Edward H. Patey - "The Christian Style of Life" (October 24, 1971)
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| (chanting liturgical music) | 0:06 | |
| - | Grace and peace be to you from God, our Father, | 3:31 |
| and from the Lord, Jesus Christ. | 3:34 | |
| When Christians come together | 3:38 | |
| before the Lord of the universe, | 3:40 | |
| we make confession of our sins | 3:43 | |
| and we open ourselves to the healing of forgiving love, | 3:46 | |
| remembering the promises of God when he said, | 3:51 | |
| "If my people which are called by my name | 3:54 | |
| shall humble themselves | 3:58 | |
| and pray and seek my face and turn from their ways, | 4:00 | |
| then will I hear from heaven | 4:06 | |
| and will forgive their sins and will heal their land." | 4:09 | |
| Let us corporately begin to meet the conditions | 4:15 | |
| which will enable God to fulfill this promise, | 4:18 | |
| to hear, to forgive and to heal, | 4:21 | |
| as we offer to God our prayers of confession. | 4:25 | |
| Let us pray together. | 4:30 | |
| Most merciful, heavenly Father, | 4:33 | |
| we have done little to advance thy kingdom on earth, | 4:36 | |
| to cultivate a true brotherhood of men, | 4:40 | |
| or to live by love. | 4:44 | |
| We have allowed selfishness and crudeness to blind us. | 4:46 | |
| We have sought holidays | 4:51 | |
| from the ethical principles of Christ. | 4:53 | |
| We have tried to believe that we could sow evil | 4:56 | |
| and not reap evil. | 5:00 | |
| Forgive our sinful stupidity, oh God, | 5:02 | |
| and restore us to righteousness in Jesus Christ. Amen. | 5:06 | |
| Let us hear and accept these words, the gospel of our Lord. | 5:17 | |
| "Jesus said, "Be of good cheer. | 5:23 | |
| Your sins are forgiven. | 5:27 | |
| Go and sin no more. | 5:30 | |
| And I say to you, accept the fact that you are accepted, | 5:33 | |
| that whatever you have done, | 5:40 | |
| you are free from bondage to your past | 5:42 | |
| and from needless anxiety for your future. | 5:46 | |
| As a child of God, | 5:49 | |
| you are free to live fully in this present. | 5:50 | |
| You were valued as you are. | 5:54 | |
| Life is good as it is given of God. | 5:58 | |
| Your future is open." | 6:02 | |
| Arise then from your past, | 6:05 | |
| pick up your life and walk in faith." Amen. | 6:08 | |
| (chanting liturgical music) | 6:15 | |
| - | The scripture lesson this morning is from gospel | 13:14 |
| according to John chapter two, verses 12 to 25. | 13:17 | |
| The first 11 verses | 13:22 | |
| were about the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee. | 13:23 | |
| I'm reading from the New English Bible. | 13:27 | |
| "After this, he went down to Capernaum | 13:34 | |
| in company with his mother, | 13:36 | |
| his brothers and his disciples. | 13:38 | |
| But they did not stay there long. | 13:42 | |
| As it was near the time of the Jewish Passover, | 13:45 | |
| Jesus went up to Jerusalem. | 13:47 | |
| There, he found in the temple | 13:50 | |
| the dealers in cattle, sheep, and pigeons | 13:52 | |
| and the money changers seated at their tables. | 13:55 | |
| Jesus made a whip of cords | 13:59 | |
| and drove them out of the temple, | 14:01 | |
| sheep, cattle, and all. | 14:04 | |
| He upset the tables of the money changers, | 14:07 | |
| scattering their coins. | 14:09 | |
| Then he turned on the dealers in pigeons, | 14:12 | |
| "Take them out." He said, | 14:15 | |
| "You must not turn my father's house into a market." | 14:17 | |
| His disciples recall the words of scripture, | 14:22 | |
| "Zeal for thy house shall destroy me." | 14:24 | |
| The Jews challenged Jesus, "What sign?" They asked, | 14:29 | |
| "Can you show as authority for your action?" | 14:34 | |
| "Destroy this temple," Jesus replied, | 14:38 | |
| "And in three days, I will raise it again." | 14:41 | |
| They said, "It has taken 46 years to build this temple. | 14:45 | |
| Are you going to raise it again in three days?" | 14:51 | |
| But the temple he was speaking of was his body. | 14:54 | |
| After his resurrection, | 14:58 | |
| his disciples recalled what he had said, | 15:00 | |
| and they believed the scripture | 15:03 | |
| and the words that Jesus had spoken. | 15:05 | |
| While he was in Jerusalem for Passover, | 15:08 | |
| many gave their allegiance to him | 15:11 | |
| when they saw the signs that he performed. | 15:13 | |
| But Jesus for his part | 15:16 | |
| would not trust himself to them. | 15:19 | |
| He knew men so well, all of them, | 15:22 | |
| that he needed no evidence from others about a man | 15:26 | |
| for he himself could tell what was in a man." | 15:30 | |
| This ends the reading of today's lesson. | 15:34 | |
| (chanting liturgical music) | 15:38 | |
| - | The Lord be with you. | 16:20 |
| Let us pray. | 16:23 | |
| Let us offer unto God our prayers of thanksgiving, | 16:29 | |
| intercession and supplication. | 16:33 | |
| Oh God, invisible and eternal, | 16:38 | |
| who has a hundred names, | 16:45 | |
| but art ever the same in mercy and in love, | 16:50 | |
| we bless your name for every gift of life, oh Lord. | 16:54 | |
| From humble things to holy grace, | 16:59 | |
| for earth itself, | 17:03 | |
| the glory of light after rain, | 17:06 | |
| the bodies that we wear, | 17:10 | |
| the universe in which we live, | 17:13 | |
| for all that sustains and support us, | 17:16 | |
| we give thanks. | 17:19 | |
| For the spirit of the universe, | 17:23 | |
| by which all material things are enlivened and fulfilled, | 17:24 | |
| for the beauty of holiness and the hope of wholeness, | 17:29 | |
| for the heart and mind of men, | 17:34 | |
| for the miracles and the mysteries of each day, | 17:37 | |
| we offer you our thanks. | 17:43 | |
| We thank thee, our Father, | 17:46 | |
| for the companionship of love and of friendship, | 17:47 | |
| and all the weathers of the world. | 17:51 | |
| Increase in us, we ask, the spirit of Jesus | 17:54 | |
| that we may share that joy | 18:00 | |
| and extend your praise. | 18:03 | |
| Oh God, whose son has taught us | 18:11 | |
| that we are members of one body, | 18:13 | |
| we take our place | 18:16 | |
| in the human family by offering our intercession | 18:18 | |
| for the world and for our brothers and sisters need. | 18:22 | |
| Let us pray for the whole state of the church of God. | 18:28 | |
| Oh Lord, our Father, unite we ask, your church. | 18:33 | |
| Point her in this day to the issues, | 18:39 | |
| raise her eyes, | 18:43 | |
| wet her lips, | 18:45 | |
| stir her imagination. | 18:48 | |
| Make her children glad, | 18:51 | |
| make her youth zealous, | 18:54 | |
| make her men brave, | 18:57 | |
| make her women free, | 18:59 | |
| make her ministers martyrs, | 19:02 | |
| make her bishops servants, | 19:06 | |
| make her once again, | 19:09 | |
| willing to risk her life | 19:11 | |
| that she may live again, | 19:14 | |
| as Christ laid down his life freely | 19:16 | |
| and rose to new life. | 19:20 | |
| Oh God of love, | 19:29 | |
| we ask that you would send rescuers and redeemers | 19:32 | |
| into the rubble of our lives and of our societies. | 19:38 | |
| Call forth Father, those among us | 19:43 | |
| and among all who are able to save, | 19:48 | |
| able to protect, | 19:52 | |
| able to give hope and to free in our time. | 19:54 | |
| Lord, heighten the hope of the fearful, we ask. | 20:00 | |
| Those who are lost and those who are hurt. | 20:06 | |
| Lengthen, we ask, the hope of the fearful, | 20:11 | |
| who hunt and who help, | 20:13 | |
| and who rescue and who free | 20:16 | |
| that they may not lose heart in their mission. | 20:19 | |
| Lengthen the days and the hours | 20:23 | |
| for finding and for freeing. | 20:25 | |
| Shorten the hours and the minutes | 20:29 | |
| for waiting and for suffering | 20:31 | |
| throughout your whole universe, we pray. | 20:34 | |
| Save the lost, free the oppressed, | 20:39 | |
| comfort the grieving and receive the dying | 20:44 | |
| by the operation of your amazing grace. | 20:49 | |
| Oh Lord, we come to you with our needs and petitions, | 20:57 | |
| a strange mixture of common men and women. | 21:03 | |
| Few among us are good people, | 21:08 | |
| some are evil who bear your name this day, | 21:12 | |
| but most are never either like most men in most places. | 21:16 | |
| Some of us are here for love of you and every brother, | 21:22 | |
| but most of us, out of a restless curiosity, | 21:25 | |
| for want of a better temple. | 21:30 | |
| Oh God, we are men of moderation in both virtue and in vice | 21:33 | |
| which is to say, we maintain a pale neutrality. | 21:39 | |
| We have an allergy to risk. | 21:43 | |
| We don't often fail, but then we don't often try. | 21:47 | |
| Our father, we are a safety first people, | 21:52 | |
| more concerned with the state of our stocks than our souls. | 21:55 | |
| We are drab strangers who are afraid of becoming friends. | 22:01 | |
| Oh God, help us in our need of new life. | 22:07 | |
| If we are truly your people, | 22:12 | |
| color us resurrection colors. | 22:15 | |
| Out of the slimy mud of first chaos, | 22:19 | |
| you brought meaning and creation. | 22:21 | |
| Out of the dark smells of a tomb, | 22:25 | |
| you brought joy in the morning. | 22:27 | |
| Out of a confused Babel folk, | 22:30 | |
| you brought up Pentecost, | 22:33 | |
| speaking loud, shouting people of joy. | 22:34 | |
| Out of us, surely you can do it again, (indistinct) | 22:38 | |
| God, our Father, take our commonness, our curiosity, | 22:44 | |
| our restlessness, our indecision, | 22:48 | |
| our neutrality, our musty moderation | 22:51 | |
| and do your windy hovering and quicken us again. | 22:56 | |
| Give us safety-last risk ability. | 23:01 | |
| Make us wild with you, we pray, | 23:06 | |
| for even into us, | 23:11 | |
| the life giving spirit of our Lord. | 23:13 | |
| Lord, help us to make this world good again. | 23:18 | |
| Make the world you made be the world, | 23:24 | |
| make the man you created be the creation, | 23:29 | |
| replace lethargy with life, | 23:34 | |
| turn our aspirations into actions | 23:37 | |
| and our thoughts into deeds. | 23:40 | |
| Give us a strong present tense, | 23:43 | |
| strengthen and renew us by what we are doing, | 23:46 | |
| by what we are saying, | 23:49 | |
| and by what we are celebrating. | 23:50 | |
| Save us in our day, we ask oh Lord, | 23:53 | |
| and show us who we are, | 23:55 | |
| how we are and why we are. | 23:57 | |
| Keep us truly human | 24:03 | |
| in Christ, who is our Lord | 24:05 | |
| who taught us as we pray together as his followers, | 24:08 | |
| we might say, | 24:11 | |
| our father who art in heaven, | 24:13 | |
| hallowed be thy name, | 24:16 | |
| thy kingdom come, | 24:19 | |
| thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 24:21 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread | 24:25 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses, | 24:28 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 24:31 | |
| And lead us not into temptation, | 24:35 | |
| but deliver us from evil. | 24:37 | |
| For thine is the kingdom | 24:40 | |
| and the power and the glory forever. Amen. | 24:42 | |
| - | May I speak in the name of God, | 25:10 |
| Father, Son, and Holy Spirit | 25:14 | |
| and to his glory, Amen. | 25:17 | |
| The cathedral where I am privileged to minister | 25:29 | |
| in the city of Liverpool in the Northwest of England | 25:35 | |
| is one of our new English cathedrals. | 25:41 | |
| It was started in 1904. | 25:46 | |
| It hopes to be finished in about three or four years time. | 25:51 | |
| It is already the largest cathedral in Britain, | 25:58 | |
| already one of the largest cathedrals in the world. | 26:04 | |
| And if you sail into Liverpool by ship | 26:09 | |
| up the River Mersey, | 26:14 | |
| or if you fly into Liverpool Airport | 26:18 | |
| across the Irish Sea, | 26:22 | |
| you'll get the same impression of this great building | 26:25 | |
| and it's great tower, | 26:31 | |
| high splendid dominating our great industrial area. | 26:34 | |
| It is now half past four | 26:45 | |
| in the afternoon of Sunday in Liverpool. | 26:48 | |
| This morning at 10:30, | 26:53 | |
| the congregation will have attended as they always do, | 26:57 | |
| Sunday morning by Sunday morning | 27:00 | |
| for the service of Holy Communion around the Lord's table. | 27:03 | |
| The organ, said to be | 27:10 | |
| the largest cathedral organ in the world, | 27:12 | |
| with its 10,000 pipes, it's five manuals, | 27:15 | |
| well off sounded art, magnificently. | 27:20 | |
| We're proud of our choir | 27:25 | |
| in the usual high standard of English cathedral music. | 27:27 | |
| The congregation, though as always not so large in England | 27:35 | |
| as they are still now in the States. | 27:39 | |
| Nevertheless, represents a pretty reasonable cross section | 27:44 | |
| of the kind of people who live in Liverpool. | 27:48 | |
| The ritual around the Lord's table | 27:53 | |
| and around the preaching of the word | 27:57 | |
| will have been impressive and moving. | 28:00 | |
| And for me, this Sunday by Sunday gathering | 28:05 | |
| around the cup of wine and around the plate of bread | 28:10 | |
| and around the word of God | 28:15 | |
| is the great personal strength | 28:19 | |
| that week by week, I get | 28:23 | |
| for living out the day-to-day business | 28:26 | |
| of six more days. | 28:30 | |
| And yet, | 28:35 | |
| I sometimes climb up the 340 feet | 28:38 | |
| of my cathedral tower | 28:43 | |
| and I look across the city, | 28:46 | |
| the times opposed, in the name of Christ, to be serving. | 28:50 | |
| I see the homes and the workplaces | 28:56 | |
| of a vast conurbation of over 2 million people. | 29:00 | |
| And then I wonder, | 29:06 | |
| I wonder whether it would rarely make any difference | 29:10 | |
| to the real life of the city | 29:15 | |
| if there were no cathedral there, | 29:18 | |
| no Holy Communion, no choir, no organ, no ministers. | 29:23 | |
| Do we really make any difference | 29:34 | |
| for all our splendor? | 29:38 | |
| I look out at the 35 miles of docks, | 29:44 | |
| which has been suffering through modernization, | 29:49 | |
| particularly through containerization, | 29:52 | |
| many of the dock industrial problem | 29:56 | |
| that you in this country have also been facing. | 29:58 | |
| I see the great automobile factories, | 30:04 | |
| Vauxhall, Ford, Chrysler. | 30:06 | |
| I know that labor relationships | 30:12 | |
| have not been good in the last few years. | 30:15 | |
| I look out on the city hall, the center of city government | 30:23 | |
| and I know that that place | 30:28 | |
| is a center of political conflict. | 30:30 | |
| Sometimes creative, there must be political conflict | 30:35 | |
| if there has to be political creativity. | 30:39 | |
| But it's often wasteful, terrifyingly wasteful | 30:43 | |
| in all our political life. | 30:48 | |
| The wrong kind of conflicts | 30:52 | |
| between conservatives and radicals, | 30:54 | |
| even sometimes between conservatives and conservatives | 30:58 | |
| and between radicals and radicals. | 31:03 | |
| I look out on the nightclubs of Liverpool, | 31:08 | |
| the discotheques, the theaters, the cinemas. | 31:12 | |
| And although I'm proud to belong to a city | 31:19 | |
| which gave the world the Beatles | 31:24 | |
| and many other good things, | 31:28 | |
| and I think the Beatles were good things, | 31:29 | |
| I also know that in those places of entertainment, | 31:34 | |
| there is a vast amount of drug abuse and drug pushing, | 31:39 | |
| increasing porn displays, strip joints, clip joints, | 31:46 | |
| and increasing trivialization of the good things of life. | 31:53 | |
| I look out on the schools of our city | 32:03 | |
| and I know that our economic situation is now such | 32:08 | |
| that many of the boys and girls | 32:13 | |
| who left school at the age of 15 or 16 last July | 32:15 | |
| are still unemployed. | 32:22 | |
| They can't get a job | 32:26 | |
| or they can only get dead end jobs. | 32:29 | |
| And in my community, if their face is a Black, | 32:34 | |
| they can't get the best jobs, | 32:37 | |
| if any jobs at all. | 32:39 | |
| I look out on the university campus | 32:44 | |
| after the sit-ins and the demonstrations | 32:49 | |
| and the rest of it. | 32:52 | |
| After all two or three years ago, | 32:53 | |
| there is now an uneasy truce, a suspicious lull, | 32:54 | |
| but it is an uneasy truce between faculty and students, | 33:02 | |
| both not quite certain | 33:07 | |
| whether their relationship with one another | 33:10 | |
| are as responsible as they should be in 1971. | 33:13 | |
| And near the cathedral was I looked down | 33:21 | |
| immediately below us, below the tower, | 33:24 | |
| almost in the precinct of the cathedral, | 33:27 | |
| I see some of the worst slum housing in England, | 33:31 | |
| and I see the streets upon which there is increasing, | 33:36 | |
| God, forgive us, racial tension. | 33:41 | |
| And in the middle of this city, | 33:48 | |
| the cathedral church of Christ. | 33:50 | |
| Does it make any difference? | 33:56 | |
| Who is this Christ anyway? | 34:03 | |
| And what, if anything, | 34:07 | |
| has his cathedral church to say to our city? | 34:10 | |
| What difference does it make, | 34:17 | |
| if it makes any difference at all? | 34:19 | |
| That Sunday by Sunday, | 34:24 | |
| the bread is broken and we say, "This is my body." | 34:27 | |
| And the cup is blessed | 34:33 | |
| and we say, "This is my blood." | 34:36 | |
| It should make all the difference. | 34:42 | |
| If only we knew how to proclaim that Christ | 34:46 | |
| with absolute clarity, | 34:53 | |
| if only the city could hear that proclamation | 34:57 | |
| with absolute distinction. | 35:03 | |
| But who is this Christ? | 35:09 | |
| And what does he got to say to our city? | 35:12 | |
| As I turn the pages of the New Testament, | 35:18 | |
| I find this Jesus came into a world very much like ours. | 35:23 | |
| In his world too, | 35:30 | |
| as in Liverpool today, as in Britain today, | 35:34 | |
| as in America today, | 35:36 | |
| in his world too, people were divided, | 35:39 | |
| paralyzed, frozen. | 35:43 | |
| Frozen by false attitudes, one towards another, | 35:47 | |
| frozen by long dead traditions, | 35:51 | |
| frozen by endless prohibitions, | 35:54 | |
| frozen by meaningless conventions, | 35:57 | |
| frozen by rules for the sake of rules, | 36:00 | |
| for the sake of rules, for this sake rules, | 36:03 | |
| and behind all this, frozen by fear, fear of people. | 36:05 | |
| And when you are frightened of people, | 36:14 | |
| you then put them into categories, | 36:16 | |
| cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, | 36:18 | |
| Blacks, Whites, young, old. | 36:20 | |
| When you were fighting the people, | 36:25 | |
| you put them into categories | 36:26 | |
| because categories are designed to make life easy for us | 36:29 | |
| by avoiding real involvement, person to person, | 36:35 | |
| by avoiding real human relationships. | 36:41 | |
| And that world, a world of paralyzed categories, | 36:49 | |
| was the world of the scribes and Pharisees. | 36:56 | |
| That is the world that Jesus, this Christ, came into | 37:03 | |
| and he smashed right through it. | 37:09 | |
| And because he smashed right through it, | 37:14 | |
| he was crucified by the church for being permissive | 37:18 | |
| because so it seemed, | 37:26 | |
| he played fast and loose with the whole precious structure, | 37:28 | |
| which divided people from one another | 37:35 | |
| and paralyzed them into boxes of fear. | 37:38 | |
| He played fast and loose, so it seems, | 37:45 | |
| with the holy law itself, | 37:48 | |
| breaking it at its most sensitive points, | 37:52 | |
| siding with the Sabbath breakers against the traditionalist, | 37:57 | |
| siding with the blasphemers | 38:02 | |
| against the pious and the religious. | 38:05 | |
| No wonder it was rumored | 38:11 | |
| that he was a glutton and a drunkard. | 38:14 | |
| No wonder it was rumored | 38:19 | |
| that his friends were pornographers | 38:23 | |
| and crooked financiers. | 38:26 | |
| But look more closely at this Christ | 38:32 | |
| and you discover he was no anarchist. | 38:36 | |
| He didn't flout tradition just for the hell of it. | 38:42 | |
| He went beyond the tradition. | 38:50 | |
| He went deeper than the conventions of society. | 38:53 | |
| He was doing something more important than traditionalism | 38:59 | |
| and the frozen attitudes of traditionalism could ever do. | 39:04 | |
| He gave a holy new concept | 39:10 | |
| of what could make society tick. | 39:15 | |
| A whole new cement to hold society together. | 39:21 | |
| He gave a new commandment, love one another. | 39:28 | |
| Here was the possibility of a whole new freedom for the city | 39:37 | |
| because here was the possibility | 39:45 | |
| of a whole new kind of relationship, person to person, | 39:48 | |
| taking each person, whoever he is, whoever she is | 39:55 | |
| with absolute seriousness | 40:00 | |
| because that's the way God takes each one of us | 40:05 | |
| all the time. | 40:10 | |
| And then he showed, by dying on a cross, | 40:14 | |
| and by that tremendous moment | 40:21 | |
| when they hammer the nails into his hands | 40:22 | |
| and at that moment, were widening the gulf | 40:25 | |
| between God's love and man's paralysis, | 40:28 | |
| bridging the gulf with a great bridge | 40:32 | |
| with the prayer of, | 40:34 | |
| "Father forgive, they don't know what they're doing," | 40:35 | |
| showing that that is no cheap way | 40:41 | |
| to Christ kind of loving. | 40:46 | |
| You can't get it in the bargain sales. | 40:50 | |
| To gain everything, he showed, | 40:56 | |
| you may have to lose everything. | 41:02 | |
| As I look from my cathedral tower, at the politics, | 41:11 | |
| the homes, the education, the industry, | 41:15 | |
| the leisure time activity of the people of my city, | 41:21 | |
| with all the frustrations and divisions, | 41:26 | |
| which prevents the good life, | 41:29 | |
| I know that in Christ's kind of loving | 41:34 | |
| is the recipe for true community. | 41:40 | |
| But I also know that that recipe | 41:45 | |
| is not easily translated | 41:51 | |
| out of the familiar language | 41:55 | |
| and symbolism of church and cathedral | 41:57 | |
| with which we cloth it, almost to make it unreal. | 42:01 | |
| It is not easily translated into the language of the world. | 42:08 | |
| But what promise opens up | 42:16 | |
| for that vast industrial metropolis | 42:19 | |
| that I'm called to serve? | 42:22 | |
| What promise opens up if only Christ could be born again, | 42:26 | |
| realistically in the factories, offices, shops, | 42:31 | |
| council chambers, slums, and ghettos | 42:37 | |
| of the city that I love? | 42:41 | |
| If we could translate | 42:45 | |
| the Gothic language of Bible and worship | 42:48 | |
| into the real language of everyday experience, | 42:53 | |
| what then does this mean for us who worship | 43:02 | |
| in the cathedral in Liverpool, | 43:06 | |
| in this great chapel here at Duke? | 43:07 | |
| What does this mean for us? | 43:12 | |
| What is the style of life | 43:15 | |
| of Christ's men and women | 43:19 | |
| in the world which needs him so desperately? | 43:23 | |
| It begins very simply, | 43:29 | |
| accepting Christ's refusal | 43:33 | |
| ever to put anybody into categories | 43:37 | |
| in order to make life easy for ourselves. | 43:42 | |
| Refusing to pigeonhole, | 43:46 | |
| refusing to use, as a kind of blanket condemnation, | 43:50 | |
| words like hippies or Negroes or students | 43:54 | |
| or conservatives or long haired layer backs | 43:57 | |
| or retired army colonels | 43:59 | |
| or communists or Catholics | 44:01 | |
| or terrorist or Protestants or radicals. | 44:03 | |
| They said of Jesus in the lesson we heard just now, | 44:09 | |
| "He knew what was in man." | 44:12 | |
| "The word became flesh," says Saint John, | 44:15 | |
| and got all mixed up with us." | 44:17 | |
| The Samaritan crossed the road | 44:20 | |
| and went down into the dirt | 44:22 | |
| to be right alongside a fellow human being. | 44:23 | |
| Never use the easy word | 44:30 | |
| to dismiss your brothers and sisters in Christ. | 44:34 | |
| The second thing it means in the Christian style of life, | 44:42 | |
| as we are called to be the reconcilers, | 44:45 | |
| the bringers of Christ love | 44:48 | |
| into our great industrial and urban societies, | 44:49 | |
| in every new situation, however unfamiliar, | 44:56 | |
| you look first, because you are a Christian, | 45:01 | |
| at the positive, the hopeful and the good. | 45:05 | |
| It is a terrible habit of many Christians | 45:10 | |
| when facing anything new | 45:13 | |
| to look for the disadvantages first. | 45:16 | |
| This has happened for instance, in my country, | 45:21 | |
| in the various rock festivals, | 45:23 | |
| the kind of children in England of Woodstock here, | 45:26 | |
| immediately ecclesiastical eyebrows have shot up in horror; | 45:31 | |
| violence, drug peddling, and the rest. | 45:37 | |
| Instead of saying first, | 45:41 | |
| what is God telling us through these great happenings | 45:45 | |
| about the search of a whole new generation for a community, | 45:50 | |
| which we middle aged Christians hardly understand at all. | 45:54 | |
| About concern, which we middle-aged Christians | 45:59 | |
| so often hardly ever show. | 46:02 | |
| About a spiritual longing, | 46:07 | |
| which we middle-aged Christian so often deny | 46:10 | |
| by religious materialism or religious sentimentality. | 46:14 | |
| In my city, with an increase of the Black population, | 46:20 | |
| there are people who are frightened, who feel threatened. | 46:24 | |
| Instead of saying what new opportunities | 46:27 | |
| is God giving us in this situation? | 46:30 | |
| Even of the terrorist in Northern Ireland | 46:35 | |
| are a great concern in Britain at the moment. | 46:37 | |
| First to say, what are they trying to express | 46:40 | |
| in this terribly difficult situation? | 46:45 | |
| Even if they're saying it in the wrong way. | 46:49 | |
| Of course you don't ignore sin, | 46:53 | |
| but you're done sensationalize it | 46:56 | |
| for the sake of religious satisfaction. | 46:57 | |
| Wagging fingers, clucking tongues. | 47:01 | |
| There's nothing more evil | 47:03 | |
| than the self satisfaction of moralists. | 47:05 | |
| The woman taking on adultery, remember the crowd. | 47:09 | |
| "We caught this woman in the very act." | 47:13 | |
| The voice of the son of God, | 47:16 | |
| "Who is without sin, | 47:19 | |
| let him throw the first stone." | 47:23 | |
| And then having personally got this Christly vision | 47:28 | |
| of his world and his creation | 47:32 | |
| and of his loving, forgiving, sharing life. | 47:38 | |
| Try to make this real | 47:44 | |
| in the day-to-day encounters of everyday life. | 47:46 | |
| Try to enable a loving, forgiving, understanding community | 47:51 | |
| insofar as it lies with you | 47:56 | |
| in each of the media | 47:58 | |
| in which you find yourself week by week, day-by-day, | 48:00 | |
| in your family, in your school, in your work, | 48:03 | |
| in your interest group, | 48:07 | |
| in your political or social or industrial life. | 48:09 | |
| Because the gospel, if it makes no sense there, | 48:13 | |
| makes no sense anywhere, | 48:16 | |
| least of all in church. | 48:19 | |
| But what about the church? | 48:24 | |
| Finally, what about the church? | 48:26 | |
| Suddenly we see that the church is not the weekly escape | 48:32 | |
| from the hard facts of life | 48:38 | |
| into a Sunday morning Gothic cloud cuckoo land. | 48:41 | |
| Suddenly we see that the church is the workshop, | 48:48 | |
| the laboratory where all this has got to be worked out. | 48:53 | |
| Because if we cannot demonstrate to the world | 49:00 | |
| the breaking down of barriers | 49:03 | |
| in true communion with Christ and with one another, | 49:05 | |
| what hope for the world itself? | 49:09 | |
| We only glimpse it now. | 49:14 | |
| How I long for that cathedral of mine | 49:18 | |
| on the hill in Liverpool | 49:21 | |
| to be the place where all kinds of people | 49:24 | |
| feel at home with each other, | 49:27 | |
| because they feel at home with Christ, | 49:29 | |
| for local establishment and the local hippies. | 49:31 | |
| How I long for my cathedral to be the real meeting place | 49:36 | |
| for young and old, across the generations, | 49:40 | |
| for Black and White, across the race barriers, | 49:43 | |
| for rich and poor, for clever and stupid, | 49:46 | |
| for right-wing and left-wing, | 49:48 | |
| for conventional and conservative | 49:50 | |
| and radical and revolutionary. | 49:53 | |
| And this is where that table and that bread and that wine, | 49:58 | |
| Sunday by Sunday, comes in. | 50:06 | |
| As we meet halfway through the service, | 50:12 | |
| we all stand and we say together, | 50:15 | |
| we are the body of Christ. | 50:19 | |
| By one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. | 50:23 | |
| Let us endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit | 50:29 | |
| in the bond of peace. | 50:33 | |
| And at that moment in the service, | 50:36 | |
| we snap out about individualism | 50:37 | |
| and we shake hands to the left and to the right | 50:41 | |
| and in front of us and behind us, | 50:44 | |
| shaking hands with our fellow Christians | 50:47 | |
| to realize we haven't come to a private cafeteria, | 50:49 | |
| we've come to a family meal. | 50:53 | |
| And then, having shaken hands | 50:58 | |
| with our brothers and sisters in Christ | 51:02 | |
| in the very center of the Eucharist, | 51:03 | |
| then to go to the communion table, | 51:08 | |
| "This is my body," | 51:11 | |
| "This is my blood," | 51:13 | |
| putting out our hands to receive them | 51:15 | |
| and having shaken hands with our neighbor, | 51:19 | |
| shaking hands with Christ. | 51:23 | |
| And in that Holy Communion, | 51:27 | |
| in which we may have nothing in common with each other | 51:30 | |
| except Christ who is everything, | 51:33 | |
| in that Holy Communion, | 51:38 | |
| we catch a fleeting glimpse | 51:39 | |
| of how our city could become a Holy Communion. | 51:41 | |
| And in the power and the vision | 51:47 | |
| of that liberating experience, | 51:49 | |
| we try to go out, God forgive us, so feebly, | 51:52 | |
| but try to go out into the paralyzed city | 51:58 | |
| in which we live and work | 52:01 | |
| Christ free men and women | 52:04 | |
| to serve and to proclaim the Christ | 52:09 | |
| who alone frees us to be human. | 52:14 | |
| Let us pray. | 52:25 | |
| Our Lord, Jesus Christ, | 52:34 | |
| we ask you that in our worship, | 52:38 | |
| in your presence and in presence, one with another, | 52:43 | |
| your kingdom may so grow in our hearts, | 52:49 | |
| that wherever we go and whatever we do in the world, | 52:54 | |
| we may enable it to grow in the hearts of others | 53:01 | |
| for your dear name's sake, Amen. | 53:06 | |
| (chanting liturgical music) | 53:13 | |
| - | Oh Lord, you have given us life and spirit | 1:02:46 |
| and called us in Jesus to live as sheriffs, | 1:02:51 | |
| accept and hallow, we ask, these fruits of our work | 1:02:56 | |
| as symbols of ourselves | 1:03:00 | |
| to be expended for the world. | 1:03:03 | |
| Send us from this alter to be prophets, | 1:03:06 | |
| priests, and pastors to the community of man, | 1:03:10 | |
| wherever we find. | 1:03:15 | |
| Go forth now from this place | 1:03:22 | |
| to be Christ body in the world | 1:03:23 | |
| and may you have grace | 1:03:27 | |
| that paradox of discipline and freedom, | 1:03:29 | |
| peace with the deep restlessness of God | 1:03:33 | |
| and always joy to fill all the cup | 1:03:38 | |
| of all your celebrations, Amen. | 1:03:42 | |
| (chanting liturgical music) | 1:03:48 |