Arthur Jeffery - Sermon Untitled (March 18, 1956)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | It's in the 1st verse of that 14th Chapter | 0:12 |
of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. | 0:16 | |
The 14th chapter of the 1st Letter to the Corinthians, | 0:20 | |
and the first verse, | 0:24 | |
"Desire spiritual gifts. | 0:26 | |
Desire spiritual gifts." | 0:32 | |
In writing to a Christian congregation | 0:37 | |
in so wealthy and important, | 0:39 | |
the commercial city is currency, | 0:41 | |
the apostle could assume that they would be eager | 0:45 | |
for the material gifts of life. | 0:47 | |
But just because they were in such a wealthy, | 0:51 | |
important commercial city, there was grave danger, | 0:54 | |
that they might be neglectful of spiritual gifts. | 0:59 | |
And so, we in our economy of abundance, | 1:05 | |
need no urging, to seek the material gifts of life. | 1:10 | |
But there is grave danger | 1:16 | |
that we also may be neglectful of spiritual gifts, | 1:18 | |
the things in which religion is concerned. | 1:24 | |
Maybe it is partly on that account, | 1:30 | |
that in certain of the great old world universities | 1:32 | |
for some years, | 1:36 | |
there have been meeting, winter semester | 1:38 | |
after winter semester, | 1:40 | |
seminars for the study of religion. | 1:43 | |
Not any one particular religion, | 1:46 | |
but problems of religion in general. | 1:48 | |
And that has taken in the new world. | 1:53 | |
And in this country also, | 1:56 | |
there are some great universities where year after year, | 1:58 | |
a seminar is studying problems of religion. | 2:02 | |
It was while leafing through | 2:10 | |
one of the religious journals one afternoon, | 2:11 | |
that my eye caught the announcement | 2:15 | |
of one of these seminars in this country, | 2:17 | |
the saying that for their next group of studies, | 2:21 | |
they would be investigating | 2:26 | |
the function of religion in the modern world. | 2:28 | |
Now, that was very curious, | 2:35 | |
because in the ancient world, | 2:38 | |
with which most of my academic concerns have to do, | 2:39 | |
such a question could never have been asked. | 2:43 | |
In the ancient world, | 2:48 | |
everybody knew what the function of religion was. | 2:49 | |
There was no need to ask the question. | 2:53 | |
In the ancient world, | 2:57 | |
medicine was the function of religion. | 3:00 | |
All the ancient religions had their gods | 3:05 | |
and goddesses of healing, | 3:07 | |
serviced by great temples, and priests, and priestesses. | 3:10 | |
The earliest treaties on medicine we possess, | 3:16 | |
was written by a priest in an Egyptian temple. | 3:19 | |
The earliest trace that we have | 3:24 | |
of anything you could call a hospital, | 3:26 | |
was at the temple court. | 3:28 | |
The earliest group of men who devoted themselves | 3:32 | |
to the care and attention of the sick was a priestly order. | 3:36 | |
Now, the ancient world did have this household remedies, | 3:42 | |
its domestic medicine, its old wives medicine. | 3:46 | |
But medicine in the strict sense | 3:52 | |
was the concern of religion. | 3:54 | |
In the ancient world, law was the function of religion. | 3:58 | |
True kings and nobles did exercise some justice | 4:05 | |
and decide cases in their courts. | 4:10 | |
And in homes, there was a certain administration of justice, | 4:12 | |
but law, was the function of religion. | 4:16 | |
Judges sat and heard, and decided cases in temple courts. | 4:20 | |
All the great codes of law in the ancient world, | 4:27 | |
were religious code. | 4:30 | |
On the great code of Hammurabi, | 4:33 | |
you can see the God Shamash | 4:35 | |
handing down the divine laws for men. | 4:37 | |
In ancient India, the "Code of Manu" was a religious code. | 4:42 | |
Diodorus Siculus tells us | 4:48 | |
that the greater Egyptian legislator, | 4:50 | |
Minos of Crete, Lycurgus of Sparta, | 4:52 | |
Zymogesic of Gati, all received their law | 4:56 | |
by divine revelation. | 5:01 | |
And they even all King Alfred in England | 5:04 | |
writing down his code, | 5:06 | |
began with the 10 Commandments, | 5:08 | |
"Domboc Law" right under the ages of religion. | 5:11 | |
For law in the ancient world, was the function of religion. | 5:15 | |
And education was the function of religion. | 5:22 | |
In the ancient world, | 5:26 | |
schools were in temple court, | 5:27 | |
and the teachers were priests. | 5:30 | |
It was a priest who invented writing. | 5:35 | |
The earliest textbooks we possess, were priestly written. | 5:39 | |
It is true that craftsman | 5:44 | |
taught their apprentices in the craftsmen's shop, | 5:47 | |
and scribes taught young scribes in their houses. | 5:51 | |
But in the wider sense, | 5:55 | |
education was a matter of religion. | 5:56 | |
And right down through the middle ages, | 6:01 | |
the great schools and universities, | 6:03 | |
both east and west, were religious institution. | 6:06 | |
And the curriculum moved upwards to theology. | 6:11 | |
Both theology was the queen of science. | 6:15 | |
And literature, was the function of religion. | 6:22 | |
In ancient India, | 6:28 | |
the Vedas were hymns to the God. | 6:31 | |
In ancient Persia, the Gathas and the Yasht | 6:36 | |
were hymns to the God. | 6:39 | |
In ancient Mesopotamia, | 6:42 | |
the Sumerian hymns and the epics. | 6:44 | |
In Egypt, the pyramid texts were religious texts. | 6:47 | |
Even in Greece, Harshad and Hormah | 6:52 | |
came to be the Bible of the Greek. | 6:54 | |
Under that early Roman Poet (indistinct) Quintilian | 6:59 | |
tells us that he is to be referenced, | 7:03 | |
not so much for the beauty of his verses | 7:06 | |
as for the religious, all that he inspires, | 7:10 | |
for literature, was the function of religion. | 7:13 | |
And music, and art, | 7:20 | |
and architecture had long development | 7:24 | |
as belonging to the religion. | 7:29 | |
It is true that very early man, | 7:32 | |
must have burst into spontaneous song | 7:35 | |
to express the joy of his heart. | 7:38 | |
And very early, he played on pipes | 7:41 | |
and beat rhythmically on drums. | 7:43 | |
And for his own delight, | 7:47 | |
he drew pictures and made images | 7:48 | |
of things that were around him. | 7:51 | |
Man, he built his shelters for his protection | 7:52 | |
and for his comfort. | 7:55 | |
But God's house, was much more important than man's house. | 7:58 | |
And it was with temple music and temple choirs, | 8:05 | |
with the building of the houses of the gods, | 8:09 | |
that music, and art, and architecture in the ancient world, | 8:13 | |
had most of their inspiration to develop. | 8:19 | |
And the ancient world amusement | 8:25 | |
was the function of religion. | 8:27 | |
In that world, almost all the holidays were holy day. | 8:31 | |
The festivals of the gods, | 8:37 | |
the great annual feasts, | 8:40 | |
and it was the priest who worked out the sacred drama, | 8:43 | |
the sacred dance, | 8:47 | |
the mystery plays, | 8:50 | |
the 101 things to gave joy | 8:52 | |
to the people on their holidays. | 8:55 | |
And then, the ancient world man turned normally | 8:58 | |
and naturally, to his shrines, to his temple | 9:01 | |
for his amusement. | 9:05 | |
Right down to late times in Greece, | 9:08 | |
the drama, both tragedy and comedy belonged to Dionysus. | 9:10 | |
And the plays were performed in his temple, | 9:15 | |
under the eye of his priest, and the very actors | 9:17 | |
had religious title. | 9:21 | |
And in the ancient world, the rights of man, | 9:25 | |
where the function of religion. | 9:29 | |
I know you can make a case, | 9:34 | |
for times when religion seem to have held men in bondage, | 9:37 | |
times when religion seemed to be man's oppressor, | 9:43 | |
but there's another side to that picture. | 9:45 | |
And there's a wonderful story | 9:49 | |
of how religion was the one thing in life, | 9:51 | |
which stood up for the rights of man. | 9:55 | |
It was priests who dared to stand up before kings | 9:58 | |
and tyrants, and robber barons, | 10:03 | |
and fight till the last ditch | 10:06 | |
for the rights of the common man, | 10:09 | |
and the privileges of the underprivileged. | 10:12 | |
But that was the ancient world. | 10:17 | |
In the modern world, myths, law, education, | 10:20 | |
are the functions of highly trained | 10:28 | |
and highly specialized profession. | 10:31 | |
And art, and music, and literature | 10:35 | |
have long since broken any binding ties to religion. | 10:40 | |
And for his rights, | 10:46 | |
a man would sell them to enter his church. | 10:49 | |
As a defense, he turns to his civic authorities | 10:52 | |
to his social group, to his union. | 10:55 | |
And thus for the amusement, | 11:00 | |
well, perhaps the best, the less have the better. | 11:03 | |
Well, what is the less? | 11:08 | |
What is the function of religion in the modern world? | 11:12 | |
May we suggest three things? | 11:18 | |
First, the preacher social gospel, | 11:22 | |
on the surface that also sounds like a superfluity. | 11:28 | |
Because this age of ours, is of all ages in history, | 11:33 | |
the great social age. | 11:38 | |
In ancient Babylonia and in ancient Egypt, | 11:43 | |
you can find evidence of social concern. | 11:45 | |
From ancient Greece, there is a great body of evidence | 11:51 | |
showing real social concern. | 11:54 | |
But on the whole, it is true that our generation, | 11:57 | |
is of all the generations known to history, | 12:02 | |
the social generation. | 12:05 | |
And so, we have developed our social planning | 12:10 | |
and our social security, our socialized medicine. | 12:12 | |
And we discussed social psychology and social ethics, | 12:18 | |
and we have political parties called socialist parties. | 12:24 | |
And in seminaries, we speak about social salvation. | 12:28 | |
We've developed a pseudoscience called sociology, | 12:32 | |
and printed the great encyclopedia of the social sciences. | 12:37 | |
And then our colleges and universities, | 12:43 | |
it has been a matter of pride | 12:47 | |
to notice how the current of student interest | 12:50 | |
has strongly turn toward social studies, | 12:53 | |
and that is good, | 12:58 | |
for we are the age of social concern. | 13:00 | |
And yet, is there any age in all the recorded history, | 13:06 | |
which has made such a called a colossal | 13:12 | |
and such a ghastly failure | 13:15 | |
just in the social area? | 13:19 | |
From childhood, we were taught | 13:24 | |
that the three great enemies of the social order | 13:27 | |
where war, nationalism, and greed | 13:30 | |
War, which goes lunging across our social order, | 13:36 | |
leaving death and ruin in its trails. | 13:42 | |
War which cuts off the flower of youth, | 13:46 | |
just when they should be maturing | 13:50 | |
to make their contribution to the social order. | 13:53 | |
War, which in a few hours, | 13:57 | |
leaves in devastation and ruin | 14:00 | |
the things which it has taken generations | 14:03 | |
of social cooperation to construct. | 14:06 | |
War, which year after year, spends millions and millions, | 14:10 | |
upon armaments and trappings of battle. | 14:16 | |
Money that should have been spent | 14:21 | |
on the amelioration of social conditions, | 14:24 | |
and the bettering of the life of man. | 14:27 | |
Nationalism, which sets up artificial barriers | 14:32 | |
between people and people, | 14:37 | |
group, and group, | 14:39 | |
and labors to make the barriers stronger and higher. | 14:40 | |
Nationalism, which teaches the children pride and arrogance, | 14:46 | |
and the despise and hate those of other groups. | 14:52 | |
Nationalism, which nurtures and fosters | 14:57 | |
the very things which keep us apart | 15:02 | |
instead of the things which draw us together | 15:06 | |
in our common humanity. | 15:09 | |
And greed, | 15:12 | |
which desires to get, rather than to give. | 15:15 | |
Which desires to exploit, | 15:20 | |
that it may arise higher, | 15:23 | |
even the rising higher means trampling | 15:25 | |
other bodies in the dust. | 15:28 | |
And we have seen the folly in the tragedy of war. | 15:33 | |
And so, we've had peace society, | 15:37 | |
and our peace congresses, | 15:39 | |
and our peace conferences, and our foundations | 15:41 | |
for the securing of a just and lasting peace, | 15:45 | |
and a fellowship for the outlawing of war, | 15:48 | |
and even our women's peace army. | 15:53 | |
In 1908, at a student conference, | 15:58 | |
I heard a member of this fellowship of peace, | 16:04 | |
speaking to the students, a very enthusiastic speaker. | 16:08 | |
And he said, "We students have repented of our father's sin. | 16:13 | |
And we have outlawed war. | 16:18 | |
in a decade, | 16:22 | |
war and it's horror will be as extinct | 16:23 | |
as the horror of the saber-toothed tiger." | 16:28 | |
But in 1914 came the 1st World War, | 16:32 | |
and presently came the 2nd World War. | 16:38 | |
And now, to the many of my colleagues are worried | 16:42 | |
about the possible consequences of a 3rd World War, | 16:45 | |
and we've done nothing effective. | 16:50 | |
We've seen the folly and the tragedy of nationalism, | 16:55 | |
and so, we've taught internationalism. | 16:58 | |
We've set up international courts. | 17:02 | |
We've had international congresses. | 17:05 | |
We've arranged for international law. | 17:07 | |
We've spoken off international exchange of personnel. | 17:11 | |
We've set up journals | 17:15 | |
for the international exchange of ideas. | 17:17 | |
We have international houses in our capitals. | 17:20 | |
And believe me, in our classrooms where you have striven | 17:25 | |
and we have striven mightily | 17:29 | |
to teach students that the only true view of things | 17:33 | |
is the world view. | 17:37 | |
And yet our generation, | 17:41 | |
instead of seeing lessening nationalism | 17:43 | |
as seen the growth of our far more viscous nationalism, | 17:47 | |
than our fathers ever knew. | 17:52 | |
We have even seen the Jews, | 17:55 | |
of all the centuries of being the great internationalist, | 17:58 | |
become nationalists, | 18:03 | |
wanting their own home and develop their own language, | 18:05 | |
and all the rest of it. | 18:08 | |
And we have seen the folly and tragedy of greed. | 18:12 | |
And we have taught, and we have striven mightily, | 18:16 | |
with our students to preach altruism instead of egoism. | 18:21 | |
To teach them that the rule of life, | 18:27 | |
is not to get from life all you can, | 18:30 | |
but to give to life all you can. | 18:32 | |
Yet only a few days ago, in Union Seminary Chapel, | 18:37 | |
a very famous speaker told us, | 18:42 | |
that the great sin of our generation is greed to get on. | 18:45 | |
Who cares two hoops for society? | 18:53 | |
And what's the answer? | 18:58 | |
Sociology doesn't know. | 19:01 | |
In all that great encyclopedia, there's no answer. | 19:05 | |
But religion knows the answer. | 19:10 | |
The answer is a gospel preached by Jesus, love. | 19:13 | |
You don't fight those you love. | 19:20 | |
You don't hate and despise, | 19:24 | |
and raise barriers against those you love. | 19:26 | |
You don't try to exploit those you love. | 19:30 | |
You don't want to get from, | 19:33 | |
you want to give to those you love. | 19:34 | |
Oh, you're say, "But that's too easy a solution. | 19:39 | |
A little love here, a little love there, | 19:41 | |
and everything will be okay." | 19:42 | |
No, it isn't easy, | 19:44 | |
it's the hardest thing in the world. | 19:47 | |
Jesus said, "If he loved them that love you, | 19:50 | |
what His reward is there in that?" | 19:53 | |
It's loving one's enemies. | 19:57 | |
It's blessing those who curse us. | 19:59 | |
It's praying for those who despitefully use us, | 20:02 | |
and that's not easy. | 20:05 | |
Do you think it's easy for the Arab to love the Jews? | 20:08 | |
Do you think it's easy for the Algerians to love the French? | 20:13 | |
Do you think it's easy for the Turks in Cyprus | 20:17 | |
to love the Greeks? | 20:20 | |
Glubb Pasha still lovers the Jordanians? | 20:24 | |
But Glubb Pasha is a kindly Christian man. | 20:26 | |
He came up and read the lesson on the Sunday night | 20:30 | |
I preached in a little English church in Amman, | 20:33 | |
but it's not easy, it's hard. | 20:36 | |
And there's function enough | 20:40 | |
for religion in the modern world. | 20:42 | |
If it can preach and practice effectively, | 20:45 | |
Christ gospel of love. | 20:48 | |
Second, to provide a basis for a modal living. | 20:53 | |
Everybody agrees that the good life | 21:01 | |
is better than the evil life. | 21:03 | |
That the truth is better than the lie. | 21:06 | |
That the right is better than the wrong. | 21:09 | |
Sometimes you do meet someone who says he does not believe | 21:13 | |
that the good life is better than the evil, | 21:16 | |
but he's an exception and one generally expects, | 21:19 | |
that, that's just oppose. | 21:24 | |
In any case, the normal thing is to believe | 21:26 | |
that the good life is better than the evil. | 21:30 | |
There are absconding bankers, | 21:35 | |
but no one would ever put his money in a bank | 21:37 | |
if he believed that bankers | 21:41 | |
normally ran away with the funds. | 21:42 | |
There are evil teachers, | 21:46 | |
but no parents would ever send their children to school | 21:48 | |
if they believe that the normal thing, | 21:51 | |
was for teachers to be evil and corrupt the youth. | 21:53 | |
Our whole social system depends, | 21:57 | |
upon the assumption, | 22:01 | |
that the normal thing is the good lie, | 22:02 | |
and we all agree. | 22:07 | |
And yet, when it comes down to personal | 22:10 | |
and particular cases, | 22:14 | |
we fall down. | 22:16 | |
and we cry with the apostle, | 22:19 | |
the good that I would die, do not. | 22:21 | |
And the evil that I would not, that I do. | 22:25 | |
Why? | 22:30 | |
And the answer, is sin. | 22:33 | |
Not a popular word. | 22:37 | |
Various other fancy names are given, | 22:40 | |
but when you look at it, it's just the same old sin. | 22:42 | |
And we cry again with the apostle, | 22:46 | |
"Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" | 22:48 | |
And religion is the only one that knows the answer. | 22:57 | |
Some years ago, there was a novel | 23:02 | |
written by a lady novelist, | 23:04 | |
apparently a very clever young lady. | 23:07 | |
I haven't read the book, I read the review of it | 23:11 | |
in the literary supplement of the "London Times." | 23:13 | |
And it tells how very cleverly | 23:18 | |
she worked out her characters on her situations. | 23:20 | |
Until presently, she got them into a terrible modal mess. | 23:24 | |
And then the reviewer said, | 23:29 | |
the author seems to sit back and say, | 23:30 | |
"Well, human nature being what it is. | 23:34 | |
What else did you expect?" | 23:37 | |
Now, religion knows that that's a lie. | 23:40 | |
Human nature being what it is, | 23:45 | |
it is not necessary to slink among the gutters | 23:47 | |
and sewers of existence. | 23:51 | |
Human nature being what it is, | 23:53 | |
it is possible to live resplendent, | 23:55 | |
triumphant, victorious lives. | 23:58 | |
At the heart of religion, there's a cross. | 24:04 | |
And in that cross of Christ, there is victory over sin. | 24:07 | |
And there's function enough for religion | 24:14 | |
in the modern world, | 24:16 | |
if religion can teach us the secret of triumphant living. | 24:19 | |
Thirdly, | 24:26 | |
to keep alive in us, | 24:28 | |
the sense about kinship to eternal things. | 24:32 | |
The orthics knew that while we are children of earth, | 24:39 | |
we are also children of the starry heavens. | 24:44 | |
But we live in the machine age, | 24:48 | |
and the machine age is fast making us forget | 24:52 | |
the starry heavens. | 24:56 | |
We're wakened up in the morning by a machine, | 24:59 | |
and we go into the bathroom and we shave with a machine, | 25:02 | |
and we come down to breakfast, | 25:05 | |
and the toast and the coffee are made by machine. | 25:06 | |
And we don't walk downstairs, we go down by a machine. | 25:09 | |
And we get into a machine and go to where we have to work. | 25:12 | |
And we don't go out to speak to our friends, | 25:15 | |
we talk to them over to a machine, | 25:17 | |
and we turn a button and the news comes in over the machine. | 25:19 | |
And we don't write letters anymore, it's done by a machine. | 25:22 | |
We don't even have to go to church on Sunday morning, | 25:25 | |
we can stay at home in carpet slippers, | 25:29 | |
and get the whole service from the opening sentences | 25:31 | |
to the final benediction over the machine. | 25:34 | |
And even the mentality of the children | 25:38 | |
is being corrupted by the machine. | 25:41 | |
Our former chaplain at Columbia, Chaplain Knox | 25:45 | |
was a very eloquent preacher. | 25:47 | |
And one day at an eloquent pause in his sermon, | 25:50 | |
a little voice came up the side aisle, | 25:53 | |
"Mommy, can we turn him off now?" | 25:56 | |
Turn him on, turn him off. | 26:01 | |
The wife of one of my colleagues was telling us | 26:06 | |
that a scripture examination in school | 26:09 | |
where they'd been studying the Parables of Jesus. | 26:11 | |
One of the questions was, what lessons do we learn | 26:15 | |
from the parable of the foolish Virgin? | 26:19 | |
And one boy, not trying to be funny, | 26:23 | |
just answering normally, said, | 26:24 | |
"The parable of all of the foolish virgins | 26:27 | |
teaches us how much better it is to have electricity." | 26:29 | |
Minds molded by the machine earthy, | 26:35 | |
forgetting all kinship with a starry heaven. | 26:39 | |
Once music, and art, and poetry | 26:44 | |
kept us reminded of heavenly things, but not modern music, | 26:50 | |
modern art, modern poetry. | 26:54 | |
There of the Earth, Earth. | 26:57 | |
And what is the left say of religion? | 27:01 | |
To teach us that the things which are seen, | 27:05 | |
are that temporal. | 27:09 | |
It's the things that are unseen, that are eternal. | 27:11 | |
When Jesus sent out the 70 disciples, they returned, | 27:17 | |
and they returned with joy, | 27:23 | |
because in that little experience, | 27:26 | |
they'd seen the eternal breakthrough | 27:28 | |
into the world of our temporal. | 27:33 | |
And Jesus said, "Blessed are the eyes, | 27:36 | |
that see the things that you are eyes have seen. | 27:41 | |
For many kings and prophets desired to see these things, | 27:45 | |
but saw them not." | 27:50 | |
Beloved, desire spiritual gifts. | 27:54 | |
Let us pray. | 28:02 | |
Now unto Him who is able to keep us from falling. | 28:11 | |
And to present us perfect | 28:16 | |
before the throne of His might. | 28:19 | |
To Him be glory in the church, | 28:22 | |
and in Christ Jesus, | 28:26 | |
world without end, Amen. | 28:29 | |
(church choir singing) | 28:36 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 28:38 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 28:43 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 28:49 | |
(bell dinging) | 29:02 | |
(church choir singing) | 29:12 |
(beating on percussive instrument) | 0:03 | |
(choir sings a cappella) | 0:05 | |
♪ All for Jesus ♪ | ||
♪ All for Jesus ♪ | 0:07 | |
♪ This our song shall ever be ♪ | 0:10 | |
♪ For we have no hope, nor Savior ♪ | 0:15 | |
♪ If we have no hope in Thee ♪ | 0:20 | |
♪ All for Jesus ♪ | 0:25 | |
♪ Thou hast loved us ♪ | 0:28 | |
♪ All for Jesus ♪ | 0:30 | |
♪ Thou hast died ♪ | 0:33 | |
♪ All for Jesus ♪ | 0:36 | |
♪ Thou art with us ♪ | 0:38 | |
♪ All for Jesus, crucified ♪ | 0:41 | |
♪ All for Jesus, all for Jesus ♪ | 0:48 | |
♪ This the church's song must be ♪ | 0:53 | |
♪ 'Til at last her sons have gathered ♪ | 0:58 | |
♪ One in love and one in thee ♪ | 1:03 |