Canon T.O. Wedel - "The Mystery of Time" (January 9, 1955)
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| (Orchestra music) ` | 0:03 | |
| - | Oh Lord our God, the giver of all good. | 1:17 |
| We beseech thee to behold in these, | 1:22 | |
| our gifts, | 1:24 | |
| the earnest of our consecration to thy service, | 1:26 | |
| and grant that now, and at all times, | 1:29 | |
| our gratitude to thee maybe as great as | 1:32 | |
| our need for thy mercy | 1:35 | |
| through Jesus Christ. Our Lord, | 1:38 | |
| amen. | 1:40 | |
| - | The text of my sermon on the topic. | 2:09 |
| The mystery of time is taken from the passage read as our | 2:11 | |
| lesson this morning, namely, the closing verses, | 2:16 | |
| we recall that the speaker is Job, himself. | 2:20 | |
| You're surveying human life in a moment of penitence and | 2:23 | |
| thoughtfulness, possibly on an ancient New Years Day. | 2:28 | |
| And he cast his eye both at man and God and says, | 2:33 | |
| "man that is born of woman is of few days | 2:33 | |
| and full of trouble. | 2:41 | |
| He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down. | 2:42 | |
| He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not." | 2:45 | |
| And then addressing God. And he says, "and dost thou open, | 2:49 | |
| thine eyes upon such an one? | 2:54 | |
| And bringest me into judgment with thee?" | 2:57 | |
| We do stand in the opening weeks of a new year. | 2:58 | |
| New year's Day itself is fresh surely in our memory. | 3:08 | |
| And that's when we celebrate a birthday and | 3:12 | |
| new year's is a kind of calendar birthday. | 3:13 | |
| We become conscious in that peculiarly vivid why, | 3:18 | |
| do we not? | 3:21 | |
| Of one of life's deepest mysteries, | 3:22 | |
| the mystery of time. | 3:25 | |
| Now this mystery has puzzled the why's of the ages, | 3:27 | |
| down through all of human history, | 3:30 | |
| past, present, future. | 3:34 | |
| We deal with these tenses as we study grammar, | 3:37 | |
| and particularly we studied French grammar, | 3:41 | |
| We have some difficulty with it, | 3:43 | |
| and find mystery, | 3:45 | |
| even in the fact of human language | 3:47 | |
| language, however, | 3:50 | |
| is a mirror of land, | 3:51 | |
| reflect upon the mystery of living time, | 3:54 | |
| and becomes awesome indeed. | 3:56 | |
| Where can you put your hands upon it? | 4:00 | |
| The past? | 4:02 | |
| Where is it? In the storehouse of memory? | 4:04 | |
| Yes, but is memory real? | 4:08 | |
| I can recall rather vividly the slightly superfluous | 4:13 | |
| heat of August days in Washington, | 4:15 | |
| but the memory is no substitute for an oil furnace in | 4:18 | |
| January. | 4:21 | |
| You probably can, can recall your vacation rather readily, | 4:24 | |
| but it's not a substitute for the examination period line. | 4:28 | |
| If memory were real, | 4:34 | |
| we might be compelled to live over again. | 4:35 | |
| Life's tragedies and pain. As not the past, therefore, | 4:37 | |
| despite his joy, | 4:42 | |
| as well as sorrow, blessedly found rest in the abyss of | 4:43 | |
| nothingness how many of us would like to | 4:47 | |
| live our past over again. | 4:51 | |
| as for the future. | 4:56 | |
| We dream and plan and even cast our private horoscopes, | 4:57 | |
| but it has that future anymore reality than does the past? | 5:01 | |
| Men consult fortune tellers to learn the secrets of the | 5:06 | |
| future. | 5:09 | |
| But do you suppose that many of us really want to know | 5:10 | |
| what our future is going to bring? | 5:14 | |
| If you prospective millionaires might enjoy the prospect, | 5:18 | |
| but the rest of us might even prefer to be spared itemized | 5:22 | |
| accounting beforehand of the burdens | 5:26 | |
| and trials which lie ahead, | 5:28 | |
| I think even of the examination period, | 5:31 | |
| which you are facing. | 5:33 | |
| Indeed, one of the texts- | 5:37 | |
| texts out of the new Testament that I live | 5:38 | |
| with once more to our examination weeks that we might take | 5:41 | |
| seriously is do not be anxious about tomorrow, | 5:44 | |
| or tomorrow will be anxious for itself. | 5:49 | |
| Sufficient unto the day is the evil there of. | 5:54 | |
| Ah, good exit Jesus of that text would help us a lot. | 5:59 | |
| Some call, well, | 6:03 | |
| Jesus spoke those words and they were wise words, | 6:07 | |
| as for living in a world of dreams of a non-existent future, | 6:11 | |
| as if it were real, that way, madness lies, | 6:15 | |
| literally so. | 6:18 | |
| Our mental hospitals are filled with pitiful men and women | 6:21 | |
| who have fled from the anxieties of the present, | 6:24 | |
| into the fantasy world of dream. | 6:27 | |
| Very well. | 6:31 | |
| If we cannot live in memory and dare not live in romantic | 6:32 | |
| dreams of tomorrow, there is left the present. | 6:36 | |
| This at least should be real and capable of being grasped, | 6:41 | |
| but is it? Hold it in your hand, if you can, | 6:44 | |
| in the very moment of grasping it too is gone. | 6:50 | |
| It is the fraction of a second, | 6:54 | |
| between two ticks of a clock. | 6:55 | |
| The present too, turns out to be a mystery. | 6:58 | |
| No worries, this mystery of time, | 7:03 | |
| a topic which couldn't be left to philosophers. | 7:05 | |
| It is the very stuff of human living. | 7:07 | |
| You and I cannot escape life in time. | 7:11 | |
| We look at our past you were there, | 7:15 | |
| we see islands of happiness that they are gone and cannot be | 7:18 | |
| resurrected and surrounding those happy memories are other | 7:21 | |
| memories, memories of shame, wrongdoing or neglected, | 7:25 | |
| Loves, broken friendships, ambitions unfulfilled, | 7:29 | |
| dreams turned into disillusion. | 7:30 | |
| And the strange thing happens to that memory. It becomes, | 7:38 | |
| it becomes the mystery of guilt. | 7:42 | |
| We may cover our guilt with forgetfulness, but it is there. | 7:47 | |
| And the way it's only oblivion | 7:50 | |
| of death or the miracle of someone's forgiving. | 7:52 | |
| The future in turn is hid from our sight blessedly so. | 8:00 | |
| We must each one of us for himself shoulder | 8:02 | |
| the responsibilities of life, in the present. | 8:06 | |
| Here, and now. As we face the present, | 8:10 | |
| one fact surely stands forth clear. | 8:15 | |
| We are ourselves creatures of time. | 8:18 | |
| We liked the fleeting moments which we call the present | 8:21 | |
| are here today and gone tomorrow. | 8:25 | |
| Man, that is born. | 8:29 | |
| A woman is of few days and full of trouble. | 8:30 | |
| He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down, | 8:33 | |
| he fleeth as a shadow, and continueth not. | 8:35 | |
| Nor do these verses out of the book of Job stand alone, | 8:40 | |
| literally scores and passages in the Bible, | 8:45 | |
| echo Job's insight. | 8:48 | |
| We spend our years as a tale that is told, | 8:51 | |
| says the familiar 90th song, what is your life? | 8:55 | |
| It is even a vapor that up here with, | 9:00 | |
| for a little time and then vanishes the way, | 9:02 | |
| says the epistle of St. Jane or listen to Jesus, | 9:06 | |
| addressing a rich man who had presumed to forecast for | 9:10 | |
| himself. A future of where he eats lousy food. | 9:14 | |
| This nighttime soul shall be required of thee. | 9:19 | |
| And then who shall those things be, | 9:23 | |
| which thou has provided the brevity of human life. | 9:26 | |
| The indignity of that breadth, | 9:35 | |
| we don't like that is the theme song of the series. Poetry. | 9:42 | |
| The agents there exists no better proof of wisdom of | 9:47 | |
| Shakespeare and the echoes of our mornings texts to be found | 9:52 | |
| on all those page. | 9:56 | |
| Almost every page. He wrote the theme song. | 9:59 | |
| If you like of Shakespeare's wisdom, | 10:02 | |
| we are such stuff as dreams are made on and onto the life | 10:06 | |
| is rounded with the sleep like as the waves make towards the | 10:09 | |
| pebble shore. | 10:13 | |
| So do our minutes hasten to their end | 10:15 | |
| golden lags and girls all abust like chimney sweepers, | 10:21 | |
| come to ducks. | 10:26 | |
| And if ever, | 10:29 | |
| we should be puzzled to know my Christianity conquered the | 10:29 | |
| culture of Greece and Rome. | 10:33 | |
| Listen to the way to the parts of that. | 10:35 | |
| Resplendent age. | 10:36 | |
| A setting sun shall rise in glory, | 10:39 | |
| but when little life is, | 10:45 | |
| or there's an end of all the story, | 10:46 | |
| we shall sleep and wake no more. | 10:49 | |
| Now the ancient brilliant world had no answer for the | 10:55 | |
| tragedy of time. | 10:58 | |
| That is why pagans became Christians. | 11:01 | |
| They heard the voice of Christ saying, | 11:04 | |
| I am the resurrection and the life, | 11:06 | |
| either believing in me though he were dead yet. | 11:10 | |
| Shall he live? | 11:12 | |
| And they entered the new world of the Christian faith that | 11:14 | |
| ancient world can surely teach us much. | 11:18 | |
| He'd had faced the mystery of time and the tragedy of time, | 11:21 | |
| the simple fact that no earthly pleasure endure the human | 11:27 | |
| alone was the wonderful thing we know | 11:32 | |
| for all it's clinging must have an end | 11:36 | |
| that the pride of man of | 11:40 | |
| emperors and Kings are clowns and beggars. | 11:41 | |
| He didn't find a view, a vanity of vanities. | 11:45 | |
| This is the bitter drop. | 11:49 | |
| You know, all we're seeking, happiness. | 11:52 | |
| And if I'm monitoring, | 11:57 | |
| master rewards can add his testimony to that or the wisdom | 11:57 | |
| of the ages. | 12:00 | |
| Listen, to listen to the gorgeous pros of Thomas Carlyle. | 12:02 | |
| Yeah, | 12:07 | |
| it must be writing inside her massages where now he asks, | 12:08 | |
| is Alexander of Macedonia. | 12:13 | |
| Does this deal host that yelled infused, battled sound said, | 12:16 | |
| is this an RB lot remained behind him or have they all | 12:20 | |
| vanished utterly? | 12:23 | |
| Napoleon too, and these must all retreats. | 12:24 | |
| And I was still his campaigns. | 12:29 | |
| Was it all other than the various specter hunt, ghosts? | 12:31 | |
| They are an I, | 12:37 | |
| a thousand million walking the earth openly at noon time. | 12:38 | |
| Some have hundreds of vantage from it. | 12:41 | |
| Some half a hundred have arisen in it. | 12:43 | |
| And I watch ticks once. | 12:45 | |
| That's like some wild flaming wild thundering train of | 12:49 | |
| heavens artillery does this mysterious mankind, | 12:52 | |
| thunder and flame through the unknown deep, | 12:56 | |
| but when or heaven with her, | 13:00 | |
| since Noah was done face nose done only that it is through | 13:03 | |
| mystery to miss from gauntlet to gone | 13:08 | |
| so much for Carline, nor is the brevity of life. | 13:16 | |
| The only problem which man faces as he deals with the | 13:20 | |
| mystery of time. | 13:23 | |
| It is man's peculiar faith that while he shares with the | 13:26 | |
| flowers of the field, he's a little less | 13:28 | |
| and he's briefs, bang. He alas, | 13:29 | |
| no even more. He feels himself responsible for what he does | 13:35 | |
| with the mystery of time. | 13:42 | |
| He bears the burden of memory, we call that guilt. | 13:45 | |
| He stands in dread of the future. | 13:49 | |
| We call that anxiety, and he walks in the present | 13:51 | |
| under the lash of the deepest mystery law. | 13:58 | |
| The mystery of conch, | 14:02 | |
| he cannot possibly live and die as can the flowers of the | 14:05 | |
| field or the animals on the farms. | 14:08 | |
| He stands under jugs. | 14:12 | |
| He cannot drift with the tide and enjoy the passing hour as | 14:14 | |
| if they were nothing beyond, | 14:18 | |
| let us eat and drink for tomorrow. We die. | 14:22 | |
| That slogan sounds enticing. | 14:25 | |
| And some of us may have tried to live by it occasionally, | 14:27 | |
| but can you do it? | 14:32 | |
| As any man ever really lived by it? | 14:35 | |
| For a man has that within himself, which part? | 14:39 | |
| The pleasures of the sense | 14:43 | |
| every wasted hour brings him a sense of guilt and evermore, | 14:46 | |
| no alcoholic and boasted, he is really happy, | 14:53 | |
| nor the man who makes sexual lusts gone. | 14:57 | |
| No other worldly who dreams of nothing except money in the | 15:00 | |
| bank. | 15:03 | |
| Man just simply is not an animal we look before and after | 15:05 | |
| and pine for what he's done. | 15:12 | |
| And I've seen Sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught. | 15:14 | |
| Indeed. | 15:22 | |
| This mystery of time, just simply is the mystery of man. | 15:24 | |
| Is it not? | 15:27 | |
| And the tragedy of time is the tragedy of man, man, man, | 15:29 | |
| without God, try to define man as indeed, | 15:35 | |
| philosophers and theologians have tried through all the | 15:35 | |
| centuries of human history and you come shooting at last to | 15:42 | |
| the rock. Bottom of fact, whatever else man is | 15:51 | |
| though he is victim of the passing show of past present and | 15:54 | |
| future. | 15:56 | |
| He feels himself responsible or use of time. | 16:02 | |
| Every moment of our lives is a crossroad as it were between | 16:06 | |
| past and future. | 16:09 | |
| And each one of us every second, | 16:10 | |
| the waking life decides which turn of the road we track | 16:19 | |
| right here in this chapel this morning, | 16:21 | |
| you are responsible for your past, your present, | 16:26 | |
| your future. | 16:28 | |
| Did you join in the morning prayers or did you not? | 16:32 | |
| You could refuse if you want to. | 16:36 | |
| When evening comes and when in the loneliness of your bed | 16:38 | |
| chamber, a dialogue with conscience is in escapable with the | 16:41 | |
| decisions you have made during the day and have added to | 16:45 | |
| your burden of guilt. | 16:48 | |
| Will you memory be Laden with shame or with gratitude | 16:50 | |
| for a day spent in the fear of God? | 16:54 | |
| Will you pray? | 16:57 | |
| Or will you sleep without prayer, your destiny, | 17:00 | |
| and eternity, maybe painted up on the issue. | 17:11 | |
| A Greek philosopher once said | 17:13 | |
| that a man should make a temple | 17:14 | |
| of his bed. | 17:16 | |
| Strange say, it deeply true. | 17:19 | |
| Or it is there in the hour when God walks through our garden | 17:24 | |
| of memory and our dreams | 17:29 | |
| that we wrestle with the mystery and | 17:33 | |
| tragedy of time and with the one who is Lord in creator | 17:35 | |
| time, the God who inhabited eternity | 17:40 | |
| and for whom a thousand years are but yesterday, | 17:45 | |
| when it is past | 17:49 | |
| men and women who try to live their lives outside the bounds | 17:53 | |
| of faith in God, ask questions. | 17:55 | |
| Sometimes those of us who call ourselves Christian proved to | 17:58 | |
| us. So they say they just interviewed God. | 18:02 | |
| But how few times are logical arguments for our belief is | 18:06 | |
| not our safest answer simply to point to the | 18:12 | |
| unbelievers own inner state. | 18:14 | |
| he too is anxious. | 18:18 | |
| He too, has the burden of guilt, | 18:21 | |
| can't just skip when it comes to his | 18:24 | |
| discontent, | 18:27 | |
| when it comes to this burden of guilt and fear of the dark | 18:28 | |
| unknown, | 18:34 | |
| I'll hunger for satisfactions with the passing show of | 18:36 | |
| worldly vanities cannot yield. | 18:39 | |
| Might it be true that man is a Pilgrim, not merely of time, | 18:42 | |
| but of eternity. | 18:46 | |
| His discontent. Might thus be | 18:49 | |
| the token within him of a fathers yearning over a | 18:51 | |
| prodigal son's return and home sickness of the soul. | 18:54 | |
| God proves his existence in the heart of the man himself, | 19:02 | |
| it is he who has set bounds to man self worship in order to | 19:06 | |
| bring men to any eternal abiding place. | 19:10 | |
| Man, so we've said cannot scape, but tragedy of time, | 19:16 | |
| he cannot escape into the past. | 19:20 | |
| He cannot dream his way into the future. | 19:21 | |
| He stands under judgment in the present. Every day, | 19:24 | |
| every hour, every moment of his life, | 19:29 | |
| he fashions his own destiny. | 19:32 | |
| And might some day as it set up Judas in the act of the | 19:36 | |
| Apostles, in a life after death goal to his own life, | 19:39 | |
| it might be, yeah, he, the creature of time, | 19:47 | |
| you and I creatures of time, we bear the burden, | 19:52 | |
| but seen arrived in the perspective of faith in God, | 19:59 | |
| this and precisely this, is man's greatness and man's law. | 20:03 | |
| Listen to the closing verse of our text. | 20:09 | |
| Man, so you recall it reads, | 20:12 | |
| Cometh forth like a flower in is cut down, | 20:15 | |
| he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not. | 20:17 | |
| And then addressing God, Job says "and dost thou open | 20:21 | |
| thine eyes upon such an one and bringest me, | 20:25 | |
| little me, into judgment with thee,?" | 20:31 | |
| Can you sense the wonder of that text? | 20:40 | |
| There exists in all proof of God's existence, | 20:41 | |
| which can compare with the inside of the Bible. | 20:47 | |
| God's judgment, the very thing, | 20:51 | |
| which burdens our life is Gods love. | 20:54 | |
| He would not judge if he did not care, | 21:01 | |
| we are indeed like a flowers of the field. | 21:06 | |
| We are a few days and full of trouble. | 21:08 | |
| We are the victims of the tragedy of time. | 21:09 | |
| But the very fact that we are conscious of our burden is | 21:12 | |
| proof of the care and the love of the creator of time, | 21:16 | |
| this world with its memories of guilt and of the future | 21:22 | |
| is not our final home. | 21:25 | |
| Anxiety is the stuff of our mortal life. | 21:29 | |
| But anxiety is the gift of God. | 21:33 | |
| God's love letter to the humans. | 21:36 | |
| It is a marking sign of our being lost children of our | 21:42 | |
| heavenly father. | 21:47 | |
| We are not masters of our faith. | 21:49 | |
| Our faith is in another's hands, | 21:51 | |
| but the tragedy of time is not ours to carry alone. | 21:54 | |
| The brevity of life has already proved of eternity. | 21:58 | |
| The guilt of our past can be laid upon him without whom was | 22:02 | |
| love. | 22:06 | |
| There would be no sense of guilt in the person without whose | 22:07 | |
| care. There could be no sting of conscious | 22:12 | |
| without whose love there would be no fear of the dark, | 22:17 | |
| no dread of the future, hours | 22:21 | |
| merely to trust and to repair and to obey and to walk in | 22:24 | |
| faith one step at a time we can live in the | 22:31 | |
| prayer, bless it. | 22:38 | |
| We can live in the present and save by everlasting. | 22:42 | |
| God would take care of past and future. | 22:48 | |
| He will forgive you. | 22:54 | |
| Jesus spoke divine words of comfort. When he said, | 22:58 | |
| take no thought for your life, | 23:01 | |
| what you shall eat or what you should drink, | 23:03 | |
| nor yet for your body, | 23:06 | |
| what you shall put on your heavenly father nor that you | 23:07 | |
| have need of all these things. | 23:10 | |
| Historians will someday, write | 23:15 | |
| Avia veins of the coming months as having taken place A.D | 23:17 | |
| 1955. | 23:23 | |
| Can we take that designation seriously? | 23:26 | |
| As Christians for A.D. is shorthand for ano domain | 23:28 | |
| in the year of our law, the coming year | 23:35 | |
| will be despite its inevitable tragedy and pay a year | 23:41 | |
| of our lord. | 23:49 | |
| And it's have been in the eyes of faith all the years. | 23:51 | |
| Since the Dawn of time, the God of time will have his own. | 23:55 | |
| And he's keeping and preparing for them what every | 24:01 | |
| tired mortal life mentions in an eternal ... | 24:05 | |
| may you and I be given the faith to walk bravely into the | 24:12 | |
| darkness of days yet unprophesized. | 24:17 | |
| our hands in God's hands and our feet on his path of peace | 24:20 | |
| let us pray. | 24:31 | |
| Oh, might God infinite watcher over the children of men | 24:40 | |
| before whom the generations rise and pass away. | 24:46 | |
| Whom our father's father's father's house where she | 24:51 | |
| in lanes across the sea whom, our children, | 24:56 | |
| their children's children will worship perhaps in this very | 25:00 | |
| place seeking. | 25:05 | |
| As we seek to discover the mystery of thy ways with the sons | 25:07 | |
| of men, | 25:10 | |
| granted we in our generation may desire only the and | 25:13 | |
| desiring DC CLI and seeking the find the, | 25:19 | |
| and having found the may rest satisfied in the forevermore | 25:24 | |
| mean now may the peace of God, | 25:31 | |
| which passes all understanding, | 25:33 | |
| keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God | 25:36 | |
| and of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, | 25:39 | |
| and may the blessing of God almighty the father, son, | 25:42 | |
| and the holy ghost be amongst you and remain with you always | 25:45 | |
| (Choir music) | 26:00 |