George F. MacLeod - "The Cross" (January 23, 1955)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(Catholic liturgical music) | 0:04 | |
- | Oh Lord our God. | 1:15 |
The giver of all good gifts | 1:17 | |
accept these our offerings | 1:21 | |
as the earnest of the dedication | 1:25 | |
of our heart and grant that our gratitude to thy | 1:28 | |
maybe as great as our need of thy mercy through | 1:34 | |
Jesus Christ Our Lord. | 1:39 | |
Amen. | 1:43 | |
- | Let us pray | 2:15 |
God of all love and of joy | 2:24 | |
who by the glad sound of the gospel has called | 2:27 | |
even us to have part in thy kingdom and glory | 2:31 | |
shine powerfully into our hearts, | 2:36 | |
we receive thee. | 2:39 | |
That we may heartedly choose that good part, | 2:41 | |
which shall not be taken away from us, | 2:44 | |
but make our calling | 2:48 | |
and election sure through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. | 2:50 | |
Amen. | 2:57 | |
(indistinct) | 2:59 | |
In the passage, | 3:03 | |
which we read | 3:04 | |
from the Second Episode to the Corinthians, | 3:05 | |
the fifth chapter and the 19 verse | 3:07 | |
God was in Christ | 3:12 | |
reconciling the world to himself, | 3:13 | |
not counting against men that trespasses | 3:17 | |
and giving to us | 3:20 | |
the ministry of reconciliation. | 3:22 | |
I sometimes think that the Bible, | 3:26 | |
the whole Bible from Genesis to revelation might be compared | 3:29 | |
with a quite vast mosaic on a wall. | 3:34 | |
Of which obviously the center of the pattern | 3:39 | |
would be the cross itself, | 3:43 | |
but the raise of whose cross | 3:46 | |
would go shimmering out | 3:49 | |
to the furthest point of that vast mosaic. | 3:51 | |
In those terms, | 3:57 | |
I would suggest | 3:59 | |
that it's the primary function of the pulpit | 4:00 | |
to take here a cluster of the small mosaic stones, | 4:04 | |
all their cluster of the small mosaic stones | 4:09 | |
to take them, | 4:14 | |
cleanse them, polish them, examine, | 4:16 | |
relate them in their cluster | 4:20 | |
and never fulfill | 4:23 | |
the function of the pulpit | 4:25 | |
until at the last cluster is put back | 4:26 | |
into the Boston mosaic | 4:31 | |
to relate the passage, | 4:33 | |
draw the paddle ball, | 4:35 | |
or the instance whether from Genesis | 4:36 | |
or from the gospel Revelation | 4:38 | |
never finished without relating | 4:41 | |
that particular cluster in all the Marvel of the mystery | 4:43 | |
to the central cross. | 4:50 | |
But I believe there are occasions when we miss them. | 4:53 | |
However, fantastic be the essay. | 4:57 | |
We must dare to glimpse | 5:00 | |
what it is that in essence, | 5:02 | |
this central design says whose power | 5:05 | |
and whose possibility radiates out, | 5:09 | |
not only into every chapter of the Bible, | 5:13 | |
but into every aspect of men's lives. | 5:16 | |
And I know no passage in the New Testament, | 5:20 | |
which would such marvelous economy of words | 5:26 | |
describes the essence of the cross as does our text. | 5:31 | |
God was in Christ, | 5:39 | |
reconciling the world to himself, | 5:40 | |
not counting against men that trespasses | 5:45 | |
and giving to us the ministry of reconciliation. | 5:50 | |
I suggest in the verse | 5:56 | |
that is declared the catharsis of the cross | 5:57 | |
in the second that is declared the comfort of the cross. | 6:02 | |
And in the third is declared | 6:06 | |
the consequence of the cross. | 6:09 | |
God was in Christ | 6:12 | |
reconciling the world to himself is the complete revelation, | 6:13 | |
the complete renewal, | 6:19 | |
the complete changeover | 6:22 | |
in our understanding of God | 6:24 | |
with its comfort, | 6:27 | |
that our trespasses are not to be counted against us | 6:29 | |
and with its consequence | 6:33 | |
that we ought ourselves to become | 6:35 | |
this ministry of reconciliation. | 6:37 | |
It's these three thoughts | 6:41 | |
that I wanted to expand this morning. | 6:44 | |
And I want as an assistant | 6:47 | |
and assistance in the expansion | 6:49 | |
to remind you of three designs | 6:52 | |
has it ever occurred to you, | 6:56 | |
how the symbol of the cross itself | 6:57 | |
conveys as you see it in your mind's eye | 7:01 | |
the lessons of the cross? | 7:06 | |
Let's take this first thought | 7:09 | |
this two thoughts of the cross | 7:12 | |
Sort, if you like the opposite of the cross, | 7:15 | |
God was in Christ, | 7:18 | |
reconciling the world to himself, | 7:19 | |
by web design for this, | 7:23 | |
I would remind you of the most dangerous word | 7:25 | |
in the English language. | 7:27 | |
The most dangerous word | 7:30 | |
in the English language is the word, I. | 7:32 | |
I don't mind what happens to other people. | 7:37 | |
I'm going to get what I want. | 7:40 | |
As soon as that becomes the primary word said in a family, | 7:44 | |
as we all know that family is in a dangerous way. | 7:48 | |
As soon as somebody in the team says, | 7:54 | |
I am going to be the center of this movement | 7:58 | |
in hockey perhaps, | 8:02 | |
I have got the power and I'm going to keep it | 8:04 | |
because I'm going to score the goal. | 8:06 | |
And I don't intend to pass to anybody else. | 8:08 | |
We know that in no time | 8:12 | |
that team will be a shambles. | 8:13 | |
As soon as in our potential to united world, | 8:16 | |
one nation says | 8:19 | |
predominantly recognizably above the others, I am. | 8:21 | |
Then we know the word that begins to be spelt out. | 8:26 | |
And that word is war. | 8:29 | |
What has been said | 8:34 | |
You see that Jesus came to strike out to the eye. | 8:35 | |
And some people say, | 8:42 | |
if you put an eye on a black board | 8:43 | |
and take out a white piece of chalk | 8:45 | |
and strike it out, | 8:47 | |
you make a cross, | 8:48 | |
to which some of you are saying | 8:53 | |
that is rather familiar as a story. | 8:54 | |
And anyway, pure as a lesson. | 8:57 | |
And yet without apology, | 9:01 | |
I start in that way | 9:02 | |
because so part is my own country is concern. | 9:04 | |
And sometimes I get a glimpse of it, | 9:08 | |
paddled out here in this land. | 9:10 | |
So far as my own country is concerned, | 9:13 | |
I'm always amazed at the number of people there | 9:15 | |
who are absolutely maturing in every other regard. | 9:19 | |
And for some reason or another | 9:24 | |
serve from a rested development, | 9:27 | |
when they face the real opposite of the gospel, | 9:29 | |
that is to say they stopped short in | 9:34 | |
that in our minds | 9:36 | |
with the feeling | 9:37 | |
that the essence of religion or Christianity is | 9:38 | |
that we had to be unselfish. | 9:41 | |
And with all our hymns and prayers, | 9:44 | |
and even our sacraments are about infinite variations | 9:47 | |
on one theme, permutations | 9:51 | |
and combinations on one formula, | 9:55 | |
which is that we must rarely be unselfish. | 9:58 | |
But that's not the gospel. | 10:05 | |
Everyone knows the gospel means good news. | 10:08 | |
And I don't find it particularly good news to be told that | 10:10 | |
I've got to be on selfish. | 10:14 | |
As a matter of fact, | 10:17 | |
I don't even have to come to church or sing a single hymn, | 10:19 | |
in order to be reminded | 10:25 | |
that I've got to be unselfish. | 10:26 | |
I've only got to live in a family | 10:29 | |
or play in a team, | 10:32 | |
or look at the grain wall clouds | 10:34 | |
and our world to know | 10:37 | |
that we've got to be unselfish. | 10:40 | |
Now, the beginning of the gospel of God | 10:46 | |
is much more terrifying. | 10:48 | |
The beginning of the gospel of God | 10:51 | |
is that God's unselfish. | 10:53 | |
You see the terrifying thing about man | 10:58 | |
is not that he's bad. | 11:00 | |
That might just be a fact. | 11:01 | |
The terrifying thing about man is his mystery, | 11:03 | |
which is the debridement bad | 11:07 | |
when everybody wants to be good. | 11:09 | |
The terrifying thing for instance | 11:15 | |
about the 2nd of September 1,939, | 11:16 | |
when the Second World War broke out, | 11:20 | |
the terrifying thing in Europe was that | 11:23 | |
there were about 400 million people in Europe, | 11:25 | |
398 million of whom did not want to go to war. | 11:29 | |
So we went to war. | 11:37 | |
I happen to have traveled the world in a good deal. | 11:42 | |
And in my own country, | 11:45 | |
I happen for years to have dealt with men, | 11:46 | |
coming out of prison | 11:48 | |
and do run camps for boys | 11:49 | |
and senior boys, in reformatory | 11:51 | |
the most difficult of them. | 11:53 | |
And yet I can still stand in this pulpit | 11:57 | |
and say that I've never yet met a man | 12:00 | |
who wanted to be bad. | 12:02 | |
Have you? | 12:06 | |
This is the terror. | 12:10 | |
The good that we would will do not | 12:13 | |
and that which we would not. | 12:14 | |
We find we've been in gone and done it. | 12:18 | |
The good news of the gospel of God is that | 12:26 | |
God knew we were like this. | 12:30 | |
And God seem did something about it, | 12:33 | |
God self nodded himself. | 12:38 | |
God was unselfish. | 12:43 | |
God struck out the I. | 12:47 | |
God was in Christ, | 12:52 | |
reconciling the world to himself | 12:55 | |
by this, which is dumb. | 12:59 | |
What do we mean when we say that God was in Christ, | 13:03 | |
reconciling the world to himself? | 13:05 | |
But it's many years ago now, | 13:09 | |
but I'll never forget | 13:10 | |
a young medical student in Edinburgh | 13:11 | |
who once came to me | 13:13 | |
and said from the age of 17, | 13:14 | |
to the time of his graduation, | 13:18 | |
to the time of the completion of his course, | 13:19 | |
he hated his father | 13:23 | |
up to the age of 17 things would be normal. | 13:26 | |
And from that age, | 13:28 | |
his father began to drive him. | 13:29 | |
And whenever he had holidays or vacations, | 13:31 | |
he kept the lad with his mind on his books | 13:33 | |
and never let him away. | 13:37 | |
And he hated his father | 13:40 | |
until they came to the evening | 13:43 | |
before his graduation his capping, | 13:45 | |
then his father said, | 13:50 | |
I can afford to tell you something now | 13:51 | |
that I haven't dared to tell you, | 13:53 | |
since you were 17. | 13:55 | |
When you were 17 | 13:57 | |
I got my marching orders from the doctor | 13:59 | |
who told me I should stop all work | 14:01 | |
and just lie up | 14:03 | |
if I wanted to preserve my life. | 14:04 | |
I had no money set aside. | 14:08 | |
My only hope was to take a risk on it | 14:10 | |
and go to the office every day. | 14:13 | |
Not knowing whether it would be alive, | 14:14 | |
that I was brought home in the evening. | 14:16 | |
But now that you are through, | 14:20 | |
I can tell you. | 14:24 | |
The boy said to me from that moment, | 14:27 | |
I was reconciled to my father. | 14:28 | |
God was in Christ, | 14:36 | |
reconciling the world to himself. | 14:38 | |
And if I'm going to be honest this morning, | 14:40 | |
I have to admit to you | 14:43 | |
that I'm not always very satisfied | 14:44 | |
with the slick answers of the church, | 14:47 | |
about this question of God | 14:48 | |
caring for every individual. | 14:52 | |
I could bring so many instances, | 14:57 | |
but I'm not going to take your time doing it | 14:59 | |
because you could all bring me instances back, | 15:01 | |
which seemed to declare that | 15:04 | |
God does not care for the individual. | 15:06 | |
I remember in one of the parishes which I had, | 15:10 | |
there was a no crown. | 15:12 | |
An old woman who was absolutely paralyzed | 15:14 | |
hand, and foot | 15:18 | |
and she was being looked after by her daughter | 15:19 | |
who herself, was a widow | 15:21 | |
with two most boisterous children | 15:23 | |
in a two roomed house. | 15:26 | |
And this old lady used to tell me | 15:28 | |
she was a God-fearing woman. | 15:30 | |
She used to tell me that | 15:32 | |
she prayed that death might | 15:33 | |
visit the house | 15:34 | |
that she might be taken away to leave her daughter | 15:36 | |
to look up after these boisterous children, | 15:40 | |
without having to wait on her, | 15:43 | |
help this old thing handle foot. | 15:45 | |
Well, death did visit the home. | 15:49 | |
It took away the door turn. | 15:53 | |
Left the old lady helpless | 15:58 | |
and trebled with two boisterous children. | 16:00 | |
She was a God-fearing woman. | 16:06 | |
You could give me instances back | 16:10 | |
that God doesn't seem to care for the individual. | 16:11 | |
But God was in Christ, | 16:16 | |
reconciling the world to himself saying, | 16:18 | |
this is what God is really like. | 16:21 | |
And faith is to believe | 16:22 | |
that God is really light despite the seeming | 16:24 | |
and despite the shadows. | 16:26 | |
God is really like what Jesus says. | 16:28 | |
And then of course does reveal | 16:35 | |
the love of God in ways | 16:37 | |
that no man can put into words | 16:38 | |
we can fumble about within adequate parallels. | 16:40 | |
And I suppose the nearest parallel | 16:43 | |
to glimpse what we mean | 16:45 | |
by the love of God | 16:46 | |
and what it does to us. | 16:47 | |
The nearest parallel is the love of a mother, | 16:49 | |
particularly the love of a mother for a ailing son. | 16:52 | |
You know that six line poem by LaPorte, | 16:56 | |
trench of a lad who kills his mother's love | 16:59 | |
or tries to kill his mother's love | 17:03 | |
and what the mother does about it. | 17:05 | |
I pulled that once in the lead | 17:08 | |
so trim gave his heart to her who loved not him and said | 17:10 | |
and said she | 17:15 | |
bring me tonight your robe | 17:17 | |
your mother's hat to feed my dog. | 17:20 | |
To his mother's heart | 17:26 | |
when that young man killed her, | 17:27 | |
cut out her heart and ran | 17:30 | |
but as he was running | 17:32 | |
luckily he fell. | 17:34 | |
And the heart rolled out on the ground as well. | 17:35 | |
And the ladders, the heart was a rolling, | 17:38 | |
heard that the heart was speaking, | 17:40 | |
and this was the word. | 17:42 | |
The heart was weeping and trying so small. | 17:44 | |
Are you hurt my child? | 17:49 | |
Are you hurt at all? | 17:50 | |
Doesn't matter what you do to a mother's love. | 17:56 | |
You can kill it. | 17:58 | |
Her whole concern is how far | 18:00 | |
you have hurt yourself in the process. | 18:01 | |
This is what is revealed about God | 18:05 | |
and you and me and the cross of Jesus Christ. | 18:07 | |
It doesn't matter what we do. | 18:10 | |
We can crucify him. | 18:11 | |
And his continuing concern is only | 18:13 | |
how far we've hurt ourselves | 18:16 | |
in the process. | 18:19 | |
God was in Christ, | 18:24 | |
reconciling the world to himself. | 18:25 | |
This is good news. | 18:32 | |
Forget about the struck Howard high | 18:37 | |
and begin to see | 18:38 | |
the comfort of the cross | 18:39 | |
that flows from it once. | 18:41 | |
Why don't you see? | 18:44 | |
Take this symbol of the comfort that flows at once. | 18:47 | |
Take the symbol of a minus sign. | 18:53 | |
We all know the psychological effect of a minus sign. | 18:57 | |
It means in debt, | 19:00 | |
the business man, | 19:02 | |
at the end of the year, | 19:03 | |
when you get the draft to consider | 19:04 | |
doesn't look at the details. | 19:05 | |
He goes to the last page to find | 19:06 | |
whether over the years of working | 19:09 | |
it's credit worth. | 19:10 | |
That gloom or hope. | 19:13 | |
We're not concerned with a business man. | 19:19 | |
We're concerned with you. | 19:21 | |
And we're concerned with me | 19:22 | |
and as far as I'm concerned. | 19:23 | |
And I asked you to be equally honest, | 19:25 | |
what is the account of your life so far? | 19:27 | |
I suggested to minus sign. | 19:31 | |
I suggested to debt. | 19:33 | |
I suggest that the good that we would, | 19:36 | |
we not to that, | 19:38 | |
which we would not that we do. | 19:40 | |
Now, this is where God works. | 19:43 | |
The essence of the gospel of God is that | 19:46 | |
God knew we were like this. | 19:48 | |
We can only talk in symbol, | 19:51 | |
but don't imagine that | 19:52 | |
because the church talks in symbol, | 19:53 | |
it's talking fairytales signs, | 19:55 | |
can't move a foot | 19:57 | |
without talking in terms of symbol. | 19:58 | |
And our symbol is this, | 20:01 | |
that God came down out of highest heaven right down to man | 20:03 | |
where he couldn't be. | 20:07 | |
And our neighbors would be surprised | 20:09 | |
at where you and I can be. | 20:12 | |
God comes down to us there | 20:16 | |
and cuts in half our minus sign. | 20:20 | |
And God says | 20:25 | |
so far as I'm concerned, you're creditable. | 20:26 | |
You're a plus. | 20:32 | |
In our own estimations | 20:36 | |
we are a minus sign | 20:37 | |
and how right we are. | 20:38 | |
And don't delude yourself. | 20:41 | |
In the estimation of our friends, | 20:42 | |
most of us are minus signs | 20:44 | |
or as we say our charity, | 20:46 | |
we've all got our faults. | 20:48 | |
This is the gospel of God. | 20:50 | |
That's so far as God is concerned. | 20:53 | |
And only so far as God is concerned about all predictable. | 20:55 | |
That's good news. | 21:04 | |
And if this is about you, | 21:11 | |
and this is about me. | 21:13 | |
And if this is about you | 21:15 | |
at the point of your failure | 21:16 | |
and about me at the point about failure, | 21:18 | |
that's a fault, | 21:24 | |
as God is concerned. | 21:25 | |
Not about your achievements, | 21:26 | |
but about the thing that you can master. | 21:31 | |
The God of this moment is saying to you | 21:36 | |
as far as I'm concerned | 21:38 | |
you are creditable in Jesus Christ. | 21:39 | |
That's good news. | 21:48 | |
That is what worship is all about. | 21:53 | |
That could all these buildings put about to know | 21:57 | |
all these sacraments are celebrated about. | 21:59 | |
The sacrifice of our thanksgiving | 22:03 | |
because there's no other sacrifice we could make. | 22:05 | |
That we've been made creditable. | 22:10 | |
That's why I call the last point, | 22:16 | |
not the challenge of the cross, | 22:19 | |
but the consequence of the cross. | 22:23 | |
Because if you get this thing at all, | 22:27 | |
it doesn't challenge. | 22:28 | |
If you get this thing at all, | 22:32 | |
it's a love story. | 22:33 | |
If you get this thing at all | 22:35 | |
it must must have a consequence. | 22:36 | |
And what is the consequence | 22:40 | |
by what could the consequence be? | 22:42 | |
Now that we've been made creditable, | 22:47 | |
we've got to become the ministry of reconciliation. | 22:49 | |
God was in Christ, | 22:53 | |
reconciling the world to himself, | 22:54 | |
not counting against you | 22:56 | |
and me our trespasses | 22:57 | |
and giving to us | 22:59 | |
the ministry of reconciliation. | 23:00 | |
The last symbol is just that | 23:07 | |
a trust is the opposite of a circle. | 23:09 | |
You know, a circle has as a psychological effect | 23:10 | |
on your being closed in | 23:14 | |
like being in a field with a fence around it | 23:16 | |
and no gate in it. | 23:18 | |
Inhibited held in, | 23:20 | |
but across is the opposite. | 23:22 | |
It points infinitely upwards | 23:24 | |
and infinitely down | 23:26 | |
infinitely to the right hand | 23:27 | |
and infinitely to the left-hand. | 23:28 | |
Freedom potentiality. | 23:31 | |
God comes down out of highest heaven to you | 23:34 | |
and me where, | 23:37 | |
you know, we can get, | 23:38 | |
and he says, | 23:41 | |
you are creditable. | 23:42 | |
Therefore, without limitation, without condition, | 23:44 | |
we've got to be the forgiving people | 23:51 | |
that God is to us. | 23:56 | |
Jesus, as we know was very stern | 24:01 | |
that at least is coming back into | 24:05 | |
the consciousness of men. | 24:06 | |
But let's be careful. | 24:09 | |
Let's remember what he was most stunned about. | 24:11 | |
What he was most stunned about was the people | 24:15 | |
who didn't forgive. | 24:18 | |
He sums it in the shortest | 24:20 | |
and the most terrifying of his parables | 24:22 | |
what he tells of a man | 24:25 | |
who was forgiven a million dollars. | 24:26 | |
And the first thing that man did was to go | 24:29 | |
and get back the $5 | 24:31 | |
that a friend owed him down the street. | 24:33 | |
Forgiving a million dollars | 24:38 | |
and to begin to move out, | 24:40 | |
to get back the $5 | 24:41 | |
that someone owes you. | 24:43 | |
Jesus does not say of that man, | 24:47 | |
that he was unimaginative. | 24:49 | |
He doesn't save that man | 24:52 | |
that he was stingy. | 24:53 | |
He says of that man, quite simply | 24:56 | |
that he is dumb. | 24:58 | |
What's gone wrong of course is that | 25:07 | |
if I may say so, is my last word | 25:10 | |
what's gone wrong is that | 25:13 | |
we've taken the cross | 25:14 | |
and we've done that with it. | 25:16 | |
And here, is all the business of religion. | 25:19 | |
He has all the business of Sundays and of souls | 25:22 | |
and of salvation. | 25:25 | |
And here's the business of ordinary life. | 25:29 | |
Here's the business of the weekday. | 25:33 | |
Here's the business of how to put things into practice. | 25:35 | |
And this hardly works here. | 25:39 | |
Does it? | 25:41 | |
So we live at the standard of the world. | 25:43 | |
We've taken the cross and put it apart. | 25:47 | |
And what has happened, | 25:49 | |
why are the religions becoming more and more vacuous? | 25:52 | |
And people just don't know | 25:55 | |
what all this abracadabra | 25:56 | |
about salvation meanings. | 25:57 | |
And our well | 26:01 | |
before our very eyes are unforgiving | 26:02 | |
and unforgiving world | 26:04 | |
before our very eyes is going to hell. | 26:06 | |
When you put it back again | 26:14 | |
and applied to the real situations | 26:17 | |
where people haven't forgiven you | 26:19 | |
and where nations are difficult to forgive | 26:24 | |
and begin to apply that. | 26:28 | |
Then your religion comes alive | 26:34 | |
and the world has a chance of being saved. | 26:39 | |
But don't make any mistake | 26:48 | |
about what the response is. | 26:51 | |
Jesus took two years to assure us | 26:56 | |
that if we go his way, | 27:00 | |
our lives will be the sheer design of a cross | 27:03 | |
Let us pray. | 27:16 | |
Oh, Christ, "the Master Carpenter" | 27:37 | |
who threw wooden nails | 27:43 | |
at the last purchase man's whole salvation. | 27:46 | |
Wheeled, well dyed tools in the workshop of thy world | 27:52 | |
that we who come rafewen to die bench | 27:57 | |
may be fashion to a, | 27:58 | |
through a beauty of thy hand | 28:04 | |
through Jesus Christ Our Lord. | 28:08 | |
Amen. | 28:13 | |
Now I may the God of Peace, | 28:15 | |
the body raised from the dead | 28:17 | |
our Lord Jesus, | 28:19 | |
that great shepherd of the sheep | 28:20 | |
through the blood of the everlasting covenant | 28:23 | |
make you perfect in every good work to do his will | 28:26 | |
working in you | 28:32 | |
that which is well pleasing in his sight | 28:34 | |
through Jesus Christ, | 28:38 | |
to whom be glory forever. | 28:40 | |
Amen. | 28:45 | |
(congregants singing hymns) | 28:47 |