Charles E. Raven - "Sequel to the Resurrection II" (May 12, 1963)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
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 |