Donald W. Shriver, Jr. - "America Remembers" (July 6, 1975) / Duke Chapel Recordings / Duke Digital Repository

(gentle piano music)

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(soft piano music)

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♪ Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation ♪

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♪ O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy health and salvation ♪

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♪ All ye who hear, now to His temple draw near ♪

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♪ Join me in glad adoration ♪

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-

Let us pray.

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O Holy God, we thirst for you for an awareness of your love.

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So now we wait before you in this company of your people.

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Still our minds and hearts that we may hear you speak to us

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and feel your presence in our midst.

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And so, become more sensitive to you

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in all the places of our living.

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Amen.

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(gentle piano music)

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(choir singing faintly)

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Jesus has told us that God yearns over us

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as a hen broods over her chickens.

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that it is not God's will that we should live as broken,

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separated, destructive people.

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We know the truth that the first action we can make

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and being made whole people

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is the confession of our personal

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and our corporate sin.

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I invite you now to join me

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in making our personal confession to God

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in the silence of this time.

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Let us pray.

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Hear these our prayers O Lord.

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Let us make our corporate confession of sin,

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which is at the same time the symbolic acknowledgement

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that we are members, one of another,

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and that our sin is more than what we need

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to personally confess.

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I ask you today to let me pray for you

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since of the prayer and the bulletin has omitted a line.

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Hear this prayer of us all.

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Most merciful God, we come before you

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to confess that we have not been worthy

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to be called your children.

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We have not understood your commandments

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nor have we fulfilled them.

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We have treated human laws as divine laws.

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We have sacrificed persons for principles.

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We have loved the sinners and have despised dissenters.

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We have been quick to condemn and slow to forgive.

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Dear Lord, forgive us our rash judgments

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and teach us your mercy.

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Grant us the understanding to remove logs from our own eyes

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so that we may serve you and your kingdom.

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Amen.

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Believe the good news that God does forgive us.

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We can go on now as forgiven people,

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we can make new beginnings because we are accepted

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and forgiven as we are.

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We give thanks to God for this opportunity for a new life.

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(soft piano music)

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(soft piano music)

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ His (singing brightly) ♪

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♪ By His grace and His might ♪

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♪ We are the (singing brightly) ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ His words are (singing brightly) ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ His words are (singing brightly) ♪

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♪ By his grace and his might ♪

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♪ He (singing brightly) ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ By his grace and his might ♪

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♪ He (singing brightly) ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ His words are (singing brightly) ♪

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♪ By his grace and his might ♪

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♪ He (singing brightly) ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪

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♪ By his grace and his might ♪

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♪ He (singing brightly) exalted us ♪

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-

Hear the reading from Jeremiah chapters 36

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and from chapter eight.

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"In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah,

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king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord,

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'Take a scroll and write on it every word

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that I have spoken to you about Jerusalem and Judah

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and all the nations from the day that I first spoke to you

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in the reign of Josiah down to this present day.

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Perhaps the house of Judah will be warned

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of the calamity I am planning to bring on them

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and every man will abandon his evil course.

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Then I will forgive their wrongdoings and their sin.'

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So Jeremiah call Baruch son of Neriah,

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and he wrote on the scroll at Jeremiah's dictation

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all the words which the Lord had spoken to him.

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He gave Baruch this instruction,

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'I am prevented from going to the lower towns.

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You must go there in my place on a fast day

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and read the words of the Lord and the hearing of the people

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from the scroll you have written at my dictation.

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You shall read them in the hearing of all the men of Judah

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who come in from their cities.

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Then perhaps they will present a petition to the Lord

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and every man will abandon his evil course

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for the Lord has spoken against this people

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in great anger and wrath.'

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Baruch son of Neriah did all that the prophet Jeremiah

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had told him to do and read the words of the Lord

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in the Lord's house out of the book.

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The king sent Jehudi to fix the scroll.

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When he fetched it from the room of Elishama,

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the editor general, he read it to the king

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and to all the officers in attendance.

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It was the ninth month of the year

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and the king was sitting in his winter apartments

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with a fire burning in a brazier in front of him.

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When Jehudi had read

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three of the four columns of the scroll,

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the king cut them off with a pen knife

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and threw them into the fire in the brazier.

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He went on doing so

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until the whole scroll had been thrown into the fire.

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Neither the king nor any of his courtiers

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had heard these words showed any fear

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or rent their clothes.

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Then Jeremiah took another scroll

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and gave it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah

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and wrote on it at Jeremiah's dictation

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all the words of the book

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which Jehoiakim, king of Judah had burned

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and much else was added to the same effect."

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"You shall say to them, 'These are the words of the Lord:

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If men fall, can they not also rise?

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If a man breaks away, can he not return?

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Then why are these people so wayward,

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incurable in their waywardness?

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Why have they clung to their treachery

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and refused to return to their obedience?

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I have listened to them and heard not one word of truth,

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nor one sinner crying remorsefully:

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Oh, what have I done?'"

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This ends the reading for the day

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(gentle piano music)

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(choir singing faintly)

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Together let us affirm 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 truly human Jesus

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to reconcile and make new,

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who works in us and others through the spirit.

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We trust God who calls us to be the church,

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to celebrate life and its fullness,

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to love and serve others,

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to seek justice and resist evil,

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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 and death and 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 speaking faintly)

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Let us pray.

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O Holy God, we try to comprehend you,

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to understand what it means that you have no beginning

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and have no end, to comprehend your power, your mercy,

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your wisdom, your justice, your love.

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To understand how you who created this marvelous

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and wonderful world and universe can care for us,

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but we get lost in abstractions

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and the impossibility of this task.

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And so, we can only bow before your presence in awe,

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but we can give thanks that you have revealed yourself to us

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through Jesus the Christ.

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And we rejoice that because of this revelation,

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we recognize your presence as you come to us in judgment

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and mercy and tender care and strong love

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through our neighbor.

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And so, O God, we give thanks for all these hosts of people

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who help make our lives more complete,

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more meaning-filled and our world more just.

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For people who even when they are hurting

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can care for others.

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For people who have found a new peace,

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a new hope and can share this with us.

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For people who help us see your truth in this world.

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For people who help us understand

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where you are calling us to work.

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For people who provide us food and shelter

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and love and health.

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And O God,

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we know that we can never be aware of your presence

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and your love without being aware of your pain

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because of all the suffering and misery of your people.

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And so, we offer ourselves to serve you

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and caring for those who are hungry,

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those who are torn asunder from their physical health,

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their mental health, their family health, and from you.

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For those who have no family, no one to love;

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those who are oppressed

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because of the structures of our society

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and our institutions and our needs.

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Those who are suffering because of their work for justice

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in your world.

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O God, we are in need of your comfort and love.

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We come to you without personal joys and our personal needs.

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Hear the prayers we bring to you for ourselves

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and for those who we love.

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In this holy silence, we lift these people to you.

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Amen.

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Hear us as we pray the prayer of our Lord.

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name;

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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, but deliver us from evil.

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

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for ever and ever.

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Amen.

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We invite you again this evening to the gardens

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to worship with us.

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If it rains, we will worship in the chapel.

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Those of us who have been fortunate enough to participate

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in the Week of Study and Reflection for Campus Ministers,

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we're especially happy to have had Dan and Peggy Schreiber

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share in the leadership for this week.

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Many of you already know Dan from his outstanding work

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with the church and the university

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when he was over in Raleigh.

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And so, you look forward as I do

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to hearing the word he brings to us today.

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Dan, welcome to Duke Chapel.

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"He was," says George Adam Smith,

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"the one constant, rational, and far-seeing power

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in the national life of Judah.

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He had an open eye for events.

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He allowed neither horror over his people's ruin

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or patriotism nor temptations to the easier life

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to blind him in the clear and just reading of his time.

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Other prophets were blinded by their patriotism,

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blinded even after the Battle of Carchemish

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when the grasp of Babylon was sensibly closing upon Judah.

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There is no better person in the Old Testament

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from whom to acquire a clearer notion of the biblical squint

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on human politics."

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His name of course was Jeremiah.

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He lived in troubled times.

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Babylon was on the march.

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Under it, spike wheel chariots,

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the most hated empire in history today.

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Assyria had crashed to ruin in 612 BC.

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Now, Babylon was hungry

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to swallow Judah's feeble Egyptian neighbor,

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but already in 608 BC, not so feeble against Judah.

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Egypt had smashed the army

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and the leader of Josiah's great army.

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Josiah that bloom upon the kings

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of all the seventh centuries, crushed the earth,

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never to be equal again among the kings of Judah.

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A bare three years later, a bigger shark than Egypt

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strikes Egypt by the waters of Babylon.

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After Carchemish, the Egyptian never smiled again.

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And the laughter was no more in Jerusalem either.

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Now, it was only a matter of time

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before Nebuchadnezzar came down

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another wolf upon another fold,

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and only the various optimistic patriots of Jerusalem

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were sure that the Lord

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would this time visit upon Nebuchadnezzar,

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the destruction of his predecessor, Sennacherib.

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Lots of patriots in private knew better.

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Apparently only one patriot in public

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dared to speak the truth as he saw it.

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It was not after all a time when the ordinary citizen

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was patient with more bad news.

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Humankind says (speaks faintly)

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cannot bear very much reality.

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And if you are a politician like King Jehoiakim

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fighting for your power and your very life,

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certain realities you don't want talked about.

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I suppose, had I been that king

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and the daily report brought me word of that crazy prophet,

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sending his secretary to trumpet bad news in public places,

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if I had been that king,

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I might well have gathered four armed men around me

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and whispered quietly,

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"Will no one rid me of this prophet?"

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That is the way it was with Henry II and Thomas Becket.

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But not that way with Jehoiakim and Jeremiah.

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Neither the public nor the officials could stomach that.

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They had a thing about killing prophets.

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At least at their best they did.

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Irksome old Jeremiah.

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Nobody enjoyed having him around, but the tradition was

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that sometimes the word of the Lord is irksome.

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The Lord of history is not captive

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to the pleasure principle.

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Both the priest and the laity knew that.

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So, the king does the next best thing to suit his pleasure.

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He burns the book, the newspaper, the tapes.

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Yeah, even he is not so neurotic and paranoid

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as to destroy the record on mere hearsay.

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He listens to it line by line, column by column,

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and with grim glee,

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he dispatches them by a pen knife and charcoal to ashes.

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It was a day of easily confiscated documents,

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but a last for the king's longterm peace of mind.

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Another copy existed in the stubborn oriental memory

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of the old country preacher from Anathoth.

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In an act of political grit

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that should encourage every scholar in this university,

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he wrote it all down again in a revised

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and expanded edition.

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"Ironically, his manuscript survives

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as the longest collection of writings

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by a single Old Testament prophet," says Moses.

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Now, in this year of our Lord, 1975,

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these almost 200 years

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after the declaring of our nation's independence,

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you could well start celebrating our bicentennial year

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by simply reading all 52 chapters of this revised,

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expanded, surviving edition of Jeremiah.

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There're still 364 days left for doing such things

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in the bicentennial year.

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If you should start the celebration thus,

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you might then begin to get

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or continue to develop a Hebrew Christian squint

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on the history of these United States.

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And what might such a squint be like?

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At the very least, it is not a squint at all,

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but a wide open squintless courage

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to look at the facts of the past

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without fear or favor.

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Not an easy assignment to get the facts

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about one's own country straight.

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To do so, you might add a second book

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to your bicentennial reading list

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in a competent history of the United States.

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Ask your favorite historian for a recommendation.

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You could do worse than the one that some of us studied

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at Davidson College.

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Morison and Commager,

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"The Growth of the American Republic."

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Among other things, this book will deliver you

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from a lot of romantic patriotism

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regarding British red coats and battle patriots,

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Concord, Yorktown, 1776, and all that.

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I mean, it wasn't as righteous and patriotic

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and popular a war as it was sometimes painted to be.

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It was not, for example, supported vigorously

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by very many residents of the 13 colonies.

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Note, if by vigor,

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one million's willingness to shoulder a gun.

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Say Morison and Commager, "The total enlistment in the war,

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regulars and militia was several hundred thousand,"

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but Washington's army reached its peak of strength

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with 18,000 in the summer of 1776.

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It fell to 5,000 by the end of the year,

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and seldom if ever, went higher, Yorktown included.

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Furthermore, somewhat late in the war,

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the British discovered

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that Americans were the best people to fight Americans.

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Several Tory regiments were organized.

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New York furnished more soldiers to George III

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and the George Washington.

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In the south, the large number of fighting Tories

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made the warfare in that section more bitter

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and inhumane than elsewhere

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for neighborhood feuds and personal grudges

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gave a sharper edge to the conflict.

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The Battle of Camden was really an American Tory victory.

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Kings Mountain was the rebel revenge.

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It debunks one's July 4th image of the revolution

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to read things like that, doesn't?

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Well, debunking is much in fashion in America these days.

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If you go hunting for them,

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you can find unpleasant facts of plenty

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in any nation's history.

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But the focus of a Hebrew Christian squint

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is not primarily here.

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Not just facing the facts of one's national history,

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but what you do with them.

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That's closer to the heart of this matter.

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One of the best of the World War II movies

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was "Bridge over the River Kwai."

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The story comes to it's painful, violent climax

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in the person of a British Colonel

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who has engineered the building of that beautiful bridge

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for his Japanese capital.

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The British gorillas arrived

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and the Colonel is trying to save his bridge

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from destruction by his own comrades in arms.

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In the irony that epitomizes the story, he is shot,

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falls upon the dynamite lever;

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and with everything crumbling around him,

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his life ends with a flash of insight,

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"What have I done?"

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Too late, too late.

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He understands he has given his life energies

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to the wrong side of a war.

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It is not likely that the author of the story

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was knowingly quoting from Jeremiah,

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but the lament is the same,

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"Not one sinner crying remorsefully,

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'Oh, what have I done?'"

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Remorse.

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As regards to the past of one's own country,

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does remorse do any good?

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Not much if your only taste of remorse

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comes in the last moment of your life

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when nothing can be done about the future.

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Not much if the evil of the past

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can actually be sealed off antiseptically into the past

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if one can be sure

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it's infection is not spilling over into the present.

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Remorse does not much good if the recognition of past evil

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is merely academic, leading to no repentance, no change,

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no throwing of human weight

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against the switches of the present

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to direct affairs down new tracks into the future.

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Remorse is a useless emotion if all that is true.

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But what if there is time to repent

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and need to repent

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(speaks faintly) the past infects the present still?

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What if the future can be different?

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Think that way and you think with Jeremiah.

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Believe that and you believe with Jeremiah.

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That you hear a brooding over the life of your country,

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one who says, "Perhaps this house will be warned

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of the calamity I am planning to bring on it

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and every man will abandon his evil course,

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then I will forgive their wrongdoing and their sin."

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Now, that is the Hebrew Christian squint

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on national history.

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Let the people of the land look carefully at their history.

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Let them take courage to ask, "What have we done?"

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Let them take courage to see and confess their sins

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because the Lord of history is faithful and just

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to forgive their sin,

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but he is one who is little interested

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in ceremonial confessions.

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He means to rid the world of its evil,

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not merely to inform the world of its evil.

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He is too faithful and too just to deliver us from our sins

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without first informing us of them

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and then wiping them away.

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It is you might say the two indispensable sides

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of his psychology of forgiveness.

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Get the facts about the sin out into the open

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so they can be dealt with, removed,

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subjected to the most sovereign of words,

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"Your iniquity is removed."

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But equip the sinner with courage to make that confession

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by assuring him in advance that the inequity is removable.

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No one goes to a physician without some hope

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that the illness can be cured.

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And barring that,

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he is usually willing to settle for a drug against the pain.

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Better the drug than nothing.

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But the Bible teaches us that the drug of forgetting

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is not the prescription of divine choice.

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He wants to deliver us from our sickness.

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Only then can it be forgotten.

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Now, we Protestants have said that kind of thing

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a long time, but we have too much individualized remorse,

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repentance, and forgiveness.

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What if all these things applied

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to what the Christian should be thinking,

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feeling and doing about our corporate

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as well as our personal path?

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That is the project I most recommend to you

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for this bicentennial year.

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Review the history of your country from this point of view

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of what sins does the Lord require us to repent?

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What is he ready to forgive in our nation

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if we are ready to repent?

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I offer for the beginning of your reflection

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only a few illustrations.

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They say that it is the illustrations in sermons

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that are the most interesting.

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Yes, and the most painful too.

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Those who like the generalities in this sermon

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so far may want to consider tuning out.

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The rest is not so pleasant,

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but be of good cheer.

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Remember forgiveness.

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Remember first the document

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that proclaim liberty throughout this land.

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All men are endowed by their creator

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with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life,

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liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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But between 1776 and 1787,

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it all depended on what people,

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you included in the category, all men.

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The founding fathers, of course, were a long way

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from raising the question,

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whether all men included all women.

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Central to their debate

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in the constitutional convention rather was the question,

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whether it included all negro slaves.

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There were some 500,000 of them in the 13 colonies.

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Within 70 years, there would be 4/1/2 men.

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Now, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant thinkers in the new land

42:23

were generally agreed that black people were human,

42:27

but only partly so.

42:30

In 1773, for example,

42:34

a certain Harvard student participating on his debate team

42:37

justified slavery on the grounds that are black was quote,

42:43

a conglomerate of child, idiot and madman.

42:48

Now, the American constitutional convention,

42:55

no one of its delegates being black

42:58

translated this popular view into the political principle

43:01

that black slaves could be counted as 3/5 human.

43:05

It's in the very first paragraph

43:12

of the unamended constitution.

43:15

It helped get a few more congressional representatives

43:20

from slave-holding states, but it didn't get slaves a vote.

43:24

Anti-slavery sentiment did get expressed

43:31

in the further provision of the new constitution

43:34

that the slave trade would be abolished, but not at once.

43:37

You can't change these things overnight.

43:41

Can you?

43:44

Give it a generation of life.

43:46

20 more years.

43:47

If you like, the whole thing can be dismissed

43:52

as that's politics, a dirty business, all of it.

43:54

But the trouble was so handy at dismissal,

44:00

especially by religious people in 1975.

44:02

Is that religious people in 1775

44:06

had something to do with this dirty business.

44:09

They had prepared the ground for.

44:12

Says church historian Martin Marty, "In new England,

44:16

whites were reluctant to baptize slaves

44:20

for baptism conferred the franchise,

44:23

and it was unthinkable that the child, idiot,

44:25

madman should vote.

44:28

First redefine baptism

44:30

so that it did not automatically confer rights on any man."

44:32

In Virginia, the issue was debated in similar terms.

44:36

"As for baptizing Negros," said the Reverend Hugh Jones,

44:40

"Several of the people disapproved of it

44:44

because they say it often makes them proud

44:46

and not so good servants."

44:49

But as early as 1727, the Bishop of London

44:52

set the minds of his slave-holding Virginia constituents

44:56

at ease on the matter.

44:59

Christianity he ruled does not make the least alteration

45:02

in civil property.

45:06

Freedom for the slaves from sin and Satan?

45:08

Yes.

45:11

But as to their outward condition, said he,

45:13

"They remain as before even after baptism."

45:16

After that statement,

45:24

the baptism of slaves in Virginia was on the increase.

45:25

Ancient history, of course.

45:31

No such words come these days from London or Virginia

45:33

or East and North Carolina,

45:38

but the agonist of our own lifetimes

45:41

over the status of black people in this society

45:43

were rooted partly in such thinking about religion

45:46

and politics two and three American centuries ago.

45:49

And if you cannot remember

45:55

these painful roots of the problem

45:56

is something to be repented for, remember them at least

45:58

as something that was empirically unworkable.

46:01

On the one hand, half human slaves hearing the full gospel

46:06

kept translating it into a half gospel.

46:10

One slave on in the 19th century naively reported

46:14

his perplexity over a slave who had been taught

46:17

the Calvinist catechism years and years.

46:20

Routinely the slave was asked one day,

46:24

"In whose image were you made?"

46:27

To which the slave replied humbly,

46:30

"In the image of the devil mask."

46:33

He was the ancestor you see

46:37

of all those black people in our century

46:38

who grew up believing what white society taught them

46:40

that blacks really are an inferior people.

46:44

On the other hand,

46:49

some of those half human slaves heard the full gospel

46:50

and translated it into full humanity for themselves.

46:53

David Walker, free Negro of Boston

46:58

had read Paul the apostle and concluded,

47:02

"Have we any other master than Jesus Christ?

47:07

Is he not their master as well as ours?

47:11

This country is as much ours as it is the whites,

47:15

whether they will admit it or not."

47:19

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s

47:25

was called by some, the second American revolution.

47:28

How sad that the first American revolution

47:33

was fought hardly if at all

47:35

on behalf of the black people of this country?

47:37

How encouraging that at last they are taking

47:41

more rightful place in the life of the republic?

47:44

How sobering that it should take so long for this to happen?

47:48

How meet, right and fitting that Christian Americans

47:53

should be astonished,

47:56

should (speaks faintly) and repent concerning all of this?

47:57

May God continue to deliver us

48:01

from the sins of our forefathers and our own sins,

48:03

lest our children suffer yet more as we have suffered.

48:08

Just...

48:14

I recall for you a second illustration.

48:18

Happily some belated signs of deliverance,

48:21

grace this illustration too.

48:25

I refer to the fate of a people

48:28

whom white Europeans stubbornly insisted on calling Indians.

48:30

History lesson.

48:38

What happened in 1492?

48:41

Correct answer.

48:46

It was the year the Indians discovered the Italians.

48:48

As we have been saying here out of Jeremiah,

48:59

it all depends on whose point of view you take.

49:02

For my own part, I now know that my earliest view of Indians

49:07

was not exactly the fruit

49:11

of a Hebrew Christian consciousness.

49:13

As boys, we played Cowboys and Indians.

49:17

The Indians always lost.

49:21

We went to cowboy movies on Saturday evening.

49:26

The Indians always lost.

49:31

So far as it went, it was more or less accurate history.

49:36

The Indians almost always really did lose.

49:39

But the other month, national television had a movie

49:46

that embodied a radical change in viewpoint.

49:49

Perhaps you saw it.

49:53

"I Will Fight No More Forever."

49:55

It was the story of Chief Joseph

50:00

whose small band of warriors

50:03

fought the US Cavalry for months to a standstill,

50:05

almost escaping the reservation they didn't want to live on.

50:08

It was one of those

50:13

rare audio-visual experiences in America.

50:14

May their number increase.

50:19

It left you wishing the Indians had one.

50:22

It left you grieving

50:28

for the racism of some of your ancestors.

50:29

It left you convinced that Castro did die

50:32

for the white man sins.

50:35

And just what sins

50:38

Chief Joseph himself summed up very eloquently

50:40

after all the fighting was over.

50:43

I have heard talk and talk

50:47

from the white chiefs in Washington, but nothing is done.

50:49

Good words do not last long unless they amount to something.

50:53

Words do not pay for my dead people,

50:57

they do not pay for my country now overrun by white men.

51:01

Good words will not give my people good health

51:07

and stop them from dying

51:10

from diseases caught from white people.

51:11

Good words will not get my people a home

51:14

where they can live in peace and take care of themselves.

51:17

You might as well expect the rivers to run backwards

51:21

as that any man who was born a free man should be contented

51:23

when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.

51:28

I have asked some of the great white chiefs

51:32

where they get the authority

51:35

to say that the Indian shall stay in one place

51:37

while he sees white men going where they please,

51:41

but they cannot tell us.

51:44

Let me be a free man: free to travel, free to stop,

51:46

free to work, free to trade where I choose,

51:52

free to choose my own teachers,

51:56

free to follow the religion of my fathers,

51:58

free to think and talk and act for myself.

52:01

Mastery of English and a penetrating sense of justice

52:09

did not get Chief Joseph what he wanted.

52:16

They sent him back to the reservation whereby 1885,

52:21

his tribe was reduced to 287 persons,

52:25

most of them too young to remember

52:30

their previous life of freedom or too old and sick

52:32

and broken in spirit

52:35

to threaten the mighty power of the United States.

52:37

When Joseph died on September the 21st, 1904,

52:43

the agency physician reported the cause of death

52:49

as a broken heart.

52:52

Even as we sit here this morning,

52:59

the trail of tears and blood lingers over this land

53:01

and the far away Dakotas.

53:04

And in spite of that therapeutic drama

53:07

over at Cherokee, North Carolina,

53:09

the Indian problem in some North Carolina counties

53:13

has yet to be worked out to a humane resolution.

53:16

It is and always has been at least equally a white problem.

53:20

And much repentance will yet be necessary in this nation

53:25

before justice and restitution are done.

53:29

These exploited people for whose independence,

53:31

the patriots of 1776 had no concern whatsoever.

53:35

Now, the time for sermonizing has run out.

53:45

Isn't that a blessing?

53:48

It's a hot summer.

53:52

And then we tarried long in this cathedral

53:54

to confess all the sins of this nation

53:56

that we could just think of.

53:59

We would have be here well into the afternoon.

54:01

And then we waited until we had discovered all the sins

54:04

that the Lord knows and thinks of, how long would that take?

54:07

Some in the congregation I suspect

54:13

think that we might well (speaks faintly)

54:15

a little longer yet.

54:17

They have quarrels with this country's treatment of them

54:19

or their ancestors that are hardly touched upon yet.

54:22

Red dirt mountain farmers and their children

54:29

bent low by an agricultural system that made the rich richer

54:34

and the poor poorer.

54:38

Women to whom the nation finally gave a vote

54:41

130 years after the constitutional convention

54:45

and whose experience of liberty and justice for all

54:50

leaves room for some bitterness.

54:54

Vietnam veterans who feel themselves scapegoats

54:58

for the loss of a war the nation hopes repeatedly

55:02

to burry in forgetfulness

55:06

without benefit of national understanding

55:08

or national repentance.

55:12

Such persons in our midst have much in common

55:15

I suspect with that veteran of Stonewall Jackson's army

55:17

who was slogging along at the end of a column

55:21

one dark day up in Virginia in 1863.

55:25

The General reviewing the column

55:30

rode to the rear on his horse,

55:32

looked down on that weary-looking (speaks faintly)

55:35

and ask him compassionately,

55:39

"Do you think you'll make it, soldier?"

55:41

Soldier looked up the General and says, "Yes, General.

55:46

I think I'll make it."

55:50

What I hope to God, I never loves another country.

55:53

And this sermon like many of Jeremiah's sermon

56:00

has been for those who love their country.

56:03

It has been for those who love it enough

56:06

to forgive it's sins against them

56:08

and to be forgiven for their share in it's sins.

56:10

It has been for those who can stand or sit on Sunday morning

56:15

and cry out before their Lord, "Forgive us our trespasses

56:18

as we forgive those who trespass against us."

56:23

If you cannot sit and pray that way fellow Americans,

56:27

fellow Christian, then forget all about this sermon.

56:31

Forget Jeremiah, forget Jesus and his tears over Jerusalem,

56:35

because without the assurance of forgiveness

56:40

from the Lord of history,

56:43

we shall not be able to bear the judgements

56:44

of the Lord of history however true

56:47

and righteous altogether those judgments may be.

56:49

This fact came home to me very recently

56:54

in the person of a Dutch Christian scholar

56:56

whose name was Hannes Hoekendijk.

56:59

He was for many years Professor of Missions

57:03

at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

57:06

Just two weeks ago, he died in his early sixties.

57:12

Just three weeks ago,

57:20

I sat in his office talking with him about his life,

57:23

especially that part lived 30 years ago

57:28

when with many Dutch Christians,

57:32

he shared the agony of World War II.

57:34

As the diary of Anne Frank reminds us

57:38

of all Europeans during the war,

57:41

the Dutch were among the most heroic resistors

57:43

to the Nazi program for exterminating the Jews.

57:46

Hannes Hoekendijk bore in his body

57:51

the marks of that resistance, imprisonment, malnutrition,

57:53

and other suffering that left him physically impaired

57:59

for the rest of his life.

58:02

But the horror that left him impaired

58:05

left six million Jews dead,

58:09

an event in recent human history so evil

58:15

that even these 30 years later,

58:19

our imagination stumbles as it tries to remember.

58:21

That sense of helpless stumbling

58:26

and inability rightly to remember

58:28

was heavy on my own spirit that day

58:31

as I rose to leave him.

58:34

In some despair, I remarked to him,

58:37

"The magnitude of some human evils

58:41

makes them impossible to face.

58:43

The only practical way to cope with such things

58:47

is to forget them."

58:50

He looked out of the window.

58:54

"No," he said softly, almost feebly,

58:57

"There is another way.

59:03

The gospel, grace, forgiveness."

59:07

Eight days later, he was dead of a heart attack.

59:16

Those were virtually his last words to me

59:21

concerning an evil time on the life of his native continent.

59:27

If I had to choose some last words

59:32

to say to the next generations of Christians

59:34

who are to live on this American continent,

59:37

I could choose no better words.

59:41

There is another way, the gospel, grace, forgiveness.

59:44

Let us pray.

59:58

May the Lord bless us and keep us.

1:00:04

Lift up his countenance upon us,

1:00:07

forgive all our sins and give us peace in our hearts,

1:00:09

in our life together, and in the life everlasting.

1:00:16

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

1:00:22

Amen.

1:00:26

(gentle piano music)

1:00:27

(choir singing faintly)

1:01:09

(soft piano music)

1:03:26

(gentle piano music)

1:04:29

(choir singing faintly)

1:04:32

(gentle piano music)

1:05:32

(choir singing faintly)

1:06:08

(gentle piano music)

1:06:32

(choir singing faintly)

1:07:43

-

Accept this offering from your people O God,

1:08:41

and save us from making these gifts

1:08:46

a substitute for the gift of ourselves.

1:08:48

We offer them to you as outward tokens

1:08:53

of our inward commitment to you and your work.

1:08:57

And we pray all of this in the spirit of Jesus, the Christ.

1:09:01

Amen.

1:09:06

(gentle piano music)

1:09:09

(choir singing faintly)

1:09:46

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God

1:13:36

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now

1:13:42

and forever more.

1:13:47

(soft piano music)

1:13:50

♪ Amen ♪

1:13:53

♪ Amen ♪

1:13:59

♪ Amen ♪

1:14:06

♪ Amen ♪

1:14:10

♪ Amen ♪

1:14:19

♪ Amen ♪

1:14:27

♪ Amen ♪

1:14:38

(bell ringing)

1:14:50

(bright piano music)

1:15:07

Donald W. Shriver, Jr. - "America Remembers" (July 6, 1975)

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1. Donald W. Shriver, Jr. - "America Remembers" (July 6, 1975)

Duke University Archives

Donald W. Shriver, Jr. - "America Remembers" (July 6, 1975)

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Duke University Archives