Douglas V. Steere - "On Holy Expectancy" (September 23, 1956; October 7, 1956)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(Indistinctive chatter) | 0:04 | |
- | [Priest} Ziki. Yes, might've tried even me. | 0:13 |
He wants to come to my house. | 0:15 | |
He wants | 0:18 | |
and he believes, | 0:19 | |
and he trusts that even | 0:20 | |
I might become one who was called of God. | 0:22 | |
I suppose, | 0:31 | |
in this kind of conception | 0:32 | |
of the way in which the Christian religion goes, | 0:33 | |
there are pre three presuppositions, obvious ones at least. | 0:36 | |
The first of those is that there is a dog tag | 0:40 | |
in the soul of each one of us | 0:43 | |
on which there is a scratch | 0:46 | |
by the very nature of our creation. | 0:48 | |
The one to whom we belong. | 0:50 | |
George Spocks the Arctic Quaker, set it all very simply | 0:54 | |
and when he said that there is something in the heart | 1:00 | |
of every man that is not a duster | 1:04 | |
or a birth or a flesher | 1:05 | |
of time, but of God. | 1:07 | |
No doctrine of the fall, | 1:10 | |
no act that any man can ever commit ever completely | 1:15 | |
extinguishes from his soul | 1:21 | |
of the water mark. | 1:24 | |
(Indistinctive cheers) | 1:27 | |
- | That mark that shows the one to whom we belong. | 1:28 |
So that's the first presupposition | 1:31 | |
of the restoration, | 1:35 | |
of the lost sense of expectancy | 1:36 | |
in the hearts of men and women. | 1:38 | |
And the second one is that we're all under divine treatment | 1:40 | |
as long as we live | 1:46 | |
and be off what the Germans called, | 1:47 | |
Eric's Liquor Behind Bloke, | 1:50 | |
we're all being treated by the divine physician | 1:52 | |
whether we know it or not. | 1:55 | |
Nothing that happens | 1:57 | |
to us ever happens completely | 1:58 | |
by accident. | 2:01 | |
Always there is a possibility | 2:03 | |
of upon the occasion | 2:07 | |
of this event something fresh | 2:08 | |
in us happening. | 2:11 | |
We never get out | 2:12 | |
from under the divine treatment. | 2:13 | |
He always has it within himself | 2:18 | |
to give us the power | 2:19 | |
to become the sons of God. | 2:20 | |
And it's in that alone that lies our hope. | 2:23 | |
And the third presupposition. | 2:29 | |
The one I want | 2:31 | |
to develop here a little this morning is the breadth | 2:31 | |
of the greatest thing that any man | 2:35 | |
or woman can do | 2:36 | |
for another is to minister, | 2:37 | |
to a brother or a sister, | 2:41 | |
to minister to them. | 2:43 | |
In such a way as to restore that sense | 2:45 | |
of expectancy in them, | 2:48 | |
by having a great expectation | 2:50 | |
of what that person may become. | 2:53 | |
It's a terrible thing | 2:58 | |
to be one who is a killer | 2:59 | |
of the dream | 3:01 | |
and the heart of another. | 3:02 | |
Well it's a wonderful thing. | 3:04 | |
And perhaps the truest expression | 3:05 | |
of our Christian vocation | 3:08 | |
to be the kindler of the dream, | 3:09 | |
or perhaps as | 3:12 | |
so often it happens the rekindler | 3:13 | |
of the dream. | 3:16 | |
The Medievals had a very simple way | 3:19 | |
of looking at one another. | 3:21 | |
They believed that Christ was moving around | 3:24 | |
in the world | 3:26 | |
and that he was here | 3:27 | |
and now, | 3:29 | |
and that you never could tell when he might knock | 3:30 | |
on your door. | 3:32 | |
(Knocking on the door) | 3:33 | |
You never knew he would be most likely | 3:34 | |
to come, | 3:38 | |
in the guys you did not expect. | 3:39 | |
And therefore take care. | 3:42 | |
When you see a leper. | 3:46 | |
When you see a person who seems | 3:48 | |
to have the face of God, | 3:50 | |
obscured from him, | 3:52 | |
when you see a man | 3:53 | |
or a woman | 3:54 | |
in great poverty, take care. | 3:55 | |
Back through the eyes | 3:58 | |
of that person that may be the | 3:59 | |
Christ who was looking out through those eyes, | 4:00 | |
into yours | 4:03 | |
and calling | 4:04 | |
on you to rise | 4:05 | |
to this occasion | 4:07 | |
and meet the need | 4:08 | |
of this brother and sister. | 4:09 | |
That's what lies back | 4:12 | |
of those wonderful stories | 4:13 | |
of Christopher Wiz The Ferry Man, | 4:14 | |
and on the stormy nights as you well remember, | 4:18 | |
there comes the child | 4:23 | |
to be taken across the river | 4:24 | |
and Christopher, | 4:27 | |
this is the last thing he wants | 4:28 | |
to do on that night. | 4:29 | |
But the child is importunate deal take nothing, but yes, | 4:31 | |
for an answer. | 4:36 | |
And so finally Christopher goes out | 4:37 | |
and puts the child | 4:40 | |
on his shoulder | 4:40 | |
and takes his stuff | 4:41 | |
and weeds into the river. | 4:42 | |
And step by step, as the water gets deeper, | 4:44 | |
he finds the burden | 4:48 | |
on his shoulder getting heavier | 4:49 | |
and heavier. | 4:50 | |
You can't imagine a child that is as heavy as this one. | 4:51 | |
And finally, when he comes up again | 4:54 | |
in the shallower water | 4:56 | |
and it comes | 4:57 | |
to the other side, | 4:57 | |
he puts the child down | 4:58 | |
and the child is | 4:59 | |
of course Christ himself. | 5:00 | |
He is born unaware as the | 5:03 | |
Christ child across the river, | 5:04 | |
or St. Martin is accosted | 5:06 | |
by the beggar on his way | 5:09 | |
to the crusade says he's cold. | 5:11 | |
And when he'd give him something | 5:13 | |
to wrap him in | 5:14 | |
and he takes his sword | 5:15 | |
and cuts half of his cloak | 5:17 | |
and gives it to him. | 5:18 | |
And that night at midnight, | 5:19 | |
as he lies shivering | 5:20 | |
in only half of his cloak, | 5:22 | |
the Christ appears in light at midnight, | 5:25 | |
and he recognizes who He is. | 5:28 | |
He's the begger | 5:30 | |
to whom he's given the role. | 5:31 | |
Today it doesn't seem to come as simply as that, | 5:33 | |
but something of the same spirit that is represented | 5:36 | |
by those Medieval legends is just true today | 5:40 | |
as it was then. | 5:42 | |
We had at Haverford college several years ago, | 5:44 | |
the distinguished Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. | 5:48 | |
I had long wanted to have him come | 5:52 | |
and try to get him, | 5:54 | |
but he stayed on | 5:55 | |
and Israel after the war. | 5:56 | |
And finally, | 5:59 | |
when he came, | 6:00 | |
it was arranged for him | 6:00 | |
to spend several days with us. | 6:01 | |
I took him over | 6:03 | |
to Quaker meeting with me where the student body gather | 6:04 | |
on Thursdays for half an hour. | 6:07 | |
And we gather in silence, | 6:09 | |
but often messages come out | 6:11 | |
of the meeting. | 6:12 | |
And I told him on the way over that, | 6:14 | |
the way we broke the silence, | 6:16 | |
if we felt we had something | 6:18 | |
on our heart to say was just | 6:19 | |
to get up and say it, | 6:20 | |
but nobody ever invited us to do it. | 6:21 | |
And that if you had a message | 6:24 | |
for the students to give it | 6:25 | |
just in that kind of way, | 6:26 | |
and if you hadn't, that was quite all right. | 6:28 | |
He said, I will never break the silence. | 6:31 | |
I've been in Quaker meeting before, | 6:32 | |
but I will never break the silence. | 6:34 | |
So he sat | 6:36 | |
in the meeting | 6:39 | |
and the president | 6:40 | |
of the college got up | 6:41 | |
and spoke a few words about what it means | 6:41 | |
to meet people across barriers, people | 6:43 | |
of different races, people | 6:45 | |
of different nations have different tastes, | 6:47 | |
of different temperaments, | 6:49 | |
of different ideologies. | 6:50 | |
What it means | 6:52 | |
to break across the barriers | 6:53 | |
and meet each other. | 6:54 | |
And he sat down. | 6:56 | |
He hadn't been seated more than a minute before up, | 6:58 | |
got this minor prophet. | 7:01 | |
And with these fiery eyes, | 7:02 | |
he looked out over this group | 7:04 | |
and he looked around | 7:05 | |
at the president | 7:06 | |
and he said, meeting is a great thing. | 7:07 | |
But it's not the greatest thing, | 7:09 | |
but one man does for another. | 7:11 | |
It's not the greatest thing. | 7:13 | |
You said, | 7:15 | |
the greatest thing that any man ever does | 7:16 | |
for another is not just to meet him, | 7:18 | |
but to confirm in him that which is deepest | 7:21 | |
to confirm in him that which is deepest. | 7:26 | |
That's what happens when we reach end-all the dream. | 7:32 | |
That's what happens when we restore | 7:35 | |
and through the ministry that we have to one another, | 7:38 | |
the high expectation that person has | 7:41 | |
for his or for her life. | 7:43 | |
I've had the privilege | 7:48 | |
of having a number | 7:49 | |
of visits | 7:50 | |
in recent years with Alan Paton, | 7:51 | |
who wrote that beautiful book | 7:53 | |
Cry The Beloved Country perhaps | 7:55 | |
South Africa's greatest writer to day. | 7:57 | |
A man who is living a magnificent life, | 7:59 | |
not only as a writer, | 8:01 | |
but himself with a kind | 8:03 | |
of witness in his own country | 8:05 | |
of that, which he believes to be right. | 8:06 | |
That man would never have done what he did. | 8:10 | |
I think it's fair to say, | 8:12 | |
had it not been | 8:13 | |
for a man named John Hoffmeyer who, | 8:14 | |
if he lived South Africa would be a different country | 8:17 | |
to had he lived to South Africa | 8:20 | |
would be a different country today? | 8:21 | |
He was the young man who carried the burden | 8:23 | |
of Smuts all through the war when Smuts was in England | 8:25 | |
and finally burned out | 8:29 | |
by it before he was 50 died, several years ago. | 8:30 | |
Hoffmeyer knew Peyton. | 8:35 | |
Peyton was had to have a little school, | 8:38 | |
schoolmaster what he saw | 8:42 | |
in this man something greater. | 8:45 | |
Hoffmeyer saw that this man had it | 8:48 | |
in him to do something more than he was doing. | 8:50 | |
So he called him | 8:52 | |
and asked him to take charge | 8:53 | |
of a very adventurous prison experiment, a deep cliff, | 8:56 | |
just outside of Johannesburg, | 8:59 | |
the common behead of this prison, | 9:02 | |
and try to do something | 9:03 | |
for these juvenile delinquents | 9:04 | |
to rose in them again | 9:06 | |
the hope that they might become creative citizens. | 9:07 | |
And Peyton rose | 9:12 | |
to the expectation | 9:13 | |
of his friend | 9:14 | |
and became head | 9:16 | |
of that prison. | 9:17 | |
And it was out | 9:18 | |
of the experience that he had | 9:19 | |
in that prison that he wrote that book. | 9:19 | |
And that he's become the figure that we know him | 9:21 | |
to be in the world today. | 9:23 | |
When John Bright lost his young wife | 9:27 | |
and felt absolutely decimated | 9:31 | |
at the what seemed | 9:35 | |
to be the destruction | 9:37 | |
of all that was precious to him. | 9:38 | |
Compton called on him before she'd been buried. | 9:41 | |
And he said, | 9:45 | |
"When your grief has spent its first wave, | 9:46 | |
come and see me, | 9:49 | |
I have something to say to you." | 9:50 | |
And John Bright came to Compton | 9:52 | |
and Compton said, | 9:54 | |
"You've gone through a great grief, | 9:57 | |
but there are poor in England where all was | 9:59 | |
in grief because | 10:02 | |
of their need. | 10:03 | |
I want you to enter political life | 10:04 | |
and become the spokesman | 10:07 | |
for the poor." | 10:08 | |
And John brights was roused | 10:10 | |
to this expectation | 10:14 | |
of what he might become | 10:15 | |
by the faith | 10:16 | |
and confidence that his friend cropped him. | 10:16 | |
And he became such a man. | 10:19 | |
And it was one | 10:21 | |
of the figures in 19th century, | 10:22 | |
England that perhaps we most admire. | 10:24 | |
If one ever thinks about the field | 10:28 | |
of teaching | 10:31 | |
and this university stands poised | 10:32 | |
before a new academic year one knows well enough, | 10:34 | |
that the greatest thing that a teacher could do | 10:39 | |
for a student is not the pass across | 10:41 | |
to him technical information that's necessary, | 10:43 | |
that's indispensable. | 10:48 | |
The teacher must be competent | 10:49 | |
to do that | 10:50 | |
and do it well | 10:51 | |
and freshly, | 10:52 | |
but that's not the greatest thing any teacher ever does | 10:53 | |
for a student. | 10:56 | |
What is the greatest thing? | 10:58 | |
Well, | 11:00 | |
the greatest thing a teacher ever does | 11:01 | |
for a student is | 11:02 | |
to rekindle the dream | 11:04 | |
of what he might become . | 11:05 | |
To rekindle in his soul the dream | 11:07 | |
of what he might become. | 11:09 | |
I remember my colleague, Thomas Kelly, | 11:14 | |
whose little Testament | 11:18 | |
of devotion, many of you have read. | 11:19 | |
I remember the story of him when he first came | 11:23 | |
to do graduate work at Haverford College. | 11:25 | |
He came from a tiny college in Ohio. | 11:27 | |
The first night he was there. | 11:31 | |
He went to see my beloved colleague, Rufus Jones. | 11:32 | |
And boy that he was | 11:37 | |
and full of enthusiasm | 11:40 | |
and full of what he wanted | 11:41 | |
to make it his life. | 11:42 | |
He confided in the older Rufus Jones. | 11:43 | |
And he said, you know, professor Jones, he said, | 11:48 | |
"I want to my life a miracle." | 11:52 | |
Well, I could imagine a student saying that | 11:55 | |
to some professors I know. | 11:56 | |
(Laughing) | 11:58 | |
I, I can imagined the kind | 11:59 | |
of response they might've gotten. | 12:02 | |
What Rufus Jones saw through | 12:05 | |
to the heart of this young man. | 12:06 | |
And he knew that every student in his height | 12:08 | |
of heights wants | 12:10 | |
to make his life a miracle. | 12:11 | |
He wants to do something unusual. | 12:12 | |
He wants | 12:15 | |
to do something that'll push things ahead. | 12:16 | |
He wants really | 12:18 | |
to give all your has | 12:19 | |
and seeing that he listened with sympathy | 12:20 | |
and he helped in Kelly | 12:24 | |
to rekindle a dream that | 12:26 | |
Kelly's life amply, amply fulfilled. | 12:28 | |
Although it was a swift life cut short at 47. | 12:31 | |
I know a student who came one day after one professor who | 12:35 | |
had had a great deal of trouble with him. | 12:42 | |
And the student had a gift for exasperating, | 12:44 | |
those who tried to help him | 12:49 | |
and this man had finally lost his patience. | 12:51 | |
And he had called this boy down | 12:55 | |
and said, | 12:57 | |
"You'll never amount | 12:58 | |
to anything. | 12:59 | |
You'll always fail is sweating. | 13:00 | |
The kind of crisis comes. | 13:01 | |
You'll never amount to anything, the way you're going." | 13:04 | |
And broken this boy came | 13:09 | |
and prepared to give up his graduate work that he was going | 13:10 | |
to do in a given field | 13:13 | |
and prepared | 13:16 | |
to leave school the end of the year | 13:17 | |
and go into a field | 13:20 | |
for which he could make a swift success. | 13:21 | |
But, well, the deep thing that he wanted | 13:24 | |
to do would be denied. | 13:27 | |
Through the fact that some people | 13:29 | |
through their lives around him | 13:31 | |
and restored in him, the dream, that was really there. | 13:32 | |
He rose to their expectations, | 13:37 | |
graduated with highest honors. | 13:40 | |
And after a year | 13:43 | |
of full bright work is now almost | 13:44 | |
to his doctorate | 13:46 | |
and will become without question, | 13:47 | |
a highly distinguished teacher in his field. | 13:49 | |
When a man is down | 13:56 | |
and every person | 14:00 | |
in his younger years is deeply down about himself | 14:01 | |
at times to have an older man believe in it, | 14:04 | |
to have an older man calling back again | 14:07 | |
to the thing he might be caught is | 14:09 | |
for a student a great gift, | 14:12 | |
and for a professor a discharging | 14:14 | |
of the deepest obligation he has towards a student. | 14:17 | |
And as one goes on in life, | 14:22 | |
there come the valleys where again and again, | 14:24 | |
a colleague may come along | 14:28 | |
and call one back to the dream | 14:30 | |
and bring one back again into the kind | 14:33 | |
of courage that may enable one to carry on. | 14:36 | |
I remember the head | 14:39 | |
of a large Negro college in | 14:41 | |
Washington, DC, who was attacked | 14:43 | |
on the one side by senators. | 14:46 | |
They called him a communist. | 14:48 | |
And on the other side by Baltimore Negroes, | 14:49 | |
who called him a fascist | 14:52 | |
and who was on faculty were giving information | 14:53 | |
to certain sides that came out about him. | 14:56 | |
And I had just come back from | 14:59 | |
New York with one of his trustees | 15:00 | |
who told me the difficult position | 15:02 | |
in which he stood. | 15:03 | |
They wanted him | 15:05 | |
to have detectives to help him out. | 15:06 | |
But he said, | 15:08 | |
you can't run a university with detectives. | 15:08 | |
At the time when he was in his darkest, | 15:11 | |
mood he told me an old Negro preacher came | 15:13 | |
to his secretary | 15:17 | |
and said, can I see the president? | 15:18 | |
She asked the president, if he could see this man, | 15:21 | |
and he said, yes, show him in. | 15:24 | |
And he came in | 15:26 | |
and he said, Mr. President, he said, | 15:27 | |
I am a great student of trees. | 15:29 | |
And he said, I've been watching you. | 15:33 | |
And these last months | 15:35 | |
and the thing's been happening to you. | 15:36 | |
He said, Mr. President, he said, | 15:40 | |
in my study of trees, | 15:43 | |
I have discovered that when you see | 15:44 | |
under a tree torn branches | 15:47 | |
and sticks and stones and brickbats, | 15:52 | |
you don't need to look any further. | 15:57 | |
You'll know it's a fruit tree. | 15:59 | |
He said, God bless you, Mr. President. | 16:03 | |
He said, good morning | 16:05 | |
and left it. | 16:06 | |
To restore a man in his heart when he's | 16:09 | |
in deep water, | 16:12 | |
the sense of expectancy that he, that he's there, | 16:13 | |
God has for him is a great gift that we can do | 16:17 | |
for one another. | 16:19 | |
But there are things which human beings can do, | 16:24 | |
and there are things which only perhaps the highest | 16:27 | |
fellowship of all can do. | 16:30 | |
And I suppose the reading | 16:33 | |
of the Bible has no greater task | 16:34 | |
for us then | 16:36 | |
to restore us | 16:38 | |
to our own lost expectancy about what | 16:40 | |
God wants to do with our life. | 16:43 | |
And I suppose the church, | 16:46 | |
if it were the real church, | 16:48 | |
if it were alive, | 16:49 | |
if it were a costly church, | 16:51 | |
if it were asking high things of people, | 16:53 | |
it would be a fellowship | 16:55 | |
of those persons | 16:56 | |
of the way we expected great things | 16:59 | |
of each other under God | 17:03 | |
and ask for prayer. | 17:06 | |
What is prayer other than the place where we have restored | 17:09 | |
in ourselves, the lost sense of expectancy. | 17:14 | |
What is prayer more than | 17:20 | |
to come into the presence of a God that never lets us go. | 17:22 | |
Old love that will not let me go. | 17:26 | |
What is prayer more than coming | 17:31 | |
into the presence | 17:33 | |
of one realizing it then that, | 17:33 | |
though we fall or we've failed. | 17:40 | |
He is constant. | 17:43 | |
And his expectancy | 17:45 | |
for us is undeterred. | 17:46 | |
What greater thing is there in prayer than that? | 17:49 | |
There's a great patch | 17:54 | |
on the cathedral of sharp, | 17:56 | |
but as a stone figure of God, | 17:59 | |
The Father holding Adam | 18:01 | |
in his lap, | 18:03 | |
and Adam has his chin down on his chest | 18:06 | |
and his eyes half closed, | 18:11 | |
and his knees drawn up almost like a fetus | 18:13 | |
in the mother's womb. | 18:15 | |
He's drowsy, he's dull, he's, unawake. | 18:18 | |
What God, The Father | 18:22 | |
in this sculpture piece | 18:23 | |
of sculpture is holding him | 18:25 | |
in his arms | 18:26 | |
and looking at him where that kind | 18:27 | |
of intensity longing somehow | 18:29 | |
for him to awake | 18:31 | |
and to know by who He is held | 18:33 | |
and to answer back . | 18:35 | |
That's what happens in the life | 18:37 | |
of prayer. | 18:39 | |
In the life | 18:41 | |
of prayer we are brought back again | 18:42 | |
into an awareness | 18:46 | |
of the constancy of God, | 18:48 | |
and we recognize what it means | 18:52 | |
to be able | 18:57 | |
to depend | 18:58 | |
when human beings have failed us by not responding. | 19:00 | |
When we haven't even been able | 19:04 | |
to come through by reading the Bible, | 19:05 | |
when the church has not exercised the function toward us, | 19:08 | |
that it was meant | 19:12 | |
to exercise. | 19:13 | |
What a blessed thing it is | 19:15 | |
to come back | 19:16 | |
to that kind of central experience, | 19:17 | |
and to know again, | 19:20 | |
that there is one who is always constant, | 19:21 | |
who never fails, | 19:25 | |
and it is his faithfulness, | 19:27 | |
not ours that finally restores | 19:29 | |
in our hearts, | 19:32 | |
the lost expectancy that makes us able | 19:33 | |
to take up life again. | 19:37 | |
It is his faithfulness that removes the line that we have | 19:40 | |
drawn through the word, | 19:46 | |
Christos | 19:50 | |
and helps us to know again to whom we belong | 19:53 | |
and whom we serve. | 19:58 | |
Let us pray. | 20:00 | |
Burn away this film from our inward dies, oh, Father, | 20:13 | |
and restore us both for ourselves | 20:16 | |
and for our fellows. | 20:19 | |
A sense of thy holy expectancy | 20:20 | |
of what we might become | 20:23 | |
of how our lives might be used. | 20:25 | |
Kill us, slugging our souls, oh Lord. | 20:28 | |
Forgiven and heal the self obsessed confinement | 20:31 | |
and rekindle in each heart here this morning, | 20:35 | |
the natural longing to live as one who knows the unknowing, | 20:37 | |
thee as one whose life is lent to be spent. | 20:42 | |
(Indistinctive chatter) | 20:49 | |
And now may the peace, | 20:51 | |
the burning peace that passeth all understanding. | 20:53 | |
Stand sentinel over your hearts | 20:57 | |
and souls both now and ever more. | 20:59 | |
(Ethereal music) | 21:07 | |
(Bell ringing) | 21:42 | |
(Ethereal music) | 21:53 |