Bradford S. Abernethy - "A Time for Presence" (April 20, 1969)
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| (church choir singing) | 0:05 | |
| - | Beloved, may we unite our hearts and our voices | 5:22 |
| in our unison prayer of confession and for pardon? | 5:26 | |
| Let us pray. | 5:30 | |
| Oh Lord, Holy and Righteous God, | 5:32 | |
| we acknowledge before thee, | 5:36 | |
| that we do not fear thee, | 5:38 | |
| and that we do not love thee above all things. | 5:40 | |
| We do not delight in prayer, nor take pleasure in thy word. | 5:44 | |
| We do not really love our neighbor. | 5:49 | |
| We lack the conscience | 5:52 | |
| that should accompany our Christian profession. | 5:53 | |
| Our hearts are divided, | 5:57 | |
| crossed by doubts, and guilty desires. | 5:59 | |
| We accuse ourselves before thee, oh God. | 6:02 | |
| We implore thee whose nature and whose name is love | 6:06 | |
| to for forgive us. | 6:10 | |
| And in forgiving, to heal us, | 6:12 | |
| so that in our lives, | 6:15 | |
| something will finally be changed, Amen. | 6:16 | |
| From the book of Micah, | 6:23 | |
| we find words which are comforting | 6:25 | |
| to those who are sincerely sorry for their sins. | 6:28 | |
| The prophet says, | 6:34 | |
| "Who is like unto God, | 6:37 | |
| who pardons inequity, and passes over transgression. | 6:40 | |
| He does not retain His anger forever, | 6:45 | |
| because He delights in steadfast love. | 6:49 | |
| He will again have compassion upon us. | 6:53 | |
| He will tread our equities under foot. | 6:56 | |
| He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea." | 6:59 | |
| Amen. | 7:04 | |
| (organ pipe music) | 7:14 | |
| (church choir singing) | 7:55 | |
| - | "Now, Moses tending the flock | 10:14 |
| of his father-in-law, Jethro the priest of Midian, | 10:17 | |
| drove the flock into the wilderness | 10:20 | |
| and came to Horeb, the Mountain of God. | 10:23 | |
| An angel of the Lord appeared to him | 10:26 | |
| in a blazing fire out of a bush. | 10:28 | |
| An angel of the Lord appeared to him. | 10:31 | |
| He gazed and there was a bush, all aflame. | 10:34 | |
| Yet the Bush was not consumed. | 10:37 | |
| Moses said, 'I must turn aside | 10:39 | |
| to look at this marvelous sight. | 10:42 | |
| Why is the Bush not burned?' | 10:44 | |
| When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, | 10:46 | |
| God called him out of the Bush, 'Moses, Moses.' | 10:49 | |
| He answered, 'Here I am.' | 10:53 | |
| And He said, 'Do not come closer. | 10:56 | |
| Remove your sandals from your feet, | 10:58 | |
| for the place in which you stand his Holy ground.' | 11:01 | |
| 'I Am,' He said the God of your father, the God of Abraham, | 11:04 | |
| the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. | 11:09 | |
| And Moses hid his face, | 11:12 | |
| for he was afraid to look at God. | 11:14 | |
| And the Lord continue you, 'I have marked well, | 11:16 | |
| the plight of my people in Egypt, | 11:19 | |
| and have headed their outcry because of their task masters. | 11:21 | |
| Yes, I am mindful of their sufferings. | 11:25 | |
| I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians, | 11:28 | |
| and to bring them out of that land | 11:31 | |
| to a good and spacious land, | 11:33 | |
| a land flowing with milk and honey. | 11:35 | |
| The home of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, | 11:39 | |
| the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. | 11:43 | |
| Now the cry of Israelites has reached me. | 11:48 | |
| Moreover, I have seen how the Egyptians | 11:51 | |
| have oppressed them. | 11:53 | |
| Come therefore, I will send you to Pharaoh, | 11:55 | |
| and you shall free my people, | 11:57 | |
| the Israelites from Egypt.' | 11:59 | |
| But Moses said to God, 'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh | 12:02 | |
| and free the Israelites from Egypt?' | 12:06 | |
| And He said, 'I will be with you. | 12:09 | |
| And it shall be your sign, that it was I who sent you. | 12:11 | |
| And when you have freed the people of Egypt, | 12:15 | |
| you shall worship God at this mountain.' | 12:17 | |
| Moses said to God, 'When I come to the Israelites | 12:20 | |
| and say to them, 'The God of your fathers | 12:23 | |
| has sent me to you.' | 12:25 | |
| And they ask me, 'What is His name?' | 12:26 | |
| What shall I say to them?' | 12:30 | |
| And God said to Moses, 'Ehyeh asher ehyeh.' | 12:32 | |
| He continued, 'Thus shall you say to the Israelite, | 12:36 | |
| Ehyeh sent me to you.' | 12:39 | |
| And God said further to Moses, | 12:41 | |
| 'Thus shall you speak to the Israelis, | 12:43 | |
| the Lord, the God of your fathers, | 12:46 | |
| the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, | 12:48 | |
| the God of Jacob has sent me to you. | 12:51 | |
| This should be my name forever. | 12:54 | |
| This my appellation for all eternity.'" | 12:56 | |
| (organ pipe music) | 13:02 | |
| (church choir singing) | 13:09 | |
| - | The Lord be with you. | 13:58 |
| - | And with your spirit. | 14:00 |
| - | Let us pray. | 14:02 |
| Our heavenly Father, in the quietness of this moment, | 14:11 | |
| we turn our thoughts to you. | 14:16 | |
| We now wish to approach you in prayer. | 14:20 | |
| We praise you for the great privilege, which is ours, | 14:23 | |
| to bring our human needs to your divine attention. | 14:27 | |
| We glorify you that in times past, | 14:32 | |
| you have heard of our prayers, | 14:35 | |
| and that you have answered them with a loving wisdom | 14:38 | |
| greater than ours. | 14:40 | |
| Oh God, we thank you that today, | 14:43 | |
| as we come here to renew our prayers, | 14:46 | |
| there is fresh grace available to supply our necessity. | 14:49 | |
| We thank you that we were given enough grace | 14:55 | |
| to desire to worship. | 14:58 | |
| And we give you thanks that all who seek, find. | 15:00 | |
| And that to all who knock, the door of your love is opened. | 15:06 | |
| We come acknowledging our unpayable indebtedness | 15:12 | |
| to you, oh Lord, | 15:15 | |
| because of your unnumbered benefits to us. | 15:17 | |
| You have met repentance with forgiveness. | 15:21 | |
| You have rewarded our high aspirations. | 15:25 | |
| You have strengthened our feeble efforts for right. | 15:28 | |
| You have given us the material necessities of existence. | 15:32 | |
| We thank you, Almighty God for these, | 15:37 | |
| and all other mercies. | 15:40 | |
| And now we come to offer unto you our petitions | 15:43 | |
| for new blessings. | 15:46 | |
| And we pray that you will send these blessings | 15:48 | |
| not on upon us and our own people, | 15:51 | |
| but upon all your children in every place. | 15:55 | |
| Give us hearts which regularly care | 16:00 | |
| for all whom you have made. | 16:03 | |
| Take away from us those self-centered tendencies, | 16:06 | |
| which frequently lead us even to pray chiefly for ourselves. | 16:10 | |
| Remove from our hearts, oh God, the sham and pretense, | 16:16 | |
| which so often spoil our religious life. | 16:21 | |
| Keep us from complimenting the church, | 16:26 | |
| while we fail to heed its gospel. | 16:29 | |
| Deliver us from pious sounding talk about the Bible, | 16:33 | |
| while we ignore your living word. | 16:36 | |
| May we not substitute neat prayers in church | 16:41 | |
| for genuine communication and confrontation with you | 16:45 | |
| in the secret places of our hearts. | 16:48 | |
| Oh Lord, let this time of worship be used by your spirit | 16:53 | |
| to accomplish these things for which we have prayed. | 16:57 | |
| We come now to intercede for our university, | 17:04 | |
| asking that the spiritual purposes | 17:07 | |
| which motivated its birth, may now strengthen its youth. | 17:10 | |
| We ask you to strengthen the leaders of school, | 17:16 | |
| of state, and of nation, | 17:19 | |
| that your people may be wisely led by inspired men. | 17:22 | |
| We pray, oh God, for those who mourn a loved one. | 17:30 | |
| We pray for those who have had an accident. | 17:36 | |
| For those who seek to regain their health. | 17:40 | |
| For those who are aiding the sick, find health. | 17:44 | |
| May all who need thy special providence, | 17:48 | |
| find it through thy love. | 17:51 | |
| Our Father, we pray that you will fulfill | 17:56 | |
| the longing of our souls for a vision of you. | 17:59 | |
| You have made us in your image, | 18:04 | |
| and we cannot be satisfied with our fellowship with you. | 18:06 | |
| Our hearts and our flesh cry out for the living God. | 18:11 | |
| Give us so to know Christ and His life, | 18:17 | |
| at the same mind, which was in Him, may be in us. | 18:20 | |
| That we may be in the world as He was in the world. | 18:25 | |
| Give us so to know Christ and his death, | 18:30 | |
| that we may not glory except in his cross. | 18:34 | |
| Give us so to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, | 18:38 | |
| that like, as He was raised from the dead | 18:42 | |
| by the power of the Father, | 18:45 | |
| we also may walk in newness of life | 18:47 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 18:51 | |
| Now, remembering the words | 18:56 | |
| which Christ has taught us to pray. | 18:57 | |
| We say our, Father who art Heaven | 19:01 | |
| hallowed would be thy name | 19:05 | |
| thy kingdom come, | 19:07 | |
| thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. | 19:09 | |
| Give us this day, our daily bread | 19:13 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses | 19:16 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us | 19:18 | |
| and lead us, not into temptation, | 19:22 | |
| but deliver us from evil, | 19:24 | |
| for thine is the kingdom, | 19:26 | |
| and the power, and the glory forever, Amen. | 19:28 | |
| - | If a very brief personal word of appreciation | 19:49 |
| may be allowed at this time | 19:53 | |
| for the invitation to preach in this chapel, | 19:56 | |
| I should like to express it. | 20:00 | |
| It is good for those of us who come | 20:04 | |
| from small intimate colonial chapels, | 20:07 | |
| with small intimate congregations | 20:13 | |
| to see how the other half lives. | 20:17 | |
| And furthermore, it has never before happened, | 20:21 | |
| that when I have preached in the chapel of a friend of mine, | 20:26 | |
| that he has been able to provide as the lector, | 20:33 | |
| the daughter of another college chaplain, | 20:37 | |
| whom I have known for many years. | 20:39 | |
| So, for many reasons, | 20:42 | |
| I have reason to be grateful | 20:44 | |
| for these expressions of Southern hospitality. | 20:46 | |
| We had a few friends in for dinner in the evening, | 20:52 | |
| not long ago. | 20:57 | |
| And since it was a group which in age, | 20:59 | |
| at least had long since ceased to be trustworthy, | 21:03 | |
| I thought a pencil and paper game | 21:08 | |
| might be in order. | 21:12 | |
| And one of these was an observation game. | 21:15 | |
| Each person was given three minutes to study a picture, | 21:19 | |
| the same picture for everyone, | 21:25 | |
| knowing that at the end of the three minutes, | 21:28 | |
| certain questions would be asked about the picture, | 21:30 | |
| which would test their powers of observation. | 21:35 | |
| It was a drawing of a house, | 21:39 | |
| which judging from footprints entering and leaving the door, | 21:42 | |
| had presumably been burgled. | 21:49 | |
| And there were clues in the picture as to the time of day | 21:52 | |
| the vandalism occurred, whose house it was, | 21:56 | |
| in what direction the burglar had fled, et cetera. | 21:59 | |
| At the end of the three minutes, | 22:04 | |
| time was called and the papers were turned over. | 22:06 | |
| And I reached for the printed sheet | 22:10 | |
| of questions to be asked. | 22:12 | |
| To my great surprise and dismay, | 22:15 | |
| I discovered that what I had | 22:19 | |
| was the printed sheet of answers. | 22:21 | |
| It had been some time since we had played the game, | 22:26 | |
| and I had thought to check | 22:28 | |
| to see if all the necessary parts were at hand. | 22:30 | |
| So, there I was, assembled guests | 22:33 | |
| eager to display their powers of observation, | 22:37 | |
| and I had answers, but no questions. | 22:40 | |
| And obviously, the game took an unexpected turn. | 22:44 | |
| As I found it necessary to say, | 22:48 | |
| for example, what would question 17 be? | 22:50 | |
| The answer to which is yes. | 22:54 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 22:57 | |
| I must say, it made it a bit difficult to grade | 23:01 | |
| to determine which question did the best job | 23:06 | |
| of eliciting the answer, yes. | 23:08 | |
| But I'm not at all sure, we didn't have a better time | 23:10 | |
| than if we had played it straight. | 23:14 | |
| Now, this experience will help to account | 23:17 | |
| for the particular tack we're going to take this morning. | 23:19 | |
| A fairly common, and perfectly respectable, | 23:24 | |
| and legitimate type of sermon, | 23:28 | |
| is the problem centered sermon. | 23:30 | |
| It begins as the game did, by inviting the hearers | 23:34 | |
| to observe something that is going on in the world. | 23:38 | |
| Can be the state of affairs in Vietnam, | 23:44 | |
| or South Africa, or Washington, or New Brunswick, or Durham. | 23:46 | |
| It can be the state of race relations, | 23:50 | |
| or of contemporary immorality, | 23:52 | |
| or this revolting student generation, | 23:54 | |
| or almost anything. | 23:59 | |
| The listeners are asked to observe something | 24:02 | |
| the preacher has observed. | 24:05 | |
| They may not see it the way he does, | 24:08 | |
| but they will usually not walk out on him. | 24:11 | |
| The next stage in this type of sermon, | 24:15 | |
| is to focus on one or more questions, | 24:18 | |
| which presumably, arise for the hero | 24:22 | |
| out of the observations he has just engaged in such as, | 24:24 | |
| what is my role as a Christian with respect to Vietnam? | 24:29 | |
| Or how can one live serenely | 24:35 | |
| in this pressure cooker type of society? | 24:39 | |
| Or how can one find viable moral standards, | 24:43 | |
| or find what it takes to want to keep them | 24:47 | |
| after they have been found? | 24:50 | |
| Or how can the university be both a free | 24:53 | |
| and a disciplined community? | 24:56 | |
| In this stage, you see the observed situation | 25:00 | |
| is hopefully brought to assume | 25:04 | |
| some kind of personal dimension. | 25:07 | |
| The third stage, if the preacher ever gets to it, | 25:12 | |
| is the search for, or consideration of possible answers. | 25:14 | |
| They are customarily sought in the biblical witness. | 25:21 | |
| And it is at this point, | 25:25 | |
| that difficulties are up to be most numerous | 25:26 | |
| for both preacher and listeners, | 25:29 | |
| for it is not easy | 25:30 | |
| to span 2000 years or more, | 25:33 | |
| and sound convincing in offering a biblical solution | 25:36 | |
| to the problem of what the Christian ought to do | 25:42 | |
| about Vietnam, or student demonstrations, | 25:45 | |
| or any of the other things which he has observed. | 25:48 | |
| I'm sure we lose a lot of our listeners at this point. | 25:53 | |
| And since that is so, | 25:57 | |
| I wonder whether one might experimentally, | 25:58 | |
| at least turn the whole method upside down. | 26:02 | |
| Instead of saying what answers can we find | 26:07 | |
| in the biblical record to questions that confront us. | 26:10 | |
| Suppose we were to say, what questions can we find | 26:17 | |
| for answers that confront us in the biblical record? | 26:23 | |
| Is what means starting with answers, | 26:29 | |
| and looking for the questions | 26:32 | |
| to which those answers applied, | 26:34 | |
| and then seeing whether the questions were still valid. | 26:36 | |
| I doubt whether a sermon is the best vehicle | 26:41 | |
| for this kind of experiment, | 26:45 | |
| but it is the handiest one available to me, | 26:47 | |
| at least at the moment. | 26:50 | |
| Let me suggest one phrase. | 26:53 | |
| There are many others, of course, | 26:56 | |
| which might be considered in the category | 26:58 | |
| of a biblical answer. | 27:00 | |
| The gist or substance of it | 27:05 | |
| appears with sufficient frequency | 27:07 | |
| that we may consider it | 27:08 | |
| one of the Almighty's standard answers. | 27:10 | |
| The phrase is, "I shall be present." | 27:14 | |
| We meet the phrase of, or if you will, the answer | 27:22 | |
| first in the episode of Moses in the Bush, | 27:25 | |
| which burned but was not consumed. | 27:27 | |
| If you do not recall hearing it | 27:32 | |
| in the lesson which was read, | 27:34 | |
| it is because there are any number | 27:37 | |
| of ways of translating the name of himself, | 27:39 | |
| which God gave to Moses, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh." | 27:42 | |
| Translated in the King James, "I Am that I Am." | 27:49 | |
| In the Revised Standard Version, "I Am Who I am." | 27:53 | |
| Martin Buber in his book, | 27:58 | |
| Moses makes a persuasive case for rendering it, | 28:00 | |
| "I shall be present" | 28:03 | |
| A wording which brings out the reality | 28:07 | |
| for which the name stood | 28:10 | |
| rather than the enigmatic name itself. | 28:12 | |
| Appearing first in connection | 28:19 | |
| with the calling of an individual, | 28:20 | |
| the idea is met soon again | 28:23 | |
| in connect with the birth of the Israelite community | 28:26 | |
| at their Exodus from Egypt. | 28:29 | |
| "I will go before you, | 28:32 | |
| a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night." | 28:35 | |
| Ezekiel has this word of the Lord | 28:41 | |
| for those about to be carried into exile, | 28:44 | |
| "I will be to them a little sanctuary | 28:46 | |
| in the place where they shall go." | 28:50 | |
| The Psalmist reflects his awareness | 28:52 | |
| of it in the familiar "23rd Song." | 28:56 | |
| And we could pick up the thread of this theme answer | 29:01 | |
| at many places in the New Testament, | 29:04 | |
| though, here it is often spoken with the accents of, | 29:07 | |
| or in respect to Christ. | 29:10 | |
| "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age." | 29:13 | |
| "Who shall separate us," say A. Paul, | 29:20 | |
| "from the love of Christ." | 29:22 | |
| And he is persuaded that nothing in this world | 29:24 | |
| or the next, would be able to do that. | 29:27 | |
| All of these you see are expressions in one way or another | 29:29 | |
| of this basic biblical answer, | 29:33 | |
| "I shall be present." | 29:37 | |
| Now, what was the question | 29:44 | |
| to which this was the answer given? | 29:46 | |
| There is I think a sameness about the question. | 29:50 | |
| In its simplest form, the question begins, what am I? | 29:54 | |
| Or what are we going to do when.... | 29:59 | |
| That unfinished sentence. | 30:06 | |
| Moses, "What am I going to do when my brethren in Egypt | 30:10 | |
| want know by what right I have come back | 30:14 | |
| to lead them out of bondage, and who sent me?" | 30:16 | |
| The Israelites, "What are we going to do | 30:21 | |
| when we are on our own in the wilderness, | 30:25 | |
| or later in the far country of exile?" | 30:28 | |
| The Psalmist, "What am I going to do | 30:33 | |
| when I'm face-to-face with the inescapable fact of death?" | 30:37 | |
| The disciples, "What are we going to do, Lord, | 30:44 | |
| when you are no longer here to show us the way?" | 30:47 | |
| St. Paul, "What am I going to do in the event | 30:52 | |
| that persecution, and famine, and threats of all kind | 30:57 | |
| bear down on me and martyrdom looms?" | 31:00 | |
| These were the specific questions to which the answer, | 31:05 | |
| "I shall be present" was offered. | 31:11 | |
| And the questions all have, | 31:16 | |
| the common element of genuine wonder, | 31:18 | |
| which verges at times on panic, | 31:21 | |
| wonder as to whether man really could hold up | 31:24 | |
| in the face of his respective tumultuous surrounding. | 31:28 | |
| What remains now, is to inquire | 31:37 | |
| whether anyone is asking this sort of question anymore? | 31:41 | |
| Can there be any doubt of it? | 31:48 | |
| I suspect one does not have to pile evidence on evidence | 31:53 | |
| in this kind of congregation, | 31:58 | |
| that this kind of question is still with us, | 32:01 | |
| what am I going to do when thus and so? | 32:05 | |
| Still being uttered in genuine puzzlement | 32:11 | |
| and often in near panic, | 32:14 | |
| it is voiced collectively and individually. | 32:15 | |
| And one may have in mind, | 32:20 | |
| the worsening international situation, | 32:22 | |
| or a career change, or a family crisis, | 32:24 | |
| or impending graduation, | 32:27 | |
| or a situation in which one | 32:29 | |
| has morally fallen flat on his face. | 32:32 | |
| Or academic requirements, | 32:35 | |
| which seem out of proportion to one's capabilities. | 32:37 | |
| To all intents and purposes, | 32:42 | |
| it is the same question we met in the biblical record. | 32:43 | |
| What am I going to do when? | 32:48 | |
| And this brings us full cycle round | 32:52 | |
| to considering the answer again, | 32:54 | |
| that strange and perhaps puzzling answer, | 32:58 | |
| "I shall be present." | 33:03 | |
| Now, this is an unusual answer, admittedly, | 33:07 | |
| and on the surface, it is not very satisfactory. | 33:09 | |
| If you were to feed a problem to a computer, | 33:13 | |
| and it came up with the answer, "I shall be present," | 33:16 | |
| you would have every right | 33:20 | |
| to think that someone had been playing around | 33:21 | |
| with the circuitry. | 33:23 | |
| The very idea | 33:26 | |
| of an unseen Presence, capital P, | 33:28 | |
| let alone the possibility of its being felt | 33:33 | |
| in any recognizable sort of way, | 33:36 | |
| has I think to meet two obstacles. | 33:41 | |
| One of these, is the reluctance of many in our time | 33:44 | |
| to give any house at all, to the idea of the supernatural. | 33:49 | |
| An interesting and worthwhile contribution to this issue, | 33:57 | |
| is to be found in Peter Berger's new book, | 34:01 | |
| "A Rumor of Angels." | 34:03 | |
| Professor Berger is professor of sociology | 34:06 | |
| at the New School for Social Research in New York. | 34:08 | |
| And he subtitles his book, "Modern Society, | 34:10 | |
| and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural." | 34:14 | |
| It is a book which is concerned basically | 34:18 | |
| with a relation between theology and anthropology. | 34:20 | |
| "In traditional Christian and Jewish thought," he says, | 34:28 | |
| "we begin with God and proceed in despair, or in hope, | 34:31 | |
| or alternating between them | 34:38 | |
| to consider who or what man is and how he got that way." | 34:39 | |
| Now, Berger refers to this as deductive faith. | 34:45 | |
| Faith which moves from statements about God, | 34:50 | |
| given statements, | 34:53 | |
| to interpretations of human experience. | 34:54 | |
| And in as much as many today, | 34:57 | |
| simply don't find that way of moving | 34:59 | |
| congenial or meaningful, | 35:01 | |
| he consider there's the possibility of inductive faith, | 35:03 | |
| moving from human experience | 35:07 | |
| to statements about ultimate reality. | 35:10 | |
| Now, he enumerates several human experiences | 35:15 | |
| that are so common | 35:20 | |
| as to appear to express something fundamental about man. | 35:22 | |
| And in these experiences, | 35:27 | |
| he feels there may be found what he calls | 35:30 | |
| Signals of Transcendence. | 35:32 | |
| A very graphic and a very useful phrase, I think. | 35:35 | |
| And by Signals of Transcendence, | 35:39 | |
| he means, phenomena that are to be found | 35:42 | |
| within the domain of our natural reality, | 35:45 | |
| but which appeared to point beyond that reality. | 35:49 | |
| One basic human trait, for example, in Berger's view, | 35:55 | |
| is man's propensity for order. | 35:58 | |
| He takes a number of these, this is only one of them. | 36:02 | |
| And he uses the example of a child waking up in the night | 36:05 | |
| from a frightening dream, | 36:09 | |
| crying out in the darkness for his mother. | 36:12 | |
| Father will usually do, I might add, he often does. | 36:16 | |
| The parent will turn on the light and sit down on the bed, | 36:22 | |
| stroke the child's head and say softly, "It's all right, | 36:27 | |
| don't be afraid, everything's all right." | 36:33 | |
| And if it has been just a bad dream, | 36:39 | |
| the child's trust in his world is restored, | 36:42 | |
| and he goes back to sleep. | 36:46 | |
| Now, parenthetically, I might say here, | 36:50 | |
| I don't know how it is with all modern parents | 36:51 | |
| of young children. | 36:55 | |
| Perhaps there are some who would not turn on | 36:57 | |
| the comforting light, | 37:00 | |
| and who would announce from the door, | 37:02 | |
| "Sunny boy, you have just discovered something basic | 37:04 | |
| about life, it's all a bad dream, so get used to it." | 37:07 | |
| But I would still wager that such parents are rare excepts, | 37:14 | |
| and that for some time to come, yet, | 37:20 | |
| little children can count on the light | 37:22 | |
| and the reassuring voice, "It's all right." | 37:24 | |
| Now, we know perfectly well, everything is not all right. | 37:30 | |
| But what keeps the parents word to the child | 37:35 | |
| from being a lie, a bear-faced lie, | 37:38 | |
| is a deep and often admitted | 37:43 | |
| faith in orderliness at the root of things. | 37:46 | |
| This kind of experience, | 37:52 | |
| one of the most common and routine for parents, | 37:54 | |
| provides Berger with one of his Signals of Transcendence. | 37:59 | |
| It proves nothing, it points to nothing specifically. | 38:04 | |
| It points in the direction of, | 38:08 | |
| an ultimate reality. | 38:11 | |
| The parent's role is a witness to something ultimately true, | 38:15 | |
| pointing to a reality beyond the immediate darkness, | 38:20 | |
| and the momentary terror. | 38:24 | |
| Through such Signals of Transcendence, | 38:28 | |
| one may perhaps come to live more easily in this time | 38:31 | |
| with the idea, at least, of the supernatural, | 38:37 | |
| A second obstacle that has to be met, | 38:44 | |
| if the idea of a Presence is to be accepted, | 38:47 | |
| is the proposition that it's truth | 38:52 | |
| is going to be apparent only after one has trusted it. | 38:53 | |
| Now, this goes against the grain for many. | 39:00 | |
| One of the most sacred of academic caws, | 39:04 | |
| is that one must first establish the truth of a theory, | 39:07 | |
| then and then only, can one trust it. | 39:13 | |
| Here, we are suggesting just the reverse, | 39:17 | |
| saying that trust must precede | 39:20 | |
| the determination of the truth of the proposition, | 39:23 | |
| that there is a Presence. | 39:28 | |
| Trust is a commodity that is in very supply these days, | 39:33 | |
| especially on college campuses. | 39:37 | |
| Does it make any sense to trust anyone | 39:40 | |
| or anything in these days? | 39:43 | |
| For an opinion on the score, | 39:48 | |
| I turned to a Labrador retriever pup became acquainted with | 39:50 | |
| recently in the summertime. | 39:57 | |
| He belonged to a nephew of mine | 40:01 | |
| who had brought the pup along | 40:03 | |
| when he came to visit his parents | 40:06 | |
| who have a cottage near ours on a lake in New Hampshire. | 40:08 | |
| The Pup's energy is inquisitiveness | 40:14 | |
| is our obvious love of life were exceeded | 40:16 | |
| only by his clumsiness. | 40:19 | |
| No sooner had he arrived in these strange new surroundings, | 40:23 | |
| for he was a city born pup, | 40:26 | |
| then he went down to the dock to investigate. | 40:29 | |
| At the end of the dock, he stopped | 40:34 | |
| and looked into the water. | 40:37 | |
| Being a very clear and calm day, | 40:41 | |
| he obviously discovered there, a playmate, | 40:44 | |
| And the excitement was too much for him, | 40:50 | |
| or else his vigorous tail wagging threw him off balance | 40:52 | |
| at any rate, he fell in. | 40:56 | |
| And, of course, promptly made a beeline for the shore. | 40:59 | |
| Subdued, but only slightly, | 41:05 | |
| he made for the end of the dock again, | 41:08 | |
| and as before, looked down into the water | 41:09 | |
| a bit more cautiously this time. | 41:12 | |
| The playmate was a bit fuzzier than before, | 41:16 | |
| but was undoubtedly there. | 41:19 | |
| And once more, with a great yapping, | 41:23 | |
| he leaned too far, and fell in. | 41:24 | |
| This time, he came ashore more slowly, | 41:30 | |
| discovering apparently what fun it was | 41:34 | |
| to use those great big pause of his, | 41:37 | |
| for the purpose nature intended, to swim. | 41:40 | |
| And this time, once ashore, | 41:46 | |
| he barely paused for a shake before getting a on the dock, | 41:48 | |
| and this time he headed straight and fast for the end | 41:54 | |
| and with a tremendous leap, | 41:57 | |
| jumped into the water, and headed away from the shore. | 41:59 | |
| It was a good 10 minutes before he'd gained to respond | 42:04 | |
| to the rather anguished calls from the shore for his safety. | 42:08 | |
| He was safe enough. | 42:14 | |
| He had discovered that this strange new element | 42:17 | |
| could be trusted, | 42:20 | |
| and that he was made for the enjoyment of that trust. | 42:22 | |
| With humanoids' trust, indeed is a cultivated posture, | 42:29 | |
| a posture that involves the acceptance of risk, | 42:35 | |
| honest recognition of, | 42:41 | |
| and not running away from anxiety | 42:43 | |
| about one's self in the future. | 42:46 | |
| Setbacks in the exercise of patients. | 42:49 | |
| Delay in the perceiving of results, | 42:54 | |
| all this, to find the truth of that enigmatic name, | 42:58 | |
| "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh," | 43:03 | |
| I shall be present. | 43:07 | |
| Near the end of the last book in the New Testament | 43:11 | |
| as nearly its last word we read, "I am Alpha and Omega, | 43:15 | |
| the beginning and the end." | 43:21 | |
| The first word and the last word, "I shall be present." | 43:24 | |
| I was present in creation, | 43:31 | |
| I shall be present in consummation, | 43:34 | |
| I am present in all the inbetweens. | 43:39 | |
| Such and inbetween time, | 43:46 | |
| is this, a time for Presence. | 43:49 | |
| Let us pray. | 43:57 | |
| Lord do thou grant to us courage to support us, | 44:03 | |
| patience to restrain us, | 44:09 | |
| love to empower us, | 44:14 | |
| and a sense of thy presence to accompany us on our way. | 44:19 | |
| Into thy hands we command our spirits. | 44:27 | |
| Reserve us thine now and evermore | 44:32 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen. | 44:37 | |
| (organ pipe music) | 44:44 | |
| (church choir singing) | 45:22 | |
| - | Almighty God who does not need to be enriched | 53:38 |
| with any gifts that we may bring, | 53:41 | |
| yet, who loves the cheerful giver, | 53:44 | |
| receive these, our offerings, | 53:47 | |
| which we present unto you, and with them, ourselves, | 53:49 | |
| our souls, and our bodies, | 53:54 | |
| as a living and trusting sacrifice, | 53:57 | |
| holy and acceptable to you, | 54:00 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 54:03 | |
| Now, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with us all. | 54:11 | |
| (church choir singing) | 54:23 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 54:25 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 54:33 |