Frederick Herzog - "The Unimagined" (December 1, 1968)
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| (liturgical music) | 0:03 | |
| (soft piano music) | 1:39 | |
| - | Let us worship God. | 3:58 |
| Let us read responsively to His praise and glory. | 4:02 | |
| The Canticle Number 607, at the back of the hymnal, | 4:06 | |
| the Venite, exultemus. | 4:13 | |
| Let the congregation stand. | 4:17 | |
| Oh, come let us sing unto the Lord. | 4:25 | |
| - | Let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. | 4:29 |
| - | Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. | 4:33 |
| - | And shew ourselves glad in Him with psalms. | 4:37 |
| - | For the Lord is a great God. | 4:40 |
| - | And a great King above all gods. | 4:43 |
| - | In His hand are all the corners of the earth. | 4:45 |
| - | And the strength of the hills is His also. | 4:49 |
| - | The sea is His, and He made it. | 4:52 |
| - | And His hands prepared the dry land. | 4:55 |
| - | Oh come, let us worship, and fall down. | 4:59 |
| - | And kneel before the Lord, our Maker. | 5:02 |
| - | For He is the Lord our God. | 5:04 |
| - | And we are the people of His pasture, | 5:07 |
| and the sheep of His hand. | 5:10 | |
| - | Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. | 5:12 |
| - | Let the whole earth stand in awe of Him. | 5:16 |
| - | For He cometh to judge the earth. | 5:21 |
| - | And with righteousness to judge the world, | 5:24 |
| and the peoples with His truth. | 5:27 | |
| - | Amen, and now let us remain standing | 5:29 |
| and sing the hymn 360, "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus." | 5:32 | |
| (church organ music) | 5:39 | |
| Let the congregation be seated. | 8:43 | |
| Let us read responsively | 8:52 | |
| the selection which has been chosen | 8:55 | |
| for this, the first Sunday in Advent, number 638 | 8:57 | |
| from the Book of Isaiah, the 42nd chapter. | 9:05 | |
| Behold my servant, whom I uphold. | 9:14 | |
| - | My chosen in whom my soul delights. | 9:18 |
| - | I have put my Spirit upon Him. | 9:21 |
| - | He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. | 9:25 |
| - | He will not cry or lift up His voice. | 9:28 |
| - | Or make it heard in the street. | 9:32 |
| - | A bruised reed He will not break. | 9:34 |
| - | And a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. | 9:38 |
| - | He will not fail or be discouraged. | 9:42 |
| - | Till He establishes justice on the earth. | 9:46 |
| - | Thus says God the Lord. | 9:50 |
| - | The Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out. | 9:53 |
| - | Who spreads out the earth and what comes from it. | 9:55 |
| - | Who gives breath to its people, | 10:00 |
| and life to those who walk on it. | 10:01 | |
| - | I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness. | 10:05 |
| - | I will take hold of your hand. | 10:11 |
| - | I have given you as a covenant to the people | 10:15 |
| a light to the nations. | 10:19 | |
| - | To open eyes that are blind. | 10:22 |
| - | To bring out the prisoners from the Dungeon. | 10:24 |
| - | And to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. | 10:28 |
| - | Amen. | 10:31 |
| (church organ music) | 10:37 | |
| (singing a hymn) | 10:56 | |
| (church organ music) | 12:24 | |
| (singing a hymn) | 12:53 | |
| It is unusual for us to make announcements | 18:14 | |
| at the University Service of Worship. | 18:17 | |
| But I have been asked to make one, | 18:19 | |
| not for the sake of those of you who are here, | 18:22 | |
| but for the sake of those who worship with us | 18:25 | |
| in the radio congregation. | 18:29 | |
| It is the second announcement in your bulletin, | 18:32 | |
| and I shall just read it for our radio listeners. | 18:34 | |
| A nursery is being operated for the children of couples | 18:39 | |
| who wish to attend the University Service of Worship, | 18:42 | |
| limited to children ages two through six, | 18:46 | |
| it is operated at the Baptist Student Center | 18:50 | |
| on Alexander Avenue, next door to the Friends Meeting House. | 18:52 | |
| Parents may leave their children there | 18:57 | |
| at any time after 10:30 AM, | 18:58 | |
| and should pick them up by 12:15 PM. | 19:01 | |
| They will be cared for by representatives | 19:04 | |
| of the two groups who are sponsoring the nursery, | 19:07 | |
| namely the four membership group of the chapel, | 19:10 | |
| and the Blue Jeans Group of Undergraduate Women at Duke. | 19:13 | |
| We have had more chiefs than Indians, | 19:18 | |
| more helpers than babies, | 19:22 | |
| may well be the nursery is closed today, I'm not sure, | 19:24 | |
| but if you will spread the word to young people, | 19:27 | |
| who'd like to worship with us, | 19:30 | |
| but who have to leave their children somewhere | 19:31 | |
| during the service. | 19:35 | |
| Here begineth the second chapter | 19:40 | |
| of the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians. | 19:44 | |
| "When I came to you brethren, | 19:50 | |
| I did not come proclaiming to you | 19:53 | |
| the testimony of God in lofty words of wisdom. | 19:55 | |
| But I decided to know nothing among you, | 20:01 | |
| except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. | 20:05 | |
| And I was with you in weakness | 20:11 | |
| and in much fear and trembling, | 20:14 | |
| and my speech and my message | 20:17 | |
| were not in plausible words of wisdom, | 20:19 | |
| but in demonstration of the spirit and power | 20:23 | |
| that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, | 20:27 | |
| but in the power of God. | 20:32 | |
| Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom. | 20:36 | |
| Although it is not our wisdom of this age, | 20:44 | |
| or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. | 20:47 | |
| But we impart the secret and hidden wisdom of God, | 20:53 | |
| which God decreed before the ages for our glorification, | 20:58 | |
| none of the rulers of this age understood this. | 21:03 | |
| What if they had, | 21:08 | |
| they would not have crucified the Lord of glory, | 21:10 | |
| but as it is written, what no eye has seen nor ear heard, | 21:15 | |
| nor the heart of man conceived, | 21:23 | |
| what God has prepared for those who love Him, | 21:27 | |
| God has revealed to us through the spirit | 21:32 | |
| for the spirit searches everything | 21:37 | |
| even the depths of God." | 21:41 | |
| Amen, and may God bless onto us | 21:47 | |
| the reading of His holy Word. | 21:50 | |
| (church organ music) | 21:54 | |
| The Lord be with you. | 22:38 | |
| (indistinct chattering) | 22:41 | |
| Let us pray. | 22:42 | |
| Almighty God unto whom all hearts are open, | 22:54 | |
| all desires known, | 22:59 | |
| and from whom no secrets are hidden, | 23:02 | |
| cleanse the thoughts of our hearts | 23:06 | |
| by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit, | 23:08 | |
| that we make perfectly love Thee, | 23:12 | |
| and worthily magnify Thy holy name | 23:16 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 23:20 | |
| And let us offer unto God two prayers of thanksgiving, | 23:25 | |
| one for the thanksgiving season, which has just passed. | 23:30 | |
| And one for the Advent season where we prepare again, | 23:35 | |
| to remember the birth of our Lord. | 23:40 | |
| Almighty God our heavenly Father, | 23:44 | |
| the eyes of all wait upon Thee. | 23:48 | |
| And Thou giveth them their meat in due season. | 23:51 | |
| What Thou giveth them, they gather, | 23:55 | |
| Thy openeth Thine hand and they are satisfied with good. | 24:00 | |
| We glorify Thee that Thou hast again fulfilled Thy promise, | 24:05 | |
| that while the earth remaineth seed, time and harvest | 24:10 | |
| shall not cease. | 24:15 | |
| For the seasons of the ever changing year we thank Thee, | 24:18 | |
| for the beauty of earth and sky, the cloud and sunshine, | 24:23 | |
| for rain and wind fulfilling Thy word, | 24:27 | |
| for flower and fruit and tree | 24:30 | |
| and now for the bounteous harvest, we praise thee, oh God. | 24:34 | |
| And far as much as without Thee labor is vain. | 24:40 | |
| We thank Thee for Thy blessing upon the skill | 24:44 | |
| and diligence of those who plowed the earth | 24:47 | |
| and sowed the seed, and now have reaped | 24:50 | |
| the fruit of their toil. | 24:53 | |
| Thou hast crowned the year with goodness, | 24:56 | |
| Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name | 25:01 | |
| in all the earth. | 25:06 | |
| Oh God, for the day of whose power the world has watched | 25:09 | |
| and waited throughout the years, | 25:13 | |
| we thank Thee for all prophetic spirits | 25:16 | |
| who have seen the promise of the better day | 25:19 | |
| and by faith have served it. | 25:22 | |
| We thank Thee for stout hearted men and women | 25:25 | |
| who in days of discouragement | 25:29 | |
| have still believed in Thy goodness. | 25:30 | |
| And then Thy desire to lead Thy people | 25:34 | |
| from darkness into light. | 25:36 | |
| We thank Thee for all who when the night was dark about them | 25:39 | |
| have watched for the morning | 25:43 | |
| and trusted in the coming dawn. | 25:46 | |
| We thank Thee for a man of faith | 25:50 | |
| who in the dim centuries dare believe in the coming of one | 25:52 | |
| who should bear man's burdens | 25:57 | |
| and redeem them from their sins, | 26:01 | |
| and reveal to them the light of Thy spirit | 26:04 | |
| for their vision of a redeemer | 26:08 | |
| and for Thy response to their desires | 26:11 | |
| we give Thee thanks and pray for light faith | 26:15 | |
| in this hour day. | 26:20 | |
| And let us offer a prayer of intercession for world peace. | 26:23 | |
| Eternal God in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn, | 26:29 | |
| but the sword of righteousness | 26:35 | |
| and no strength known but the strength of love. | 26:39 | |
| So guide and inspire, we pray Thee, | 26:45 | |
| the work of all who loved Thy kingdom at home and abroad | 26:47 | |
| that all peoples may seek and find their security, | 26:52 | |
| not enforce of arms, but in the love that casteth out fear | 26:57 | |
| and in the fellowship of love revealed to us by Thy son. | 27:05 | |
| And now let us offer a prayer of supplication for ourselves. | 27:14 | |
| God of truth and love, | 27:20 | |
| we acknowledge before the hour deep need | 27:23 | |
| of a new birth of Christ spirit in our midst. | 27:25 | |
| We confess our desire to share in the selfishness, | 27:31 | |
| which rules out human life in the prejudices and suspicions | 27:36 | |
| which divide men in the love of unworthy things | 27:42 | |
| which cheapens life. | 27:48 | |
| In the timidity which holds back good causes, | 27:52 | |
| and in the indifference which suffers evil to go unchecked. | 27:58 | |
| We confess our broken vows of loyalty to Christ. | 28:03 | |
| I would want to faith in the way of love, | 28:10 | |
| along which He leads. | 28:13 | |
| At this Advent season send His spirit | 28:17 | |
| with a new appeal to our hearts. | 28:21 | |
| May we hear again His gracious invitation to follow Him, | 28:25 | |
| over the tumult of the world | 28:32 | |
| may His voice ring clear and true | 28:34 | |
| speaking the word of peace and reconciliation | 28:38 | |
| with Thee, His father and ours. | 28:43 | |
| And ours, our savior Christ has taught us | 28:50 | |
| we humbly pray together. | 28:53 | |
| Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, | 28:56 | |
| Thy kingdom come, | 29:01 | |
| Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 29:03 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread | 29:08 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses | 29:11 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us | 29:13 | |
| and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil | 29:17 | |
| for Thine is the kingdom | 29:22 | |
| and the power and the glory forever, amen. | 29:24 | |
| - | The text for this Advent meditation | 29:46 |
| is found in 1 Corinthians, | 29:50 | |
| the second chapter, the ninth verse, | 29:53 | |
| "What no eye has seen nor ear heard | 29:57 | |
| nor the heart of man can see | 30:02 | |
| what God has prepared for them who love Him." | 30:05 | |
| Let us pray. | 30:10 | |
| May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 30:13 | |
| be acceptable in thy sight, | 30:17 | |
| oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer, amen. | 30:21 | |
| And yet, it moves. | 30:29 | |
| Galileo is supposed to have said on June the 22nd, 1,633, | 30:34 | |
| after officially denying before the inquisition | 30:41 | |
| that the earth moves around the sun. | 30:44 | |
| And yet it moves, | 30:49 | |
| although the words are said to be legendary, | 30:52 | |
| they fully express one of the great ideas | 30:56 | |
| in the advance of the scientific imagination | 31:00 | |
| that introduced our modern age. | 31:03 | |
| For 2000 years, from Ptolemy to Copernicus and Galileo, | 31:07 | |
| the earth had been the center of the world. | 31:13 | |
| Now it turned out to be no more than a satellite | 31:17 | |
| of the sun and a vast planetary system. | 31:22 | |
| Today, every grade school child | 31:27 | |
| is familiarized with the idea. | 31:30 | |
| Watch the children in the planetarium | 31:33 | |
| in Chapel Hill observed the small scale model | 31:35 | |
| of our planetary system. | 31:40 | |
| They think nothing of it does it work. | 31:43 | |
| It's a matter of course to them | 31:46 | |
| that the earth revolves around the sun, | 31:48 | |
| but not too long ago, as history moves, | 31:53 | |
| it was still unimagined. | 31:57 | |
| We were reminded of it again when this past summer, | 32:01 | |
| one of the Roman Cardinals Franz König of Vienna | 32:04 | |
| announced that the Roman church | 32:09 | |
| will somehow revise its condemnation of Galileo's views. | 32:11 | |
| As one looks back upon the vast reaches of history, | 32:18 | |
| there are many such moments in which something unimagined | 32:22 | |
| suddenly broke in upon mankind. | 32:27 | |
| Occasionally, we speak of various types of men | 32:31 | |
| appearing in history. | 32:35 | |
| The first type, which includes the neanderthal man | 32:38 | |
| in prehistory more than 150,000 years to 30,000 BC. | 32:42 | |
| The first type probably knew | 32:50 | |
| only how to be a food gatherer and a hunter. | 32:52 | |
| With the appearance of the Aurignacian man, | 32:57 | |
| a second type of human being emerged capable of art, | 32:59 | |
| but seemingly only with neolithic man, about 6,000 BC, | 33:04 | |
| something hitherto, unimagined burst upon man, | 33:09 | |
| the use of bow and arrow, domestication of animals, | 33:15 | |
| cultivation of grain and fruit trees, | 33:20 | |
| and the invention of the wheel. | 33:23 | |
| Imagine the wheel for countless centuries | 33:25 | |
| and millennia unimagined, an item so indispensable | 33:28 | |
| for our means of transportation, | 33:33 | |
| cars, trucks, railroads and so on. | 33:36 | |
| Much of what we know of in technology today | 33:40 | |
| is an extension of the inventions of neolithic man. | 33:43 | |
| But all along the road, there were many stages | 33:48 | |
| where things we take for granted today | 33:51 | |
| were unimagined by millions of men. | 33:54 | |
| An illustration from our time, for us this Christmas season, | 33:58 | |
| it said that's an American astronauts | 34:05 | |
| are to see circle around the moon. | 34:08 | |
| For us, this raises no real problem for the imagination. | 34:12 | |
| It has not as yet happened, | 34:16 | |
| but it is not difficult to imagine that it will, | 34:19 | |
| even for many of our grandparents, | 34:24 | |
| however, this belong to the unimagined. | 34:26 | |
| Angels in the sky, yes, but man, | 34:32 | |
| today we are inclined to think of the scientific imagination | 34:39 | |
| as almost infinite. | 34:43 | |
| Our life on this planet is being determined | 34:46 | |
| by the way it science is up the possibilities of the future, | 34:49 | |
| war for millennia was taken for granted as inevitable. | 34:53 | |
| True, there were hopes for peace, | 34:58 | |
| but this peace was usually conceived off | 35:01 | |
| as a supernatural event, | 35:05 | |
| being introduced from a transcendent world. | 35:07 | |
| Now peace seems imaginable. | 35:12 | |
| For example, as a mere byproduct of the sheer magnitude | 35:14 | |
| of the weapons man has been able to produce. | 35:18 | |
| (indistinct) the military are no longer preparing for a war, | 35:22 | |
| which statesman hope will never break out, | 35:28 | |
| their own goal has become to develop weapons | 35:31 | |
| that will make war impossible. | 35:35 | |
| Others are not so confident, | 35:40 | |
| but they too argue within the context | 35:43 | |
| of what science is producing or can produce. | 35:46 | |
| Arthur Custer for example, | 35:51 | |
| recently suggested that man's aggressive instincts | 35:52 | |
| and the way he handles them and his reasoning | 35:55 | |
| cannot at all be trusted to bring about peace. | 35:59 | |
| Relying on findings of anthropologists and neurologists, | 36:04 | |
| he suggests that the discrepancy developed | 36:09 | |
| between two parts of the human brain, | 36:12 | |
| the archicortex and the neocortex, | 36:14 | |
| the development of the human brain took a wrong turn. | 36:17 | |
| I am not competent to judge | 36:23 | |
| the scientific value of his theory, | 36:25 | |
| but I find it notable what he makes of it. | 36:28 | |
| He suggests putting the proper medical compound | 36:32 | |
| into the water systems of the nations of the world, | 36:38 | |
| with a proper medicine and the drinking water, | 36:43 | |
| man's hates and aggressive instincts might be changed, | 36:46 | |
| and we might have world peace before long. | 36:52 | |
| Where will the human imagination stop? | 36:57 | |
| Probably there is no limit. | 37:01 | |
| Today is the first of Advent, 1,968. | 37:06 | |
| I appeal to the unimagined in human history | 37:14 | |
| because it may give us a better appreciation | 37:18 | |
| of the unimagined in the coming of Jesus Christ. | 37:23 | |
| St. Paul describes it in brief words, | 37:29 | |
| "What no eye has seen nor ear heard | 37:32 | |
| nor the heart of man can see." | 37:37 | |
| Here, the unimagined was not conceived | 37:42 | |
| in the brain or the heart of man. | 37:45 | |
| Our civilization is so saturated | 37:49 | |
| with Christian influences in all aspects of culture, | 37:52 | |
| that it is often difficult to grasp | 37:58 | |
| the newness of this event. | 38:00 | |
| We are all familiar with the story, "A Babe in a Manger." | 38:04 | |
| An itinerant preacher in Judea and Galilee | 38:10 | |
| a cross and the resurrection, | 38:14 | |
| what was so new in it all? | 38:18 | |
| The first ones to speak about it | 38:21 | |
| so their very destiny and the destiny of all things. | 38:23 | |
| "Whosoever seeth me, seeth the Father, | 38:31 | |
| I am the resurrection and the life." | 38:35 | |
| Jesus is reported to have said. | 38:39 | |
| Suddenly claims were made in history | 38:42 | |
| that outdistance every imagination. | 38:45 | |
| In response, man affirm to have encountered | 38:51 | |
| here, there eternal life, their ultimate destiny. | 38:54 | |
| This is the truly unimagined | 39:01 | |
| that still can give us pause for thought and all. | 39:04 | |
| Advent is the beginning of the Christian year, | 39:12 | |
| and at the beginning of the Christian year, | 39:18 | |
| Advent means that the whole Christian story | 39:20 | |
| cannot be read mainly backwards | 39:24 | |
| in terms of what it has brought thus far, | 39:27 | |
| but it must be read in terms of what it still will bring. | 39:30 | |
| Life is still threatened from our sides, | 39:37 | |
| evil, suffering, and death are ever near. | 39:41 | |
| We wither and perish, but this experience | 39:46 | |
| is ultimately unsatisfactory for many. | 39:52 | |
| Is this all we can say about human life? | 39:57 | |
| Advent this means not and yet it moves, and yet he comes. | 40:02 | |
| In spite of everything that speaks against it, | 40:11 | |
| faith hopes that history is moving toward the reality | 40:13 | |
| embodied in Jesus Christ, towards openness to truth, | 40:18 | |
| towards victory over evil and death. | 40:23 | |
| Advent, this is protest and grace. | 40:28 | |
| The message Jesus brought was repent | 40:34 | |
| and believe in the gospel. | 40:39 | |
| He protested evil and brought grace. | 40:42 | |
| When the Christian lifts up his head and says, | 40:47 | |
| "And yet he comes, he protests evil, suffering and death." | 40:51 | |
| And yet he also knows that the insufficiency of his protests | 41:00 | |
| is redeemed by grace. | 41:05 | |
| In this respect, we are always at the crossroads of history. | 41:09 | |
| Do we want to open ourselves to the power | 41:15 | |
| of the unimagined in Jesus coming | 41:18 | |
| or do we wish to try to outdistance it. | 41:21 | |
| Arthur Custer two decades ago still believe | 41:26 | |
| that the change needed in mankind in order to bring peace | 41:29 | |
| could be produced by moral suasion. | 41:33 | |
| Now he feels it is too late for that, | 41:36 | |
| but the water coming out of our faucets in Durham | 41:40 | |
| still does not make us any better. | 41:43 | |
| The same is true of the water coming out of the faucets | 41:46 | |
| in Moscow, or Rome or (indistinct). | 41:49 | |
| Idealistic schemes to improve the human race quickly | 41:53 | |
| have failed time and again, | 41:57 | |
| and while we are waiting for some of them to take effect, | 42:00 | |
| it still takes the hard work of redoing each individual | 42:04 | |
| of making each man a new man. | 42:10 | |
| Advent, this is protest | 42:15 | |
| for example, protest against the evil of ignorance in men. | 42:19 | |
| There are many reasons | 42:25 | |
| for the kind of democratic education we have today, | 42:27 | |
| but if we trace it back to its origins | 42:31 | |
| in this country and in the old world. | 42:34 | |
| We will find that a lot of Christian hopes emigrated | 42:36 | |
| as it were, into the battle against ignorance | 42:40 | |
| in the secular realm. | 42:44 | |
| Often when I see a kindergarten teacher | 42:46 | |
| or a grade school teacher, as well as an academician, | 42:49 | |
| I remember, and their historical roots, also some protests | 42:53 | |
| based on their hope for a new world of God. | 42:58 | |
| Advent as protest is also protest | 43:05 | |
| against the suffering of men. | 43:08 | |
| Again, there are many historical basis | 43:11 | |
| for the kind of medical attention we received | 43:14 | |
| in this society of ours, | 43:17 | |
| but some of its roots also point to Christian hopes | 43:20 | |
| immigrated to the secular realm. | 43:25 | |
| Often when I see a nurse, I think back to the great changes | 43:28 | |
| in the nursing profession, | 43:33 | |
| in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, | 43:35 | |
| which also influenced our American pattern of nursing, | 43:39 | |
| and which to a large extent grew out of hopes | 43:45 | |
| for the coming of the new world of God. | 43:51 | |
| We could speak of Advent as protests in many ways, | 43:57 | |
| the coming of Jesus Christ as hope of the world | 44:02 | |
| contradicts every structure of society | 44:05 | |
| and every form of human life that keeps men | 44:09 | |
| from developing their full potential. | 44:13 | |
| The power of the unimagined in Jesus Christ | 44:17 | |
| is felt by the bitter resistance | 44:20 | |
| to Christian protests against social evil today. | 44:24 | |
| Where new world breaks in, | 44:31 | |
| the evil power structures put up a fight. | 44:34 | |
| And yet the coming of Jesus Christ, | 44:40 | |
| his fuller manifestation to the world | 44:43 | |
| may seem like a far-fetched idea to many. | 44:46 | |
| If the expansion of the human imagination today | 44:51 | |
| were accompanied by an equal growth of human freedom, | 44:54 | |
| this would become more and more far-fetched indeed, | 44:58 | |
| but many fear that the society | 45:02 | |
| to which the scientific imagination helps to give birth | 45:05 | |
| is moving in the opposite direction. | 45:11 | |
| (indistinct) in the revolution of hope | 45:15 | |
| speaks of a monster to which we are giving birth. | 45:19 | |
| Bureaucracy is controlling us | 45:24 | |
| as he puts it the mega machine, | 45:27 | |
| the totally organized and homogenized social system | 45:30 | |
| in which society has such functions | 45:35 | |
| like a machine and men like its parts, | 45:37 | |
| and this is becoming far from more and more the case. | 45:42 | |
| Over against all this, | 45:49 | |
| Advent points to the freedom of man in Jesus Christ. | 45:50 | |
| In Him the goal of society is not a social machine, | 45:55 | |
| but the free human being shaping, molding society. | 46:00 | |
| Of course, one can think of Advent as a commemoration | 46:07 | |
| of the coming of Jesus once upon a time of the expectations | 46:12 | |
| connected with this coming among His people, | 46:16 | |
| especially the prophecies of Israel, | 46:20 | |
| but His very calming then once upon a time | 46:23 | |
| called for the hope for the fuller manifestation | 46:28 | |
| of His reality in the world as a whole. | 46:33 | |
| So it is part of the very nature of the Christian faith | 46:37 | |
| to look forward to what? | 46:41 | |
| To the full victory of the free man. | 46:45 | |
| In our day, it is looking forward to the victory | 46:52 | |
| over the technological captivity that is threatening us. | 46:56 | |
| Jesus Christ has brought liberation to every age | 47:01 | |
| as best it could grasp it. | 47:05 | |
| For example, for the reformation, | 47:09 | |
| it was liberation from the shackles | 47:11 | |
| of an authoritarian hierarchy. | 47:14 | |
| For us, whose future seems to be a technological superstate, | 47:17 | |
| Jesus Christ offers liberation | 47:23 | |
| from the shackles of bureaucracy, | 47:26 | |
| big government and the program life. | 47:29 | |
| As my words go out to you, | 47:35 | |
| I'm quite cognizant of the many symbols | 47:38 | |
| that are offered today in a pluralistic society | 47:41 | |
| for the freeing of the individual to true personhood. | 47:45 | |
| The question in the end is which symbol | 47:49 | |
| is the most powerful and effective? | 47:51 | |
| The pulpit is not the place to decide this question. | 47:54 | |
| It can only be decided in the experiment of action, | 47:59 | |
| but it is important to understand from the pulpit | 48:04 | |
| that it is necessary to delve into the whole story | 48:08 | |
| of Jesus of Nazareth to find out what he has to offer. | 48:12 | |
| And it could well be that in the encounter with him, | 48:16 | |
| we meet the most unimagined power of the new. | 48:19 | |
| What is so important about the unimagined in Him | 48:26 | |
| is its power to liberate the imagination for acts | 48:29 | |
| hitherto believed impossible. | 48:35 | |
| There is a surprise hidden in the reality of Jesus, | 48:39 | |
| something unexpected for every age. | 48:43 | |
| And this is what Advent again announces | 48:48 | |
| the coming of the new. | 48:52 | |
| What this concretely involves today | 48:57 | |
| is probably that Jesus enables us to rebel, | 49:00 | |
| to view society critically, | 49:07 | |
| to oppose it where opposition is called for | 49:10 | |
| and to change it where change is inevitable or overdue. | 49:13 | |
| The word rebel or rebel | 49:19 | |
| should not call for two negative connotations in the south. | 49:22 | |
| In any case, the coming years in the church | 49:30 | |
| will probably become years of rebellion | 49:33 | |
| in which Christians stand up more and more | 49:36 | |
| against those things that dehumanize man. | 49:39 | |
| I said earlier, "Advent means protest and grace." | 49:46 | |
| The rebels of God will be a special kind of rebels. | 49:53 | |
| They will see their limitations. | 49:57 | |
| They will know that they cannot introduce perfection | 50:00 | |
| in society, they will live by the forgiveness | 50:03 | |
| of their shortcomings and failures. | 50:07 | |
| So they will live by what God has prepared for them. | 50:13 | |
| They will live not only by their saying "No," | 50:20 | |
| but also by God saying "Yes." | 50:24 | |
| And the yes will be stronger than the no, | 50:28 | |
| rebels who live by grace | 50:32 | |
| this is probably what it means to be Christians today | 50:35 | |
| and probably what it means to be human beings today. | 50:38 | |
| Jesus went ahead of us in this respect, | 50:45 | |
| he rebelled against His society, the rulers and His church, | 50:48 | |
| the scribes and the Pharisees. | 50:53 | |
| He said "No," but He also said "Yes." | 50:56 | |
| And His yes, especially on the cross | 51:01 | |
| and the resurrection triumphed over the no, | 51:03 | |
| even for the scribe and the Pharisee. | 51:07 | |
| He was a rebel who lived by grace and who embodied grace. | 51:13 | |
| What no eye has seen nor ear heard | 51:23 | |
| nor the heart of man can see, | 51:25 | |
| what God has prepared for those who love Him. | 51:28 | |
| In the Advent season, we reaffirm our hope | 51:34 | |
| that what God has prepared for those who love Him | 51:38 | |
| will ultimately be shared by all men, | 51:43 | |
| indeed, by all of creation, | 51:49 | |
| in spite of what we now still see as evil, | 51:52 | |
| suffering and death, so that every knee will bow | 51:56 | |
| and every tongue confess, and yet, He comes. | 52:05 | |
| Amen, let us pray. | 52:15 | |
| We thank Thee for the newness | 52:23 | |
| Thou has brought in Jesus Christ. | 52:28 | |
| Make Thou us walk by this newness, in this Advent season | 52:34 | |
| and all the days of our life, in the name of Jesus we pray. | 52:42 | |
| Amen. | 52:51 | |
| (church organ music) | 52:53 | |
| (soft organ music) | 56:51 | |
| (singing a hymn) | 58:19 | |
| (church organ music) | 1:05:05 |
