Robert E. Cushman - Baccalaureate Service (June 6, 1971)
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(organ music playing over choir) | 0:03 | |
- | If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves | 2:26 |
and the truth is not in us. | 2:33 | |
Therefore, let us offer unto God, | 2:36 | |
our unison prayer of confession and for pardon. | 2:39 | |
Let us pray. | 2:44 | |
Forgive us our sins, oh Lord, | 2:48 | |
the sins of the present and the sins of the past, | 2:51 | |
the sins of our souls and the sins of our bodies, | 2:56 | |
the sins of our youth and the sins of our age. | 3:01 | |
Our casual sins and our deliberate sins. | 3:05 | |
Our secret sins and our presumptuous sins. | 3:10 | |
Forgive us the sins which we have done to please ourselves | 3:15 | |
and the sins which we have done to please others. | 3:20 | |
Forgive us those sins which we know | 3:24 | |
and those which we do not know, | 3:28 | |
because they have so laid hold upon us | 3:31 | |
that we no longer confess them to be sins. | 3:34 | |
Forgives us them, oh, Lord. | 3:39 | |
Forgive them all for thy mercy sake, amen. | 3:41 | |
And hear these words of assurance of sin forgiven | 3:49 | |
from the Book of the Psalms. | 3:54 | |
"The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, | 3:57 | |
and abounding in steadfast love. | 4:05 | |
The Lord redeems the life of His servants. | 4:08 | |
None of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned. | 4:14 | |
Therefore let us be of good courage." | 4:20 | |
- | The Old Testament lesson this morning | 4:34 |
is found in the Book of Joel, in 2. | 4:37 | |
"Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, | 4:43 | |
call a solemn assembly, gather the people, | 4:49 | |
sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, | 4:55 | |
gather the children, even the nursing infants, | 5:00 | |
let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. | 5:05 | |
Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, | 5:11 | |
the ministers of the Lord weep, and say, | 5:16 | |
'Spare thy people, oh Lord, and make not thy heritage | 5:20 | |
a reproach, a byword among the nations. | 5:25 | |
Why should they say among the peoples, | 5:30 | |
where is their God?' | 5:33 | |
And it shall come to pass afterward, | 5:36 | |
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. | 5:40 | |
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, | 5:44 | |
your old men shall dream dreams | 5:48 | |
and your young men shall see visions. | 5:51 | |
Even upon the men servants and maid servants, | 5:55 | |
in those days I will pour out my Spirit." | 5:58 | |
The New Testament reading is found in the Book of Matthew 7. | 6:04 | |
"Be aware of false prophets who come to you | 6:12 | |
in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. | 6:14 | |
You will know them by their fruits. | 6:20 | |
Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? | 6:23 | |
So every sound tree bears good fruit, | 6:29 | |
but the bad tree bears evil fruit. | 6:33 | |
Not everyone who says to me, | 6:37 | |
'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the Kingdom of heaven, | 6:39 | |
but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. | 6:44 | |
On that day, many will say to me, | 6:50 | |
'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesied in your name? | 6:53 | |
And cast out demons in your name? | 6:58 | |
And do mighty works in your name?' | 7:02 | |
And then will I declare to them, | 7:06 | |
'I never knew you, depart from me you evil doers.' | 7:08 | |
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them, | 7:15 | |
will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock | 7:20 | |
and the rain fell and the floods came, | 7:25 | |
and the winds blew and beat upon that house, | 7:30 | |
but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. | 7:33 | |
And everyone who hears these words of mine | 7:40 | |
and does not do them, will be like a foolish man | 7:43 | |
who built his house upon the sand. | 7:48 | |
And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew | 7:52 | |
and beat against that house and it fell. | 7:57 | |
And great was the fall of it." | 8:01 | |
"And when Jesus finished these sayings, | 8:05 | |
the crowds were astonished at His teaching | 8:08 | |
for He taught them as one who had authority | 8:12 | |
and not as their Scribes." | 8:15 | |
(organ music playing over choir) | 8:20 | |
(gentle organ music) | 9:21 | |
(congregant coughs) | 9:36 | |
(gentle organ music) | 10:13 | |
(choir sings in foreign language) | 10:27 | |
♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ | 11:00 | |
- | The Lord be with you. | 14:15 |
Congregation | And also with you. | 14:18 |
- | Let us pray. | 14:19 |
Let us offer unto God the litany of thanksgiving. | 14:22 | |
Hear, oh, God this prayer of thanksgiving, | 14:29 | |
which we offer onto thee. | 14:31 | |
For the homes from which we came, for parents and guardians | 14:34 | |
and sponsors who believed in education | 14:41 | |
and made it possible for us to be at Duke, | 14:46 | |
and to leave this university as its sons and daughters, | 14:50 | |
we give thee thanks and praise for the interplay | 14:55 | |
of the colleges and schools, undergraduate, graduate, | 15:00 | |
and professional, which widened our horizon and deepened | 15:05 | |
our understanding and stretched our imagination. | 15:09 | |
We give thee thanks and praise for people, | 15:14 | |
all kinds of people. | 15:20 | |
For classmates who grew with us, and cheered us | 15:23 | |
and accepted us as friends. | 15:27 | |
For teachers who realized that a good instructor | 15:32 | |
teaches a person as well as a subject. | 15:35 | |
For administrators whose eyes twinkled, | 15:40 | |
even when the chin was firm. | 15:44 | |
For janitors, maids, secretaries, kitchen help, | 15:47 | |
maintenance crews, known and unknown, | 15:51 | |
who worked for our benefit. | 15:55 | |
We give thee thanks and praise | 15:58 | |
for the memories which will haunt us | 16:02 | |
for better or for worse. | 16:06 | |
The colors in the fall, | 16:09 | |
the indoor stadium after thanksgiving, | 16:11 | |
the gardens in the spring, the library, the lab, | 16:14 | |
the chapel, the unions, Branson page, newspapers, flyers, | 16:20 | |
and placards, marching, and standing and sitting. | 16:29 | |
For all memories, we give thee thanks and praise | 16:35 | |
for the fact that this university still pays more | 16:41 | |
than lip service to (speaks in foreign language) | 16:45 | |
to knowledge, which is linked with a reverence, | 16:49 | |
to insight that has a place for piety, | 16:54 | |
to one all before the universe, | 16:59 | |
which may be the beginning of wisdom. | 17:03 | |
We give thee thanks and praise, for thyself, thy profits, | 17:06 | |
psalms and law givers, for Jesus of Nazareth | 17:13 | |
and for thy Holy Spirit, glory be to thee, oh God, amen. | 17:17 | |
And now let's offer a prayer of intercession. | 17:26 | |
Oh God, who knit us all together in mutual love | 17:31 | |
and responsibility for one another, | 17:35 | |
hear our prayer of intercession for all kinds of folk. | 17:39 | |
In a time of international strife and national division, | 17:44 | |
of racial tension and class struggle, | 17:50 | |
of college chaos and academic bewilderment. | 17:53 | |
On behalf of all men, | 17:58 | |
we pray for peace but not without justice. | 18:01 | |
We pray for quiet, but only if the issue is have honestly | 18:08 | |
been faced and resolved. | 18:13 | |
We pray for honor, rather than victory, | 18:16 | |
for understanding rather than mastery, | 18:21 | |
for sanity rather than success, | 18:25 | |
for the triumph of thy way, rather than ours. | 18:30 | |
For thou are the love which is goodwill, | 18:36 | |
the creator, sustainer and redeemer of all men, amen. | 18:40 | |
And let us offer a prayer of supplication for ourselves. | 18:48 | |
All Mighty and eternal God who are Alpha and Omega, | 18:56 | |
the God of beginnings and endings. | 19:01 | |
Hear our prayer for ourselves, | 19:05 | |
especially for those of us who now complete | 19:09 | |
another phase of their continuing education. | 19:13 | |
We pray for our university, holding in glad remembrance, | 19:19 | |
those who so believed in a heritage of learning | 19:24 | |
and reverence, that they gave to it their thought, | 19:27 | |
their wealth, their service. | 19:32 | |
We pray for our university, | 19:37 | |
grateful for its present even when we are angry with it. | 19:40 | |
Pleased with its successes, | 19:46 | |
though not blind to its failures. | 19:49 | |
Glad of it's friendship, it's interplay of minds and hearts. | 19:53 | |
And at this time we commend to thee those of our number | 19:59 | |
who have finished their course on earth. | 20:04 | |
Trustees, faculty, students of the graduate school, | 20:08 | |
give them thy rest and thy peace. | 20:16 | |
We pray for our university thinking of its future, | 20:22 | |
which we shall watch as alumni, as friends, | 20:26 | |
as happy critics. | 20:30 | |
We present to thee our hopes for our school, | 20:33 | |
that it may enter graciously and gladly and determinately | 20:36 | |
into wider fields of welfare, | 20:41 | |
ever seeking to bind more closely in learning and reverence | 20:45 | |
to thy glory and our good. | 20:50 | |
So we deliver to thy keeping, another academic year, | 20:54 | |
the classes of 1971, the graduate of 1971, | 21:01 | |
in their various disciplines. | 21:09 | |
Bless them, bless each of them, bless all of them, amen. | 21:13 | |
And now as Jesus taught His disciples, we pray together, | 21:26 | |
saying, "Our Father who art in heaven, | 21:30 | |
hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. | 21:35 | |
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 21:39 | |
Give us this day our daily bread | 21:43 | |
and forgive us our trespasses, | 21:46 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against thee. | 21:49 | |
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. | 21:53 | |
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, | 21:58 | |
forever, amen." | 22:02 | |
(organ choir music) | 22:09 | |
(choir sings indistinctly) | 22:49 | |
- | In the name of the Father, and of the Son | 26:54 |
and of the Holy Spirit, amen. | 27:00 | |
This sermon today is offered in the name of God, | 27:06 | |
and dedicated to all parents, | 27:11 | |
especially to those of our graduating classes. | 27:15 | |
This, like God, the Father, have the doubtful privilege | 27:20 | |
of being authority figures. | 27:25 | |
This status as I am told, does not everywhere today | 27:29 | |
enjoy universal popularity. | 27:33 | |
Since however, parents share with God, | 27:38 | |
in search an inescapable priority and being | 27:43 | |
if not in knowledge, they may deserve some sympathy | 27:46 | |
for the travail attaching to this unavoidable proceedings. | 27:51 | |
As I attempt this Baccalaureate sermon, | 27:58 | |
as part of what the chronicle rumors | 28:02 | |
to be superfluous ceremony. | 28:05 | |
I do seek to say something helpful to graduates, | 28:08 | |
as well as to parents. | 28:12 | |
Certainly in the English speaking world, | 28:14 | |
the commands when the occasion with the Baccalaureate, | 28:18 | |
has been time on or in the agenda of the academic year. | 28:22 | |
It intends to celebrate achievement, | 28:27 | |
namely, that of you who are graduating today. | 28:31 | |
Therefore there has been and may yet be a place | 28:35 | |
for a today on, that is glory to God, | 28:38 | |
somewhere in the university calendar. | 28:42 | |
Even if it is about in the direction of an authority figure, | 28:46 | |
it roads in an ancient tradition | 28:51 | |
that may still be worth heeding. | 28:54 | |
The Baccalaureate in fact, has for centuries symbolized | 28:57 | |
the union between sacred and profane learning. | 29:01 | |
In the oldest universities of Europe, | 29:06 | |
these two, sacred and profane learning, were yoked together. | 29:09 | |
In this tandem, they early migrated to the new world | 29:15 | |
and found harbor at William and Mary, Harvard and Columbia. | 29:19 | |
Most lately, this pair found reaffirmation in the motto | 29:26 | |
of the youngest of American universities, | 29:31 | |
our own, Duke University. | 29:33 | |
Before you depart these precincts, | 29:36 | |
I hope you will have noticed our motto | 29:39 | |
as it is sculptured in stone | 29:42 | |
at the entrance of this sanctuary. | 29:45 | |
On our scutcheon it reads, "Eruditio et Religio." | 29:48 | |
It means to affirm the union of learning and high ethic, | 29:54 | |
thus sacred and profane learning are evidently | 30:00 | |
yoked together in the intention of our founders. | 30:04 | |
It was this sort of cohabitation they esteemed and allowed | 30:08 | |
for in their legacy of aspiration for us. | 30:12 | |
Furthermore, you will find that aspiration spelled out | 30:18 | |
on a bronze tablet, east of Mr. Duke's statue. | 30:22 | |
Under his watchful eye, | 30:27 | |
if not within reach of the flick of his cigar. | 30:29 | |
Like all other men, Mr. Duke's vision | 30:33 | |
has exceeded his grasp. | 30:39 | |
Fundamentally perhaps, it is because this yolk of learning | 30:42 | |
and piety, I refer to, has become tenuous among us | 30:48 | |
or downright sundered, | 30:54 | |
that I find the privilege of the Baccalaureate sermon today, | 30:56 | |
overwhelmed by the burden of it. | 31:00 | |
Possibly it is the moral confusion of our times. | 31:04 | |
Perhaps it is blown weariness with academia, | 31:09 | |
coupled with suspicion of your apathy, | 31:13 | |
and my own aversion to captive audiences. | 31:16 | |
In any case, in order to communicate, | 31:21 | |
it is necessary to know with whom one speaks. | 31:25 | |
To be sure about this, | 31:30 | |
there is never given us entire confidence | 31:31 | |
even when we conversed with the closest of our companion. | 31:34 | |
Alexis Carol was right, | 31:38 | |
when he spoke of "Man, The Unknown." | 31:41 | |
In our day, I sometimes think I would amend to read, | 31:44 | |
"Man, The Unknowable." | 31:48 | |
In our day, the only way we can know one another | 31:51 | |
or in any day, is by openness. | 31:55 | |
That is by the will to self revelation. | 31:59 | |
But that requires goodwill, | 32:03 | |
which is the supreme mark of our humanity. | 32:05 | |
When it is absent, | 32:09 | |
we traffic with one another wearing masks, | 32:11 | |
perhaps your beards and long hair are your mask. | 32:15 | |
Do you decline to be known | 32:20 | |
or do you wish to be known as someone else, | 32:22 | |
but who? | 32:26 | |
Perhaps you yourselves, do not really know, | 32:28 | |
but are still looking for the answer. | 32:31 | |
Accordingly my problem this morning is that, | 32:36 | |
I have far less certainty to whom I speak | 32:38 | |
than at all the quarter century that I have | 32:42 | |
from time to time addressed students from this pulpit. | 32:45 | |
Either you appear maxi, that is in hiding | 32:49 | |
from, or you go mini, that is, you go native. | 32:55 | |
In these years, it seems to me, you will have somehow | 33:00 | |
been afraid to be yourself, to be known for you. | 33:02 | |
Your clothing is almost invariably costume | 33:07 | |
as it is this morning. | 33:11 | |
Often it is jolly even wholesome, | 33:13 | |
but it appears always as a disguise. | 33:16 | |
You are barefooted or near naked. | 33:20 | |
If you are, I do not therefore know you better, | 33:24 | |
if too is a ploy, a disguise, | 33:28 | |
where you call attention to your body | 33:31 | |
or your long hair or your beards, | 33:33 | |
but precisely not yourself. | 33:36 | |
Is it a distraction? | 33:40 | |
Is it intended to be? | 33:42 | |
What are you afraid of? | 33:44 | |
Are you hiding, from who? | 33:46 | |
To whom am I speaking? | 33:50 | |
So I think my problem as Baccalaureate preacher today, | 33:54 | |
is my mistrust concerning your real identity, | 33:58 | |
your aims, presiding motives and controlling incentives. | 34:02 | |
Shall I trust the chronicle of recent years, | 34:08 | |
especially your years? | 34:11 | |
That shameless smut, it's part as an ideology. | 34:14 | |
It's intemperate saw upon persons, | 34:19 | |
it's intellectual mediocrity. | 34:21 | |
Shall I take its messages as indicative of your identity? | 34:25 | |
If it does not represent you, it occurs to me to ask, | 34:30 | |
why you have not withheld that portion of your general fee | 34:34 | |
that is in subsidy long since. | 34:37 | |
You are its publishers. | 34:41 | |
If you are not, nobody else claims to be. | 34:43 | |
When have you fired the editorial board | 34:46 | |
by the simple method of non-support? | 34:49 | |
If your own publications misrepresent you, | 34:53 | |
if they stereotype the public mind about you, | 34:56 | |
is it not strange, that confusion is the broad | 34:59 | |
concerning your identity and the nature of this subculture | 35:03 | |
in which you seem to burrow? | 35:06 | |
On the other hand, if I ignore your disguises, | 35:10 | |
if I converse with you individually, | 35:16 | |
if I overlook your sundry masks, your dishevelment, | 35:19 | |
your publicists and ever ready interpreters. | 35:23 | |
I usually find that we can converse, | 35:27 | |
and sometimes even communicate. | 35:31 | |
To be sure, this is within the fixed limits | 35:34 | |
that are set to a mutual human, no ability. | 35:37 | |
But let no one mistake, there has been no time | 35:41 | |
in the history of Western civilization | 35:45 | |
when communication between persons | 35:47 | |
was more difficult or elusive. | 35:49 | |
That is why psychiatry and alive therapeutics | 35:53 | |
flourish today. | 35:56 | |
Religion and other avenues of community | 35:58 | |
failing to provide the way, | 36:01 | |
some escape must be had from the endemic disease of privacy. | 36:02 | |
This too, in a time when the technologies and the mass media | 36:10 | |
vomit more sounding brass for consumption in a given year | 36:15 | |
and process more data than has been disgorged | 36:19 | |
from the time of Abraham of Judea, to Abraham of Lincoln. | 36:22 | |
And no one is, I fear, thereby notably the wiser. | 36:28 | |
It is possible I summarize this morning, | 36:35 | |
that the part of your resolve to disguises is his refuge | 36:39 | |
from the flood of undigested verbiage and facticity | 36:43 | |
full of sound and theory but signifying little | 36:47 | |
or nothing in virtue up, perpetual over sound. | 36:51 | |
Learning requires cessation of input, | 36:55 | |
and a certain periodicity of ingestion. | 36:59 | |
But we are hapless victims of bombard much in these days. | 37:02 | |
And from this modern barbarism, | 37:07 | |
I think you instinctively hide, | 37:09 | |
and possibly among other ways, by going native. | 37:12 | |
Despite your accesses and some aberrations | 37:18 | |
born of your panic, you are, as I observe you individually, | 37:22 | |
predominantly a benin generation, | 37:27 | |
who are not acting on mass. | 37:29 | |
You long for quietness, for peace, | 37:34 | |
for your main simplicities, for authentic love. | 37:37 | |
You'll keep going, you'll survive, | 37:42 | |
because as young men and young women, you see visions | 37:45 | |
in the manner of Joel's prophecy. | 37:49 | |
Your protestations are enforced, I think | 37:52 | |
by fears for the future that sometime leave you desperate. | 37:55 | |
You look about you, you will see little official to hold to, | 38:00 | |
little that is organized to trust, | 38:05 | |
and precious little public leadership | 38:07 | |
that claims your loyalty, even in the university. | 38:10 | |
Most of the time you sensed yourselves as alone | 38:13 | |
in a mass society that is out of control, or seems to be. | 38:17 | |
And so are you clinging to one another, | 38:24 | |
you make a subculture to dwell in. | 38:27 | |
You improve on that by moving into communes, | 38:29 | |
you'll profoundly resent the irrefutable fact | 38:33 | |
that you are the kept children of an affluent society. | 38:36 | |
So you are orphaned in the midst of plenty. | 38:40 | |
Both the love of your parents and their unprecedented | 38:44 | |
ability to subsidize you and your card college. | 38:47 | |
You love them, | 38:51 | |
and some of you hate what they seem to represent. | 38:53 | |
You call it the system. | 38:56 | |
You know that they know they are in a kind of bondage, | 38:59 | |
you long for new freedom, for emancipation. | 39:02 | |
And some of you in the name of liberation | 39:05 | |
and alleged maturity, | 39:07 | |
make the university a layer for cohabitation. | 39:09 | |
(congregation laughs) | 39:13 | |
It is a kind of belated acquiescence to the perspective, | 39:17 | |
I think, of Matthew, our nose pensive lines in Dover B. | 39:21 | |
You disgust your vision of a better world and exclaim, | 39:26 | |
"Our love, let us be true to one another." | 39:31 | |
For the world which seems to lie before us | 39:35 | |
like a land of dreams, have really neither joy, nor love, | 39:37 | |
nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help from pain. | 39:41 | |
And we are here as on a dark link planes, | 39:47 | |
sweat with confused alarms of struggle in flight, | 39:49 | |
where ignorant arm is clashed by night. | 39:53 | |
If I'm not mistaken, you can claim these words for your own | 39:58 | |
with greater justification than Matthew Arnold Good, | 40:03 | |
a hundred years ago. | 40:07 | |
His face was then reeling | 40:10 | |
under the assault of philosophic naturalism. | 40:12 | |
Yours reels under the bludgeoning of circumstance | 40:16 | |
that has been the catastrophic global tumult | 40:19 | |
of the 20th century. | 40:22 | |
In spite of the recent triumphs of technology, | 40:24 | |
the handle slick society into which you were born, | 40:28 | |
you apprehend, you perceive, and you fear, | 40:32 | |
that it is all a house built upon the sand. | 40:38 | |
That the flood tide is swelling. | 40:42 | |
That the winds blow. | 40:45 | |
That the house is collapsible. | 40:47 | |
You do what you can do. | 40:51 | |
You go naked. | 40:55 | |
You hide behind long hair, | 40:56 | |
near nakedness and native costuming. | 40:58 | |
You say, "Our love, let us be true to one another." | 41:01 | |
You protest, you confront every establishment, | 41:06 | |
you know better how to run the university, | 41:10 | |
and from the perspective of your subculture, | 41:12 | |
it is doubtless true. | 41:15 | |
To sum it up, you're and you're entitled to be, I believe, | 41:18 | |
the concerned generation. | 41:24 | |
You are also, I think, a generation in hiding. | 41:27 | |
Hair is the way to go underground sometimes | 41:32 | |
without leaving town. | 41:36 | |
You really haven't had too much fun in your college years | 41:39 | |
certainly not in the old styles | 41:42 | |
with which some of us are familiar. | 41:44 | |
When have you been carefully in these years? | 41:47 | |
Along with your benignity, | 41:51 | |
punctuated by all outbursts of all times | 41:54 | |
in temperate protests. | 41:58 | |
There has been, I believe a persuasive sobriety | 42:00 | |
fostered by underlying this peace. | 42:05 | |
Always, there has been in the background, | 42:09 | |
the threatening drum beats of Vietnam, the debacle, | 42:11 | |
the intellectual and moral bankruptcy | 42:15 | |
of American foreign policy. | 42:18 | |
But I do not want this morning to pass without recalling | 42:22 | |
that you have also had moments of vision, | 42:26 | |
when you'll have joined with the prophet Joel | 42:30 | |
and Martin Luther King in dreaming dreams. | 42:33 | |
In the year of the vigil, remember April, 1968. | 42:37 | |
You as a class, were in your freshman year. | 42:43 | |
"I have a dream," Martin Luther king was proclaiming then | 42:47 | |
and in his death, you joined him in dreaming. | 42:51 | |
It was my privilege to speak to you then. | 42:55 | |
I knew at that time who we were, you, most of you, and I. | 42:59 | |
We worked together, possessed of a common mind, | 43:06 | |
galvanized into a unison bond over the wakened conscious. | 43:10 | |
Do you remember? | 43:15 | |
It was holy week. | 43:17 | |
The memorial service in this sanctuary was relayed | 43:19 | |
by Mike's out onto the campus. | 43:22 | |
Some of you were there, in the disciplined company, | 43:25 | |
seated in sectors, in silent protest, | 43:28 | |
quiet self-disciplined and alert. | 43:32 | |
Inside this sanctuary there were as many persons | 43:35 | |
as there are here today. | 43:38 | |
Perhaps you were among them. | 43:40 | |
Possibly some of you will remember, | 43:43 | |
words which I was then truly privileged to speak, | 43:45 | |
as vehicles of our common shame and equally common hope. | 43:49 | |
"This is Holy week," I said. | 43:54 | |
What has strange coincidence. | 43:56 | |
Ever since last Thursday night, | 43:59 | |
I have been haunted by the words, | 44:01 | |
"Greater love hath no man than this, | 44:03 | |
that a man lay down his life for his friends." | 44:06 | |
And there is added, "Ye are my friends if you do | 44:09 | |
whatsoever I command you." | 44:13 | |
Is it possible I ask then that, | 44:16 | |
Martin Luther King accepted the friendship of Christ | 44:19 | |
and thereby became a friend to all. | 44:22 | |
Is it possible I ask you now, that by his friendship, | 44:26 | |
he escaped from withdrawal into openness | 44:30 | |
and from the disguises of privacy into courageous effort | 44:33 | |
to resolve what I call then, | 44:37 | |
the contradiction in American life, | 44:39 | |
between the principle of its dedication | 44:41 | |
and the maxims of its practice. | 44:43 | |
The previous day, the editor of response, | 44:47 | |
a divinity school publication, | 44:54 | |
had written of Dr. King, "He was one of those men of vision | 44:56 | |
who demanded of democracies' its potential." | 45:00 | |
Those were true words. | 45:04 | |
But the editor spoke also at that time to our common mind | 45:06 | |
when he added, "It is a tragedy that for many of us | 45:10 | |
his dream became our nightmare. | 45:13 | |
To this, I replied that Good Friday. | 45:16 | |
For some it may be so, | 45:20 | |
the nightmare of a tortured conscious. | 45:22 | |
For others, it has already been a restoration. | 45:24 | |
For some, it has been a rebirth of conscious. | 45:27 | |
This can become truly holy week for us | 45:30 | |
if we will unite ourselves to his dream, | 45:33 | |
and claim his vision for our own. | 45:36 | |
"I have a dream," Martin Luther king was saying, | 45:40 | |
"that one day this nation will rise up | 45:44 | |
and live out the true meaning of its creed." | 45:47 | |
We all felt it was right. | 45:50 | |
You graduating seniors were freshmen then. | 45:52 | |
Many of you responded then in unison to the outrage | 45:56 | |
conscious of your fellows and of the nation. | 45:59 | |
Day and night, you sat in vigil. | 46:02 | |
We have all been in long and some time very well | 46:05 | |
during ways since that high moment of renewal. | 46:09 | |
But it is part of your history. | 46:12 | |
But where are we? | 46:15 | |
Where are you now? | 46:17 | |
Where are you going from here? | 46:20 | |
With what dream are you now enraptured? | 46:22 | |
By what vision are you now led? | 46:25 | |
And with what vocation are you presently charged | 46:27 | |
for the day after tomorrow? | 46:31 | |
That is the question. | 46:33 | |
You will have to answer for yourselves | 46:35 | |
for you wear your own disguises and masks. | 46:38 | |
These conceal your inmost intention. | 46:42 | |
I have ventured rationally, no doubt, | 46:48 | |
but I hope not unkindly, to probe your exterior. | 46:49 | |
But I no longer claim to understand you. | 46:54 | |
Perhaps this is because I am an authority figure | 46:58 | |
and there has come a wall between us. | 47:01 | |
In many ways I think you are a wounded generation, | 47:04 | |
as well as a concerned one, and one in hiding. | 47:09 | |
And I have tried to indicate that I understand in some part | 47:13 | |
why it is so. | 47:18 | |
As to where you are going and as to your vocation | 47:20 | |
appearances seem at times to indicate that | 47:23 | |
you are going naked. | 47:26 | |
And when the house built upon the sand is engulfed | 47:29 | |
by tide and flood, | 47:32 | |
it is indeed proven to take to the beaches. | 47:36 | |
It is however hard to make a bold vocation of beach calming. | 47:39 | |
And let me remind you of a matter | 47:45 | |
that has recurrently failed as often as it has been tried, | 47:47 | |
there is no passage way back to the garden of Eden | 47:51 | |
or to a man's original innocence. | 47:55 | |
The way about redemption, corporate or individual is, | 47:58 | |
it appears otherwise. | 48:03 | |
Utopia has always proved elusive. | 48:05 | |
I will close by reference to the judgment | 48:10 | |
of another educator. | 48:14 | |
Dean Lee McDonald, the Pomona College, California. | 48:16 | |
He finds that the crisis in education today | 48:21 | |
is at least twofold. | 48:24 | |
He sees it as a crisis of vocation | 48:27 | |
and a crisis of authority. | 48:30 | |
The crisis of vocation he thinks, | 48:33 | |
maybe the most important problem | 48:36 | |
faced by college students today. | 48:38 | |
Not just the problem of finding a job, | 48:42 | |
but finding a pattern of life work that is congruent | 48:46 | |
with a fundamental commitment | 48:50 | |
as to the way things ought to be. | 48:53 | |
If Dean McDonald is right, | 48:57 | |
and in my experience he is dead right, | 48:59 | |
then your perplexity and restlessness is understandable. | 49:01 | |
You are as you ought to be, | 49:06 | |
dreamers in search of an altered society. | 49:08 | |
My counsel today is that you will have to remake it | 49:12 | |
as you were told to do so. | 49:16 | |
It will not be made available to you as a handout | 49:19 | |
like almost everything else you have had so far. | 49:22 | |
To discover this, there with is to discover a vocation. | 49:27 | |
But it is to learn also that the now generation | 49:33 | |
has its work cut out for it as long as it lives. | 49:38 | |
But on your way, remember the wisdom of Robert Browning, | 49:43 | |
"That a man's reach always exceeds his grasp." | 49:49 | |
Otherwise you will continue a utopian, | 49:53 | |
in search of the garden of Eden. | 49:58 | |
And for the comfort of your parents, for I am also one, | 50:01 | |
I will convey something that it took me | 50:06 | |
more than half a century to learn, not in theory, | 50:09 | |
but in the way of hard experience, it is this, | 50:13 | |
"That dependency breeds resentment in the dependent, | 50:18 | |
and excessive dependency generates anger and hostility." | 50:22 | |
If you are an angry generation, | 50:27 | |
if you resent all authority figures, | 50:30 | |
is it because in this most affluent society of all time, | 50:33 | |
you are perhaps, and through the choice of nobody, | 50:38 | |
dependent to an unprecedented degree. | 50:42 | |
This is the society you resent, | 50:46 | |
the one that nurtured you | 50:48 | |
and from which you have been able to do little but receive. | 50:49 | |
And this brings us to the crisis of authority. | 50:54 | |
For longer perhaps, than anyone in this university, | 50:59 | |
I have as an administrator, | 51:02 | |
encountered the crisis of authority. | 51:05 | |
I know what it means to be an authority figure, | 51:09 | |
as Gilbert and Sullivan once rhymed it, | 51:13 | |
"When constabulary duties to be done, | 51:16 | |
a policeman's law is not a happy one." | 51:21 | |
Indeed it isn't. | 51:25 | |
Neither Gilbert nor Sullivan | 51:28 | |
however steady, was unnecessary. | 51:29 | |
The point however, is not one I wish to press this morning. | 51:32 | |
I wish to look more deeply into the crisis of authority. | 51:36 | |
I offer for your reflection one consideration, | 51:40 | |
which may make this a Baccalaureate sermon. | 51:44 | |
That is, one that unites sacred with profane learning. | 51:48 | |
Dean McDonald goes on to offer this profound surmise. | 51:54 | |
He says, "Perhaps it is because our sense of the authority | 52:00 | |
beyond human authority is so weak in our time | 52:08 | |
that human authority is despised." | 52:13 | |
This, he correctly observes is a religious problem. | 52:17 | |
If so, the most distressing societal problems of our time | 52:22 | |
refers back, perhaps, to the impoverishment | 52:27 | |
of religious faith and commitment in our communities. | 52:31 | |
In that case sociological and political problems | 52:36 | |
may ultimately be theological ones. | 52:40 | |
If the only authority you perceive in your father or mother, | 52:44 | |
the Dean, the Mayor, the Governor, or the President, | 52:49 | |
is merely human, that is positive. | 52:55 | |
If structure, law and every establishment | 52:59 | |
reflect only the class that happens to be in power, | 53:03 | |
then indeed, revolution and overthrow is at the disposition | 53:07 | |
of a superior power that can master it. | 53:14 | |
Then, as Callicles long ago affirmed in Plato's Republic, | 53:19 | |
"Right is the power of the strong." | 53:25 | |
As an alternative to this ideology that is again | 53:30 | |
current among us, as yet, I think another house built upon | 53:33 | |
the sand, I recommend for your probing, | 53:38 | |
the alternative of building your house upon a rock. | 53:42 | |
That rock is variously styled | 53:47 | |
in both the Old and the New Testaments. | 53:50 | |
Jesus called it the sum of the law and the prophets. | 53:54 | |
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, | 54:00 | |
and with all thy soul and with all thy mind." | 54:04 | |
And the second is like unto him. | 54:07 | |
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." | 54:09 | |
It is more difficult to build upon this rock | 54:14 | |
than upon any sand. | 54:18 | |
It is the stuff of which the dream of Martin Luther King | 54:20 | |
was made and which led into martyrdom. | 54:23 | |
It is indeed not the garden of Eden, | 54:26 | |
to which we are always seeking to return, | 54:29 | |
but the garden of Gethsemane, | 54:33 | |
which we are always seeking to avoid. | 54:35 | |
It is the narrow way and the straight gate. | 54:38 | |
It is the acknowledgement that behind every authority | 54:42 | |
that can rightfully claim the allegiance of man, | 54:45 | |
is the authority of the Most High. | 54:48 | |
And that to this sovereign will, | 54:51 | |
all authority must be referred | 54:53 | |
for its ultimate authorization. | 54:55 | |
Finally, as a Baccalaureate preacher, | 54:58 | |
in the Christian tradition, | 55:04 | |
I would be less than honest if I did not refer you to Him | 55:08 | |
who taught as one having authority, not as the Scribes. | 55:11 | |
And whose authority was just exactly that incomparable | 55:17 | |
in achievement of matching in life and death, | 55:21 | |
the truth that He taught. | 55:24 | |
This kind of authority stands in the light | 55:26 | |
of its own self authenticating goodness. | 55:29 | |
I cherish for each of you, the hope, | 55:34 | |
as you go forth from this subculture, | 55:37 | |
that you may find an authority big enough, | 55:40 | |
both to command and to empower your vocation. | 55:43 | |
If you'll do I believe in the end, | 55:48 | |
it will be because you have been able to honor | 55:50 | |
the motto of this university, | 55:53 | |
that is, "To unite profane learning | 55:55 | |
with allegiance to ultimate authority." | 55:59 | |
In that vision, in that alliance, | 56:02 | |
I believe you will find the direction | 56:06 | |
for any worthy vocation. | 56:09 | |
Try it before you are much older. | 56:13 | |
Amen, let us pray. | 56:16 | |
In the name of the Father, and of the Son | 56:20 | |
and of the Holy Spirit. | 56:24 | |
We dedicate these words to thy glory, amen. | 56:27 | |
(organ music playing over choir) | 56:50 | |
- | Let the congregation rise and receive the blessing of God. | 1:03:08 |
Unto God's gracious mercy and protection, do we commit you. | 1:03:17 | |
The Lord bless you and keep you. | 1:03:25 | |
The Lord make His face to shine upon you, | 1:03:31 | |
and be gracious unto you. | 1:03:35 | |
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, | 1:03:39 | |
and give you peace and joy this day and forevermore. | 1:03:43 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:03:56 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:04:04 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:04:12 |