Charles E. Raven - "Sequel to the Resurrection II" (May 12, 1963)

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Preacher	In the name of the eternal God,	0:45
	father, son, and holy spirit.	0:48
	Last week, we were thinking about the first sequel	0:54
	to Easter, the discoverer, the revelation	0:58
	of that which we commemorate on Ascension day,	1:03
	the full statue and significance of Jesus revealed	1:09
	in his ministry, in his passion, in his resurrection,	1:15
	that impact which compelled the people of his own time.	1:23
	First to say, never a man speak as this man.	1:28
	And then to begin to say my Lord and my God	1:33
	And we tried to realize the significance,	1:39
	the need for our own time of that transformation	1:44
	of our values, that provision of a coherent	1:51
	and intelligible theology	1:56
	and that quickening into love of our instincts	2:00
	of worship and adoration.	2:07
	The second sequel to Easter is of course	2:11
	the end product of the whole ministry of Jesus.	2:15
	The thing for which,	2:20
	to which that whole ministry was dedicated	2:23
	the event that we commemorated the (mumbles)	2:29
	when the blessed community, the fellowship	2:33
	of the holy spirit, the body of the risen Christ,	2:36
	emerged into human consciousness and history.	2:43
	We can trace it in the acts of the apostles	2:52
	where though perhaps more attention is paid	2:56
	to flames and rushing mighty winds	3:00
	and psychic utterance.	3:06
	Nevertheless, the emphasis is really upon the emergence	3:10
	of this community of which it was true	3:14
	that the multitude of them that believed	3:18
	what of one heart and of one soul and in saint Paul,	3:20
	we can trace as we traced last week,	3:27
	his growing apprehension	3:33
	of the scale and scope of the revelation in Jesus	3:36
	so that it meant transforming not only his ideas	3:41
	of man and a man's sin and a man's redemption	3:45
	but of God and his nature and his glory.	3:49
	So through the Pauline epistle,	3:55
	we see the growth of his concept	4:00
	of this new way of life,	4:03
	the growth that the seed which was sewn in him	4:07
	on the Damascus road.	4:12
	Until the end we find in the last great Hymn	4:14
	of his ministry.	4:20
	The fourth chapter of the epistle	4:23
	to the Ephesians are less than read this morning.	4:25
	We find him focusing and completing the vision	4:29
	which had haunted, has haunted prophetic souls	4:37
	all through the ages.	4:41
	The vision of a day when the earth should be filled	4:44
	with the knowledge of the Lord	4:47
	as the waters cover the sea.	4:49
	When he writes, till we all attain,	4:53
	till indeed we all come home	4:58
	that the word is used regularly	5:01
	of a ship coming into Harbor.	5:03
	Till we all come home into the unity,	5:06
	which is based upon our faith	5:11
	and our total awareness,	5:15
	our full knowledge of the son of God,	5:19
	into a mature manhood,	5:23
	into the measure of the stature	5:26
	of the fullness of the Christ.	5:28
	He sees as (mumbles) has lately told us.	5:31
	He sees the whole process of creation	5:39
	as a process of christification,	5:44
	of growing up into the fullness	5:47
	of the family of God who's first born	5:51
	is Jesus the Christ.	5:56
	That is the second sequel.	6:00
	And God knows it is needed more desperately	6:03
	than ever at this great critical period.	6:06
	When for the first time in all human history	6:11
	it's worldwide fulfillment is within sight,	6:15
	almost within reach,	6:20
	almost a necessity.	6:22
	But I suppose if your generation,	6:25
	the present student generation does not succeed	6:29
	in reaching the unifying of mankind	6:34
	they may well be submerged and civilization with them	6:39
	in man's destruction.	6:45
	There is the great crisis of our time.	6:49
	And yet, if you look as my wife and I	6:53
	were able to look from close quarters	6:58
	on the chaos in Europe.	7:05
	The straining almost to the breaking point.	7:08
	And I say this sadly but deliberately	7:12
	of the Western alone.	7:16
	If you look at the perplexity of all political	7:20
	and most economic affairs, the present moment.	7:26
	When this splendid opportunity is being frustrated	7:30
	because we cannot escape from our propaganda,	7:34
	mostly lies,	7:40
	from our nationalisms mostly out of date,	7:43
	from our prejudices and contempt of others,	7:48
	largely untrue, cannot escape into that larger sense	7:54
	that the world after all is God's world.	8:02
	It can become the home of the families of mankind.	8:07
	And we ourselves have both the physical resources	8:13
	and the scientific methods to bring that result about.	8:17
	And yet we are squandering our opportunities	8:24
	by standing on our own prestige,	8:27
	by thinking in terms of our own way of life,	8:31
	by displacing others and boycotting them.	8:35
	But cause we do not understand	8:41
	the conditions which make	8:46
	for a lasting and happy community of mankind.	8:49
	We all want it.	8:57
	No one in these days wants war.	8:59
	No one in these days really thinks his own nation	9:03
	so is superior that it can dominate the whole earth.	9:06
	Nobody is quite in the grips.	9:11
	As we were a century ago of racial	9:14
	and social and sex prejudices.	9:19
	We know that these things are out of date	9:23
	and yet somehow we cannot discover	9:27
	the things that belong unto our peace.	9:31
	We cannot discover the conditions	9:35
	Which must be fulfilled If a worldwide community	9:38
	is coming to be.	9:42
	I think we should all agree probably	9:45
	with the (mumbles) claim	9:49
	that that community must be universal,	9:52
	that you can't say to the Chinese,	9:57
	"Depart, you are not holy enough to be with us,"	9:59
	That you can't say to the Russians.	10:03
	"Your way of life is so different from ours	10:04
	that we can't have contact with you."	10:07
	We know it must be universal.	10:10
	And I hope that all of us know	10:14
	that it must be personal in character,	10:16
	and yet we can't taint.	10:21
	And I think that a large share of blame must rest	10:27
	upon those who have not yet begun to apply	10:33
	the new knowledge of humanity,	10:37
	not only physiological and biological	10:40
	but psychological and sociological to man in the man	10:44
	to the collective life of mankind.	10:51
	We've had a good deal of contempt for the crowd.	10:56
	We've had a good deal of quite unwarranted confidence	11:02
	in the method of committee government.	11:06
	We haven't really begun to think what constitutes	11:09
	the kind of community	11:15
	which many of us have experienced, Thank God.	11:18
	And by which the world history has been changed	11:22
	The community when men and women find themselves caught up	11:27
	into so great a solidarity	11:33
	that words become almost unnecessary.	11:39
	The thought passes immediately from person to person	11:42
	that a sense urgency and a par,	11:48
	grips the whole gathered folk	11:53
	and things become possible beyond all dream.	11:58
	When in fact, the elementary process of integration	12:02
	which most individuals know when they are confronted	12:09
	with sudden crises and disclosing themselves resources	12:13
	of power and speed and certainty,	12:19
	which they didn't know that they possessed	12:25
	when that same process grips a gathered folk,	12:27
	as it grip the apostles and the church at Pentecost.	12:36
	As it gripped, for instance the early Franciscan movement,	12:41
	as it gripped to an amazing extent,	12:47
	the early quakers in the 17th century	12:50
	when men and women discover	12:54
	that they are members of one body.	12:58
	Members of one family,	13:01
	psychology has been tragically confined	13:05
	within an almost adolescent view of mankind.	13:09
	Know thyself, accept thyself, be thyself.	13:15
	With the splendid ministry to damaged	13:21
	and distorted individuals	13:25
	but with no real attempt surely	13:28
	to cope with the great corporate evils of our recent days.	13:32
	Evils for which no individual is responsible.	13:40
	And which no individual,	13:45
	be he president or Pope	13:48
	can by himself affect cure.	13:51
	Why is it that we have been so blind	13:57
	to the immense increase propaganda and advertisement.	14:03
	To the immense pressure of moneyed interests,	14:11
	acting almost without moral consideration	14:16
	to the mass hatreds and prejudices	14:22
	that plunges into war against our wills.	14:27
	Why is it that we don't understand the conditions,	14:32
	the splendor that is within our reach?	14:38
	Well, look at it for a few minutes	14:44
	in the light of the Christian revelation and experience.	14:46
	Jesus quite plainly at the very beginning	14:51
	of his public ministry faced the problem	14:55
	of the sort of community towards which he should work.	14:59
	Command these stones that they have made bread,	15:05
	man does not live by bread alone,	15:09
	free markets, free distribution of food.	15:13
	The welfare state doesn't produce fullness	15:17
	of life by itself.	15:21
	You've only to look at the most successful country	15:24
	in welfare state terms, Sweden.	15:29
	And see that there are suicide rate is higher	15:33
	than that of any other civilized people	15:36
	and rising immensely rapidly.	15:39
	Man does not live by bread alone	15:44
	nor does he live surely by priest craft.	15:48
	And the exploiting of the miraculous.	15:54
	Jesus would not cast himself down from the pinnacle	15:58
	of the temple appearing as the prophets had predicted.	16:02
	And the people expected a Messiah on the clouds	16:07
	of heaven with the glory of God	16:11
	though shalt not exploit the Lord thy God.	16:16
	How often have we in the churches,	16:21
	canalized religion into something to our own advantage.	16:24
	How often have we claimed the prerogative of disposing	16:30
	of the mercies of God,	16:35
	how straight and narrow is the way	16:38
	that we have often summoned men to follow	16:41
	not that road alone	16:46
	and least of all the road now	16:51
	is so universally popular the road of deterrence	16:55
	and stored instruments of terror.	17:00
	The appealed fear, the appealed power.	17:05
	Lord, give me the kingdoms of this world.	17:10
	And then I will begin to make them	17:13
	into the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.	17:15
	That Jesus rejected as plainly diabolical.	17:21
	And the sooner the church has the courage to say	17:27
	that its exploitation is plainly diabolical,	17:30
	the nearer it will be to its vocation,	17:33
	not those three ways, what then?	17:39
	Our father and his family,	17:43
	Jesus appealed past these economic	17:48
	and religious and political adventures of mankind	17:51
	to something much more human,	17:58
	much more basic.	18:01
	The thing that perhaps more than anything else	18:03
	in the universe distinguishes man from the beast.	18:06
	The whole circumstances of childbirth,	18:15
	the long infancy and the adolescent,	18:21
	the abandonment of a breeding season,	18:27
	the inevitable gathering together	18:31
	and holding together of the parents of the family.	18:34
	All that which so manifestly was the nursery	18:38
	of our civilization as well as of our humanity.	18:46
	He appealed to it.	18:51
	And as we saw last Sunday, rethought his idea are of God	18:55
	in appropriate terms,	18:59
	revealed to us, our father.	19:05
	Jesus proclaimed it and saint Paul elaborated it.	19:09
	From the beginning of the break with Israel,	19:15
	realizing that the old Testament had failed to fulfill	19:19
	the message of the kingdom.	19:24
	Coming on to his discovery	19:27
	that there was neither June or Greek	19:31
	neither bond nor free, neither male or female,	19:33
	but all one, one human community in Christ.	19:39
	And sir, looking forward beyond the imitation	19:46
	of Christ in the epistle to the Philippians	19:52
	and the universality of Christ in the epistles	19:58
	to the Colossians.	20:01
	To this vision of the redeemed cosmic society	20:04
	of the world as becoming at last, God's world.	20:12
	Not by the destruction of the individual,	20:18
	the individual cell does not cease to be itself	20:22
	in the unity of the body	20:27
	any more than the individual human is absolved	20:29
	and depersonalized in the unity of the society	20:36
	that is to be.	20:41
	Now it is only in communion, community.	20:44
	Someday we should learn to say only in communism	20:51
	that the individual finds his freedom	20:55
	and his fulfillment.	20:57
	When we have disassociated communism	21:00
	from the distortions and exaggerations	21:04
	and autocracies and cruelties that have degraded it,	21:13
	one world, in Christ.	21:21
	Jesus came to proclaim it.	21:27
	Paul declared it to the possible,	21:30
	the ages since then have never abandoned the hope of it.	21:33
	And in these days when Christians are beginning	21:38
	to discover their own unity,	21:44
	to see their own divisions	21:47
	in their proper proportion, as trivial and (mumbles)	21:50
	to find themselves growing up into something of the measure	21:57
	of the appreciation of the Christ	22:03
	and when the whole scientific world	22:07
	is trending in that direction.	22:10
	Yes, I say that deliberately.	22:13
	And when from the church of Rome,	22:17
	which many of us had thought almost the embodiment	22:22
	of sterilized and fossilized superstitions	22:28
	and doctrines when from the church of Rome	22:39
	has come this great people voice calling us	22:42
	so wisely and so loving to seek for things	22:49
	that belong unto peace.	22:54
	Surely we who call ourselves free.	22:56
	Surely we in the mini-sighted colors	23:01
	of our spiritual radiance,	23:07
	our denominational inheritance,	23:10
	shall meet to that cry	23:14
	and dedicate ourselves to flesh.	23:19
	To the Pentecost that is to be,	23:23
	to the day when again, the multitude of them	23:28
	that believed shall be of one heart and of one soul.	23:31
	When we come home united in our faith	23:38
	and in our awareness of and response to the Christ,	23:44
	come home to the fullness, to the statue of our manhood,	23:51
	according to the measure of the gift of the Christ.	23:57
	Let us pray.	24:02
	God, who does teach the hearts of thy faithful people	24:08
	by the sendings and the light of the holy spirit	24:12
	grant us by the same spirits to have a right	24:16
	to judgment in all things.	24:19
	that we may both perceive	24:22
	and know what things we ought to do.	24:24
	And also may have grace and power faithfully	24:27
	to fulfill the same through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	24:31
	So may the love of God unite you.	24:37
	May the joy of God inspire you.	24:40
	May the peace of God sustain you.	24:44
	May the blessing of God the father, son and holy spirit	24:47
	rest upon you and remain with you as with all his children,	24:52
	now and ever more, amen.	24:57

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Title:

Charles E. Raven - "Sequel to the Resurrection II" (May 12, 1963)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4fj2ff2j

Date:

May 12, 1963

Speaker:

Raven, Charles E.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0227
ref5659_ei4
uachapelsermaud
duke:628293
dcrau002233
ark:/87924/r4fj2ff2j
e3cd8fdc-e1cf-464d-8aca-d011be4c78fb

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Charles E. Raven - "Sequel to the Resurrection II" (May 12, 1963)

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