James T. Cleland - "Homo Sum, Christianus Sum" (February 13, 1966)
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| (instrumental music) | 0:09 | |
| - | Let us pray. | 0:34 |
| Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 0:37 | |
| be acceptable in thy sight | 0:42 | |
| oh, Lord our strength and our redeemer. | 0:47 | |
| Amen. | 0:52 | |
| Those of us who are somewhat aware of European history, | 0:59 | |
| remember how the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, | 1:05 | |
| commuted between France and Germany | 1:12 | |
| during the last 100 years. | 1:16 | |
| Albert Schweitzer, was born in Alsace | 1:21 | |
| and John Gunther once asked him, | 1:27 | |
| which he thought himself to be most. | 1:31 | |
| French or German. | 1:35 | |
| Schweitzer replied in Latin, | 1:40 | |
| homo sum | 1:45 | |
| I am a man, | 1:49 | |
| yet not in the sense of I am a male, | 1:54 | |
| homo sum. | 1:59 | |
| I am a human being. | 2:02 | |
| Now this affirmation of an under lying common denominator, | 2:08 | |
| is so simple that it may be overlooked. | 2:16 | |
| So true that it may be ignored. | 2:20 | |
| So devastating that it may be avoided. | 2:26 | |
| It is so much more natural to say of a person, | 2:33 | |
| he's German, she's French. | 2:37 | |
| He's a Northerner, she's a Republican. | 2:41 | |
| He's a Baptist, she's a pagan. | 2:46 | |
| He's white, she's a college graduate. | 2:50 | |
| He's a Negro, she's Jewish. | 2:56 | |
| We have to struggle to get behind and below | 3:01 | |
| and over these valid but the limiting classifications | 3:06 | |
| to the primal and ultimate fact that he | 3:13 | |
| and she and we are human be | 3:18 | |
| (Latin language) | 3:20 | |
| Let's look at this thought together | 3:30 | |
| especially as this is Race Relations Sunday. | 3:32 | |
| The Old Testament struggles | 3:39 | |
| with the idea of the oneness of man | 3:41 | |
| in collision with the belief in the chosenness of the Jews. | 3:46 | |
| Both creation stories in Genesis, | 3:54 | |
| point to a common pair of ancestors | 3:57 | |
| for all the people of the earth. | 4:01 | |
| The very word Adam, is a generic noun for mankind | 4:05 | |
| as well as a proper name for the first man. | 4:14 | |
| So, God created man, | 4:19 | |
| mankind, in his own image. | 4:24 | |
| In the image of God, he created him. | 4:28 | |
| Male and female, he created them. | 4:32 | |
| The Unitarian Universalist card for last Christmas | 4:39 | |
| which several of you sent me, re-echos this idea. | 4:44 | |
| "There is only one man in the world | 4:49 | |
| and his name is All Men." | 4:55 | |
| The words are Carl Sandberg's. | 5:00 | |
| The thought is as a old as the creation stories | 5:04 | |
| and as new as this rainy Sunday. | 5:09 | |
| The Jew was never allowed to forget this | 5:14 | |
| though he had a hard time living up to it. | 5:17 | |
| He so believed that he was of a uniquely chosen race. | 5:21 | |
| Amos the prophet, wrapped him over the knuckles about this. | 5:27 | |
| Are you not like the Ethiopians to me oh, people of Israel? | 5:33 | |
| Says the Lord. | 5:40 | |
| Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt? | 5:43 | |
| And you can hear his heroes giving three cheers. | 5:47 | |
| Sure he did. | 5:52 | |
| And then Amos adds, | 5:54 | |
| and the Philistines from Caphtor | 5:57 | |
| and the Syrians from Kir, | 6:01 | |
| granted that Yahweh led the Jews out of Egypt. | 6:05 | |
| He also led the Philistines from Crete | 6:10 | |
| and the Syrians from the distant north east | 6:14 | |
| and thus provincialism is spanked | 6:17 | |
| and universalism is again enunciated. | 6:21 | |
| Homo sum is prior to I am a Jew | 6:26 | |
| or a Philistine | 6:33 | |
| or a Syrian. | 6:35 | |
| Now our classical heritage struggles with this thought. | 6:38 | |
| It was the Roman playwright, Terrance, | 6:44 | |
| who in the second century, BC, | 6:47 | |
| expressed the often quoted dictum. | 6:50 | |
| (Latin language) | 6:51 | |
| which may be paraphrased, I'm a human being. | 7:03 | |
| What concerns any human being must concern me | 7:08 | |
| and the use gentium, | 7:17 | |
| the law of the nations was an effort on the part of Rome | 7:19 | |
| to bring some order and justice into the relationship | 7:25 | |
| of the dependent peoples of the empire | 7:30 | |
| though all was recognizing the unique status | 7:34 | |
| of the Roman citizen. | 7:38 | |
| And the philosophers especially the Stoics, | 7:41 | |
| attempted to identify the law of nations. | 7:44 | |
| They used gentium with the law of nature. | 7:47 | |
| It was an understandable mistake | 7:52 | |
| to equate Roman might with divine Providence, | 7:55 | |
| but there was something noble in the effort. | 8:00 | |
| A man is a man is a man, | 8:04 | |
| is more basic than a man is a Roman | 8:08 | |
| or a Greek | 8:12 | |
| or a Jew. | 8:14 | |
| And the humanists echoed the slogan homo sum, | 8:16 | |
| was Alexander Pope who wrote, "An honest man's | 8:20 | |
| the noblest work of God." | 8:24 | |
| And it was Robert Burns who in an angry poem, | 8:28 | |
| looked forward to the day that man to man, | 8:33 | |
| the world o'er shall brothers be for all that. | 8:37 | |
| Maybe that's why the Russians issued a commemorative stamp | 8:46 | |
| on his 200th birthday though the English wouldn't. | 8:50 | |
| And before we play South Carolina tomorrow night, | 8:57 | |
| (narrator clears his throat) | 9:00 | |
| let me add one more testimony to this homo sum witness. | 9:01 | |
| It is spoken by U Thant, the UN secretary general, | 9:08 | |
| regarding the influence of Buddhism | 9:14 | |
| on his behavior as a spectator at a boxing match. | 9:18 | |
| Suppose that a Burmese boxer and a foreign boxer | 9:24 | |
| were fighting for a title, | 9:27 | |
| I could watch the progress of the match | 9:30 | |
| without any emotional reaction. | 9:33 | |
| I would not feel one way or the other | 9:36 | |
| whatever the result of the match might be. | 9:39 | |
| I was trained to regard humanity as a whole | 9:43 | |
| and not in terms of segments | 9:48 | |
| or divisions constituting the whole. | 9:50 | |
| Local interests became subordinated to national interests | 9:54 | |
| and national interests were subordinated to human interests. | 9:59 | |
| Maybe that's why the Burmese, U Thant, | 10:06 | |
| is the UN secretary general. | 10:11 | |
| But I wonder how many of us will behave like him. | 10:15 | |
| When we gaze on Mr. McGuire and his Gamecocks on the morrow. | 10:20 | |
| There then is the what of homo sum, | 10:29 | |
| but we know how far short of it we fall by accident, | 10:35 | |
| by intention, | 10:40 | |
| by default. | 10:42 | |
| I shall not speak this morning of Birmingham and Selma | 10:45 | |
| of Jackson and Chapel Hill. | 10:51 | |
| I would instead call to your remembrance two passages | 10:56 | |
| which we all know. | 11:01 | |
| The first is from the Merchant of Venice. | 11:04 | |
| Shylock is speaking, | 11:08 | |
| "I am a Jew. | 11:12 | |
| Half not a Jew eyes, | 11:16 | |
| half not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, | 11:19 | |
| senses, affections, passions, | 11:25 | |
| fed with the same food, | 11:31 | |
| hurt with the same weapons, | 11:34 | |
| subject to the same diseases, | 11:37 | |
| healed by the same means, | 11:41 | |
| warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer | 11:45 | |
| as a Christian is. | 11:50 | |
| Homo sum. | 11:54 | |
| I am Adam. | 11:58 | |
| I am a human being. | 12:02 | |
| The second passage is a short poem by Countee Cullen | 12:08 | |
| entitled "Incident". | 12:12 | |
| Once riding in Old Baltimore, | 12:17 | |
| heart filled, head filled with glee, | 12:20 | |
| I saw a Baltimore and keep looking straight at me. | 12:24 | |
| Now I was eight and very small | 12:29 | |
| and he was no quite bigger. | 12:33 | |
| And so I smiled, | 12:36 | |
| but he poked out his tongue and called me nigga. | 12:39 | |
| I saw the whole of Baltimore from May until December. | 12:47 | |
| Of all the things that happened there, | 12:54 | |
| that's all that I remember. | 12:57 | |
| Puer sum. | 13:03 | |
| I am a boy. | 13:05 | |
| I'm not just a nigga. | 13:08 | |
| I'm not even just a Negro. | 13:11 | |
| I too I'm of Adam. | 13:15 | |
| I am Adam. | 13:18 | |
| Homo sum. | 13:22 | |
| Now the question rises. | 13:28 | |
| Why should I accept the what of homo sum, | 13:32 | |
| even granted its long history its widespread geography | 13:38 | |
| its recurrent affirmation? | 13:42 | |
| Oh, there are all kinds of reasons. | 13:45 | |
| Self-interest, | 13:47 | |
| intelligence, | 13:50 | |
| the other regarding quality in our makeup. | 13:52 | |
| But there's just one answer we shall consider | 13:57 | |
| assembled as we are in the university service of worship. | 14:00 | |
| Christiano sum. | 14:07 | |
| I am to some extent a Christian. | 14:12 | |
| Naturally we turn to our Lord | 14:19 | |
| for the motivation of our lives | 14:21 | |
| and we find him stressing homo sum | 14:24 | |
| both in his teaching and in his behavior. | 14:28 | |
| He told a parable in which the hated Samaritan | 14:32 | |
| was the humane human being. | 14:37 | |
| He instructed his followers to love their enemies, | 14:43 | |
| domestic and foreign. | 14:46 | |
| He ate with despised, publicans and sinners. | 14:50 | |
| He forgave an adulteress. | 14:56 | |
| He paid his highest compliment to a Roman junior officer. | 15:01 | |
| He healed the daughter of a Syrophoenician woman. | 15:08 | |
| He behaved in word and indeed like a human being | 15:14 | |
| par excellence. | 15:19 | |
| And when Pontius Pilate presented Jesus | 15:22 | |
| to the Jewish hierarchy he said, | 15:25 | |
| "Behold the man." | 15:28 | |
| And in the Latin version of the New Testament, the Vulgate, | 15:33 | |
| these words are translated, ecce homo, | 15:36 | |
| Which we may with dramatic irony render look a human being. | 15:42 | |
| And this emphasis comes to light in the Ephesian passage | 15:53 | |
| which was our morning lesson. | 15:56 | |
| The writer is struggling with the problem, | 16:01 | |
| how to make Jewish Christians forget their tribal background | 16:03 | |
| and Gentile Christians ignore their racial tradition | 16:09 | |
| and together live just as Christians. | 16:15 | |
| Pure and simple. | 16:21 | |
| And he used as an analogy, an architectural fact. | 16:23 | |
| In the temple at Jerusalem, which was destroyed about 70AD, | 16:29 | |
| there was a barrier beyond which a Gentile | 16:34 | |
| could not pass on penalty of death. | 16:40 | |
| The inscription which carried that warning, | 16:45 | |
| is now in a museum in Istanbul formerly Constantinople. | 16:49 | |
| You can see it there. | 16:55 | |
| Now the letter writer pointed out | 16:58 | |
| that Jesus had smashed that partition. | 17:00 | |
| Listen to his words, "For he is our peace | 17:04 | |
| who has made us both one | 17:09 | |
| and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, | 17:13 | |
| that he might create in himself one new man | 17:17 | |
| in place of the two. | 17:23 | |
| So making peace." | 17:26 | |
| Now this from one angle, is the creation of a new humanity. | 17:29 | |
| From another angle, it is the recreation | 17:35 | |
| of the original humanity. | 17:40 | |
| The recovery of the fact that we are children of Adam | 17:44 | |
| the common ancestor of all men, because he was all men. | 17:48 | |
| This thought is echoed in another New Testament letter. | 17:53 | |
| There is neither Jew nor Greek | 17:57 | |
| for you are all one in Christ Jesus. | 18:03 | |
| Now this is why we should accept the what of homo sum | 18:08 | |
| because each of us is a Christian. | 18:14 | |
| Christiano sum with all racial qualifying adjectives, | 18:16 | |
| with all tribal restrictive labels omitted. | 18:22 | |
| Oh I know that we Christians | 18:28 | |
| have not have been a howling success | 18:29 | |
| in living up to the insights of our faith. | 18:33 | |
| We could cite example after example, | 18:36 | |
| dozens, scores, hundreds of failure upon failure | 18:38 | |
| to take seriously the example of our Lord | 18:44 | |
| or the teachings of the New Testament. | 18:47 | |
| But all is not lost. | 18:50 | |
| The very fact that our race relation Sunday is observed, | 18:53 | |
| is a sign both of sin and of repentance. | 19:00 | |
| The Vatican Council just ended, | 19:08 | |
| recognized this revived appreciation, | 19:11 | |
| not only in Roman Catholic Protestant relations, | 19:14 | |
| but in a new attitude to Jews and Arabs. | 19:17 | |
| Father Hans Kung, the great German scholar, | 19:23 | |
| in a recent issue of Commonweal, | 19:29 | |
| talks of a new period of Judeo Christian relations | 19:32 | |
| after 2000 years of church history. | 19:37 | |
| Imagine that. | 19:44 | |
| A new relationship after 2000 years of church history. | 19:45 | |
| And if that surprise you, listen to this one. | 19:50 | |
| He adds, "The church looks with great respect | 19:52 | |
| on Hinduism and Buddhism and especially on Islam, | 19:57 | |
| which together with her also worships the one God | 20:05 | |
| and honors Jesus as a prophet." | 20:10 | |
| Now there aren't many Protestants who'd say that. | 20:13 | |
| This is the official statement of the Vatican Council. | 20:16 | |
| Brethren this is a day for celebration | 20:20 | |
| as well as for confession | 20:24 | |
| but there's a third and last question to be answered. | 20:28 | |
| Granted that we should treat all men as fellow human beings | 20:32 | |
| and that the primary for us here this morning, | 20:37 | |
| is Christian love. | 20:41 | |
| How do we go about it? | 20:43 | |
| Well, Albert Schweitzer has answered that question for us. | 20:46 | |
| Here it is in three sentences. | 20:50 | |
| "Example, is not the main thing in influencing others, | 20:54 | |
| it is the only thing. | 21:02 | |
| Hope is renewed each time that you see a person you know | 21:08 | |
| who is deeply involved in the struggle of life | 21:12 | |
| helping another person. | 21:16 | |
| Example is the only thing. | 21:20 | |
| Example is the way to implement | 21:25 | |
| the how we can do it in our speaking, | 21:27 | |
| in the choice of our words, | 21:31 | |
| in the tone of our voice, | 21:35 | |
| in the obvious attitude | 21:38 | |
| that one person is addressing another person | 21:41 | |
| with both recognized as human beings." | 21:46 | |
| Those of us who are skilled | 21:52 | |
| with the pen can do it in our writing. | 21:53 | |
| Arthur Daley, the sports editor of the New York Times. | 21:58 | |
| And I wish that another sports editor | 22:04 | |
| not a 100 miles from here would read him. | 22:06 | |
| Arthur Daley won the Pulitzer Prize for his sport writing. | 22:11 | |
| He once quoted a classic remark about Joe Louis, | 22:15 | |
| the heavyweight champion which I've never forgotten. | 22:19 | |
| Talking of Joe Louis he said, "He's a credit to his race, | 22:23 | |
| the human race." | 22:29 | |
| "He's a credit to his race, the human race." | 22:33 | |
| That's a sentence that lives and sparkles and glows. | 22:37 | |
| And those of us who are activists | 22:43 | |
| can do it through our deeds. | 22:45 | |
| I think of the successful battle recently | 22:48 | |
| waged by some divinity school students | 22:51 | |
| to force Dunham to allow Negros, | 22:54 | |
| to play on the Edgemont Community Center basketball team | 22:58 | |
| in an official league. | 23:02 | |
| It was effected by righteous indignation, | 23:07 | |
| sheer stickability, | 23:11 | |
| and some humor. | 23:14 | |
| Ask yourself, where am I needed? | 23:17 | |
| And then move in. | 23:21 | |
| If we are really needed it doesn't matter | 23:24 | |
| if we are Baptists, Buddhist or blasphemers. | 23:27 | |
| Presbyterians, papist or pagans | 23:32 | |
| if we just care enough for people as persons | 23:36 | |
| and have some skill to go with a concern. | 23:41 | |
| Someone filling out a questionnaire form | 23:48 | |
| for a job set puzzled by this question. | 23:52 | |
| Person to notify in case of an accident. | 23:56 | |
| Person to notify in case of an accident. | 24:01 | |
| Do you know what he finally wrote? | 24:05 | |
| Anybody in sight. | 24:07 | |
| (audience laughing) | 24:10 | |
| That's what I felt two weeks ago. | 24:12 | |
| Anybody in sight. | 24:15 | |
| Are you in sight of a need? | 24:18 | |
| Move in. | 24:21 | |
| Yell for help. | 24:23 | |
| Example is the thing. | 24:26 | |
| Do you know what'll happen? | 24:29 | |
| We'll be scared to death, | 24:32 | |
| we shall fear for our inadequacy, | 24:35 | |
| and we shall be surprised with joy. | 24:39 | |
| Well, let's draw this sermon to a conclusion. | 24:45 | |
| We act as Christians by treating people | 24:50 | |
| as fellow human beings. | 24:55 | |
| We do not act to make them Christian. | 24:58 | |
| That is not our purpose though it may be a byproduct. | 25:03 | |
| And because we are Christian, | 25:10 | |
| we discover that we are human beings. | 25:13 | |
| (Latin language). | 25:19 | |
| I am Christian therefore, I am a human being. | 25:28 | |
| We are all children of the same creator and redeemer | 25:35 | |
| who is no respecter of color or of race | 25:41 | |
| and we are supposed to be like him. | 25:48 | |
| Amen. | 25:55 | |
| Let us pray. | 25:57 | |
| Our father God, whose blessed son died | 26:04 | |
| to break down the dividing wall of hostility | 26:07 | |
| between Jew and Gentile, | 26:11 | |
| help us to destroy barriers | 26:15 | |
| and to build bridges between the races | 26:19 | |
| that we may continue his work in our day in generation | 26:24 | |
| to thy glory and for the relief of man's estate. | 26:31 | |
| And may the blessing of God come upon you abundantly. | 26:37 | |
| May it keep you strong and tranquil | 26:42 | |
| in the truth of his promises | 26:46 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 26:49 | |
| (choral music) | 26:59 |
