Tharon McConnell - "Called to Be Reconcilers" (February 22, 1970)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(solemn music playing) | 0:05 | |
(choir singing indistinctly) | 4:22 | |
(choir singing softly indistinctly) | 5:17 | |
(organ playing music) | 5:48 | |
(choir singing indistinctly) | 6:38 | |
Male Speaker | The prophet Isaiah said, | 10:32 |
in the year that King Uzziah died, | 10:33 | |
I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, | 10:36 | |
high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple | 10:40 | |
and one cried unto another and said, | 10:45 | |
"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. | 10:48 | |
The whole earth is full of His glory." | 10:53 | |
And then he followed that having seen the vision of God | 10:57 | |
with a confession of his own unworthiness saying, | 11:02 | |
"Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone. | 11:06 | |
Because I am a man of unclean lips | 11:11 | |
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. | 11:15 | |
For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." | 11:19 | |
Even so, we having seen the King, | 11:25 | |
are in need of confession and of repentance. | 11:30 | |
So may we be seated and sing together the first two stanzas | 11:33 | |
of our prayer of confession, number 412. | 11:38 | |
(organ playing) | 11:42 | |
(choir singing indistinctly) | 12:06 | |
Male Speaker | After Isaiah had made his confession of sin | 14:36 |
and had asked the forgiveness of God, | 14:39 | |
the lesson continues. | 14:44 | |
And then flew one of the seraphim unto me. | 14:47 | |
Having a live coal in his hand, | 14:51 | |
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar, | 14:55 | |
and he laid it upon my mouth and said, | 14:59 | |
"Lo, this has touched thy lips | 15:03 | |
and thine inequity is taken away | 15:08 | |
and thy sin purged." Amen | 15:12 | |
(organ playing music) | 15:24 | |
(choir singing indistinctly) | 16:02 | |
Male Speaker | It is perfectly obvious | 18:56 |
to the members of the worshiping congregation | 18:57 | |
who are present here in the chapel today that, | 19:00 | |
an unusual service is to be held | 19:04 | |
in the chapel today at 4 o'clock | 19:07 | |
because of the props, that are so obviously about you. | 19:10 | |
The members of the congregation who are listening on radio, | 19:15 | |
do not see those and may have not read | 19:19 | |
the publicity about the most unusual contemporary | 19:22 | |
performance, which is to be held here today. | 19:28 | |
I will not, at this time, go in detail about it, | 19:32 | |
except to say that those who are not here today | 19:35 | |
to see it and hear it and experience it at 4 o'clock, | 19:40 | |
will spend the rest of the year regretting the fact | 19:44 | |
that they were not, as they hear the reports of it | 19:47 | |
from those who were. | 19:49 | |
I do invite your attention, | 19:51 | |
attention and your attendance at (indistinct) | 19:53 | |
at 4 o'clock today. | 19:59 | |
Female Reader | Scripture lesson this morning, | 20:14 |
comes from 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, | 20:15 | |
"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, | 20:22 | |
the old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. | 20:27 | |
All this is from God, who through Christ, | 20:32 | |
reconciled us to Himself and gave us | 20:35 | |
the ministry of reconciliation, | 20:38 | |
that is God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, | 20:40 | |
not counting the trespasses against them | 20:45 | |
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. | 20:48 | |
So we are ambassadors for Christ. | 20:51 | |
God making His appeal through us. | 20:54 | |
We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconcile to God. | 20:56 | |
For our sake, He made Him to be sin, who knew no sin. | 21:01 | |
So that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." | 21:05 | |
(organ playing) | 21:12 | |
(choir singing indistinctly) | 21:21 | |
Male Speaker | The Lord be with you. | 21:56 |
(congregation speaking indistinctly) | 21:58 | |
Male Speaker | Let us pray. | 21:59 |
Almighty God, who does give us a new day | 22:10 | |
and a new opportunity. | 22:14 | |
We come now to offer our thanks | 22:17 | |
for giving us a chance to ennoble our lives, | 22:20 | |
by worshiping Thee. | 22:23 | |
We thank Thee for all the open doors, | 22:27 | |
which Thou has set before us. | 22:30 | |
If our health is less than perfect, | 22:33 | |
we thank Thee that there are doctors and nurses, | 22:36 | |
medicines, clinics and hospitals. | 22:40 | |
If our spiritual health is at a low ebb, | 22:45 | |
we thank Thee we have Thy loving invitation, | 22:49 | |
whosoever will, may come. | 22:53 | |
And that Thou has provided the Scriptures, the church, | 22:56 | |
teachers, preachers, counselors, friends, | 23:01 | |
services of corporate worship. | 23:06 | |
If we have failed to establish righteousness and order, | 23:10 | |
we thank Thee for a new day, | 23:15 | |
for new resources and a new chance to try. | 23:17 | |
We thank Thee for the promise of Spring, | 23:24 | |
near the end of Winter. | 23:27 | |
For the thrill, | 23:30 | |
of every new and recurring opportunity. | 23:32 | |
We bless Thee for the sense of satisfaction, | 23:38 | |
which comes when a job has been well done. | 23:41 | |
We come with gratitude for great music, | 23:46 | |
for great musicians. | 23:50 | |
For the imagination of those | 23:53 | |
who do not rely entirely on the past, | 23:55 | |
but who blaze new trails for today and tomorrow. | 23:59 | |
For inspiring art, for inspired artists. | 24:04 | |
We express our thanks to Thee O God | 24:09 | |
for a start house of learning, which beckons us. | 24:11 | |
And for teachers who guide us toward it | 24:15 | |
and fellow students who share the path. | 24:19 | |
We thank Thee for the creative relationship of love | 24:25 | |
between true lovers, who are not exploiting each other, | 24:29 | |
but who do love each other, unselfishly and devotedly. | 24:34 | |
We thank Thee most of all for Jesus Christ, | 24:40 | |
the Lord of Life. | 24:43 | |
The Conqueror of Death, who purifies and ennobles | 24:44 | |
every relationship of life. | 24:50 | |
O God we make our prayer of intercession for our fellows, | 24:56 | |
those around the world that we do not know, | 25:02 | |
but about whom we know. | 25:05 | |
Who are known to Thee and who are loved by Thee, | 25:08 | |
as much as we are. | 25:12 | |
We pray for the sick, the bitter, the alcoholic, | 25:16 | |
the drug addict, the biased and the bigoted. | 25:22 | |
We pray for those who believe that they have gone too far, | 25:28 | |
in their habitual sin to return to a loving Father. | 25:32 | |
We pray for those who are leaders of church and of State. | 25:40 | |
Who are student leaders, leaders of the adult world, | 25:46 | |
that all may be led by Jesus Christ. | 25:50 | |
And all men understand their need of each other and of Him. | 25:54 | |
We pray for those O God, | 26:02 | |
who are in trouble spots of the world today. | 26:05 | |
In the near East and the far East, | 26:12 | |
in Europe, at home. | 26:16 | |
For those who are seeking to bring love and reconciliation | 26:21 | |
into those areas. | 26:25 | |
Give them and give us hearts that are hots with concern, | 26:29 | |
heads that are cool with wisdom, | 26:34 | |
muscle and nerve to act, | 26:38 | |
wills firmly under the control of judgment. | 26:42 | |
Give all of us a vision of Thy Kingdom | 26:48 | |
and of Thy will for our lives. | 26:51 | |
Grant unto us the Spirit which Thy Son Jesus Christ had, | 26:55 | |
as He taught us as we pray to say, | 27:02 | |
Our Father who art in Heaven, | 27:05 | |
Hallowed be Thy name, | 27:08 | |
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done | 27:10 | |
on earth as it is in heaven. | 27:14 | |
Give us the day our daily bread | 27:16 | |
and forgive us our trespasses, | 27:19 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 27:21 | |
And lead not into temptation | 27:25 | |
but deliver us from evil. | 27:28 | |
For Thine is the Kingdom and the power | 27:30 | |
and the glory forever. Amen. | 27:33 | |
Female Speaker | It has been some 3 1/2 years now, | 27:56 |
since I left the United States, | 28:01 | |
headed for a country who's name was | 28:04 | |
rapidly becoming a household word, | 28:07 | |
Vietnam. | 28:11 | |
And even as I left, | 28:14 | |
and new step in escalating the war has taken place, | 28:17 | |
as the bombing of the North has been increased. | 28:22 | |
And yet, I was a very naive young girl, | 28:27 | |
as a flew across the Pacific headed for Vietnam. | 28:31 | |
My knowledge of Vietnam was a flake. | 28:38 | |
My understanding of war had come from | 28:43 | |
movies, television, novels. | 28:46 | |
And I think that I can be very honest when I say that | 28:52 | |
as I headed toward Vietnam, | 28:56 | |
I really had a vision of myself as a sort of | 28:59 | |
heavenly light, going out to the middle | 29:02 | |
of the battlefields of Vietnam, | 29:06 | |
to bring back great miracles of life to the people there. | 29:08 | |
Well believe me, | 29:15 | |
movies, television, novels | 29:17 | |
cannot begin to prepare one | 29:22 | |
for what it really means to war for over 3 years | 29:26 | |
in the middle of war. | 29:31 | |
They cannot prepare one | 29:35 | |
for actually seeing and feeling | 29:37 | |
man's inhumanity to man. | 29:42 | |
I have returned from Vietnam | 29:46 | |
concerned for this country, | 29:49 | |
and for the suffering of the people there. | 29:52 | |
I returned with a new understanding of my own country. | 29:56 | |
I have returned with new sense of values. | 30:03 | |
I have returned with a real fear | 30:08 | |
of war, of violence and of hatred. | 30:12 | |
Because for three years I saw, I felt, | 30:18 | |
what it does to people. | 30:24 | |
And I have returned convinced, | 30:28 | |
that those of us who would dare to call ourselves Christians | 30:30 | |
must daily mind what it means | 30:37 | |
to participate in this thing, we call reconciliation. | 30:40 | |
We must come in to terms, | 30:47 | |
with our own relationship to God, | 30:50 | |
and learned what it demands of us, | 30:59 | |
in our day-to-day relationships with one another. | 31:03 | |
I was in Vietnam as a member of an organization called, | 31:10 | |
Vietnam Christian Service. | 31:13 | |
This is an interdenominational organization, | 31:16 | |
which was created to be the evidence | 31:19 | |
of the concern of Christians around the world, | 31:23 | |
with the suffering of the people in Vietnam. | 31:28 | |
And those of us that joined this organization | 31:32 | |
were asked to commit ourselves to three things. | 31:35 | |
First of all to become ministers to the human needs, | 31:39 | |
created by, by the war. | 31:42 | |
Secondly, to become a Christian presence | 31:45 | |
in the midst of the war. | 31:50 | |
And thirdly, to bear witnesses to the Christ of Christ | 31:53 | |
and the reconciling power of love. | 31:58 | |
We worked as teams, usually community development teams. | 32:04 | |
Assigned to areas | 32:09 | |
where there were large concentrations of refugees. | 32:11 | |
And thus we began to live and work | 32:16 | |
among the people of Vietnam, | 32:20 | |
to learn about war and what happens to people | 32:23 | |
caught in the midst of war. | 32:27 | |
What is it like to live in Vietnam? | 32:32 | |
Well first of all to live in Vietnam, | 32:37 | |
is to be constantly confronted by the war, | 32:39 | |
in one way or another. | 32:42 | |
Almost every family that I can think of this morning, | 32:45 | |
has lost one, two, three, | 32:50 | |
some of them even more members of their families, | 32:55 | |
as a result of this war. | 32:58 | |
Some of them has died as soldiers, | 33:02 | |
fighting for one side or the other. | 33:03 | |
Others have been caught in the crossfire in their villages. | 33:07 | |
Still others have been killed by | 33:12 | |
mortars, artillery, bombs. | 33:14 | |
Secondly it means to live in the face of uncertainty, | 33:20 | |
the uncertainty of life. | 33:28 | |
Because in Vietnam, one never knows | 33:31 | |
when the war will suddenly be right in his own front yard. | 33:33 | |
This morning it may be 10 km away, | 33:40 | |
and you hear it as you go about your activity, | 33:43 | |
the sounds of guns, | 33:47 | |
the sounds of mortars and artillery's or bombings. | 33:49 | |
But its far away this morning, | 33:55 | |
but tonight you can be wakened up at any time as it comes | 33:59 | |
right to your own doorstep. | 34:05 | |
And again it comes in many forms. | 34:08 | |
Sometimes its in the form | 34:11 | |
of National Liberation Front Terrorist activities. | 34:12 | |
Sometimes its getting caught in the crossfire, | 34:17 | |
as firefights takes place between opposing sides. | 34:23 | |
And again it comes in the form of | 34:28 | |
mortars, artillery or bombs. | 34:31 | |
But it is always there. | 34:36 | |
And you cannot run away from the war in Vietnam. | 34:40 | |
It is meant the great dawn of the basic structure | 34:46 | |
of Vietnamese society. | 34:50 | |
For centuries life in Vietnam has revolved around the family | 34:53 | |
and the strongest loyalty has always been to family. | 34:58 | |
But now that is gone, | 35:02 | |
the mom is left to be dad, mother | 35:05 | |
and breadwinner as well. | 35:10 | |
A 5, 6 month old baby | 35:13 | |
is left in the care of 5 or 6 year old brother or sister, | 35:15 | |
all their lives. | 35:21 | |
It means a country prices that just kept on going up | 35:25 | |
and the people with a standard living far below ours, | 35:31 | |
trying to deal with the resulting inflation. | 35:34 | |
And then of course for large number of people in Vietnam, | 35:40 | |
it has meant to becoming refugees within their own country. | 35:44 | |
Some of them have chosen to become refugees, | 35:51 | |
they were scared of terrorists, | 35:54 | |
of artillery and bombs | 35:59 | |
which they learned are not discriminate. | 36:00 | |
A fighting which was growing near their village. | 36:04 | |
And so they left their villages and moved in near the cities | 36:09 | |
looking for security. | 36:13 | |
But some of the refugees are not volunteer refugees, | 36:17 | |
they have been forced to become refugees, | 36:22 | |
as a result of military strategy. | 36:25 | |
10,000 of the refugees with whom I worked, | 36:30 | |
were created by the latter. | 36:33 | |
People forced to leave their valley, | 36:37 | |
in order it might become a full strike zone. | 36:40 | |
The villages destroyed, the farmlands defoliated. | 36:45 | |
Refugees, frightened people | 36:52 | |
removed from their farmland, | 36:56 | |
lacking skills to earn an income, | 37:00 | |
by people living close together, | 37:05 | |
with few sanitary facilities. | 37:08 | |
Refugees, a people discouraged, | 37:12 | |
tolerated war, tired of being objects, | 37:17 | |
moved about on a chess board, | 37:22 | |
unable to shape and form their own lives. | 37:26 | |
And it was to these people that we have come to minister. | 37:33 | |
The first part of our task was perhaps the easiest. | 37:37 | |
Ministering to human needs. | 37:41 | |
There were so many human needs and they were very obvious. | 37:44 | |
As a nurse, I hardly knew where to begin. | 37:48 | |
But life seemed again to take the form of clinics, | 37:52 | |
visits from the refugee camps to work with mothers, | 37:58 | |
help education programs and for the last year and a half, | 38:02 | |
it meant 18 student nurses. | 38:08 | |
Trying to teach them my own skills, | 38:11 | |
so as to enable them to minister to the needs | 38:16 | |
of their own people. | 38:20 | |
For each of us on the team, it was different. | 38:23 | |
But by putting together the very human needs and evidence, | 38:26 | |
and my own talents, | 38:30 | |
we began to come up with programs | 38:33 | |
directed to solving some of the needs of the refugees | 38:36 | |
but we had come to do more that this, | 38:42 | |
we had come to be a Christian presence. | 38:46 | |
And it was quite obvious to us | 38:51 | |
that if we really meant to be Christians, | 38:52 | |
witnesses to the reconciling power of love, | 38:56 | |
that we must be available to all people in Vietnam. | 39:02 | |
No matter what their political or religious affiliation | 39:07 | |
might be. | 39:11 | |
We had to be neutral. | 39:15 | |
It meant that we are tempted to live in an open houses; | 39:19 | |
no big concrete fences around them, | 39:24 | |
no barbed wire, | 39:28 | |
no armed guards out front to protect us, | 39:31 | |
most of all, no guns. | 39:37 | |
And secondly it meant that we had to allow people | 39:43 | |
to become persons. | 39:49 | |
Having chosen Jesus Christ, | 39:54 | |
we had chosen the way of love. | 39:58 | |
The kind of love that gets undermat, | 40:03 | |
to find the real person who lies underneath. | 40:08 | |
The kind of love that learns to accept | 40:15 | |
and allow a person to be exactly | 40:20 | |
who and what he is. | 40:23 | |
War is so terribly dehumanizing, | 40:28 | |
and there's a reason for that. | 40:33 | |
Wars cannot begin and wars cannot continue. | 40:36 | |
When we think in terms of killing persons, | 40:41 | |
we just aren't made that way. | 40:45 | |
But we can be taught to hate | 40:48 | |
and to kill things. | 40:52 | |
And though somehow in wars, | 40:55 | |
people get turn into things. | 40:59 | |
As we take away their humanity. | 41:05 | |
We all do this, | 41:09 | |
we participate in it everyday of our lives, | 41:12 | |
when we fail to respond to real persons. | 41:16 | |
And one of the most common method we use to accomplish this, | 41:22 | |
is a way we pick up a label | 41:27 | |
and attach it to someone else. | 41:30 | |
We're really good at this, we put a label on someone, | 41:34 | |
and then we never respond to that person as, | 41:40 | |
anything other than the label, | 41:44 | |
and of course I understanding on what that labels means. | 41:47 | |
There are a lot of labels in our world today, | 41:52 | |
we got radicals and reactionaries, | 41:58 | |
doves and hawks, militant. | 42:02 | |
Probably the label which I run into most frequently, | 42:06 | |
is the idea connected with a missionary. | 42:11 | |
You know, little old lady with her hair up in a bun, | 42:15 | |
and a black skirt 4 inches below her knee, | 42:18 | |
who's never read anything but the Bible. | 42:21 | |
Well in Vietnam, people use labels too. | 42:30 | |
We made those labels, | 42:35 | |
and we have our own understandings of them. | 42:37 | |
There's the Viet Cong, the gook, | 42:42 | |
Charlie, puppets, | 42:47 | |
American imperial. | 42:53 | |
Well I can tell you that each one of those persons, | 42:58 | |
those labels is a real person. | 43:02 | |
And I know because I've met every single one of them | 43:07 | |
in Vietnam. | 43:10 | |
And I found out that they were just real persons, | 43:13 | |
each of them has a very real need. | 43:17 | |
Some of them were refugees, some of them were students, | 43:24 | |
or soldiers, or government workers, or merchants. | 43:29 | |
But each of them is a person. | 43:37 | |
Being a Christian presence in Vietnam really meant, | 43:41 | |
meant being open and available | 43:46 | |
to each of these persons. | 43:50 | |
Learning to be concerned about them as they were. | 43:53 | |
Allowing them to be what they wanted to be, | 43:59 | |
Vietnamese. | 44:03 | |
Vietnamese who desire to be left alone, | 44:07 | |
to settle their own differences, | 44:12 | |
to choose and determine their own future. | 44:16 | |
We all need to work at being able to give others | 44:22 | |
the freedom to be what they are | 44:27 | |
and what they want to become. | 44:30 | |
In that country where people have been subjected | 44:34 | |
to all kinds of propaganda for years. | 44:36 | |
It is only those people | 44:45 | |
who prove from day-to-day business of living, | 44:46 | |
that they care. | 44:51 | |
They really care about people. | 44:54 | |
Not as political object in a game of power, | 44:59 | |
but people worthy of being accepted. | 45:05 | |
Because they are real people. | 45:09 | |
It is only persons who can prove that they care, | 45:13 | |
whoever learned to narrow the friendship | 45:22 | |
of the people of Vietnam. | 45:25 | |
Us persons motivated by | 45:30 | |
our own understanding of Christian love. | 45:35 | |
We tried to be this kid of person. | 45:39 | |
We tried to minister | 45:47 | |
to all people in Vietnam, | 45:50 | |
to work ourselves into areas, | 45:54 | |
where we knew we will be ministering to people, | 45:58 | |
caught on both sides of the conflict. | 46:02 | |
Because only that putting ourselves in such positions | 46:06 | |
could we give the reconciling power of love | 46:12 | |
a chance to prove itself. | 46:17 | |
A chance to be filled, | 46:20 | |
even in the midst of war. | 46:24 | |
We attempted, | 46:28 | |
and are still attempting, | 46:31 | |
to maintain a ministry to the human needs | 46:34 | |
of all the people of Vietnam, | 46:36 | |
without regard to their religious or political affiliation. | 46:40 | |
So much to bring love, acceptance | 46:46 | |
and understanding. | 46:53 | |
This is the beginning of reconciliation, | 46:57 | |
its not the end, | 47:02 | |
but its a start because it always begin | 47:05 | |
on a person-to-person level. | 47:08 | |
And so we were there working, on a person-to-level | 47:12 | |
in an attempt to bring about reconciliation. | 47:17 | |
But I'm no longer in Vietnam, my three years are over | 47:22 | |
and I find myself once again still trying. | 47:25 | |
And yet I am convinced, that I cannot stop now. | 47:32 | |
Indeed that all of us, who are Christians, | 47:39 | |
must really begin to work | 47:43 | |
for peace and reconciliation. | 47:46 | |
We have got to learn to accept people, | 47:51 | |
to allow people, | 47:56 | |
to be what they want to be. | 48:00 | |
And in relation to Vietnam, I think this means, | 48:04 | |
granting the freedom to determine their own destiny. | 48:08 | |
It means being very aware | 48:16 | |
of the moral questions involved in this war. | 48:19 | |
Reading, seeking to understand what is going on. | 48:24 | |
So that we can help our government, | 48:32 | |
to develop policy | 48:34 | |
which will be in the interest of the people | 48:38 | |
most directly affected by this war, | 48:40 | |
the people of Vietnam. | 48:46 | |
We cannot lose sight of the fact, | 48:50 | |
that as we debate, what should be done there, | 48:52 | |
everyday lives are being lost | 48:58 | |
and people are suffering. | 49:04 | |
Our world today is torn with strife and hatred, | 49:09 | |
and we the church, the people of God, | 49:13 | |
are called to be in the midst of that strife. | 49:18 | |
If we have indeed become reconciled with God, | 49:22 | |
through Jesus Christ, | 49:25 | |
it means that we have been called | 49:28 | |
to a ministry of reconciliation. | 49:30 | |
Caring to the world divided, a ministry of love. | 49:34 | |
I warn you that it is not easy, | 49:41 | |
it may mean that you are unpopular and misunderstood. | 49:45 | |
Reconciliation means grappling with real issues, | 49:53 | |
wherever we are, a war in Vietnam, | 49:58 | |
conflict and tension between black and white, | 50:06 | |
a generation gap, | 50:13 | |
the problem that exists between the haves and the have nots. | 50:18 | |
Reconciliation means honesty, | 50:25 | |
recognition of the facts that we are all sinners, | 50:29 | |
that that we have been set free from our past, | 50:35 | |
with its prejudices and its malice, | 50:39 | |
and openness today and tomorrow, | 50:44 | |
to work for love, justice, | 50:50 | |
peace for all people. | 50:54 | |
Reconciliation means love and action. | 50:59 | |
A willingness to place ones very being | 51:04 | |
on the line, in the middle of conflict. | 51:08 | |
In an attempt to help men understand each other. | 51:14 | |
Reconciliation is a cross, | 51:22 | |
and for one we call Jesus Christ, | 51:27 | |
it meant death. | 51:31 | |
If we had indeed been reconciled with God, | 51:37 | |
through Jesus Christ, | 51:42 | |
then we have been invited to become participants | 51:46 | |
in the ministry of reconciliation. | 51:52 | |
We are called to become reconciled. | 51:59 | |
Are we willing, | 52:06 | |
to risk our lives in the world | 52:09 | |
to bring peace, understanding | 52:15 | |
and love to all men? | 52:21 | |
Father God, | 52:29 | |
we thank you for Jesus Christ. | 52:33 | |
For His willingness to put His life on the line for us. | 52:37 | |
And we thank you for the way, | 52:44 | |
He always responded to people wherever they were. | 52:47 | |
We acknowledge our failure to live, as He did. | 52:53 | |
Forgive ourselves astutedness, | 52:59 | |
our failure to love, | 53:03 | |
our failure to see the sufferings | 53:07 | |
which goes on around us everyday. | 53:10 | |
And send us forth into the world today, | 53:17 | |
as persons willing to risk our lives, | 53:23 | |
to become the peacemakers and reconcilers, | 53:28 | |
that you have called us to become. | 53:33 | |
In the name of Him who brought us reconciliation, | 53:38 | |
Jesus Christ. Amen. | 53:43 | |
(organ playing hymn) | 53:49 | |
(choir singing indistinctly) | 54:30 | |
(organ playing softly) | 58:23 | |
(choir singing indistinctly) | 1:01:19 |