Samuel S. Wiley - "Going on to Maturity" (August 2, 1970) / Duke Chapel Recordings / Duke Digital Repository

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May we now approach the heavenly father,

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In recognition of our need of confession

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and of forgiveness for our sins.

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And make our humble confession.

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Let us pray.

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Oh God, who art rich in mercy toward all those

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who having missed the way, still turn and seek thy face.

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We bow in contrite prayer to acknowledge our guilt.

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We're guilty because we failed to do the right

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as well as we knew to do it.

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And because we failed to avoid evil

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as well as we knew how to avoid it.

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In thy presence, our father,

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our customary disguises and comfortable pretenses

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do not avail.

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And under the searching light of thy holiness,

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we know ourselves for what we are,

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imperfect and wayward creatures

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who often seek our own wills

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in spite of our noble aspirations and our high resolutions.

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As Christians, oh God,

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we confess that the sin of the world is often very much

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our own sin and that the greed,

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which shocks us when we see it in others,

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lurks in our own hearts.

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None of us loves justice and mercy

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the way we should.

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May we receive the grace of humility, here, now

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in thy presence.

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So that we may cease to defeat thy will for the world,

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by our selfish wills.

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In these and many other ways, we have failed to witness

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to the power of Christ's resurrection

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and to the power of his redeeming grace.

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And oh God,

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we pray that the vision of what we honestly might be

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shall convict us of what we are

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so that thy mercy may redeem us of our sin

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through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

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Amen.

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You remember from reading the sixth chapter of Isaiah,

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That Isaiah, when he found himself in the presence of God

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acknowledged what he had not seen

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when he was simply consciously in the presence

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of his fellow man. Namely, that he was a sinner.

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When he was comparing himself with his fellows,

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he thought I'm as good as he is,

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or I'm no worse than she is.

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But when he saw God high and lifted up, he said,

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"Woe is me or I am a man of unclean lips.

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I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."

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But God did not leave him in that state.

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When he acknowledged his sin and was sorry for it.

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Then you recall the passage continues

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and tells us how a person who was a servant of God,

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took a call from the altar.

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Symbolically, taking God's own gift and touched his lips

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and he was cleansed.

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His sin was taken away and he was no longer a guilty person

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alienated from God,

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but was then able to hear the voice of God

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and to go out as a servant of God, with joy,

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with acceptance and being loved.

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And this is the word of assurance

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which the scripture gives us over and over again

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that we do not need to go around with our heads down

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and a hang dog expression on our face.

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That when we worship God and are honest with God,

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and sorry for our sins and seek amendment,

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we are received as sons and daughters

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and are a part of the family of God.

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And this is great good news,

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should provoke us to praise and thank God

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which we will now do.

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As we turn to number 624 in the back of our hymnals

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and read responsively this prayer of Thanksgiving

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entitled, "The song of David". 627.

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Blessed art thou, oh Lord, The God of Israel.

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Thine oh Lord is the greatness and the power,

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the glory and the victory and the majesty.

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Thine is the kingdom, oh Lord.

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Both riches and honor come from thee.

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In thy hand of power and might.

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And now we thank thee, our God.

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(orchestral music)

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(choir singing)

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Now let me read for our benefit of part of a letter,

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which Paul, the apostle wrote to the Christians in Ephesus.

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It's now a part of the Bible and Bible scholars

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have chopped it up into chapters and verses.

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And according to this chopping,

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this appears in chapter four.

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I read from the Revised Standard Version.

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I therefore a prisoner for the Lord,

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beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling

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to which you have been called.

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With all lowliness and meekness,

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with patience for bearing one another in love,

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eager to maintain the unity of the spirit

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and the bond of peace.

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There is one body, one spirit,

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just as you were called to the one hope

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that belongs to your call.

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One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

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One God and father of us all.

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Who is above all and through all and in all.

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But grace was given to each of us,

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according to the measure of Christ's gift.

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Therefore, it is said when he has ascended on high,

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he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

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In saying he ascended, what does it mean

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but that he had also descended into the lower parts

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of the earth.

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He who descended is he who also ascended far above all

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the heavens, that he might feel all things.

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And his gifts were that some should be apostles,

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some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,

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or the equipment of the saints or the work of the ministry,

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or building up the body of Christ

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until we all attain to the unity of the faith

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and the knowledge of the son of God.

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To mature manhood,

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to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

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so that we may no longer be children,

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tossed to and thrown and carried about

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with every wind of doctrine

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by the cunning of men,

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by their craftiness in deceitful wilds.

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Rather speaking the truth in love,

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we are to grow up in every way unto him,

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who is the head into Christ.

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Amen.

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(orchestral music)

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(choir singing)

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The Lord be with you, let us pray.

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Oh God, whom we call our eternal father.

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Strong to save, hear us as we pray for our fellow men

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and for ourselves.

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We pray for those young people who perhaps are students

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in this summer school or in some other institution

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or those who are at home or at work,

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trying to make decisions about their lives,

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may the waning days of this summer,

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be times when the tangled and fragmentary meanings

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of learning, of education,

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come to have a central and controlling purpose

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and be brought into focus.

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May thy son, Jesus Christ, The Lord of life,

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the Lord of love be lifted up and chosen as master.

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We offer unto thee, oh, God, our prayers for the sick,

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the injured. And beyond any routine prayer of ours,

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we earnestly beg for health to come to those

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who suffer in any way.

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May Jesus, who correctly has been called the Great Physician

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be manifest to them in love, in power,

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in strength and healing.

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Give knowledge to the physicians,

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give tender care to the nurses

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and may extra grace be given to those who serve at home,

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whose tasks are heavier because of the illness

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of a loved one.

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Our great and loving father,

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we offer our prayers on behalf

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of all thy children everywhere.

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But particularly now, we offer them for the students

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of our university who are at work on summer jobs,

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earning money for their study in the fall.

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Those who labor in the war against poverty.

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Those who are involved in some kind of project this summer

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to help the dispossessed.

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Those who are serving in Nicaragua and the jungles,

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those who are seeking to alleviate the tragedy in Peru,

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others in other places around the world

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in their own way, seeking to help.

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We pray for those of our number whom we think of

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as our friends here,

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some of whom have graduated or serving in distant places.

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We pray for those in the armed forces,

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for those in the Peace Corps,

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those who are in their own way,

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and according to their own understanding and capabilities,

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doing what they can make this a better world.

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Uphold their hands, cheer, and inspire their hearts.

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And now God, we pray for our president,

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for the officers of our administration, The Senate,

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the Congress, and all of our representatives,

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and particularly those who have been given

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the responsibility to seek to bring peace to Israel

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and the Arab world and to Vietnam and that tortured area.

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May they be firm in the right,

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as thou dost give them to see the right.

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May they find support in working for a world of peace

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and justice, but we pray especially

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that some new light may dawn upon those

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who are seeking to find a solution to these tortured areas

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of the world.

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And to that end though, God,

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we pray that the Lord of the church,

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The Christ, the Prince of Peace, may be in their hearts.

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Strengthen the movements for unity and for sanity,

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which are stirring in the world today

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through the holy spirit.

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And especially, may unity come to thy Church.

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Bless all Catholics,

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all Orthodox and all Protestant enterprises,

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which are seeking to bring harmony and oneness

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to the broken body of our Lord.

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Even as we pray, oh God, for these goals,

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we are mindful our own responsibilities in cooperating

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with thee and answering our own prayers.

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So now we pray for ourselves in this service

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that we may be given grace to be faithful,

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to be unbiased,

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to be cooperative, to be intelligent,

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and actually to be honest.

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We pray that we may grow to be mature.

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We are bold ask these favors because we pray in the name

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of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

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Help us oh God to make our own prayer,

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which he has taught us to pray, saying,

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our father who art in heaven,

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hallowed be thy name.

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Thy kingdom come.

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Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us this day, our daily bread

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and forgive us our trespasses

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as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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And lead us not into temptation,

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but deliver us from evil.

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For thine is the kingdom and the power

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and the glory, forever.

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Amen.

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One of you scholars may be able to help me find the source

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of a word, which I read many years ago.

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The oldest angels are the youngest

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because they are nearest to the heart of God.

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In thinking and praying about this opportunity

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which is mine today,

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I concluded that I might well present a sequel to what I

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offered just one week, less than a year ago in this place.

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The subject then was the image of God.

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And the text was from second Corinthians in the third

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chapter.

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But all of us who are Christians have no veils on our faces,

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but reflect like mirrors, the glory of the Lord.

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We are transfigured in ever increasing splendor

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into his own image.

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And the transformation comes from the Lord

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who is the spirit.

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Now there was the suggestion in those words,

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that for the Christian,

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a process has begun whereby ultimately, he is to be restored

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to the pattern of the true humanity

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from which we all through sin have departed.

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Having been out of town two weeks ago,

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I did not know this past Monday when I notified

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the chaplain's office, that my subject for August 2nd,

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was going to be, going on to maturity.

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I did not know that the chaplain himself on July, the 19th

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had preached here on maturity according to the Bible

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and boy, I'm sticking with the theme,

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not out of near stubbornness,

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but because it was too late to change.

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And because I feel sure that what a United Methodist might

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have said and what a Southern Presbyterian will say

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will probably bear only a remote resemblance.

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Besides I'm going to leave fraud strictly out of it.

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But just as I was leaving for church this morning,

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a very lovable neighbor of ours who is probably

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somewhat of a pagan,

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called to me while he was digging a ditch in his backyard,

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fracturing the Sabbath, "Good luck," this morning.

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I didn't know that he read the church notices,

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or is aware of what might be going on here,

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but I'd like to wish you good luck.

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It is a little warm for a sermon, isn't it?

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To qualify our subject and our texts for there are

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two of them for use here.

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Let me point out that they're very close to

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a theme held by John Wesley, In Colossians 1:28,

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Paul having referred to Christ in you,

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the hope of glory continued whom we preach.

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Warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom

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that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.

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In the fourth chapter of Ephesians,

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the same notice struck, this time with a new resolute.

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Reference has been made to the gifts in that passage,

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to the gifts given to individual Christians

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for building up the body of Christ.

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Till we all come in the unity of the faith

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and of the knowledge of the son of God,

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unto a perfect man,

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unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

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Some of you aware that when ministers in the United

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Methodist Church come to their examination and for admission

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into full connection, the Bishop pro-founds 19 questions.

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They're very close questions. The first two are these,

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have you faith in Christ? Are you going on to perfection?

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When I first heard the second question,

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first I thought it must be a bold Christian indeed,

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who could confidently affirm,

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I am going on perfection

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and I do expect to be made perfect in love in this life.

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And yet in a university setting,

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it should not seem strange to set such a moral goal.

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Educators are accustomed in setting educational goals

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to aim at excellence.

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This demanding objective may be softened in the

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teacher's thinking by interpreting it in terms

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of the individual's capacity,

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challenging each student to excel not the other person's,

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but his own past achievement.

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Now the university,

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which succeeds doing that to any great degree

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may be said to be excellent.

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In reading the famous treatise by John Wesley called,

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"A Plain Account of Christian Perfection",

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I kept wondering in what sense

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the present today's Christian can accept perfection

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as a valid personal goal.

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If there are those who can say in all humility,

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I am going on to perfection.

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There are others,

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including myself who must confess this is a hard word.

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It is high.

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I cannot attain unto it,

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not without a divine miracle.

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Besides in our present speech,

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perfection smacks of moralism, of perfectionism,

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a kind of scrupulosity,

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which we are told is bad for mental health.

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That sort of morbid self effort surely was not what

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John Wesley meant.

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So I admit being much relieved to find that the new

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translations of the New Testament, hewing to a close study

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of the original Greek and it's meaning for today.

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You have another cast to the word perfection

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so that it need not unnerve us,

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need not cut the nerve of moral temple.

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Where the king James version said,

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whom we preach warning every man and teaching every man

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in all wisdom that we may present every man

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perfect in Christ Jesus,

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the Revised Standard Version, which was read,

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goes like this, him we proclaim,

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warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom

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that we may present every man mature in Christ,

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where the Jacobean English put it like this,

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till we all come in the unity of the faith

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and of the knowledge of the son of God,

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unto a perfect man under the measure of the statue

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of the fullness of Christ.

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The newer language says, until we all attain to the unity

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of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God,

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to mature manhood, to the measure of the statue

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of the fullness of Christ.

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In those, in this sense,

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those believers who feel unnerved by the expectation

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of Christian perfection in this life

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may rally to Wesley's standard.

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I do have faith in Christ.

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And I am going on to maturity.

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While being perfect in love in this life

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may come only at the very threshold of the future life,

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I'm earnestly striving to grow up

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but it's going to take a miracle.

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Now, the thought to which Jesus referred when he said,

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"Can any of you have a much he worries

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make himself an inch taller.

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It will take a miracle like that,

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which causes the lilies of fields to grow

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from the brown earth, with rain and sun and dew.

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It's the miracle of the seed.

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And it's on this ground that the Christian of today

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can understand Wesley.

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Those questions asked of United Methodist ministers coming

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into full connection were formulated by Wesley and have been

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little changed throughout the years.

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Recall that 19th question. It is in two parts.

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Will you observe the following directions?

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Be diligent, never be unemployed,

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never be trifling employed, never trifle away time.

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Neither spend any more time at any one place

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more time than strictly necessary.

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Second part, be punctual,

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do everything exactly at the time and do not mend our rules,

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but keep them not for wrath, but for conscious sake.

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Those directions may seem anachronistic to us today,

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but they do speak of how greatly an earnest that saintly man

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was and look at the results.

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If you seek his monument, look around him.

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Look at the great church which grew from his work

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and the immense good that has grown from the passion

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for changed lives and changed society

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which is lain in Western following.

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Such results did not come from doodling along the way,

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but by diligence.

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They did not come either from moralistic compulsion

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or an unhealthy perfectionism that drove these Christians

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to self harm.

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They came because what Wesley meant by Christian perfection

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was absolute Christian love.

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Would not be hard for a man to be diligent

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and to be punctual.

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If the work on which he went was done out of love,

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and this is the clue That John Wesley's doctrine

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of Christian perfection.

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Desire not to live, but to praise his name,

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let all your thoughts, words, and works, tend to his glory.

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Let your soul be filled with so entire love to him

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that you may love nothing but for his sake.

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Whether we eat or whether we drink or whatsoever we do,

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through all for the glory of God.

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Or Wesley being a Christian was all a nun.

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His feeling can be simply stated,

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can any serious person find a medium

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that is a halfway house between serving God,

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and serving the devil?

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Early in 1738,

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as he was returning from Savannah back to England,

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John Wesley wrote a hymn, which expressed the cry

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of his heart. Oh, grant for nothing in my soul may dwell,

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but thy love alone. oh may thy love possess me whole.

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My joy, my treasure and my crown drains fires

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far from my heart remove.

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My every act, word, thoughts, love.

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Such intense piety seems a little too rich for our blood

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or too individualistic.

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Read on in Wesley's accounts.

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And loving God,

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the Christian loves his neighbor as himself.

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He loves every man as his own soul. He loves his enemies.

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Yay, and the enemies of God.

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And if it be not in his power to do good to them,

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that hate him yet he ceases not to pray for them.

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Though they spun his love and still despitefully use him

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and persecute him fo he is pure in heart.

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Love has purified his heart from envy, malice, wrath,

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and every unkind temper.

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Linking thus the first and great commandment,

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to love God with everything we've got.

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And the second like unto it,

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Wesley was used with God to set in motion forces,

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which are still moving powerfully in human society.

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And it is that that I wish to speak now.

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In the book of discipline to which I've referred,

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that there included two important historical documents,

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The Methodist Social Creed,

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and basic beliefs regarding social issues

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and moral standards of the evangelical united

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brethren church.

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These documents should lay to rest forever

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among those who acknowledge their grip,

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the contention that Christianity has no business tampering

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with social and political matters.

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There are some in every,

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nearly every denomination in certain many in my own

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to claim that the Christian faith has to do

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only with the salvation of the individual

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and that it should stay out of the forums,

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which seek to mold the legislation that regulates

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the structures of a common life,

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the structures which make or break men.

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You know, how pleased you are when some famous person

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says something you've been and have been trying to say?

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Well, not long ago,

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a former moderator of the general assembly

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of my denomination did just that.

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He wrote, we believe he was speaking for a truth.

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We believe strongly that if the church is to be adequate

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both today and tomorrow, she must in false words,

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declare the whole council of God.

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She must proclaim to the world of balanced full on gospel.

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We're caught up just now in a tug of war between two groups

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of churchmen. Those who champion individual salvation,

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and those who champion Christian social action.

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As a consequence,

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the body of Christ is afflicted with the disease

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of either/or.

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Whereas what is needed is a fresh baptism of both/and.

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We refuse, said this man,

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we refuse to choose between doctrine and essence.

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Between Christianity as a creed and Christianity as a life.

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Between the inner life of the soul and the outer life

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of conduct.

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Between personal salvation and social crusading,

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we will never get very far in the years ahead,

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frantically pulling on only one

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or on only one side of the boat.

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No friend of Christianity

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sets the personal gospel over against the social gospel.

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God meant these for a holy alliance

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and to neglect either is to lose both.

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Anyone who reads the New Testament even casually

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must know that the Christian religion

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has to do with life, the whole of life mightily

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and all the time.

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It is no vacuous piety unrelated to the issues

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of the real world in which we spend most of our time.

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Nothing is strictly removed from the concern of religion.

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Having said this,

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let us go on to say that the partisans of social action

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should remember that apart from transformed men and women,

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the victories we yearn for in society are impossible.

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Well, there will be lacking the mind that knows the right,

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the heart that loves the right and the will

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that works for the right.

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Those were the words of William Amaliot of Dallas.

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They described the attitude of Christian maturity,

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fresh baptism of both end.

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If we followed such a word,

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we would be delivered from the moral heresy

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which selects a few virtues for observance and excuses,

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one self lapses than others by claiming

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rectitude in those selected.

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We know the latent and perhaps unwitting violence

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of the pietist, who says many prayers,

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but tries to appear oblivious to the hunger of his neighbor.

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On the other hand,

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I do want my social activist friend to be the sort of person

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I can trust around my women folk.

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Must we discard the doctrine of Christian perfection?

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Not I think, if we understand it in terms of maturity,

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in terms of starting out to become truly human,

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like Jesus Christ, bending all our desire towards that.

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Some of us have been involved in seminars at Central Prison

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in rallies designed to give us understanding of what it is

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to be incarcerated in that bastion,

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which was built over a hundred years ago,

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like a fortress to repel invasion from outside.

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And it was in no ways suiting for the rehabilitation

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of criminal minds

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in order that these men go back to their communities.

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We have learned that even in maximum security,

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in that bastion, there is a hierarchy power,

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only it's a low-archy .

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The prison psychiatrist described it to us as an inverted

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pyramid as though the structure was seen,

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reflected in a lake.

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Power gravitates, not to the best man in the prison,

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but to the worst, the most unscrupulous, the meanest,

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the most grasping.

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One has in our time an awful sense that something like this

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is happening in today on the streets of some of our cities

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and on some of our campuses among our youth.

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We have a rebel generation.

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It's easy to understand why they should be repelled

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by what they term the hypocrisy of the older generation.

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Yet for all their hypocrisies,

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those elders have a little grace left enough to be shocked

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that the youth, their children,

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have turned away from the middle class virtues.

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Some of which were sacred to them like chastity.

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May there not be a common meeting ground

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for the generations then in this concept of maturity.

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If parents could see that age, their years alone,

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do not necessarily mean maturity.

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And if the kids could see that doing your own thing forever

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may result in permanent childhood,

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perhaps our society could get moving again.

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Show the letter to the Ephesians, to the track for our time.

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It represents biblical scholars.

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Tell us the ripening concepts

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the apostle Paul had shared with his friends

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in earlier letters.

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Colossians, he speaks of presenting every man mature

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in Christ. In Ephesians,

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the emphasis is on the church as community

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in which the relation is so organic,

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that the individuals maturity is seen

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to be inseparably connected with the maturity

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of the whole body of Christ, which is the church.

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And the goal of Christians to be pressing on

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until we all attain.

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For the unity of the faith and of the knowledge

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of the son of God to mature manhood

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is the measure of the stature of a fullness of price.

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I'd hoped today that there would be time to talk about

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the elements that go into the making of maturity.

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I can only hope now that the chaplain told you all of that

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two weeks ago.

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In these concluding moments,

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allow me to say what you would expect me to see

48:31

in Ephesians because it's then.

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It's this verse that mature churchmanship is at acumental.

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We are to come in the unity of the faith,

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to the knowledge of the son of God,

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to the measure of respect of the fullness of Christ.

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There is one body and one spirit,

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just as you were called to the one hope that belongs

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to your call.

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One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God

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and father of us all.

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Who is above all and through all in and all.

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And this unity is something given the not to be achieved

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by church unions.

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But as Francis Fared had said,

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naturally, this is a true inward unity,

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but it does not occur to the writer,

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to imagine that it may not find outward expression.

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That is why as humanists feel that healing,

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the unhappy divisions in the church is a part of what is

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meant by earnestly pursuing the will of God

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and going on the maturity.

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Vocation.

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So breathtaking is that of the church

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which is to reveal a plan that's surprising

49:55

even to the angels.

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Of calling to have a part in the fulfilling

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of God's vast design for the universe,

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in the unity that the church should show for,

50:09

give the pattern of the unity of all things created,

50:13

show by the harmony of our fellowship,

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a habiter of the universal harmony there is to come.

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Such a vocation so breathtaking

50:28

when rightly sensed should make both young and old

50:31

begin to ask if doing our own thing as meaning doing

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what pleases ourselves in childish self-centeredness

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is being big enough.

50:45

I was a child. I spoke like a child.

50:48

I fought like a child. I reasoned like a child.

50:50

I became a man.

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I gave up childish ways.

50:57

Gifts, the skills of individuals

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are to help build community.

51:04

A little book called "God Reconciles And Makes Free"

51:10

George Becared of Oxford has said,

51:14

He asked first, "What is man?"

51:16

Then he replied,

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"He is a creature of contradiction

51:20

who is capable alike of great good and great evil.

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Of whose highest achievements are constantly being spoiled

51:27

and distorted into means of degradation."

51:30

The Christian diagnosis is that in all this,

51:34

we see only defective manhood. Man has alienated from God.

51:37

True manhood is to be seen in Christ.

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The union of manhood and godhood,

51:46

which we see in him is what God always intended for man

51:48

and Christ thus possibility and the actual beginning

51:53

of a new humanity.

51:57

Here's where the life lived wholly for God

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and therefore for the men and women

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who are the objects of God's love.

52:05

And the gospel is that we can be drawn into union

52:07

with his life in such a way as to share his obedience to God

52:12

and his concern.

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Amen.

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They call the earliest Christians disciples

52:26

or followers of the way.

52:29

When the father of one of my best friends died,

52:33

the son said of him.

52:36

He went a long way on the road

52:38

a man could walk with Christ in this life.

52:41

Could any father have a higher hope than that

52:46

his son could say that of him when time comes for graduation

52:49

to another life?

52:54

That text aroused from Ephesians said that,

52:57

unity of the faith and knowledge of the son of God,

53:00

lead to maturity.

53:02

How shall we know him unless we go with him and share his

53:05

obedience to God and his concern for man.

53:10

I give you now, again, those words of Albert Schweitzer,

53:16

He comes to us as one unknown,

53:21

without a name as of old,

53:24

by the Lakeside he came to those men who knew him not.

53:27

He speaks to us the same word, follow thou me.

53:31

He sets us to the tasks,

53:36

which he has to fulfill for our time.

53:38

He commands and to those who obeyed him,

53:42

whether they be wise or simple,

53:45

he will reveal himself in the toils,

53:48

the conflict, the sufferings,

53:51

Which they shall pass through in his fellowship.

53:54

And as an ineffable mystery,

53:58

they shall learn in their own experience who he is.

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That's great.

54:11

Father of Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature

54:18

and in favor with God and man,

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grant our soul to mature that we may become part

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of the answer instead of part of the problem.

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Give us the child like heart,

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but deliver us from childishness.

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Teach us in what true freedom lies

54:41

so that in the liberty of perfect love,

54:45

we may share the work and the joy of our Lord

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in his name. Amen.

54:54

(orchestral music)

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(choir singing)

55:36

(orchestral music)

1:00:51

(choir singing)

1:01:17

Samuel S. Wiley - "Going on to Maturity" (August 2, 1970)

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1. Samuel S. Wiley - "Going on to Maturity" (August 2, 1970)

Duke University Archives

Samuel S. Wiley - "Going on to Maturity" (August 2, 1970)

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Duke University Archives