Howard C. Wilkinson - "Family Man" (May 13, 1962)
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| Preacher | To be observed or choose | 0:04 |
| in qualities of motherhood, | 0:05 | |
| the church in America took up this celebration, | 0:09 | |
| both in its denomination or organizations, | 0:14 | |
| and in its interdenominational organizations, | 0:17 | |
| and sponsored the observance of mother's day, | 0:21 | |
| so that almost from the beginning, | 0:25 | |
| it was very widely celebrated. | 0:27 | |
| However, during the very first generation | 0:31 | |
| of the observance of this celebration, | 0:35 | |
| there were certain abuses which grew up concerning it, | 0:37 | |
| and which caused some grave questions | 0:42 | |
| to be raised concerning it. | 0:45 | |
| It seems that there was a feeling | 0:48 | |
| that an element of insincere exaggeration | 0:51 | |
| was creeping in to the celebration. | 0:55 | |
| There was such a eulogizing of motherhood in general, | 1:00 | |
| and of mothers in particular, | 1:04 | |
| that the feeling was expressed in some quarters | 1:07 | |
| that the observance was going beyond the point of reality. | 1:10 | |
| And indeed, some people | 1:15 | |
| began staying away from church on mother's day, | 1:17 | |
| because they felt they were incapable | 1:19 | |
| of enduring the emotional strain, | 1:21 | |
| which would be created by the excessive eulogizing | 1:24 | |
| of mothers and motherhood | 1:29 | |
| on mother's day in church. | 1:31 | |
| It was said in some quarters that there was competition | 1:34 | |
| between Sunday School teachers and preachers | 1:37 | |
| to see which could | 1:39 | |
| moisten the eyes of their hearers the most | 1:42 | |
| when they came to observe mother's day. | 1:44 | |
| And some mothers began staying away | 1:48 | |
| from church on mother's day, | 1:50 | |
| because they felt threatened | 1:52 | |
| by the image of motherhood that would be painted at church, | 1:54 | |
| and it would feel that they did not quite measure up | 1:58 | |
| to this high standard of motherhood that was being set. | 2:01 | |
| And so to save themselves embarrassment, | 2:06 | |
| they would stay at home. | 2:08 | |
| Well, then there were other objections that were raised. | 2:11 | |
| Some people felt that this inordinate glorification | 2:15 | |
| of the maternal parent, | 2:20 | |
| without a corresponding glorification of the paternal parent | 2:22 | |
| left the family situation in an unwholesome imbalance. | 2:28 | |
| Well, because of these and other considerations, | 2:33 | |
| the Protestant Church of America | 2:36 | |
| began to make a new emphasis, | 2:38 | |
| and has offered this to Protestantism | 2:42 | |
| as at least a live option or alternative | 2:45 | |
| to an observance of mother's day. | 2:48 | |
| And that is what Protestantism today calls | 2:51 | |
| the Festival of the Christian Home. | 2:54 | |
| So that in churches today across America, | 2:58 | |
| there is the observance on the second Sunday in May | 3:01 | |
| of the Festival of the Christian Home, | 3:04 | |
| which includes | 3:07 | |
| a glorification or exaltation | 3:09 | |
| of the virtues of motherhood, | 3:13 | |
| appreciation for what mothers mean | 3:15 | |
| in our civilization and in the family, | 3:17 | |
| but which goes beyond it, | 3:20 | |
| and includes other elements as well, | 3:22 | |
| and which more importantly sees motherhood | 3:25 | |
| in the context of the family, | 3:28 | |
| which really makes mother feel more comfortable | 3:31 | |
| because of the true mother sees herself | 3:33 | |
| in the context of the family and the whole. | 3:36 | |
| And so today we here in Duke Chapel | 3:41 | |
| are observing the Festival of the Christian Home | 3:43 | |
| with its emphasis upon the great role, | 3:47 | |
| which mothers fulfill | 3:50 | |
| and which fathers do and children, | 3:53 | |
| and then the togetherness, which the home represents. | 3:56 | |
| I would like to bring this to your attention | 4:01 | |
| by considering a well-known phrase, | 4:03 | |
| "Family man". | 4:07 | |
| I would like for you to think about the family man | 4:10 | |
| in this sermon today. | 4:13 | |
| Now the Webster's on a Bridge Dictionary reserves that term | 4:16 | |
| to describe the adult, male human, | 4:21 | |
| who is married to a wife and who has children. | 4:25 | |
| But there is an important sense, | 4:29 | |
| in which all of the species homo sapiens | 4:31 | |
| is family man. | 4:37 | |
| All of us | 4:41 | |
| are family man. | 4:44 | |
| Man being used in the generic sense. | 4:48 | |
| The five-year-old boy is family man. | 4:52 | |
| The 10 year old girl is family man. | 4:55 | |
| The 70 year old spinster is family man. | 4:59 | |
| All of us are family man. | 5:02 | |
| The human being is family man. | 5:07 | |
| We are made for the family and the family was made for us. | 5:10 | |
| Now, what are the ingredients, | 5:17 | |
| the necessary ingredients of the family | 5:19 | |
| that make it so important? | 5:22 | |
| So necessary, so fundamental as eating and sleeping. | 5:25 | |
| Well, I expect that you have read, | 5:31 | |
| as I have read a number of descriptions | 5:33 | |
| of what the essential ingredients of the family are. | 5:35 | |
| I have selected four necessary ingredients, | 5:40 | |
| which will serve very well for the purposes of this sermon. | 5:44 | |
| The first necessary element, | 5:48 | |
| which we must have in order to have a family | 5:50 | |
| is the concept and the reality of parenthood. | 5:53 | |
| A small group of people banded together, | 5:58 | |
| which does not have in the group | 6:01 | |
| the concept and the reality of parenthood | 6:04 | |
| is not a family. | 6:07 | |
| It may be a community of some sort, | 6:08 | |
| but it is not a family, | 6:10 | |
| because parenthood, either the father image, | 6:12 | |
| or the mother image, or both | 6:15 | |
| are absolutely essential to the concept of the family. | 6:17 | |
| Secondly, there must be at least the potentiality, | 6:23 | |
| if not the realization of it, | 6:26 | |
| of the creation of new life within this small community. | 6:29 | |
| Not every family has yet created new life. | 6:36 | |
| But Roy Burkhart says it in his opinion, | 6:42 | |
| "Where you do not have at least | 6:44 | |
| the potentiality of the creation of new life in a community, | 6:46 | |
| it is not a family." | 6:50 | |
| So that this is a part of the whole concept | 6:53 | |
| of what we were talking about this morning. | 6:56 | |
| And then third, in order to have a family, | 7:00 | |
| there must be sufficient stability, | 7:02 | |
| support and nourishment | 7:05 | |
| within the family group, | 7:08 | |
| so that the emergence of new life within it | 7:11 | |
| will be followed by the strengthening | 7:16 | |
| and the growth of the new life | 7:20 | |
| until it achieves maturity. | 7:22 | |
| This also say all experts on family life | 7:27 | |
| is an important ingredient in the family. | 7:32 | |
| Not enough to have parenthood, not enough to have new life, | 7:37 | |
| this new life must be nurtured, protected, supported, | 7:41 | |
| and trained within the understanding, | 7:46 | |
| which the family has of its essential nature. | 7:50 | |
| And fourth, a family to be a family | 7:54 | |
| must have an acceptance of itself | 7:59 | |
| and on each member. | 8:04 | |
| And this acceptance, of course, | 8:07 | |
| is not based upon similarity, | 8:09 | |
| but often is based upon dissimilarity, unlikeness. | 8:14 | |
| There must be an acceptance | 8:20 | |
| of all members of the group by each member of the group, | 8:23 | |
| and a recognition of fundamental kinship, | 8:27 | |
| so that if one brother does not like | 8:32 | |
| what some other brothers are doing in the family, | 8:35 | |
| there is an acceptance, | 8:38 | |
| which goes beyond that dislike of what he is doing. | 8:40 | |
| There has to be a recognition that, in spite of the fact | 8:45 | |
| that there is tension within the family, | 8:48 | |
| there is a more important kinship, | 8:50 | |
| which I have to that other member of the family. | 8:54 | |
| And there must be a toleration of one member | 9:01 | |
| by the other member | 9:06 | |
| during periods of growth and tension and disagreement. | 9:08 | |
| There must be a for-a-better or for-a-worse-ness, | 9:14 | |
| or you do not have a family. | 9:19 | |
| And there must be fundamental, basic honesty | 9:22 | |
| between the members of the family, | 9:26 | |
| and when that breaks down, the family breaks down. | 9:28 | |
| If the relationship between two members of the family | 9:32 | |
| becomes fundamentally dishonest, | 9:35 | |
| then the family has broken down. | 9:39 | |
| All right, now, this is what we were talking about | 9:44 | |
| this morning, | 9:46 | |
| when we say that all of you | 9:47 | |
| and everyone else in the world are family man. | 9:50 | |
| And this is the institution | 9:56 | |
| which above every other institution in the world, | 9:59 | |
| including the church, | 10:02 | |
| is the basic and most necessary institution | 10:04 | |
| for the survival, not merely of the human race | 10:08 | |
| in a physical sense, | 10:11 | |
| but of man as a civilized being. | 10:12 | |
| Without it, civilization is done for. | 10:17 | |
| Without it, the church is done for. | 10:22 | |
| It is the fundamental institution. | 10:26 | |
| Indeed, it is so basic, | 10:29 | |
| in the whole understanding which man has of himself, | 10:31 | |
| that God has represented himself to us | 10:36 | |
| and the relationship which he has to us in family terms. | 10:40 | |
| God has revealed himself to us | 10:46 | |
| and his whole understanding of us in family terms. | 10:49 | |
| Dean Strobel read a while ago | 10:54 | |
| a portion of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, | 10:55 | |
| in which he said that | 10:58 | |
| "Paul bowed his knee unto the father, | 11:01 | |
| from whom, every family | 11:08 | |
| in heaven and on earth is named." | 11:12 | |
| All families derive their familiness, | 11:18 | |
| their identity | 11:23 | |
| from the fact that God is our creator | 11:25 | |
| and that we are his children. | 11:28 | |
| So that the concept which God has given us, | 11:31 | |
| by which we were to understand ourselves is this, | 11:33 | |
| that he is our father, we are his children, | 11:37 | |
| we already each other's brothers and sisters | 11:41 | |
| and Christ is our elder brother. | 11:43 | |
| This is the family picture. | 11:46 | |
| This includes everyone. | 11:48 | |
| And in the intention of God, the father, | 11:51 | |
| even the recalcitrant members of his family | 11:53 | |
| are still the objects of his love, | 11:56 | |
| and he is seeking to woo and wind them | 11:59 | |
| into an acceptance of their role in the family. | 12:02 | |
| And it is our part as his sons and daughters | 12:08 | |
| to aid and assist him | 12:13 | |
| in bringing these people consciously and spiritually | 12:15 | |
| into an acceptance of their role in the family of God. | 12:19 | |
| Now, it was through this, | 12:24 | |
| that the two basic doctrines of Christianity, | 12:25 | |
| as they relate to persons, was developed. | 12:29 | |
| Namely, the doctrine of the fatherhood of God | 12:33 | |
| in the brotherhood of man. | 12:35 | |
| And in this regard, you see, | 12:38 | |
| we recognize the difference between | 12:40 | |
| the understanding of human equality, | 12:43 | |
| which we find in Christianity, | 12:46 | |
| and the understanding of human equality, | 12:49 | |
| which we find in communism. | 12:50 | |
| The term, which the communist uses | 12:53 | |
| to refer to his neighbor, is comrade. | 12:55 | |
| The term which the Christian uses to refer to his neighbor | 12:59 | |
| when he wishes to express | 13:02 | |
| this feeling of equality, is brother. | 13:04 | |
| And in many of our churches, a generation ago, | 13:07 | |
| people in the church referred to each other | 13:10 | |
| as brother Jones and sister Smith. | 13:13 | |
| This was a witnessing to the fact that under God | 13:16 | |
| we are brothers, we are not comrades. | 13:20 | |
| A comrade can be a person | 13:23 | |
| who does not have the same father that I have, | 13:27 | |
| but a brother is a person | 13:31 | |
| who has the same father that I have. | 13:33 | |
| So communism does not have the concept of the family in it, | 13:37 | |
| whereas the Christian understanding of man | 13:41 | |
| is basic in a family relationship. | 13:44 | |
| Alright, so much for that. | 13:52 | |
| What are the implications of this? | 13:53 | |
| The first implication, | 13:56 | |
| and the one which I really believe | 13:58 | |
| is the most important is that | 14:00 | |
| we must strengthen, | 14:02 | |
| support and build up | 14:05 | |
| the human family as an institution in society, | 14:08 | |
| and we must resist its enemies at whatever cost. | 14:12 | |
| The human family is the unit | 14:19 | |
| upon which civilization depends. | 14:24 | |
| Education depends upon it. | 14:29 | |
| And yet it is being threatened on every side today, | 14:32 | |
| as perhaps it has not been threatened in many centuries. | 14:36 | |
| One of the enemies of the family today is the torrid pace | 14:41 | |
| at which we live in this modern day. | 14:46 | |
| Robbing many have the leisure and the togetherness, | 14:50 | |
| which they need, to cement the ties of family life. | 14:53 | |
| Something has to be done about this. | 14:58 | |
| We take encouragement from the news. | 14:59 | |
| The technology is going to provide all of us | 15:02 | |
| with a lot more leisure time. | 15:05 | |
| Some of us on the religious life staff | 15:07 | |
| are wondering how technology | 15:09 | |
| is going to affect us in that regard, | 15:10 | |
| but for mankind as a whole, at least, | 15:13 | |
| there is the promise that there will be more leisure, | 15:16 | |
| and in this leisure, | 15:20 | |
| hopefully families can strengthen the ties of family life. | 15:22 | |
| Another very great enemy of the family today | 15:29 | |
| is the increasing tendency to regard the marriage vow | 15:33 | |
| as something which can be lightly broken, | 15:38 | |
| and the marriage institution | 15:41 | |
| as something which can be rapidly and frequently changed. | 15:43 | |
| You can swap mates like you will change grocers. | 15:48 | |
| And this is a very great enemy of the family. | 15:53 | |
| Suppose that the army | 15:59 | |
| that were defending the United States of America | 16:00 | |
| had 25% of its soldiers as deserters. | 16:04 | |
| We would not feel it was very much of an army. | 16:08 | |
| Well, the institution of marriage | 16:11 | |
| is the army which defends the family, | 16:13 | |
| and 25% of the people in the marriage army | 16:17 | |
| today are deserters. | 16:21 | |
| One fourth of all marriages | 16:24 | |
| that are entered into or broken, | 16:26 | |
| not by death, but by divorce. | 16:28 | |
| And we are going to have to change this trend somehow, | 16:32 | |
| or the institution of marriage and the family | 16:36 | |
| is going to be weakened to the point of severe danger | 16:39 | |
| in the world today. | 16:43 | |
| Dr. Leland Foster Wood, has given us a very sobering word | 16:46 | |
| at this point, | 16:50 | |
| when he said that "While it is true that the family | 16:51 | |
| must adjust itself to the changing civilization | 16:54 | |
| in which it finds itself, | 16:57 | |
| it is much more importantly true | 16:59 | |
| that civilization must adjust itself to the family. | 17:02 | |
| That whatever is necessary for the survival | 17:07 | |
| and the strength of the family, | 17:09 | |
| civilization must do and provide. | 17:11 | |
| That the family does not stand as an expendable, | 17:15 | |
| whereas certain things in civilization are expendable. | 17:18 | |
| And whenever those things begin eating away | 17:22 | |
| at the vitals of the family, then they must be changed." | 17:25 | |
| So that today the thinking Christian has to raise | 17:30 | |
| the very real question about | 17:34 | |
| whether some of his idols in American Culture | 17:35 | |
| are as important as he has been thinking them to be, | 17:39 | |
| if they are enemies of the family and of marriage. | 17:43 | |
| Some of our heroes are going to have to be debunked, | 17:48 | |
| because they pose a threat to the stability of marriage. | 17:53 | |
| We see today many popular people | 17:59 | |
| who regard the breakup of their marriage | 18:01 | |
| as an opportunity for professional publicity, | 18:04 | |
| and whenever marriage becomes one of the steps | 18:09 | |
| by which we achieve professional status, | 18:11 | |
| then we are in for really a sad day. | 18:15 | |
| Not very long ago, | 18:19 | |
| it was reported in one of the trade journals | 18:20 | |
| that a certain actress in Hollywood | 18:23 | |
| had a press agent who tried to get a magazine | 18:25 | |
| to take pictures of her forthcoming wedding, | 18:28 | |
| and have them print it in the picture magazine. | 18:34 | |
| The managing editor declined to do it, | 18:38 | |
| because she being a much married actress | 18:40 | |
| was not a very good risk time-wise, | 18:44 | |
| so as far as the length of her marriage was concerned. | 18:48 | |
| And the managing editor said, | 18:51 | |
| "Well, simply it takes six weeks to develop these pictures | 18:52 | |
| and get the layout made and get it printed, | 18:56 | |
| and I'm afraid that six weeks after your marriage, | 18:59 | |
| these pictures will not be relevant." | 19:01 | |
| And on that basis, he declined to take the pictures. | 19:04 | |
| Now, I believe that we are going to have to recognize | 19:08 | |
| the truth of what Dr. Leland Foster Wood has said, | 19:11 | |
| that while the family has to learn to adjust to elements | 19:15 | |
| within its civilization, | 19:20 | |
| it is much more imperative that the civilization | 19:21 | |
| adjust itself to the needs of the family. | 19:24 | |
| And therefore, I believe that it is as important | 19:27 | |
| for the students of Duke University, | 19:29 | |
| or any other college for that matter, | 19:31 | |
| to plan, to study, to discuss, | 19:33 | |
| and to prepare along the lines | 19:39 | |
| of ability and preparation for marriage, | 19:43 | |
| then for the preparation for your vocation, | 19:48 | |
| because your marriage | 19:52 | |
| will have more to do with your happiness | 19:53 | |
| than your vocation will. | 19:55 | |
| While you are here, it is very important | 19:58 | |
| that you take the courses | 20:01 | |
| that are being offered in marriage and family life, | 20:02 | |
| is that you read the fine books, | 20:05 | |
| which you will discover in the library on this area, | 20:07 | |
| and take advantage of the discussions, | 20:11 | |
| which the religious council offers, | 20:12 | |
| in which our denominational groups | 20:14 | |
| provide from time to time to prepare you | 20:16 | |
| for a sensible, intelligent, creative Christian marriage. | 20:19 | |
| I would like to suggest before closing | 20:29 | |
| that there are implications also, | 20:31 | |
| the concept of the human being as family man | 20:35 | |
| for the church and for the nations. | 20:39 | |
| Not every person is able, for one reason or another, | 20:44 | |
| to be a part of a continuing well-rounded human family. | 20:48 | |
| All of us, of course, are sons and daughters, | 20:53 | |
| but we are not all husbands and wives, | 20:56 | |
| and we're not all parents. | 20:58 | |
| But because of the fact | 21:01 | |
| that we are are made for family life, | 21:03 | |
| we must participate in some significant family, | 21:07 | |
| and the church can be and is | 21:10 | |
| a family for every human being | 21:13 | |
| who will let it be the family for him, | 21:16 | |
| this being true of whether you have a human family | 21:19 | |
| about you or not. | 21:22 | |
| Jesus Christ, when he was speaking | 21:24 | |
| to a group of people on one day | 21:26 | |
| was told that his mother and his brothers | 21:29 | |
| were outside and that they wanted to see him. | 21:31 | |
| Matthew tells how that Jesus | 21:34 | |
| turned to the man who spoke to him and said, | 21:36 | |
| "Who are my mother and my brothers?" | 21:39 | |
| And stretching forth his hand to his disciples, he said, | 21:43 | |
| "Here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters. | 21:46 | |
| Whoever does the will of God | 21:51 | |
| is my mother and my brothers and my sisters." | 21:54 | |
| In other words, he was saying, | 21:58 | |
| the people who are doing the will of God | 22:00 | |
| are the family of God, they are Jesus Christ family. | 22:02 | |
| And we can be parts of that family | 22:06 | |
| by being parts of the church. | 22:09 | |
| But we need also to remember | 22:12 | |
| what the four basic ingredients of family life are | 22:13 | |
| as we think of the church in family terms. | 22:16 | |
| The fatherhood of God, | 22:19 | |
| and I think there was a day when this was minimized, | 22:21 | |
| the great deal in our understanding of the church, | 22:23 | |
| as simply being a group of people who had good motives | 22:26 | |
| and wanted to do a little bit of good in the world. | 22:29 | |
| Carl Barth has reminded us, however, | 22:33 | |
| of the fact that God is prior and central, | 22:35 | |
| and that he is an objective reality, | 22:39 | |
| rather than simply a figment of the imagination. | 22:42 | |
| So we must remember in the church | 22:45 | |
| that the primary concept is that of God as father, | 22:47 | |
| but also the need for the emergence of new life | 22:52 | |
| and the nurturing of new life | 22:55 | |
| and the acceptance of one another, | 22:57 | |
| regardless of our differences. | 22:59 | |
| There are books being written today | 23:01 | |
| and being circulated across our campuses in America, | 23:03 | |
| which are criticizing the church, not in a family spirit. | 23:06 | |
| Now, to be sure of the members of the family | 23:12 | |
| must correct one another and there must be criticism, | 23:13 | |
| but it must be within the family spirit, | 23:16 | |
| otherwise the church is destroyed, rather than built up. | 23:18 | |
| And when you and I criticize each other within the church, | 23:24 | |
| Presbyterian criticized Baptist, | 23:27 | |
| and Methodist criticized Episcopalians, and so on, | 23:29 | |
| it should be done within the recognition | 23:31 | |
| that these people too are the brothers of ours in the faith, | 23:34 | |
| and they are the sons of God, | 23:39 | |
| and that Christ died for them as well as for us. | 23:41 | |
| In closing, I think it is true | 23:49 | |
| that the very existence of the human race | 23:52 | |
| beyond this century, | 23:55 | |
| may depend upon our ability | 23:56 | |
| to think of the nations of the world as members of a family. | 24:00 | |
| Have a family of nations, so that when new life is emerging, | 24:04 | |
| new nations are being brought into being, | 24:08 | |
| the older nations will nurture them and accept them | 24:12 | |
| and love them, | 24:16 | |
| in spite of the tensions and the differences, | 24:20 | |
| the trial and error mistakes that are made, | 24:24 | |
| so that we will look upon other nations as our brothers, | 24:28 | |
| rather than merely as our comrades. | 24:31 | |
| Recognizing the primacy of the fatherhood of God | 24:35 | |
| and growing out of that, the essential brotherhood of man. | 24:39 | |
| Yes, you and I are a family man. | 24:44 | |
| We are not made for our loneliness, | 24:48 | |
| we were made for community. | 24:50 | |
| We are gregarious. | 24:52 | |
| We are people who need to respond | 24:55 | |
| in faith and obedience to the fatherhood of God, | 24:58 | |
| and to develop the human family, | 25:03 | |
| to make the church a family and the nations a family. | 25:06 | |
| Oh God, our heavenly father, | 25:18 | |
| humbly and obediently now, | 25:21 | |
| we recognize thee as our Lord and our father. | 25:25 | |
| And we pray thee to give us strength | 25:31 | |
| to recognize that other children | 25:33 | |
| as our brothers and sisters, | 25:35 | |
| and to make it so through Christ our Lord. | 25:37 | |
| And now may the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ | 25:41 | |
| be with you all. | 25:43 | |
| (indistinct male voice) | 25:46 | |
| Male | I think. | 26:26 |
| I don't know whether this side records or not. | 26:28 | |
| We'll have to try it and see. | 26:31 |