Bishop Gerald Kennedy - Baccalaureate Sermon; John Casteel - "The Prevenient Love of God" (June 2, 1957)
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Announcer | Back alert service, Sunday, June 2, 1957. | 0:09 |
Speaker, Reverend Gerald Kennedy, | 0:16 | |
Los Angeles, California. | 0:20 | |
(soft music) | 0:23 | |
Man | Let us pray, | 2:05 |
Almighty and most merciful God | 2:10 | |
only because of our own worthiness, | 2:13 | |
but boldly because of thy goodness | 2:16 | |
and the ceaseless patience of thy love | 2:19 | |
we bow our heads before thee in adoration, | 2:22 | |
thou has created us, | 2:26 | |
preserved us and brought us to this hour. | 2:29 | |
Thy has told out to us, | 2:33 | |
the offer of thy companionship when we were most alone, | 2:34 | |
thou has given us strength when we were weak | 2:40 | |
and light when we groped in darkness, | 2:43 | |
we thank thee our Father for all of thy blessings, | 2:47 | |
but most especially for the many opportunities | 2:53 | |
which thou has provided for us a Duke | 2:56 | |
for sound learning and exciting truth. | 3:00 | |
Which have enlarged our acquaintance with ourselves, | 3:03 | |
thy world and thee, for classes, books, assignments, | 3:06 | |
and examinations, | 3:12 | |
which have helped in the discipline of our minds | 3:14 | |
and releasing them into new freedom. | 3:17 | |
For parents, professors, administrators, alumni, | 3:20 | |
and fellow students who have given of their time | 3:26 | |
and talents that we may learn the truth. | 3:30 | |
And for the special privilege | 3:34 | |
of having thy Word interpreted to us each Sunday | 3:37 | |
in the University service of worship. | 3:41 | |
We confess before thee | 3:44 | |
that we have often failed thee | 3:47 | |
that our selfishness has made evil out of our intended good | 3:50 | |
that our prejudice has blinded us, | 3:55 | |
that our indifference has kept us | 3:58 | |
from the knowledge of thy will. | 4:01 | |
And that our pride has hidden thee from our sight. | 4:03 | |
We asked thee on this special day for thy pardon | 4:08 | |
and for the grace that will make us whole. | 4:12 | |
Cleanse us of the wrong that distorts the mind | 4:15 | |
of the willful desire that twist life away from thy purpose, | 4:19 | |
cherished hatred and thoughtless contempt, | 4:24 | |
and of pride of place and envy. | 4:28 | |
Bring us in every moment of decision to set before thee | 4:31 | |
the choices we would make. | 4:35 | |
Submitting our knowledge to thy wisdom | 4:38 | |
and yielding all that we are to the service | 4:41 | |
of what thou with service be. | 4:44 | |
Oh God, who has taught us to pray | 4:48 | |
for others as well as for ourselves, | 4:51 | |
we beseech thee to have regard for all schools, | 4:54 | |
colleges, and universities, | 4:59 | |
that they may be dedicated to true learning | 5:01 | |
whereby life may be enriched. | 5:05 | |
The bond of ignorance and superstition broken | 5:07 | |
dullness sharpen into insight and wonder into reverence | 5:11 | |
writ us together in this uneasy world | 5:17 | |
of all that makes for enmity, | 5:20 | |
of the narrow loyalties that breed war, | 5:23 | |
of the cramped horizons where our spirits grow poor | 5:26 | |
and rule among the affairs of men everywhere | 5:32 | |
to the establishment of thy love and righteousness. | 5:35 | |
That thy mind may be brought by our hands into the future, | 5:39 | |
not in trembling under thy wrath but in willing obedience. | 5:43 | |
We offer our prayers in the name of the master teacher, | 5:49 | |
Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 5:53 | |
Amen. | 5:55 | |
(soft music) | 6:29 | |
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(Indistinct choir singing) | 14:26 | |
Priest | The scripture lesson this morning | 16:53 |
is taken from the 12th chapter of Romans | 16:55 | |
the first through the eighth verses. | 16:59 | |
"I beseech you therefore brethren, | 17:03 | |
by the mercies of God that you present your bodies, | 17:05 | |
a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, | 17:10 | |
which is your reasonable service. | 17:18 | |
And be not conformed to this world, | 17:22 | |
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind | 17:26 | |
that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable | 17:32 | |
and perfect will of God. | 17:37 | |
For I say, through the grace given unto me | 17:42 | |
to every man that is among you, | 17:46 | |
not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, | 17:49 | |
but to think soberly, | 17:53 | |
according as God hath dealt | 17:56 | |
to every man the measure of faith. | 17:57 | |
For as we have many members in one body, | 18:02 | |
and all members have not the same office. | 18:05 | |
So we, being many, are one body in Christ, | 18:09 | |
and every one member is one of another. | 18:15 | |
Having then gifts differing according | 18:19 | |
to the grace that is given to us, | 18:21 | |
whether prophecy, | 18:24 | |
let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith | 18:26 | |
or ministry, let us wait on our ministering. | 18:30 | |
Or he that teacheth on teaching, | 18:34 | |
or he that exhorteth on exhortation, | 18:38 | |
he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity, | 18:42 | |
he that ruleth, with diligence, | 18:47 | |
he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness." | 18:51 | |
Thus endeth the reading of his Word. | 18:57 | |
(soft music) | 19:18 | |
♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 19:44 | |
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♪ His grace and glory ♪ | 21:42 | |
♪ By his grace and glory ♪ | 21:46 | |
♪ By his grace and glory ♪ | 21:52 | |
♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 21:57 | |
♪ His grace and glory ♪ | 22:41 | |
♪ His grace and glory ♪ | 22:45 | |
♪ His grace and glory ♪ | 22:48 | |
♪ His grace and glory ♪ | 22:51 | |
♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 22:55 | |
♪ Praise the Lord ♪ | 23:33 | |
♪ Praise the Lord ♪ | 23:35 | |
Gerald | After one has come into what is certainly | 24:20 |
one of the most beautiful churches in the world | 24:22 | |
and listen to this great music. | 24:26 | |
It takes a good deal of courage to stand up | 24:28 | |
and try to preach. | 24:30 | |
One has the feeling that the spoken word | 24:32 | |
is hardly necessary for the worship of God. | 24:34 | |
You will understand therefore, | 24:37 | |
why I count it such a very high honor | 24:39 | |
to be in this pulpit this day and to speak on this occasion. | 24:40 | |
There has come down to us from 1,650 | 24:47 | |
a list of the names of the German of Sussex county, England. | 24:51 | |
They were all Puritans apparently, | 24:57 | |
and they all had names expressing their faith. | 24:59 | |
One man's name was, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White. | 25:04 | |
Another one was called, Peace-of-mind Knight, | 25:09 | |
that sounds modern. | 25:11 | |
One man was called, Kill-Sin Pimple. | 25:15 | |
And there was another named, Renewed-right-wise Barry. | 25:18 | |
The English essayist, E.V Lucas says that | 25:24 | |
if he could choose a name | 25:26 | |
which was descriptive of his life | 25:27 | |
he would prefer to be called Renewed. | 25:29 | |
He says, that's what everybody is looking for. | 25:33 | |
Renew, to start over again, freshly not weary, | 25:36 | |
not cynical, not disillusioned. | 25:42 | |
And I suppose he's right. | 25:45 | |
There is in nearly every man's life | 25:48 | |
and almost in escapable nostalgia for good old days. | 25:50 | |
When we get old we want to begin again | 25:56 | |
we think of the days of our youth | 25:58 | |
as the great days of our lives, | 25:59 | |
fresh beginnings, great hopes, renewal. | 26:02 | |
So as I have been thinking about that | 26:08 | |
during these past days, | 26:10 | |
there came to my mind that great verse read this morning | 26:11 | |
by the praeses from Romans | 26:14 | |
where Saint Paul is saying to those early Christians, | 26:17 | |
"be not conformed to this world, | 26:21 | |
but be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind". | 26:25 | |
And he seems to be saying | 26:31 | |
that one of the gifts of the gospel | 26:32 | |
is this gift of renewal. | 26:34 | |
The sense of fresh beginnings and of our a new start | 26:38 | |
and of a fresh dream. | 26:40 | |
And I want to talk about that | 26:42 | |
for a little while this morning. | 26:43 | |
I read some time ago there was a professor | 26:47 | |
from the Middle West, Henry Mark, | 26:48 | |
that if you do not want your children | 26:50 | |
to over hear what you're saying, | 26:52 | |
act as if you're talking to them. | 26:53 | |
And so this morning I'm reversing that a little bit | 26:56 | |
and I'm talking primarily | 26:59 | |
to what I think is going to happen in a few years from now | 27:01 | |
in the hopes of maybe the graduating class | 27:03 | |
may overhear something I say. | 27:06 | |
The first thing I wanna say this morning | 27:11 | |
is a rather pessimistic thing | 27:13 | |
and I feel sure it's true. | 27:14 | |
So far as the vast majority of people are concerned, | 27:17 | |
life is a gradual running down. | 27:20 | |
Now that's inevitable. | 27:26 | |
That's inevitable, of course, physically speaking, | 27:27 | |
there comes a time when suddenly we realize | 27:31 | |
that we have run down considerably, physically speaking, | 27:33 | |
and the life in a sense is a process of gradually dying. | 27:38 | |
Comes as a very hard blow to us, as a very great shock. | 27:44 | |
That first time when we have to admit to ourselves | 27:49 | |
that we got more weary than we used to become. | 27:52 | |
That the print is a little smaller | 27:57 | |
and the blocks are a lot longer. | 28:00 | |
That would not be so bad in some countries | 28:05 | |
I think where they honor age, | 28:07 | |
there are some cultures | 28:08 | |
where the elderly man is a man respected, | 28:10 | |
and a man could know that as he grew older, | 28:14 | |
at least he would obtain something | 28:16 | |
to make up for this loss of physical vigor, | 28:18 | |
but not in America. | 28:20 | |
We do not for the most part honor age, | 28:23 | |
this is a young country. | 28:26 | |
We worship youth, we worship action. | 28:29 | |
So a man has to act young, even if it kills him. | 28:33 | |
And sometimes it does. | 28:37 | |
This thing does not always come as it does to an athlete, | 28:42 | |
the realization to a baseball player, for example, | 28:45 | |
that he's an old man of 38 | 28:48 | |
or a boxer who probably is toward the end when he's 32, | 28:50 | |
it sometimes comes very gradually to us, | 28:55 | |
but it comes in a way that brings about | 29:00 | |
what some psychologists call the dangerous age. | 29:02 | |
When a man or a woman in desperation | 29:07 | |
to recapture the sense of youth does something silly, | 29:09 | |
like trying to find a new wife or a new husband. | 29:11 | |
It's a bad time. | 29:17 | |
And we all have to get ready for it because it's coming. | 29:19 | |
The son of Robert Benchley says that | 29:22 | |
his father always thought he ought to take exercise | 29:26 | |
and keep in good condition, but he hardly ever did. | 29:28 | |
He says that his father bought a rowing machine | 29:31 | |
brought it home, put it under the bed | 29:33 | |
and never used it once. | 29:35 | |
He paid enough rent on a sunlamp | 29:38 | |
to buy it several times over and never turned it on. | 29:39 | |
He called the couch which he had in his study, his track | 29:44 | |
and he would announce blissfully | 29:49 | |
he was going to take a couple of turns around the track | 29:50 | |
by which he meant he was going to take a nap. | 29:52 | |
(congregation laughing) | 29:55 | |
He always insisted after he became a spectator sportsman | 29:57 | |
that the toughest game was high a lie. | 30:01 | |
He said the steps at the hippodrome | 30:03 | |
are the longest I have to climb. | 30:04 | |
(congregation laughing) | 30:06 | |
And he speaks for most of us | 30:08 | |
because we come to that time ultimately, | 30:10 | |
when suddenly we know that we have run down | 30:13 | |
and perhaps in a more serious way, | 30:18 | |
we run down mentally, many of us. | 30:22 | |
I do not know whether the faculty | 30:26 | |
would agree with me on this or not. | 30:29 | |
But about the saddest thing I see | 30:31 | |
is the average college graduate | 30:34 | |
10 years after he's graduated, he's running down. | 30:36 | |
He's an individual who has given up | 30:42 | |
all intellectual interests for the most part. | 30:44 | |
No more does he think no more does he study. | 30:46 | |
He has been too busy becoming a success. | 30:51 | |
And so perhaps he may now and again, | 30:55 | |
glance through his trade journal | 30:57 | |
or his professional magazine. | 31:00 | |
He may take a hasty look at life | 31:02 | |
at the barber shop usually, | 31:05 | |
he may read an article or two from the reader's digest, | 31:08 | |
but it has been a long time | 31:10 | |
since he really wrestled with an idea, | 31:12 | |
the social conditions of his time | 31:17 | |
and the political situation in his country, | 31:19 | |
the international problems, | 31:22 | |
all these things pass him by. | 31:23 | |
He is no longer interested. | 31:26 | |
He has run down mentally, | 31:30 | |
and this is something that can happen so easily | 31:36 | |
and we know it not, | 31:38 | |
it comes upon us and we do not know exactly | 31:39 | |
what has happened to us, but here it is, it has happened. | 31:42 | |
And it's a desperate thing. | 31:47 | |
I speak to you this morning of that possibility, | 31:49 | |
almost probability unless you're very careful | 31:53 | |
that you become a part of the majority of people | 31:57 | |
to whom life is just running down. | 32:00 | |
The late Steven Vincent Benet | 32:05 | |
I think one of America's great poets | 32:06 | |
wrote some lines a good many years ago, just four of them, | 32:09 | |
which he called, "Interestingly enough 35". | 32:12 | |
I happened to find them when I was just about that age | 32:14 | |
and they struck me hard. | 32:17 | |
This is what he wrote, | 32:19 | |
"The sky, the sun was hot. | 32:22 | |
The sky was bright and all July was overhead. | 32:24 | |
I heard the locusts first that night, | 32:30 | |
six weeks til frost they said". | 32:34 | |
And he was speaking of that moment, | 32:38 | |
when suddenly we know like all our fathers, | 32:40 | |
we will grow old and one day we will die. | 32:43 | |
That moment when this becomes real | 32:46 | |
and it can become a very destructive tragic moment | 32:51 | |
in our lives. | 32:56 | |
Other second thing I want to say this morning is | 33:00 | |
that in our generation, | 33:02 | |
we assume that there is some physical answer to this problem | 33:03 | |
that if we are running down, | 33:07 | |
we can find some physical things | 33:08 | |
which will wind us up again so to speak. | 33:09 | |
If you'll read the magazines, | 33:14 | |
you see that we assume | 33:15 | |
that there was a physical answer to every problem | 33:16 | |
that faces you the young lady that's having trouble | 33:19 | |
with her romance, only needs to change her toothpaste. | 33:21 | |
Or maybe she needs a new shampoo. | 33:26 | |
The young man who is not getting along | 33:30 | |
very well in business is wearing the wrong kind of shirt. | 33:32 | |
He needs the kind of that full of wear | 33:36 | |
for the partial rizai or something like that. | 33:37 | |
(congregation laughing) | 33:40 | |
There is a physical answer to the thing | 33:42 | |
if you're not succeeding | 33:43 | |
and all you have to do is discover what it is | 33:44 | |
somewhere you can find it. | 33:47 | |
Something that will solve the whole business, romance, | 33:49 | |
success, friendship, family life. | 33:53 | |
It's amazing how the whole pressure upon us | 33:57 | |
is to make us believe | 34:00 | |
that somewhere there is a product if we find it | 34:01 | |
that will take care of this whole business. | 34:04 | |
Some years ago, | 34:08 | |
the novelist Ernest Hemingway had a crack up in a plane | 34:09 | |
and narrowly escaped death. | 34:12 | |
He was in Africa. | 34:14 | |
I remember seeing a picture of him | 34:16 | |
shortly after that accident. | 34:17 | |
I'm sure some of you saw it. | 34:19 | |
He stands just at the edge of the jungle. | 34:21 | |
He hasn't shaved for a long time. | 34:23 | |
In one hand, he has a bunch of bananas | 34:26 | |
and the other hand a bottle of gin. | 34:28 | |
And as one of my friends says rather cynically, | 34:31 | |
who has written a book. | 34:33 | |
He says, "By looking at Hemingway, | 34:35 | |
you can't tell whether he's emerging from the jungle | 34:37 | |
or whether he's going back into it". | 34:39 | |
(congregation laughing) | 34:41 | |
But here it is, jungle philosophy, | 34:44 | |
all you need on the one hand enough to eat | 34:49 | |
and on the other hand enough to drink and all is well. | 34:52 | |
There's a physical answer to the problem that you face. | 34:57 | |
There's even a physical answer we believe if we go stale, | 35:05 | |
if life suddenly caves in on us, | 35:08 | |
you'd need to travel. | 35:10 | |
Buy yourself a ticket on a plane or a ship, | 35:12 | |
go to some other country, discover a new environment, | 35:15 | |
put yourself from here over there | 35:18 | |
and you will have a healing. | 35:20 | |
You will feel good again | 35:23 | |
and life will may have meaning for you again. | 35:24 | |
Well, I wish it were true. | 35:26 | |
There's so many Americans traveling a day, | 35:27 | |
I wish it were true. | 35:28 | |
I think it is a good thing that we travel a great deal. | 35:30 | |
I'm glad that Americans are traveling | 35:32 | |
many who can't afford to traveling | 35:34 | |
they, now can pay it later. | 35:35 | |
But it is a good thing that we are seeing other cultures | 35:39 | |
in other nations, | 35:42 | |
because then we understand our own better | 35:42 | |
and we understand our place in the world. | 35:44 | |
And I hope we have a growing appreciation of our oneness | 35:46 | |
as a world. | 35:50 | |
It's good, | 35:52 | |
but it won't solve many problems for you. | 35:53 | |
The fellow that's a born to mind | 35:55 | |
will be one of Honolulu, almost certainly. | 35:56 | |
The man who finds it very difficult | 36:02 | |
to discover a meaning in his life in Durham | 36:04 | |
probably won't find it in Hong Kong either. | 36:05 | |
And there are any number of these Americans traveling | 36:10 | |
who do only one thing, | 36:12 | |
criticize everything they see | 36:14 | |
in terms of what they have back home. | 36:16 | |
And they come back just as they left, | 36:19 | |
still unhappy, still bored, | 36:22 | |
still lacking any real purpose or meaning in their lives. | 36:25 | |
There's an old Spanish proverb that sums it up. | 36:28 | |
It says, "he who would bring home | 36:32 | |
with him the wealth of the Indies | 36:34 | |
must take the wealth of the Indies with him". | 36:37 | |
And what a man is here, he will be there | 36:42 | |
and you'll never can leave yourself behind | 36:45 | |
and this doesn't solve it. | 36:47 | |
It is a wonderful thing to travel, | 36:48 | |
but don't think it's going to change your life very much. | 36:50 | |
I don't know whether any of you have ever been | 36:54 | |
in one of those old country stores or not. | 36:56 | |
Some of the older people in this congregation, | 36:58 | |
I'm sure have been. | 37:00 | |
When I was Bishop of the Portland area, | 37:01 | |
I had Alaska under my jurisdiction | 37:03 | |
and many a time in one of those frontier, | 37:06 | |
Alaska communities, | 37:08 | |
I went into an old fashion country store. | 37:09 | |
Everything that that community had to have, | 37:12 | |
had to be in that store. | 37:15 | |
There was only one and you want to see them | 37:16 | |
piled up this way and that, | 37:20 | |
I don't know how anyone ever could find anything | 37:22 | |
and I remember a sign I saw it said, | 37:24 | |
we have it if you can find it. | 37:27 | |
(congregation laughing) | 37:29 | |
And that's our belief today. | 37:33 | |
We have it if you can find it, | 37:35 | |
we have an answer if you can discover it, | 37:37 | |
if it isn't in this product it will be this one, | 37:39 | |
search for it. | 37:41 | |
Well, I don't believe it. | 37:42 | |
And the third thing I want to say is, | 37:46 | |
all healing, all renewal has to come from inside. | 37:50 | |
It has to be something from within. | 37:57 | |
They don't have it and you can't find it. | 38:00 | |
It has to come from inside. | 38:05 | |
Not too many years ago when I graduated from college, | 38:07 | |
I was talking with a man who had been a friend | 38:11 | |
of our families for a long time. | 38:13 | |
He knew that it was a sacrifice for me to go to college. | 38:15 | |
In fact, he tried to discourage me | 38:17 | |
and it had been a hard grind. | 38:20 | |
And I remember seeing him one day and he said, | 38:21 | |
"well, do you think it was worth it?" | 38:23 | |
And I said, yes. | 38:24 | |
He said, "what did you get out of it?" | 38:27 | |
And I spoke just off the top of my head. | 38:31 | |
Well, I said, I got an attitude. | 38:33 | |
And he thought that was a rather flipping answer. | 38:36 | |
I think maybe he thought I was stupid, | 38:39 | |
but as I've lived a number of years and thought back on it, | 38:42 | |
I would still say the same thing. | 38:45 | |
I got an attitude, a critical attitude, | 38:47 | |
a horror of becoming just a victim | 38:52 | |
of high powered propaganda. | 38:54 | |
They believe in the truth and a love of it. | 38:57 | |
A desire if possible, to understand the truth and to find it | 39:01 | |
and a willingness to away these things | 39:07 | |
without first accepting a critical attitude. | 39:09 | |
I believe that was the thing I got from college, | 39:14 | |
which I value the most. | 39:16 | |
Most of the information I received I've forgotten or lost. | 39:17 | |
I discovered where it could be found | 39:21 | |
or where my secretary can find it for me. | 39:23 | |
And the main thing I believe that came from that experience | 39:26 | |
and it was a great experience, | 39:28 | |
it was a changing experience in my life | 39:30 | |
was an attitude of the critical mind, | 39:34 | |
something inside, | 39:37 | |
a psychiatrist, a psychologist, | 39:41 | |
all of those who deal with the mind | 39:42 | |
do not always agree on the right explanation | 39:45 | |
of why we do what we do. | 39:48 | |
But there's one thing on which they do all agree. | 39:49 | |
All the various schools and it is this | 39:52 | |
that a man's healing has to come from inside. | 39:55 | |
And we are discovering in these days, | 39:59 | |
that close relationship to a man's physical strength | 40:01 | |
with his inner strength and his physical health, | 40:05 | |
with his mental health. | 40:08 | |
We are discovering in this day | 40:09 | |
that if inside of us we have something | 40:11 | |
which is the center of resentment and hatred and fear | 40:13 | |
until that's removed there's nothing that can heal us | 40:16 | |
not from the outside, it has to be an inner healing. | 40:19 | |
If we are to be healed at all. | 40:23 | |
Jesus said something one time | 40:26 | |
that we have rather ignored, | 40:27 | |
we do not preach on it very much, | 40:28 | |
we did not discuss it, it's a radical statement. | 40:30 | |
He said, "blessed are you when you are persecuted | 40:33 | |
for righteousness sake". | 40:36 | |
What does that mean? | 40:37 | |
He was saying, "blessed are you, fortunate are you, | 40:38 | |
lucky are you, happy are you when you are persecuted | 40:40 | |
because you have a conviction. | 40:45 | |
And because at the end of the day, | 40:48 | |
in spite of all the unpopularity that has surrounded you, | 40:49 | |
you can live with yourself and say, | 40:52 | |
"I stood by what I believed", | 40:54 | |
happy are you, this is where it comes from. | 40:57 | |
He's saying this is health, this is success, | 41:00 | |
inside nowhere else. | 41:04 | |
Have you read that little classic, | 41:07 | |
"The Lonely Crowd" where Riesman speaks | 41:08 | |
about the outer directed in the inner directed people. | 41:11 | |
A poor man who was merely the victim | 41:14 | |
of the most pressured, | 41:16 | |
who goes wherever the pressure pushes him. | 41:17 | |
The outer directed, who is no longer actually a person, | 41:19 | |
but simply a result of what other people want him to be, | 41:23 | |
over against that inner directed individual | 41:27 | |
who has certain great convictions from within | 41:30 | |
which he stands. | 41:33 | |
That's the thing I'm speaking of | 41:35 | |
and this comes to mean strength to men. | 41:38 | |
John Wesley, who was a spiritual father | 41:41 | |
of the Methodist church, lived to be an old man of 88. | 41:43 | |
He started with a rather poor health as a child, | 41:47 | |
did enough work to kill a hundred men, | 41:50 | |
rode up and down England in all kinds of weather, | 41:52 | |
preached any number of times a day | 41:55 | |
and seemed to thrive on it and died at 88. | 41:57 | |
Toward the end of his life | 42:00 | |
somebody asked him what the secret of his health was. | 42:01 | |
And he said, "the main thing was this | 42:03 | |
I got up at four o'clock every morning. | 42:05 | |
I preached at five, it's the best exercise in the world". | 42:06 | |
I take his word for it. | 42:11 | |
I haven't tried it. | 42:13 | |
(congregation laughing) | 42:15 | |
But I think that what he was saying was this, | 42:17 | |
that when a man has a sense of a higher purpose in life, | 42:19 | |
when he's doing something that he knows is worth doing, | 42:22 | |
somehow it even affects his physical strength | 42:25 | |
that he doesn't get tired | 42:27 | |
and he has great resources, great reservoirs of power. | 42:29 | |
The man whose life is meaningless never finds, | 42:34 | |
renewal and power come from within. | 42:38 | |
There was a very cynical book in the Old Testament | 42:43 | |
called the book of Ecclesiastes | 42:45 | |
has always been a favorite of mine. | 42:47 | |
This man who's looked around | 42:49 | |
and has studied some of the cliches | 42:50 | |
that they were speaking in his generation | 42:53 | |
turns his back upon them. | 42:54 | |
He says in one place, the race is not always to the swift, | 42:56 | |
nor the battle to the strong. | 43:01 | |
And I have lived long enough | 43:04 | |
to understand something of the meaning of that. | 43:05 | |
I have seen the young man who has everything in his favor, | 43:07 | |
who walked around swiftly to the top, falters some way, | 43:10 | |
that young man who you were not very much impressed with, | 43:17 | |
perhaps at the beginning, | 43:19 | |
proves to have inside himself tremendous swiftness | 43:21 | |
and speed that carries him on and on to the heights. | 43:25 | |
I've watched those battles | 43:34 | |
and as you watched the beginning of it you said, | 43:35 | |
"this cause can't win, look what's against it. | 43:37 | |
All the newspapers, all the powerful people in the community | 43:39 | |
are on the other side, | 43:42 | |
what chance does it have | 43:44 | |
till you discover that a few people dedicated | 43:47 | |
to a high purpose win | 43:50 | |
because inside they had power that no one saw, | 43:54 | |
no one understood. | 43:59 | |
I'm saying this morning, that renewal comes from inside | 44:02 | |
not outside. | 44:06 | |
Power is from within and not from without. | 44:09 | |
If you read that famous biography of Johnson by Boswell | 44:12 | |
and I expect most of you have. | 44:16 | |
You may recall that little incident | 44:19 | |
where Boswell is reporting to Johnson | 44:20 | |
about a condemned criminal. | 44:22 | |
He said, "this man had lived a very evil life | 44:25 | |
and now just in the last days before his execution | 44:27 | |
he had suddenly turned to religion and studied it | 44:31 | |
with great intentness" | 44:33 | |
and Johnson said, | 44:35 | |
"sir when a man is going to be hanged in a fortnight, | 44:36 | |
it wonderfully concentrates his mind". | 44:39 | |
And the truth is | 44:45 | |
that when we come up against 10 great crisis in our lives, | 44:45 | |
suddenly we know that all we have is our mind. | 44:48 | |
All we are is what we are inside. | 44:54 | |
All we have to stand upon is the quality of our characters, | 44:57 | |
the faith by which we live. | 45:01 | |
You're not going to be renewed by buying that product, | 45:03 | |
you're not going to change your life | 45:08 | |
by some physical answer. | 45:10 | |
You're going to find it inside | 45:12 | |
or as Paul put it, by the renewal of your mind. | 45:14 | |
Now, the last thing I want | 45:23 | |
to say this morning is, that this, in my judgment | 45:24 | |
is one of the greatest gifts of religion. | 45:27 | |
And it is a special gift | 45:30 | |
I think that God gives us through Christ | 45:31 | |
the renewal of our minds, | 45:34 | |
He does it by giving us hope. | 45:38 | |
This may not have happened to you yet | 45:40 | |
and I hope it never does, but it has happened to some of us. | 45:42 | |
We come to the realization that we did something | 45:46 | |
that is utterly unforgivable. | 45:48 | |
We did not think it could ever happen to us, | 45:52 | |
but it did, and in that desperate moment, | 45:54 | |
what we need above everything else is hope | 45:57 | |
that somehow once more we can believe in ourselves. | 45:59 | |
And I believe that one of the great things | 46:05 | |
that Christ does for men is to perform this miracle | 46:07 | |
of restoring faith in ourselves | 46:11 | |
when we have done something that is utterly unforgivable | 46:13 | |
and we know it. | 46:17 | |
And we hope again and we try again. | 46:19 | |
You may not have had this experience | 46:23 | |
and I hope you never shall, but you might. | 46:25 | |
Some of us have, | 46:27 | |
when a friend that we trusted | 46:29 | |
and would've build our lives on, sold us out. | 46:31 | |
And there are some here this morning | 46:35 | |
who can think back with me on such an occasion | 46:36 | |
when the heavens caved in and you said, | 46:40 | |
I can never believe in anyone again, | 46:42 | |
but He came and performed that miracle upon us again. | 46:46 | |
And we began to understand | 46:49 | |
there were things in this man's life we never knew | 46:51 | |
and there are people who are trustworthy | 46:53 | |
and we began to believe in folks again, | 46:57 | |
He brought us the renewal of our hope. | 47:00 | |
And it may be that we shall have that experience | 47:04 | |
of taking the wrong turning | 47:06 | |
or coming one day to the dead end. | 47:08 | |
When all of life seems to be as a tale told by an idiot | 47:10 | |
sound and fury signifying nothing. | 47:14 | |
And then instead of sitting down | 47:19 | |
and feeling sorry for ourselves, | 47:20 | |
He may give us grace to believe that we were at fault, | 47:23 | |
not life. | 47:28 | |
And that somewhere back there, | 47:30 | |
we have to return and take the other track. | 47:31 | |
This is what's wrong | 47:34 | |
with the generation of novelists of our time. | 47:35 | |
They had been writing their stories | 47:38 | |
about men who have ignored every moral law of life, | 47:40 | |
every decent convention and then when life caves in on them, | 47:43 | |
they cry out as if life had let them down, | 47:47 | |
not once ever facing up | 47:51 | |
to maybe the truth is that they left life down | 47:52 | |
and they were wrong and not life. | 47:55 | |
He comes to us when we have taken that wrong turning | 48:00 | |
to make us hope again, that life is right. | 48:03 | |
Life is full of meaning and excitement | 48:07 | |
and unventured dignity. | 48:09 | |
We have to find the way again. | 48:12 | |
And our hope is renewed. | 48:15 | |
One of my very close friends in the console of bishops | 48:19 | |
is Bishop Frank Smith of Houston, he is retiring in 1960. | 48:21 | |
They say that he can take a young man | 48:26 | |
who has to go out to the very most difficult | 48:29 | |
discouraging job in the conference. | 48:32 | |
Put his hand on that boy shoulder | 48:35 | |
and talked to him for a little while | 48:36 | |
and the boy straightens up, throws his shoulders back | 48:38 | |
and goes out as if he was facing | 48:41 | |
the greatest opportunity there is and does a wonderful job. | 48:43 | |
So one of his friends has suggested | 48:48 | |
that they make Bishop Smith a chaplain | 48:50 | |
of Huntsville prison after he retires. | 48:51 | |
That's where they execute the bad Texans | 48:53 | |
for this friend says that Bishop Smith | 48:58 | |
could put his hand on the shoulder of a fellow | 49:00 | |
going to the electric chair | 49:01 | |
and making him think he's facing the greatest opportunity | 49:02 | |
he ever faced. | 49:04 | |
So that he'd be willing to pull the switch himself probably. | 49:06 | |
(congregation laughing) | 49:09 | |
Oh, this gift of encouragement, | 49:11 | |
this gift of a new hope, | 49:13 | |
this gift of a vision | 49:15 | |
that goes beyond the present difficulty, | 49:16 | |
what a gift that is in men | 49:20 | |
to bring encouragement to others. | 49:22 | |
But of course, above all that we can ever do | 49:25 | |
it is his gift through Christ, | 49:27 | |
to make us hope again. | 49:30 | |
To teach us that we live by faith | 49:32 | |
and no man can live for 10 minutes | 49:34 | |
on the basis of what he can prove. | 49:36 | |
That we choose this faith | 49:38 | |
that has within it the promise of God. | 49:40 | |
That we tested as Paul tells us to do, | 49:43 | |
this will of God for us. | 49:45 | |
And as we live by this faith, | 49:48 | |
to find that every day is a new life, | 49:50 | |
that there's no boredom connected with this. | 49:53 | |
That we can hardly wait for the next year | 49:56 | |
to see what life has to bring us never forget this. | 49:57 | |
Even Robert Browning wrote those off folded lines, | 50:00 | |
"Grow old along with me. | 50:03 | |
The best is yet to be", that he was a Christian | 50:05 | |
and he was speaking as a Christian. | 50:10 | |
It made no sense to the pagan and it never will. | 50:13 | |
I look around about some people who feel | 50:22 | |
that life has grown weary, | 50:25 | |
and I wonder about them what's happened to them. | 50:26 | |
Bernard Berenson, one of the great art critics of our time, | 50:30 | |
and one of the great art philosophers said, | 50:32 | |
recently, because he's an old man now, | 50:35 | |
has so much work ahead of him | 50:38 | |
that he's afraid he'll die before he finishes it. | 50:39 | |
Said he'd like to stand on a street corner, | 50:42 | |
like a beggar with his cap in his hand | 50:44 | |
and beg for some extra hours from the passerby, | 50:46 | |
who are wasting them. | 50:50 | |
And I speak to you this morning | 50:55 | |
of the kind of life, the life of hope, | 50:57 | |
the life of faith, the life of love. | 50:58 | |
That it's a constant life of renewal, | 51:02 | |
so that everyday a man begins a new with expectation | 51:04 | |
and hope for the future. | 51:10 | |
The renewal of your mind. | 51:13 | |
I close with this. | 51:17 | |
One of the outstanding priest in the church of England | 51:20 | |
is a man called Father Dolling, | 51:23 | |
who spent a good many years in Portsmouth. | 51:25 | |
His parish was down in the slum section | 51:29 | |
he was the poor man's priest. | 51:31 | |
He had a very great sense of a mission | 51:34 | |
to this parish to improve the living conditions | 51:37 | |
in this section of the city. | 51:39 | |
He discovered for example, | 51:42 | |
that the sewer system of the city of Portsmouth | 51:43 | |
had not extended itself into this slum section | 51:45 | |
there were no drains there. | 51:47 | |
It upset him so much that he began to organize opposition | 51:50 | |
and these formerly acquiesced and humble people | 51:53 | |
began to put pressure up on the mayor for a change. | 51:55 | |
And the mayor who was a good politician, | 51:59 | |
didn't want things stirred up, | 52:01 | |
and he thought everything was all right the way it was. | 52:02 | |
And so he went to the Bishop and said, | 52:05 | |
"Can't you quiet this priest?" | 52:07 | |
Told him what he was doing, | 52:09 | |
and the Bishop called Father Dolling into talk to him | 52:12 | |
and said in a nice way, | 52:15 | |
"Now this is out of your bailiwick really. | 52:16 | |
You're doing things that the priest has no business doing. | 52:18 | |
Yours is a spiritual task. | 52:21 | |
You're supposed to teach these people, | 52:23 | |
religion and theology and faith | 52:24 | |
and tell them what they ought to believe. | 52:26 | |
You have no business interfering in this". | 52:28 | |
And then Father Dolling, | 52:31 | |
who was notoriously slow of speech and fumbling with words | 52:32 | |
suddenly burst out and said, | 52:36 | |
"But my Lord, the reason I'm making a fuss | 52:38 | |
about the drains is because I believe in the incarnation. | 52:42 | |
I believe in the dignity of life. | 52:49 | |
I believe that God came into life in a real way. | 52:53 | |
I believe in everyman who has to live. | 52:58 | |
And my task therefore is to make life better for every man. | 53:02 | |
And I submit to you this, | 53:09 | |
that no man who believes in the incarnation | 53:11 | |
will ever discover that life is dull, | 53:15 | |
but he will discover that | 53:19 | |
that phase central in his life is a renewing thing | 53:20 | |
every day of his life. | 53:26 | |
Be not conformed to this world, | 53:30 | |
but be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind". | 53:33 | |
Let us stand together for the benediction. | 53:41 | |
(congregation speaking indistinctly) | 53:45 | |
Now, oh Lord, we commend into thee in a special way | 53:51 | |
these young men and young women | 53:53 | |
who graduate from this great university | 53:55 | |
and ask thy blessing upon them. | 53:57 | |
We pray especially that this experience | 54:00 | |
which has been there shall be to them through all the years | 54:02 | |
of their lives, | 54:04 | |
like a well of water springing up | 54:06 | |
to give them the water | 54:08 | |
where if they drink, they shall not thirst again. | 54:09 | |
May the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God | 54:14 | |
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit | 54:18 | |
rest and abide with you now and evermore. | 54:20 | |
(soft music) | 54:30 |
(soft music) | 0:04 | |
(congregation singing indistinctly) | 1:04 | |
(soft music) | 1:35 | |
(congregation continues singing) | 2:19 | |
- | Let us offer unto God our unison prayer of confession. | 4:29 |
Let us pray. | 4:36 | |
Our heavenly Father, who by thy love has made us, | 4:38 | |
and through thy love has kept us, | 4:44 | |
and in thy love wouldst make us perfect. | 4:47 | |
We humbly confess that we have not loved thee | 4:52 | |
with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, | 4:55 | |
and that we have not loved one another | 5:00 | |
as Christ hath loved us. | 5:03 | |
Thy light is within our souls | 5:06 | |
but our selfishness hath hindered thee. | 5:09 | |
We have not lived by faith, we have resisted thy spirit. | 5:13 | |
We have neglected thy inspirations. | 5:19 | |
Forgive what we have been. | 5:23 | |
Help us to amend what we are, | 5:25 | |
and in thy spirit direct talk we shall be | 5:28 | |
that thou must come into the full glory of thy creation | 5:33 | |
in us and in all men, | 5:38 | |
through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. | 5:41 | |
Now as our savior, Christ, hath taught us, | 5:46 | |
we humbly pray together, say, | 5:50 | |
our father who at in heaven, hallowed be thy name, | 5:53 | |
thy kingdom come. | 5:59 | |
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 6:02 | |
Give us this day our daily bread | 6:07 | |
and forgive us our trespasses | 6:10 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 6:13 | |
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, | 6:17 | |
for thine is the kingdom | 6:23 | |
and the power and the glory forever, amen. | 6:25 | |
(congregation singing) | 7:22 | |
- | First lesson for the morning is written | 10:19 |
in the First Epistle of John, | 10:21 | |
the fourth chapter of the seventh verse. | 10:24 | |
"Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God. | 10:29 | |
And he who loves is born of God and knows God. | 10:35 | |
He who does not love does not know God for God is love. | 10:40 | |
And in this, | 10:47 | |
the love of God was made manifest unto us. | 10:48 | |
That God sent his only son | 10:53 | |
into the world so that we might live through him | 10:55 | |
in this is love. | 11:01 | |
Not that we loved God, | 11:04 | |
but that he loved us and sent his son to be the expiation | 11:06 | |
for our sins. | 11:12 | |
Beloved, if God so loved us, | 11:15 | |
we are also to love one another. | 11:18 | |
No man has seen God, | 11:22 | |
but if we love one another God abides in us | 11:25 | |
and his love is perfected in us. | 11:30 | |
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us | 11:34 | |
because he has given us on his own spirit. | 11:39 | |
And we have seen and testified | 11:43 | |
that the father has sent his son as the savior of the world. | 11:46 | |
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, | 11:52 | |
God abides in him and he involved. | 11:56 | |
So we know and believe the love God has for us, | 12:01 | |
God is love. | 12:06 | |
And he who abides in love abides in God, | 12:08 | |
and God abides in him. | 12:12 | |
In this is love perfected with us | 12:16 | |
that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, | 12:20 | |
because as He is so are we in this world. | 12:24 | |
There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear, | 12:30 | |
for fear has to do with punishment. | 12:37 | |
And he who fears is not perfected in love. | 12:41 | |
We love because He first loved us." | 12:45 | |
And the second lesson in the Gospel according to Mark, | 12:53 | |
the 12th chapter and the 28th verse. | 12:56 | |
"One of the scribes came upon | 13:01 | |
and heard them disputing with one another. | 13:02 | |
And seeing that Jesus answered them well, | 13:06 | |
asked him, 'Which commandment is first of all?' | 13:09 | |
Jesus answered, 'The first is, hear, O Israel. | 13:14 | |
The Lord, our God, the Lord is one. | 13:18 | |
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, | 13:23 | |
and with all your soul and with all your mind, | 13:27 | |
and with all your strength. | 13:31 | |
The second is this, | 13:35 | |
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. | 13:38 | |
There is no other commandment greater than these.' | 13:42 | |
The scribes said to him, | 13:47 | |
'You are right teacher. | 13:47 | |
You have truly said that he is one | 13:49 | |
and there is no other but he, | 13:52 | |
and to love him with all the heart | 13:55 | |
and with all of the understanding, | 13:58 | |
and with all the strength and to love one's neighbor | 14:00 | |
as oneself is much more | 14:03 | |
than all bull burnt offerings and sacrifices.' | 14:05 | |
When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely he said to him, | 14:10 | |
'You are not far from the kingdom of God.' | 14:17 | |
After that, no one dared to ask him any questions. | 14:21 | |
May God bless you (indistinct) of His Word. | 14:28 | |
(soft music) | 14:36 | |
(congregation singing indistinctly) | 15:08 | |
- | The Lord be with you. | 17:12 |
Let us pray. | 17:15 | |
Most gracious Father, | 17:24 | |
who for every new generation prepares the new, thy blessing. | 17:28 | |
We, thy people offer this prayer of thanksgiving, | 17:35 | |
for the power thou hast given us | 17:42 | |
to lay hold of things unseen. | 17:44 | |
For the strong sense we have that | 17:48 | |
this world is not our abiding pole, | 17:52 | |
but our restless hearts, | 17:57 | |
which nothing finite tend to satisfy, | 18:00 | |
we give thee thanks, oh, God. | 18:04 | |
For the invasion of our souls by thy Holy Spirit, | 18:10 | |
for all human love and goodness that speak to us of thee, | 18:15 | |
for the fullness of thy glory outpour in Jesus Christ. | 18:23 | |
We give thee thanks, oh, God, thou author of every good. | 18:30 | |
Let us offer unto God our prayer of intercession | 18:39 | |
for all conditions of men. | 18:42 | |
Loving and Holy Spirit of God, | 18:46 | |
we pray that we and all men may increasingly work together | 18:51 | |
that thy will may be done on the Earth, | 18:57 | |
that the resources of the Earth may be gathered, distributed | 19:03 | |
and used with unselfish motives and scientific skill, | 19:08 | |
for the benefit of all. | 19:15 | |
That beauty may be given to our towns | 19:19 | |
and left to our countryside, | 19:23 | |
that children may be finely bred and finely trained, | 19:28 | |
that there may be open ways, | 19:37 | |
and peace and freedom from end to end of all the Earth. | 19:40 | |
That all men may learn goodwill through keeping thy company. | 19:49 | |
Let us offer onto God our prayer of intercession | 19:59 | |
for our own country. | 20:03 | |
At this season of remembrance, | 20:07 | |
we commend unto thee our country, | 20:09 | |
so distraught in its thinking, | 20:13 | |
so puzzled in it's acting | 20:18 | |
as it seeks to serve both thee and mammon. | 20:22 | |
Help each of us to remember | 20:28 | |
that's unless thou doest build the nation, | 20:32 | |
we labor in vain as we seek to put it together. | 20:35 | |
Recall to us our forebears, | 20:42 | |
who came here because they wanted freedom to worship thee. | 20:44 | |
Help us to be in spirit, their children. | 20:51 | |
Recall to us our ancestors who made this country, America, | 20:57 | |
independent, free, | 21:02 | |
and help us to preserve in it the independence and freedom, | 21:07 | |
which allows us to worship thee and server others, | 21:12 | |
in Christ's name. | 21:18 | |
Let us offer unto God our prayer of supplication | 21:21 | |
that we may always have His spirit. | 21:27 | |
Eternal God, in whom is our health and our peace, | 21:34 | |
how may we utter our need of thee? | 21:42 | |
Our minds need thee to give them poise. | 21:48 | |
Our wills need thee to give them strength. | 21:54 | |
Our hearts need thee to give them triumph. | 22:00 | |
We need thee as we labor for a better to world. | 22:07 | |
Very urgent is our need of thee | 22:13 | |
if we are to face persistent evil | 22:17 | |
with hopeful determination. | 22:21 | |
Oh, thou who understandest us | 22:25 | |
better than we understand ourselves, | 22:29 | |
grant unto us a healing, | 22:33 | |
heartening consciousness of thy presence | 22:36 | |
as revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord. | 22:40 | |
And the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ | 22:45 | |
be with us all ever more, amen. | 22:50 | |
(soft music) | 23:06 | |
(congregation singing) | 26:27 | |
All mighty God, | 29:25 | |
in whom we live and move and have our being, | 29:28 | |
we offer and present unto thee our gifts. | 29:33 | |
A symbol of our sacrifice, | 29:38 | |
ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, | 29:41 | |
and living sacrifice unto thee, | 29:50 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 29:54 | |
- | Let us pray. | 30:32 |
Oh, God, who has given unto us thy Word | 30:35 | |
put a lamp onto our path, and light unto our feet. | 30:38 | |
Grant us (indistinct), | 30:45 | |
adhering in faith and acting in obedience. | 30:49 | |
We may ever glorify thy name, | 30:53 | |
through Christ, our Lord, Amen. | 30:57 | |
On a text, we take the phrase | 31:03 | |
from the Epistle which was read for our first lesson. | 31:05 | |
"We love because he first loved us." | 31:09 | |
Concerning the love of God for us, it might be said | 31:17 | |
that there's nothing we need more urgently, | 31:22 | |
or find more difficult to believe in than this. | 31:26 | |
We need, of course, to believe that God loves us. | 31:32 | |
We cannot live even without human love. | 31:37 | |
An unwanted infant may receive the best of scientific care, | 31:43 | |
but if he does not receive love, he languishes and dies. | 31:49 | |
A boy may go out into the street from an unloving home, | 31:55 | |
either with or without plenty of money in his pocket. | 31:59 | |
And he soon becomes a juvenile delinquent. | 32:04 | |
Multitudes of people perpetuate | 32:09 | |
not only in their own adult years | 32:11 | |
but in the lives of their children, | 32:14 | |
same fears and anxieties and hostility | 32:17 | |
that are caused by the perversion of or the want of love | 32:21 | |
in their own childhood. | 32:27 | |
To be unwanted, to be forced to live | 32:30 | |
but at the same time not to be loved, | 32:34 | |
can become so unendurable | 32:38 | |
that men will take to crime, to war, to rebellion | 32:40 | |
in an effort to claim for themselves | 32:46 | |
the heritage of being loved and accepted, | 32:49 | |
which life has denied. | 32:54 | |
We need, if life is to be endurable at all, | 32:57 | |
we need to be loved by other people. | 33:01 | |
How much more we need the assurance | 33:06 | |
that we are loved by God, | 33:08 | |
how indeed are we to endure and to come triumphant | 33:11 | |
through the evil and tragedy that beset human history | 33:16 | |
and befall inescapably in some measure on us fall, | 33:22 | |
without the sustaining confidence that through all of this, | 33:27 | |
God loves us and his love prevails. | 33:31 | |
And of course, we're always trying to work out our own ways | 33:37 | |
of meeting and overcoming our misfortunes | 33:41 | |
and our sufferings without taking God into account. | 33:43 | |
Sometimes we attempt it by denying that evil exists at all, | 33:48 | |
except as a kind of illusion in our inconstant minds. | 33:52 | |
To do that may give us a kind of temporary peace, | 33:57 | |
but we don't succeed in maintaining the illusion very long. | 34:02 | |
And even while we do, | 34:06 | |
by maintaining it we make ourselves irrelevant | 34:09 | |
to the great conflict between life and death, | 34:13 | |
good and evil and rages through human history | 34:16 | |
that is a part of the life of every individual. | 34:20 | |
And again, we attempt to set bounds to our suffering | 34:26 | |
and to make ourselves safe behind defenses | 34:30 | |
of our own erecting. | 34:33 | |
In 1939, James Hilton, | 34:35 | |
who you may remember as the author of "Shangri-La", | 34:38 | |
wrote an essay in which he, looking ahead | 34:43 | |
to the catastrophe that was about to fall on the world, | 34:46 | |
in which he said that there was so much evil | 34:51 | |
in the world that we cannot, | 34:54 | |
we dare not open ourselves to it all. | 34:56 | |
"The best we can do," said Hilton, | 35:00 | |
"Is to make very sure of what we love | 35:03 | |
and shut all the rest out entirely." | 35:07 | |
Not a great many people were trying that in 1939, | 35:13 | |
the great many more are still trying it today. | 35:18 | |
Most of us in fact give most of our time, our thought, | 35:22 | |
our energy, our resource, to the attempt to arrange life | 35:27 | |
so that we can make sure of what we love | 35:32 | |
and can shut out all the rest that imperils. | 35:36 | |
Then sooner or later as individuals, | 35:44 | |
and as societies and as nations, | 35:47 | |
we discover this can't be done. | 35:51 | |
No American standard of living, | 35:54 | |
no particular pattern of life, | 35:58 | |
no personal security or achievement can preserve us | 36:02 | |
or be preserved against the changes of time, | 36:08 | |
the forces of destruction, the last triumph of day. | 36:12 | |
Only a love greater than all of these can save us. | 36:19 | |
Well, can we believe that God does love us with such love | 36:28 | |
or we need desperately to be able to think that he can | 36:35 | |
and that he does? | 36:39 | |
(indistinct) And this may come somewhat as a surprise | 36:43 | |
to us if we recognize it, | 36:47 | |
we need to believe in the love of God | 36:50 | |
in order to make the thought of God himself endurable to us. | 36:52 | |
It is one thing of course, | 36:59 | |
to believe somewhat vaguely in the existence of God. | 37:00 | |
It is something more to believe | 37:06 | |
that he has certain attributes and thoughts. | 37:08 | |
It is still something else to believe that | 37:12 | |
among these attributes, one is the character of love. | 37:15 | |
And it is still a greater thing | 37:21 | |
to believe that love stands first | 37:23 | |
among all the attributes of God. | 37:27 | |
So preeminent in fact, | 37:30 | |
that the writer of our Epistle this morning says, | 37:32 | |
"Not God doesn't love but simply God is love." | 37:35 | |
well, suppose He were not. | 37:44 | |
Suppose as a large number of mankind, | 37:48 | |
past and present have believed | 37:51 | |
that God is merely a passive being, | 37:54 | |
taking no interest in the fortunes | 37:58 | |
and the hopes and sorrows, | 38:00 | |
the dangers and distresses of we whom he has created. | 38:01 | |
Suppose Elijah's talk to the priest of Baal in Mount Carmel | 38:08 | |
are indeed through of the Lord of Israel also. | 38:12 | |
"Cry aloud," said Elijah, "For he is a god. | 38:16 | |
Either he is musing or he's gone aside, | 38:19 | |
or he's gone on a journey | 38:22 | |
or perhaps he's just fallen asleep." | 38:24 | |
You can talk the idolaters that way | 38:28 | |
only when you are convinced | 38:31 | |
that the Lord of Israel slumbers nor sleeps. | 38:34 | |
Belief in an indifferent God | 38:41 | |
would be almost more than unbearable, would it not? | 38:46 | |
Enough to believe in any God (indistinct). | 38:51 | |
Suppose God be as some have held him, | 38:59 | |
not simply indifferent to our loss and fortune | 39:02 | |
but purposefully malevolent toward us. | 39:06 | |
At the end of his life, | 39:11 | |
HG Wells said he was searching for a word | 39:12 | |
or the Supreme being that would not have | 39:15 | |
the same kindly meaning attached to it, | 39:18 | |
that goes with the name God. | 39:22 | |
And he decided at last to call the Supreme being | 39:26 | |
the antagonists. | 39:31 | |
"The stand," he said, "For the unknown implacable | 39:34 | |
who had put up with creation for a long time | 39:39 | |
but now at the last most determined to wipe it out." | 39:43 | |
Well, there are times in human history | 39:49 | |
when men have been tempted to take this view | 39:51 | |
of God's attitude toward us. | 39:54 | |
There are times in human life | 39:56 | |
when we are all compelled to raise the pride. | 39:58 | |
How can any good God let this happen? | 40:02 | |
Under the duress of human history and experience, | 40:07 | |
we find ourselves driven to that point where | 40:10 | |
if we are to endure the thought that there is of God at all, | 40:13 | |
we must be able to think of him as a God of love. | 40:18 | |
Mildred Cable, who spent 30 long years in missionary travels | 40:25 | |
in the Gobi Desert, | 40:30 | |
drove camel one day in her journeys, | 40:32 | |
on a row of Muslim tombs. | 40:35 | |
In one of these every year, | 40:38 | |
some holy man of the Mohammed and faith entered | 40:41 | |
and was sealed up with an opening left just large enough | 40:44 | |
to hand him a pitcher of water at sunset. | 40:48 | |
There for 40 days he fasted, | 40:53 | |
his only occupation repeating over | 40:57 | |
and over the 99 attributes of Allah, | 41:00 | |
dropping a pebble to the floor as he pronounced each name. | 41:05 | |
Mildred Cable says that, | 41:12 | |
"As I stood there | 41:14 | |
and let my imagination picture the stones | 41:15 | |
falling ceaselessly from the fingers of this man, | 41:19 | |
who knew all the 99 names for God, | 41:24 | |
except the one thing that would have changed everything | 41:29 | |
for him, God is love." | 41:35 | |
Endured as we are in life and history, | 41:43 | |
we can surmise many characteristics | 41:47 | |
of God that seemed to fit with our experience. | 41:50 | |
He is tall, He is mind, | 41:53 | |
He is the prime mover, | 41:57 | |
He is the antagonist or He is not at all. | 41:59 | |
But what we need to be able to say and believe about him is, | 42:06 | |
that He is love. | 42:11 | |
For unless God is love, nothing really matters, | 42:13 | |
not for long. | 42:20 | |
We need then to believe that God is love, | 42:24 | |
but can we believe? | 42:26 | |
Is there not too much in our experience | 42:29 | |
to contradict this claim that faith makes? | 42:31 | |
Indeed it is not those very... | 42:34 | |
Is it not those very considerations that make up our need | 42:36 | |
for his love that also tempt us to believe | 42:40 | |
that faith in his love is only an illusion, | 42:44 | |
which sentimentally religious people can accept? | 42:48 | |
I think a great deal here as in many matters in life, | 42:53 | |
depends upon the point of view that you choose | 42:57 | |
when you start thinking about this question. | 43:00 | |
Take for example, the Parable of the City, | 43:04 | |
"A man," he says, "Tries to cross a busy street. | 43:07 | |
As he steps out into the traffic, | 43:11 | |
a truck comes bearing down on him. | 43:14 | |
And only because it swerves aside at the last moment, | 43:17 | |
does he escape being run over. | 43:20 | |
'God loves me,' he says, 'He's spared my life.' | 43:23 | |
A few days later, he ventures across the street, | 43:29 | |
but this time the truck does run him down | 43:31 | |
and he is carried off to the hospital mangled but alive. | 43:34 | |
'God loves me,' he says, gratefully, | 43:39 | |
'He spared my life.' | 43:41 | |
(speaks indistinctly) He makes a third venture | 43:45 | |
into the world of traffic and this time gets killed. | 43:47 | |
'God loves him,' say his friends, 'He took him home." | 43:52 | |
And now from the point of view of the skeptic of course, | 43:58 | |
God may love this man but he cannot be set to do so | 44:01 | |
in all three instances. | 44:05 | |
You cannot maintain that God loves him equally well. | 44:08 | |
Whether he escapes harm or simply has his life spared, | 44:12 | |
or gets killed in order to take him into eternity. | 44:18 | |
To say that sort of thing from the skeptic point of view | 44:22 | |
is to throw logic to the wind. | 44:26 | |
And yet it is just such an affirmation as this, | 44:30 | |
which the Christian makes. | 44:34 | |
God can and does love the man | 44:36 | |
no matter what may happen to him. | 44:40 | |
The question whether God loves him is not to be answered | 44:43 | |
by trying to identify that love with our own particular idea | 44:47 | |
as to what is good or bad for the man. | 44:54 | |
Indeed it is just this mistake of measuring God's love | 44:58 | |
for us by the way it fits into our own particular idea | 45:02 | |
as to what his love should be | 45:07 | |
so often makes it difficult for us | 45:10 | |
to believe that he loves us at all. | 45:12 | |
We are not going to believe Him unless it coincides | 45:16 | |
with our own love for ourselves. | 45:22 | |
You'll remember (indistinct) | 45:27 | |
about the prayers of the people under his roof. | 45:32 | |
How they would say to God, | 45:36 | |
"Leave thy heavens and come down | 45:37 | |
to our earth of water clocks and hedges, | 45:39 | |
be interesting and weak like ourselves | 45:42 | |
and we will love you as we love ourselves." | 45:45 | |
All of our pain and sorrow is made up | 45:51 | |
in some part of real affliction, | 45:53 | |
but also it is made up of grief and bitterness | 45:57 | |
that brings it out because something | 46:01 | |
of our own self centered life is being denied or torn out. | 46:03 | |
All of our protests, God can't love me | 46:11 | |
or He wouldn't let this happen to me. | 46:15 | |
There's the infliction of our own wound self love. | 46:18 | |
Believe that God loves us | 46:27 | |
to meet whatever may happen to us | 46:30 | |
with a persuasion that neither death nor life, | 46:32 | |
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, | 46:35 | |
nor things present, nor things to come, | 46:38 | |
nor height, nor depth, | 46:42 | |
nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God | 46:44 | |
in Christ Jesus. | 46:48 | |
To believe this is possible only as we are delivered | 46:50 | |
from the self calculation that sees everything | 46:54 | |
through the eyes of our own desire. | 46:59 | |
And when we begin to yield all that we are, | 47:02 | |
or desire or cherish into the hands of God, | 47:05 | |
in order to pass from human love to divine love | 47:11 | |
(speaks indistinctly) a new burden is needed. | 47:16 | |
These words come not from an armchair philosophy | 47:23 | |
but from a man who spent five long years | 47:27 | |
in a concentration camp, | 47:30 | |
trying to cheer thousands of his federal country men, | 47:33 | |
to whom every form of human love, friends, lovers, family, | 47:37 | |
was denied. | 47:44 | |
To pass from human love to divine love, | 47:46 | |
a new birth is needed. | 47:51 | |
That new birth which makes belief | 47:57 | |
in the love of God possible will show itself for one thing, | 47:59 | |
in the way in which we now seek to know God for himself. | 48:04 | |
In human experience, love comes only as the result of a law | 48:10 | |
or at least a vivid and intimate personal meeting. | 48:15 | |
We seldom love strangers. | 48:19 | |
We find it difficult to believe we are loved by somebody | 48:22 | |
we have never even known. | 48:26 | |
How are we to conclude that God does not love us | 48:30 | |
if we have never come to know him | 48:35 | |
as one person can know another? | 48:39 | |
We may not of course deny that he exists. | 48:42 | |
Our Atheism is of another kind. | 48:46 | |
The Psalmers described it simply by saying, | 48:49 | |
"God is not in all our core. | 48:51 | |
Being able to believe in and to receive the love of God | 48:55 | |
waits upon our willingness to seek God and come to know him | 48:59 | |
as far as we are able, | 49:04 | |
and to speak with him as a man speaketh to a friend." | 49:06 | |
But more than that, our failure to know God | 49:13 | |
and therefore to be assured that he loves us | 49:16 | |
is more than a matter of chance. | 49:20 | |
This is strange but the truth is we do not know God | 49:22 | |
because we do not want to know him. | 49:26 | |
We do not believe he loves us | 49:29 | |
because we do not want his love. | 49:31 | |
All love makes a claim upon us. | 49:36 | |
We cannot accept it | 49:40 | |
without giving back something of ourselves, | 49:42 | |
some love of our own. | 49:45 | |
And that always means surrendering | 49:48 | |
something of our own self will. | 49:51 | |
Bride at the June wedding is no longer asked | 49:54 | |
to promise that she will love, honor and obey. | 49:57 | |
Perhaps this change in the ritual is a gain for everybody, | 50:02 | |
including the groom. | 50:06 | |
But if the marriage is founded on love, | 50:09 | |
the bride is nevertheless surrendering herself | 50:12 | |
to an obedience which love makes inescapable. | 50:15 | |
And the groom too has to make the same surrender | 50:19 | |
and offer the same obedience. | 50:25 | |
And when neither husband nor wife are willing any longer | 50:29 | |
to live with that kind of selfless surrender, | 50:33 | |
then not only does the marriage fail, | 50:38 | |
but their refusal begins to express itself in anger | 50:41 | |
and bitterness and in hostility. | 50:46 | |
If we are to be able to believe that God loves us, | 50:51 | |
therefore to accept his love | 50:56 | |
in all the experiences of our lives, | 50:58 | |
we shall have to make that kind of surrender to him. | 51:02 | |
The love of Christ constrains us from fall. | 51:08 | |
We're never quite sure whether to take his words | 51:13 | |
as a promise, or our guidance and reassurance, | 51:15 | |
or as a threat to our independence and self will. | 51:20 | |
When you cannot accept love, | 51:25 | |
when you will not make the surrender | 51:29 | |
that the acceptance of love demands, | 51:30 | |
then you must reject the love | 51:35 | |
even though you will be driven to bitterness | 51:38 | |
and to violence or you can cut yourself free, | 51:41 | |
thus from human love, divine love, a new birth is needed. | 51:48 | |
Only those who are delivered from the love of themselves | 51:57 | |
can begin to know and to believe in the love of God. | 52:01 | |
Well, if this is all we might say | 52:08 | |
concerning the love of God for us, | 52:10 | |
we might find out understanding of our problem may be fear, | 52:13 | |
but it might well be doubted | 52:18 | |
whether we will have found | 52:19 | |
the love of God anymore real or present for us. | 52:20 | |
To be able to say only that we need God's love desperately, | 52:25 | |
and that to believe his love requires us to be born again | 52:30 | |
might be the cause for despair more than hope. | 52:34 | |
If God really loves us, would He not both give us his love, | 52:39 | |
and at the same time give us the power, the will, | 52:44 | |
the capacity to believe Him | 52:49 | |
and to accept the love that He wants? | 52:51 | |
The answer to that question is, | 52:55 | |
he not only would do so but he does do so. | 52:58 | |
Bernard writing to his friars | 53:03 | |
in the medieval monastery said, | 53:05 | |
"He loves both more than you love | 53:07 | |
and before you love at all." | 53:11 | |
The patriarch of the early church | 53:15 | |
when we were reading this morning makes quite clear | 53:17 | |
what he means. | 53:20 | |
"We love because he first loved us. | 53:21 | |
Hearing is the love of God. | 53:26 | |
Not that we love him but that he loved us and sent his son | 53:28 | |
to be the expiation for our sins." | 53:34 | |
The Lord is fair, the love of God is given us in a person, | 53:39 | |
Jesus Christ. | 53:45 | |
In our helplessness, the love of God acts to deliver us | 53:47 | |
even before we think for us. | 53:52 | |
The form of his giving is in one who enters, | 53:57 | |
and shares and redeems our lives. | 54:00 | |
And the time of his giving is always beforehand. | 54:03 | |
It is by the (indistinct) love of God, | 54:10 | |
that we are rescued and made triumphant | 54:14 | |
over all that history or experience may bring | 54:18 | |
to afflict or to destroy. | 54:22 | |
But are we able to believe this and to live by it, | 54:26 | |
to say that it is true for us? | 54:31 | |
The answer to that can only be discovered | 54:34 | |
by those who will make the venture of living | 54:36 | |
as if it is true for them. | 54:39 | |
To discover God loves us is to face the doubts | 54:43 | |
and hazards that be set us with courage, | 54:46 | |
with determination to find our way through them | 54:50 | |
and in doing so to make a complete surrender | 54:53 | |
of our course into the hands of God. | 54:57 | |
To discover that is to undergo pain and defeat, | 55:02 | |
and grief in the assurance that in everything, | 55:05 | |
he is able to work for good with those who love him. | 55:08 | |
It is to face and battle against temptations | 55:15 | |
to self-indulgent, to self aggrandizement, | 55:19 | |
and to self (speaks indistinctly), | 55:23 | |
we can do all things through him who strengthens us. | 55:27 | |
To learn to believe that God loves us, | 55:32 | |
is to learn slowly and by his grace, | 55:36 | |
that we can be certain of that love | 55:40 | |
only as we've come to love one another. | 55:42 | |
Those who make such ventures in all probability, | 55:47 | |
those who never made such ventures will never discover | 55:50 | |
whether the love of God is true or not. | 55:55 | |
Those who do, take the risk and make the venture. | 56:01 | |
More then the discovery turns from doubt to probability | 56:07 | |
and from probability to unfailing and blessed assurance. | 56:13 | |
The end of the 19th century the brilliant, | 56:19 | |
young English historian, John Wilhelm Rowntree, | 56:22 | |
discovered at the very time when the promise of his learning | 56:27 | |
and his devout personal life were about to come to fruition | 56:31 | |
that his eyesight was failing. | 56:36 | |
The day came when his physician told him the truth. | 56:39 | |
He would soon be totally blind. | 56:43 | |
He came out from the consultation with the doctor | 56:49 | |
into the street and stood for a few moments | 56:52 | |
by a railing in the sunlight to collect himself. | 56:56 | |
And as he wrote later, | 57:00 | |
"As he stood there, he suddenly felt the love of God | 57:01 | |
wrap him round as though a visible presence enfolded him | 57:08 | |
and a joy filled him such as he had never known before." | 57:15 | |
We're are to be going blind, | 57:24 | |
to be facing the darkness beyond our prideful | 57:28 | |
for the future, stand sometimes on the dizzy edge | 57:31 | |
of dark or even despair, | 57:36 | |
and yet to feel the love of God wrap us about, | 57:41 | |
as though a visible presence enfolds. | 57:45 | |
To know this is to believe and find proof | 57:50 | |
that God is love, | 57:56 | |
(indistinct) it is that we love because He first loved us. | 58:00 | |
Let us pray. | 58:10 | |
We rejoice, oh, God, in all the light of thy truth, | 58:18 | |
and guide us on our way and grant us | 58:21 | |
with it also thy same spirit. | 58:24 | |
We may be guided into all love for thee and for one another. | 58:28 | |
Now may the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 58:34 | |
grace of God, the Father, | 58:38 | |
communion of the Holy Spirit be with us this day | 58:40 | |
and forever more. | 58:44 | |
(congregation singing indistinctly) | 59:05 | |
(bells ringing) | 1:00:35 | |
(soft music) | 1:00:45 |