Joseph R. Sizoo - "Religion in Depth" (December 17, 1962)
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| - | There is a sentence in the Advent lesson | 0:09 |
| which always sobers me and pulls me up. | 0:13 | |
| I would like to hold it before you a little while today. | 0:17 | |
| "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." | 0:22 | |
| The heart of the world is kneeling once again, | 0:28 | |
| before the entrancing story of the Nativity. | 0:31 | |
| It is the ever, never-old story | 0:36 | |
| of which childhood never grows weary, | 0:39 | |
| and for which old age never loses its affection. | 0:42 | |
| It is simple and artless in its setting. | 0:48 | |
| It is so timeless in its meaning. | 0:53 | |
| It is so constant in its implication. | 0:56 | |
| It is a story which warms the heart | 1:02 | |
| and fires the flames of faith, | 1:05 | |
| leads many to unaccustomed charities, | 1:09 | |
| offers forgiveness to the unforgiving, | 1:13 | |
| cushions the blows of adversity, | 1:16 | |
| and brings the wanderer home. | 1:20 | |
| Chesterton wrote it this way. | 1:23 | |
| "To an open house in the evening | 1:25 | |
| home shall men come. | 1:27 | |
| To an older town than Eden, | 1:30 | |
| and a taller town than Rome. | 1:32 | |
| To the end of the way of the wondering star | 1:35 | |
| to things that cannot be, and that are, | 1:38 | |
| to the place where God was homeless, | 1:41 | |
| and all men are at home." | 1:44 | |
| It isn't a festival simply of one religion. | 1:48 | |
| This has become humanity's day of Jubilee. | 1:52 | |
| As well unto its moonbeams | 1:57 | |
| that fall with a yellow glow, | 2:00 | |
| on the hills all about you | 2:02 | |
| as to suppose you can untwist this story | 2:05 | |
| from the hope and the heart of contemporary life. | 2:08 | |
| Now, why is that so? | 2:14 | |
| How do you explain the fact | 2:17 | |
| that in each recurring yuletide, | 2:19 | |
| the world's affection for this day grows? | 2:23 | |
| What explains it? | 2:27 | |
| When Christ was born, | 2:30 | |
| and God broke through in history, | 2:32 | |
| a whole new concept of life came into being. | 2:35 | |
| The Advent announces that religion to be real | 2:41 | |
| must be felt and lived and experienced. | 2:47 | |
| It can only be transmitted and mediated | 2:52 | |
| through a person. | 2:57 | |
| Not by debating, but by demonstrating | 2:59 | |
| will men walk back to God. | 3:04 | |
| Words by themselves are never enough. | 3:08 | |
| Now, the reason is simple, | 3:14 | |
| because words mean different things to different people. | 3:16 | |
| No two people will give you | 3:20 | |
| the exact same definition of the same word. | 3:22 | |
| There are some ideas that are too big for words. | 3:26 | |
| Words like love and faith and honor and virtue | 3:30 | |
| have no meaning until somebody lives them. | 3:36 | |
| They have to be felt and lived and experienced | 3:41 | |
| to be made real. | 3:45 | |
| One day the brilliant Harvard professor, Josiah Royce, | 3:48 | |
| was sitting in his study at Harvard. | 3:51 | |
| The door opened and a freshman entered. | 3:55 | |
| He came to the desk and said, "Professor Royce, | 3:58 | |
| what is the definition of a Christian?" | 4:01 | |
| Professor Royce looked at the freshman, | 4:04 | |
| got up from his chair, walked to the window and said, | 4:07 | |
| "I do not know what is the definition of a Christian, | 4:10 | |
| but there goes Phillips Brooks." | 4:13 | |
| Religion to be real, must be transmitted | 4:17 | |
| and mediated through a person. | 4:20 | |
| Words are never enough, not even God's words. | 4:25 | |
| So in the fullness of time, | 4:30 | |
| God sent his Son, and the Word became flesh, | 4:32 | |
| and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. | 4:36 | |
| And when men saw Jesus, they said, | 4:39 | |
| "Emanuel, God is with us." | 4:42 | |
| And Jesus said, "He who has seen me, | 4:45 | |
| hath seen the Father also." | 4:48 | |
| Religion to be real, must be mediated through a person. | 4:51 | |
| Words are never enough. | 4:57 | |
| Now it is so, that the early Christian community | 5:01 | |
| came into being. | 5:05 | |
| This little handful, went out into a world which hated them | 5:08 | |
| and a generation which hooted them, | 5:12 | |
| unperturbed by cross bearing | 5:14 | |
| and undisturbed by their persecution. | 5:16 | |
| They went out into a world which hated them. | 5:21 | |
| And within three centuries, | 5:25 | |
| from 3 to 7 million had been brought into their fellowship, | 5:27 | |
| and they carried the gates of empire from its hinges. | 5:32 | |
| How did they accomplish it? | 5:37 | |
| Not by debating it, but by demonstrating it. | 5:39 | |
| They did not give their generation an argument, | 5:45 | |
| but they gave it the alluring loveliness | 5:48 | |
| of a Christ-filled life. | 5:51 | |
| Chesterton, if I may quote him again, | 5:55 | |
| once said that in the first century, | 5:59 | |
| Christianity was advanced | 6:04 | |
| by Christians who practiced it. | 6:06 | |
| In later centuries, they tried to advance it by preaching, | 6:09 | |
| because it was easier. | 6:14 | |
| But words by themselves are never enough. | 6:17 | |
| They did not debate it, but they demonstrated it. | 6:21 | |
| I have said all this | 6:27 | |
| because it's profoundly relevant | 6:29 | |
| in our contemporary scene. | 6:32 | |
| This is something which needs saying today. | 6:35 | |
| Great move movements, convictions, ideas, | 6:40 | |
| to be real must be mediated through a person. | 6:44 | |
| Words are never enough. | 6:49 | |
| That is obviously true | 6:53 | |
| in the affairs of the world all about us. | 6:56 | |
| It is becoming increasingly clear | 6:59 | |
| that the tensions, strains, misgivings, dangers | 7:02 | |
| which hunt and confront our time arise out of words. | 7:07 | |
| The Cold War is a war in which the weapons are words. | 7:14 | |
| Modern man has developed a demonic skill | 7:20 | |
| in juggling with phrases, | 7:23 | |
| and giving a false twist to words | 7:25 | |
| so that they lose their original meaning. | 7:28 | |
| The result is that today words are meaningless and empty | 7:32 | |
| and become dangerous shibboleth. | 7:35 | |
| When Mr. Kay talks about the glory of democracy in Russia, | 7:39 | |
| he has drained that word dry of its meaning, | 7:45 | |
| and poured into it concepts | 7:48 | |
| that are utterly foreign to it. | 7:51 | |
| He calls something out of every religion, | 7:54 | |
| every philosophy, every social theory, | 7:57 | |
| every psychological program. | 8:00 | |
| He adds to it, the dream of Mohammed | 8:03 | |
| and the vision of Joan of Arc | 8:06 | |
| and the trickery of Machiavelli, | 8:09 | |
| the genius of American advertising, | 8:12 | |
| the ruthlessness of a Chicago gunman | 8:16 | |
| rolls it all up into a ball and calls it democracy. | 8:18 | |
| That's for the birds. | 8:22 | |
| When the screaming, bearded Castro | 8:26 | |
| shouts about emancipating his people, | 8:31 | |
| it isn't the kind of freedom | 8:34 | |
| for which our forefathers fought, bled and died. | 8:36 | |
| When we pray grand peace in our time, oh God, | 8:41 | |
| that word is haunted by a glory and a hope | 8:44 | |
| that rings through the centuries. | 8:47 | |
| But when he talks about peace, | 8:50 | |
| he means a classless society held in force | 8:52 | |
| by suspicion and by hate, and by intrigue. | 8:56 | |
| There are certain words, | 9:03 | |
| truth, goodwill, democracy, freedom, | 9:06 | |
| which have gone deep in the minds of modern men, | 9:11 | |
| so much so, that they have definite and distinct meanings. | 9:17 | |
| But these words today are twisted out of shape | 9:22 | |
| so that they no longer mean what they say, | 9:26 | |
| or say what they mean. | 9:28 | |
| It is as if you emptied an eight-ounce bottle of honey, | 9:32 | |
| and poured into it, vinegar without changing the label. | 9:37 | |
| Words today terrorize modern society, | 9:43 | |
| because words by themselves are never enough. | 9:47 | |
| That is true in areas much nearer home. | 9:52 | |
| We make a great deal of the word democracy. | 9:56 | |
| The desire for freedom goes deep with us. | 10:00 | |
| We take rather seriously the Declaration of Independence, | 10:04 | |
| that all men are created free and equal. | 10:07 | |
| But somehow it seems like a lonely island | 10:12 | |
| in a sea of hate and suspicion. | 10:15 | |
| Why is that? | 10:17 | |
| Can it be because once upon a time, | 10:19 | |
| democracy men, goodwill, understanding, | 10:21 | |
| religious tolerance, racial understanding. | 10:26 | |
| Today, so often it is a substitute | 10:30 | |
| for the words self-interest, | 10:33 | |
| pressure groups, political double talk, | 10:35 | |
| indifference to education, | 10:39 | |
| inordinate display of wealth, social irresponsibility, | 10:41 | |
| juvenile delinquency, and political detachment. | 10:46 | |
| Not long ago, the United States State Department, | 10:55 | |
| called a conference of businessmen on Route 40, | 10:59 | |
| because they had refused service to certain ambassadors | 11:05 | |
| and members of the embassy of foreign countries, | 11:11 | |
| who desired their services. | 11:15 | |
| At a public hearing, it was told to them | 11:18 | |
| that they were hurting this country. | 11:22 | |
| And in this public hearing tape recorded, | 11:26 | |
| one of them said to me, "That's not my concern. | 11:29 | |
| That's not my problem. | 11:34 | |
| That's the problem of government." | 11:36 | |
| I had supposed that democracy meant | 11:40 | |
| a government of the people, by the people | 11:43 | |
| and for the people. | 11:47 | |
| It is a sobering fact | 11:49 | |
| that many who are so dramatically leading | 11:52 | |
| the peoples of South America, Asia and Africa | 11:56 | |
| into the Soviet orbit were educated in our universities. | 12:00 | |
| There is something wrong with us and our education | 12:07 | |
| when those who have been educated among us | 12:11 | |
| and are benefactors of it, turn against us. | 12:14 | |
| Words are never enough. | 12:19 | |
| Now, what is true is especially true | 12:23 | |
| in the area of religion. | 12:27 | |
| If it is to be vital, it must be felt | 12:30 | |
| and lived and experienced. | 12:33 | |
| When clouds gather and storms roll over you, | 12:37 | |
| you want something more than a syllogism | 12:42 | |
| to see you through. | 12:45 | |
| When misgivings crowd in on you, | 12:48 | |
| what you need is not somebody to debate religion, | 12:51 | |
| but to demonstrate it. | 12:55 | |
| Thomas Carlisle was sitting one day in his study. | 12:58 | |
| There was a knock at the door, | 13:03 | |
| and the new parish minister came to pay a call. | 13:05 | |
| During the course of the conversation, | 13:10 | |
| the young minister said that Mr. Carlisle, | 13:14 | |
| "Mr. Carlisle, what can a man like me | 13:17 | |
| do in a parish like this?" | 13:21 | |
| Carlisle turned to him grimly and said, | 13:25 | |
| "What this parish needs is a man who knows God. | 13:28 | |
| Otherwise, and by the methods of hearsay, | 13:32 | |
| words are never enough." | 13:37 | |
| And yet the tragedy of this attempt | 13:41 | |
| to build the kingdom of God, | 13:43 | |
| is to suppose you can advance it by words only. | 13:45 | |
| If words can save a world, | 13:48 | |
| this earth ought to be paradise. | 13:50 | |
| When I was a boy, | 13:54 | |
| I was almost kept out of the church for life, | 13:57 | |
| literally for life, | 13:59 | |
| because there lived in my community | 14:01 | |
| a man who had all the answers. | 14:03 | |
| He could argue every theological nicety | 14:06 | |
| to a hair-splitting finesse, | 14:08 | |
| but you couldn't trust him with a nickel. | 14:10 | |
| I come from a godly home, but a poor home. | 14:13 | |
| And this man was always trying to short change | 14:16 | |
| my bonny mother. | 14:19 | |
| What you say about Jesus Christ | 14:21 | |
| must conform to the way you live with Him, | 14:23 | |
| or nothing happens. | 14:26 | |
| Up and down the streets of the world | 14:29 | |
| are men and women whose lives | 14:33 | |
| have been embittered, not sweetened, | 14:35 | |
| made cynical, not believing, | 14:39 | |
| darkened and not illumined, | 14:43 | |
| because they met the wrong kind of Christian. | 14:47 | |
| It is constantly true in the world in which we live. | 14:54 | |
| And that kind of religion never lasts. | 14:58 | |
| Sometimes you will come upon people | 15:02 | |
| who toss religion out of their lives | 15:05 | |
| in some moment of crisis when they need it most. | 15:07 | |
| And when you ask them why they had religion of a kind, | 15:11 | |
| but it didn't go deep, | 15:13 | |
| it lacked what Paul Talley called, | 15:15 | |
| it lacked a sense of depth. | 15:17 | |
| We make a great deal of the cross, and we should. | 15:22 | |
| We carve it on wood. | 15:27 | |
| We emblazon it on spires. | 15:29 | |
| We emboss it on prayer books. | 15:31 | |
| We smother it with roses. | 15:34 | |
| But it is hardly a way of life. | 15:36 | |
| It is time to bring it out | 15:39 | |
| of the stratosphere of abstraction, | 15:41 | |
| and make it real in the political scene, | 15:45 | |
| in labor disputes, in racial strife. | 15:49 | |
| You may know all the of rules of baseball. | 15:55 | |
| That doesn't make you a Babe Ruth. | 15:58 | |
| You may know all the timetables of the world. | 16:02 | |
| That doesn't make you a John Gunther. | 16:06 | |
| You may know all about Christianity. | 16:09 | |
| That doesn't make you a Christian. | 16:12 | |
| Dr. Bridgman, the brilliant physicist, | 16:16 | |
| and Nobel Prize winner wrote, | 16:20 | |
| "The true meaning of a word is to be found, | 16:22 | |
| not by what a man says about it, | 16:26 | |
| but what he does with it." | 16:29 | |
| The value of a dollar bill is determined, | 16:32 | |
| not by the words printed on paper, | 16:35 | |
| but the integrity of the government behind it. | 16:38 | |
| If the government becomes irresponsible, | 16:42 | |
| the paper is worthless. | 16:46 | |
| The greatest barrier | 16:49 | |
| to the coming of the kingdom of God | 16:50 | |
| is not some lone atheist who can't gather | 16:53 | |
| a corporal's guard, but those who name his name | 16:56 | |
| before the world, and betray it in life. | 17:01 | |
| I have come upon more cynicism, more bitterness | 17:07 | |
| in universities and colleges in this country | 17:12 | |
| because of that, than from any other reason. | 17:15 | |
| A little over a year ago, Carl Sandberg came to Washington | 17:22 | |
| to address a Joint Session of the United States Congress | 17:29 | |
| on Abraham Lincoln. | 17:33 | |
| It was a moving experience, I assure you. | 17:35 | |
| He held them spellbound. | 17:39 | |
| One sentence in that moving address was this. | 17:42 | |
| "Millions there are, | 17:46 | |
| who take him as a personal treasure. | 17:49 | |
| He had something they would like to see | 17:53 | |
| spread everywhere over the whole earth. | 17:56 | |
| We can't find words | 18:00 | |
| to say exactly what it was, but he had it. | 18:02 | |
| It was there in the light and shadow of his personality." | 18:07 | |
| Words are never enough. | 18:12 | |
| Do you know the lines of John Drinkwater? | 18:16 | |
| "We know the paths wherein our feet should tromp, | 18:19 | |
| across our hearts are written thy decrees. | 18:22 | |
| But now oh Lord my God, be merciful with more than these. | 18:25 | |
| Knowledge we ask not, knowledge thou hast lent. | 18:29 | |
| But Lord, the will, there lies our bitter need. | 18:31 | |
| Give us to build the deep intent. | 18:35 | |
| The deed, the deed." | 18:38 | |
| And the Word became flesh, dwelt among us, | 18:42 | |
| full of grace and truth. | 18:47 | |
| Amen. | 18:51 | |
| (organ music) | 19:18 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 19:26 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 19:29 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 19:31 |