Valerie Russell - "Redeeming the Soul of America: You Can Run, but You Can't Hide" (April 15, 1973)
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| (choir music) | 0:04 | |
| (air whooshing) | 3:38 | |
| - | Almighty and most merciful father, | 3:45 |
| we have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep. | 3:49 | |
| We have followed too much the devices | 3:53 | |
| and desires of our own hearts. | 3:56 | |
| We have offended against your holy laws. | 3:58 | |
| We have left undone, those things, | 4:02 | |
| which we ought to have done. | 4:04 | |
| And we have done those things, | 4:06 | |
| which we ought not to have done, | 4:08 | |
| and there is no health in us. | 4:10 | |
| Oh, Lord have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. | 4:13 | |
| Spare thou those oh God, who confess their faults. | 4:18 | |
| Restore those who are penitent, according to your promises | 4:23 | |
| declared unto mankind, in Jesus Christ our Lord, | 4:27 | |
| and grant oh most merciful father for his sake | 4:32 | |
| that we may hereafter live a Godly, righteous | 4:37 | |
| and sober life. | 4:41 | |
| To the glory of your holy name, amen. | 4:43 | |
| Hear the words of assurance from Psalm 21. | 4:48 | |
| "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? | 4:52 | |
| The Lord is the stronghold of my life, | 4:58 | |
| of whom shall I be afraid?" | 5:02 | |
| Let us say together our Lord's prayer. | 5:05 | |
| Our father who art in heaven, | 5:09 | |
| hallowed would be thy name. | 5:12 | |
| Thy kingdom, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 5:15 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread, | 5:21 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses, | 5:24 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 5:27 | |
| And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. | 5:31 | |
| For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, | 5:36 | |
| forever and ever, amen. | 5:40 | |
| (orchestra music) | 5:49 | |
| (bright orchestral music) | 6:58 | |
| (choir singing) | 7:08 | |
| The Lord be with you and with your spirit. | 12:01 | |
| Let us pray | 12:05 | |
| Almighty God who shows us in your son, | 12:11 | |
| the true way of blessedness. | 12:15 | |
| Give us grace to take up our cross and follow him | 12:18 | |
| in the strength of patience and in consistency of faith. | 12:22 | |
| And grant us such fellowship with him in his suffering, | 12:27 | |
| that we may know the secret of his strength and peace, | 12:32 | |
| who now lives and reigns with you | 12:36 | |
| in the unity of the holy spirit. | 12:39 | |
| One God forever and ever all, amen. | 12:42 | |
| (air whooshing) | 12:46 | |
| - | Our scripture lesson for today is taken | 12:53 |
| from Lamentations 5:1-9. | 12:55 | |
| "Remember oh Lord, what has befallen us | 13:00 | |
| behold and see our disgrace. | 13:02 | |
| Our inheritance has turned over to strangers, | 13:05 | |
| our homes to aliens. | 13:07 | |
| We have been orphans, fatherless, | 13:09 | |
| our mothers are like widows. | 13:11 | |
| We must pay for the water we drink, | 13:13 | |
| the wood we must be bought. | 13:15 | |
| With a yoke on our necks, we are hard driven. | 13:17 | |
| We are weary. We are given no rest. | 13:19 | |
| We have given the hand to Egypt and to Syria | 13:22 | |
| to get bread enough. | 13:25 | |
| Our fathers sinned and are no more | 13:27 | |
| and we bear their iniquities. | 13:29 | |
| Slaves rule over us, | 13:31 | |
| there's none to deliver us from their hand. | 13:33 | |
| We get our bread at the peril of our lies | 13:36 | |
| because the sword in the wilderness". | 13:38 | |
| The second selection is taken from | 13:41 | |
| Matthew the 21st chapter, first three 11 verses. | 13:42 | |
| "And when they drew near to Jerusalem | 13:48 | |
| and come to Bethlehem, to the Mount of olives, | 13:50 | |
| then Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, | 13:53 | |
| 'Go into the village opposite you | 13:56 | |
| and immediately you will find an tied and a coat with her. | 13:58 | |
| Untie them and bring them to me. | 14:02 | |
| If anyone says anything to you, | 14:04 | |
| you shall say the Lord has need of them. | 14:06 | |
| And he will send them immediately'. | 14:09 | |
| This took place to fulfill what was spoken | 14:12 | |
| by the prophet saying, tell the daughter of Zion, | 14:14 | |
| behold, your king is coming to you, | 14:17 | |
| humble and mounted on a ass. | 14:19 | |
| and a coat, the fold of an ass. | 14:21 | |
| The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. | 14:24 | |
| They bought the ass and the coat | 14:27 | |
| and they put their garments on them. | 14:28 | |
| And he sat thereon. | 14:30 | |
| Most of the crowds, spread their garments on the road | 14:32 | |
| and others cut branches from the trees | 14:34 | |
| and spread them on the road. | 14:36 | |
| And the crowds then went before them | 14:38 | |
| and the have followed him, shouted | 14:40 | |
| 'Hosanna to the son of David, | 14:41 | |
| blessed be he who come the name of the Lord. | 14:43 | |
| Hosanna in the highest'. | 14:45 | |
| And he entered Jerusalem. | 14:47 | |
| All the city was stir saying, 'Who is this?' | 14:48 | |
| And the crowd said, | 14:51 | |
| 'This is the prophet, Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee'". | 14:52 | |
| Thus says the lesson, | 14:56 | |
| (bright piano music) | 14:59 | |
| (choir singing) | 15:07 | |
| - | Let us say together the unison affirmation of faith. | 15:42 |
| We believe in God who has created and is creating, | 15:46 | |
| who has come in the true man, Jesus, | 15:52 | |
| to reconcile and make new. | 15:55 | |
| Who works in us and others by his spirit. | 15:57 | |
| We trust him. | 16:01 | |
| He calls us to be in his church to celebrate his presence, | 16:03 | |
| to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, | 16:08 | |
| to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen, | 16:14 | |
| our judge and our hope, in life, in death, | 16:18 | |
| in life beyond death. | 16:22 | |
| God is with us. We are not alone. | 16:25 | |
| Thanks be to God. | 16:28 | |
| Let us pray. | 16:31 | |
| Oh, thou from whom to be turned is to fall | 16:42 | |
| to whom to be turned is to rise | 16:48 | |
| and in whom to stand is to abide forever. | 16:52 | |
| Grant us in all our duties thy help, | 16:57 | |
| in all our perplexities thy guidance, | 17:01 | |
| in all our dangers thy protection | 17:05 | |
| and in all our sorrows thy peace. | 17:08 | |
| Today, we remember the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem | 17:13 | |
| and we are grateful and ashamed, | 17:18 | |
| for he was beginning the end | 17:21 | |
| and doing so with great humility and concern. | 17:24 | |
| We remember that Jesus drove the money changers | 17:30 | |
| out of the temple and healed the blind | 17:33 | |
| and the lame in the temple | 17:36 | |
| and we realized that our lives | 17:39 | |
| are neither lives of disruption nor lives of healing. | 17:42 | |
| Much less both. | 17:48 | |
| We pray for your mercy, oh God, and your justice | 17:51 | |
| in our own lives that we may be of used to others | 17:56 | |
| in human bondage. | 18:00 | |
| We also come before you with our prayers | 18:04 | |
| for all the people of the world, | 18:07 | |
| oh eternal God of peace and love. | 18:10 | |
| We pray today for the liberation of all the oppressed | 18:14 | |
| peoples in our world. | 18:17 | |
| Those oppressed because other countries wage wars | 18:20 | |
| on their land, | 18:23 | |
| those oppressed by governmental systems, | 18:25 | |
| which do not help destroy people, | 18:27 | |
| those oppressed because they lack the money | 18:31 | |
| and the political power to change their lives, | 18:34 | |
| those oppressed because of the color of their skin, | 18:38 | |
| those oppressed because of their sex, | 18:42 | |
| those oppressed by members of their families | 18:45 | |
| who do not love them | 18:48 | |
| and those oppressed because their bodies | 18:50 | |
| or their minds are not well. | 18:52 | |
| We want you, our God, to enable us to love | 18:55 | |
| and care about all these oppressed peoples. | 18:59 | |
| Even though we do not even know their names or faces. | 19:03 | |
| We all know what some kind of oppressed feels like | 19:08 | |
| and we know it hurts and kills. | 19:12 | |
| We know that if the kingdom of God is ever to be part | 19:16 | |
| of our lives, oppression must stop. | 19:19 | |
| We all have visions of what a world without oppression | 19:23 | |
| would be like. | 19:27 | |
| And yet most of us don't have the desire or the motivation | 19:29 | |
| or the time to spend our lives working for the liberation | 19:33 | |
| of our brothers and sisters. | 19:38 | |
| We know our hands and feet and minds are needed, | 19:40 | |
| but we hide or burden ourselves because we know | 19:45 | |
| that praying for others is hypocrisy, | 19:49 | |
| if we don't pray for action from ourselves. | 19:55 | |
| We know that we are here on earth to do your work | 20:00 | |
| and bidding. | 20:03 | |
| Kindle in us the desire to change our world. | 20:05 | |
| And then impassion us with the motivation | 20:10 | |
| so that we will all make time. | 20:12 | |
| Help us to feel the desperation of the oppressed peoples | 20:16 | |
| so that we can work under a sense of urgency. | 20:21 | |
| We know dear God, | 20:25 | |
| that we cannot bring in your kingdom alone, | 20:27 | |
| but we also know that with your help | 20:30 | |
| and our hearts, heads and hands, | 20:33 | |
| we can change many things about us that hurt and kill. | 20:37 | |
| We pray that together with you, | 20:42 | |
| we can provide liberation for others and ourselves. | 20:45 | |
| All this we ask in the name of Jesus, the Christ, amen. | 20:51 | |
| - | It is a great honor and privilege | 21:09 |
| for me to be here this morning, | 21:12 | |
| through my associations with the national student, YWCA, | 21:16 | |
| I have met many duke students over the years, | 21:21 | |
| and they have been become my friend | 21:23 | |
| and a part of my support community. | 21:27 | |
| And so it is beautiful to be back amongst them | 21:29 | |
| and here with you on this Palm Sunday. | 21:34 | |
| The old Testament lesson this morning from Lamentations | 21:39 | |
| might very well have been written | 21:45 | |
| about late 20th century America. | 21:47 | |
| Many of us are in a depression | 21:52 | |
| and disillusioned with the great hope of the sixties. | 21:56 | |
| When we believed that we in America were on the verge | 22:00 | |
| of creating a new Camelot, a just and a great society. | 22:05 | |
| But a few well aimed rifle shots, the rapid wind of change, | 22:13 | |
| politicians who shape our lives, | 22:20 | |
| so often seeming like strangers, | 22:23 | |
| inflation, racism, | 22:27 | |
| the Kerner Commission Report, | 22:31 | |
| which stated that this nation is headed toward two nations, | 22:33 | |
| separate and unequal, | 22:38 | |
| the Lettuce Boycotts, women's liberation, | 22:42 | |
| the breakdown in family structures, wounded knee, | 22:45 | |
| the communications explosion, the population explosion, | 22:49 | |
| the intergenerational gaps | 22:55 | |
| have shown us as often a rootless and a restless people. | 22:58 | |
| Our nation seems to be suffering | 23:06 | |
| as well from a profound sense of spiritual dryness, | 23:10 | |
| a lack of soul power. | 23:15 | |
| Listen to the words of the Old Testament lesson. | 23:22 | |
| Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, | 23:26 | |
| our homes to aliens. | 23:31 | |
| We are like orphans. | 23:33 | |
| We must pay for the water we drink. | 23:36 | |
| We have given the hand to Egypt and to Assyria | 23:40 | |
| in order to get bread enough. | 23:46 | |
| And there is a way in which morally and psychologically, | 23:49 | |
| we do get bread at the peril of our lives. | 23:54 | |
| Slaves to a dehumanized system rule over us. | 23:59 | |
| And seemingly there is none who would deliver us | 24:03 | |
| from their hand. | 24:09 | |
| We are a collectively troubled people | 24:12 | |
| and somehow all of our intellectual knowledge | 24:16 | |
| and best thinking have not provided us with the solutions. | 24:19 | |
| There is an all of folk on poem | 24:25 | |
| that emerges from the sixties | 24:28 | |
| that I think best describes our human condition. | 24:30 | |
| And it says, "Millionaires and poppers, | 24:34 | |
| we walk the lonely street. | 24:38 | |
| Rich and poor, we are companions of the restless feet. | 24:41 | |
| Strangers in a foreign land, | 24:48 | |
| we strike a match with a trembling hand. | 24:51 | |
| Have we learned too much to ever understand?" | 24:55 | |
| The time is here | 25:01 | |
| to redeem the soul of America. | 25:04 | |
| For even if some of us do not feel personally the oppression | 25:08 | |
| or dehumanization, | 25:13 | |
| and I suspect that most of us do at some level, | 25:15 | |
| present in this time, around many of these issues, | 25:19 | |
| there are brothers and sisters all around us who do. | 25:24 | |
| And as long as they are bound | 25:29 | |
| into a struggle for liberation, we are all bound. | 25:32 | |
| If we do not have to cope personally, | 25:38 | |
| with all or many of the pressing issues, | 25:41 | |
| we will all surely have to cope with the results | 25:45 | |
| of not attacking those issues. | 25:49 | |
| All of us in America will continually bear the consequences, | 25:53 | |
| if not the burden, of oppression. | 25:59 | |
| We can run, but we can't hide. | 26:02 | |
| Therefore redeeming the soul of America | 26:08 | |
| or building liberation is the business of all of us. | 26:11 | |
| For example, the auto industry can be given a year's grace | 26:19 | |
| in building the non combustible engine | 26:23 | |
| and we don't have to get involved in that dispute, | 26:26 | |
| I suppose, | 26:28 | |
| but we will still be breathing that filthy air. | 26:30 | |
| We can watch technology obliterate thousands of jobs a year | 26:35 | |
| right out of the job market and feel bad, | 26:39 | |
| but not too bad because we have jobs, | 26:44 | |
| but then watch our tax money drained off | 26:48 | |
| into escalating welfare costs | 26:51 | |
| because we have not insisted on the retraining programs | 26:54 | |
| that we need to help people function in new ways | 26:59 | |
| in a technological society. | 27:04 | |
| We can run, but we can't hide. | 27:07 | |
| Example, we can commit no conscious act of discrimination | 27:11 | |
| against a person to deny them an adequate education | 27:17 | |
| because of their race, | 27:21 | |
| but as long as we allow poor schools to do that | 27:24 | |
| and do not demand that they adequately teach our children | 27:29 | |
| to function, we are creating those two societies, | 27:33 | |
| which will divide our nation and possibly be its downfall. | 27:39 | |
| We are undermining our own future. | 27:45 | |
| We can run, but we can't hide. | 27:49 | |
| It is time to redeem the soul of America. | 27:54 | |
| Now enter this dilemma enters Jesus | 28:00 | |
| and the Palm Sunday event. | 28:03 | |
| What do we know about Jesus? | 28:08 | |
| First of all, he was a most unusual man, | 28:11 | |
| a Jew who had a sense of being a child of God, | 28:15 | |
| born to be God's anointed one, | 28:20 | |
| born for the sake of the people, born for a purpose, | 28:24 | |
| born with a destiny, born to live a life of liberation | 28:29 | |
| that made it possible for him to understand | 28:34 | |
| that all people longed for liberation. | 28:38 | |
| Beyond that, we really don't know that much about him, | 28:45 | |
| except that somehow he came and the fullness of time | 28:49 | |
| in a time when the people, the Jewish people, | 28:54 | |
| were trying to understand what it would mean | 28:58 | |
| to have a Messiah | 29:01 | |
| and what it would mean if the prophet's vision came true, | 29:04 | |
| that the kingdom of God would come in their midst. | 29:10 | |
| And we know that he lived with the lonely | 29:17 | |
| to gather up the disinherited | 29:20 | |
| and that he formed a little band of them, | 29:23 | |
| just to be together and to be for each other | 29:26 | |
| and to be for others. | 29:30 | |
| And they discover as they went along, | 29:34 | |
| that they had a certain power to heal, to make well, | 29:36 | |
| to comfort, to ease the pain of those around them. | 29:42 | |
| And they spent their lives doing that. | 29:48 | |
| But Romans as well as Jewish establishment | 29:52 | |
| often were irritated by such disruptive people, | 29:55 | |
| especially when the crowds began to follow and listen. | 29:59 | |
| And then there were the Pharisees. | 30:05 | |
| You know, the Pharisees were okay people, really. | 30:08 | |
| They just wanted to keep religion Orthodox | 30:11 | |
| and make sure that nobody followed up the theology | 30:14 | |
| or the faith beyond some kind of traditional recognition. | 30:17 | |
| As Herman Hesse said, the Pharisees were like so many | 30:23 | |
| of those of us who see ourselves as custodians | 30:29 | |
| of what we have traditionally known, | 30:35 | |
| says Hesse, and I quote | 30:38 | |
| "Humanity, which they loved as we did | 30:40 | |
| was for them something complete | 30:46 | |
| that must be maintained and protected". | 30:50 | |
| While for Jesus, and perhaps for those who struggle | 30:54 | |
| for change, | 30:59 | |
| while for Jesus, humanity was a distinct goal | 31:01 | |
| toward which all people were still moving, | 31:06 | |
| whose image no one knew, | 31:10 | |
| whose laws were nowhere written down. | 31:14 | |
| And so Jesus was seen as offbeat | 31:20 | |
| and it didn't take much persuasion | 31:23 | |
| to get the Roman crew living in Jerusalem | 31:26 | |
| to put into death. | 31:30 | |
| And when it happened, | 31:32 | |
| probably most of the people of Palestine, | 31:34 | |
| didn't even notice | 31:37 | |
| because after all that was before the day of TV. | 31:40 | |
| But there were a few who did. | 31:45 | |
| And after his death, | 31:48 | |
| they kept feeling his presence | 31:51 | |
| and a new spirit began to build from within their midst, | 31:53 | |
| which included a new sense of themselves. | 31:58 | |
| And they started a great oral tradition | 32:01 | |
| and began to remember what he had said and what he had done | 32:05 | |
| and measured with in and against the context of his time, | 32:10 | |
| they decided that indeed he could be the Messiah. | 32:15 | |
| Jesus tried to symbolize | 32:22 | |
| and proclaim and dramatize, | 32:26 | |
| through his actions of holy week, | 32:29 | |
| the signs of a new age, | 32:34 | |
| a new possibility for the world. | 32:37 | |
| Jesus entered the traditional celebration of Passover | 32:41 | |
| with the awareness that in the midst of that tradition, | 32:46 | |
| his own destiny was going to breakthrough | 32:51 | |
| to something quite new and quite different. | 32:56 | |
| He wanted to redeem the soul of his times | 33:00 | |
| and because he was so attuned to the reality | 33:04 | |
| that God acts through men and women to recreate, | 33:08 | |
| to redeem the world, | 33:12 | |
| we have the image of a trembling Jesus at Gethsemane, | 33:15 | |
| begging that the cup by I passed from his lips, | 33:19 | |
| yet turning toward the city. | 33:22 | |
| For he knew that once he accepted obedience | 33:26 | |
| to the will of God in the lives of people, | 33:30 | |
| he could run, but he couldn't hide | 33:33 | |
| from fulfilling that will and that destiny, | 33:37 | |
| You and I in America today are in a similar spot. | 33:43 | |
| Our actions or our inactions to redeem our times | 33:50 | |
| as Christians is innocent, | 33:54 | |
| except when juxtaposed with some other dramatic events. | 33:58 | |
| And our inaction as Christians is devastating | 34:04 | |
| when juxtaposed with that obedience of Jesus, | 34:09 | |
| whom we come here today to call Lord | 34:13 | |
| and to cry hosanna at. | 34:19 | |
| Take the image of a fiddle player. | 34:23 | |
| Everybody loves a good violinist. | 34:27 | |
| But Nero became famous because he decided to exercise | 34:31 | |
| his art while Rome burned. | 34:35 | |
| Howard Hughes couldn't wait | 34:39 | |
| to fly out of Managua, Nicaragua, | 34:42 | |
| a half an hour after that country was devastated | 34:45 | |
| by an earthquake. | 34:49 | |
| And that was all right, | 34:51 | |
| except that Roberto Clemente couldn't wait to get in. | 34:53 | |
| Our actions or our inactions as Christians are innocent, | 34:59 | |
| except when juxta with the other dramatic events | 35:06 | |
| and demands of our time. | 35:11 | |
| And therefore, when we honestly look at ourselves | 35:15 | |
| in the light, and in that light, | 35:20 | |
| we too know in a most profound way | 35:24 | |
| that we can run, but we can't hide | 35:30 | |
| A great third world, | 35:36 | |
| Latin American theologian by the name of Paulo Freire | 35:39 | |
| has been Kind of storming the western world, | 35:45 | |
| talking about soul force | 35:52 | |
| and the struggle for liberation. | 35:55 | |
| And in a letter that he wrote to a young divinity | 35:58 | |
| school student, | 36:00 | |
| he talked about the Christian imperative for action. | 36:02 | |
| And he said, the following, says Freire, | 36:04 | |
| "The Christian message is not an invitation to sit back | 36:09 | |
| and watch oppression taking place, | 36:13 | |
| nor is it the devilish for enslaving people. | 36:16 | |
| And hence the first requirement of knowing how to hear | 36:22 | |
| the word of God, and not only hearing it, | 36:25 | |
| but putting it into action | 36:28 | |
| is a willingness to dedicate oneself | 36:30 | |
| to the liberation of persons. | 36:33 | |
| Such a process though demands a historical commitment. | 36:36 | |
| It requires a transforming activity, | 36:40 | |
| one that will embolden us to challenge | 36:44 | |
| the powerful of the earth. | 36:47 | |
| In the final analysis, | 36:50 | |
| the word of God is inviting me to recreate the world. | 36:52 | |
| And the true humanization of humanity | 36:58 | |
| cannot be brought about in the interiority of our minds. | 37:02 | |
| It has to take place in external history". | 37:09 | |
| Now, if this is true or even feasible, | 37:16 | |
| then what are some of the meaningful questions for us | 37:22 | |
| on this event of Palm Sunday, | 37:28 | |
| as we sit here trying to live our lives, | 37:30 | |
| What will it require of us, this challenge, | 37:35 | |
| to be the vessel through whom God can, | 37:40 | |
| once again, be known, | 37:43 | |
| How do we mobilize our power | 37:46 | |
| to be catalysts in building a spreading band | 37:50 | |
| of those who out of the religious traditions | 37:54 | |
| and constitutionally democratically mandated | 37:59 | |
| in the promise of our nation? | 38:04 | |
| How will we mobilize our power to take on the new Pharisees | 38:07 | |
| and the pharaohs of our time? | 38:12 | |
| For it is not just an individual question that comes, | 38:16 | |
| but a collective one. | 38:20 | |
| This folk song that many of us song that Pete Seeger wrote | 38:23 | |
| says, "You know, one man's hands, can't tear a prison down | 38:27 | |
| and two person's hands can't tear a prison down. | 38:31 | |
| But if two and two and 50 make a million, | 38:34 | |
| we could see that day come around". | 38:38 | |
| Well, what will it mean if we take our power seriously? | 38:41 | |
| And what will it require to be faithful? | 38:46 | |
| Some thoughts briefly that I would like to leave. | 38:50 | |
| First, it will require of us a risk of the past. | 38:54 | |
| God has always come, especially to the oppressed. | 39:02 | |
| And God came to Moses and commanded him to lead | 39:06 | |
| the children out of Egypt. | 39:10 | |
| Jesus was not a man of power. | 39:12 | |
| And why does God use the seemingly powerless in our society | 39:16 | |
| or in history so dramatically? | 39:20 | |
| Is it because it is more imperative to struggle | 39:24 | |
| to create a new society, | 39:27 | |
| if it is seen as a matter of survival. | 39:30 | |
| We must divorce ourselves enough | 39:35 | |
| from such identification with the mainstream | 39:38 | |
| so that we can risk the future. | 39:43 | |
| But to do that, | 39:47 | |
| we have to live our lives in the edge of faith, | 39:49 | |
| that we are not called to do it alone. | 39:52 | |
| We must believe that there is a power | 39:56 | |
| which burned through Moses, which burn through Jesus, | 39:58 | |
| which burn through all the prophets, | 40:02 | |
| which can burn through us, | 40:04 | |
| which can transform our talents | 40:07 | |
| and our skills into ones of healing. | 40:10 | |
| Unless we believe in that power, | 40:14 | |
| we will never be able to risk the past, | 40:16 | |
| because we are too insecure to believe in an open future. | 40:20 | |
| Without faith in the creative power to move through us, | 40:26 | |
| liberation is impossible because we will never let die | 40:32 | |
| what must die so that the new can be born. | 40:37 | |
| Secondly, We must use our skills and discipline | 40:45 | |
| and spirit power to overcome our sense of hopelessness. | 40:50 | |
| Bill Coffin, who is the chaplain at Yale once said, | 40:56 | |
| one of my favorite things that he once said, was that | 41:00 | |
| "The only thing worse butting one's head | 41:03 | |
| against a closed door, | 41:06 | |
| is butting one's head against an open one. | 41:08 | |
| It tends to throw one off balance". | 41:11 | |
| Jesus's journey through the streets of Jerusalem | 41:16 | |
| was a journey against cynicism and hopelessness. | 41:20 | |
| He knew that such cynicism and hopelessness | 41:25 | |
| had become the feeling of his time | 41:28 | |
| and compounded into mediocrity had become, | 41:31 | |
| not only the public spirit, | 41:35 | |
| but public policy of his day. | 41:37 | |
| He saw that in order to create the new order, | 41:40 | |
| he had to participate in a hopeful act, a trustful act, | 41:44 | |
| which even though to the world appeared to be tragedy, | 41:51 | |
| would in the end become victory. | 41:56 | |
| There is no greater act of hope or non cytisism | 42:00 | |
| than giving one's life for one's brothers and sisters, | 42:06 | |
| believing that it will make a difference. | 42:09 | |
| The exact price that any of us will pay to be faithful, | 42:13 | |
| may vary, but taking the opportunity | 42:17 | |
| and making the opportunity to be prophetic when it comes, | 42:21 | |
| no matter how great or small | 42:25 | |
| is a profound act of affirmation, | 42:27 | |
| of the possibilities of new life. | 42:30 | |
| May we be delivered from butting our heads | 42:34 | |
| against the open doors. | 42:37 | |
| Thirdly, we must dare to be vulnerable | 42:41 | |
| to the winds of the struggles that are blowing around us. | 42:45 | |
| We have become insensitive | 42:50 | |
| to suffering. | 42:55 | |
| We have become dehumanized to apathy. | 42:58 | |
| Technologically, we have all the resources we need | 43:01 | |
| to feed the hungry, not just in America, but in the world. | 43:05 | |
| There do exist, potential Henry Kissingers | 43:11 | |
| of the domestic front. | 43:14 | |
| We are overflowing with expertise of all kinds. | 43:17 | |
| Our problem to redeeming the soul of America | 43:23 | |
| is not knowhow, but willpower. | 43:26 | |
| Jesus was finally great because out of his humanness, | 43:31 | |
| he made himself vulnerable | 43:36 | |
| through caring about the winds of agony | 43:39 | |
| that blew around him. | 43:42 | |
| And so it is that you and I | 43:46 | |
| will have to face the mirror image | 43:49 | |
| of our social condition and inadequacies. | 43:53 | |
| If racism will die, we must kill it. | 43:58 | |
| If sexism is to fade away, we destroy the myths | 44:03 | |
| and rebuild the new relationships. | 44:08 | |
| If kids are to be educated so they can survive | 44:12 | |
| the complexities of this age, all kids, | 44:16 | |
| then we must initiate the cry | 44:20 | |
| and devise the plan for equal education. | 44:23 | |
| There is an old Chinese proverb that says, | 44:28 | |
| "If you give a man a fish, he can eat for an evening. | 44:31 | |
| If you teach him how to fish, he can eat for a lifetime". | 44:35 | |
| It means knowing that we are not our brother's keeper, | 44:40 | |
| but our brother's brother. | 44:46 | |
| God through Jesus, showed us even a defeated person, | 44:49 | |
| broken, unjustly condemned, killed, | 44:56 | |
| could be as great as the greatest in the world. | 45:01 | |
| If out of him, the spirit was not drained, | 45:05 | |
| love did not waiver, faith not only religious faith, | 45:09 | |
| but a solid unshakeable faith in mankind survived. | 45:17 | |
| We must care enough to be vulnerable, | 45:24 | |
| care enough to offer ourselves towards acts of healing. | 45:29 | |
| Martin Luther King, for many of us, another prophet | 45:36 | |
| who heard the beat of the same drummer, | 45:40 | |
| called the believing community | 45:43 | |
| to redeem the soul of America, | 45:46 | |
| to restore its vision and its demand for justice and dignity | 45:49 | |
| for all its people. | 45:55 | |
| Well, it is a fearsome task | 45:59 | |
| starting that road towards Easter, | 46:02 | |
| but we see what God can do with us | 46:05 | |
| and we can, and often we'll run from that task, | 46:10 | |
| but we cannot hide from it. | 46:14 | |
| It calls us from every direction. | 46:18 | |
| For we know that to let life leak out, | 46:22 | |
| to let it wear away by the mere passage of time, | 46:26 | |
| to withhold giving it and spending it, | 46:31 | |
| is to choose nothing. | 46:35 | |
| May God grant us the strength | 46:39 | |
| to meet the challenge of change | 46:44 | |
| and may we know that if we stumble, | 46:48 | |
| we still will have fallen forward faster, | 46:51 | |
| and that we will at least have been on the road, | 46:55 | |
| keeping faith with the journey. | 47:01 | |
| Hosanna. Let us pray. | 47:06 | |
| God, our holy parent, | 47:13 | |
| we thank you for the gift of your son | 47:17 | |
| and your gifts of power and prophecy to all thy children. | 47:21 | |
| Keep us right side up when the world is upside down, | 47:27 | |
| fill us with a deep Hosanna, | 47:33 | |
| that we might make an ever and more just world | 47:37 | |
| because of what you have done for, and with us. | 47:45 | |
| Be thou our vision. Amen. | 47:51 | |
| (orchestra music) | 47:58 | |
| (choir singing) | 48:28 | |
| (orchestral music) | 50:04 | |
| (choir music) | 52:13 | |
| (bright orchestral music) | 54:07 | |
| (choir music) | 54:13 | |
| (bright piano music) | 54:43 | |
| (choir music) | 54:52 | |
| (bright piano music) | 56:52 | |
| (uplifting choir music) | 57:00 | |
| (bright piano music) | 58:07 | |
| (choir music) | 58:37 | |
| - | Oh God, of whose gifts we have all received, | 59:20 |
| accept this offering of your people. | 59:25 | |
| Remember in your love, | 59:28 | |
| those who brought it and those for whom it is given. | 59:29 | |
| And so follow it with thy blessing | 59:34 | |
| that it may promote peace, justice and power | 59:37 | |
| among all people, amen. | 59:41 | |
| (bright orchestral music) | 59:52 | |
| (uplifting choir music) | 1:00:34 |
