkness,	25:08
	"and the darkness has not overcome it.	25:11
	"There was a man sent from God whose name was John.	25:15
	"He came for testimony to bear witness to the light	25:19
	"that all might believe through him.	25:23
	"He was not the light, but came	25:26
	"to bear witness to the light.	25:28
	"The true light that enlightens every man	25:30
	"was coming into the world.	25:33
	"He was in the world, and the world was made through him	25:35
	"yet the world knew him not.	25:39
	"He came to his own home, and his people received him not	25:42
	"but to all who received him, who believed in his name	25:47
	"he gave power to become the children of God	25:51
	"who are born not of blood nor the will of the flesh,	25:55
	"nor of the will of man, but of God.	25:59
	"And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us.	26:03
	"Full of grace and truth, we have beheld his glory.	26:08
	"Glory as of the only son from the father.	26:13
	"Praise be to God."	26:19
	(organ music)	26:23
-	[Reverend Juanita] Greetings and	27:21
	blessings to each one of you as we approach	27:22
	the beginning of a new year and a new decade.	27:25
	May God's love prosper in the time ahead	27:30
	and may each of you know that love and God's peace.	27:34
	Let us pray.	27:40
	Oh Lord, may the words of my mouth	27:44
	and the meditations of our hearts	27:48
	be acceptable to you this day.	27:50
	Amen.	27:54
	W.H. Auden penned these words in the closing section	28:02
	of his Christmas oratorio, For the Time Being.	28:07
	"The Christmas feast is already a fading memory	28:13
	"and already the mind begins to be vaguely aware	28:18
	"of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension	28:22
	"at the thought of Lent and Good Friday	28:25
	"which cannot, after all, be very far off.	28:29
	"The happy morning is over,	28:34
	"The night of agony still to come.	28:37
	"The time is noon when the spirit must practice	28:41
	"his scales of rejoicing without even	28:45
	"a hostile audience, and the soul endure a silence	28:47
	"that is neither for nor against her faith	28:53
	"that God's will be done."	28:57
	It is in this time being, this noon of the spirit,	29:03
	in which you and I most often live	29:08
	that I want to talk about the word made flesh.	29:12
	In composing the prologue to his gospel,	29:20
	the writer of John surely faced a dilemma.	29:24
	His audience was made up of both Jews and Greeks.	29:30
	People of different philosophical backgrounds.	29:34
	The idea of a coming messiah, an idea at the very center	29:39
	of Jewish expectation and hope,	29:44
	was quite alien to the Greeks.	29:48
	John used a rather ingenious device	29:52
	to convey his message to his pluralistic world.	29:55
	For the Jew, a word was something more	30:02
	than sound uttered from the mouth.	30:06
	A word had an independent existence, it did things.	30:10
	Once spoken, once out,	30:16
	the word began to act	30:20
	and nothing could stop it.	30:22
	Remember the creation story.	30:26
	And God said, let there be light.	30:30
	God said, let there be sky.	30:36
	God said, let there be dry land.	30:42
	God said, let there be maples and porcupines and people.	30:48
	God said...	30:54
	God saying, God's word, made the world,	30:58
	and us.	31:03
	Remember Isaac's blessing,	31:07
	the one Jacob and Rebecca stole from Esau.	31:09
	However devious the recipient and his mother,	31:14
	the blessing, once spoken, could not be taken away	31:18
	from Jacob and given to Esau.	31:21
	Indeed, we too can identify with that view.	31:27
	How many of us have wanted to call back	31:32
	words we have uttered, and have not been able to do so?	31:35
	When the Old Testament was translated	31:44
	into Aramaic from Hebrew,	31:45
	a language that the Jewish people no longer knew	31:48
	in the hundred years or so before the birth of Christ,	31:51
	people of the day were steeped in the transcendence of God.	31:56
	God's holy otherness, God's great distance	32:01
	from humankind.	32:06
	Human attributes were not assigned to God.	32:09
	To do so distorted the nature of God.	32:13
	And so the phrase, the word of God	32:19
	was substituted for the name of the deity.	32:23
	The word of God was synonymous with God	32:28
	and the phrase was quite familiar to first century Jews.	32:33
	The Greek word logos may be translated	32:39
	both "word" and "reason."	32:42
	In the text for today, "word" is used.	32:46
	But in Jewish thought, reason and wisdom	32:51
	were very closely connected	32:55
	and the study of the wisdom literature,	32:58
	particularly proverbs, indicates that the creative power	33:01
	of the word was also attributed to wisdom.	33:06
	Therefor, to the Jew, word was not only	33:12
	active and powerful, but it was a creative force	33:17
	born of reason or wisdom.	33:22
	For the Greek, logos, or word, was the reason	33:28
	of the deity that established the principle of order	33:32
	by which the universe existed.	33:35
	Further, this same order, dwelling in human beings	33:40
	gave them reason and knowledge of the truth	33:44
	and the ability to judge between right and wrong.	33:47
	Logos was nothing less than the mind of God	33:52
	controlling the world and everyone in it.	33:56
	And so John brings the Jewish and the Greek	34:03
	streams of thought together in his prologue.	34:05
	He bridges two cultures in his explanation of Jesus,	34:10
	giving validity and credence and acceptability	34:14
	to this God-man, the word made flesh.	34:18
	For the Jew, Jesus is explained as the word of God	34:25
	coexisting since before the beginning of time with God	34:29
	and God, in God's wisdom and creative power,	34:34
	and in that holy otherness decided to become flesh	34:38
	and dwell on earth.	34:44
	Humankind had not ascribed human attributes	34:48
	to this word of God, God had made the decision.	34:50
	And the word became flesh.	34:56
	For the Greek, this word made flesh	35:03
	was nothing less than the mind of God	35:07
	controlling the world through reason.	35:10
	Nothing less than God continuing to establish	35:13
	the principle of order under which the universe existed.	35:17
	The word became flesh, the mind,	35:24
	the reason of God	35:28
	had come to dwell on earth and to see it.	35:30
	One had only to look at Jesus,	35:33
	said John to the Greeks and the Jews,	35:36
	and John sets forth his gospel to demonstrate	35:40
	the truth of his premise.	35:43
	Okay, so far, so good.	35:49
	An interesting essay on first century etymology,	35:53
	and bravo for the ingenuity of John.	35:57
	But what of us?	36:03
	What does it mean that the word was made flesh, to us	36:06
	who are neither first century Jews nor Greeks?	36:11
	We who know no one who walked and talked	36:16
	with Jesus on the dusty roads of Palestine,	36:20
	we who live in this 20th century time being	36:24
	where by and large the world seems	36:28
	indifferent to the spirit?	36:31
	It is somehow easier, philosophically easier,	36:37
	to accept the preexistence of the word	36:42
	and its creative power than to make sense	36:44
	of the word made flesh in our time.	36:48
	In Bethlehem so long ago, and today,	36:53
	yes, today, right here in Durham, North Carolina,	36:57
	at Duke University, just last week	37:03
	remember the carols?	37:08
	Christ is born today,	37:12
	or joy to the world, the Lord is come?	37:16
	Or the words we have sung this very morning.	37:22
	Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king.	37:26
	Where do we find the word made flesh?	37:34
	We turn to the witnesses like John	37:43
	and the other gospel writers who set Jesus forth	37:45
	as the object of our faith,	37:48
	as the fulfillment of those Old Testament prophecies.	37:51
	We turn to the Book of Acts	37:57
	to discover the way the early church	37:59
	and its leaders understood Jesus.	38:01
	We turn to the letters for further	38:05
	instruction in the faith,	38:07
	and we turn to the apocalypse, the Book of Revelation	38:10
	for reinforcement of our hope.	38:14
	And we also look to our own experience	38:20
	with the word made flesh.	38:23
	But we also look to people today	38:28
	who are living lives reminiscent of the quality of life	38:31
	that Jesus lived as the word made flesh	38:35
	and to which John bore witness.	38:38
	We look to the saints, both those canonized	38:42
	and those ordinary folk in our very midst.	38:48
	We look to Mother Teresa of Calcutta,	38:54
	the winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize	38:59
	An Albanian peasant woman, she founded	39:04
	the Missioners of Charity to care for the destitute	39:08
	and the dying on the streets of Calcutta, India	39:12
	and has extended her work to other parts of the world	39:16
	including Harlem and the South Bronx in New York City.	39:20
	It's difficult to be very descriptive	39:27
	about a woman like Mother Teresa,	39:30
	because as one biographer puts it,	39:33
	the holy dedicated, like Mother Teresa,	39:36
	do not have biographies.	39:40
	We do know that in addition to her work	39:44
	with the destitute and the dying,	39:47
	part of her days are spent in offering darshan,	39:50
	an Indian tradition where the powerful, the notable,	39:54
	or the holy make themselves available to all comers.	39:59
	Of her, Michael T. Kaufman,	40:06
	a writer for the New York Times magazine	40:10
	and a professed Jewish non-believer says,	40:13
	"The human clay molds itself in unambiguous joy."	40:19
	There is a prayer written by Mother Teresa	40:26
	to which we have access, and which says more	40:29
	of who she is than descriptive words can ever say.	40:32
	She prays,	40:37
	"Dearest Lord, may I see you today	40:41
	"and every day in the person of your sick,	40:44
	"and whilst nursing them minister unto you.	40:48
	"Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive	40:54
	"disguise of the irritable, the exacting,	40:57
	"the unreasonable, may I still recognize you	41:01
	"and say, Jesus, my patient,	41:06
	"how sweet it is to serve you.	41:10
	"Oh beloved sick, how doubly dear you are to me	41:15
	"when you personify Christ, and what a privilege is mine	41:18
	"to be allowed to tend you.	41:23
	"And Oh God, while you are Jesus, my patient,	41:27
	"deign also to be unto me a patient Jesus	41:31
	"bearing with my faults, looking only to my intention	41:35
	"which is to love and serve you	41:40
	"and the person of each of your sick."	41:42
	This prayer of Mother Teresa describes not only	41:50
	her holiness, but points us also to another reminder	41:53
	of the word made flesh.	41:58
	Even as Jesus himself pointed us to the hungry,	42:00
	the thirsty, the naked, the sick,	42:04
	and the imprisoned,	42:09
	as recorded in the gospel according to Matthew.	42:11
	In her retreats and her letters,	42:18
	the late English mystic Evelyn Underhill	42:21
	insisted that intellectual, ivory tower type Christians	42:24
	do themselves a great injustice	42:29
	when they have no first hand person-to-person	42:31
	contact with the poor.	42:34
	As long as she was physically able,	42:38
	long after she was world famous,	42:41
	Ms. Underhill went three times a week	42:44
	to London slums to talk with the downtrodden of the earth.	42:46
	Why?	42:51
	Because it gave her a good feeling,	42:52
	or provided her a tax break because she	42:54
	donated baskets of food?	42:57
	No.	42:59
	She went because she met Christ in the least of these	43:01
	and she found they always gave her more mercy,	43:06
	more love than she gave them.	43:10
	Perhaps, as Henri Nouwen, author and teacher, reminds us	43:16
	persons of prayer, of faith,	43:21
	are those who are able	43:25
	to recognize in others the face of the messiah	43:27
	and make visible what was hidden,	43:31
	make touchable what was unreachable.	43:34
	We must, of course, be careful not to fall into the trap	43:41
	represented by a poster Avery Dulles tells about seeing.	43:46
	The poster said, "God is other people."	43:52
	You may have seen it yourself.	43:56
	And Dulles was right perhaps to suggest a comma.	43:58
	God is other, people.	44:03
	God is other.	44:06
	But God has entrusted the word to people	44:09
	through Christ body, the church,	44:12
	and in the incarnation	44:15
	has endowed us flesh with holiness	44:18
	and the potential of holiness.	44:23
	This truth is not easy to grasp	44:28
	and it is here that we need to call on the epistle reading	44:31
	for its message to us today.	44:34
	God's love is perfected in us	44:39
	in the sense that it is realized	44:41
	and brought into actuality.	44:43
	Theologians and psychologists alike	44:47
	have told us that only those who know	44:50
	themself to be loved can love.	44:53
	Only those who have been trusted can trust.	44:58
	Only those who have themselves been objects of devotion	45:03
	can really give themselves.	45:08
	And so we have to accept the love and trust	45:13
	God has placed in us,	45:16
	and really become the children, the servants of God	45:19
	before we can see in others the face of the messiah,	45:24
	the image of God.	45:29
	Gordon and Gladys DePree have a poem with these lines in it.	45:34
	"I stood there in the crowd, cursing its density	45:41
	"and anonymity, angry that my feet had been stepped on	45:45
	"and no one stopped to ask my pardon.	45:50
	"Then, it hit me.	45:56
	"I felt the life flowing out of me	45:59
	"into their bodies around me,	46:02
	"and their life flowing into mine.	46:04
	"I looked into faces for the first time,	46:08
	"realizing that I was not only myself,	46:13
	"but I was a part of them, as well.	46:17
	"They and I were expressions of the same force,	46:23
	life.	46:28
	"Coming from somewhere, housed in these bodies,	46:30
	"looking out of these eyes,	46:35
	"and then I recognized them.	46:40
	"These were the faces of God."	46:45
	It becomes very difficult to see the face of God	46:53
	in those who step on your feet,	46:55
	in those who are members of the Ku Klux Klan,	46:59
	or the communist party, or even in those	47:02
	with whom we live our lives day by day.	47:06
	For we who have been created in the	47:11
	image and likeness of God	47:13
	had rather play God and lord it over others	47:16
	than to be our brothers and sisters' keepers	47:20
	than to see the flesh of God in their flesh.	47:25
	Let your mind focus for a moment	47:33
	on whatever image of Jesus you have.	47:36
	A babe in a manger.	47:42
	A seaside teacher.	47:47
	A figure on a cross.	47:51
	Whatever image comes first.	47:55
	Is your Jesus flesh and blood?	48:01
	I expect so.	48:05
	Now think of those you love.	48:08
	Think of the people you dislike.	48:12
	The people who please and those who irk.	48:15
	Are they in focus?	48:21
	Are they flesh and blood?	48:25
	And now back again with your mind to Jesus.	48:30
	The resemblances between pesky neighbors	48:35
	and the Lord may be faint, but Christ's face	48:37
	can take a million, million forms.	48:42
	It is W.H. Auden again who reminds us	48:50
	to seek the messiah in the land of unlikeness,	48:53
	in the kingdom of anxiety,	48:59
	in the world of the flesh.	49:02
	Look for Christ wherever you go this afternoon or tomorrow,	49:10
	see how many faces of God you recognize.	49:18
	For the word was made flesh	49:26
	and dwells among us still.	49:31
	Let us pray.	49:37
	Oh God, we stand before you	49:42
	as those caught in the time being.	49:45
	Bolster our faith.	49:50
	May we know we are loved,	49:53
	may our love to you deepen and our commitment to love	49:56
	and serve others as we seek to be people of prayer,	50:00
	of faith, who recognize the faces of	50:05
	the messiah and others.	50:08
	May we too know the unambiguous joy	50:12
	of devotion to you and yours.	50:16
	In the name of the word made flesh, amen.	50:20
	("Greensleeves")	50:27
Man	Affirmation of faith.	54:27
	Let us affirm what we believe.	54:30
	"We believe in God, who has created and is creating,	54:34
	"who has come in the truly human Jesus	54:39
	"to reconcile and make new,	54:42
	"who works in us and others by the spirit.	54:45
	"We trust God, who calls us to be the church	54:50
	"to celebrate life and its fullness,	54:55
	"to love and serve others,	54:58
	"to seek justice and resist evil,	55:01
	"to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen,	55:05
	"our judge and our hope,	55:09
	"in life and death, in life beyond death, God is with us.	55:12
	"We are not alone.	55:19
	"Thanks be to God."	55:21
	Be seated.	55:24
	The Lord be with you.	55:34
	Let us pray.	55:38
	Everliving God, by thy mercy we have come	55:43
	to the gateway of another year.	55:47
	Grant that we may leave 1979 and enter 1980	55:51
	with grateful hearts, thankful for past years	55:56
	and determined to live more vibrant in faith tomorrow.	56:02
	We are thankful, oh God, for the gift of forgetfulness	56:08
	that we can close the date book on our	56:14
	fevers and fits of the past year,	56:17
	that we can forget our lack of love	56:22
	for ourselves and love for others.	56:25
	We are thankful for hope reborn with Christmas	56:31
	and with the coming of a new year, a new decade.	56:36
	Hope for a world of no hostages in Iran,	56:42
	or of no starving children in Cambodia,	56:47
	of no conflicts in North Carolina,	56:51
	hope for human compassion and for spiritual renewal.	56:56
	We are thankful for the duties and responsibilities	57:03
	we take with us, duties to resume afresh,	57:07
	and we are thankful for unforeseen opportunities	57:13
	and pleasures and pain that teaches us who we are	57:16
	in relation to Christ.	57:22
	Send us into 1980 to spread thanksgiving	57:26
	and to devote to thy glory our smiles and our headaches,	57:31
	our laurels and our sack cloth, our success and our failure.	57:38
	Ah, our God, but even as we celebrate the new hope	57:46
	symbolized by the new year, we have uneasy feelings.	57:50
	Change, God, change makes us nervous.	57:57
	Oh yes, we know it is inevitable.	58:02
	We somehow accept and enter the doors it opens,	58:05
	yet from the time we can distinguish	58:10
	sleep from wakefulness, we are uneasy with transition.	58:12
	The familiar, which we identify	58:18
	with warmth feels so secure.	58:20
	And we really do, or did, want to grow up	58:25
	and move from junior high to senior high school	58:31
	and onto college and then into the world of work	58:33
	but we wonder along the way, what will it be like?	58:38
	That next stage of life, the next year,	58:42
	and we thy people, oh God, we worry a lot.	58:46
	Change puts dips in our ego,	58:52
	and we need thy love to help us through the passages.	58:56
	Today we pray for all persons experiencing change	59:02
	and for all situations in which transition	59:06
	makes people uncomfortable.	59:09
	For all of those who in this season	59:13
	are going away from home to study,	59:15
	to work, to wander, or to make war,	59:19
	for all of those whose economic standing is changing,	59:25
	going from better to worse, from more to less,	59:29
	for all who are finishing a task	59:35
	and beginning another, for nations moving from	59:38
	less to more freedom for their people	59:42
	and for those moving in the opposite direction,	59:44
	tromping the human rights of their citizens.	59:47
	We pray for leaders in government, industry, and education	59:52
	who are frightened by forces of change	59:55
	they are unable to control.	59:58
	For young people who are becoming adults,	1:00:02
	and adults who are growing old.	1:00:04
	For those who are moving from health to sickness,	1:00:08
	and from sickness to health.	1:00:11
	For people going to jail, and people leaving jail.	1:00:14
	We pray for all those emerging from and those	1:00:20
	entering into the dark souls of the night,	1:00:23
	and those who are being rekindled by	1:00:26
	the bright day of thy love.	1:00:29
	A new year of opportunity and threats	1:00:34
	loom for us, oh God,	1:00:36
	and as we pass through the gate	1:00:39
	anoint us with the fragrances of faith,	1:00:42
	the faith of the Christ who teaches us to pray,	1:00:46
	our father, who art in heaven,	1:00:51
	hallowed would be thy name,	1:00:54
	thy kingdom come, thy will be done	1:00:56
	on earth as it is in heaven.	1:01:00
	Give us this day, our daily bread	1:01:03
	and forgive us our trespasses	1:01:05
	as we forgive those who trespass against us	1:01:08
	and lead us not into temptation	1:01:12
	but deliver us from evil	1:01:14
	for thine is the kingdom	1:01:17
	and the power and the glory forever, amen.	1:01:19
	(organ music)	1:01:33
-	Let us pray.	1:08:27
	Mighty God, this is our last offering of 1979	1:08:29
	to thee and to thy church, the last of this decade.	1:08:34
	Count unto us as righteousness,	1:08:39
	all of our unfulfilled intentions	1:08:42
	as stewards in the past, and bless our resolution	1:08:44
	to be in the future more faithful with our time,	1:08:49
	our talents, and our means.	1:08:53
	Accept now these symbols of our gratitude	1:08:56
	to thee for thy love,	1:08:59
	and continue to love us,	1:09:01
	even when we begrudge thee thy do.	1:09:03
	Through Jesus Christ, amen.	1:09:07
	("O Come All Ye Faithful")	1:09:11
-	Go in peace.	1:12:40
	Go to find your star of Bethlehem to guide you in the world.	1:12:42
	Go into 1980, and may Christ attend you.	1:12:47
	In the name of God our maker, God our redeemer,	1:12:51
	and God the spirit with us, amen.	1:12:55
	(organ music)	1:13:00

Item Info

Title:

Juanita Bass Wright - "And the Word Was Made Flesh" (December 30, 1979)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 27:21. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 49:40.
God’s love is realized and brought into reality through us, and we need to seek God in everyone, not just those we like. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “A word had an independent existence, once spoken, it did things. Once spoke, once out, the word began to act, and nothing could stop it.”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4bz61p2f

Date:

December 30, 1979

Speaker:

Wright, Juanita Bass

Liturgical Calendar:

Christmas

Biblical Book:

Chapter and Verse:

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-1063
ref7338_eu1
uachapelsermaud
duke:320370
dcrau001942
ark:/87924/r4bz61p2f
dd9dd4ac-0b81-4907-8da7-f3937698923c

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

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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.

Rights:

No Re-Use

In Copyright

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This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Juanita Bass Wright - "And the Word Was Made Flesh" (December 30, 1979)

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Item Info

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Duke University Archives