Douglas V. Steere - "On Holy Expectancy" (September 23, 1956; October 7, 1956)

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	(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

Item Info

Title:

Douglas V. Steere - "On Holy Expectancy" (September 23, 1956; October 7, 1956)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4h41pp16

Date:

September 23, 1956
October 7, 1956

Speaker:

Steere, Douglas V.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0025
ref5271_pdq
uachapelsermaud
duke:628230
dcrau002077
ark:/87924/r4h41pp16
19d29177-d7d1-4518-99ae-9efb3f1fb7c4

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

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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