John W. Carlton - "Holy Waste" (August 13, 1961)

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-	Recently in conversation with a friend on this campus,	0:16
	he told me that one day,	0:23
	he was reprimanded by his wife	0:25
	because in something of an impulsive moment,	0:28
	he had spent too much money	0:33
	in an effort to enhance her vacation.	0:36
	With a wifely eye on budgets which will not budge	0:40
	and children to be fed and clothed,	0:45
	she objected that he could ill afford the money.	0:49
	With his native's rudeness,	0:55
	he shifted the argument from the head to the heart	0:58
	and reminded her that when they were married,	1:04
	he could ill afford the wedding ring.	1:07
	The money could have been spent for household items	1:11
	and for other necessities.	1:16
	As he went on to press his tithes,	1:20
	I was led to believe	1:23
	that with the reflections upon the wedding ring,	1:26
	all of her protests were properly dissolved	1:30
	in a glorious mist of sentimentality.	1:34
	After all, Pascal told us long ago	1:38
	that the heart has its reasons	1:43
	which the mind knows not of.	1:46
	And even as a bachelor,	1:50
	I would plead unashamedly for wedding rings,	1:53
	which cannot be afforded,	1:57
	and for wives who are sometimes too expensive.	1:59
	This little human episode brings	2:04
	to mind this morning a question.	2:06
	Is there a place in life	2:10
	and certainly in Christian experience	2:14
	for extravagance,	2:17
	for the unblocked impulse,	2:20
	for the spontaneity of love?	2:24
	In the spiritual dimensions of life,	2:29
	Jesus certainly made great place for giving	2:32
	which is not smothered by caution and prudence.	2:36
	Perhaps nowhere is this fact revealed more clearly	2:43
	than it is in the scripture of the morning.	2:48
	We read that Jesus has come to the home of Simon,	2:52
	the leper at Bethany.	2:55
	The issues of destiny are being speedily drawn,	2:59
	and he senses the ominous shadows	3:04
	of the cross growing ever nearer.	3:06
	No doubt, he comes to that moment	3:10
	as one in whom desperate tides	3:12
	of the whole world's anguish forced	3:15
	through the channels of a single heart.	3:19
	Suddenly, the room is a stir	3:23
	as a woman impulsively breaks an alabaster jar	3:26
	and pours the contents on the head of our Lord.	3:31
	This extravagant and impulsive action immediate drew	3:37
	a murmur of protest from her shocked onlookers	3:42
	and also brought a very spirited defense from our Lord.	3:47
	Let us look, first of all,	3:55
	at the objection which was raised.	3:56
	We are told in the scriptures that	4:00
	with this murmur of protest,	4:01
	their finest logic was to ask the question,	4:03
	why all this waste?	4:06
	After all, why shouldn't this have been sold	4:09
	and the proceeds given to the poor?	4:12
	Here it once we have that clash	4:16
	between the market mind	4:18
	and the life of the spirit.	4:21
	Here is the old debate between earthbound reason	4:24
	and the spontaneity of love.	4:27
	After all, these were people who were accustomed	4:31
	to living frugally	4:33
	for perhaps they came from the great middle classes of life,	4:36
	and they were accustomed to living	4:40
	in a solid substantial world of gold,	4:42
	and copper, and silver.	4:45
	And their natural protest was to raise the question,	4:48
	"Why all this waste?	4:51
	This should have been sold	4:52
	and the proceeds given to the poor."	4:54
	And yet tragically enough,	4:57
	while their prudential souls are shocked,	5:00
	their failure to see this act	5:04
	as anything other than extravagant waste reveals	5:06
	their serfdom to the market mind of the world.	5:11
	Now, the verdict of these shocked onlookers is not new	5:17
	to life.	5:20
	Indeed, it is as old as the human race.	5:22
	Here, we have the purely reasonable	5:26
	versus ecstatic element in religion.	5:30
	In the minds of most people,	5:36
	the devotion displayed by this woman	5:37
	to be sure builds no barns.	5:39
	It yields no compound interest.	5:42
	Indeed, it may well be a foreign entanglement of the soul.	5:45
	For minds which know the cost of everything	5:52
	and the value of nothing,	5:54
	the sacrifice of life for faith is sheer waste.	5:57
	It is needless extravagance.	6:02
	No doubt, much sympathy is expended	6:06
	by well-upholstered saints oftentimes.	6:09
	Upon some fine young man or woman,	6:13
	who in some far flung outpost	6:16
	of human need has forgotten themselves	6:19
	into a glorious happiness.	6:22
	And perhaps in the logic of our world,	6:26
	we would say concerning such an expenditure of life,	6:28
	"Why all this waste?	6:31
	Too bad they could not invest themselves	6:34
	in an occupation where they could 'make good'."	6:36
	Such logic as this would look	6:42
	at a person like Francis of Assisi and say,	6:43
	"Why all this waste?	6:45
	Here was one after all who could have been Lord	6:48
	of a manner rather than an impecunious beggar"	6:51
	Such reasoning as this would look at John Wesley and say,	6:55
	"Why all this waste?	6:59
	This man with marvelous executive and organizing skill,	7:02
	would he not have made a marvelous parliamentary whip	7:06
	or a major general?"	7:09
	This reasoning would look at a person like Father Damian	7:12
	who has he worked among the lepers	7:17
	in the hill Hawaiian islands contracted	7:18
	that dread disease.	7:20
	And they would say,	7:23
	"Why all this waste?"	7:24
	As he then addressed his congregations there and said,	7:27
	"I speak to you not as my brethren,	7:31
	but as we lepers."	7:34
	You see, we observe from the record	7:39
	that Jesus warmly applauded this woman.	7:41
	He was moved to high praise.	7:45
	He said this was a thing of beauty.	7:49
	This will always be spoken of her	7:52
	as a memorial wherever the gospel is preached.	7:54
	Here, I think we come	8:00
	upon a very significant truth for all of life.	8:01
	If our Lord were here on this earth today,	8:06
	would he not be strangely impatient	8:08
	with our natural caution, and prudence,	8:11
	and timidity, and calculated concern?	8:14
	Would he not call us to such an act of devotion	8:19
	as we have in our lesson this morning?	8:22
	Here in this woman,	8:26
	Jesus saw the abundant heart	8:29
	and He joyfully and gladly accepted what He saw.	8:33
	There is no subtle attempt here to analyze her motives	8:39
	and say, "Why did she do this?"	8:44
	Here, He saw the spontaneous overflow of a grateful heart	8:47
	and He was gladdened by what He saw.	8:51
	It seems as we look in the Bible	8:57
	that Jesus honor this kind of faith.	9:01
	He lacked to see a life which would take risks,	9:06
	which would risk the hazards of the untried road,	9:10
	a life which was not always concerned	9:15
	with careful prudence and nervous calculation.	9:18
	On one occasion, he said,	9:24
	"Whoever puts his hand to the plow	9:25
	and looks back is not worthy of the kingdom."	9:28
	He was all for burning the bridges behind one cell	9:33
	so there could be no retreat and no turning back.	9:36
	He had his most delightful experiences with people	9:41
	in the gospels who made great adventures for their faith,	9:45
	who displayed almost a reckless disregard	9:50
	for human judgments and for conventional standards.	9:53
	That must have been a very great moment	9:58
	in the life of our Lord.	10:00
	When one day,	10:03
	the friends of the paralytic unable to gain access	10:04
	to Jesus because of the press of the throne	10:09
	actually demolished the roof	10:13
	and put the paralytic down at the feet of the Master.	10:16
	I think he must have said to himself,	10:21
	"Today, this gospel is doing serious business.	10:22
	These people mean something by their faith."	10:27
	Obviously, He was greatly impressed by the poor widow	10:33
	who came by the urn in the temple	10:37
	and dropped in her meager contribution	10:40
	for the support of the institution.	10:43
	Now, many people made an elaborate ceremony of this.	10:47
	But one day, there came the widow who put in two mites.	10:52
	This was all she had.	10:59
	And when you give everything,	11:02
	it doesn't have to be much to be all.	11:05
	She put into that temple treasury all that she had	11:10
	and Jesus again was moved to great praise.	11:13
	He said,	11:16
	"These others out of their abundance have given something,	11:17
	but she out of her poverty has given all."	11:21
	This again moved Him to great praise.	11:27
	But today,	11:29
	in our modern Hollywood version	11:31
	if we were writing this story	11:33
	and did not know our Master,	11:34
	no doubt we would write a nice little sequel to this story.	11:37
	We would have Jesus seeing the poverty	11:41
	of the woman call her back,	11:44
	restore the coins marvelously transformed into gold and say,	11:47
	"Go, my dear and live forever on this."	11:51
	But so far, as the record goes,	11:56
	He did nothing at that moment to relieve her poverty.	11:57
	He let her give all,	12:01
	and He praised her for doing it	12:04
	because He knew that she already had her reward.	12:06
	You see, our Lord never wanted to get between people	12:13
	and their sacrifices.	12:17
	He liked to see people take risks.	12:20
	He loved those who would take up crosses and follow Him.	12:24
	One day, after our Lord had discourse	12:32
	on the perils of riches,	12:34
	Sam and Peter became awfully disturbed.	12:38
	And he said to Jesus,	12:42
	"Master, we have left all and followed you.	12:45
	What do we get?"	12:50
	And the reply of Jesus was to the point,	12:53
	"You will become sons of the Most High."	12:57
	In other words,	13:04
	the great reward of serving Him.	13:05
	The great reward of discipleship is not in getting.	13:09
	It is in being.	13:14
	It is not in having.	13:16
	It is in becoming.	13:19
	This is the reward for following Him.	13:22
	Thus, do we see in the first part	13:29
	of our scripture therefore,	13:30
	this old clash between the market mind	13:33
	and the life of the spirit.	13:36
	But Jesus saw this for what it was.	13:40
	And in sharp retort to her critics,	13:44
	He said, "Why do you trouble this woman?	13:49
	Let her alone."	13:53
	And then in two very brief propositions,	13:56
	He gives a marvelous defense of what she did.	14:01
	You will observe that Jesus said, first of all,	14:08
	"She has done a beautiful thing."	14:10
	Now imagine doing a deed,	14:15
	which would be called beautiful	14:17
	by the Master of men.	14:19
	And the word which he uses here is kalos,	14:22
	a word which occurs something like a hundred times	14:26
	in the New Testament.	14:29
	The word suggests that,	14:32
	which is attractive,	14:33
	that which delights the heart,	14:36
	language is both beautiful and honorable	14:40
	in the spiritual sense.	14:44
	This word is sometimes used in classical Greek,	14:48
	in Sophocles' Antigone.	14:53
	When she is about to bury her brother	14:56
	who has been disgraced in the eyes of the state	15:01
	and is forbidden honorable burial,	15:03
	she is warned that she must suffer the consequences	15:07
	of what she does.	15:10
	Where upon she bravely replies,	15:12
	"He's beautiful for me to die in such employ."	15:16
	Now, in the Christian sense,	15:23
	the word comes eventually	15:24
	to be used as a description of the good deeds,	15:27
	which presumably marks the life of a Christian.	15:32
	The suggestion, therefore,	15:37
	is that the Christian's character,	15:39
	his goodness is to be winsome and attractive.	15:42
	There was once an old Scottish minister	15:51
	by the name of J. P. Struthers	15:52
	who remarked that what the world needs	15:54
	more than anything else is somebody	15:57
	who will do a bonny thing for God.	15:59
	And perhaps the lovely word bonny suggests something	16:04
	of what Jesus has in mind here.	16:08
	For you see, after all,	16:13
	so much of our own personal goodness is often grim.	16:14
	It is austere.	16:19
	It is loveless.	16:21
	It is protesting.	16:24
	I suppose, today, we are so often weary of extravagance.	16:27
	We are strangely suspicious of any lavish expenditure	16:33
	of life and self in the name of religion.	16:38
	Our perennial theme song is nothing over much.	16:42
	Our desire to believe is oftentimes carefully balanced	16:47
	by the proper proportion of respectable doubt.	16:52
	The desire for wonder is all too often strangled	16:58
	by a nervous calculation	17:03
	and by prudential considerations.	17:05
	Many of us are like T.S. Eliot in his description	17:10
	when he says that we measure out our lives by coffee spoons.	17:15
	And when we come to die,	17:20
	it is by just the last little spoonful dripping away.	17:21
	Now this morning,	17:28
	I believe personally that there are many people	17:28
	in our world who have known somewhere	17:32
	along life's way the abundance of the heart,	17:35
	but this so often has been stifled by human laws,	17:39
	by convention,	17:45
	by rigid austere self-control.	17:47
	This morning,	17:53
	I well know that there are many people	17:53
	in this world who suffer immeasurably	17:57
	because love has been denied them.	17:59
	Perhaps born under adverse conditions,	18:04
	are living life in the midst of inhospitable circumstances.	18:08
	They have known what it is to be deprived of love.	18:12
	But believe me,	18:17
	I suspect there is a far larger number today	18:18
	who suffer because they have never learned how to give love,	18:22
	how to invest themselves deeply,	18:29
	how to spend themselves lavishly	18:32
	in the lives and the needs of others.	18:35
	Somehow rather we have ways of suppressing	18:40
	in ourselves and in others the abundant heart	18:43
	and the expenditure of self,	18:46
	which certainly transgresses all laws of reason.	18:49
	And yet in our scripture lesson this morning,	18:55
	this is precisely what our Lord praised	18:58
	in this marvelous woman	19:00
	for here was the total unrestrained giving of self.	19:02
	Sometime ago,	19:10
	I read a marvelous article from Norman Cousins,	19:11
	the editor of the Saturday Review.	19:15
	He had just returned	19:19
	from visiting with Schweitzer in Africa.	19:20
	He said that many times,	19:24
	during the course of his visit,	19:26
	they were told together about the great questions of life	19:29
	and human destiny,	19:32
	particularly in the evenings when the hospital was asleep	19:36
	and the shadows of darkness had come.	19:40
	I wish we had a transcript of those conversations.	19:44
	But when he came back to our shores,	19:49
	he was reflecting upon the fact	19:51
	that to many people,	19:54
	Schweitzer is a little more than a kind	19:57
	of sentimental do-gooder,	19:59
	who is wasting his life on African natives	20:03
	who can neither read nor write.	20:06
	But in a perfectly marvelous way,	20:10
	Norman Cousins goes on to raise a profound issue.	20:13
	He said, "The greatest tragedy	20:20
	in the world is what dies inside a man while he lives;	20:22
	the death of faith, and hope,	20:30
	and feeling, and awareness, and response."	20:34
	He said, "Schweitzer has proven to the world	20:42
	that while we have no control	20:46
	over the fact of our existence,	20:48
	we hold supreme command over the meaning	20:53
	of that existence for us."	20:59
	And he said, "Our greatest tragedy is that we shall die	21:03
	and never know our greatest power,	21:07
	the power of love to give itself for others."	21:12
	And I maintained this morning	21:19
	that the deepest question perhaps,	21:21
	which we can raise with ourselves is	21:22
	to ask ourselves frankly,	21:26
	what in me is dying?	21:31
	For it is perilously possible to become a living body	21:35
	and a dead soul.	21:41
	And to be sure,	21:44
	we do not have control over the fact of our existence.	21:44
	We are here.	21:47
	This is given,	21:48
	but the glorious fact is that we hold supreme command	21:51
	over the meaning of that existence for us.	21:55
	We are spiritual beings capable	21:59
	of almost infinite expansion.	22:01
	For all that I genuinely care	22:05
	for this morning is part of my life,	22:07
	it is part of my spiritual history and destiny.	22:11
	Yes, long ago in Simon's house at Bethany,	22:17
	our Lord understood this,	22:23
	and He called this act beautiful.	22:26
	And He called it beautiful	22:30
	because it refused to count the cost.	22:31
	It had set beauty above utility.	22:35
	Jesus saw here love lifted to a fine art.	22:40
	And here, He honors that fine excess,	22:46
	the surprise which springs from the imagination of love.	22:50
	There is a place in all devotion	23:00
	for love lifted to a fine art.	23:03
	There is a place for a great cathedral	23:06
	like this with soaring arches that are prayers in stone.	23:08
	There is a place for great music	23:16
	that perennial language of the heart.	23:19
	There is a place in life of poetry	23:22
	that spontaneous overflow of great and powerful feelings.	23:24
	There is always the place for the great book	23:29
	which is what John Neilson said it was,	23:33
	"The precious life blood of a master spirit treasured up	23:36
	on purpose for a life beyond life."	23:40
	And so this morning,	23:47
	unashamedly in this sermon,	23:48
	we celebrate love that is not smothered	23:51
	with caution and prudence,	23:54
	and a heart that is lifted out of arithmetic into love.	23:58
	Jesus called this deed beautiful	24:06
	because it enshrined the beauty	24:10
	and the nobility of love's extravagance.	24:13
	Let us move now to our final consideration.	24:20
	You will observe also that our Lord says of this deed,	24:24
	"She has done what she could."	24:29
	Or to put it another way,	24:34
	"She has done that which lay in her power."	24:36
	But I hear someone say this morning,	24:42
	after all,	24:43
	this isn't a very extravagant word of praise,	24:44
	but I maintain that it is for a very simple reason.	24:48
	There are precious few people in this world	24:52
	whoever do all they can.	24:56
	So few of us ever do what lies immediately at hand.	24:59
	You see, we all prefer to indulge in a kind of revering.	25:06
	It's much more poetic to think in terms of what I cannot do	25:11
	than it is to get down to the dull, prosaic business	25:17
	of trying to decide what to do with life.	25:21
	This morning, it is far more engaging	25:26
	to indulge in a sort of revering and self-dramatization.	25:30
	And imagine what I would do with $50,000,	25:35
	which I do not and will never have.	25:38
	Far more engaging to do that	25:42
	than to decide what to do with the $5,	25:44
	which I do have.	25:46
	Far more poetic this morning,	25:49
	to imagine what I would do	25:51
	where I possessed of the gifts	25:53
	and graces of Schweitzer, or Einstein,	25:55
	or some giant of the human race far are more engaging	25:59
	to do that than to get down to the dull business	26:02
	of looking at my one talent.	26:05
	For like a great many people in the world,	26:10
	I belong to the common 5/8.	26:14
	I'm a little more than 1/2, I hope,	26:17
	and not quite 2/3.	26:20
	This is where life finds many of us	26:24
	and is so much more engaging	26:27
	to think in terms of that,	26:31
	which we cannot do.	26:33
	But our Lord was not amused	26:36
	in reading this for what it was.	26:38
	He saw here one who did that,	26:41
	which lay in her power.	26:46
	And this morning,	26:49
	this scene speaks powerfully to all of us	26:50
	of the enormous importance	26:55
	of the consecration of personality.	26:58
	The unmeasured sharing and giving are the best	27:02
	that we have and all.	27:09
	For you see what this story really says to us is this,	27:14
	that personality is a sacred treasure	27:19
	and it is an unspeakable tragedy	27:25
	to carry a personality through life in an unbroken jar.	27:29
	Our Lord is saying,	27:36
	"Break it,	27:38
	give it,	27:41
	use it,	27:43
	spend it.	27:45
	And then you will know the meaning of life."	27:47
	For after all, the highest use of life is	27:54
	to spend it for that,	27:59
	which will outlast it.	28:02
	And Jesus said of the deed of this woman	28:05
	that this sacred holy waste would always be spoken	28:09
	of her as a memorial.	28:15
	And in His own life,	28:20
	as He came to the end of the road,	28:23
	He did not disavow the sacred waste	28:27
	for there that day on Golgotha	28:31
	as He was lifted high	28:34
	on His lonely hill there	28:36
	in the self-surrendering love of that cross,	28:40
	there was a strange meeting of reason	28:44
	and ectasy of moral obedience and sacred waste.	28:47
	I close this morning with these lines from Santayana,	28:56
	"O world, thou choosest not the better part!	29:02
	It is not wisdom to be only wise,	29:09
	and on the inward vision close the eyes,	29:14
	It is but wisdom to believe the heart."	29:19
	Let us stand.	29:26
	Oh God, our Father,	29:38
	who in the beauty	29:41
	and the brightness of life has set our feet	29:42
	in pleasant places,	29:46
	humbly do we consecrate ourselves anew	29:49
	to the godly and fruitful life.	29:53
	In all our days,	29:57
	grant us the contentment of self-forgetfulness,	29:58
	the joy of spiritual service,	30:03
	and the grace of the abundant heart.	30:06
	And now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling	30:11
	and to present you faultless before the presence	30:17
	of His glory with exceeding joy,	30:19
	to the only wise God, our savior,	30:23
	the glory and majesty,	30:27
	dominion and power both now and evermore.	30:30
	♪ Amen ♪	30:40
	♪ Amen ♪	30:48
	♪ Amen ♪	30:56
	(bell ringing)	31:16
	(uplifting music)	31:28

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Title:

John W. Carlton - "Holy Waste" (August 13, 1961)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r40867704

Date:

August 13, 1961

Speaker:

Carlton, John W.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0154
ref5514_9wr
uachapelsermaud
duke:628598
dcrau002170
ark:/87924/r40867704
c84cc8f6-6e0e-4155-ad76-7fe4476454dc

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John W. Carlton - "Holy Waste" (August 13, 1961)

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