Waldo Beach - "Disciplines of Denial" (March 10, 1963)
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| - | Who are the affluent comfortable | 0:06 |
| and gay children is the product of tradition. | 0:09 | |
| (Indistinct) for some of you | 0:24 | |
| that Lent is the season of the Christian year, | 0:25 | |
| the 40 day period from Ash Wednesday to Easter, | 0:29 | |
| of penitence and penance in preparation for Easter. | 0:35 | |
| And in case you didn't notice what with basketball and all | 0:42 | |
| we are now in Lent. | 0:48 | |
| There have been a few Lenten signs around the campus. | 0:53 | |
| At least Hot cross buns were served in the cafeteria. | 1:00 | |
| I know that the Episcopalians | 1:06 | |
| with their characteristic pension | 1:10 | |
| to make the most of the Christian year | 1:12 | |
| through a Mardi Gras before Lent began. | 1:16 | |
| But for the large part, | 1:21 | |
| we don't know what to do about Lent. | 1:25 | |
| Maybe go to church or chapel a bit more often, | 1:29 | |
| or feel a little more guilty about not going. | 1:34 | |
| And maybe | 1:39 | |
| while they're look a little more serious than we usually do. | 1:40 | |
| And perhaps if we're very devout, | 1:46 | |
| follow the VR crutches | 1:49 | |
| by giving up ice cream, sundaes | 1:52 | |
| or cigarettes for the duration. | 1:55 | |
| But Lent means hardly more than | 1:59 | |
| a kind of frosting on our buns. | 2:01 | |
| A vague nudge to solemnity. | 2:06 | |
| I'm proud of our childhood memories. | 2:10 | |
| The real purpose of Lent largely neglected or forgotten | 2:13 | |
| is that it'd be a time of self-examination, | 2:20 | |
| of inner cleansing, | 2:23 | |
| of fasting and prayer in imitation of Christ, | 2:25 | |
| fasting and prayer in the wilderness. | 2:31 | |
| The spiritual logic behind it | 2:36 | |
| is that one cannot come | 2:41 | |
| into the joyous meaning of the Christian life, | 2:42 | |
| except by way of negative purging of self-denial. | 2:45 | |
| No cross, no crown. | 2:53 | |
| The positive meaning of redemption | 2:57 | |
| is found only along a via negativa. | 3:00 | |
| Through the disciplines of denial. | 3:06 | |
| The classic paradigm for the inner meaning of Lent | 3:12 | |
| is found in the scripture of the morning. | 3:15 | |
| The story of the rich young ruler. | 3:18 | |
| Here is dramatized the encounter of us all | 3:22 | |
| with the one who sets the ultimate terms of our life. | 3:28 | |
| We are in the rich young ruler | 3:33 | |
| who run up and asked, | 3:37 | |
| " What must I do to find eternal life?" | 3:41 | |
| Or to translate it into terms we would use, | 3:46 | |
| to find the point of it all, | 3:50 | |
| to find authentic existence. | 3:54 | |
| And God is in Christ, | 3:58 | |
| confronting us with the stringent answer. | 4:01 | |
| You lack one thing, | 4:06 | |
| go sell what you have give to the poor, | 4:09 | |
| and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. | 4:15 | |
| When taken, not in its extra and all | 4:24 | |
| or crude or literal sense, | 4:26 | |
| but in its internal sense, this word of Christ | 4:28 | |
| catches the meaning of Christian self-denial. | 4:33 | |
| There are three levels represented. | 4:37 | |
| Three dimensions of self-denial subtly interrelated. | 4:40 | |
| And the validity of each depends on the next level down. | 4:46 | |
| There are three directions of giving | 4:53 | |
| suggested by three preposition. | 4:58 | |
| And in the definitions of the moral life, | 5:03 | |
| prepositions count for everything. | 5:06 | |
| The first is suggested by the phrase, | 5:11 | |
| go sell what you have give up your possessions. | 5:15 | |
| Here is the usual and traditional discipline of denial | 5:24 | |
| and the most familiar in the Catholic tradition. | 5:28 | |
| The way of renunciation. | 5:32 | |
| To give up the things that one owns | 5:35 | |
| is the necessary beginning of self discovery. | 5:38 | |
| The obvious moral reason | 5:44 | |
| for giving up in the Christian sense | 5:46 | |
| is not that it does things for one's win or one's figure, | 5:51 | |
| but that it clears the sight clouded by distraction | 5:58 | |
| and preoccupied with things. | 6:03 | |
| Possessed by our possessions, as the law says. | 6:07 | |
| We cannot possibly make out the lineaments of eternal life | 6:11 | |
| bothered by this and that. | 6:18 | |
| All Martha's cumbered with many things | 6:21 | |
| lacking Mary's single eyed devotion | 6:27 | |
| to the one important thing. | 6:32 | |
| The monk, the nun really has something | 6:37 | |
| which today's operator in Suburbia lacks. | 6:42 | |
| Who is surrounded, | 6:49 | |
| almost drowned in things. | 6:51 | |
| A monk walking through a Supermarket drugstore | 6:55 | |
| is free knowing all the things he doesn't need. | 7:03 | |
| In calm possession of a detachment | 7:09 | |
| from the superficial junk | 7:13 | |
| to which we are frantically attached. | 7:16 | |
| Simplify. | 7:20 | |
| Simplify. | 7:22 | |
| This was Thoreau's counsel. | 7:24 | |
| We would do well to heed his word. | 7:27 | |
| If we could only hear it within the den of canned music, | 7:31 | |
| the racket of traffic. | 7:36 | |
| We might well take a leaf from the notebook of the monk, | 7:41 | |
| and give up for Lent, some cherished physical pleasure. | 7:46 | |
| The aesthetic from Eastern culture has a moral point. | 7:54 | |
| We in the West eat too much. | 8:01 | |
| To see clearly with a mind's eye | 8:07 | |
| into the nature of reality. | 8:10 | |
| There's a deep moral wisdom | 8:13 | |
| in the discipline of self denial of things. | 8:14 | |
| Lent should be the season to recall it. | 8:18 | |
| But giving up by itself is only superficial. | 8:24 | |
| Indeed it is laden with danger | 8:32 | |
| unless related to a deeper moral purpose. | 8:34 | |
| The second give. | 8:38 | |
| To give to self denial, | 8:40 | |
| renunciation for the good of neighbor. | 8:46 | |
| Go give up what you have and give to the poor. | 8:52 | |
| Here is a reading of the Christian life. | 8:57 | |
| More like that of the classical reformers | 9:00 | |
| we should renounce in order to fulfill the law of charity. | 9:03 | |
| We give up in order to give to. | 9:09 | |
| The discipline of sacrifice | 9:15 | |
| is one practiced not only in the context of the soul, | 9:18 | |
| in the world of things, | 9:22 | |
| but also in the context of the world of neighbor needs. | 9:24 | |
| And in the Protestant tradition especially | 9:29 | |
| we are to go without, | 9:32 | |
| in order that the neighbors should go with. | 9:34 | |
| The law of love surrounds the ethics of renunciation. | 9:38 | |
| Social concern, service. | 9:43 | |
| Returning of the goods one renounces for oneself | 9:47 | |
| to the common market. | 9:50 | |
| Here is fulfillment of the law. | 9:53 | |
| But even these two gives lack the one thing needful. | 9:56 | |
| "What lack I yet?" asks the Ernest attractive young ruler. | 10:05 | |
| One who has observed the law all the way up, | 10:12 | |
| from Sunday school, | 10:16 | |
| to give up and to give to may be done | 10:18 | |
| out of a pinched and narrow spirit. | 10:23 | |
| Jesus carried on a running attack against the Pharisees | 10:27 | |
| who practiced a conspicuous self mortification, | 10:32 | |
| a conspicuous arms giving on the street corners. | 10:38 | |
| Morally exactly like the conspicuous consumption | 10:44 | |
| of the suburban status seeker. | 10:47 | |
| Just in the Pharisees, it was conspicuous austerity. | 10:51 | |
| Both are done in order to be seen of men. | 10:57 | |
| The disciplines of self denial and of charity | 11:02 | |
| may be perverted in their spirit | 11:05 | |
| by a self centered spirit. | 11:09 | |
| Incurvatus in Se. | 11:14 | |
| To use Luther's phrase, | 11:20 | |
| a heart turned in on itself, | 11:22 | |
| which misses eternal life | 11:25 | |
| by doing all the right outward things | 11:28 | |
| for the wrong inward reason. | 11:30 | |
| The third give of the Christian life | 11:36 | |
| at the heart of the matter | 11:39 | |
| is to give in. | 11:44 | |
| And come follow me. | 11:47 | |
| At the circumference of existence, renunciation. | 11:52 | |
| Closer in charity, social concern at the core, | 11:58 | |
| the surrender of the self to the sovereignty of God. | 12:08 | |
| The validity of giving up and giving to | 12:14 | |
| rests upon the inner bent of the will | 12:19 | |
| that has given in to the overwhelming demand of God's grace. | 12:22 | |
| Oh I know there's much cheap and slick talk | 12:33 | |
| in church circles about surrender, | 12:37 | |
| conversion. | 12:43 | |
| This most difficult and subtle aspect of the Christian life | 12:46 | |
| is often by the evangelist | 12:52 | |
| perverted into some sort of emotional flip. | 12:54 | |
| To talk of surrender and self-denial, | 13:01 | |
| maybe an odd incongruity amid all this respectable elegance | 13:06 | |
| among the cautious and well satisfied generation, | 13:14 | |
| the term surrender is alien. | 13:20 | |
| Really impossible. | 13:25 | |
| This is the duke chapel, not a camp meeting or a revival. | 13:27 | |
| It's just not done to surrender around here. | 13:34 | |
| Yet despite the misuse, | 13:45 | |
| the misunderstanding of the term, | 13:48 | |
| it stands as indispensable to give in. | 13:51 | |
| It means in essence that the self centered self | 13:57 | |
| is taken out of its radical egocentricity. | 14:02 | |
| Is transformed by radical theo centricity | 14:07 | |
| into God-centered centered existence. | 14:14 | |
| It requires that the self come forth from its I castle, | 14:18 | |
| tear down all its elaborate self defenses | 14:24 | |
| and self justifications | 14:28 | |
| and give itself over to the sovereignty | 14:31 | |
| of the king of the universe. | 14:35 | |
| Then authentic existence, | 14:38 | |
| the great possession of eternal life | 14:43 | |
| is by the miracle of grace | 14:47 | |
| handed back to the self. | 14:50 | |
| Then to the giving up of renunciation | 14:55 | |
| is redeemed from cautious anxiety. | 15:02 | |
| It is made easy within its exaction's. | 15:07 | |
| And the giving to of charity | 15:13 | |
| is redeemed from paternalism | 15:16 | |
| or from the earning of merit badges by kindnesses. | 15:21 | |
| Lay this story of the rich young ruler | 15:30 | |
| against our Lenten life in this pleasant university, | 15:34 | |
| running through this four year dress rehearsal | 15:41 | |
| for life in Suburbia. | 15:44 | |
| Story all seems very far away and long ago | 15:48 | |
| yet we are mirrored in the story. | 15:54 | |
| It has a jarring contemporaneity about it. | 15:59 | |
| Story is reviewed and judgment | 16:04 | |
| before it is promised and renewal. | 16:08 | |
| As the gospel is always bad news before it is good news. | 16:12 | |
| Hold the story up against our life | 16:19 | |
| we do rather badly on all of the three gives. | 16:22 | |
| Giving up. | 16:28 | |
| We don't give up much. | 16:31 | |
| The report on the campus chest | 16:35 | |
| on West campus was, what was it? | 16:38 | |
| $700 this spring | 16:41 | |
| averaging out to 21 cents per student. | 16:43 | |
| Compare what we spend on ourselves in a day. | 16:50 | |
| Compare the budget for the Shanty Clear | 16:56 | |
| with a Campus Chest. | 17:01 | |
| Lent becomes an embarrassment. | 17:03 | |
| We don't give to very much. | 17:08 | |
| There are yes projects in town | 17:13 | |
| Edge Month, Project Nicaragua, | 17:17 | |
| summer projects on which we do well | 17:23 | |
| where Duke students are magnificently giving hours, | 17:26 | |
| energy, finding a kind of significance in it. | 17:32 | |
| A richness of possession lacking in the dorm. | 17:38 | |
| But mostly we feed ourselves in cozy and cotton splendor | 17:44 | |
| and fend off all consideration of the world's hurt | 17:52 | |
| and the world's hunger | 17:56 | |
| by practical considerations. | 17:58 | |
| And who gives in to the sovereign demands of God in Christ. | 18:03 | |
| Egocentricity is the spiritual ailment endemic | 18:12 | |
| to American university culture. | 18:17 | |
| We are all spoiled children and operators. | 18:21 | |
| With a curious deep bias in us, | 18:30 | |
| which expects our universe to hand a Suburban happiness | 18:33 | |
| to us on a platter. | 18:39 | |
| With all the fringe benefits. | 18:42 | |
| All we have to do is to offer | 18:45 | |
| the credentials of a college degree is our ticket. | 18:48 | |
| The story of the rich young ruler | 18:56 | |
| does not have a happy ending. | 18:58 | |
| He went away with a heavy heart | 19:03 | |
| for he had great possession. | 19:07 | |
| or so he thought. | 19:10 | |
| The encounter was a failure. | 19:14 | |
| So when we are encountered by the one who offers | 19:19 | |
| the terms of authentic existence, | 19:23 | |
| we are attracted, caught by this powerful winsomeness. | 19:26 | |
| But only for a moment. | 19:35 | |
| On second thought, | 19:38 | |
| we go away because we have a busy schedule | 19:39 | |
| and great possessions or so we think. | 19:46 | |
| But our hearts are restless | 19:51 | |
| as we move on to live in what Reese man calls | 19:54 | |
| the suburban sadness. | 19:58 | |
| Surfeited by honey and caught in traffic. | 20:02 | |
| Self denial, we shrug | 20:09 | |
| maybe all right for the monks and the missionaries, | 20:13 | |
| but not for me. | 20:19 | |
| Yet we are forever haunted | 20:22 | |
| by a summon from beyond ourselves. | 20:24 | |
| That we cannot quite shake off or drown out | 20:28 | |
| the word of perpetual relentless exacting rebuke | 20:34 | |
| and gracious invitation. | 20:43 | |
| Whoever shall seek his life shall lose it. | 20:48 | |
| Whoever will lose his life for my sake | 20:54 | |
| and the gospel will find it. | 20:58 | |
| Amen, let us pray. | 21:05 | |
| Almighty God who recalls us at this season | 21:17 | |
| to the special memory of the life and death of thy Son. | 21:23 | |
| And through his memory prompts us | 21:29 | |
| to the disciplines of self-examination and self-denial. | 21:31 | |
| Grant we beseech thee | 21:39 | |
| that the resolves we speak easily with our lips in worship, | 21:41 | |
| maybe self practiced in daily deed | 21:48 | |
| that we may come to understand the meaning of his death | 21:54 | |
| and resurrection whom we call our Lord | 21:58 | |
| and to a single obedience through him | 22:04 | |
| to be in knowledge of whom | 22:10 | |
| stands our eternal life. | 22:14 | |
| Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 22:19 | |
| the love of God and the communion of the holy spirit | 22:23 | |
| be with you all. | 22:29 |