James A. Jones - "Beyond a Religion of Comfort" (January 26, 1958)

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Man	And you see it's recording now.	0:04
	Now, you watch that little line.	0:06
	And when that thing is so that it never crosses	0:09
	when he speaks so loud, see, you can make it cross,	0:13
	see how I it did it, watch.	0:17
	No, I didn't do loud enough.	0:20
	You can make it cross, like then see when that overlaps,	0:21
	Well, you keep your volume so that it doesn't cross	0:24
	and it'll record all right.	0:28
	You might record a little bit	0:29
	of the scripture lessons just to see how it's gonna go.	0:31
	And you leave the input here and you wanna go this way,	0:40
	so you'll press there and just let it run	0:44
	through the sermon, watch the volume a little bit,	0:46
	after you set it, you won't have to worry about it.	0:49
	It's easy to do that.	0:51
	(organ playing in the distance)	0:53
Preacher	The one thing beyond all others that makes us	1:20
	the marvel of the world here in America is the way we get	1:25
	about over the face of the earth.	1:30
	The average American will take a longer journey	1:34
	on a weekend than most of the sons of men will take	1:38
	in the duration of their lives.	1:43
	In this holiday season between semesters,	1:47
	many a Duke student will cover more ground than most	1:51
	of the children of men will cover in their lifetime.	1:57
	It is not only this insatiable yen to get from here	2:03
	to yonder if for no apparent reason whatsoever,	2:08
	that marks us as Americans.	2:12
	It is our insistence that in our journey,	2:15
	we shall be comfortable.	2:19
	We can board a train and get a private room	2:23
	with a full length bed and adjust the temperature	2:27
	to suit our taste and sleep our way to New York.	2:31
	We can get on a plane and the attendant is always coming	2:37
	around to flop up the pillows or to give us a blanket	2:41
	or to tilt back for chairs.	2:46
	We can get in our cars of late,	2:49
	that are mechanically designed to absorb the shock	2:53
	of the road, that are air conditioned to take out	2:58
	the sting of the weather and that are designed	3:03
	for our physical wellbeing, like a library chair,	3:07
	and go across the continent at a speed limit that is only	3:13
	a patriotic concession to the public stature.	3:17
	The simple fact is we go from here to yonder.	3:22
	Not only that we insist, we go comfortably.	3:27
	Unfortunately, this part of you has begun to spill over	3:34
	into other areas of life.	3:38
	We insist that in the journeys of life,	3:42
	we shall be comfortable.	3:45
	We are coming to insist that the journey	3:47
	of life must be comfortable.	3:50
	The title has been employed.	3:55
	About 100 books have been written on the central theme,	3:58
	'How to Succeed in 10 Easy Steps'.	4:02
	And we are far more concerned that the steps be easy,	4:07
	than that we get to the serious business of defining	4:11
	what is success.	4:14
	Every college and university in the United States is short	4:18
	of scholarship fund.	4:22
	Every college and university in the United States	4:25
	of which I know anything has a credit balance	4:29
	in it's student loan funds.	4:33
	The simple fact is that we belong to a generation	4:37
	that insists that the treasures that we claim	4:41
	for ourselves shall be possessed	4:45
	without any great duress.	4:48
	Time was when a hostess invited us to come to dinner	4:53
	and she went to the problem and serious personal problem	4:57
	of cooking on Saturday or early Sunday morning	5:01
	to get the chores done.	5:05
	There are places in the world today	5:09
	where parents would carry their children through storm	5:11
	and sleet and snow to get them to the first grade.	5:16
	What has happened to us?	5:21
	Now, instead of preparing the meal, it is ordered	5:23
	in many places from a delicatessen.	5:27
	I've eaten home cooked meals, and I'm sure you have	5:31
	that made me wish during the dinner, and afterwards	5:35
	that they had been ordered from the delicatessen.	5:39
	But nonetheless, the very grace of hospitality	5:42
	has been robbed of its adversities.	5:46
	And as for children in these days, we insist	5:50
	that they be taken from the door of our home,	5:54
	to the door of the school house, be the sun never so bright	5:57
	in the sky.	6:02
	Now this is not a kind of sadism that wants	6:05
	to disregard our high standard of living.	6:07
	I believe that every deserving man needs an opportunity	6:12
	for higher education.	6:15
	I know that duties of home can become oppressive.	6:18
	I'm quite well convinced that children still have	6:22
	the disposition that seems to belong to their breed	6:26
	to step in every mud puddle along the way,	6:29
	and thus jeopardize their health.	6:32
	But finally, we get to the part of you	6:35
	that you can go anywhere you want in this life	6:38
	and be anything that really counts and all the while,	6:42
	be comfortable.	6:47
	Our catch word today is security, all kinds of security.	6:52
	Maybe we have not devised a way whereby at evening time	6:59
	for the human race, it shall be light,	7:03
	but we are well on the way to advising a fashion by which	7:06
	at evening time, nobody shall be poor.	7:10
	The greatest gamble in all the world,	7:14
	the gamble of agriculture now is robbed of some	7:16
	of its peril with crop insurance.	7:20
	The list runs on and on.	7:24
	Men in public office promising us everything under the sun,	7:28
	so that we are not so much citizens of the state	7:33
	as wards of the state.	7:36
	And they are exceeded in what they promise only	7:41
	by those individuals who want to get in public office.	7:44
	The time will come in this Republic,	7:50
	as it always comes in God's long run over the years	7:53
	when we shall have men who have the courage to dare us	7:57
	and not the capacity to nurse us.	8:00
	Who will remind us again that every glory road has	8:04
	along its way, signs of a cross.	8:07
	And that the crown, that really is the crown of valor,	8:12
	for God or for man is the crown of thought.	8:16
	This part of you, which insistent	8:23
	on comfort is our modern religious heresy.	8:25
	We have seen this surmise that if you are right with God,	8:31
	nothing possibly can go wrong with you.	8:34
	That if you have an ulcer of the stomach,	8:39
	it's due to a guilt complex.	8:41
	That if you have a headache, it's because you're angry.	8:44
	And some reputable physicians and surgeons are insisting	8:49
	that cancer itself, time and again is	8:53
	to be attributed to anxiety.	8:56
	We are in debt to those who remind us of	9:00
	the intimate union between body and spirit	9:03
	in the human frame.	9:06
	And no doubt there are times when people have ulcers	9:09
	because they are worried and have headaches	9:12
	because they are angry and perhaps even have carcinoma	9:15
	because are distressed.	9:20
	But there are people who have these troubles	9:23
	who are not so afflicted with these perplexities	9:25
	of the heart.	9:29
	It is always a dangerous thing to generalize in reverse.	9:31
	And to say that because such a condition obtains in the life	9:37
	of an individual, this is it's sole explanation.	9:40
	And yet we have created in religion today,	9:47
	a kind of collective wellbeing.	9:49
	The word well has been robbed of its spiritual connotation.	9:54
	By it we mean that we are proceeding satisfactorily.	9:59
	Life is on course, the sun is in the sky.	10:03
	The sea is calm, nobody is sick or disturbed	10:06
	and everything is well clear around the clock.	10:10
	And if it's not so, then God is not in his heaven,	10:14
	no more is He in the heart of the man who borrows his name.	10:19
	Well now this modern religious heresy, really is	10:25
	a corrective of a heresies.	10:28
	After the Protestant reformation,	10:32
	two great movements took place within the Christian Church.	10:34
	One of them was a theological movement that attempted	10:39
	to capitalize upon what the enlightenment or	10:42
	the Renaissance had done to the minds of men.	10:46
	The other one was a social movement, which attempted	10:51
	to bring to bed up on the complexities	10:54
	of man's social order,	10:57
	the results of the industrial revolution.	10:59
	Of late, we have tried to address ourselves	11:04
	to the serious problem of bringing this gospel of God,	11:07
	about which Christian people are disposed to talk,	11:11
	down to the intimate levels where individuals live.	11:14
	And it has been surmised, that God must relate himself to	11:19
	what we call individual happiness.	11:23
	God of course is concerned for individual joy	11:29
	and not to track it in semantics, as it may appear.	11:32
	There is a fundamental and the spiritual difference	11:36
	between happiness, contentment with what happens to you	11:40
	and joy, which is that fundamental disposition of the spirit	11:46
	that transforms a man's circumstance.	11:51
	But in these first years of the 20th century,	11:57
	there has been created a part of you in the life	12:03
	of the church, which reminds us that we must be comfortable.	12:06
	And if we are not, our religion is out of kilter.	12:11
	And so history repeats itself.	12:17
	Man setting about to amend one fault, creates another.	12:19
	For what is heresy, but the disposition of man	12:26
	to carry on this elated truth to its logical conclusion.	12:29
	This morning, I'm suggesting to you a very simple,	12:35
	and I'm certain, a quite often discussed theme.	12:39
	Perhaps a man can be Christian and comfortable	12:43
	at the same time, but a man cannot insist	12:47
	that Christianity and the comfortableness	12:53
	of his own spirit are mutually interchangeable.	12:57
	Perhaps you can be religious without pain,	13:03
	but my friend, you cannot be Christian without pain.	13:08
	For squarely at the middle of the gospel we profess,	13:15
	is the shape of a cross.	13:19
	It is no accident that this beautiful church is fashioned	13:23
	in that pole.	13:28
	For here is the truth, that for the men who bear	13:32
	the name of God in Christ, there is no way	13:37
	to the soul's ultimate honor, except the way of anguish.	13:43
	How can a Christian be comfortable in a world like this?	13:50
	How can a Christian be satisfied	13:57
	with his own personal circumstance,	14:00
	or with the circumstance of the society which he is a part	14:03
	when his own life falls far short of that	14:08
	which it was meant to be on the Christ,	14:11
	and when the kingdom seems to delay forever in its coming.	14:14
	Perhaps you can get from here to yonder,	14:22
	in the journeys of life comfortably,	14:24
	but you cannot get from the city of destruction	14:28
	to the city of God on the same term.	14:31
	I suggest that we examine that truth in the light	14:38
	of two simple facts.	14:41
	The first of them is this,	14:45
	that Christian experience is far more than satisfaction	14:48
	with one mortal in doom.	14:57
	Maybe God insists that there be a cross in the passion	15:02
	of things because we are more than mortal.	15:07
	The second proposition is this,	15:14
	our Christian experience is built not upon circumstance,	15:18
	but upon faith.	15:23
	To deal with the first, the most consistent fall	15:27
	to the average individual in interpreting the significance	15:31
	of God for his own life is that he is disposed to judge that	15:34
	how he is doing at the move is	15:38
	the really significant matter.	15:41
	Now we are flesh and God deals with us so.	15:44
	For ever spirit so tender is that of Christ.	15:49
	Did ever one concern himself with the broad needs of	15:55
	the human spirit and the brokenness of the human body	15:59
	to match that concern one finds in the son of man?	16:02
	But when you look at the son of man opening blind eyes	16:08
	and unstopping deaf ears and straightening crooked legs,	16:11
	and even raising the dead, it was always something else	16:16
	at which he was getting.	16:21
	Many illustrations could come to mind might one be brought	16:24
	from scripture, the paralytic who was healed	16:27
	at the pool of Bethesda.	16:31
	Jesus not only made him whole physically,	16:34
	but then the record plainly says, He sought him out	16:38
	as if there was to be much more to this miracle	16:41
	than the straightening of crooked legs.	16:46
	Because life under God offers something that	16:49
	the repairing of crooked legs could not provide,	16:54
	and the impairment of crooked legs could not preclude.	16:59
	Better to enter life with your hand voluntarily cut off,	17:06
	with your eye voluntarily pulled out,	17:12
	than to have these appointments of physical wellbeing	17:16
	and not enter into life.	17:21
	The fact of the matter in these rugged words of our Lord is	17:25
	that he seems to postulate that suffering is the way	17:29
	of honor for that individual who means	17:34
	to do anything valorous about his own life.	17:38
	I do not know why it is so.	17:42
	But cross-bearing is the life giving	17:45
	and the honor-asserting way.	17:50
	Is it so because without the pains of mortality,	17:54
	we would become unduly ensnared with the affairs	17:59
	of this world?	18:03
	Is it so that without that deep travel of spirit,	18:06
	which is the mark of honor, we would lose that sense	18:10
	of mystery and of humility	18:15
	without which religion is sheer nonsense?	18:18
	Running through the whole of the day,	18:25
	there is a scholar thread, is it to remind us	18:27
	that this earthen vessel	18:32
	which holds our treasure is not the treasure?	18:34
	Is it to tell us that man was made for something more	18:40
	than this world can express or offer or contain?	18:45
	Is this not really the truth?	18:52
	The pain which is in a new passion of	18:56
	the ultimate problem with death.	19:01
	The pain is here to tell us we were made as men of God,	19:04
	not only to understand why to live, but how and why to die.	19:11
	Jim Barret, so we are told by J.R Miller has	19:25
	a remarkable story, which he entitles	19:28
	'How My Mother Got Her Soft Face'.	19:31
	You remember it.	19:36
	Word came to their home on the bleak long cold	19:39
	of a Scottish winter's night of the critical illness	19:43
	of their son in the city.	19:49
	They made ready to go as you would expect parents to do,	19:53
	to be at the bedside of their child.	19:57
	They walked to the railroad station some distance removed	20:00
	and as they were waiting for the train, the agent came out	20:04
	and called the father of the son and gave him a message,	20:09
	which has just come through.	20:13
	And the father came back to the mother and said,	20:15
	the lad has gone on.	20:20
	And they went back to their cottage and Barret describing	20:24
	the experience of his mother said,	20:29
	that is how she got her soft face, and her pathetic ways	20:32
	and her large charity, and that is why other mothers run	20:40
	to her when they have lost their child.	20:46
	Is that the reason?	20:53
	That we bear in our bodies, the marks of being prepared	20:57
	for and waiting seriously upon that fashion of life	21:04
	which releases us at last.	21:11
	Only they who stand in wait beside the shade	21:16
	of sufferings gate shall earn the right at last too late	21:19
	to bid the bout, be free.	21:26
	Well beyond the fact that pain persists,	21:35
	beyond the fact that a man must get over a religion	21:39
	of comfort because he must learn he is other than mortal,	21:43
	is it fair to suggest that this is a principle	21:48
	that is in violet because Christianity is grounded on faith	21:52
	and not on experience?	21:57
	It is based upon what a man believes	22:02
	and not what a man endures.	22:05
	The proper ordering is stated in the word of the apostle	22:11
	from faith, experience God.	22:15
	The greatest capacities of the human spirit,	22:24
	I think can be easily identified.	22:26
	One of them is the capacity to think,	22:29
	but of all the great capacities of the human spirit,	22:33
	this is the least.	22:36
	The reasoning capacity of the mind is a remarkable capacity,	22:38
	but it is its least effective and significant trade.	22:43
	Far greater in measure is that capacity of	22:49
	the human spirit to feel.	22:51
	Wherein, in the words of Pascal, a man can say,	22:55
	the heart has its reason that the reason knows not all.	22:58
	But finally the greatest capacity of the human spirit,	23:04
	is its capacity to imagine.	23:07
	Always, the future belongs to the dreamer,	23:12
	whether in political science, in education,	23:16
	in economics or in religion,	23:20
	the future is the product of faith.	23:22
	Faith it sees beyond the narrow shape of faith	23:28
	Faith that doesn't see perhaps but dares.	23:33
	Faith that can be described in the words of Simpson	23:38
	who said that he came to his scientific conclusion	23:40
	by taking all the evidence and surmising the direction	23:44
	in which it was pointing, and then concluding	23:47
	that the direction was correct, and calling up	23:50
	on Belfort to work out the mathematics.	23:53
	This you see is the faith of a scientist that comes to	23:58
	the near frontier of the reasoning process of his own mind,	24:01
	or even a memory of the accomplishments of others.	24:05
	And he imagines how it ought to be, and then behaves as if	24:09
	that is the passion by which it will be.	24:16
	This is the device of the soul.	24:23
	This is that centrality of faith at the very nature	24:26
	of things in a man's concert with God	24:30
	Over here in the hospital I'm quite sure there are patients	24:37
	who are recovering from surgery.	24:42
	Now, I do not know the anguish through which they went prior	24:46
	to the surgery, but I'm sure also that if they asked	24:49
	the doctors they made the rounds this morning,	24:54
	the doctors were told that the surgery done no good	24:56
	whatsoever, that they hurt worse now	24:59
	than they did before they were operated on.	25:01
	The surgeon comes back to say the wound is clean,	25:06
	the marks of recovery are normal, every evidence points	25:09
	to complete restoration of health.	25:13
	Now whose word is the patient going to take?	25:17
	The word of his own aching abdomen or the word of a man	25:19
	who's been through the middle?	25:23
	This you see if the response of faith.	25:26
	Is it the faith of a man who takes the word of one	25:29
	who has been along the line, or is it to be the experience	25:33
	of a man who sits in the midst of his present misery?	25:37
	In microcosm, that is the issue.	25:43
	In every great venture of life, does pain persist	25:46
	so that we must not rely up on our experience,	25:53
	that we must not make ourselves prisoner	25:59
	to the entanglements of this world,	26:02
	that the joys of the day shall not blind us to the fact	26:06
	that we live, not by what we have attained,	26:13
	not even by what we endure, but by what not seeing,	26:18
	we dare to become.	26:25
	So, I come at last to the ticks.	26:32
	this, you see, was the problem.	26:34
	The bold man to see it, Peter, the apostle who wanted	26:37
	to inquire of his Lord, what do I get out of following you?	26:40
	Give me something I can touch and handle.	26:46
	Give me a place in your truth.	26:50
	Shall I have houses and land, and years went on.	26:54
	And he learned the answers to his own questions.	26:59
	And he writes to his confederates in love and in discipline.	27:03
	Let them that suffer under the will of God,	27:10
	commit the keeping of their souls to him in well-doing	27:14
	as unto the faithful creator.	27:21
	By which certainly he means to say,	27:29
	when the arrows sting and when darkness covers the face of	27:33
	the earth and bleak darkness the horizons of the soul,	27:37
	that a man finally express his all.	27:43
	This, I veritably believe	27:49
	This is not dodge the issue I'm afraid.	27:59
	It is not to bury one's head in the sand	28:03
	and act as if it isn't so.	28:06
	It is to say so long as we are mortal,	28:09
	we can expect evidence	28:13
	that suggests we were meant to be immortal.	28:15
	And so long as the just live by faith,	28:21
	any other way of life is not justified.	28:27
	So to this religion of discomfort I call it,	28:35
	because it is the religion of Christ.	28:41
	If a man embraces it, he moves forward unhindered,	28:46
	inundating, finally at last, on heart.	28:54
	We stand to pray.	29:06
	Grant us thy grace, oh Lord our God,	29:15
	to commit all our ways unto thee.	29:19
	The way of joy by the doxology of our hearts	29:23
	for thy blessing, the way of the shadow valley by faith,	29:28
	that is unashamed and unafraid.	29:33
	The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,	29:39
	the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,	29:42
	be and abide with us and all who we love	29:46
	and all who love thy kingdom everywhere, forever more.	29:50
	Amen.	29:58

Item Info

Title:

James A. Jones - "Beyond a Religion of Comfort" (January 26, 1958)

Description:

The Christian religion requires pain, because pain leads to experience and begets faith. Although comfort provides happiness, it does not provide joy--it is only through pain that we can arrive at true happiness. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: "Perhaps you can be religious without pain, but, my friends, you cannot be Christian without pain."

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4251km78

Date:

January 26, 1958

Speaker:

Jones, James A.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0042
ref5305_a3c
uachapelsermaud
duke:628310
dcrau002089
ark:/87924/r4251km78
44ea9e65-ab2a-4c0d-8fd7-05dbbd935e6c

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.

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In Copyright

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