James T. Cleland - "This Business of Churchgoing" (September 16, 1962)

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	(Church organ playing)	0:12
-	Let us pray.	0:28
	Let the words of my mouth	0:33
	and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable	0:37
	in thy sight.	0:41
	Oh Lord our strength and our Redeemer.	0:43
	Amen.	0:49
	For many years, one of the official acts	0:58
	of Freshmen Orientation Week	1:04
	has been a service in the university chapel.	1:08
	A service, very specially for you	1:14
	who worship now as newcomers	1:19
	to the Duke community.	1:22
	You have already been greeted by all kinds	1:26
	of academic officials, and rightly so.	1:30
	Without you, the undergraduate colleges would peter out	1:37
	in June, 1965,	1:43
	except for the scholarly laggards who cannot quite lay hands	1:47
	on a BS or a BA in a normal student generation.	1:53
	Today, the university welcomes you to its	1:59
	own officially recognized service of worship.	2:03
	This is because your chosen alma mater	2:08
	recognizes the union of learning and religion.	2:11
	(speaking in Latin)	2:17
	The Protestant denominations on this campus	2:22
	represented by their chaplains	2:26
	unite to give you an inter-denominational salutation	2:29
	symbolized in the chaplain of the university	2:36
	who is presiding over this diet of worship.	2:40
	We salute you in the name of God.	2:44
	Now, as you settle down among us,	2:52
	a recurring question is going to pop into your mind	2:55
	with annoying frequency.	2:59
	What is the point of this university service of worship?	3:03
	We are here at Duke to study, to learn,	3:12
	to widen and deepen our minds.	3:17
	Are we also here to sing, to pray,	3:23
	to listen to sermons?	3:28
	Look at the newspapers,	3:32
	the Berlin Wall,	3:35
	the Communist irritation in Cuba,	3:38
	the tumultuous awakening of segmented Africa,	3:44
	the stalemate between conservatives and liberals	3:50
	in Washington.	3:55
	Has churchgoing any real reason for being	3:58
	in a world like that?	4:03
	Aren't the Armed Forces, the symbol of our generation,	4:06
	wouldn't it be wiser to join the Air Force or the Navy ROTC	4:13
	rather than the church?	4:19
	Is there much point to worshiping together	4:23
	during the next four years?	4:26
	Now this is valid and good questioning.	4:31
	And let us look together for an answer,	4:36
	using as a norm, the new Testament scripture lesson,	4:39
	which has just been read.	4:45
	The story of that Army officer who came	4:49
	face to face with Jesus in the village of Capernaum.	4:53
	Here was a soldier engaged in policing Palestine,	5:00
	presumably a junior officer in the Army of Herod Antipas,	5:06
	the tetrarch of Galilee.	5:12
	He was a non-Jew, perhaps a Roman,	5:16
	with a hundred men under his command.	5:21
	In the first century A.D.,	5:27
	his job was one of the most arduous in the Roman empire	5:29
	because in that century, Palestine,	5:35
	that little country about the size of Connecticut,	5:37
	Palestine caused Rome more worry	5:42
	than the rest of the empire rolled into one.	5:46
	The steady stubbornness of Rome collided	5:52
	with the sheer obstinacy of Jerusalem.	5:55
	There was an uncanny cussedness about each of them,	6:01
	because each held itself to be the chosen people.	6:07
	On the one hand, the Jews claim to be the people	6:12
	because of what was written in the old Testament.	6:16
	It's in the book. Read the Revelation.	6:19
	On the other hand, the Romans claim to be the people	6:25
	because of the facts of Imperial history.	6:28
	Look at the record.	6:32
	Theological pride clashed with experiential confidence,	6:36
	theory with fact,	6:42
	and neither would yield to the other beyond	6:43
	a jot or a tittle.	6:47
	You can guess the outcome.	6:50
	It is parabled in an analogy from the physics classroom,	6:53
	where a teacher asked this question:	6:59
	"What will happen when an irresistible force	7:02
	meets an unmovable mass?"	7:07
	And a student, distinguished more by common sense	7:11
	than by scientific knowledge answered,	7:13
	"There will be an inconceivable crash."	7:17
	There was an inconceivable clash in Jewish-Roman relations	7:24
	in 66 A.D.	7:31
	And in four years, Rome steamrollered over Palestine,	7:34
	slow, ponderous, inevitable.	7:40
	It planned no Blitzkrieg.	7:44
	It moved with glacier-like thoroughness.	7:47
	Like a glacier, it left nothing living behind it.	7:52
	Jerusalem fell A.D. 70.	7:56
	Now in that situation, around the year A.D. 30,	8:00
	this Centurion was stationed with these man on the shores of	8:05
	the sea of Galilee at Capernaum.	8:09
	And there, a Roman soldier though he was,	8:14
	pledged to uphold the Empire and the emperor	8:19
	as his chief loyalty,	8:22
	he built a synagogue for the Jews.	8:25
	He loves our nation.	8:31
	"He has builted our synagogue" was how the	8:34
	Jewish officials in Capernaum put it to Jesus.	8:37
	And Jesus paid that officer in a foreign army of occupation,	8:41
	the highest tribute he paid to anyone in the gospels.	8:48
	I have not found faith like this in Israel.	8:54
	Now it's not in the text,	9:01
	but I'm going to assume that this officer	9:04
	attended the synagogue.	9:07
	It was not an uncommon occurrence for gentiles	9:09
	to attend the synagogue service.	9:12
	They were forbidden to enter the inner courts of the temple	9:15
	on pain of death.	9:19
	Some day, some of you will go to Istanbul.	9:24
	And if you go up to the museum there,	9:29
	you'll find the actual stone from the temple,	9:31
	which says on it, "No foreigner beyond this place	9:36
	on pain of death."	9:41
	But there was no restriction on gentiles	9:45
	in their attendance on the synagogue.	9:47
	Now, why did he go?	9:50
	Well, let me suggest two possible reasons.	9:52
	Valid for him. Valid for us.	9:56
	First,	10:00
	he wanted to worship the God whom he had chosen	10:03
	as the most important fact in his life.	10:07
	He wants to worship the God whom he had chosen	10:12
	as the most important fact in his life.	10:14
	There was probably no need for him to build a synagogue	10:19
	for political reasons.	10:23
	He wasn't a proconsul, or a legate, or a governor.	10:25
	He was only a Centurion, a junior officer,	10:32
	second Lieutenant.	10:38
	But he evidently had a religious sense.	10:41
	Now, what does that mean?	10:43
	He knew that he himself was not ultimate,	10:46
	but he was not all-important.	10:50
	He knew there was a fact in the universe other than himself,	10:52
	greater than himself,	10:57
	some a little more important than that,	11:00
	other than Rome, greater,	11:02
	more lasting than Rome.	11:07
	He knew there was a Creator over against himself,	11:11
	a creature,	11:15
	therefore he was humble,	11:16
	and humility is always the threshold of religion.	11:20
	And so he looked around for a God to worship.	11:29
	Now, what is worship?	11:32
	Worship is just the worth in which we hold	11:34
	something or someone.	11:39
	Corporate worship is the social expression of that worth.	11:43
	So he looked around for a worthy God	11:50
	whom he could hold as worthwhile,	11:53
	as the most worthwhile fact in his life.	11:56
	Because you see true humility always demands	12:01
	a worthy object of worship,	12:06
	something someone which will give dignity to the worshiper,	12:09
	even in his humility.	12:15
	And out of the varied and the various gods	12:20
	of the first century,	12:22
	he chose the God of the Jews.	12:25
	Now, why?	12:28
	Well, we don't know, but we can guess.	12:30
	For one thing, this God was just.	12:35
	You remember the lines which Amos wrote way back	12:40
	in the eighth century B.C.,	12:43
	putting these words into the mouth of God,	12:46
	"I hate, I despise your feasts.	12:49
	I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.	12:55
	Take away from me the noise of your songs	13:00
	to the melody of your heart.	13:05
	I will not listen.	13:08
	But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness,	13:10
	like a never flowing stream."	13:18
	Now that would appeal to this Roman officer because the	13:20
	Romans had a slogan.	13:23
	(Speaking in Latin)	13:26
	That means "Let justice stand	13:31
	even if the heavens fall."	13:34
	Justice undergirded the Roman Empire.	13:38
	But more than that, the God of the Jews was holy.	13:43
	That is morally whole.	13:48
	When a man thought of Him seriously,	13:51
	then a man was forced to examine his own conduct	13:54
	in the light of the character of this God,	13:59
	read Isiah on that.	14:03
	The Lord God of the Jews	14:07
	was a very different kind of deity	14:10
	from the celestial beings on Mount Olympus.	14:14
	Oh, they might be fun to have afternoon tea with	14:19
	or ambrosia and nectar,	14:23
	but one may hardly accuse them of being holy.	14:27
	But there was a third quality which appealed	14:33
	to the soldier.	14:35
	The Jewish God was merciful.	14:38
	The prophet Hosea had discovered that.	14:43
	He had discovered it from his own experience.	14:47
	His wife had become a prostitute.	14:51
	And he discovered he still loved her.	14:56
	He said, "If I can love my wife,	14:59
	who has shamed me, and show mercy to her,	15:03
	surely God is big enough to love Israel,	15:09
	which has played the prostitute."	15:13
	And to show mercy.	15:17
	Most people need mercy for one reason or another.	15:22
	And so this soldier chose the God of the Jews as his God.	15:28
	He didn't become a Jew, no.	15:34
	He joined that circle of gentiles	15:37
	on the fringe of Judaism who are known as the God fearers.	15:40
	They worship the Jewish God,	15:45
	but they will not accept the mark of circumcision	15:47
	nor keep the dietary laws.	15:51
	They worshiped in the synagogue, not in the temple.	15:54
	Now hasn't that been the case with many folk	15:59
	ever since the first century?	16:02
	They cannot accept everything in the Jewish-Christian	16:06
	tradition, but they are God fearers.	16:10
	They find in that tradition,	16:16
	something outside of themselves,	16:17
	to which they willingly pay homage.	16:20
	For they know that the most important fact in their lives	16:24
	is their view of the universe,	16:30
	the calamity and the character of that	16:33
	which we spell G-O-D.	16:36
	And the Jewish-Christian God is that fact for them.	16:43
	They accept the name that Jesus gave him, Father.	16:48
	Because Father is a shortcut way of bringing together the	16:53
	justness of Amos,	16:57
	the holiness of Isaiah. and the mercy of Hosea.	17:00
	A good Father is just, holy, merciful.	17:05
	And so they ally themselves with the Jewish-Christian	17:12
	tradition when they come Sunday by Sunday to chapel	17:16
	and recognize that kind of God is the God and is their God.	17:20
	Members of the Freshmen class, can that be true for us	17:29
	here at Duke?	17:33
	I think so.	17:35
	During the last years of the second World War,	17:39
	I was chaplain in one of the New England prep schools,	17:42
	and one evening at chapel the headmaster	17:47
	read a letter from an old boy written on the battlefield.	17:50
	He had just buried a classmate.	17:58
	There was no chaplain at hand.	18:02
	And so the officer did what he thought was right	18:06
	and fitting.	18:09
	He repeated the school prayer.	18:12
	He said the school hymn and the Lord's Prayer.	18:16
	He buried his friend.	18:23
	He commended him to the care of God	18:24
	from and within the beloved community	18:27
	as they both had known it best.	18:32
	There are Duke alumni, whose first port of call	18:38
	when they return to the campus is the chapel.	18:43
	Some even sing again in the choir.	18:48
	Many worship with us on the Lord's Day.	18:52
	They remind us of the Centurion at Capernaum.	18:58
	And so that is one reason for churchgoing,	19:04
	the opportunity to respect,	19:08
	to worship the God who is the most worthwhile fact in life,	19:12
	who gives us dignity in our humility	19:19
	by calling us his sons and his daughters.	19:23
	Now, there's a second reason why that Centurion	19:31
	may have attended the synagogue which he built.	19:34
	And that was to keep his spirit sensitive in the midst	19:40
	of a world that numbs the finer feelings,	19:45
	to keep his spirit sensitive in the midst of a world	19:50
	that numbs the finer feelings.	19:55
	I think that would be a sound reason for the Centurion.	19:59
	His was a profession which called for heroism,	20:03
	for cold courage, not for hot courage.	20:08
	Police action never calls for hot courage.	20:11
	It calls for cold courage.	20:14
	If you would understand the kind of job that he did,	20:17
	then ask any British soldier who was engaged in the same job	20:21
	between the first and the second World Wars.	20:29
	And yet it was a job that was often callous and brutalizing.	20:34
	One act to lore the model, tone, and produce inner discord.	20:41
	But this officer had a sensitiveness to the things	20:47
	of the spirit.	20:51
	He recognized another side to his nature.	20:54
	He wanted to keep a grip on the finer qualities on the	20:58
	gentler virtues,	21:02
	therefore he attended the synagogue.	21:05
	The service in an army of occupation was not	21:08
	the ultimate.	21:12
	Policing the outpost of an empire was not	21:15
	the be all and the end all of life.	21:18
	There was another realm,	21:22
	another kingdom to which he owed allegiance,	21:25
	in which he wished to live too,	21:30
	but he loves our nation.	21:34
	He has builted our synagogue within the Jewish faith.	21:37
	He kept his spirit sensitive.	21:42
	And down the years, others have experienced what we have	21:47
	assumed that Centurion discovered.	21:51
	Listen to this written at a time of civil strife in England.	21:55
	The year after the death of Oliver Cromwell,	22:02
	the year before the restoration of Charles the Second.	22:06
	It is an inscription on a tablet in the	22:12
	Staunton Harrold Church in England.	22:16
	Here it is.	22:22
	"In the year 1659,	22:23
	when all things sacred were either destroyed or profaned,	22:28
	this church was built to the glory of God	22:36
	by Sir Robert Shirley Barnett,	22:41
	whose singular praise it was to have done the best thing	22:45
	in the worst time and hoped them in the most calamitous."	22:49
	So singular praise it was	22:58
	to have done the best thing in the worst time	23:01
	and to have hoped them in the most calamitous,	23:05
	that's a worthy epitaph.	23:08
	A spirit alive to spiritual things in a day	23:11
	when all things sacred were either destroyed or profaned.	23:15
	It's a good reason for building a church,	23:21
	it's a good reason for coming to church.	23:24
	And we too live in a world, which is moderately ugly,	23:30
	which has been moderately ugly in many of its major emphasis	23:36
	for over a generation.	23:41
	It's a world of moral chaos, ethical confusion,	23:44
	and spiritual perversion.	23:48
	Moreover, for many of us,	23:53
	especially for you men in the freshman class,	23:54
	it's a world in which the Armed Forces seem ultimate.	23:59
	It's not easy for us to find ourselves around	24:06
	in the realm of ideals and values in this year of grace,	24:09
	something which Mark Twain once wrote in his diary,	24:14
	is almost a parable of our time.	24:18
	He was in Germany in February, 1892, confined to bed,	24:22
	when an important debate was going on in the Reichstag,	24:29
	the German Parliament, here's what he wrote:	24:33
	"30 days sick-a-bed, full of interest,	24:36
	read the debates and get excited over them,	24:41
	though I don't understand.	24:44
	By reading, I keep myself in a state of excited ignorance,	24:47
	like a blind man in a house of fire,	24:53
	flounder around immensely, but unintelligently interested.	24:56
	Don't know how I got in.	25:00
	I can't find the way out,	25:02
	but I'm having a booming time all to myself."	25:03
	Can that describe us?	25:09
	Here we are fascinated in our heads and sick in our hearts,	25:12
	as we try to steer ourselves through the model straits	25:18
	of Messina,	25:21
	between the scilla of Washington	25:23
	and the corruptness of Moscow,	25:25
	while listening to the bewitching voices of Fulton Lewis,	25:29
	Walter Littman, Mr. Kennedy, and Mr. Cruciate.	25:34
	And perhaps like the Centurion,	25:41
	we should come to chapel, our synagogue,	25:44
	to expose ourselves to the things which are true, lovely,	25:50
	and of good report.	25:56
	To remain sensitive to spiritual values	25:59
	in that kind of a world	26:02
	because in that kind of a world, we must live	26:04
	in the world but not of it.	26:14
	There's a reason for churchgoing and the juxtaposition	26:18
	of these two prepositions,	26:22
	in the world but not of it.	26:24
	Read first Corinthians,	26:26
	and watch Paul wrestling with that problem.	26:29
	How can this little church be in Corinth,	26:33
	but not of Corinth?	26:38
	Because Corinth was probably the most wicked city	26:40
	in the first century, there's an old sea captain's proverb,	26:44
	which says, "Not everyone is lucky enough	26:47
	to get to Corinth."	26:51
	I'll give you some idea what it was like.	26:53
	It was a sailor's paradise.	26:56
	And this little church,	27:01
	how can it be in Corinth, but not of it?	27:03
	No wonder he wrote them four letters.	27:07
	Trying to straighten them out.	27:10
	Now there's another reason for churchgoing,	27:13
	to keep the spirit sensitive in the midst of a world	27:17
	that numbs the finer feelings.	27:21
	I'd like us to ponder these two reasons	27:24
	as we think of this university service of worship.	27:26
	Don't let anyone discourage you by saying that the synagogue	27:31
	was a more estimable institution in the Centurion's day,	27:36
	than the church is in ours.	27:41
	You read Jesus on the Jewish religion in Matthew 23.	27:44
	His attitude is symbolized in the repeated use of the word	27:52
	"hypocrite" for the Jewish clergy.	27:57
	And yet, in that kind of a church,	28:03
	this Centurion found the spiritual inoculation,	28:08
	which safeguarded them against the infection	28:16
	his job was apt to bring.	28:19
	And in like manner,	28:23
	many of us will find here in the next four years,	28:24
	in this spot, a holy place.	28:28
	We shall come back.	28:34
	Some of us often.	28:36
	We shall return not to accept unthinkingly	28:40
	everything said,	28:45
	not necessarily to identify ourselves completely	28:48
	with everything done.	28:54
	Many of us will be God's fearers.	29:00
	And we shall return first to come to know,	29:05
	to respect, and maybe ultimately to worship	29:11
	the God revealed in the Jewish-Christian tradition,	29:17
	which is the stuff of the ideals and aspirations	29:22
	of our heritage.	29:27
	And second, we'll come to keep the spirit sensitive	29:30
	to the things of the spirit	29:38
	in a world of recurring darkness and unwary cruelty.	29:42
	And for these reasons, we can echo the words of the	29:51
	Psalmist, which began our old Testament lesson this morning:	29:55
	"I was glad when they said unto me,	30:01
	let us go into the house of the Lord."	30:06
	Amen.	30:14
	Let us pray.	30:17

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "This Business of Churchgoing" (September 16, 1962)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4q23w18g

Date:

September 16, 1962

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0198
ref5600_gvy
uachapelsermaud
duke:628114
dcrau002208
ark:/87924/r4q23w18g
9456ffb3-09f3-493e-886d-ef9965fd2cf4

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings

Language:

English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

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

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No Re-Use

In Copyright

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