Davie Napier - "Back from the Cave" (November 24, 1974) / Duke Chapel Recordings / Duke Digital Repository

(worship music)

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(choral singing)

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Grace to you and peace from God,

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our father, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

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My brothers and sisters in Christ,

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let each one of us now confess his or her sin

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surely in the presence of almighty God,

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but also in the presence of a caring fellowship

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of friends and neighbors.

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Let us pray.

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Oh Lord God,

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you have made our land rich

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in the abundance of your creation.

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Yet freedom, justice,

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food for life, and love universal

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ar for us and for countless others all over the world

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still only a dream.

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We come before you acknowledging that our gratitude

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may not be gratefulness, but greediness.

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We know that our stewardship should be manifest

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in service to others.

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We know it is not enough for us simply to say, we are sorry.

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As we say this, others are now hungering, starving, and die.

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We need to feel personally the urge to aid

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our distressed and broken sisters and brothers of the world.

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May we learn to share our abundance so that our dreams

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of wholeness and health for all may become a reality.

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And then with the help of your amazing grace,

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we who are still lost in the maze of selfishness

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may become truly thankful.

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So we pray,

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so may it be.

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Let us continue

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each in a personal way with our prayers to God.

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The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in

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from this time forth and forevermore.

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May the almighty and merciful God grant us pardon

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and forgiveness for all our sins

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through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

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Amen.

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(worship music)

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(choral singing)

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Let us stand for the affirmation of our faith.

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We are not alone.

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We live in God's world.

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We believe in God who has created and is creating,

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who has come in the true man, Jesus,

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to reconcile and make new,

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who works in us and others by his spirit.

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We trust him.

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He calls us to be his church, to celebrate his presence,

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to love and serve others,

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to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen,

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our judge and our hope

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in life, in death, in life beyond death.

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God is with us.

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We are not alone.

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Thanks be to God.

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The Lord be with you.

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(congregation answers)

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Let us pray.

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Oh God, we thank you

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for this day and this moment,

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for this university and this chapel,

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for this service and this experience,

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for this family of yours throughout all the earth,

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and this people, each person gathered here

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to worship this day.

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We thank you, Lord,

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that you lead us by your spirit

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and you protect us from others,

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and from ourselves,

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that you spare us the full consequence

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of our stupidity, our fear, and our hate.

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We thank you for peace, when it exists,

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for love, where it is felt,

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and for hope, when it is sure.

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We, oh God, who are blessed with riches of body and spirit,

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thank you for life

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and all that life means to us.

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Oh God, ever caring, ever sustaining,

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ever seeking spirit, we reach out now

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in thought and concern for brothers and sisters,

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men, women, boys, and girls who are in special need.

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Some are right here in this place, oh God,

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and we know it.

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Well-dressed, well-nourished, well-educated,

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lonely, hurting, struggling, confused, longing,

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some are naked, hungry and sick,

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bodies twisted and broken

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from disease, and starvation, and neglect.

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Oh God, through the spirit of Christ,

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teach us how to feed the hungry, clothe the naked,

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visit the sick, go to those who are in prison,

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bind up the broken hearted, and set free the oppressed.

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Oh God, may we become so sensitized to the needs

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of your children here and everywhere.

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We will offer them bread for life surely

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and share with them the bread of life,

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who is even Jesus Christ, our Lord.

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And now, oh God, teach us to serve you

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with loyal and steadfast hearts,

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to give and not to count the cost,

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defied and not to care for the wounds we receive,

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to work and not to ask for rest,

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to serve and not to ask for any rewards,

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save that of knowing, oh God, that we are in some small way

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doing your will through Jesus Christ,

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our Lord, our brother, who taught us how to live

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and teaches us how to pray as we pray together.

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Our father, who art in heaven,

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hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,

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thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us this day our daily bread

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and forgive us our trespasses

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as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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And lead us not into temptation,

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but deliver us from evil

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for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,

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forever and ever, amen.

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May I welcome you to this service of worship this day,

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a day in some ways,

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which is a down day for those of us

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who struggled hard and wanted yesterday's game to come out

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just one or two points different from what it did.

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But may I, in this context, say a word of congratulations

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to those who represented this university yesterday,

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some young man, coaches, and athletes whom I have gotten

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to know quite well this fall,

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and congratulate them on the way they really gave

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of themselves, for themselves surely,

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but also for you, and me, and for this place.

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So it is a down day, but not really.

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And I say congratulations to those who represented us.

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May I invite you to one of two special services

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this afternoon and tonight at three o'clock

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and at eight o'clock,

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something rather unique in the way of worship in this place.

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There will be a puppet show depicting the creation.

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There will be music,

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and there is an art exhibit which will be

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on display in the crypt.

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So there'll be something for us to see up here

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and as well as downstairs.

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Services will begin at three and at eight.

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You are invited to come and share

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in these worship experiences of religion and the arts.

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The offering today in its entirety,

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as decided by the administrative committee of the chapel,

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will go to Oxfam America.

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And that means that it will go to relieve some

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who are starving.

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I was impressed in a way that I have never been

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impressed before by the Duke students this week,

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who some 15 or 1,800 or so of them fasted on Thursday

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and contributed something over $4,000 to Oxfam Relief

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and with your generosity and your concern this morning,

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our total contribution to Oxfam may well exceed $5,000.

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So I encourage you to give,

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to join with those students and others who have already

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expressed their concern this week.

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The time of the offering, will you remember this

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and give so that someone may feed just a little bit better.

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We welcome to Duke University and to Duke Chapel today

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the Reverend Dr. B. Davie Napier,

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currently president of Pacific School of Religion.

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He is a poet, priest, pastor, teacher,

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administrator, Old Testament scholar,

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but contemporary prophet.

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You are invited to join us today at lunch in room 101

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of the Union Building to have conversation with Dr. Napier.

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But at this moment, may I say to you, Dr. Napier,

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that in the name of God, and on behalf of those of us

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who gather here to worship this day,

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I welcome you to Duke Chapel.

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And now we hear the word which you bring to share with us.

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The reading of 1 Kings 19

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will become a part of the sermon.

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What Ms. Phyllis Christian Harris reads

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represents my own translation and editing

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of that remarkable story.

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In the preceding chapter, 1 Kings 18,

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you remember that Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh,

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has defeated and decimated the prophets of Baal,

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whose sponsor and champion is Jezebel,

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daughter of the king of Tyre

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and wife of Ahab, king of Israel.

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in the narrative before us, the narrative of the cave,

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Jezebel sends a word of dire threat to Elijah,

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who in terror runs south to Mount Horeb,

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where he hides in a cave,

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emerges, is rebuked, goes back the way he has come,

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and on the way anoints Elisha.

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But as I hope you will see,

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Elijah's story is also our story.

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The threat, real or simply paranoid,

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the flight in terror through the wilderness of despair,

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the wonder of sustenance in that desert,

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the darkness, the stillness,

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the strangely comforting loneliness of the cave

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in which we spend a night, or a week,

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or however long it takes for the noise and fury

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of our hell to subside,

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the perception of the gift now of gentle silence,

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the miracle then of the discovery,

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a new of the is-ness of the word,

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but the immediate bitter protest against it,

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because it will not let us stay in this place of haven

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from storm, and the silence of gentleness,

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because it sends us back again.

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And because it rebukes the pride of our paranoia,

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our sometimes monumental sense

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of absolute unique commitments and persecution.

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And finally, our return to call an Elisha

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on the way and to resume the work of ministry,

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ordained and lay, to word of God and word of earth,

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renewed by the whole kaleidoscopic experience

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of the trip to the cave.

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Now, Jezebel sent this word to Elijah.

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If you are Elijah, I am Jezebel.

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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You may be a prophet, but I am royalty.

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If your name means God is Yahweh,

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mine means without cohabitation.

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And as long as I'm here, neither you nor Yahweh

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will stand in the kingdom of this royal house.

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You make your own appropriations.

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Here are some of mine.

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Or perhaps one of yours this morning would be

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if you are Duke, I am Carolina.

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Here's one of mine, a beautiful morning

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in Nanking, China, a Saturday morning,

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I am attending Hillcrest American School and I am boarding

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with a missionary couple near retirement,

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their kids long since grown and now thoroughly idealized.

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It's a matter of dispute between them and me

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whether I'm supposed to practice the piano on Saturday.

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I haven't done so this morning.

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I've gone out to play.

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I'm 10 years old.

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Mrs. Wilson, furious that I have gone out

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before practicing, calls me into the house and says,

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in effect, if you are Davie, I am Mrs. Wilson.

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My parents are summoned from Xinjiang,

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two hours by rail down the Yangtze,

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and I'm put to bed on bread and water for the weekend.

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I am devastated for the loss of Saturday,

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but secretly I don't mind missing the long Sunday in church.

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The trip to the cave was real, but short.

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Years later, 1939, I'm in seminary,

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third year, Christmas vacation near at hand.

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Failing vision in my left eye,

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detachment of the retina,

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an immediate operation at Johns Hopkins

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and possible abandonment of projected PhD program

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in Old Testament.

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If you are Davie, I am adversity.

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That trip to the cave was longer.

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It is the late 1940s,

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I'm the teaching chaplain at the University of Georgia.

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It is, of course, before the Supreme Court decision

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of 1954 and the Martin Luther King era of the 1960s.

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Joy, my wife, and I host a seminar of mine for dinner

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and as it turned out a very long evening's discussion

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with three black Morehouse faculty,

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George Kelsey in Christian ethics,

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A.E. Jones French,

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and Ed Williams in economics.

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An influential university colleague learned of it

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and confronted me in fury.

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What he could not tolerate was the fact that we had had

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these three colleagues with us at dinner.

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He said, I'll have you fired if it's the last thing I do.

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If you are Davie, I am John.

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Now it is the 1950s.

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I'm on the faculty of the Yale Divinity School,

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collaborating with a colleague at another seminary

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on what is to be a joint introduction to the Old Testament.

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Suddenly in the midst of the venture

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he writes in effect, your stuff is too inferior to mine

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to be published with it.

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If you are Davie, I am, shall we say, Egbert.

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I don't know any Old Testament scholar named Egbert, do you?

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On that one too, I went to the cave where the word,

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and joy, and Richard Niebuhr sent me back

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to publish the same stuff in what became my first book,

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"From Faith to Faith."

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It is 1967.

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I'm dean of the chapel at Stanford.

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And in my first year there, the very simple message,

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if you are the chaplain, I am the president.

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The issue then centered in Vietnam,

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the bitter opposition to it, and its effects

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by the vast majority of students

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and the role of the Stanford chapel

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as the center of the resistance.

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A funny thing, later when he was no longer president

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and I was on my way elsewhere,

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but US personnel were still waging the war in Vietnam,

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he dropped by my office and fell glumly into a chair

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and said, Davie, what are we going to do

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about this damn war?

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I said, where were you a few years ago?

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This is simply to illustrate autobiographically

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something of the variety of the form of the trauma,

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Elijah Jezebel, that may send any of us

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running for life, as it were,

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through the desert to the cave.

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-

Frightened for his life, Elijah ran away.

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When he got to Beersheba in Judah,

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he left his servant there and went on

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into the wilderness until at least he sat down

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under a broom tree and prayed that he might die.

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I've had it Yahweh, he said,

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I'm no better than those who've gone before me.

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-

You can have the whole thing, Yahweh.

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Carry on, but count me out.

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Go ahead with your fights, but (foreign term).

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And dear God, don't we all know this feeling.

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So let's get it out with a proper prayer,

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not a conventionally pious prayer, like, you know, oh Lord,

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I'm courageous only help thou mine un-courage.

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We, in circumstances like this, ought to be able to say,

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who do we think we're kidding?

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We hide it.

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We ought to be able to say, Yahweh,

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eternal God, Lord of my Lord, Jesus Christ,

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I've had all of Jezebel I can stand,

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get her off my back.

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And if you can't do that, then I say the whole deal stinks.

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I want out.

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I've had it, Yahweh.

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I'm no better than my mothers, my fathers, my ancestors,

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those who've gone before me.

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It's enough.

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Take my life since God knows I'm not better

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than those who've gone before me.

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-

He laid down there and went to sleep

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until suddenly someone touched him and said,

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wake up and eat.

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He looked about and there at his head

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was a stone-basked biscuit and a jar of water.

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So he ate and drank, and then on the strength

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of that nourishment, he went to Horeb,

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coming there to a cave, he spent the night.

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-

Now we have before us a description that is

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incomparably eloquent by virtue

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precisely of economy, simplicity,

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and in all of biblical literature a stark singularity.

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Time stands quite still.

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It is a moment of crisis majestically detached

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from all known and common ways.

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And it is recounted in Hebrew

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without the use of a single verb to sap

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the naked power of static, substantive words.

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We can get by in English using only the imperfect

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of the verb to be,

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but the Hebrew remains starker,

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barer, more powerful, more arresting.

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-

There was a mighty wind.

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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Not in the wind was Yahweh.

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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And after the wind, earthquake.

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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Not in the earthquake was Yahweh.

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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And after the earthquake, fire.

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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Not in the fire was Yahweh.

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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And after the fire,

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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a sound of gentle silence.

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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-

It is dearly beloved, not even the beloved phrase,

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a still small voice.

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When the deafening sound of the awful violence

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of nature has passed,

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and there is that sudden contrasting gentleness of quiet,

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that audible voice of silence,

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it is the word of Yahweh

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that is, that comes, that occurs, that happens,

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that is articulate and apprehendable.

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Yahweh was not in wind, earthquake, or fire.

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And after all of these, there was a sound of gentle silence.

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-

Upon hearing it, Elijah covered his face with his robe

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and went out to take his position at the mouth of the cave.

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It was only now that the word of Yahweh was.

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-

That is that it came,

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that it occurred, that it happened,

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that it was articulated and apprehendable.

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-

What are you doing here, Elijah?

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(Davie speaks in foreign language)

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Elijah replied.

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-

Now watch the defense mechanism come into play,

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all of us are familiar with it.

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Elijah is, of course, taken sharply aback, he's affronted.

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What kind of Yahweh word is this, this implicit rebuff?

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Doesn't he, Yahweh, understand that it's this prophetic role

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of his that he's imposed on me,

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that brings me here to the cave, shattered, exhausted,

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running and hiding from my very life?

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I don't need this critical interrogating word.

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I need the healing word, the affirming word, the stroking,

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the stroking word.

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-

Elijah replied.

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-

To that seemingly uninformed, unsympathetic word,

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Elijah replied testily.

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-

I have been passionately devoted to Yahweh,

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God of (foreign term), even while the people of Israel

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have abandoned you, your altars they have destroyed,

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your prophets they have put to death with the sword.

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I am left now myself alone,

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and they are after me to take my life.

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-

I want you to hear this essential word.

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From any of us in widely varied situations

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of self-righteous paranoia,

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where we see ourselves, as it were,

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as Yahweh's lone ranger,

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Horatio at the bridge,

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Hans Brinker with his silver skates

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and his finger in the dike,

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it was only one of those, I'm not sure which it was,

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the last single remaining bastion of theological

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and prophetic integrity.

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And of course, for background music,

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the Tannhauser Overture, in counterpoint

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with hearts and flowers, you know, like humoresque

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and way down upon the Swanee River.

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Don't you understand they are after me?

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-

But Yahweh answered Elijah,

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go back the way you have come.

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-

Retrace your steps, return to where and what you were.

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-

Because there are still 7,000 left in Israel.

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-

The number is no census count,

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but a round number, thousands upon thousands.

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-

Whose knees have never been to bow,

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nor whose lips have kissed him.

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-

The way to the cave, or to broaden the matter,

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for the ways to the caves are as crowded

40:55

these US years as roads to the beaches

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on Labor Day weekend.

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Why have we become a generation of cave seekers?

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Well, if Elijah is Legion,

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then so is Jezebel.

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And if Jezebel is Legion, so is the cave.

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As the flight to the cave is undertaken

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by vast numbers for a vast range of reasons,

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so too the nature of the cave

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varies vastly and appropriately.

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Nevertheless, every search for the cave represents

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the more or less desperate craving of the searcher

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for relief from coping with the seemingly uncopeable,

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the cave is the womb.

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A few of the obvious drives that pack us off daily,

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or weekly, or episodically, or for some in hope permanently,

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our fear, or even terror in the particular given set

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of circumstances, the sheer discouragement

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and exhaustion of facing questions

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without answer, profound disillusionment that takes

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many forms with the pertinent prevailing system or systems,

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deep and bitter contempt of one's own society

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bred of the abysmal failure to attain

42:30

in consistent practice even a semblance

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of the justice professed and acclaimed, despair.

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So it was with the college generation of the late '60s,

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over the formidable obduracy of a political establishment

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in going its merciless way, quite apparently

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deaf to the cries of anguish of its empathetic

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and real victims, victims by the tens of millions here

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and around the world.

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Archbishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil,

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tells us to be aware of escape mechanisms, conscious or not.

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And he calls attention to what is surely potentially

43:20

one of our most disastrous forms of caveism.

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He says, be aware especially of a very serious sign.

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He said these words last June at Harvard.

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And here, I think, he goes on above all

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of the admirable youth of today's world.

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The danger that after the enthusiasm,

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the dedication without limits,

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the commitment during university days,

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they will reach the phase of installation in life

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of conformism, of bourgeoisieism,

43:59

of the death of ideals.

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The traffic to the cave may embrace us all, rich and poor,

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royalty and commoners, black and white, free and slave,

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female and male, peasant and landowner,

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exploiter and oppressed, and all of us bent

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on exchanging what we deemed

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to be an unremediable, intolerable,

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essentially uninhabitable situation for peace,

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or even the illusion of peace.

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And the range of caves runs from the old standbys of sex

44:41

and alcohol and other drugs to TA,

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transcendental analysis,

44:55

TM, transcendental meditation,

44:58

TV,

45:02

before whom we stand, sit, lie, eat, and drink

45:06

for an unconscionable number of adult hours every week,

45:10

TF, touchy, feely

45:15

in dual or group encounter,

45:21

TZ, try zen,

45:24

TS, take Sominex.

45:29

(congregation laughs)

45:32

It is not my intention to say that the cave

45:36

has no legitimate function.

45:39

Elijah came back from the cave revived, renewed.

45:42

Although the word of Yahweh was quite absent and silent

45:47

in the cave, the experience of the cave,

45:50

the recapitulation of the womb,

45:53

the distance and perspective afforded by the cave

45:56

from and upon Baalism, and Jezebel, and Israel.

46:00

All this was and is a legitimate gift

46:06

of a legitimate and essential cave trip.

46:09

It may be given to us, all of the Elijahs, to return

46:13

from the cave with fear and terror, if not allayed

46:18

at least in control,

46:22

with new resources given to face unanswerable questions

46:25

with courage and endurance,

46:28

with disillusionment transformed to fresh determination,

46:32

with societal contempt converted again to sorrow,

46:37

compassion, and resolution,

46:42

and with despair, turning back,

46:44

once more, to prophetic passion.

46:46

I hope it's unnecessary to say that both the church

46:52

and the seminary suffer erosion of authenticity

46:56

in proportion to the measure of their acquiescence

47:04

in institutional cave playing.

47:07

Many lay and clergy would make the church the cave,

47:12

the escape, the refuge, the womb.

47:15

The resources of faith, which by the grace of God

47:21

are imparted to the church as gifts

47:23

to be given and proclaimed

47:25

are themselves such properly dispensed

47:29

as to render infrequent or unnecessary the trip to the cave,

47:32

but the church itself may not be the cave,

47:36

except at the cost of losing both the word of God

47:40

and the word of earth.

47:44

For all of the legitimacy of the cave trip,

47:47

the word that comes when we emerge from the cave,

47:49

where alone the word is accessible to us,

47:52

the word that comes is always the same,

47:56

what are you doing here?

47:59

Do you know what you are doing here?

48:02

And if you know why you have come,

48:04

then go back to what, and where, and who you were.

48:07

Paulo Freire says that we are not built in silence

48:11

but in word and work, in action reflection.

48:17

And in a note on that statement, he comments,

48:21

I obviously do not refer to the silence

48:23

of profound meditation,

48:26

could we say the cave, in which one only apparently leaves

48:28

the world, withdrawing from it in order to consider it

48:32

in its totality and thus remaining with it.

48:35

But this type of retreat is only authentic,

48:38

he says, when the meditator is bathed in reality,

48:40

not when the retreat signifies flights from the world

48:45

in a type of historical schizophrenia.

48:50

At a meeting of the Central Committee

48:54

of the World Council of Churches in West Berlin last August,

48:55

the chairman, Dr. M.M. Thomas, said almost wistfully

48:59

at the conclusion of an address,

49:03

insisting these were not his terms

49:07

on the inseparability of the word of God

49:10

and the word of earth.

49:12

I sometimes wish he said that we could interpret the theme

49:15

Christ only as withdrawal from these many worlds

49:17

and many responsibilities,

49:22

but we cannot because in and through Christ,

49:24

God renews all people and all things.

49:26

In the same address, he had said earlier,

49:30

as both a temporal and spiritual being, one cannot be

49:33

involved in a purely horizontal or purely vertical activity.

49:36

The horizontal vertical, the social spiritual dimensions

49:41

meet in human nature.

49:45

And in all human aspirations and activities,

49:47

living theology, he said, is a dialogue

49:50

between the gospel of Christ and the self understanding

49:53

of men and women in concrete situations.

49:57

Evangelistic witness, he said, must be related

50:01

to the deepest concerns of men and women.

50:04

What are you doing here, Elijah?

50:08

You may stay overnight as it were in the cave,

50:10

but you may not stay in the cave

50:13

shut off from the word of earth.

50:16

And so from the word of God.

50:19

This is the very word of God,

50:21

go back now to hear and heed the word of earth.

50:23

Do we understand in the church

50:29

what Freire is talking about when he says that people

50:31

cannot save themselves no matter, he says,

50:34

how one understands salvation?

50:37

Either as individuals or as oppressor class,

50:40

salvation can be achieved, he says, only with others.

50:43

It is Rosemary Ruether who suggests there are two ways

50:49

falsely to appropriate the transcendent.

50:53

One is to domesticate it.

50:56

We do very well with that.

51:00

The other is to separate, isolate the word,

51:02

cut it away from the whole of human life.

51:06

She says both the establishment,

51:09

domestication, of Christianity and the segregation

51:12

of the sacred to a sphere removed from the midst of life

51:17

are equally ways of abolishing the presence

51:22

of the holy spirit so that the world of the powers

51:25

and principalities can go on as before.

51:28

Domestication, we know all about.

51:33

It is Baalism, it is the attempt at sustained

51:39

worship at two altars, Yahweh and Baal.

51:47

The attempt at prolonged separation is caveism,

51:53

tolerable, acceptable, even therapeutic

51:58

as temporary expedient, but quickly self-defeating

52:02

since word of earth, and in consequence,

52:06

word of God are shut away.

52:07

What are you doing here, Elijah?

52:10

Go back the way you've come,

52:12

because there are 7,000, thousands upon thousands,

52:13

a multitude, vast throngs, whose knees have never bent

52:18

to Baal, nor whose lips have kissed him.

52:23

Go ahead with the next line.

52:32

-

Leaving that place.

52:35

-

Is leaving the cave.

52:36

-

Elijah came upon Elisha, son of Shaphat

52:38

plowing with 12 yoke of oxen in front of him

52:41

and he with the 12.

52:44

And Elijah passed by, he tossed his robe over him,

52:46

leaving the oxen.

52:49

-

And I'm doing some adjustment on the text,

52:51

and this is not Chris's fault.

52:53

Go ahead, if you will, Chris, with the next lines.

52:54

-

Leaving the oxen, he ran after Elijah and said,

52:56

let me give my father and mother a farewell kiss,

53:00

then I will follow you.

53:04

Elijah said, go on back.

53:05

What claim have I got over you?

53:08

Leaving him, Elisha went back, took the pair of oxen,

53:10

slaughtered them, used the implements of plowing

53:14

to cook their flesh and gave to the people to eat.

53:17

Then he left to follow Elijah and he became his disciple.

53:22

-

Don't misunderstand me, which is a way of saying

53:27

to myself, don't let me misunderstand me.

53:29

The cave may be good,

53:33

recreative, restorative,

53:36

and therefore, essential, but not caveism,

53:39

which would institutionalize the cave.

53:43

Cave, si, caveism, no.

53:46

The cave gives shelter when the furies without

53:49

and within are raging beyond all control

53:52

and the word comes more easily

53:56

and distinctly after the grateful sound of gentle silence

53:57

and our emergence from this place of isolation and security.

54:03

It is now that we know in the word of God

54:08

and the word of earth that we are not alone.

54:11

We are surrounded, in fact, by clouds of living witnesses,

54:16

that there is the work of the kingdom to be done

54:20

and disciples and colleagues,

54:22

intimate Elijahs with whom to be doing the work.

54:25

Go back, always go back

54:30

and on the way, always on the way,

54:33

find commission, enlist and inspire,

54:36

Elisha, and Elisha, and Elisha.

54:39

Go with the word of God and the word of earth,

54:42

go with Elijah and Elisha.

54:45

Go with Gustavo Gutierrez, who reminds us that Christ

54:49

God has irreversibly committed himself

54:55

to the present moment of humankind.

54:58

He means, of course, every present moment,

55:02

to carry it to its fulfillment.

55:04

Go with Elijah and Elisha,

55:08

go with Dom Helder Camara, who on rarely intimate terms

55:10

with the bitter word of Brazilian earth,

55:14

as well as the word of God.

55:17

He's nevertheless able to declare,

55:19

I believe in a creator and father

55:22

who desired man and woman as co-creators and who gave

55:25

them intelligence and a creative imagination to dominate

55:29

the universe and to complete the creation.

55:33

And he constantly sends his spirit

55:37

to make the human mind fruitful,

55:39

even as he made the waters fertile

55:41

at the beginning of creation.

55:42

Go with Elijah and Elisha and with Paulo Freire,

55:45

who against odds much greater than we see or know

55:50

affirms his trust, as he says simply,

55:53

in people and his faith in the creation of a world

55:56

in which it will be easier to love.

56:00

Go with Elijah and Elisha.

56:07

Go with all these.

56:10

Go even with Gary MacEoin,

56:12

radicalized Latin American priests,

56:17

who choose to stay within the church and who do not,

56:20

he writes, see themselves as conduits of grace

56:24

to tens of thousands of people.

56:29

They are, he says, satisfied if they can create

56:32

a few small islands of Christian life,

56:35

leaving the future radiation to the holy spirit.

56:39

Beloved, we will go to the cave as we may and must

56:46

when the time and place

56:50

of our present moment become unendurable,

56:51

when in whatever way we hear the terrifying word

56:54

of threatened, unqualified disaster,

56:57

if you are Elijah, I am Jezebel.

57:00

But we will take only temporary lodging there.

57:06

We will resist the drift or the drive

57:10

toward caveism in ourselves, in church,

57:12

and in the life of faith.

57:17

On our way, always on our way in the earth,

57:20

we will bring Elijah with us to the work

57:25

of the word of God and the word of earth.

57:28

If we cannot do more, it is enough.

57:33

We will create islands of authentic Christian life,

57:37

and we will be content in faith to leave

57:43

the future radiation to the holy spirit.

57:46

Let us pray.

57:52

Source of light, ultimate author of truth,

57:56

creator and sustainer of our life,

57:59

eternal advocate of justice and integrity,

58:03

in the midst of human conditions around this globe,

58:07

which deny you, in a time when commonly power claims

58:09

to be truth,

58:14

and in an epoch when we know how unjust

58:16

are the ways of our nation and world,

58:19

we make bow to remember in your presence this university.

58:23

With regret and penitence for the good

58:29

we might have been and were not,

58:31

but with thanksgiving for what it has been given us,

58:34

is given us, to create of light, to clarify of truth,

58:39

to enhance of life, and to support of justice and integrity.

58:45

To these ends, be pleased to bless this university,

58:52

her multiple boards and constituencies.

58:57

To these ends of light and truth of life,

59:02

of justice and integrity, all who are a part

59:04

of this institution.

59:10

In the name of that one who gave himself

59:13

for the peace of the world,

59:15

even our savior, Jesus Christ, amen.

59:17

(worship music)

59:28

(choral singing)

59:53

(worship music)

1:01:51

(choral singing)

1:03:08

(worship music)

1:07:50

(choral singing)

1:08:03

-

Oh God,

1:09:02

as we have given of ourselves this week past,

1:09:04

and now give of these, our possessions,

1:09:09

may we commit ourselves body, mind, and spirit

1:09:13

to you and to your way,

1:09:19

and to our neighbors and their needs.

1:09:22

We dedicate ourselves now to love as Christ loves even us.

1:09:26

In our Lord's name, we pray.

1:09:35

Amen.

1:09:39

(worship music)

1:09:43

(choral singing)

1:10:16

The grace of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ,

1:13:57

the love of God, the father,

1:14:02

the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you

1:14:06

and those whom you love, this day and forever.

1:14:12

(choral singing)

1:14:20

(bells ring)

1:14:44

(worship music)

1:15:02

Davie Napier - "Back from the Cave" (November 24, 1974)

Transcript

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Duke University Archives