Carlyle Marney - "As Fools Die" (October 14, 1973)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(choir sings) | 0:05 | |
(bright organ-pipe music) | 1:23 | |
(choir sings) | 1:58 | |
- | Our Lord has said, | 6:01 |
if anyone comes to me, | 6:05 | |
I will in no way cast him or her out. | 6:09 | |
Created in the image of God we have often failed | 6:17 | |
to live up to our potential. | 6:21 | |
In the presence of others like us, | 6:25 | |
in the company of this supportive fellowship of worshipers, | 6:30 | |
Let us now confess our sins to God, and to one another, | 6:36 | |
Let us pray. | 6:43 | |
Oh Lord, we come before you in the knowledge | 6:46 | |
that we do not love you above all things. | 6:49 | |
We do not cherish the beauty of your world, | 6:53 | |
but literate with ugliness. | 6:57 | |
We do not use the power you gave us over your creation | 7:00 | |
to preserve and protect it, | 7:04 | |
but to pave it over with monuments, | 7:07 | |
to our own selfish achievements. | 7:09 | |
You have given us the will to shape our lives | 7:13 | |
and our institutions to serve all peoples. | 7:17 | |
But we have advocated the power and greed. | 7:21 | |
We turn to you now away from our mistakes and seek mercy | 7:25 | |
for not knowing and for knowing what we do. | 7:31 | |
We implore you whose nature and whose name is love | 7:37 | |
to forgive us, us and in forgiving to heal us, | 7:42 | |
so that in our lives, something will finally be changed. | 7:46 | |
Amen. | 7:51 | |
Let us continue with our personal prayers of confession. | 7:53 | |
I say to you, | 8:19 | |
by the witness of the Word and the church through the ages, | 8:22 | |
you are accepted as you are. | 8:25 | |
Your life does have some ultimate significance | 8:29 | |
in this world. | 8:34 | |
Your life is good as it is given. | 8:37 | |
Your future is open. | 8:42 | |
Receive every moment of it | 8:45 | |
as God's good gift to you. | 8:48 | |
Let us pray now as you find it in the bulletin. | 8:55 | |
The prayer our Lord has given us praying, | 8:59 | |
All | Our Father who is in heaven, | 9:03 |
may all men come to respect and love you. | 9:07 | |
May you rule in every heart and in all of life. | 9:11 | |
Give us us day by day the things of life we need, | 9:15 | |
forgive us, our sins like we forgive everyone | 9:20 | |
who has done us wrong. | 9:24 | |
Let nothing test us beyond our strength. | 9:26 | |
Save us from our weaknesses, | 9:30 | |
for yours is the authority, the power and the glory forever, | 9:33 | |
Amen. | 9:39 | |
(Soft organ-pipe music) | 9:42 | |
♪ Holy, holy ♪ | 10:30 | |
♪ Holy ♪ | 10:37 | |
♪ Holy is the Lord ♪ | 10:44 | |
♪ Holy, holy ♪ | 10:58 | |
♪ Holy ♪ | 11:04 | |
♪ Holy is the Lord ♪ | 11:11 | |
♪ He is holy ♪ | 11:25 | |
♪ Forever more ♪ | 11:37 | |
♪ I will my praise ♪ | 11:50 | |
♪ Him more ♪ | 11:55 | |
♪ I will praise ♪ | 12:01 | |
♪ His name ♪ | 12:06 | |
♪ Holy, holy ♪ | 12:14 | |
♪ Holy ♪ | 12:20 | |
♪ Holy is the Lord ♪ | 12:28 | |
♪ Holy, holy ♪ | 12:42 | |
♪ Holy ♪ | 12:48 | |
♪ Holy is ♪ | 12:56 | |
♪ The Lord ♪ | 13:01 | |
♪ Lord I will praise ♪ | 13:10 | |
♪ Him more ♪ | 13:14 | |
♪ Holy, holy ♪ | 13:32 | |
♪ Holy ♪ | 13:38 | |
♪ Holy is the Lord ♪ | 13:46 | |
- | Let us open our hearts and minds to the Word of God. | 14:21 |
The scripture this morning is taken from | 14:26 | |
the third chapter of second Samuel versus 31 through 34. | 14:29 | |
And the second chapter of first Kings. | 14:35 | |
"Then David said to Joab and to all people | 14:42 | |
who were with him, | 14:47 | |
rend your clothes and gird on sack cloth, | 14:49 | |
and mourn before Abner. | 14:55 | |
And king David followed the bier. | 14:58 | |
They buried Abner at Hebron, | 15:03 | |
and the king lifted up his voice | 15:06 | |
and wept at the grave of Abner, and all the people wept. | 15:10 | |
And the king lamented for Abner saying, | 15:18 | |
'should Abner die as a fool dies? | 15:22 | |
Your hands were not bound. | 15:27 | |
Your feet were not fettered. | 15:31 | |
As one falls before the wicked you have fallen.' | 15:35 | |
And all the people wept again over him." | 15:40 | |
"When David's time drew near, | 15:49 | |
he charged Solomon, his son saying, | 15:52 | |
I am about to go the way of all the earth. | 15:57 | |
You know, also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me, | 16:03 | |
how he dealt with the two commanders | 16:10 | |
of the armies of Israel. | 16:13 | |
Abner, the son of Ner, | 16:15 | |
and Amasa the son of Jether, | 16:18 | |
whom he murdered avenging in time of peace, | 16:22 | |
blood which had been shed in war, | 16:27 | |
and putting innocent blood | 16:31 | |
upon the girdle about my loins, | 16:34 | |
and upon the sandals on my feet. | 16:37 | |
Act therefore according to your wisdom, | 16:41 | |
but do not let his head go down to sheal in peace." | 16:45 | |
Here ends the morning lesson. | 16:53 | |
(bright organ-pipe music) | 16:56 | |
(choir sings) | 17:05 | |
- | Together, let us affirm our faith. | 17:37 |
All | We are not alone, we live in God's world. | 17:42 |
We believe in God who has created and is creating, | 17:47 | |
who has come in the true man, Jesus, | 17:52 | |
to reconcile and make new, | 17:55 | |
who works in us and others by His spirit. | 17:58 | |
We trust Him. | 18:02 | |
He calls us to be in his church | 18:03 | |
to celebrate his presence, to love and serve others, | 18:06 | |
to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus crucified | 18:11 | |
and risen, our judge and our hope, | 18:17 | |
in life, in death, in life beyond death, | 18:21 | |
God is with us, we are not alone, | 18:25 | |
we believe in God, thanks be to God. | 18:29 | |
- | The Lord be with you. | 18:36 |
Congregation | And with the spirit. | 18:37 |
- | Let us pray. | 18:39 |
Oh God, our father, we thank and praise you for a new day. | 18:51 | |
And a new time of worship in this place of beauty, | 18:58 | |
of inspiration and of fellowship. | 19:01 | |
We thank you for the life that stirs within each of us. | 19:06 | |
For this beautiful world into which we go and in which move. | 19:12 | |
For the work and the study you have given us to do | 19:18 | |
for our friends and families. | 19:25 | |
For music and books and good company, | 19:29 | |
and all the good pleasures in life. | 19:34 | |
Here our prayer we offer for others. | 19:40 | |
We pray, oh God, | 19:45 | |
for those in whom the pulse of life grows weak. | 19:50 | |
For the sick, who miss the brightness of the day, | 19:56 | |
and the moon light of the night. | 20:02 | |
For the overworked, who take no time to relax | 20:08 | |
and have no joy in leisure. | 20:13 | |
For the unemployed, who have no labor, | 20:18 | |
who have no joy of labor. | 20:23 | |
In particular in this moment, oh God, | 20:28 | |
We raise our prayers for peace in the Middle East. | 20:34 | |
We do not understand all the complexities | 20:41 | |
which cause war to be waged there. | 20:44 | |
But we do understand that war is hell. | 20:49 | |
That war brings death pain, brokenness, | 20:54 | |
widows, and orphans. | 21:01 | |
Help us to cry peace, peace, | 21:06 | |
and someday, oh, God defined that there is peace. | 21:10 | |
Also, oh God, | 21:18 | |
in the confusion of leadership which has become our country, | 21:23 | |
may your will of truth and justice | 21:31 | |
and righteousness become clear | 21:36 | |
to our leaders. | 21:42 | |
And may they follow your will. | 21:46 | |
Hear oh, God our prayer, which we offer for our needs. | 21:53 | |
Oh God, keep us from over indulgent, self-centeredness. | 21:59 | |
From careless destruction of life and beauty. | 22:08 | |
From intentional harm to this good earth, | 22:13 | |
which you have given us. | 22:17 | |
We realize we are human, oh, God. | 22:24 | |
And we need not only our own power, | 22:28 | |
but strength that comes from beyond us. | 22:31 | |
Help us to grow in grace and in concern. | 22:36 | |
As our minds grow wiser, make us kinder of heart. | 22:41 | |
As our arms grow stronger, make our hearts deeper. | 22:48 | |
As our world grows smaller, make our hearts larger. | 22:54 | |
As our neighbor grows colder, make our hearts warmer. | 23:01 | |
May we or God be persons who meet and fulfill | 23:10 | |
our responsibilities in life with songs of joy and love | 23:15 | |
and real caring as Jesus, our Lord came caring. | 23:20 | |
May our lives also reflect his loving concern | 23:26 | |
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, | 23:34 | |
these words are offered as our prayer | 23:37 | |
for this moment, Amen. | 23:43 | |
Our preacher for this morning | 23:52 | |
is Dr. Karl Earl Magni. | 23:56 | |
Theologian, philosopher, | 24:01 | |
writer, interpreter of life, | 24:07 | |
to a countless number of persons. | 24:13 | |
Preacher of preachers. | 24:18 | |
But above all, a warm human being, | 24:24 | |
who knows we're on the path of life he is traveling | 24:30 | |
And tries constantly to help others of us on that same road, | 24:38 | |
to find meaning and assurance. | 24:46 | |
It is a personal joy and a privilege for those of us | 24:51 | |
who worship in this chapel to hear him, | 24:55 | |
Dr. Magni. | 25:01 | |
- | The Chaperone, I would be a delict to myself, | 25:11 |
if I did not begin by expressing my infinite regard | 25:17 | |
for this place and this people. | 25:22 | |
I think I'd rather go to church here than any place | 25:27 | |
I know now in this country. | 25:32 | |
And if I did not express | 25:36 | |
my tremendous personal satisfaction | 25:38 | |
that working with the persons with whom I'm privileged | 25:43 | |
to work briefly part of each week, one semester | 25:47 | |
as a visiting guru of some sort. | 25:50 | |
I have infinite regard for this place. | 25:56 | |
Consequently, I'll do the latest thing I know. | 26:00 | |
And the best thing I know anytime I come. | 26:04 | |
And I'm grateful for the privilege of worshiping with you. | 26:09 | |
I suppose the title as fools die seems stupid. | 26:14 | |
It could read all fools die. | 26:19 | |
Or it could read everybody dies. | 26:24 | |
Or it could read all fools die. | 26:28 | |
All fools in the day of rath. | 26:32 | |
For what I am concerned to get across | 26:36 | |
is the inescapable morality of politics. | 26:39 | |
Anybody whose way of life is political gets it. | 26:48 | |
Long years ago now Paul Sherason said, | 26:56 | |
that four kinds of American religion ought to die | 27:00 | |
and they ought die, for they cannot help us. | 27:04 | |
The merely intellectual, the merely emotional, | 27:10 | |
the merely therapeutic with its medicine kit under its arm, | 27:15 | |
and the merely moral. | 27:19 | |
We had a birth of all of it lately. | 27:23 | |
and especially as Meneger has put it, | 27:26 | |
pastors aren't very good chief psychiatrists, | 27:29 | |
we really aren't, and there's a great deal more | 27:34 | |
for us to be. | 27:38 | |
But who wouldn't wish for the death | 27:40 | |
of all mere religion anyhow. | 27:43 | |
Real religion is intellectual. | 27:47 | |
It is emotional. | 27:51 | |
It is always therapeutic. | 27:53 | |
And as others have said here also, | 27:57 | |
basically irrefragably religion is moral, really moral. | 28:00 | |
And so is politics always moral. | 28:09 | |
That is to say life as religious and life as political | 28:14 | |
has something to do with character. | 28:19 | |
All of the great novels in plays. | 28:26 | |
All of the histories of dynasties in power are memories | 28:29 | |
of the violation of a basic moral expectation. | 28:34 | |
In particular, the pageant of the Kings of Israel in Judah | 28:41 | |
is an epitome displayed against a backdrop | 28:46 | |
of moral expectation. | 28:50 | |
The violation of which is death. | 28:55 | |
Now, if I were a Jacob Blue Vic Mendelson Bartore, | 28:59 | |
I do with the rest of my life, | 29:03 | |
a set of auditorials about this. | 29:06 | |
I do a king Hezekiah for Woodrow Wilson. | 29:10 | |
I do a Nebuchadnezzar for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. | 29:17 | |
I do a Tiglef Palizer III for Harry Truman. | 29:23 | |
I do a sort of Midwestern Kansas Solomon | 29:29 | |
for General Azin Howard. | 29:34 | |
I do a tragic unrealized Jonathan, | 29:38 | |
for John Kennedy. | 29:43 | |
I do a gaunt dark but giant sow | 29:46 | |
for Lyndon Johnson. | 29:52 | |
And in the last of my auditorials, | 29:55 | |
I'd leave king David in a office For Richard Nixon, | 29:59 | |
With Abner and Joab in the front office. | 30:06 | |
Indeed, I think in minor key now, | 30:13 | |
I'd had a subset interlude on Ish Bashef for Spiral Agnew. | 30:18 | |
But if you think, I mean to compliment by ascribing | 30:25 | |
by David as I did, you simply do not know David | 30:29 | |
or Abner, or Joab. | 30:34 | |
The morale of the politician | 30:39 | |
and the morals of the king are most safe | 30:42 | |
when Abner and Joab occupy the front office. | 30:48 | |
With Abner and Joab in the front office, | 30:54 | |
the king doesn't have to know anything. | 30:58 | |
He is safe, his morals are safe. | 31:02 | |
King David can play his harp, sing his songs, | 31:06 | |
dance before the altar, preach at the funerals, | 31:10 | |
issue press releases, wait for his friends | 31:13 | |
while Abner and Joab make his wheels go round. | 31:16 | |
The morality of it is is, | 31:24 | |
David saw Abner die by knife | 31:27 | |
as a fool dies he said. | 31:31 | |
And his last word to Solomon condemned his Joab | 31:34 | |
to the acts of Beniah. | 31:40 | |
Until here of late, where was there ever a pair | 31:46 | |
of administrators like Abner and Joab, | 31:50 | |
nephews of Kings, 30 year career men of highest rank, | 31:54 | |
one dispatched by his service of two small a principal, | 32:01 | |
the other act by putting functions so high, | 32:08 | |
he lived on manipulated relation. | 32:13 | |
Both days are utterly moral. | 32:18 | |
Abner was a man of war. | 32:23 | |
He had lived as a man of war and as a politician. | 32:27 | |
He mixed his political techniques with war tactics | 32:32 | |
at the Watergate in Gibeon where 12 against 12, | 32:36 | |
they had fought with knives. | 32:42 | |
And then he commanding general was maneuvered into killing | 32:45 | |
a sub turn Lieutenant, insult of insults | 32:51 | |
with the butt end of his spear. | 32:56 | |
But the dead man was Asahel, little brother to Joab, | 33:00 | |
his opposite number in politics. | 33:06 | |
Now back to the merely political, | 33:10 | |
having lived by sword and chicanery, | 33:13 | |
Abner now wishes to live only on chicanery. | 33:17 | |
So he took off his sword, he didn't wear his knife, | 33:20 | |
he forgot his basic principle, his opposite number Joab, | 33:26 | |
David's nephew, chief of staff. | 33:33 | |
And he died with a knife of Joab in his belly | 33:35 | |
at the gate, at his funeral David wept. | 33:39 | |
For he needed Israel's Abner, and he said, Abner, | 33:44 | |
you died as a fool dies from the morality of politics. | 33:48 | |
And Joab, son of the David's sister, | 33:57 | |
crew, chief, commando leader, top banana | 34:02 | |
in David's bandit days long since army commander, | 34:06 | |
trusted advisor, chief of staff to the king. | 34:11 | |
He became willingly the servant of the back end | 34:16 | |
of somebody else's virtue. | 34:20 | |
Here David incubates King Louis 14, | 34:26 | |
by some centuries for Louis to knew | 34:30 | |
what one needs in the front office. | 34:36 | |
And would say, I, my chancellor is a scandaler, | 34:40 | |
but I cannot do without him. | 34:46 | |
What if David is acting when he says in public, | 34:52 | |
that Joab is too hard for him? | 34:55 | |
What if Joab is not an independent operator, | 34:59 | |
but is organically and functionally the backside | 35:03 | |
of David's public virtue? | 35:07 | |
What if the David-Joab relation is such that Joab will do | 35:11 | |
what David wants, regardless of what David says he wants. | 35:16 | |
What if Joab knew David needed Abner dead? | 35:22 | |
In spite of David's tears at the funeral, | 35:28 | |
See Joab grinning In the wings. | 35:32 | |
What if in spite of David's gentle terms for Rayma, | 35:39 | |
Joab knew David wanted no more threat | 35:43 | |
from that troublesome quarter. | 35:46 | |
So he Joab would destroy all evidence of David's complicity | 35:49 | |
in the death of Uriah, by making seemed to have been | 35:53 | |
so vicious a fight, that the cry no quarter | 35:57 | |
was justified. | 36:03 | |
What if Joab is so near as David's backside | 36:06 | |
that he knew that Absalom had to die. | 36:11 | |
Even while the king weeping on the rooftop at Mahanaim, | 36:15 | |
had ordered, don't you hurt that young man. | 36:21 | |
See Joab slither out the limb of the Terrabens. | 36:26 | |
And with his hand, no bull, just with his hand, | 36:30 | |
first, an arrow into the throat, to the rioting Absalom. | 36:35 | |
That was never until lately a front man, | 36:41 | |
like Joab, it worked. | 36:45 | |
Never shall trusted and administrator. | 36:50 | |
Never so fear, sidekick so faithful as steward | 36:54 | |
until I after 30 chapters or so. | 36:59 | |
The X, | 37:03 | |
the morality of politics, | 37:07 | |
King David on his deathbed sings for Solomon, | 37:11 | |
I am about to go the way of all the earth. | 37:15 | |
You what Joab did to me, | 37:19 | |
how he used the tools of war in my front office | 37:24 | |
in a time of peace. | 37:29 | |
How he put innocent blood on my girdle. | 37:33 | |
Don't let his head go down to the grave in peace. | 37:38 | |
Last shot, Joab clinging | 37:44 | |
to the horns of the altar | 37:49 | |
in the tent of the Lord, | 37:52 | |
before Beniah sent to axe him in the head | 37:54 | |
and succeed him as commander. | 38:02 | |
For politics like religion | 38:05 | |
is moral when it's real. | 38:09 | |
(speaks foreign language) | 38:13 | |
Is it all really so moral, reverend? | 38:16 | |
Can you really expect a modern audience in such a center | 38:21 | |
to be receptive to such a dictum as that. | 38:25 | |
Politics is immoral, unmoral, non-moral, | 38:30 | |
beyond morals and unmoral, | 38:34 | |
but it's hardly ever moral long. | 38:36 | |
Of course, and everything dies | 38:40 | |
not just us fools I know that. | 38:44 | |
But it all adds up to a moral set of moral alternatives | 38:48 | |
for life and living for of politics like religion | 38:52 | |
is always moral in its nature. | 38:56 | |
So it simply means that politics and religion | 38:59 | |
are dimensions of human life, so much a like | 39:03 | |
that each is a medium through which and within | 39:07 | |
which mans real nature | 39:11 | |
is always crippled or blessed. | 39:14 | |
And the moral effect aspect is that he man, | 39:20 | |
has choices and is responsible. | 39:27 | |
Then if Abner and Joab political supreme to say to us, | 39:36 | |
"Are you trying to say that we should live like characters | 39:43 | |
in gun smoke, that we should watch out for our enemies, | 39:45 | |
that we should throw away all pocket knives | 39:52 | |
and search all our house guests, not at all." | 39:54 | |
I mean, only to say that life itself is moral | 39:59 | |
and that neither in religion nor politics, | 40:03 | |
can a man expect more than life from life | 40:06 | |
than his basic principle can deliver. | 40:12 | |
He works most everywhere. | 40:18 | |
Those who see marriage as a mere meeting of emotional needs | 40:21 | |
must prepared for changing needs to over spill the relation | 40:25 | |
and dissolve the marriage, | 40:29 | |
for marriage is a moral commitment. | 40:30 | |
Those who live utterly on material principles | 40:34 | |
ought not to expect spiritual rewards. | 40:37 | |
Those whose creed put self at center must be prepared | 40:42 | |
to endure a life that finds its limit at that center. | 40:46 | |
Those whose principle is psychological behaviorism need | 40:50 | |
to expect little from unconditioned love. | 40:54 | |
Those who bet on a naturalistic determinism | 41:00 | |
should not require themselves to do free acts of decision. | 41:03 | |
If you limit me to optimistic humanism, forget immortality. | 41:10 | |
If your origins are really contained | 41:17 | |
in scientific materialism, | 41:20 | |
quit bothering these gurus about the inner life. | 41:24 | |
What is your basic principle? | 41:30 | |
It will determine as it did with Abner, what you get. | 41:32 | |
In political religion it means, | 41:39 | |
that those who model their church | 41:43 | |
on the American business community must not look | 41:45 | |
for the new Jerusalem to come down or of it isn't coming, | 41:48 | |
it's already here. | 41:52 | |
In the religion of politics, | 41:55 | |
it means that if my basic principle, | 41:59 | |
my wearing of the sword is loyalty. | 42:02 | |
If loyalty is my virtue, | 42:07 | |
I better hope that the object of my loyalty stays in power. | 42:10 | |
If I live for control, I must not expect love for it. | 42:18 | |
If my character is conformity, | 42:26 | |
I must not expect creativity of me. | 42:30 | |
If my God is always deemed right, | 42:35 | |
I should not look for any much good out of it. | 42:40 | |
Is innocence my prime virtue? | 42:46 | |
I'd better not look for accomplishment to. | 42:50 | |
Is the political God of the country power? | 42:55 | |
Then forget peace as a prospect. | 43:01 | |
No country has ever had both dominance and loving neighbors. | 43:05 | |
If it's Caesars, Jesus, has said to have said, | 43:13 | |
give it to him. | 43:18 | |
But it meant no separation of state and church, | 43:21 | |
politics and religion have done. | 43:25 | |
The two kingdoms represent all categories used by Augustine, | 43:29 | |
the Roman church, and not abandoned the even by Luther, | 43:35 | |
our present day, political protestants. | 43:40 | |
None of that two kingdoms business really holds | 43:44 | |
for politics or religion. | 43:46 | |
Calvin made no such mistake, | 43:50 | |
one kingdom, and he knew who should rule | 43:55 | |
and where his oracle could be heard, | 43:59 | |
Though Jonathan Swift would later characterize | 44:04 | |
the Scottish version as the emission | 44:06 | |
of oracular belches delivered before panting disciples. | 44:10 | |
But the real point here is that my basic principle | 44:18 | |
had better be broad enough to contain what I have ordered | 44:22 | |
from politics, for that base will determine the nature | 44:26 | |
of my gathering in. | 44:31 | |
Jesus illustrates this with his least understood parable, | 44:34 | |
about a manager that got it in the nick. | 44:38 | |
And to which the object of the parable was, | 44:42 | |
if I live by the book, I had better be the book keeper. | 44:45 | |
For the man out front is dispensable, disposable | 44:52 | |
and vulnerable, especially in the religion of politics. | 44:56 | |
And the religiopolitics of life and living, | 45:03 | |
it's all the same. | 45:09 | |
If you goal is to be harmless as a dove, | 45:11 | |
you really will need the wisdom of a snake as a base, | 45:14 | |
for politics gets rough. | 45:19 | |
And if you are going to live on grace, | 45:23 | |
you had better come to terms with responsible guilt. | 45:27 | |
It's too late to be innocent. | 45:32 | |
Better take a look at the morality | 45:36 | |
of religiopolitical life. | 45:38 | |
A childhood vow too narrow, really constricts. | 45:41 | |
A man who models himself on a warped and twisted leader | 45:49 | |
will be himself warped and twisted. | 45:53 | |
A person whose cultural values are local and regional, | 45:57 | |
Harvard Yard, or Southwest Texas Teachers College, | 46:03 | |
both are too local, you may count on it. | 46:09 | |
For the business of your living will end up by reflecting | 46:16 | |
what you have really treasured. | 46:19 | |
Poor Abner, he thought Joab had become civilized. | 46:23 | |
He thought the ground rules had changed. | 46:30 | |
He forgot to wear his basic principle, | 46:34 | |
This as Paul Tilik knew and said really is your life. | 46:39 | |
The shape of your ultimate concern is that shape | 46:45 | |
you really live by and for this indeed is faith, | 46:49 | |
your ultimate care. | 46:55 | |
At this point in time, | 47:01 | |
when I was writing yesterday, this piece. | 47:05 | |
Through my window at Carolina Inn, | 47:09 | |
I could see old man Sam Irwin, loading a thin suit bag | 47:12 | |
in the back end of an old blue Chrysler, | 47:18 | |
headed up the Hills to Morganton, I suppose. | 47:23 | |
In spite of his voting record on the social issues | 47:29 | |
I have supported and he didn't. | 47:32 | |
He reminds me that there's a different kind of politics | 47:36 | |
and political living. | 47:41 | |
He would not change places within any chief in Washington. | 47:45 | |
For there's a different way to be political. | 47:52 | |
Two Yankee visitors passed my open window at the same time, | 47:57 | |
one stretched and said, | 48:03 | |
"The air is really different down here in the south." | 48:07 | |
So mode it be. | 48:14 | |
But we've a lot to face as religio-political persons | 48:18 | |
now alive who are moral and there is a higher way. | 48:23 | |
In the realm of political public religion, | 48:29 | |
whether civic or folk religion, | 48:32 | |
there's simply no way that the institutional church can talk | 48:35 | |
its way out of the fix into which we've come in the sixth | 48:39 | |
and seventh decades of the 20th century. | 48:44 | |
And the issue really lies where Jesus put it, | 48:48 | |
God or mammon translated. | 48:53 | |
It means humanity or security, | 48:56 | |
people or property, | 49:00 | |
and the awful fact remains the only institutional church, | 49:03 | |
more helpless than the church without people, | 49:07 | |
but property is the church without property, | 49:12 | |
which has lots of people. | 49:16 | |
There's really not much room to play around with this. | 49:20 | |
And of all the religious, | 49:24 | |
the pastor is in the middle tempted | 49:28 | |
toward the lower politics. | 49:31 | |
It covers him with a virtual necessity, | 49:35 | |
to use relations in such a manipulative way as to guarantee | 49:39 | |
the function that supports the total enterprise. | 49:44 | |
The threat here of the lower joy of politics | 49:49 | |
is that I may very well anywhere I work, | 49:54 | |
become the backside of somebody's virtue. | 49:58 | |
I may have been hired to make somebody look good | 50:05 | |
or somebody's class look good, | 50:09 | |
and that's rough to live with | 50:12 | |
unless you happen to like this sort of thing, | 50:15 | |
the higher politics. | 50:20 | |
Only those religious institutions which have changed | 50:23 | |
neither theology, their ecclesiology, | 50:26 | |
their social ideas, nor their customs. | 50:30 | |
Only those that have really served their bunch, | 50:33 | |
their class only these have stayed solvent, | 50:36 | |
Some even prosper. | 50:41 | |
And what kind of backside of virtue is that? | 50:43 | |
It's as if to opt for mammon breeds mammon. | 50:48 | |
It's as if money is only worth its power. | 50:53 | |
And believe me, it has been used for power, | 50:58 | |
the awful power of withholding life. | 51:01 | |
The iniquitous, ubiquitous temptation for all relig youth | 51:06 | |
is to get with it, to throw your weight on the side | 51:11 | |
of the power. | 51:15 | |
To pick up one skirt and tiptoe gingerly across | 51:17 | |
this long muddy flat, until some catastrophe changes | 51:21 | |
the political mind of the churches and puts us out | 51:26 | |
in the streets where we belong. | 51:29 | |
But the temptation of the lower politics is still to go | 51:32 | |
for the support of the buggy, and let others choose, turned, | 51:37 | |
and drive the horses to death. | 51:43 | |
There must be a better way to be. | 51:47 | |
The old Senator was backing out now, | 51:53 | |
to head across the Piedmont, another week done. | 51:56 | |
In my heart, I wished him out my window | 52:03 | |
a safe journey. | 52:07 | |
And I didn't call out the open window | 52:10 | |
as I really wanted to do, | 52:12 | |
bravo! Bravo! | 52:15 | |
But his late example presses me to offer | 52:19 | |
an alternative prospect to the knife | 52:23 | |
and the axe of Abner and Joab. | 52:28 | |
It's for all of us, it's in the Book. | 52:33 | |
What if your eye, your self regard and confidence, | 52:38 | |
whoever you are is so high that you really do not have | 52:43 | |
to stay as and where you are. | 52:49 | |
What if God really does have other folks, | 52:55 | |
other villages, where you can work? | 52:58 | |
What if Caesar's share of things really is just a penny. | 53:04 | |
What if there really is no secular holy dichotomy, | 53:14 | |
and God Almighty has access to whatever he might want. | 53:20 | |
What if your real worth is in your being | 53:26 | |
and your having been, and your will be, | 53:30 | |
more than it's in what you have or what you do. | 53:35 | |
What if your prime gift is a of relations | 53:41 | |
with brothers, sisters, fellows, | 53:46 | |
and there is no thing you must be. | 53:50 | |
What if your life really is a personal affair, | 53:56 | |
not a professional thing at all? | 54:02 | |
What if no rank or place or station | 54:07 | |
can give me anything to keep? | 54:11 | |
What if dear A.C. Reed was right when he says, | 54:19 | |
in the Duke lectures years ago, | 54:24 | |
"whatever you earn nature will collect." | 54:27 | |
What if a life lived is my only word | 54:35 | |
and that is moral. | 54:40 | |
What if the issue really is God or Mammon, | 54:45 | |
humanity or security people, or property, | 54:48 | |
and God has got all the artillery. | 54:52 | |
What if money is really means of loving or not loving? | 54:57 | |
And what if really not one stone shall be left on top | 55:03 | |
of another of any house we have built to God. | 55:06 | |
What if God's flock all did have and always | 55:12 | |
will have more lambs than it has rams, | 55:17 | |
and there's only a few old rams | 55:25 | |
a man has to share by hand in his lifetime. | 55:27 | |
That's to say, what if he did say to Simon Peter, | 55:33 | |
that third time feed the lambs, | 55:37 | |
meaning that power does not matter much, | 55:42 | |
the rams are old and will die. | 55:45 | |
What if my real political life is of the same stuff | 55:51 | |
as all the fellows I work with and for, | 55:56 | |
and that I am expected to understand this is moral | 55:59 | |
and cannot evade it by my mere bookkeeping. | 56:03 | |
What if God Almighty won't marry mammon because | 56:08 | |
He doesn't like or need mammon. | 56:12 | |
And I can't pull it together. | 56:16 | |
And my in house church roof really does fall in out of it. | 56:19 | |
It's happened before. | 56:28 | |
What if true politics requires me to opt for people | 56:31 | |
where they could be instead of where | 56:35 | |
our frozen institutions have kept them. | 56:38 | |
What if gospel really is political, and is too tough, | 56:44 | |
and too expensive, and too liberal, to be lightly taken. | 56:49 | |
And what if I really do have | 56:55 | |
to choose Joab, Abner, axe or knife, | 56:57 | |
or is there not a higher way? | 57:04 | |
What if the politics of life is inescapably moral? | 57:08 | |
There's a life one way, | 57:16 | |
and the horns of Joab's alter the other way. | 57:20 | |
For hey, hey you, | 57:25 | |
we are a people who really do know better. | 57:29 | |
We know a way toward an ultimate earth | 57:36 | |
and we are responsible, | 57:42 | |
and politics is moral, | 57:46 | |
just like life and living. | 57:53 | |
Amen. | 57:59 | |
(Bright organ-pipe music) | 58:18 | |
(choir sings) | 59:09 | |
- | Let me say just a word about an announcement | 1:02:06 |
you find in the bulletin this morning | 1:02:09 | |
concerning the friends of the chapel. | 1:02:15 | |
A number of people have talked with me | 1:02:20 | |
about this item. | 1:02:25 | |
(speaking indistinctively) | 1:02:29 |