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