Howard C. Wilkinson - "Our World in New Perspective" (September 18, 1966)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | I once was in a congregation | 0:17 |
and saw the preacher mount the pulpit. | 0:20 | |
And he said, "Before I have begin my sermon | 0:25 | |
I have something I want to say." | 0:29 | |
I am somewhat like that preacher, | 0:34 | |
except that I have something else to say | 0:36 | |
before I commence my sermon. | 0:39 | |
That something else | 0:43 | |
is a word of the warmest and heartiest welcome | 0:44 | |
to each of you. | 0:47 | |
Some of you are seated here in the nave. | 0:50 | |
Some of you are seated in the overflow chapel. | 0:53 | |
Some of you are worshiping by radio. | 0:56 | |
All of you are welcome. | 1:00 | |
Most of you are freshmen, | 1:03 | |
and I don't know where all you have come from, | 1:06 | |
but you're here now, and that is what matters. | 1:09 | |
Some of you are upperclassmen who have come back | 1:12 | |
to orient the freshmen to this campus. | 1:16 | |
Some of you are upperclassmen who came back early | 1:21 | |
to be engaged yesterday afternoon | 1:26 | |
with representatives from West Virginia. | 1:29 | |
If we did not know you already, | 1:32 | |
we would be able to recognize you in chapel this morning | 1:35 | |
by the pleased expressions on your faces. | 1:38 | |
However, I will not harp on that. | 1:41 | |
We- | 1:45 | |
(congregation laughs) | 1:46 | |
Some of you I recognize as being from distant cities | 1:48 | |
who have come here for this service today, | 1:53 | |
you are welcome too. | 1:56 | |
Now this is an interdenominational service. | 1:59 | |
It is conducted every Sunday morning here at 11 O'clock, | 2:03 | |
and it is for you. | 2:07 | |
You do not tamper with your membership in the church | 2:10 | |
to which you belong to worship here. | 2:14 | |
This is a worshiping community, a temporary community | 2:18 | |
as any university is for the students, | 2:22 | |
but it's very meaningful and very permanent for you | 2:26 | |
while you are here. | 2:29 | |
You remain a member of your local church, | 2:31 | |
but you worship here with Christians | 2:35 | |
from around the world and of every denomination. | 2:37 | |
From our point of view, as here in the chancel | 2:41 | |
we look at the congregation, you all look alike | 2:44 | |
and we cannot tell which is Lutheran and which is Methodist. | 2:47 | |
You Presbyterians look as baptized as the Baptist do. | 2:53 | |
You Quakers look as Episcopalian as the Anglicans. | 2:57 | |
And of course our Catholic brothers are most welcome | 3:01 | |
in the congregation and they are here every Sunday. | 3:04 | |
This is your service. | 3:10 | |
The choir, the preachers, | 3:13 | |
the presiding ministers, the ushers, the collectors, | 3:14 | |
the congregation are members of many denominations. | 3:18 | |
I would like to draw a distinction | 3:24 | |
between an interdenominational service | 3:25 | |
and a non-denominational service. | 3:28 | |
This is not a non-denominational service. | 3:30 | |
It is interdenominational and you are welcome. | 3:34 | |
Well, I have said my other word. | 3:39 | |
Now to come to the original word | 3:41 | |
that I came into the pulpit to give. | 3:44 | |
Less than a month ago, a manmade device | 3:49 | |
which we named Lunar Orbiter | 3:54 | |
completed a carefully planned journey | 3:57 | |
from the earth to the moon | 4:00 | |
and promptly went into orbit around the moon. | 4:02 | |
In response to electronic signals from the earth, | 4:06 | |
it began taking pictures of various points of interest | 4:12 | |
on the moon. | 4:17 | |
On August 25, three weeks ago, | 4:19 | |
it flashed back to earth a photograph | 4:24 | |
taken from a point beyond the horizon of the moon. | 4:27 | |
In the foreground of this picture | 4:32 | |
and taking up most of the area of the photograph | 4:35 | |
was the curved horizon of the moon. | 4:39 | |
In the distant background, | 4:45 | |
and looking by comparison very small, was the earth. | 4:48 | |
The whole earth was contained | 4:58 | |
in a tiny section of this picture. | 5:00 | |
There it was, round as an orange | 5:05 | |
and seeming about a small as an orange. | 5:08 | |
Now the crowning blow to me was that as a former Texan, | 5:12 | |
my native state was not even visible in the picture at all. | 5:16 | |
When on August 26th, that picture was published | 5:23 | |
on the front page of newspapers across America. | 5:28 | |
The human race got its first sight in history | 5:32 | |
of a picture of the earth, | 5:37 | |
as it appears when viewed | 5:39 | |
from a distant point in the universe. | 5:41 | |
It was all the more impressive, | 5:45 | |
because the picture showed a large and vast Lunar horizon | 5:47 | |
in the foreground, | 5:52 | |
completely dwarfing the earth by comparison. | 5:54 | |
I believe that the publication of that picture | 6:00 | |
had a subtle but powerfully disquieting effect | 6:02 | |
upon the subconscious minds of a great many people | 6:06 | |
on the earth. | 6:10 | |
It shocked them into the facing of something, | 6:12 | |
which actually they knew to be a fact, | 6:15 | |
but which they had been assuming was not a fact. | 6:18 | |
Now, parenthetically, let me digress a moment | 6:24 | |
and say that if you have not already, | 6:27 | |
learn the force of unexamined assumptions, | 6:31 | |
please do not delay another week | 6:36 | |
before learning about the force of unexamined assumptions. | 6:39 | |
An era which is proclaimed | 6:45 | |
can be and probably will be examined | 6:49 | |
and found to be what it is. | 6:52 | |
But an era which is not proclaimed, | 6:55 | |
which is held as an unexamined, quiet assumption | 7:00 | |
can be much more influential and do much more damage, | 7:05 | |
precisely because it is quietly unexamined. | 7:10 | |
Well, the assumption which was shattered | 7:15 | |
by the publication of this picture was | 7:17 | |
that our world is the center of the universe. | 7:21 | |
That's the assumption. | 7:25 | |
That we have been emotionally basking in. | 7:27 | |
Earthlings have assumed that this planet | 7:30 | |
was the chief center of activity and interest | 7:32 | |
in the entire universe. | 7:35 | |
That the moon served pretty much the same purpose | 7:37 | |
of a 40 watt electric light bulb | 7:40 | |
hanging from a tree in your backyard | 7:43 | |
to give you a pale light by night. | 7:45 | |
And that the sun is a huge heat lamp | 7:49 | |
hanging up there somewhere in the firmament | 7:52 | |
to provide us with light and warmth by day. | 7:56 | |
You know, even the pictures | 8:02 | |
which have been taken by our astronauts | 8:04 | |
as they circumnavigated the globe | 8:06 | |
have tended to bolster this emotional assumption. | 8:10 | |
Although these pictures have perhaps shown the moon | 8:15 | |
and other heavenly bodies with greater clarity than before, | 8:18 | |
and even though the one that was on the front page | 8:23 | |
of this morning's Durham newspaper | 8:25 | |
shows the curved horizon of the earth. | 8:28 | |
Nevertheless, our world has loomed in these pictures | 8:34 | |
as being by far the most significant reality in the picture. | 8:38 | |
Everything else in the universe has been pictured | 8:45 | |
and evaluated in relation to how it appears | 8:49 | |
from an earth based and earthbound set of cameras. | 8:53 | |
But more importantly, from an earthbound set of assumptions. | 8:58 | |
This earthbound set of assumptions, | 9:07 | |
of course is ministered to our vanity and pride. | 9:09 | |
Comfort is no end. | 9:11 | |
They have made us feel very important in our own sight. | 9:14 | |
Then along came the August 26th picture, | 9:21 | |
taken from deep in space. | 9:24 | |
Now this was no artist's conception | 9:28 | |
of how we might look when viewed from beyond the earth. | 9:30 | |
It was no astronomer's sketch | 9:36 | |
of what his theory might call for. | 9:39 | |
It was a photograph of our world in new perspective. | 9:43 | |
The dictionary offers several definitions | 9:51 | |
of the word perspective. | 9:54 | |
The one I have in mind just now is, | 9:56 | |
the capacity to view things in their true relations | 9:59 | |
or relative importance. | 10:06 | |
So what I'm saying is that this photograph of our world, | 10:10 | |
taken by a manmade camera, | 10:15 | |
has shown us our world in a new relation | 10:19 | |
and a new importance, relatively speaking. | 10:22 | |
It has arrested us with stunning evidence | 10:27 | |
of the fact that our planet looks pretty small | 10:31 | |
when seen in perspective, | 10:35 | |
and that we are not the overwhelming center of everything, | 10:38 | |
which we have emotionally assumed ourselves to be. | 10:42 | |
And so, we shall have to reexamine the dimensions | 10:47 | |
of our own importance | 10:51 | |
in the light of this new perspective. | 10:52 | |
Before doing that, however, | 10:57 | |
it will be worth our taking just a few minutes | 10:59 | |
to notice a significant parallel to this. | 11:01 | |
Now it is my opinion that during this weekend, | 11:07 | |
perhaps, even today. | 11:10 | |
Perhaps, even just now in this service, | 11:12 | |
something is beginning to happen to you freshman. | 11:17 | |
In the area of your emotional assumptions, | 11:22 | |
which is very similar | 11:26 | |
to what began to happen to all of our people on August 26th. | 11:29 | |
Think for a moment | 11:34 | |
about the home you left to come to this university. | 11:36 | |
In your mind's eye, there is your hometown or city, | 11:41 | |
your neighborhood, the street or road on which you live, | 11:46 | |
your house, yard, inside the house, your own room. | 11:51 | |
In the room, your bed, your souvenirs, | 12:00 | |
scrapbooks, a little secret places | 12:04 | |
where you hid the things you wanted no one else to see. | 12:08 | |
There are the telltale reminders | 12:13 | |
of some crushing disappointments in the past. | 12:16 | |
Perhaps, the clippings or the dried petals | 12:20 | |
of some surprising victory. | 12:23 | |
There on the doorstep is the dog, | 12:26 | |
who thinks you're the greatest. | 12:29 | |
There may be a parent, a neighbor, | 12:32 | |
a friend who has often acted | 12:38 | |
as though everything that was made was made just for you. | 12:41 | |
In a real sense, that has been your world. | 12:49 | |
And for you, perhaps, | 12:54 | |
that world has emotionally seemed | 12:57 | |
to be the center of the universe. | 13:00 | |
And yet this morning, in your mind's eye, as you look back | 13:05 | |
and take a mental picture of that world, | 13:10 | |
it is different from the mental picture you had of it | 13:14 | |
when you turned from it to come here. | 13:18 | |
In the foreground of this morning's picture, | 13:22 | |
whether you are looking from the top | 13:28 | |
of the Duke chapel tower or from a bench underneath, | 13:31 | |
a spreading Oak tree on East campus, | 13:35 | |
or from a Bleacher in Duke stadium | 13:38 | |
or maybe from the drapery window | 13:42 | |
of the freshly occupied York Hilton dormitory. | 13:45 | |
In the foreground of the picture, | 13:52 | |
is a vastly, arching, gothic horizon looming very large | 13:57 | |
and taking up most of the space of that picture. | 14:06 | |
On that close academic horizon are nearly 7,000 students | 14:12 | |
from many lands, | 14:18 | |
and numerous distinguished professors, | 14:20 | |
whose heads are full of exciting knowledge | 14:22 | |
you've never dreamed of, | 14:25 | |
but in the distance, in the background of that picture, | 14:28 | |
in your mind, you noticed that world | 14:34 | |
from which you so recently have come. | 14:37 | |
That world of your dog and your scrapbook, | 14:41 | |
that world in which you felt so very secure and so very big. | 14:45 | |
Now, all at once, it appears to be so very small. | 14:50 | |
So very remote, about the size of an orange. | 14:58 | |
You being a part of that world, | 15:04 | |
see yourself now in new perspective, | 15:06 | |
for as you look about you, even here in this chapel, | 15:10 | |
you see, sitting here worshiping with you 2000 other people, | 15:14 | |
very few of whom even know your name. | 15:20 | |
They don't know that you're from Spring Branch | 15:26 | |
or from Manawa or Salisbury | 15:29 | |
or Flat Rock or Overland Park or Albany, | 15:33 | |
your world, you viewed now in new perspective | 15:40 | |
are no longer the center of the universe | 15:47 | |
or even the center of the university. | 15:50 | |
Even as our planet, when pictured from afar | 15:56 | |
is seen to be only one small unit among millions, | 15:59 | |
so you see and now you feel yourself | 16:03 | |
to be only one small unit among a host of others. | 16:07 | |
Well, many, many centuries ago, | 16:13 | |
another person had that same feeling. | 16:16 | |
He had strolled out of his tent into the desert night, | 16:19 | |
and through the dry atmosphere, he saw clearly, | 16:24 | |
the sparkling planets overhead. | 16:27 | |
The bright full moon, the uncounted stars | 16:30 | |
in the vast reaches of a mighty universe. | 16:35 | |
Two thoughts impressed themselves upon his mind. | 16:39 | |
The first was a thought about the majesty | 16:44 | |
and greatness of a creator who could make | 16:46 | |
and sustain such a universe. | 16:49 | |
And realizing that he stood in the presence of this God, | 16:52 | |
he explained the words our choir sang a little while ago, | 16:57 | |
how excellent is thy name in all the earth. | 17:01 | |
And the second thought which impressed itself upon his mind | 17:07 | |
had to do with his own size and importance | 17:12 | |
in relation to the vastness of the created universe. | 17:15 | |
And so long before Lunar Orbiter | 17:19 | |
took its distant picture of the earth, | 17:22 | |
the psalmist got the point. | 17:24 | |
He cried out, when I look at the heavens, | 17:28 | |
the work of thy fingers, | 17:32 | |
the moon and the stars which thou has established, | 17:34 | |
what is man that thou mindful of him | 17:38 | |
and the son of man that thou doesn't care for him? | 17:44 | |
Friends, that's a good question. | 17:50 | |
It is the most logical question to ask | 17:53 | |
as we look at that August 26th photograph | 17:56 | |
of the world and new perspective. | 17:58 | |
It is the central question for you to ask, | 18:01 | |
as you see yourself as a freshman | 18:05 | |
on the threshold of the university. | 18:07 | |
Who am I? | 18:11 | |
What is the significance of my existence | 18:14 | |
on a tiny planet, in a vast universe? | 18:17 | |
What does it mean now that I have emotionally discovered | 18:21 | |
that I am only one among thousands | 18:25 | |
and the entire universe does not revolve around me? | 18:28 | |
Well, I'm preaching this sermon today, | 18:35 | |
not primarily to offer answers to these questions, | 18:38 | |
I'm preaching it chiefly to provide a setting | 18:43 | |
for the questions. | 18:46 | |
And to try to clarify the dimensions of the questions. | 18:49 | |
You will have to work through the answers for yourself. | 18:54 | |
And it may take you four years to discover them. | 18:58 | |
But let me suggest in closing, | 19:03 | |
that you will find it profitable | 19:06 | |
to walk down two avenues of thought, | 19:08 | |
as you seek to find and to fashion the answers. | 19:11 | |
First, I believe you will discover your new perspective | 19:16 | |
enhancing your personal importance | 19:24 | |
rather than destroying it, | 19:29 | |
which is a more challenging thought after all. | 19:33 | |
To realize that you live on a world in a one planet universe | 19:36 | |
or that you are an integral part | 19:42 | |
of an unimaginably majestic universe. | 19:46 | |
Which is more exciting? | 19:53 | |
The thought that you live in a world so small | 19:56 | |
and uneventful, that you can be the central reality in it, | 19:58 | |
or the thought that you are a part of a great university, | 20:03 | |
in a great world of people and events | 20:08 | |
which call forth from you the best you have to give. | 20:12 | |
Which is better? | 20:18 | |
To be the soloist in a one member choir, | 20:21 | |
or to be a part of a great university chapel choir | 20:24 | |
and learn to sing the greatest oratorios ever composed. | 20:27 | |
Is it better to practice medieval alchemy | 20:33 | |
in your own backyard where you are king, | 20:36 | |
or to be one humble student of chemistry | 20:40 | |
among many in a great laboratory | 20:43 | |
and live on the frontier of fantastic discovery? | 20:47 | |
Which? | 20:51 | |
The second avenue of thought, | 20:55 | |
along which you may walk toward an answer | 20:56 | |
to the psalmist question, is the one which he chose himself, | 20:58 | |
realizing how small a particle he was | 21:05 | |
among the dust of the universe, | 21:08 | |
how small a pebble he was upon a beach of time and space | 21:11 | |
as great as this one, | 21:17 | |
his only claim to importance had to rest upon | 21:20 | |
what the creator had created him to be. | 21:26 | |
The psalmist knew he was the valuable | 21:31 | |
only because God valued him. | 21:33 | |
But precisely because God did invest him with value, | 21:39 | |
he was very significant. | 21:44 | |
This kind of importance is so much greater | 21:48 | |
than the importance of relative size | 21:51 | |
that there can be no comparison at all. | 21:55 | |
Quality over quantity. | 21:57 | |
Therefore to his own question before God, | 22:02 | |
what is man that thou mindful of Him? | 22:06 | |
He gave before God the answer, | 22:10 | |
thou has made him little less than God | 22:14 | |
and crowned him with glory and majesty. | 22:19 | |
He was describing the 1966 freshman class, you. | 22:26 | |
The writer of the apostle of Hebrews read this Psalm | 22:35 | |
and quoted part of it to his readers, | 22:39 | |
didn't seem to know where it came from. | 22:41 | |
Then he forfeited and forted rather, | 22:43 | |
he fortified the psalmist thought by adding the assertion | 22:46 | |
that Jesus Christ, the son of God | 22:52 | |
is not ashamed to call us his brothers. | 22:56 | |
In all the gospels, we find record that Christ taught, | 23:00 | |
we are important because God gives us importance. | 23:04 | |
We may be tiny, | 23:10 | |
we may live in a universe of unthinkably vast space, | 23:11 | |
but the very hairs of our heads are numbered. | 23:17 | |
The apostle Paul wrote to his friends, | 23:22 | |
beloved, now are we sons of God. | 23:25 | |
A few minutes ago after pointing out | 23:32 | |
that the August 26th photograph | 23:34 | |
showed the earth to be relatively small, | 23:37 | |
I said, this will cause us | 23:39 | |
to reexamine the dimensions of our own importance | 23:41 | |
in the light of this new perspective. | 23:45 | |
When we do that reexamination, if we do it thoroughly, | 23:48 | |
and if we take seriously the radical insights | 23:53 | |
of christian faith, | 23:55 | |
we will see how false, utterly false and brittle | 23:57 | |
was our sense of importance | 24:02 | |
when it was founded upon the thought of ourselves | 24:04 | |
being the center of everything, | 24:07 | |
and how very sane it is | 24:10 | |
and how really comforting to acknowledge God | 24:14 | |
as the center of all meaning | 24:19 | |
and ourselves as His beloved sons. | 24:22 | |
Our sense of self value as humans | 24:27 | |
does not rest upon our own greatness, | 24:30 | |
nor upon our achievements. | 24:33 | |
We are not great because we have IBM machines | 24:37 | |
and automation and cybernetics, nuclear fishing, | 24:39 | |
Zirocks and antibiotics, or any of those things. | 24:42 | |
Indeed, every advance we make in human wisdom and creativity | 24:47 | |
only shows more clearly how finite man is | 24:53 | |
and how dependent he is upon God | 24:57 | |
for the ground of his value. | 25:00 | |
Was it not a manmade camera, in a manmade spacecraft | 25:03 | |
that snapped the photograph of the world, | 25:09 | |
which made us look so small? | 25:11 | |
Was it not a manmade collection of hydrogen bombs, | 25:16 | |
equipped with manmade rockets and manmade submarines | 25:22 | |
which have brought man so close | 25:25 | |
to the brink of annihilation that only God can now save us? | 25:27 | |
But even as we are no more important or valuable | 25:34 | |
when we build a great technology, | 25:37 | |
so we are no less important when we discover | 25:40 | |
that we are only one among many | 25:43 | |
and no less important when we see our world as a tiny planet | 25:46 | |
in God's vast universe. | 25:50 | |
It is God who made us. | 25:53 | |
It is the living God who values us. | 25:57 | |
The freshman in the pew beside you this morning | 26:01 | |
may not know your name, but God does. | 26:04 | |
The person in the pew in front of you | 26:08 | |
may not know where you are from, | 26:11 | |
but there is one who does know | 26:14 | |
and who Himself is from everlasting to everlasting, | 26:16 | |
the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. | 26:22 | |
And under His name, be glory in the church by Christ Jesus | 26:27 | |
throughout all ages, world without end. | 26:31 | |
Almighty God, the creator of the universe | 26:41 | |
and the Lord of the university, | 26:44 | |
we give thee thanks that thou has taught us | 26:47 | |
to call thee, father. | 26:49 | |
And we pray for grace to act as members of thy family. | 26:53 | |
- | The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and the love of God | 27:00 |
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. | 27:03 | |
(indistinct) | 27:13 | |
(bell rings) | 28:54 | |
(bright piano music) | 29:05 |