McMurry S. Richey - "Grace and Discipline" (July 16, 1961)

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	(soft rumbling sound)	0:04
-	Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great,	0:18
	a cloud of witnesses,	0:21
	let us also lay aside every weight	0:23
	and sin which clings so closely.	0:27
	And let us run with perseverance the race	0:30
	that is set before us.	0:33
	Looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,	0:35
	who for the joy that was set before him endured	0:40
	the cross, despising the shame	0:44
	and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.	0:47
	Consider him who endured from sinners	0:51
	such hostility against himself	0:53
	so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.	0:56
	Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom	1:02
	that cannot be shaken	1:05
	and let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence	1:07
	and all for our God is a consuming fire.	1:12
	One comes to this place in this service of worship,	1:21
	mindful of already having been confronted	1:27
	and searched and tried	1:31
	and of having opportunity for joining	1:35
	in the praise and prayer of choir and leaders of worship.	1:37
	And wonders what else there may be to say,	1:44
	except these words of scripture.	1:48
	What does one do or say when such a pointed	1:53
	and all demanding claim is laid upon him	2:02
	as in these words of scripture.	2:08
	In these academic quarters,	2:12
	we have all ways of lessening claims like this.	2:16
	This is not peculiar to the academic mind	2:22
	in all realms of life.	2:25
	We find ways of dodging what God expects of us,	2:27
	but there are some interesting species	2:32
	of academic dodge as well.	2:34
	A quarter of a century ago, it was the fashion	2:38
	in some quarters of New Testament interpretation	2:42
	to look at a passage like this great, powerful message	2:46
	from Hebrews read this morning.	2:51
	And to find here an example of an effort at social control.	2:55
	Said one prominent New Testament writer, a scholar,	3:00
	the early church was engaged in the desperate effort	3:06
	to consolidate and extend its hold	3:12
	and over against it was the threatened Roman empire	3:16
	and Rome sought social control by persecution	3:21
	to break down the loyalty	3:25
	of this nascent Christian movement.	3:26
	The church on the other hand sought	3:31
	to control to bolster and steady	3:34
	and strengthen its members by pointing	3:38
	to the example of Jesus crucified up on the cross,	3:43
	who never said a mumbling word	3:47
	of other great confessors of faith before	3:51
	and after Christ who stood steady	3:57
	in time of persecution, who openly express their faith,	4:00
	thereby secured their continuing unity with	4:07
	the threatened movement and gave encouragement	4:11
	and strength to some of the others.	4:14
	So all they wrote marker stories.	4:17
	They echoed confessions.	4:21
	They sought in one way or another to control	4:24
	the threatened group of Christians	4:28
	who might otherwise defect and take on again,	4:30
	the coloration of the Roman empire around	4:33
	be lost from the church into the world.	4:36
	I submit this is a very significant interpretation	4:42
	of the epistles of the Hebrews,	4:47
	For we do see here a church,	4:50
	which at least in times past has undergone persecution	4:52
	and has a great role of heroes	4:59
	and witnesses of the faith to call.	5:01
	And wants to steady those who might defect.	5:05
	This interpretation went on to suggest that most	5:13
	of the New Testament could be seen from this perspective.	5:16
	It was an instrument of social control	5:21
	to keep Christians faithful when the power	5:26
	and might of Rome were threatening.	5:30
	It's interesting to note however,	5:34
	that other scholars look at some of the same data,	5:36
	particularly the epistle to the Hebrews	5:39
	and find here not so much a church now under persecution.	5:42
	This is in the past,	5:47
	but rather a church of Christians	5:50
	who are becoming lethargic.	5:53
	Who are losing the discipline and control of their lives,	5:56
	who are adapting to the world around,	6:01
	who are forgetting that in Jesus Christ,	6:04
	God has made himself so savingly manifest	6:07
	that he is the last word about how we find access to God	6:11
	or God's heart is open to us.	6:18
	In danger forgetting this,	6:21
	and so Hebrews is written not primarily	6:24
	to steady them in persecution,	6:28
	but to nerve them in time of indifference	6:31
	and lethargy and spiritual slothfulness.	6:35
	You and I are not prepared this morning	6:40
	to choose between the scholars here,	6:42
	but do we not see interesting parallels	6:46
	to situations in all day?	6:48
	There are Christians in the world today	6:52
	whose faithfulness to Jesus Christ,	6:55
	whose belonging to one another in the fellowship	6:58
	is threatened by devices more demonic	7:03
	than ever envisaged by the Roman empire.	7:09
	Ways of breaking down their faithfulness,	7:12
	of brainwashing them.	7:16
	Of forcing them to conform to an un-Christian order.	7:19
	We think not only of those who today behind iron curtains	7:24
	find it hard to be Christian.	7:31
	But of those in the not too distant past	7:34
	threatened by the Nazi regime,	7:38
	who also had to come through persecution	7:42
	with great suffering.	7:46
	So we find Christians threatened	7:49
	and it would be in order to nerve	7:52
	and strengthen them with a word	7:54
	about how Jesus Christ himself endured	7:57
	the cross despising the shame.	8:00
	And he sat down at the right hand of God,	8:03
	but there may be more serious threats	8:08
	to authentic Christianity today than such overt opposition.	8:12
	Perhaps the kind of threat,	8:18
	also visible in the New Testament,	8:21
	the threat of indifference of relaxation of zeal,	8:25
	of lethargy and lack of discipline.	8:31
	Perhaps this threat is even more dangerous	8:36
	for all day perhaps.	8:42
	I said there are academic ways	8:48
	of dealing with the challenge of the epistle to the Hebrews.	8:50
	There are other ways of responding to ways	8:56
	of those a bit more zealous.	9:00
	Those who want to do	9:04
	and be what is called for in the gospel.	9:06
	Sometime ago, there came to my hand,	9:12
	a beautifully tooled leather volume,	9:15
	just over a century old.	9:19
	Fine artwork in the leather,	9:22
	gorgeously marbled end papers,	9:27
	superb paper and printing masterpiece	9:30
	of the printers and binders art.	9:36
	A book by Jeremy Taylor of three centuries ago,	9:40
	entitled "Rules and Exercises For Holy Living".	9:45
	Interestingly enough, in the flyleaf,	9:54
	to this gorgeously bound book,	9:57
	there was this almost anomalous notation	10:00
	to so-and-so obviously the name of a student,	10:06
	Magdalen College, Oxford.	10:11
	March, 1961, prize for athletic sports.	10:14
	I confess I was taken aback a bit	10:22
	for this is not quite the way	10:26
	we generally reward our athletes or do	10:27
	with a book on rules or exercises of holy living	10:31
	and volume two is fully dying,	10:36
	but there was a certain congruence.	10:41
	This athleticism of the spirit expressed by Jeremy Taylor,	10:45
	after all had a certain kinship with the discipline	10:53
	of athletics in which some of our numbers	10:56
	are involved while the rest of us sit in the stand.	11:01
	And there have been some who've been caught hold off	11:07
	by a book like Jeremy Taylor's	11:10
	and caught up into this strenuous discipline of the spirit.	11:13
	John Wesley writes in his play	11:20
	in account of Christian perfection.	11:22
	"In the year 1725 being in the 23rd year of my age.	11:25
	I met with Bishop Taylor's	11:30
	"Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying"	11:32
	In reading several parts of this book,	11:35
	I was exceedingly affected.	11:37
	That part in particular,	11:41
	which relates to purity of intention.	11:42
	Instantly, I resolved to dedicate all my life to God.	11:45
	All my thoughts and words and actions.	11:49
	Being thoroughly convinced that there was no medium,	11:53
	but that every part of my life	11:57
	and not some only must either	11:58
	be a sacrifice to God or to myself.	12:01
	That is in effect to the devil.	12:04
	Can any serious person dial to this" Wesley goes on.	12:07
	"Or find a medium between serving God	12:12
	and serving the devil."	12:15
	So he entered into an athleticism of the spirit.	12:17
	This book was to him not a prize for athletic sports,	12:23
	but a goal and a direction for a spiritual athleticism.	12:29
	Yet when one reads Taylor, he wonders whether	12:36
	this legalistic kind of quietism is quite	12:40
	the expression of the gospel ethic.	12:44
	Here are 23 rules for employing all time	12:48
	and Wesley adopted and tried to abide by most of these.	12:52
	Five benefits of this exercise.	12:57
	10 rules for purity of intention, eight signs of it.	13:00
	Six several manners of the divine presence,	13:05
	10 rules of exercising this consideration.	13:08
	Five benefits of this exercise.	13:11
	And one could go on page after page	13:14
	of a table of contents,	13:17
	missing to be sure the vibrant and genuine piety	13:20
	of the prayers and the strenuous athleticism,	13:24
	of the directions for spiritual growth inside.	13:29
	Yet, one has the feeling that Jeremy Taylor	13:33
	is calling us to invest our prayer and piety	13:37
	and discipline in order that we may gain	13:43
	for ourselves some heavenly treasure.	13:46
	There is about this book,	13:50
	an aura of deserving by our strenuous effort,	13:52
	the approval of God.	14:00
	And this suggests that we look at a third way	14:04
	of responding to the challenge of Hebrews.	14:07
	This putting of Jesus Christ before us,	14:12
	this calling to his discipleship.	14:16
	One wonders if Jeremy Taylor's disciplined life	14:20
	in order to deserve grace,	14:26
	isn't somehow putting the cart before the horse.	14:29
	In essential Protestantism,	14:34
	the word has been the other way around.	14:37
	It's not the good news of what we have to do	14:41
	to deserve salvation.	14:46
	This is bad news, but rather the good news,	14:48
	the gospel of what God has done	14:53
	and what God is to make us what he would have us be.	14:56
	This is good news and we rejoice in it.	15:01
	In the Christian church, we have tried	15:06
	to take very seriously this message of grace,	15:08
	of a God who is forgiving, who accepts us,	15:12
	not because we are good but because he is,	15:16
	accepts us as we are.	15:19
	And yet one wonders if this too cannot be made	15:23
	a dangerous dodge for real Christian living.	15:30
	Just as the scholar may find his way	15:35
	of evading the claim of God,	15:38
	just as the disciplined Pietist	15:42
	may find ways of boiling down to some rules	15:45
	to keep this utter claim of God upon his life.	15:48
	So we may very adroitly preach the gospel in such a way	15:54
	that it leaves us rather comfortable and undisturbed.	16:01
	I would submit today that there's this paradox of grace	16:08
	and discipline in which we stand.	16:14
	Calls not for an abandonment of discipleship,	16:18
	but for an equally athletic Christianity.	16:24
	In this epistle to the Hebrews one gets on every page,	16:30
	not only the call to steadiness in persecution,	16:38
	but the call to zeal out of lethargy, out of indifference.	16:43
	Let us hold fast the confession of our hope	16:51
	without wavering for he who promised is faithful,	16:54
	read Hebrews, and let us consider how to stirrup	16:58
	one another to love and good works,	17:02
	not neglecting to meet together as is a habit of some,	17:05
	but encouraging one another.	17:09
	And so let us put ourselves in the position	17:15
	suggested by Kierkegaard once more,	17:22
	who raises serious question about our being	17:27
	the spectators and God being the performer	17:29
	when we come to worship.	17:33
	And who suggests instead that you and I	17:35
	are the actors on the stage	17:39
	with a preacher as the prompter	17:42
	and the scripture as the script, and God is the audience.	17:45
	The congregation, the spectator who watches what we do,	17:54
	who sees what we really are and what we are not.	18:01
	Suppose that we could enter into something	18:07
	of this small group life of mutual encouragement	18:13
	and reception of divine confrontation.	18:19
	And suppose this morning that we were to hear	18:23
	the words of the epistle to the Hebrews,	18:27
	as the prompting to what we ought to be.	18:31
	Suppose that we were to take this as	18:36
	the beginning of a Bible study for ourselves	18:38
	in little groups of four or five, what could we make of it?	18:43
	Or what would God be saying to us through it,	18:48
	how much he would say,	18:53
	and here's where we want to leave a sort	18:56
	of open-ended sermon, one in which we review	18:58
	just for a moment the thrust of this passage of scripture.	19:03
	Here is the reminder which you	19:09
	and I would be speaking to one another in a group.	19:12
	The reminder that what really counts in the world.	19:16
	What is most real is God.	19:21
	And that God has manifest himself decisively,	19:26
	openly in Jesus Christ.	19:32
	And we could not argue about this.	19:36
	We could not persuade one another into such a faith.	19:39
	We would simply testify and open the way	19:43
	for another reading the scripture,	19:46
	hearing the word, sharing in worship.	19:49
	Being part of a fellowship.	19:53
	To be convinced of this for himself.	19:56
	And we might cite the great witnesses of the past.	19:59
	Those heroes of the faith whose rule	20:04
	was called in Hebrews 11, but more great lists,	20:07
	throngs of witnesses, even to all day.	20:14
	People around us, great names, people unknown,	20:20
	those who in love and self discipline	20:26
	and devotion daily manifest	20:30
	the reality of Jesus Christ in our community.	20:33
	Perhaps we could be encouraged by hearing	20:38
	of other little groups that are part of a great renewal	20:41
	of the church in prospect.	20:45
	Groups of Christians here and there.	20:47
	Student movements, prayer cells, Bible study units	20:50
	who are seriously asking what God has to say to us	20:59
	in these words of scripture	21:03
	and what we therefore are meant to be and do as a church.	21:05
	We could fight as did Hebrews.	21:12
	This role of the heroes of the faith,	21:16
	these witnesses, who stand by while we run	21:18
	the race of life.	21:22
	Beyond this, we could be telling each other	21:26
	about this Christian race in which we are entered.	21:28
	About Jesus, who has run it in such a way	21:34
	that when we attend to what he was and said,	21:38
	and did he begins to excite in us an inner drive	21:44
	to be like that.	21:52
	Jesus who for the joy who was set before him	21:57
	endured the cross, despising the shame	22:00
	and is sat down at the right hand of God.	22:04
	Perhaps we could be telling each other	22:08
	also about this athleticism of the spirit,	22:09
	which with the old grads of the faith,	22:13
	standing by strips away all the clinging garments,	22:18
	all the sins which hold us back	22:25
	and drives forward with speed and with power.	22:30
	Here is a different kind of motivation	22:34
	to spiritual excellence.	22:38
	Not the Pietist persuasion that if we do well enough,	22:40
	God will somehow reward us for our piety,	22:47
	but rather that inward drive,	22:52
	because we've been laid hold up by the Almighty	22:57
	that inward drive to strip away all that pulls us back	23:01
	in order that we may be what he would have us be.	23:07
	Perhaps we could tell each other about how easy it is	23:12
	for us to slip into lethargy and indifference,	23:17
	remind ourselves how little we have suffered,	23:22
	what an easy going and undisciplined Christianity	23:25
	we're in danger of. How those who really take on the way	23:29
	of Christ not only endure suffering like good soldiers,	23:35
	but also enter into the suffering of the world.	23:41
	Perhaps we could take some heart	23:46
	from the burgeoning idealism of the youth of today.	23:48
	We who are a bit flabby and soft in our faith	23:54
	have been rebuked and inspired	24:01
	as the appeal for the Peace Corps	24:04
	has made us aware of once more,	24:06
	that there is in human nature,	24:10
	a genuine concern to count for something in serving	24:13
	the world's ill and helping the world's needy.	24:17
	Perhaps we could testify to one another in such a group	24:24
	about the reality coming through to us	24:29
	in our times of worship.	24:33
	A God who is not just the God of Moses on the Mount,	24:36
	frightening and awesome as his presence seemed,	24:43
	but a God who shakes the heavens and the earth	24:48
	and who in all day reminds us,	24:52
	how much did we count on, how much of this world	24:55
	in which we trust is really passing ephemeral.	24:59
	Our culture, our civilization, our comforts, our customs,	25:05
	what are these before the eternal God	25:12
	who is a consuming fire.	25:15
	And so we would testify to one another in such a group	25:18
	that we worship God with gratitude with all and reverence,	25:22
	For He is a final test of all reality.	25:28
	Perhaps if you and I were to enter	25:34
	into this kind of discipleship today,	25:37
	joined with others in small groups,	25:41
	reading the scripture, offering prayer,	25:45
	sharing our goods, taking upon ourselves other burdens,	25:50
	spending our lives for those around.	25:57
	Perhaps we would discover again,	26:01
	the reality of the faith that emboldened	26:05
	these New Testament saints to call	26:08
	the role of the heroes of faith,	26:12
	and to look in our generation for some fulfillment	26:15
	of their meaning.	26:18
	Here history is laid upon our hearts.	26:20
	We recognize that we've become a sought a funnel	26:23
	for the past into the future.	26:26
	And we too may be disciples of Jesus Christ.	26:29
	Now unto him who is able to keep us from falling	26:46
	and to present us faultless	26:49
	before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,	26:51
	to the only wise God, our savior be glory	26:54
	and majesty, dominion and power now and evermore.	26:58
	Amen.	27:03
	(choir singing)	27:11
	(church bell chiming)	27:54
	(church organ playing)	28:06
	(man whistling)	28:55
	(church organ playing)	28:59
	(loud footsteps)	29:08
	(man whistling)	29:22
	(loud footsteps)	29:28
	(congregation talking at a distance)	29:36
	(church organ playing)	29:50
	(congregation talking at a distance)	29:53
	(church organ playing)	30:17
	(congregation talking at a distance)	30:27
	(man whistling)	30:47
	(congregation talking at a distance)	30:53
	(church organ playing)	31:06
	(congregation talking at a distance)	31:25
	(church organ playing)	31:35
	(congregation talking at a distance)	32:30
	(church organ playing)	32:38

Item Info

Title:

McMurry S. Richey - "Grace and Discipline" (July 16, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r45t3m15b

Date:

July 16, 1961

Speaker:

Richey, McMurry S.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0151
ref5508_e22
uachapelsermaud
duke:627948
dcrau002167
ark:/87924/r45t3m15b
17b8901c-c2df-4c7c-9cbc-ce1788145b5a

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings

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Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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