Douglas V. Steere - "The Man Who Came Back" (October 14, 1962; February 17, 1963)
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- | This service, which is about to be recorded is that... | 0:05 |
(soft choir music) | 0:09 | |
I want to speak this morning about the man who came back. | 0:27 | |
We've heard this swift story that's taken from the gospel | 0:32 | |
about the 10 lepers who see Jesus passing | 0:37 | |
and in the midst of their desperate need, | 0:42 | |
they cry out for his help that they might be healed. | 0:44 | |
And he sends them off to report themselves | 0:48 | |
to the priest promising this healing, | 0:52 | |
which is carried out. | 0:55 | |
And one man comes back | 0:57 | |
and Jesus says, "Were there not 10 who were healed, | 1:02 | |
where are the nine?" | 1:07 | |
And it is that question of "Where are the nine?" | 1:10 | |
that I want to speak about here this morning. | 1:14 | |
It's the question of ingratitude. | 1:20 | |
Ingratitude is not easy to define | 1:24 | |
although most of us detected swiftly | 1:26 | |
when we see it in others | 1:28 | |
and occasionally we're even conscious of it | 1:29 | |
when we discover it in ourselves. | 1:32 | |
It's a kind of a capacity to take gifts for granted | 1:37 | |
without any kind of response for them. | 1:43 | |
To take gifts for granted | 1:47 | |
without any response for them. | 1:49 | |
Sergeant Kurikov said one time that | 1:53 | |
with an insincere man, God could do nothing. | 1:55 | |
But with an ungrateful man, God can do still less. | 1:58 | |
I suppose that if you were trying to analyze | 2:03 | |
what ingratitude was, you'd find it made up | 2:06 | |
of a considerable increment of self-absorption | 2:08 | |
and a considerable increment of self pity. | 2:13 | |
Self-absorption. | 2:19 | |
Evelyn Underhill, Mrs. Stuart Moore used | 2:22 | |
to have a story she loved to tell | 2:24 | |
about a little wood elf who had a wheelbarrow | 2:27 | |
and was busy in the forest collecting slugs | 2:31 | |
and snails that destroyed the vegetation. | 2:34 | |
And he was a very exemplary wood elf. | 2:38 | |
He had one possession that he particularly happy about | 2:41 | |
and one that he thought a great deal of. | 2:47 | |
He had a soft green blanket | 2:50 | |
that he wrapped himself in at night | 2:54 | |
when it was cold in the forest | 2:55 | |
and slept comfortably all night. | 2:58 | |
This green blanket had fallen from a fairy's carriage | 3:00 | |
as she had gone through the wood | 3:03 | |
and he had found it and never returned it. | 3:06 | |
And each night he wrapped himself in this | 3:08 | |
and slept so warmly and snugly | 3:10 | |
that he never woke up in the morning | 3:12 | |
to see the king of the world | 3:14 | |
that came early in the morning | 3:16 | |
in the forest to make all things new. | 3:17 | |
And one time an old shepherd came to this wood elf | 3:19 | |
and he said, "Have you ever seen the king of the world?" | 3:24 | |
And here was the wood elf | 3:30 | |
who lived right in the midst of the forest | 3:31 | |
and the king of the world came every morning. | 3:34 | |
And the wood elf said, "No." | 3:36 | |
He said, "As a matter of fact, | 3:37 | |
I've never been able to manage it." | 3:39 | |
And the old shepherd looked deep into his eyes | 3:42 | |
and through his eyes into his soul | 3:45 | |
and he said, "I seem to see something deep in your soul | 3:46 | |
that looks to me like a blanket." | 3:51 | |
And the wood elf knew that his secret was discovered, | 3:57 | |
that he would rather lie wrapped | 4:01 | |
in the soft green blanket than to arise up | 4:05 | |
in the morning to see the king of the world. | 4:09 | |
And it's this soft green blanket | 4:11 | |
of ingratitude and self-absorption, | 4:14 | |
that keeps many of us from seeing | 4:18 | |
what is really going on | 4:21 | |
and making any kind of adequate response to it. | 4:22 | |
I went into the study of a distinguished | 4:26 | |
religious leader not so long ago. | 4:28 | |
I saw the framed copies of his honorary degrees. | 4:33 | |
They're conspicuously displayed on the walls. | 4:36 | |
I saw his books that he had written | 4:41 | |
out where the sight of them could not be escaped. | 4:44 | |
I saw pictures on the wall of the famous people | 4:52 | |
in this country with inscriptions. | 4:55 | |
They had signed these pictures with some dedication to him. | 4:57 | |
There was even a picture of him on the wall, | 5:01 | |
although he was there. | 5:03 | |
And it made me think of the soft green blanket. | 5:05 | |
I once went to see Selma Lagerlof, | 5:12 | |
one of Sweden's great writers. | 5:14 | |
She was the only woman at that time | 5:17 | |
in the Swedish National Academy. | 5:18 | |
This is in her own home out in the rural Sweden | 5:20 | |
and she received me in a room that was filled | 5:24 | |
with busts of herself that had been made | 5:26 | |
by distinguished sculptors. | 5:29 | |
She was there and these busts were there | 5:31 | |
a little difficult to know just who was who. | 5:33 | |
There seemed to be a need for self-assurance | 5:36 | |
that was there and it was in this room | 5:38 | |
that she received her visitors. | 5:41 | |
I thought in contrast to this, | 5:44 | |
to the study of my beloved colleague, | 5:46 | |
the late Rufus Jones | 5:49 | |
who had pictures of all of his teachers in his study. | 5:52 | |
None of them signed that I can remember, | 5:58 | |
and also of the great minds through the ages | 6:00 | |
that had made contribution to him. | 6:03 | |
Those pictures were there not to honor him, | 6:05 | |
they were there that he might honor them | 6:08 | |
in gratitude for what he had gotten from them. | 6:10 | |
And I thought of the contrast between the two. | 6:13 | |
The soft green blanket of self-absorption. | 6:16 | |
But if you turn the blanket over | 6:21 | |
there is just the reverse side to the same thing | 6:24 | |
in self-pity for self-pity is only just | 6:27 | |
the reverse side of self-absorption. | 6:29 | |
And there again, | 6:32 | |
there is the possibility of being | 6:35 | |
so wrapped in self-pity that no sense | 6:37 | |
of the gifts that have come | 6:41 | |
to one is any longer possible. | 6:43 | |
We can have no awareness of those | 6:46 | |
because we are so wrapped up in self-pity. | 6:47 | |
I have heard people speak in marriage | 6:52 | |
about the other partner and the lack of appreciation | 6:54 | |
of them on the part of the other partner | 6:57 | |
to the almost utter exclusion | 7:00 | |
of what the other partner had given to them | 7:02 | |
and what the other partner was really | 7:04 | |
continually pouring out upon them in this marriage. | 7:06 | |
So wrapped that they were unable to see it. | 7:10 | |
There's a story of an old man in his eighties, | 7:14 | |
who went to visit another old man in the hospital | 7:17 | |
who had been a companion of his. | 7:20 | |
And this man was having oxygen coming up his nostrils | 7:22 | |
and he said "George," he said, | 7:28 | |
"There's not much hope for us now, is there?" | 7:30 | |
He said, "George, we're pretty much | 7:32 | |
on the downgrade now, aren't we? | 7:35 | |
It probably won't be very long for us now, will it?" | 7:37 | |
He said, "Is there anything I can do for you, George?" | 7:40 | |
And his friend whom he'd come to see said, | 7:42 | |
"Yes, would you mind taking your foot | 7:44 | |
off the oxygen tube." | 7:46 | |
There come those who see in life | 7:49 | |
those dark things in their self-absorption | 7:54 | |
that prevent them from being open | 7:57 | |
to those things that bring life. | 8:00 | |
There was a story of a Harvard professor... | 8:04 | |
A play of a Harvard professor who was | 8:07 | |
a professor of French and he had such a longing | 8:09 | |
that he might someday be able to spend two | 8:13 | |
or three years, which would be necessary | 8:16 | |
in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris | 8:18 | |
to get out the research materials for this great book | 8:20 | |
that he always wanted to write. | 8:23 | |
But there were always the students he had to teach. | 8:24 | |
And the sabbatical years were always too short. | 8:27 | |
And there was these students who all was | 8:29 | |
a kind of roadblock between him | 8:32 | |
and this great feat of scholarship, | 8:34 | |
which he was sure he would be capable | 8:36 | |
of performing if he was only able to get there. | 8:37 | |
And then one day in his middle life, | 8:41 | |
he discovered that he had lung cancer | 8:43 | |
and he had only a few matter of a few months to live. | 8:45 | |
And then in the kind of white light of awareness | 8:48 | |
that this brought to him, | 8:51 | |
he was compelled to ask himself | 8:53 | |
what if he should be given back a piece of life, | 8:56 | |
what he most wanted. | 8:58 | |
And it became so clear to him | 9:00 | |
that what he most wanted would not be | 9:01 | |
the Biblioteque Nationale but it would be | 9:04 | |
a chance again at the students. | 9:06 | |
There is a kind of look at life | 9:11 | |
that professor Hawking used to tell us | 9:15 | |
about in his classes at Harvard. | 9:16 | |
He said, "You know, nobody gets what he deserves | 9:19 | |
or deserves what he gets, | 9:22 | |
but we're here in this life for the giving. | 9:24 | |
We're here in this life for the sowing, | 9:28 | |
not for the counting up of that which is to come. | 9:31 | |
And it is that alone, which opens up life." | 9:35 | |
These nine men whom Jesus is asking about, | 9:42 | |
where are they? | 9:46 | |
Were there not 10 who are healed, | 9:48 | |
where are the nine? | 9:49 | |
These nine undoubtedly we're most grateful to be healed. | 9:52 | |
They were most grateful to have this new lease on life. | 9:54 | |
They were most grateful to be back in circulation again. | 9:57 | |
No doubt they had the feeling that they'd been denied | 10:00 | |
a block of life, and now we're going | 10:02 | |
to make up for it. | 10:03 | |
Jesus? Oh, they might send a message | 10:04 | |
to him someday of gratitude or the one he served, | 10:06 | |
or they might think of him sometime. | 10:10 | |
But now, they were busy in life. | 10:12 | |
Were there not a 10 who were healed, | 10:15 | |
where are the nine? | 10:17 | |
But there was the man who came back. | 10:21 | |
One man who came back, threw himself at Jesus' feet | 10:24 | |
and in great thankfulness opened himself up | 10:28 | |
to the one who had cleansed him. | 10:32 | |
And gratitude alone, as we experience it, | 10:41 | |
can help us to understand | 10:44 | |
what ingratitude really is | 10:45 | |
and cannot only help us to see that as it's shadow, | 10:50 | |
but can open up to us life itself. | 10:53 | |
I have in my desk at home, as many of you have, | 10:57 | |
a central drawer which is connected | 10:59 | |
with the side drawers in such a way | 11:03 | |
that when I pull the side drawers, | 11:04 | |
they won't come open. | 11:06 | |
But when I pull the central drawer open, | 11:07 | |
then the side drawers come open. | 11:10 | |
Gratitude is the central drawer of the religious life. | 11:12 | |
Other things do not come open until the heart | 11:19 | |
is baptized with thankfulness. | 11:22 | |
I often think there might've been | 11:28 | |
another beatitude that said, | 11:29 | |
"Blessed are the thankful hearted ones | 11:30 | |
for they shall open up the heart of the world. | 11:32 | |
Blessed are the thankful hearted ones, | 11:35 | |
for they shall open up the heart of the world." | 11:37 | |
The old rabbi of cots, according to a Hasidic legend | 11:42 | |
was approached one day by his disciples | 11:46 | |
for their daily lesson. | 11:49 | |
And he gave it to them. | 11:51 | |
He said, "Where is the most high to be found?" | 11:51 | |
And they said, "Rabbi, that you should ask us | 11:55 | |
where are the most high is to be found. | 11:58 | |
The most high is to be found everywhere." | 12:00 | |
"No," said the rabbi of cots, | 12:03 | |
"God is where men let him in. | 12:06 | |
God is where men let him in." | 12:11 | |
And gratitude is a way to let God in, to let him work. | 12:14 | |
To let him open up all the sides of life. | 12:21 | |
I often think that in our kind of life | 12:25 | |
in a country like this where we have so much | 12:29 | |
and so much, we are the inheritors of so much. | 12:31 | |
We take so much for granted that when you go | 12:34 | |
into some of the countries that do not have | 12:37 | |
these kinds of physical advantages, | 12:40 | |
you see just how life is without these. | 12:41 | |
And yet you often find in these people | 12:45 | |
a more thankful heart than you find | 12:47 | |
in the people of our own country. | 12:49 | |
I go in the summer when I can for a holiday | 12:52 | |
at a place called Mackinaw in Northern Michigan, | 12:56 | |
and a great bridge has been built | 12:59 | |
between the lower and the upper peninsulas | 13:01 | |
in these last years. | 13:03 | |
And the lives of men were taken doing that. | 13:05 | |
A number of men were killed building that bridge. | 13:10 | |
No great bridge has ever built that doesn't cost blood. | 13:12 | |
No great tunnel has ever built that doesn't cost blood. | 13:17 | |
There's blood in the ties of every railroad | 13:19 | |
from a man that laid that one day. | 13:22 | |
And yet people well over that bridge, | 13:25 | |
pay their fees, feel that they have this coming | 13:27 | |
to them because they paid for it | 13:31 | |
without any sense of thankfulness | 13:33 | |
that these two peninsulas have been connected | 13:35 | |
by some who have given their lives for that | 13:38 | |
and that they have the blessing now, | 13:40 | |
of swiftly passing from one place to another. | 13:43 | |
We take it all for granted. | 13:45 | |
Among these simple people, | 13:47 | |
we often find a sense of thankfulness | 13:49 | |
being constantly expressed. | 13:52 | |
The little rituals that they've developed | 13:53 | |
that might give us pulse about our own lives | 13:55 | |
and about our own religious lives. | 13:58 | |
When you are in Africa and you find some person | 14:01 | |
along the sea coast where the coconuts grow. | 14:04 | |
When he opens a coconut, | 14:07 | |
terribly thirsty for the juice of it, | 14:09 | |
always a little is poured out first | 14:10 | |
in thankfulness for what has come to him. | 14:13 | |
Bananas taken off the tree | 14:16 | |
and always a banana laid aside | 14:18 | |
in thankfulness for what has come. | 14:21 | |
There's a story that the Buddhist fishermen of Japan | 14:24 | |
have a ceremony once a year on the edge of the sea, | 14:27 | |
where they ask the forgiveness of the fish | 14:32 | |
for taking them in the course of the year. | 14:35 | |
They must take them, they must make their living that way. | 14:38 | |
Their own people need the protein | 14:41 | |
that comes from these fish. | 14:43 | |
But there is a sense that they have taken | 14:45 | |
the lives of fellow creatures | 14:48 | |
and that forgiveness must be asked for. | 14:50 | |
In a way, almost thankfulness is poured out to them. | 14:53 | |
Or you going in India, early in the morning, | 14:56 | |
four o'clock in the morning, you move around. | 14:58 | |
What do you see? | 15:00 | |
A woman, up early, in front of her little hut, | 15:02 | |
putting a beautiful design on the ground | 15:08 | |
with chalk water in thankfulness for her home, | 15:13 | |
for her children, for life, | 15:17 | |
for what has come to her. | 15:20 | |
By midday that will all be trampled, | 15:22 | |
people will have walked across it. | 15:24 | |
By night, you won't even be able to detect | 15:26 | |
the figure that's in it. | 15:29 | |
That doesn't matter. | 15:30 | |
It's offered up as a thankfulness, | 15:31 | |
like the sand paintings that the Indians made. | 15:33 | |
An act of thankfulness to the one that made us. | 15:35 | |
Life is all full of these opportunities | 15:39 | |
that there are for this kind of thankfulness. | 15:41 | |
These openers of the heart, | 15:44 | |
if we only were prepared to be sensitive to them. | 15:45 | |
Many nights in the year, there is a sunset. | 15:51 | |
If people are not too busy | 15:55 | |
to lift their eyes to the sky, | 15:57 | |
or don't have the attitude | 15:59 | |
that "I've seen that before," | 16:00 | |
there is something that opens us up, | 16:04 | |
that we've been given another day. | 16:06 | |
That we're on this earth. | 16:08 | |
That we are before something very beautiful | 16:10 | |
that opens our life up. | 16:13 | |
The sunset may be an occasion, an opener of the heart, | 16:17 | |
or a deeper opening of gratitude. | 16:20 | |
My wife and I had the privilege, several years ago | 16:25 | |
of being at Darjeeling in the month of January, | 16:27 | |
where the air is clear and getting up very early | 16:29 | |
one morning while it was dark and going up 2000 feet | 16:32 | |
onto tiger hill and then watching as it began to get light. | 16:35 | |
And as the sun came up, watching the light of the sun | 16:40 | |
light up that whole range of the Himalayas | 16:44 | |
from Kanchenjunga right across the Mount Everest. | 16:47 | |
That great, white, shimmering beauty of the Himalayas. | 16:50 | |
You didn't wanna climb it, you didn't want to photograph it. | 16:55 | |
You didn't want to paint it, you didn't want to own it. | 16:58 | |
You didn't want to mine it. | 17:01 | |
We all just wanted to stand there and just be open | 17:02 | |
by the fact that there was on this earth, | 17:05 | |
anything as beautiful as that. | 17:07 | |
Sometimes it comes in different ways. | 17:12 | |
A young man, who is taking his parents for granted, | 17:14 | |
perhaps he's been in a family where there wasn't | 17:16 | |
very much emotional expression anyway. | 17:17 | |
And one day in his twenties, | 17:21 | |
when a time when he's been stopping | 17:22 | |
to kind of look at the whole picture, | 17:24 | |
a kind of a tidal wave of gratitude comes over him. | 17:28 | |
For what his parents have done, | 17:33 | |
for the way they never stood in his way, | 17:35 | |
for the way they always put themselves | 17:36 | |
somehow at his disposal to make possible his life. | 17:38 | |
To make the possible that his life might flow | 17:41 | |
in the way in which it longed to go. | 17:44 | |
And perhaps, he might even be given | 17:47 | |
the gift of tears in such a moment. | 17:49 | |
For the first time in many years. | 17:51 | |
My father, a year or two before he died, | 17:55 | |
was living out in Seattle. | 17:57 | |
He had a little lot next to the house where he lived, | 17:58 | |
which he had a big garden. | 18:00 | |
He had grew things far more than he needed, | 18:02 | |
he used to pass them out amongst the neighbors there. | 18:04 | |
And he said he was on his knees, weeding in the garden. | 18:06 | |
And he said, suddenly it just came over him | 18:11 | |
that he just looked up and he said, | 18:14 | |
"I just felt so thankful that I wasn't | 18:16 | |
anywhere else in the world than here. | 18:18 | |
I was just so thankful I had a garden. | 18:21 | |
I had a garden to care for, | 18:23 | |
that God had kept me on in life. | 18:25 | |
That I had still the chance to know | 18:27 | |
and be sensitive to what was going on in the world. | 18:30 | |
I was just overflowed with a sense of thankfulness." | 18:31 | |
These are the openers of the heart | 18:36 | |
that come along in the course of the day. | 18:37 | |
Two years ago, I was over in France at Chartres, | 18:44 | |
and I had seen the picture of this statue | 18:47 | |
on one of the porches of Chartres | 18:50 | |
and I spent about two hours trying to find it. | 18:53 | |
And my neck was well exercised | 18:55 | |
via looking up to try to find, | 18:59 | |
and I finally found it. | 19:01 | |
It's a figure of God the father | 19:03 | |
holding Adam on his lap. | 19:06 | |
And Adam is dull and half asleep. | 19:10 | |
Chin is down, knees are drawn up, | 19:14 | |
looks like a fetus in the mother's womb. | 19:17 | |
He's dull and half asleep. | 19:20 | |
And God the father, in as far as stone | 19:23 | |
can make it possible to show this. | 19:25 | |
God the father is looking at him | 19:28 | |
as he holds him on his lap. | 19:29 | |
Looking longingly, somehow longing | 19:31 | |
that Adam may come awake and realize | 19:33 | |
who it is that holds him and answer back, | 19:35 | |
begin to love back. | 19:41 | |
There are sometimes when this kind of thing | 19:47 | |
is institutionalized. | 19:50 | |
The Jews look on their Sabbath in a way | 19:54 | |
that we have almost forgotten. | 19:58 | |
And I was in Jerusalem in Israel, | 20:03 | |
in the Orthodox quarter one Friday afternoon | 20:07 | |
when the sunset was just coming on | 20:10 | |
and it was almost time for the Sabbath to begin. | 20:13 | |
And I saw people running to the synagogue, | 20:17 | |
hurrying to the synagogue. | 20:20 | |
Some of these Hasidic Jews were there | 20:22 | |
are so longing to be there, to be in their place | 20:25 | |
when the Sabbath begins. | 20:29 | |
And the children, they often say, "Shalom, Shalom," | 20:31 | |
but this is now "Shabbat shalom," | 20:34 | |
sabbath greeting, sabbath blessings | 20:37 | |
that they give to you. | 20:39 | |
There are stories of some Hasidists | 20:41 | |
who you go to do business with them on Wednesday | 20:43 | |
and they say, "Oh, no, it's too near the Sabbath. | 20:45 | |
Don't come on Thursday, | 20:49 | |
oh much too near the Sabbath. | 20:50 | |
Come after the Sabbath. | 20:51 | |
There is this kind of longing to be there, | 20:53 | |
the seventh day, the day on which God rested. | 20:56 | |
The day, that special day of thankfulness, | 20:58 | |
where we can express again, | 21:02 | |
our thankfulness to him for our creation | 21:03 | |
and for our conservation and for our ultimate being | 21:06 | |
in his hands in such a way that if we are | 21:10 | |
to be redeemed, he must redeem us. | 21:13 | |
In thankfulness. | 21:15 | |
There is an institutionalization of gratitude, | 21:17 | |
vividly experienced by these people | 21:20 | |
as they participate in it. | 21:23 | |
There is an Englishman by the name | 21:26 | |
of Malcolm Spencer who's dead now | 21:28 | |
but was the hero and the great friend | 21:31 | |
of the Student Christian Movement | 21:34 | |
in England for a generation. | 21:36 | |
Malcolm Spencer's whole religion was oriented | 21:39 | |
around thankfulness. | 21:41 | |
He got up in the morning, rush to the window | 21:42 | |
in his pajamas and threw open the window | 21:44 | |
and thanked God for the day that was before him. | 21:46 | |
Thank God that he was on earth. | 21:50 | |
Thank God for the jobs he had to do. | 21:51 | |
His religion was simply poured out in thankful. | 21:53 | |
But thankfulness is not just an emotion, | 22:00 | |
gratitude is not just an emotion. | 22:07 | |
Käthe Kollwitz, perhaps Germany's greatest woman artist | 22:09 | |
used to always say that | 22:14 | |
every gift contains a task. | 22:18 | |
And therefore, those who truly feel grateful | 22:24 | |
always have a task laid upon them. | 22:27 | |
There's an ethic of gratitude. | 22:30 | |
It's never been put better than by Catherine of Sienna | 22:32 | |
in one of her dialogues in which she has God speaking. | 22:37 | |
And God says, "I require that you love me | 22:40 | |
with the same love with which I love you. | 22:42 | |
But this indeed you cannot do, | 22:44 | |
because I loved you without being loved. | 22:46 | |
All the love which you have for me, you owe me, | 22:49 | |
therefore to me, in person, you cannot repay | 22:52 | |
the love I require of you. | 22:54 | |
So I have placed you in the midst of your fellows | 22:57 | |
that you may do to them that's what you kind of do to me. | 23:00 | |
And that is to say that you may love your neighbor | 23:04 | |
out free grace without expecting any return from him. | 23:08 | |
What you do unto him, I count done unto me." | 23:12 | |
This is the ethic of gratitude, | 23:17 | |
God has placed us in the midst of our fellows | 23:19 | |
and we love him back in them and then their service. | 23:24 | |
And a grateful-hearted man is a man who isn't counting | 23:31 | |
whether others are going to recognize who did this | 23:34 | |
as the wonderful old Jesuit motto which says, | 23:39 | |
"You'll do a great deal in this world if you're not | 23:41 | |
too particular about who gets credit for it." | 23:43 | |
We've been put down here in the world | 23:46 | |
to serve our fellows and there's | 23:49 | |
a kind of chain reaction that comes with these things. | 23:50 | |
Albert Schweitzer, in one of the really decent acts | 23:53 | |
in the west leaves his career, | 23:56 | |
trains himself in medicine | 24:00 | |
and goes out to Lambarene. | 24:01 | |
And what happens? | 24:03 | |
Well, all kinds of people do similar things. | 24:05 | |
Young Mellon gives up a life of comparative ease, | 24:10 | |
studies medicine in the thirties, goes down in Haiti | 24:14 | |
and forms a Schweitzer-like hospital down there. | 24:17 | |
And Theodore Bender, a brilliant young German does | 24:21 | |
the same thing at Pucallpa | 24:24 | |
in the upper waters of the Amazon. | 24:26 | |
And Michael Wood over in Kenya and Tanganyika | 24:29 | |
does the same thing over there | 24:34 | |
and a great many people in Lambarenes | 24:37 | |
of their own, which had nothing to do with medicine, | 24:39 | |
but mean they do their task in a new kind of way | 24:42 | |
all over the world because this man | 24:44 | |
decided to love back and to try | 24:48 | |
and return for all that had been poured out | 24:51 | |
and lavished and given to him. | 24:53 | |
After the age of 30, tried to adrift | 24:55 | |
the corner of pain on a people somewhere. | 24:58 | |
This is the chain reaction of loving back, | 25:01 | |
the chain reaction of gratitude | 25:05 | |
that was really promised and that has been carried out. | 25:06 | |
Sometimes it means lifting the telephone and calling up | 25:10 | |
some old person who doesn't get many calls anymore. | 25:12 | |
Their friends are gone. | 25:14 | |
Sometimes it means a girl in her teens is down | 25:16 | |
in a bus station after school for an hour | 25:20 | |
looking after children while giving their harassed mother | 25:24 | |
a chance to get her ticket and maybe just get | 25:27 | |
a little peace for just a minute. | 25:30 | |
And why is she doing it? | 25:31 | |
Well, she doesn't know, it's fun. | 25:33 | |
Or somebody balancing the budget in some way. | 25:34 | |
These things are all original when they're genuine, | 25:37 | |
they come up out of the heart. | 25:41 | |
We find the ways in which to carry these out. | 25:42 | |
But all of these are a part of this loving back, | 25:45 | |
but you may well say, | 25:50 | |
"In a world like this, does this mean anything? | 25:51 | |
In a world like this, | 25:54 | |
threatened as it is by cosmic extinction, | 25:55 | |
is there really any place for this kind of thing? | 25:59 | |
For this kind of gratitude in such a world as this? | 26:02 | |
I am a stranger and afraid in a world I never made. | 26:04 | |
Well, certainly for those who feel grateful | 26:08 | |
for what has been given to them, | 26:12 | |
they must exert themselves to implement | 26:15 | |
the peace with everything that is in them. | 26:19 | |
And you must do that all through a life | 26:23 | |
where you will be intentional all | 26:26 | |
through your life in the situation. | 26:27 | |
You must give everything you can | 26:29 | |
to build up those forces of peace | 26:31 | |
to let this country and every country know, | 26:33 | |
that no country any longer can act on its own. | 26:35 | |
That now there must be a responsible way of working | 26:38 | |
this out together, that must be done. | 26:41 | |
But when all that has been done, what then? | 26:43 | |
Well, I think then Luther gave us the grateful man's answer. | 26:47 | |
Somebody asked him "If you knew the world were | 26:50 | |
to end tomorrow, what would you do today?" | 26:53 | |
Luther said, "If I knew | 26:55 | |
the world would end tomorrow, | 26:56 | |
I'd plant a tree today" | 26:57 | |
Jesus asks the question, | 27:06 | |
"Were there not 10 who were healed, | 27:09 | |
where are the nine?" | 27:12 | |
Are we among the nine? | 27:15 | |
Lavished, | 27:18 | |
given all? | 27:21 | |
Blessed are the thankful-hearted | 27:27 | |
for they shall open the heart of the world. | 27:31 | |
Let's pray. | 27:36 | |
Oh God, | 27:56 | |
that we might leave the ranks of the nine | 27:59 | |
and join the ranks of the one. | 28:02 | |
Strip us from the green blankets | 28:08 | |
and although you have given us so much already, | 28:13 | |
give us one thing more, | 28:18 | |
a grateful heart. | 28:21 | |
And now may the peace, the burning peace | 28:27 | |
that passes all understanding stand sentinel | 28:29 | |
over your hearts and minds both now | 28:32 | |
and evermore. | 28:36 | |
(soft choir music) | 28:42 |