Albert C. Outler - "So What Have You Done for Me Lately?" (December 10, 1967)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | The maxim that comes from the mouth of Jesus. | 0:03 |
See obviously took it seriously. | 0:05 | |
This notion that a mans life | 0:08 | |
may be measured by his response to his opportunities. | 0:11 | |
It sounds dreadfully moralistic, | 0:16 | |
but who will deny that Jesus understood it as integral to an | 0:18 | |
authentic style of life? | 0:23 | |
And who will deny that it was one of | 0:27 | |
the ordering principles of those forebears | 0:29 | |
whom we rejoice to honor here today? | 0:31 | |
And yet it strikes a discord in our modern years. | 0:36 | |
And this is itself a clue to the climate of our generation. | 0:40 | |
These are the days of the now generation. | 0:45 | |
There is a soft drink that makes a pitch about it's | 0:47 | |
now taste | 0:50 | |
and there's a new university further up east | 0:51 | |
that advertises itself as the now university. | 0:55 | |
The past goes unremembered | 1:00 | |
and the future is dreaded. | 1:02 | |
Change is the only constant in the relentless flux of | 1:05 | |
continuing social revolution. | 1:09 | |
Mutations come so fast that we cannot assimilate them. | 1:13 | |
And so slow that the discontented go unsatisfied. | 1:17 | |
Ours is an age that mingles idealism and outrage. | 1:23 | |
When disintegrating value systems pose dangers | 1:28 | |
as dire as the specter of disintegrating atoms. | 1:32 | |
No, this has been given trenchant commentary by Eric Hoffer, | 1:37 | |
our wonderful modern Montaigne. | 1:41 | |
It's his thesis in the tempo of our times that the presence | 1:45 | |
of a global population of juveniles, | 1:49 | |
is irreverent term for young folks, | 1:53 | |
spells trouble for everybody. | 1:57 | |
No country is a good country to its juveniles. | 2:00 | |
Even in normal times, | 2:04 | |
every society is in the grip of a crisis when a new | 2:05 | |
generation passes from boyhood to manhood, | 2:09 | |
but ours are not normal times. | 2:13 | |
Our social chemistry has gone awry, | 2:15 | |
no matter what ingredients are placed in the retort, | 2:19 | |
the end product is more often than not explosive. | 2:22 | |
The chief trait, | 2:26 | |
which characterizes the temper of odd times is impatience. | 2:27 | |
Tomorrow has now become a dirty word. | 2:32 | |
The future is now and hope has turned into desire. | 2:36 | |
The adolescent cannot see why he should wait to become a man | 2:40 | |
before he has a say in the ordering of domestic and foreign | 2:43 | |
affairs. | 2:46 | |
He is panting to act as a pathfinder in the van of mankind. | 2:47 | |
Rudeness has become a substitute for power, | 2:53 | |
for fate and for achievement. | 2:57 | |
Now one of the obvious side effects of such a mood | 3:00 | |
is that in it | 3:02 | |
the past is readily dismissed by common consent as more of | 3:04 | |
an incubus than a blessing. | 3:09 | |
The past is prologue. | 3:12 | |
So runs the motto on the portal of the national archives, | 3:14 | |
with a bow to Shakespeare's Tempest. | 3:18 | |
But most of my young friends feel strongly that their | 3:21 | |
prologue was a flawed affair, | 3:24 | |
which they would rather shed than celebrate. | 3:29 | |
God knows, they say the world we have had | 3:32 | |
forced it on us, is a plus perfect mess, | 3:34 | |
or stronger words to the same effect. | 3:38 | |
It is so grimly unsatisfactory that many are trying | 3:41 | |
to opt out of it. | 3:44 | |
Others turn to destructive protest, fiercely self-righteous. | 3:47 | |
There are those who really do believe that | 3:52 | |
they can grasp the sorry scheme of things entire, | 3:54 | |
shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to their | 3:58 | |
hearts desire. | 4:01 | |
And so they turn away from the past in conscientious, | 4:04 | |
ingratitude. | 4:08 | |
They know that they are as of a legacy once called great, | 4:10 | |
but they scorn to be beholden to it. | 4:14 | |
They liked the wheeler dealer in the old ways | 4:18 | |
who came in to foreclose on an old family friend. | 4:20 | |
The victims plea for mercy was the recital of what he had | 4:25 | |
done for his tormentor in times past. | 4:29 | |
Given him his first job, introduced him to his wife, | 4:32 | |
bailed him out of bankruptcy, et cetera, et cetera. | 4:36 | |
And at the end of this recital, | 4:40 | |
the entrepreneur brushed it all aside | 4:42 | |
with the scornful question | 4:44 | |
"so what have you done for me lately?" | 4:46 | |
But then can Founders Day mean in such a climate when it is | 4:52 | |
also true that our founders did - | 4:57 | |
that what our founders did for us | 4:59 | |
is so plainly insufficient that we have to keep on | 5:01 | |
building and rebuilding and developing and redeveloping. | 5:06 | |
When the financial goal of your fifth decade program is | 5:11 | |
nearly thrice the sum of your original endowment. | 5:14 | |
What word it is that from, from this particular past, | 5:18 | |
that remains worthy of hearing in the present for the | 5:22 | |
future? | 5:25 | |
Well, this much at least, | 5:27 | |
that we are as responsible for the making the | 5:30 | |
utmost of our unmerited gifts, | 5:33 | |
as our founders did with theirs. | 5:36 | |
This may sound trite, | 5:39 | |
but to accept it, | 5:42 | |
to affirm it then to express it in effective living would be | 5:43 | |
the purest honor in our power to offer to their memory | 5:48 | |
today or any day. | 5:51 | |
I am as willing as Anthony was | 5:55 | |
to bury the past and not to praise it, | 5:57 | |
but not without a word of testimony to its achievements | 6:00 | |
and that present import. | 6:03 | |
As a merited member of | 6:06 | |
more successive now generations than I care to remember, | 6:09 | |
I claimed the right to call attention to those convictions | 6:13 | |
and passions that fueled and guided our forefathers, | 6:17 | |
not merely in their praise, | 6:22 | |
but in solemn testimony that their best convictions and | 6:23 | |
passions are still urgently relevant for us | 6:28 | |
here and now. | 6:32 | |
The founders I knew or knew about didn't spend a lot | 6:34 | |
of time looking back either, | 6:38 | |
only enough to gain and keep perspective. | 6:41 | |
And what they would ask of us is that we review the past for | 6:44 | |
its insights and that we plot the future with hopeful plans | 6:47 | |
for real action. | 6:52 | |
In such a testimony my first point is | 6:55 | |
that history has a striking way of confounding | 6:57 | |
contemporary judgments, as to who the real swingers and | 7:00 | |
the real squares really are. | 7:05 | |
When Frederick Martin has spoken of | 7:08 | |
the current nouveau avant. | 7:10 | |
The group of frenzied people | 7:14 | |
failing in their struggle to keep up with | 7:17 | |
modernity, to stay in, | 7:20 | |
to make pace with what's happening. | 7:22 | |
Naturally and up, | 7:27 | |
this is more than flesh and blood can manage. | 7:28 | |
Hence the desperate recourse to drugs and hurt behavior | 7:30 | |
in lieu of self-reliance. | 7:34 | |
And then there was the pathetic story in The Times, | 7:38 | |
two weeks ago of how ex-professor Timothy Leery has now | 7:40 | |
become the ex-guru of the league for spiritual discovery. | 7:44 | |
I have no qualms with the leagues message, that you are free | 7:50 | |
to do your own thing, | 7:55 | |
but it is always fair to ask if a given thing is a real | 7:58 | |
doing or a disastrous self deception. | 8:01 | |
And it comes to mind that the now bedraggled motto tune in, | 8:06 | |
turn on, drop out, is a close paraphrase of the alibi of the | 8:10 | |
unprofitable servant in our parable. | 8:15 | |
I took your money, I wrapped it in a sock | 8:18 | |
and I left it while I went about my tripping. | 8:20 | |
See, here it is. | 8:24 | |
Now for all their faults and shortcomings, | 8:27 | |
our founders saw life with clearer eyes than this. | 8:29 | |
They were for the most part compulsive types | 8:33 | |
who were enchanted by goals and dreams | 8:36 | |
that seemed unreal to most of their contemporaries. | 8:39 | |
They sometimes drove themselves and others to tasks that we | 8:42 | |
might wish had been conceived in different terms. | 8:46 | |
Now they weren't non-conformists but have a different style | 8:49 | |
than nowadays when nonconformity has to run in packs | 8:53 | |
and wear uniforms in order to sustain itself. | 8:57 | |
It is not that they were heroes or saints, | 9:02 | |
nor that they ever saw the fullness | 9:05 | |
of their dreams come true. | 9:07 | |
The men who led the light from the Union Institute to | 9:09 | |
Trinity College to Duke University were constantly engaged | 9:13 | |
in an unequal struggle between need and resources. | 9:18 | |
With inadequate support | 9:22 | |
in a climate where the correlation of eruditio | 9:25 | |
and religio | 9:29 | |
was suspect by the Pius. | 9:31 | |
As indeed it still is. | 9:34 | |
Though now for the quite opposite reason by the non Pius. | 9:35 | |
But I came to Duke in 1938, | 9:41 | |
it could still be said that the buildings were more imposing | 9:44 | |
than the academic community that dwelt therein. | 9:48 | |
And yet it was that first century, and most | 9:52 | |
especially its last two decades, | 9:55 | |
that created the exciting and demanding future | 9:57 | |
that lies before you now. | 10:01 | |
You are as not only to a great tradition of great | 10:03 | |
philanthropy, but of a lifestyle, | 10:07 | |
a gospel of opportunity and duty, | 10:10 | |
that is still more relevant | 10:14 | |
and valid than most of its alternatives. | 10:15 | |
It's jist was this. | 10:19 | |
That the enduring significance | 10:22 | |
of a mans life | 10:25 | |
lies in what he does with his abundance, | 10:27 | |
whatever that abundance may be. | 10:31 | |
It is I take it a truism that human culture in all its | 10:34 | |
higher reaches is the product of the use or abuse | 10:38 | |
of surplus accumulations | 10:43 | |
in any given population and a surplus of food. | 10:45 | |
Well, the invention of creative intelligence, et cetera, | 10:49 | |
et cetera. | 10:53 | |
When the bulk of human energy is absorbed | 10:55 | |
in the prime necessities of self-maintenance | 10:59 | |
and there's only a meager margin left | 11:03 | |
for being really and fully human. | 11:05 | |
On the other hand, | 11:09 | |
when there is ample food and shelter and fun and games, | 11:10 | |
but no passion to surpass, | 11:16 | |
society stagnates, all calcifies. | 11:19 | |
It is with surpluses. | 11:24 | |
And the concern for their creative use | 11:26 | |
that the agony of culture begins, | 11:29 | |
and it is an agony. | 11:33 | |
For with the same surplus | 11:36 | |
the haves can oppress the have-nots or the wise | 11:37 | |
and the good can create those values | 11:41 | |
that mark civilization all from savagery. | 11:44 | |
What a man does with what he does not really need | 11:48 | |
for mere survival | 11:52 | |
defines his true humanity and writes his real epitaph. | 11:55 | |
In amassing and managing one of the great American fortunes, | 12:01 | |
the dukes and their associates were conspicuous both for | 12:05 | |
their energy and enterprise. | 12:09 | |
And yet also for their humane concern | 12:11 | |
and their effective generosity. | 12:14 | |
There are not many comparable cases to match the results | 12:18 | |
they achieve in American education | 12:20 | |
and in their contributions to church and society. | 12:23 | |
And they were children of their ages and their clay feet | 12:27 | |
were boldly exposed, | 12:31 | |
but they were creative men, | 12:34 | |
visionaries, architects, builders. | 12:36 | |
They were disciplined men desiring to be judged by results | 12:41 | |
and not merely by good intentions. | 12:46 | |
They were men of character and a code, | 12:49 | |
self accepted, self-administered, self-assessed. | 12:52 | |
Their kind has been truly analyzed by Leon Harris | 12:59 | |
in his superb recent biography of a kindred soul | 13:02 | |
in the same tribe, Godfrey Lowell Cabot. | 13:06 | |
He, Godfrey Cabot, and this could be said | 13:10 | |
of all the founders that I knew, was a hero, | 13:12 | |
not in the Greek sense, | 13:17 | |
but in the only sense in which we have heroes left. | 13:19 | |
A man who performs over and above his duty | 13:23 | |
by normal standards, who marches to his own drums | 13:26 | |
and is willing to take risks in doing so. | 13:31 | |
Who is dedicated in the literal sense of self placement | 13:35 | |
without stint, not driven through a position, | 13:39 | |
but self given and whose life is ordered by such presently | 13:44 | |
on fashionable words, as duty, probity, | 13:48 | |
integrity and character. | 13:53 | |
But surplus money, even in quantity | 13:57 | |
and without strings cannot build a university without yet | 14:00 | |
another surplus fruitfully managed. | 14:04 | |
Leisure time. | 14:07 | |
Too many of us have forgotten or never knew that the Greek | 14:10 | |
original for our word scholar, 'scholae', | 14:14 | |
means leisure time | 14:17 | |
or by extension | 14:20 | |
a man with time to think and the disposition to do so. | 14:21 | |
And your predecessors here, | 14:27 | |
the faculty and students, had far less leisure | 14:29 | |
than they needed or than would now be thought minimal | 14:32 | |
for academic excellence. | 14:35 | |
My first teaching load was now twice | 14:36 | |
what would be normal usage. | 14:39 | |
Moreover, our amassed capital from the leisure of other men, | 14:42 | |
which being interpreted is the library, | 14:46 | |
was still comparatively meager, even in my time. | 14:50 | |
The status of eggheads in the environing | 14:54 | |
society of this region was only barely respectable | 14:57 | |
and their influence in practical affairs was negligible. | 15:01 | |
And yet it was these men and women | 15:04 | |
who rooted the scholarly tradition here, | 15:06 | |
who cultivated the arts and sciences of critical inquiry and | 15:09 | |
taught others to do so who blazed a trail that has not yet | 15:13 | |
been followed to its end. | 15:17 | |
And so the story goes of men who wrote well with their | 15:21 | |
abundances and who have earned the right to ask us | 15:26 | |
how well we are doing, or proposed to do | 15:30 | |
without us. | 15:34 | |
It is here that the salute to our founders | 15:36 | |
becomes a challenge to ourselves to | 15:38 | |
to self examination and self dedication. | 15:40 | |
Well, there never was a generation | 15:45 | |
so immersed in abundance as our own. | 15:46 | |
There is indeed a sort of surf it off it on the abundance of | 15:49 | |
abundance. | 15:53 | |
As the flower children are trying to tell us | 15:55 | |
in their garish ways. | 15:57 | |
And as all the prophets prophesied, | 15:59 | |
there will be more leisure and more gadgets | 16:02 | |
and more affluence. | 16:05 | |
There will be more people with more time | 16:06 | |
and at least the technical means to manage larger surpluses | 16:09 | |
more creatively than ever before, since Eden. | 16:14 | |
And yet we already know, | 16:20 | |
and the knowledge strikes panic in our hearts, | 16:21 | |
that our equivalent of the achievements | 16:24 | |
and contributions of our forebears | 16:26 | |
will demand of us a discipline and dedication of | 16:30 | |
heart and mind and will that we are loathed to impose upon | 16:33 | |
ourselves and that cannot be imposed upon us by others. | 16:37 | |
It is closed to us | 16:42 | |
to replicate the feats | 16:45 | |
and the failures of the founders. | 16:46 | |
It is open to us to receive their legacy. | 16:51 | |
Gratefully to renew it's imperative of noblesse oblige. | 16:56 | |
In our time and our circumstances | 17:02 | |
to stretch out our vision of now | 17:06 | |
to include our duty to the future, | 17:09 | |
to make the most of change | 17:13 | |
and not merely to endure it's happening. | 17:15 | |
There is the challenge of poverty in an affluent society. | 17:19 | |
There is the challenge of human equality and harmony | 17:22 | |
in a race conscious society. | 17:26 | |
There is the challenge of license and violence | 17:29 | |
in a free and ordered society. | 17:31 | |
There is the anguished hope of peace in a war torn world | 17:34 | |
haunted by the terrors of | 17:38 | |
alternate incineration or irradiation. | 17:40 | |
And most of all, | 17:43 | |
there is the challenge of being truly human ourselves, | 17:44 | |
of finding the wisdom and the will | 17:49 | |
to distinguish license from liberty. | 17:52 | |
Outrage from moral indignation, | 17:55 | |
tantrums from significant witness and real results. | 17:57 | |
It will not do to plead the enormity | 18:03 | |
of the issues before us. | 18:05 | |
By any fair comparison, our forebears underwent | 18:08 | |
as much as ever we must face. | 18:12 | |
And if they bequeathed us the world in agony | 18:16 | |
let us be well, lest we ensure that the agony | 18:19 | |
will never end or end in some | 18:22 | |
final flash of meaningless destruction. | 18:25 | |
They were men who hated to lose on their investments. | 18:29 | |
We are their chief investments and they would happily | 18:33 | |
forego all our eulogies of them | 18:38 | |
in exchange for our catching | 18:41 | |
and keeping their spirit and their faith. | 18:43 | |
And thus, we come at last to the heart of the matter. | 18:50 | |
The vision of the good society is fatally blurred | 18:53 | |
by men who suppose that it is no more than a human task, | 18:57 | |
a human achievement. | 19:03 | |
The secular city is finally unfit for human habitation | 19:06 | |
without the reconciling for forces of love | 19:11 | |
and hope and faith. | 19:13 | |
The parable of the talents makes sense | 19:17 | |
only in the context of the kingdom of God. | 19:19 | |
The righteous rule of God in the hearts and lives | 19:23 | |
of men and women. | 19:25 | |
Humanity will never experience the fruition of | 19:28 | |
its hopes and expectations, | 19:31 | |
apart from the acknowledged Lordship of Jesus Christ, | 19:32 | |
the man who makes our manhood actual and real through God's | 19:37 | |
sovereign love, incarnate in Him. | 19:41 | |
It was no mere whim of Mr Dukes | 19:47 | |
that placed this chapel in the center of the campus, | 19:50 | |
and it has been no accident that its influence in this | 19:53 | |
community, both symbolic and actual | 19:56 | |
has made an enormous difference in | 19:59 | |
the life of this university and of this region. | 20:01 | |
Which can be measured merely by imagining | 20:05 | |
how it would be here now, | 20:08 | |
if there had been no such symbol of religio here, | 20:09 | |
to match the omnipresent tokens of eruditio, | 20:15 | |
here and elsewhere. | 20:19 | |
And so Founders Day is a day for remembrance, | 20:22 | |
for reverence, for gratitude, | 20:27 | |
for renewed perspective. | 20:31 | |
It is also a day of resolution and dedication. | 20:34 | |
It is rather for us, the living, and all that. | 20:37 | |
This then is no mere ritual episode, | 20:42 | |
no mere routine ceremonial. | 20:46 | |
For on our response to what is here remembered | 20:50 | |
and portended | 20:55 | |
hangs the sincerity of our faith | 20:57 | |
and the verity of our confession, | 21:00 | |
that we shall hear presently | 21:03 | |
in the hallelujah chorus. | 21:05 | |
That the Lord God omnipotent does indeed | 21:07 | |
reign and shall reign | 21:12 | |
forever and ever. | 21:15 | |
Amen. | 21:20 | |
Let us pray. | 21:21 | |
Almighty God who has given us a goodly heritage beyond our | 21:26 | |
deserving and has set us to tasks and | 21:29 | |
goals beyond our powers of full achievement. | 21:34 | |
Forgive us, our failures of nerve, hope and vision. | 21:38 | |
Strengthen our hearts and wills to make the most of our | 21:42 | |
futures in faith and love. | 21:45 | |
And so enable us to honor the memory and the purposes of | 21:49 | |
those we gratefully name, | 21:53 | |
our founders in this place. | 21:55 | |
May the best in the past inspire us | 21:58 | |
and may the good in the present | 22:02 | |
give us courage and may the future beckon us | 22:04 | |
and to yet more useful life and work, | 22:09 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 22:14 | |
Amen. | 22:18 | |
(hymn playing) | 22:26 | |
(choir singing) | 22:34 | |
(hymn stops) | 27:18 | |
The peace of God which passes all understanding, | 27:18 | |
keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God | 27:22 | |
and of His son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, | 27:26 | |
and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, | 27:29 | |
and the Holy Spirit be among you and remain with you always. | 27:33 | |
Amen. | 27:39 | |
(music playing) | 27:40 | |
(choir singing) | 27:43 | |
(music and choir stop) | 28:12 | |
(bell rings) | 28:18 | |
(music playing) | 28:37 |