Creighton Lacy - "From Being Anxious or Secure" (December 2, 1962)
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Let us pray. | 0:04 |
- | Hear us, oh, here us Lord, | 0:08 |
to thee a sinner is more music, | 0:11 | |
When he prays than spheres' or angels'. | 0:14 | |
Praises is be in panegyric alleluias. | 0:16 | |
Hear us, for till thou hear us, Lord. | 0:20 | |
We know not what to say. | 0:25 | |
Amen. | 0:29 | |
The words which we have just prayed, | 0:38 | |
are from the litany of John Donne, | 0:41 | |
one of the earliest and most brilliant of English poets. | 0:43 | |
He lived at the time of Shakespeare, | 0:47 | |
and wrote some of the finest love songs of his age, | 0:49 | |
and yet he was also strange as it may seem a parish priest, | 0:53 | |
and the author of a great many prayers and hymns. | 0:57 | |
My text today is taken from another stanza of the litany, | 1:02 | |
which reads, | 1:06 | |
from being anxious, or secure. | 1:08 | |
Dull clods of sadness, or light squibs of mirth. | 1:12 | |
From needing danger, to be good, | 1:19 | |
from owing thee yesterday's tears today. | 1:23 | |
From bribing Thee with alms, | 1:28 | |
to excuse some sin more burdenous. | 1:31 | |
Good Lord, deliver us. | 1:35 | |
From being anxious, or secure. | 1:41 | |
Good Lord deliver us. | 1:46 | |
Those two words, anxious or secure | 1:52 | |
sound like a contradiction. | 1:54 | |
How often we pray that we may lose our anxiety, | 1:56 | |
and find security, | 2:00 | |
that we may replace, | 2:02 | |
worry with trust and certainty. | 2:04 | |
Nevertheless, | 2:08 | |
this prayer that God will deliver us from both anxiety, | 2:09 | |
and security, is more even than divine paradox. | 2:12 | |
It is a profound blending of truth, | 2:18 | |
and faith, as important in our daily lives, | 2:21 | |
as in our Christian gospel. | 2:24 | |
The anxieties of undergraduate days loom large, | 2:28 | |
dates and grades and money in that order, | 2:33 | |
but let the voice of experience assure you paranthetically, | 2:38 | |
that amid these Gothic towers, | 2:42 | |
you have more security, than you will ever have again. | 2:45 | |
we are all familiar with two commandments of Jesus, | 2:51 | |
not to be worried or anxious, | 2:55 | |
to those of us who presume however, | 2:58 | |
unworthly to stand in his pulpit. | 3:00 | |
He says, "when they deliver you up", | 3:04 | |
and believe me anyone standing on | 3:07 | |
this spot in duke chapel, feels delivered up. | 3:09 | |
"When they deliver you up, do not be anxious, | 3:14 | |
how you are to speak or what you are to say, | 3:17 | |
for what you are to say will be given to you in, | 3:20 | |
that hour for it is not you who speak, | 3:22 | |
but the spirit of your father speaking through you." | 3:26 | |
Some of us preachers, unfortunately, | 3:31 | |
do not take these words of the master, seriously enough, | 3:33 | |
with the result that the message from God is buried, | 3:36 | |
under polished language and clever illustrations, | 3:40 | |
but all of us have heard other speakers who take, | 3:44 | |
this assurance too literally, | 3:46 | |
and stand up in the pulpit with nothing to say, | 3:49 | |
nothing, at least that sounds | 3:52 | |
like the spirit of the heavenly father speaking through us, | 3:54 | |
but all of us in our | 4:00 | |
everyday speech need to think about this verse, however. | 4:02 | |
The opportunities to witness for Christ do not always occur | 4:06 | |
in public meetings. | 4:10 | |
As Christians, we need to ask ourselves constantly, | 4:13 | |
whether in the classroom, | 4:16 | |
or on the football field. | 4:18 | |
In the laboratory, | 4:20 | |
or in the office. | 4:21 | |
In dealing with our roommates or with the janitors. | 4:24 | |
The words of our mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 4:27 | |
are acceptable in the sight of God, | 4:31 | |
our strength and our Redeemer. | 4:34 | |
But, there is an even more familiar, | 4:39 | |
yet perplexing assurance. | 4:41 | |
Do not be anxious about your life, | 4:43 | |
what you shall eat, | 4:45 | |
or what you shall drink, | 4:46 | |
nor about your body, what you shall put on. | 4:47 | |
Your heavenly father knows | 4:51 | |
that you need them all. | 4:52 | |
Seek first, his kingdom and his righteousness, | 4:54 | |
and all these things shall be yours as well. | 4:58 | |
Be not therefore anxious for the Morrow, | 5:02 | |
for the Morrow will be anxious for itself. | 5:05 | |
We who call ourselves practical moderns, | 5:09 | |
find this disturbing to say the least. | 5:12 | |
It's a natural human concern to, | 5:15 | |
wanna know where the next dollar is coming from. | 5:17 | |
Imagine my astonishment, | 5:21 | |
the other day to see a student sending off a money order. | 5:22 | |
I had assumed that it was a one-way traffic | 5:25 | |
from thousands of parents into Duke Station, | 5:27 | |
but it's only sensible and realistic | 5:32 | |
to keep sufficient savings for a rainy day. | 5:34 | |
It's simple common sense to, | 5:37 | |
"go to the ant thou sluggard, | 5:39 | |
consider her ways and be wise", | 5:42 | |
as the book of Proverbs advises. | 5:44 | |
It's good American tradition to admire frugality, | 5:46 | |
and thrift than hard work. | 5:50 | |
In fact, as Horace Greeley, who put it, | 5:53 | |
"The darkest hour of any man's life is, | 5:55 | |
when he sits down to plan | 5:58 | |
how to get money without earning it." | 6:00 | |
Yet, beyond our selfish concerns, | 6:04 | |
Jesus' words here, | 6:07 | |
pose the searching problem of other people's suffering. | 6:08 | |
We cannot believe, | 6:13 | |
that all human beings throughout the world, | 6:14 | |
who starved or thirst or freeze are evil, | 6:18 | |
we cannot maintain as Christians that, | 6:26 | |
poverty and misery are always the fault of the victims. | 6:28 | |
It seems that best around about kind of justice to seek | 6:32 | |
the Kingdom of Heaven and expect, | 6:36 | |
that all our material needs will be added unto us. | 6:37 | |
One clue is given in the new testament epistles. | 6:44 | |
According to my small Bible concordance, | 6:47 | |
the noun anxiety occurs only twice. | 6:50 | |
The first letter of Peter says, | 6:55 | |
"humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, | 6:57 | |
that He may exalt you in due time casting all your anxiety | 7:00 | |
upon Him, because he cares for you." | 7:05 | |
All of us, I venture to say, | 7:13 | |
I prayed for deliverance from anxiety, | 7:14 | |
of all forms of suffering. | 7:17 | |
Worry is perhaps the most widespread, | 7:19 | |
one of the hardest to bare, | 7:23 | |
often costly and its effect, | 7:25 | |
and probably the most unnecessary. | 7:29 | |
So I say this, | 7:31 | |
with full awareness of approaching examinations. | 7:32 | |
when anxiety becomes extreme, | 7:36 | |
it takes the dreadful form of panic, | 7:39 | |
and fear may be paralyzing, | 7:41 | |
and crippling at the very time | 7:43 | |
when we need strength of body and clarity of mind. | 7:45 | |
We admit that fruitless, faceless worry | 7:50 | |
is either annoying disease or a soul searing sin, | 7:54 | |
and we have all felt in time of crisis, | 8:00 | |
large or small, | 8:02 | |
the relief, | 8:04 | |
the freedom, | 8:06 | |
the peace of casting, | 8:08 | |
all our anxiety upon God, who cares for us, | 8:09 | |
but there is another kind of anxiety from, | 8:16 | |
which we should never be free. | 8:18 | |
The reaction which we usually speak of | 8:20 | |
with a better word, concern. | 8:22 | |
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, | 8:26 | |
"besides those things, which are without, | 8:28 | |
there is that which presses upon me daily, | 8:30 | |
anxiety for all the churches." | 8:34 | |
How deeply all of us feel that kind of concern of intervals | 8:39 | |
for our families and friends, | 8:42 | |
how deeply as Christians, | 8:46 | |
we ought to feel that kind of anxiety | 8:48 | |
for the churches of the world, | 8:50 | |
those under prosecution, | 8:53 | |
and more subtle pressures, | 8:55 | |
or those which in complete freedom, | 8:57 | |
deny their Lord by denying brotherhood. | 9:00 | |
Rabbi leibman, reminded us in his bestseller, peace of mind, | 9:06 | |
"that our susceptibility to anxiety is | 9:10 | |
the soil of our human growth." | 9:13 | |
Let us never pray to be delivered from the kind of concern | 9:17 | |
that produces progress and creativity. | 9:20 | |
Fear of disease, such as polio and cancer | 9:24 | |
inspires us to seek for causes and for cures. | 9:28 | |
Fear of war, may someday lead mankind to build | 9:32 | |
a world of justice and brotherhood. | 9:36 | |
Fear of poverty is inducing many nations | 9:41 | |
to embark on great social and economic experiments, | 9:43 | |
along many lines. | 9:47 | |
These efforts, which we in America call social security, | 9:51 | |
turn our thoughts now toward | 9:55 | |
that other word of John Donne, | 9:57 | |
"from being secure, good Lord deliver us." | 9:59 | |
Why should we pray to be delivered from feeling secure? | 10:06 | |
Is security not the one thing | 10:09 | |
that frees us in turn from anxiety? | 10:11 | |
Can we not confidently affirm | 10:15 | |
that the world will guarantee us anxiety, | 10:17 | |
but our faith in God provides security. | 10:20 | |
It's not as simple as that. | 10:25 | |
Speaking of social security, | 10:28 | |
a prominent preacher said in | 10:30 | |
the Christian century sometime ago, | 10:32 | |
"its' extension has been one of | 10:35 | |
the greatest acts of justice in our history. | 10:36 | |
It is a convincing affirmation | 10:40 | |
that a nation's wealth and responsibility is its' people," | 10:42 | |
but the same writer continued, | 10:49 | |
"yet, the quest for security can be distorted | 10:51 | |
and perverted until it becomes the exclusive aim in life, | 10:54 | |
blocking out nearly everything else," | 10:59 | |
and he told up a New Yorker cartoon in | 11:03 | |
which a man is proposing to a girl, in these words, | 11:05 | |
"I have a good basic salary with escalator clause, | 11:09 | |
social security and diamond insurance, | 11:12 | |
old age benefits, unemployment compensation, | 11:15 | |
and the pension plan. | 11:18 | |
When you marry me?" | 11:19 | |
Now, the tragic conclusion is | 11:22 | |
that most modern girls would jump eagerly | 11:23 | |
at such a proposal. | 11:26 | |
For security today, | 11:28 | |
so often takes precedence, | 11:29 | |
over love or kindness or understanding. | 11:32 | |
Sometime ago I had a visit | 11:38 | |
from a brand new graduate of this institution. | 11:39 | |
Who had always dreamed of studying for the law, | 11:42 | |
but because he had a wife and baby daughter, | 11:46 | |
he was abandoning that dream, | 11:48 | |
and sat around in the barber shop, | 11:50 | |
waiting for replies from his job applications | 11:52 | |
to big industrial firms across the country, | 11:55 | |
which could guarantee him security and steady income. | 11:58 | |
From sacrificing our dreams, | 12:03 | |
from letting our courage rust, | 12:07 | |
from being base secure. | 12:10 | |
Oh Lord, deliver us. | 12:14 | |
Or, take the military phase of our 20th century life. | 12:19 | |
In my college day, | 12:23 | |
the phrase collective security was in every headline | 12:24 | |
and in every foreign policy debate, | 12:27 | |
it is heard less frequently today, | 12:30 | |
but the idea is inherent in the United Nations | 12:32 | |
and in mutual assistance treaties. | 12:35 | |
The agreement on which NATO | 12:39 | |
and the European Defense Community rest | 12:41 | |
was originally called the Atlantic Security Pact. | 12:44 | |
When it was signed, | 12:48 | |
the realistic journalism of life magazine commented. | 12:49 | |
"It is a military Alliance, | 12:54 | |
an instrument of security, | 12:56 | |
it has already made | 12:59 | |
and will continue to make | 13:01 | |
for more, not less tension in the world." | 13:03 | |
Yet the nuclear age confirms an ancient truth, | 13:10 | |
that there is no such thing as absolute security, | 13:13 | |
and any nation which undertakes it | 13:16 | |
will become a Garrison state, | 13:18 | |
or a bankrupt state or both. | 13:21 | |
Similarly, the fourth national study conference on | 13:26 | |
the churches and world order warned, | 13:28 | |
"according to the Christian gospel, | 13:32 | |
nations, as well as men that are concerned solely | 13:34 | |
with security and self-defense, | 13:38 | |
lose even these." | 13:40 | |
When we seek simply to have security, | 13:43 | |
we get into a vicious circle. | 13:46 | |
We never have enough. | 13:48 | |
So it is with all our efforts to achieve security in | 13:53 | |
this life, they make for more, rather than less tension. | 13:56 | |
What about the religious field? | 14:04 | |
We think instantly of the great Psalms of trust and comfort | 14:07 | |
and faith, other names for security, | 14:11 | |
yet for us to call ourselves Christians, | 14:16 | |
it may be shocking to discover | 14:18 | |
that all the biblical references to anxious or anxiety | 14:19 | |
are in the new Testament, | 14:26 | |
and all the references to secure or security | 14:28 | |
are in the old Testament, | 14:32 | |
And another fact of the four or five times | 14:36 | |
that the noun security appears in | 14:38 | |
the American revised version, | 14:41 | |
all are unfavorable or dangerous, | 14:43 | |
not something admirable. | 14:48 | |
In Judges. | 14:51 | |
The people that were there in dwelled in security, | 14:52 | |
for there was none in the land possessing authority, | 14:55 | |
and they had no dealings with any man. | 14:58 | |
Security, in those terms then was the kind of hibernation | 15:02 | |
as undesirable as it is impossible in | 15:06 | |
this modern world, | 15:09 | |
as proof of the poor quality of this type of security. | 15:12 | |
The king James version translates | 15:15 | |
the phrase they dwelt careless. | 15:18 | |
The second passage in job, begins hopefully, | 15:22 | |
"God giveth the mighty to be in security, | 15:27 | |
and they rest thereon," | 15:29 | |
but it goes on to say, | 15:32 | |
"they are exalted. | 15:34 | |
yet a little while and they are gone. | 15:36 | |
Yea, they are brought low. | 15:38 | |
They are taken out of the way as all others." | 15:39 | |
Here is a clear-cut warning to people of our own day, | 15:44 | |
who are inclined to put their trust in wreaking tube, | 15:47 | |
and iron shard. | 15:51 | |
Job is warning that all the empires and peoples | 15:53 | |
who pride themselves on power and security | 15:56 | |
are eventually brought low and swept away. | 16:00 | |
And the book of Daniel refers to a king of fierce | 16:05 | |
countenance, a contemptible person. | 16:08 | |
The devil, or the enemy, | 16:11 | |
in their security, shall he destroy many. | 16:14 | |
He shall come in time of security | 16:18 | |
and shall obtain the kingdom by flattery's | 16:20 | |
in time of security shall he come even upon | 16:23 | |
the fattest places of the province. | 16:25 | |
Days of security then, for the nation or the individual | 16:30 | |
are dangerous because they lead to false confidence, | 16:35 | |
and laziness, | 16:38 | |
the material comfort, | 16:40 | |
which blinds us to spiritual realities | 16:42 | |
and the needs of others. | 16:44 | |
The pride which goeth before a fall. | 16:47 | |
From this eternally contemporary book, | 16:52 | |
which we call the Bible, | 16:54 | |
John Donne got his idea, | 16:57 | |
that security is to be feared and avoided. | 16:58 | |
We call it self-contentment, complacency, | 17:03 | |
but we often use the term false security. | 17:07 | |
Even in modern usage, | 17:11 | |
security has a deadening effect on life. | 17:12 | |
One of the clearest lessons of history is the growth, | 17:16 | |
and progress come from periods of insecurity | 17:19 | |
because of real and desperate need | 17:23 | |
the periods of security and complacency | 17:26 | |
lead often into decay and death, | 17:28 | |
in both physical and spiritual realms. | 17:31 | |
Albert Schweitzer is wisely remarked, | 17:36 | |
"The good conscience, is an invention of the devil." | 17:39 | |
Look out he warns, when your conscience tells you | 17:43 | |
that all is well, | 17:46 | |
whether it be with your nation or with your own soul. | 17:47 | |
Another 17th century poet just after John Donne, | 17:52 | |
Thomas Traherne put it that; | 17:55 | |
"Contentment is a sleepy thing. | 17:58 | |
If it in death alone must die. | 18:01 | |
A quiet mind is worse than poverty, | 18:04 | |
unless it from enjoyment spring, | 18:07 | |
true joys alone contentment do inspire, | 18:10 | |
enrich content and make our courage higher. | 18:14 | |
Content alone's a dead and silent stone." | 18:19 | |
I suspect that Jesus had this truth in mind when he spoke | 18:27 | |
those perplexing words, | 18:30 | |
"I come not to bring peace, | 18:32 | |
but a sword," | 18:34 | |
for Jesus was a revolutionary, | 18:36 | |
and never, never, | 18:38 | |
never, sought security as one of the goals of life. | 18:41 | |
Security that means contentment, satisfaction, complacency. | 18:46 | |
No. | 18:51 | |
In individuals and nations, that is a dead end, | 18:54 | |
a moral cancer, | 18:58 | |
a dead and silenced stone. | 19:00 | |
From being thus secure. | 19:04 | |
Good Lord deliver us. | 19:07 | |
But, security that is rooted in faith, | 19:11 | |
there is a different thing. | 19:13 | |
Security that swallows up anxiety by trusting God. | 19:16 | |
Now we're getting close to the center of spiritual truth, | 19:20 | |
which is the only real truth. | 19:24 | |
We shall never find absolute peace | 19:28 | |
and certainty in this life, | 19:31 | |
least of all in this tumultuous 20th century. | 19:32 | |
Saint Augustine voiced, the simple fact, | 19:37 | |
some 1700 years ago, that, | 19:40 | |
"Our hearts are restless, | 19:42 | |
until they find their rest in thee." | 19:45 | |
Jesus and his farewell message to | 19:48 | |
the disciples told them the same thing. | 19:50 | |
"My peace, I leave with you. | 19:54 | |
My peace I give unto you, | 19:57 | |
not as the world giveth, give I unto you." | 20:00 | |
Let us pray God to deliver us from | 20:06 | |
the foolish petty selfish worries of life, | 20:09 | |
but fill us continually with Christ, divine discontent | 20:14 | |
with his refusal to be satisfied in | 20:18 | |
the face of injustice and misery and sin, | 20:21 | |
with his energy and his concern for all mankind. | 20:25 | |
Let us pray, God also to deliver us from false security | 20:33 | |
from the self satisfaction, | 20:38 | |
and ills that are dangerous to us as a nation | 20:39 | |
and to our individual souls, | 20:43 | |
but fill us full to overflowing | 20:47 | |
with trust in God's abiding Providence | 20:49 | |
and with delight in his service. | 20:53 | |
C.S. Lewis, who has been called, | 20:58 | |
undoubtedly the most influential lay defender | 21:00 | |
of Christianity in England and America, | 21:03 | |
writes in the Problem of Pain, | 21:06 | |
"The settled happiness and security, which we all desire. | 21:09 | |
God withholds from us by the very nature of the world, | 21:14 | |
but joy, pleasure and merriment. | 21:19 | |
He has scattered broadcast. | 21:24 | |
We are never safe, | 21:27 | |
but we have plenty of fun and some ecstasy. | 21:30 | |
Let us pray, | 21:37 | |
That we may change to evenness, | 21:48 | |
this intermittent aguise piety. | 21:51 | |
That snatching cramps of wickedness | 21:55 | |
and apoplexies of fast sin may die. | 21:57 | |
That music of thy promises, | 22:02 | |
not threats in thunder may awaken us to our just offices, | 22:04 | |
what in thy book, thou dost, | 22:11 | |
or creatures say, | 22:13 | |
that we may hear, Lord, | 22:16 | |
hear us when we pray. | 22:19 | |
Spare us oh God, our loving father from national pride, | 22:23 | |
from material pride, | 22:28 | |
from spiritual pride, | 22:30 | |
may we never make a selfish security our goal, | 22:33 | |
but rather be continually anxious for the needy | 22:36 | |
and the suffering, of all the world, | 22:39 | |
but give us ever an abiding trust in thee, | 22:43 | |
a faith that amid the tensions | 22:46 | |
and uncertainties of this life, | 22:48 | |
Thou are eternal, | 22:51 | |
absolute, unchanging, | 22:53 | |
and full of love. | 22:57 | |
From being anxious or secure, | 23:00 | |
good Lord deliver us. | 23:04 | |
Now may the Lord of peace himself, | 23:09 | |
give you peace at all times in all the ways. | 23:12 | |
The Lord be with you all. | 23:16 | |
(choir singing) | 23:25 |