Edmund A. Steimle - "Children and Angels" (October 29, 1972)
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Transcript
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- | All mighty and holy God, | 0:11 |
searcher of the hearts of men, | 0:14 | |
who knows us better than we know ourselves, | 0:17 | |
and see us the sins which are at hides from us, | 0:21 | |
hear our prayer of confession. | 0:26 | |
We confess the sorrows which brought no softening of heart, | 0:29 | |
the chastening | 0:34 | |
which yielded no peaceable fruit of righteousness, | 0:35 | |
the rebukes of conscience which led to no amendment of life, | 0:40 | |
we confess the councils of thy word | 0:45 | |
we have known and not loved, | 0:48 | |
the gospel of thy son, we have believed and not obeyed, | 0:52 | |
the leading of the spirit of truth | 0:58 | |
we have acknowledged and not followed, | 1:00 | |
have mercy upon us, oh God, we humbly intrigue thee, | 1:04 | |
forgive us our sins. | 1:09 | |
Forgive them all for Jesus sake and for our sake, amen. | 1:12 | |
Hear these words of the assurance of forgiveness | 1:22 | |
from the Old Testament and the New, | 1:25 | |
Who is like unto God who pardons inequity | 1:29 | |
and passes over transgression, | 1:35 | |
because He delights in steadfast love, | 1:40 | |
He will again have compassion upon us. | 1:43 | |
He will tread our inequities under foot, | 1:48 | |
He will cast all our sins in the depths of the sea. | 1:51 | |
Jesus said, "Him who comes to me I will not cast out." | 1:58 | |
Our sins are forgiven for Jesus sake. | 2:06 | |
Therefore be of good courage. | 2:13 | |
And knowing that our sins are forgiven, | 2:18 | |
let us us pray together the prayer | 2:21 | |
which Jesus taught His disciple saying, | 2:23 | |
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, | 2:27 | |
thy kingdom come, | 2:32 | |
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 2:35 | |
Give us this day our daily bread, | 2:39 | |
and forgive us our trespasses | 2:43 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us, | 2:45 | |
and lead us not into temptation, | 2:49 | |
but deliver us from evil, | 2:52 | |
for thine is the kingdom, | 2:54 | |
and the power, and the glory, forever, amen. | 2:56 | |
(soft music) | 3:04 | |
(singing faintly) | 4:00 | |
The Lord be with you. | 11:37 | |
(intrinsic) | 11:39 | |
Let us pray. | 11:41 | |
Let us offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the reformation. | 11:49 | |
Almighty God, we remember with gratitude, | 11:55 | |
the Protestant reformation | 11:58 | |
whose anniversary, we celebrate on this day. | 12:01 | |
For this heritage, we give thee thanks. | 12:05 | |
For Martin Luther, who in anxiety and faith, | 12:11 | |
left the church which he loved, | 12:16 | |
that he might remain true to the revelation of thy self, | 12:20 | |
in thy word. | 12:24 | |
For those who supported him with confidence and courage | 12:27 | |
in the fight of faith, | 12:32 | |
for heretics whose insights and interpretations | 12:35 | |
have become orthodoxy, | 12:40 | |
for all who risk health and wealth and home and reputation | 12:43 | |
that an old truth might be respoken, | 12:48 | |
for these reformers, glory be to thee, oh God. | 12:53 | |
We give thee thanks for present performers in thy church, | 13:01 | |
Protestant and Roman, | 13:05 | |
for the interdenominational ecumenical earnestness, | 13:09 | |
which would bring them together at thy son's table, | 13:13 | |
for Pope John XXIII that thee saint, | 13:18 | |
who with whimsy and determination | 13:23 | |
and liveliness and goodwill surprised all men | 13:26 | |
of all lands and creed, | 13:31 | |
and has given us a vision and a confidence | 13:34 | |
that has not yet faded away. | 13:38 | |
For these longings and hopes, glory be to thee, oh God. | 13:42 | |
Accept this our prayer of thanksgiving rooted in memory | 13:48 | |
and blossoming in reassurance, amen. | 13:54 | |
Let us offer a prayer of intercession. | 14:00 | |
We bring before thee, oh God, | 14:04 | |
the troubles and perils of peoples and nations, | 14:06 | |
the sighing of prisoners and captives and refugees, | 14:11 | |
the sorrows of the bereaved, the necessities of strangers, | 14:17 | |
the helplessness of the weak, the despondency of the weary, | 14:23 | |
the failing powers of the aged, | 14:29 | |
oh God, even through us, draw near to each, | 14:33 | |
for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 14:39 | |
Let us offer prayer of supplication for ourselves. | 14:44 | |
Oh God, who has given us the grace | 14:49 | |
to carry the sword of thy kingdom of peace, | 14:51 | |
who has made us messengers of peace in a world of strife, | 14:56 | |
and messengers of strife in a world of false peace, | 15:01 | |
make strong our hand, make clear our voice, | 15:07 | |
give us humility with firmness and insight with passion | 15:12 | |
that we may fight not to conquer, | 15:20 | |
but to redeem. | 15:25 | |
Give us the patience of those who understand | 15:28 | |
and the impatience of those who love. | 15:32 | |
That the might of the gentleness may work through us, | 15:36 | |
and the mercy of thy rath may speak through us. | 15:41 | |
In the name of Him who calls us to thy kingdom of peace, | 15:46 | |
and love, and truth, amen. | 15:51 | |
I have been asked by the chapel powers | 16:02 | |
that we who have lead this weekend, | 16:06 | |
to give you an explanation of the Rube Goldberg apparatus, | 16:11 | |
which has been established alongside the pulpit. | 16:17 | |
Ever since 1945, and maybe earlier, | 16:23 | |
the acoustics have been somewhat less than perfect | 16:28 | |
in this building. | 16:33 | |
The loud speaker system by the pulpit | 16:36 | |
is connected only with the microphone | 16:39 | |
on the pulpit lectern. | 16:43 | |
This mic is connected with the old speakers | 16:46 | |
in the triforium. | 16:50 | |
Will you please let us know if there is any improvement | 16:52 | |
or impairment for the ear of the listener? | 16:57 | |
We apologize to Dr. Stanley | 17:02 | |
for involving him in this experiment. | 17:05 | |
Yet as a Presbyterian, | 17:09 | |
I feel that it may have been for ordained for this Luther | 17:10 | |
to be the fifth. | 17:15 | |
And now let us hear the of God, | 17:19 | |
as it is found in the gospel according to St. Matthew, | 17:21 | |
The 18:1-10. | 17:26 | |
"At that time, the disciples came to Jesus saying, | 17:36 | |
'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' | 17:41 | |
And calling to Him a child, He put Him in the midst of them | 17:47 | |
and said, 'Truly, I say to you, | 17:51 | |
unless you turn and become like children, | 17:56 | |
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. | 18:00 | |
Whoever humbles himself like this child, | 18:05 | |
he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. | 18:08 | |
Whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me, | 18:13 | |
but whoever causes one of these little ones | 18:20 | |
who believe in me to sin, | 18:24 | |
it would be better for him to have a great millstone | 18:28 | |
fastened round neck | 18:33 | |
and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. | 18:35 | |
Woe to the world for temptations to sin, | 18:40 | |
yet it is necessary that temptations come, | 18:46 | |
but woe to the man by whom the temptation comes. | 18:51 | |
And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off, | 18:57 | |
throw it from you. | 19:03 | |
It's better for you to enter into life maimed or lame | 19:06 | |
than with two hands or two feet | 19:11 | |
to be thrown into the eternal fire. | 19:13 | |
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, | 19:18 | |
throw it from you. | 19:24 | |
It's better for you to enter life with one eye | 19:26 | |
than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. | 19:31 | |
See that you do not despise one of these little ones. | 19:36 | |
For I tell you, that in heaven, | 19:43 | |
their angels always behold the face of my Father, | 19:46 | |
who is in heaven.'" | 19:51 | |
Amen. Here endeth the lesson. | 19:54 | |
(soft music) | 19:58 | |
(singing faintly) | 20:08 | |
Let us affirm our faith in God. | 20:43 | |
We believe in God who has created and is creating, | 20:48 | |
who has come in the true man, Jesus | 20:54 | |
to reconcile and make new. | 20:57 | |
Who works in us and others by His spirit, we trust Him. | 21:00 | |
He calls us to be in His church, to celebrate His presence, | 21:07 | |
to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, | 21:12 | |
to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, | 21:19 | |
our judge and our hope. | 21:23 | |
In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. | 21:25 | |
We are not alone, thanks be to God. | 21:32 | |
- | Grace, beyond you and peace from God, our Father, | 21:52 |
and from our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. | 21:56 | |
There's a world of children and angels in the New Testament, | 22:01 | |
which is both a delight and an embarrassment. | 22:05 | |
An embarrassment, | 22:10 | |
because this is precisely the New Testament world, | 22:11 | |
where it has been so easy to slip into sentimental slop, | 22:14 | |
to bring the whole thing down | 22:18 | |
to the level of "Mother Goose," | 22:19 | |
"Fairy Godmothers," | 22:22 | |
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." | 22:24 | |
It conjures up sticky pictures of, in Sunday schools, | 22:27 | |
of Jesus cuddling little ones on His knee, | 22:31 | |
of men in white sprouting enormous swing standing around | 22:35 | |
looking at trifold foolish and self conscious. | 22:39 | |
It's hardly a world which offers very much | 22:43 | |
to a serious post scientific, post religious world, | 22:46 | |
bad Jared with tough and ugly problems | 22:51 | |
all over the global as well as the urban map. | 22:54 | |
And yet at the same time, | 22:59 | |
this world of children and angels is a delight, | 23:00 | |
because it hints at the impossible becoming possible, | 23:05 | |
of worlds beyond this world. | 23:09 | |
And other wonder and surprise in life, | 23:12 | |
we can so readily miss as we grow older and wiser | 23:14 | |
in the affairs of the world | 23:18 | |
and the way in which we think it works. | 23:20 | |
At any rate, it is the world so prominent | 23:24 | |
and pervasive in the Bible | 23:26 | |
that if we try to avoid it | 23:28 | |
or look the other way in embarrassment, | 23:31 | |
we simply miss a big part of what the New Testament | 23:34 | |
and what consequently of what life is all about. | 23:37 | |
Prior after all, | 23:42 | |
there were angels there at the birth, | 23:43 | |
angels in the wilderness, angels at the empty tomb. | 23:46 | |
From beginning to end, | 23:51 | |
the story is cluttered with these strange figures. | 23:53 | |
And then when they press Jesus for the secret | 23:59 | |
at the heart of the whole business, | 24:01 | |
He replied, "Unless you turn and become like children, | 24:04 | |
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." | 24:10 | |
So at the risk of getting sentimental on the one hand, | 24:13 | |
and on the other, | 24:18 | |
oppressing our investigation of this strange world | 24:19 | |
of children and angels | 24:22 | |
so vigorously and rigorously as to miss the point, | 24:23 | |
let's try to come to some kinds of terms with it, | 24:27 | |
and let's start with the world of angels. | 24:31 | |
The Bible was obviously written from within a worldview | 24:36 | |
which took for granted the presence of demons | 24:38 | |
and spirits and angels, | 24:41 | |
and Jesus shared that worldview. | 24:44 | |
As another has pointed out, | 24:48 | |
Jesus was a thoroughly secular man. | 24:49 | |
That is to say a man of His age. | 24:53 | |
And as a man of His age, a secular man, | 24:57 | |
He spoke quite naturally | 25:01 | |
at the presence of demons and spirits and angels. | 25:02 | |
So at the end of this passage about children, He says, | 25:06 | |
"See that you do not despise one of these little ones, | 25:09 | |
for I tell you that in heaven, | 25:13 | |
their angels always behold the face of my Father, | 25:16 | |
which is in heaven. | 25:20 | |
Now these are what we have come to call guardian angels | 25:23 | |
or angels of presence. | 25:26 | |
And they constitute only one of the order of angels. | 25:29 | |
There are others. | 25:33 | |
Specialization is not simply a 20th century phenomenon, | 25:35 | |
it appears in the orders of angels. | 25:39 | |
For example, there was a day observed | 25:43 | |
in some church calendars | 25:45 | |
as the Day of St. Michael and All Angels. | 25:47 | |
Recalling the story of the war in heaven | 25:50 | |
recorded in the book of Revelation | 25:53 | |
when St. Michael and his angelic hosts, | 25:56 | |
a kind of warrior class of angels, | 26:00 | |
routed the dragon serpent, Satan, and his warrior angels, | 26:03 | |
and cast them out of heaven. | 26:08 | |
Other types of angels, communications experts apparently, | 26:12 | |
were busy day and night carrying messages | 26:18 | |
between heaven and earth. | 26:20 | |
Like Jacob's dream of the ladder | 26:22 | |
stretching between earth and heaven | 26:24 | |
with angels ascending and descending upon it. | 26:27 | |
Or like the angel warning Joseph to flee to Egypt, | 26:31 | |
and then another one telling him it was okay | 26:36 | |
that Herod was dead and he could return. | 26:38 | |
Other angels specialized in obstetrics. | 26:42 | |
They appear with birth announcements. | 26:46 | |
To Zachariah and Mary and others. | 26:49 | |
Angels appear at the end of the long temptation | 26:53 | |
in the wilderness | 26:56 | |
to give strength and assurance to our Lord. | 26:56 | |
Other angels appear at the empty tomb | 27:00 | |
to give directions as to what to do next. | 27:03 | |
Well, what in the world are you gonna make | 27:08 | |
of this world of angels? | 27:09 | |
For Jesus and His world, obviously, | 27:12 | |
it meant that the world was simply alive | 27:16 | |
with the presence and the power of God. | 27:19 | |
The angels of presence | 27:22 | |
indicating God's presence, strength, and comfort. | 27:24 | |
The warrior angels in heaven suggest Paul's principalities | 27:29 | |
and powers in the heavenly places, | 27:33 | |
the powers for evil and good constantly at war | 27:36 | |
which transcend the evil and the good | 27:41 | |
in any single one of us. | 27:45 | |
The angels which traffic between heaven and earth | 27:49 | |
indicate the God who speaks to us | 27:51 | |
in the very stuff of birth and life and death, | 27:52 | |
God forever breaking into our lives in grace and judgment. | 27:56 | |
Now, this is all quite obvious, | 28:04 | |
and we readily engage in translation, | 28:08 | |
and in the process of demythologization. | 28:11 | |
But the angels in the biblical record | 28:16 | |
are not there simply to remind us | 28:19 | |
that certain 1st century people | 28:21 | |
believed in spirits and demons and angels, | 28:24 | |
and intriguing as it might have been for them, | 28:28 | |
we can readily dispense with the fiction | 28:30 | |
and lose nothing of the meaning | 28:33 | |
through our customary hermeneutical procedures. | 28:36 | |
There's a lot more to it than that. | 28:40 | |
The angels are there to indicate something | 28:44 | |
as surprising for those 1st century people as for us. | 28:46 | |
And if the angels suggest something | 28:52 | |
of a cock-eyed world in the Bible | 28:56 | |
that makes no sense to us, | 28:59 | |
then we're probably close to being on the right track. | 29:04 | |
Because the task of biblical interpretation, | 29:11 | |
which is what goes on whenever anyone tries to preach, | 29:13 | |
constantly prods us into taking a fresh look | 29:18 | |
at this new thing which is breaking in on us | 29:22 | |
in the birth and the life and the death. | 29:24 | |
Biblical interpretation is the attempt, | 29:28 | |
our grants to you and all, but impossible attempt, | 29:30 | |
but is the attempt to shake our dove familiarity | 29:33 | |
with a story and to see almost as if for the first time, | 29:37 | |
the cock-eyed character of the world, | 29:44 | |
which is actually unfolding in the overly familiar details | 29:48 | |
of a story we've known ever since we were kids. | 29:54 | |
For the God who has disclosed in these familiar details | 29:58 | |
will not be packaged, defined, capsuled, | 30:03 | |
whether into a full blown theological system | 30:08 | |
or into some phrase, | 30:12 | |
even such pregnant phrases as the man for others, | 30:16 | |
or to make life truly human, | 30:22 | |
or the familiar, accept Christ as your personal savior. | 30:25 | |
The resistance to this perennial impulse of ours, | 30:31 | |
to classify, to qualify, to extract the essence of... | 30:35 | |
In other words, to get this God into our pockets, somehow, | 30:42 | |
this God who comes to the accompaniment | 30:48 | |
of angelic choruses in the sky | 30:51 | |
is evident all over the place. | 30:55 | |
It is a cock-eyed world. | 30:57 | |
The world of the New Testament, | 31:00 | |
if you don't think so | 31:02 | |
you haven't been reading it closely lately. | 31:03 | |
It's a world, a cock-eyed world, | 31:07 | |
where a woman breaks a jar of ointment very precious. | 31:11 | |
So precious it was probably worth a whole year's salary, | 31:15 | |
over the head of Him who said | 31:20 | |
that we would be judged by the extent | 31:22 | |
to which we devoted whatever wealth we have | 31:24 | |
to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, | 31:26 | |
and sent a young man away sorrowing | 31:30 | |
because he was unwilling to give his wealth to the poor, | 31:33 | |
and yet commenced this woman | 31:37 | |
for this obvious waste and extravagance. | 31:41 | |
Even Judas, you remember, was bright enough | 31:45 | |
to see the absurd contradiction. | 31:48 | |
The New Testament world is a cock-eyed world | 31:52 | |
where a man who works but one hour in the cool of the day | 31:56 | |
gets paid just as much as those who worked | 31:59 | |
all through the long, tough heat of the day. | 32:02 | |
And that's weird. | 32:06 | |
It's a cock-eyed world where a man, the man, | 32:09 | |
gets caught in a storm at sea | 32:13 | |
and instead of praying to the God he called his Father | 32:16 | |
like any humble trusting Son of God might be expected to do, | 32:21 | |
speaks directly to the raging wind and seas | 32:27 | |
as if they were possessed by demons | 32:31 | |
and tells them to cool it, | 32:33 | |
and there was a great calm. | 32:37 | |
It's a cock-eyed world where Martha doing the grubby work | 32:42 | |
of a servant girl around the house, | 32:45 | |
the very picture of the humble servant of others | 32:47 | |
He tells us to be, get short shrift for her pains | 32:50 | |
because she was not sitting at His feet | 32:54 | |
like Mary drinking in the pearls of wisdom | 32:56 | |
dropping from His lips. | 32:59 | |
It is a cock-eyed world, this world of the New Testament. | 33:01 | |
So the world of angels indicates, | 33:08 | |
not only a world simply alive | 33:10 | |
with the presence and the power of God, | 33:13 | |
but alive with the presence and power of a strange | 33:17 | |
and apparently, unpredictable God. | 33:20 | |
And to grasp that reality, we have to become like children. | 33:24 | |
Not God knows in the conventional and sentimental sense | 33:33 | |
that it's easy for children to believe in the miraculous, | 33:36 | |
the bizarre and the world of angels, | 33:39 | |
but in the sense perhaps | 33:42 | |
that the child capacity for wonder and delight | 33:44 | |
in the presence of the mystery and unpredictability of life. | 33:49 | |
To become like children, it is I suppose, | 33:54 | |
to be a child of God. | 34:00 | |
The unselfconscious acceptance of the gift of life, | 34:05 | |
of life as a gift. | 34:09 | |
The acknowledgement of mystery | 34:12 | |
beyond and within everything around us, | 34:13 | |
the willingness to be accepted just as we are like a child | 34:17 | |
with no striving to make ourselves acceptable, | 34:22 | |
no striving, indeed, to earn anything like a vacation | 34:28 | |
or a nap in the afternoon, | 34:35 | |
or a martini before dinner. | 34:38 | |
In fact, that familiar phrase, "You certainly deserve it," | 34:42 | |
drops simply out of the vocabulary entirely. | 34:47 | |
But how is all this possible? | 34:52 | |
We try so hard, as Christians at least some of us do, | 34:55 | |
we write and preach long sermons | 35:02 | |
and sit and listen to long sermons. | 35:04 | |
We engage in serious self-study sessions | 35:08 | |
sometimes in years of theological inquiry | 35:11 | |
or perhaps in intensive sensitivity sessions. | 35:15 | |
We take the ills of our society, the poverty, | 35:19 | |
the prejudice of violence, | 35:22 | |
the hidden and overt racism in ourselves | 35:24 | |
and in our community in deadly seriousness. | 35:27 | |
And if we don't, we know we should, | 35:31 | |
we are aware, you are aware, | 35:34 | |
of the dragon in every one of us. | 35:37 | |
The sins, the failures day after today, | 35:41 | |
and we repent and do our own form of penance | 35:44 | |
in one favorite form of penance, | 35:46 | |
is precisely to take ourselves with deadly seriousness. | 35:50 | |
Because after all, the Christian life is serious business, | 35:55 | |
isn't it? | 35:58 | |
It involves suffering and pain and loss | 36:00 | |
and at the center of it all across. | 36:03 | |
And then Jesus comes along | 36:06 | |
with this absolutely absurd talk of becoming like children. | 36:07 | |
Well, you can, you know. | 36:17 | |
At least I can. | 36:20 | |
I've lived some three score years plus a few, | 36:23 | |
and I've seen and experienced, | 36:26 | |
a hell of a lot of hell on earth and in me. | 36:28 | |
And I can't jump outta my skin and recover my lost innocence | 36:35 | |
and become a child again. | 36:38 | |
Nicodemus was right, you know. | 36:42 | |
"How can a man be born again when he is old? | 36:44 | |
Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb | 36:48 | |
and be born?" | 36:50 | |
Nicodemus may have been a little of literal minded, | 36:53 | |
but he had a point. | 36:56 | |
It all sounds so utterly absurd. | 36:59 | |
And quite possibly, even more absurd | 37:04 | |
for those of you who are younger than for us who are older. | 37:07 | |
After all, we who are older have seen so much, | 37:11 | |
are apt to have grown worn and tired with our striving, | 37:14 | |
maybe ready to try almost anything | 37:20 | |
even to become like children, | 37:23 | |
though, how to manage that remains a mystery. | 37:27 | |
But for you who are younger, it is absurd. | 37:32 | |
There are so many avenues of approach | 37:33 | |
to solving your own hangups, | 37:35 | |
as well as the tough and bitter problems | 37:38 | |
of the world around us. | 37:40 | |
There's psychology and politics or the new left. | 37:42 | |
There's sociology, participatory democracy, | 37:46 | |
there's a possibility of working | 37:50 | |
within the establishment for change | 37:51 | |
or wrecking the whole thing | 37:54 | |
and beginning over again from scratch. | 37:55 | |
There's almost an infinite number of possibilities | 37:58 | |
to create a new and better world, | 38:01 | |
which have never really been tried | 38:03 | |
until you give your minds and wits and hands to them. | 38:05 | |
But, unless you turn and become like children, | 38:12 | |
well, I suspect you're not really ready for that yet, | 38:21 | |
are you? | 38:25 | |
As B. Davie Napier has written, | 38:28 | |
"There's another reason | 38:30 | |
why we can't authentic appropriate the vision," | 38:31 | |
our minds are much too busy being minds, | 38:35 | |
and much too noisy making thinking sound. | 38:40 | |
From morning till night, | 38:44 | |
frantically, we celebrate the work of celebration. | 38:45 | |
We do not want to listen and respond. | 38:50 | |
We want to take command. | 38:55 | |
We want to work, manipulate, celebrate the word. | 38:57 | |
In any case, the hearing of the word comes hard for us. | 39:03 | |
And yet, unless you turn and become like children, | 39:10 | |
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. | 39:18 | |
How is it possible, assuming that the kingdom of heaven | 39:24 | |
still holds some attraction, what can it possibly mean? | 39:28 | |
Frederick Bakner has suggested and wisely, I think, | 39:34 | |
that we miss the point if we look for the meaning, | 39:39 | |
as I have already been guilty of doing here this morning, | 39:41 | |
trying to find the meaning in the analogies | 39:45 | |
of the child's capacity for wonder and delight, | 39:50 | |
his openness to the future and all the rest of it. | 39:54 | |
The meaning, he suggests, | 39:57 | |
is essentially the shock. | 39:59 | |
The shock itself. | 40:02 | |
And the shock, of course, | 40:07 | |
is in the fact that here is precisely something | 40:09 | |
that we cannot achieve at all by trying or striving, | 40:13 | |
by obedience or commitment, | 40:19 | |
or by jumping out of our skins, or anything else. | 40:23 | |
And that's frustrating, of course. | 40:29 | |
Because when we think we understand the truth in anything, | 40:32 | |
we feel, we must immediately do something about it. | 40:36 | |
And here is something | 40:41 | |
we obviously cannot do anything at all about. | 40:42 | |
And maybe it is there | 40:51 | |
that we come close to probing the mystery, | 40:54 | |
and to the mystery of our stance | 40:58 | |
toward the one who constantly comes to us. | 41:00 | |
If we are shocked into the realization | 41:04 | |
that we cannot, by any trying are striving, | 41:08 | |
become like children, then, | 41:12 | |
then do not we become like children. | 41:17 | |
This is not to say of course, | 41:26 | |
that we are relieved of giving up our striving | 41:27 | |
to be the man for others, to make life more human, | 41:29 | |
to give ourselves to the bitter and perplexing problems | 41:35 | |
in the world around us, the war, the pollution, the poverty, | 41:38 | |
the starving children in the third world, | 41:41 | |
the racism in ourselves and in our communities. | 41:44 | |
All those areas, we're out of our striving. | 41:47 | |
Some change does come and for the good at times, | 41:53 | |
however slowly and discouragingly. | 41:56 | |
But it is to say | 42:00 | |
that we take not only the sufferings of our present time | 42:02 | |
in deadly seriousness, | 42:08 | |
feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, | 42:10 | |
but that we take the world | 42:13 | |
of children and angel seriously, too. | 42:14 | |
The world of angels, | 42:18 | |
which heralds the coming of a cock-eyed world, | 42:19 | |
alive with a presence and power of an unpredictable God. | 42:23 | |
A God who will not be capsuled or defined or celebrated | 42:28 | |
where nothing is set. | 42:34 | |
Nothing completely predictable, | 42:36 | |
where the future is open and full of surprise. | 42:39 | |
Samuel Miller once wrote, | 42:45 | |
"To have faith in God, is to believe in becoming." | 42:48 | |
In the limitless possibilities of becoming, | 42:55 | |
in the kind of becoming a transfigures man | 43:00 | |
and transforms the world and to become like children, | 43:04 | |
is to accept this world | 43:10 | |
of unpredictable comings and becomings. | 43:12 | |
So, the world of children and of angels, | 43:19 | |
the world of angels indicating a world alive | 43:26 | |
with the unpredictable | 43:28 | |
and often cock-eyed presence and power of God, | 43:29 | |
and the world of children | 43:34 | |
alive to the possibilities in a world alive | 43:37 | |
with the unpredictable presence and the power of God. | 43:41 | |
And if that's really so, | 43:45 | |
then that's a pretty good and great world | 43:49 | |
in which to be alive, wouldn't you say? | 43:53 | |
And perhaps the only sensible way for sensible people | 44:00 | |
to respond to a world like that is of course, | 44:08 | |
to feed the hungry and cloth the naked, | 44:14 | |
for the poor you have with you always. | 44:15 | |
But also to go berserk once in a while, you know. | 44:18 | |
And a Christmas, to buy an electric train | 44:25 | |
with all contraptions | 44:29 | |
for your three-month-old first born man child. | 44:31 | |
And more perfume than you can possibly afford | 44:36 | |
for your wife or girlfriend, | 44:39 | |
and dance in the aisles occasionally | 44:43 | |
instead of forever marching, | 44:46 | |
and celebrate the trivial for a change. | 44:51 | |
A year ago in the Columbia-Princeton game, | 44:56 | |
Columbia had just stopped Princeton cold | 45:02 | |
on a drive for an apparent touchdown. | 45:05 | |
And the Columbia band broke out into the "Hallelujah" chorus | 45:09 | |
from Handel's Messiah. | 45:13 | |
Let us pray. | 45:20 | |
Oh God, our Father, | 45:27 | |
as our minds stretch out to explore the mystery, | 45:31 | |
in fitful faith and hesitancy, | 45:36 | |
do thou stoop down to bless us with wisdom and compassion, | 45:42 | |
with wonder, and with joy. | 45:50 | |
Through Christ, our Lord, amen. | 45:56 | |
(soft music) | 46:04 | |
(singing faintly) | 46:45 | |
(soft music) | 49:07 | |
(singing faintly) | 50:55 | |
- | Here we offer and present unto thee, oh God, | 56:27 |
our silver and our gold, the symbol of ourselves, | 56:30 | |
to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto thee, | 56:36 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 56:43 | |
And may the blessing of God come upon you abundantly. | 56:50 | |
May it keep you strong and tranquil | 56:55 | |
in the truth of His promises, | 56:59 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 57:02 | |
(singing faintly) | 57:12 | |
(bell dinging) | 59:06 | |
(soft music) | 59:23 |