Thomas Woodward - "For Me, Terrifying Words" (August 17, 1975)

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	(soft music)	0:06
	(singing faintly)	2:46
-	Let us pray.	4:04
	Well, Lord our God,	4:07
	great, eternal, wonderful, and glory.	4:09
	Thy who keep His covenant and promise	4:13
	for those that love thee, with their whole hearts.	4:16
	Thy who art the life of all,	4:19
	the help of those who seek thee,	4:22
	the hope of those who cry unto thee.	4:25
	Cleanse us from our sins,	4:29
	cleanse us from every thought displeasing to thy goodness	4:32
	that now with a pure heart and a clean mind,	4:35
	with perfect love, and with calm hope.	4:39
	we may venture confidently and fearlessly to pray unto thee.	4:44
	Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, amen.	4:49
	(soft music)	4:55
	(singing faintly)	5:41
	We are a people gathered here today with broken promise,	9:15
	we are mindful of our own failures and sins,	9:19
	of the inadequacy of our own righteousness.	9:23
	And we are people called together	9:26
	by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.	9:28
	Therefore, let us make our prayer of confession now.	9:32
	Oh, holy, and merciful God,	9:56
	we confess that we have not always	10:00
	taken upon ourselves with joy, the yolk of obedience,	10:02
	nor been willing to seek and to do your perfect will.	10:08
	We have not loved you	10:13
	with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength,	10:15
	neither have we loved our our neighbors as ourselves.	10:20
	You have called us to respond	10:25
	to the need of our brothers and sisters.	10:27
	And we have passed on heeding on our way.	10:30
	In the pride of our hearts and our unwillingness to repent,	10:35
	we have turned away from the cross Christ	10:40
	and have grieved your Holy Spirit.	10:44
	Forgive us, we pray. Amen.	10:47
	If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just	10:54
	to forgive us our sins,	10:57
	and to cleanse us from all in righteousness, amen.	10:59
	(soft music)	11:09
	(singing faintly)	12:24
	From the prophet Micah,	18:31
	the fourth chapter versus five through eight,	18:32
	"For all the people's walk, each and the name of its God,	18:37
	but we will walk in the name of the Lord, our God,	18:42
	forever and ever.	18:45
	"In that day," says the Lord, "I will assemble the lame	18:48
	and gather those who have been driven away.	18:52
	And those whom I have afflicted.	18:55
	And the lame, I will make the remnant.	18:58
	And those who were cast off, a strong nation.	19:02
	And the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion	19:06
	from this time forth and forevermore.	19:09
	And you, O tower of the flock,	19:13
	hill of the daughter of Zion, to you it shall come,	19:17
	the former dominion shall come	19:22
	the kingdom of the daughter of Jerusalem.	19:25
	The gospel lesson from Matthew's gospel,	19:35
	the ninth chapter verse nine through 13.	19:37
	"As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew	19:42
	sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, 'Follow me.'	19:45
	And he rose and followed Him.	19:51
	And as he sat at table in the house,	19:54
	behold many tax collectors and sinners	19:57
	came and sat down with Jesus and His disciples.	19:59
	And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples,	20:04
	'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?'	20:09
	But when He heard it, He said,	20:14
	'Those who are well have no need of a physician,	20:17
	but those who are sick.	20:22
	Go and learn what this means.	20:25
	I desire mercy and not sacrifice.	20:28
	For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.'"	20:33
	(soft music)	20:43
	(singing faintly)	20:56
	Let us affirm our faith.	21:29
	We are not alone, we live in God's world.	21:32
	We believe in God who has created and is creating,	21:37
	who has come in the truly human Jesus,	21:43
	to reconcile and make new.	21:46
	Who works in us and others through the spirit.	21:50
	We trust God who calls us to be the church,	21:54
	to celebrate life and its fullness,	21:58
	to love and serve others,	22:02
	to seek justice and resist evil,	22:05
	to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen.	22:08
	Our judge and our hope.	22:12
	In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.	22:14
	We are not alone, thanks be to God.	22:21
-	The Lord be with you.	22:26
	Let us pray.	22:30
	O Lord, our God.	22:42
	Now art great, now art eternal,	22:46
	now art wonderful in all thy glory.	22:49
	Now see us time ever beginning and ending.	22:56
	Thou art the one who sees a thousand years as yesterday,	23:00
	which is passed.	23:04
	Thou has created all things out of nothing.	23:07
	And according to thy appointment, O God, so is our life.	23:16
	In thy creative majesty, we are made.	23:22
	In this moment, unable to repeal the 20th century,	23:27
	unable to get out of our own skins.	23:33
	And it is thou, O God, who has committed our work to us.	23:38
	We therefore would commit our cares to thee.	23:45
	We thank thee, O God, that we are thy children.	23:50
	And that thou has assured us	23:56
	that while we are intent upon thy I will,	23:57
	that will hear our prayers,	24:02
	and know our wants, and be with us.	24:06
	Oh, thou who art to God of love,	24:15
	and who has created all children,	24:19
	more and more fill us	24:22
	with that compassion for others trouble,	24:24
	which comes as we forget our own.	24:28
	With the charity of them that know their own unworthiness,	24:36
	and with the glad hope	24:42
	of those who are children of eternity.	24:43
	Encourage us, O God, in every good work,	24:47
	and help us to strive to be worthy of the name, Christian.	24:52
	But unto thee, O God,	24:58
	the beginning and the end,	24:59
	the Lord of the living the refuge of the dying,	25:01
	be thanks and praise this day and forevermore.	25:05
	And hear us, O God,	25:12
	as we together make our prayer	25:15
	in the words that our Christ has taught us to pray saying.	25:17
	Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.	25:22
	Thy kingdom come, thy will be done	25:29
	on earth as it is in heaven.	25:33
	Give us this day, our daily bread	25:36
	and us our trespasses	25:39
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	25:42
	And lead us not into temptation,	25:46
	but deliver us from evil.	25:49
	For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,	25:51
	forever and ever, amen.	25:56
-	From the reading from the gospel this morning,	26:19
	as Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew	26:23
	sitting at the tax office.	26:28
	And He said to him, "Follow me."	26:31
	And he rose and followed Him.	26:35
	"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"	26:39
	Jesus said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician,	26:45
	but those who are sick.	26:51
	I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."	26:54
	For years, this was of great comfort to me.	27:01
	My appreciation and love for this scripture	27:07
	goes all the way back to when I first learned	27:10
	to say my own prayers of confession.	27:13
	Dear Lord, I was mean to Nancy and Phil,	27:18
	and I didn't clean up my room.	27:23
	I got mad at Mother and Dad,	27:27
	and I thought out a lot of dirty thoughts today.	27:30
	Please forgive me.	27:34
	I have already forgiven Nancy, and Phil,	27:36
	and Mother, and Dad, and all the others.	27:39
	I'm sorry.	27:43
	Help me to be good, amen.	27:45
	As long as I could keep the confessions going,	27:50
	I would stay on the receiving end of,	27:54
	"I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."	27:57
	And that of course, is a deal I could not refuse.	28:02
	But it is not that easy.	28:09
	The sinners Jesus talks about here,	28:13
	are not the run-of-the-mill sinners like you and me,	28:15
	but outrageous sinners.	28:19
	The outcasts and the unclean.	28:23
	On the surface of things,	28:27
	this scripture was not written for us,	28:28
	it was used by Matthew to explain to us, to justify to us,	28:33
	the inordinate time Jesus spent with the poor,	28:39
	the unclean, and the outcasts.	28:44
	The inordinate amount of time	28:53
	Jesus spent with the poor, the unclean, and the outcasts.	28:54
	And not just Jesus, but the whole activity of God Himself	29:00
	from the beginning of recorded history.	29:06
	In choosing people to be His people,	29:10
	God looks first to the desert	29:14
	and finds a small group of wandering nomads.	29:17
	Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.	29:21
	In the calling of Israel, God chooses the smallest,	29:26
	the scruffiest of peoples, slave laborers, outcasts,	29:32
	people in a strange and alien land.	29:38
	And that at a time when there were plenty of ancient	29:43
	and wonderful cultures, just waiting to be asked.	29:47
	As someone said, if life is like a high school prom,	29:54
	God chose to worth the wallflowers.	29:58
	The prophets whose writings take up	30:04
	nearly half of the Old Testament,	30:07
	spend almost all their time	30:10
	yelling at the likes of you and me	30:11
	and comforting the poor, the really poor.	30:16
	The stepped on, the really stepped on,	30:20
	and the outcast.	30:25
	The point is that with what we're once comforting	30:31
	and reassuring words have suddenly,	30:35
	for a middle class American	30:38
	in a world filled with hungry, starving	30:40
	and really desperate people, become terrifying,	30:43
	disturbing words.	30:48
	From all outward appearances,	30:52
	aren't we the well, the righteous,	30:55
	for whom Jesus has so little time?	30:59
	Mervyn Stockwood, a Anglican priest in London,	31:09
	went to ask his bishop for permission	31:14
	to establish house churches in this parish.	31:16
	The bishop said, no.	31:20
	The only house communion in his diocese	31:23
	were to be for sick people.	31:25
	Said, Father Stockwood,	31:30
	"That's fine bishop, because in my parish, we're all sick."	31:32
	We're all sick, do you believe it?	31:40
	By triangle area standards, I may not be rich,	31:51
	but by the world's standards, I certainly am.	31:56
	We have every right to be terrified,	32:02
	disturbed by the words of Jesus.	32:05
	And not to feel that way, is I suppose,	32:09
	not to have heard a word He said.	32:12
	But in this parish, in this congregation, we're all sick.	32:18
	Sometimes I get so full of anger and ambition.	32:27
	So filled with worry and frustration.	32:31
	I know what he's talking about.	32:35
	Let me share something with you.	32:43
	When I was driving down to Georgia a couple of months ago,	32:47
	I saw one of those Norman Rockwell type billboards.	32:52
	You've seen them.	32:56
	In the front view of a a beautiful sort of modern,	32:59
	that sort of traditional church,	33:04
	stands a very handsome family.	33:07
	Norman and Noreen Normal, with their two Normal children.	33:10
	They are nicely, but not too expensively dressed.	33:16
	They looked devout, but not too devout.	33:21
	They are singing a hymn, but not too enthusiastically.	33:25
	Mr. and Mrs. Normal,	33:32
	obviously fell in love at the proper time,	33:33
	had their children at correct intervals,	33:36
	and have no serious problems in their married life.	33:39
	They can eat without gaining weight,	33:44
	drink without becoming alcoholics,	33:47
	and buy a new car without getting into serious debt.	33:50
	There they are at worship without a worry in the world.	33:55
	Blessed are the Normal. Bless it are the Normal.	34:01
	What a depressing picture of the church?	34:08
	What an awful picture of the church?	34:12
	They would bore God half to death.	34:18
	Well, if the words of Jesus	34:28
	about the well and the righteous are disturbing,	34:30
	where do we find our comfort?	34:36
	Matthew, he's our man.	34:40
	Matthew though, well healed,	34:49
	shared none of the normality of the plastic billboard.	34:50
	As a Jew, he worked for the Romans, an uneasy vocation.	34:56
	As a tax collector,	35:03
	he had understandable trouble making friends.	35:05
	And the healthy size of his income was matched	35:09
	by an equally unhealthy isolation and aloneness.	35:12
	In the gospel story, Matthew sits in his office	35:20
	doing his job.	35:24
	Jesus come along and says to Matthew,	35:28
	"Follow me. Follow me."	35:31
	Why these words to Matthew?	35:38
	Why not something else?	35:41
	Maybe because Jesus saw the lines on Matthew's face.	35:46
	The special lines that isolation or guilt	35:51
	can make on one's face.	35:55
	The lines, the scars of the misfit, the outcast.	35:58
	Anyway, Jesus says very simply, "Follow me."	36:08
	Jesus did not say, sell all you have and give to the poor.	36:15
	Matthew is wealthy, but that was not his problem.	36:22
	Jesus did not say, repent and be saved,	36:29
	though Matthew was as deep in guilt as anyone.	36:35
	Instead, Jesus spoke directly to the point	36:41
	of Matthew's most intense pain, his isolation.	36:44
	And said, "Follow me."	36:52
	And this is just where I must allow Him to speak to me.	37:00
	At the point where I feel the most pain.	37:04
	Whether it be isolation, guilt, worry, or frustration.	37:09
	In the world, we are all misfits.	37:22
	Each harboring our own special marks	37:28
	of pain and frustration.	37:30
	We know the difference	37:34
	between the person we have been called to be,	37:35
	and the person we have settled for,	37:39
	or been forced to settle for.	37:42
	In the earthly kingdom, we are all misfits,	37:48
	Matthew's our man.	37:53
	So what happened to Matthew?	37:59
	What's the end of that story?	38:03
	Does the encounter with Jesus Christ	38:06
	somehow make us all normal?	38:09
	From all I can discover,	38:14
	Matthew was a misfit before he met Jesus,	38:15
	and a misfit afterwards.	38:19
	He was never really very popular.	38:22
	In fact, throughout the rest of the New Testament	38:28
	we hear almost nothing about Matthew.	38:30
	As though he were sort of off by himself,	38:35
	whether by his choice or not.	38:39
	There was no immediate transformation.	38:42
	The gospels are right.	38:47
	Jesus did say, "Follow me.	38:49
	And not, "Hocus pocus, Presto chango."	38:53
	God does not promise us normality happiness.	39:01
	Especially that worry free happiness	39:06
	of the billboard picture.	39:08
	There is no reason to believe	39:12
	that our own special disabilities will vanish	39:13
	because of our faith in Christ.	39:19
	The Lord does promise to give us courage to face reality	39:24
	and say, this is who I am.	39:28
	Me and not someone else's idea of reality.	39:33
	He will show us	39:42
	that even with all the loneliness and frustration,	39:43
	we do have our own beauty.	39:47
	A beauty far more precious, and far more lovable	39:51
	than all the glossy magazine pictures,	39:58
	all the normality in the world.	40:02
	Matthew stands for something very special	40:09
	for honesty, reality.	40:13
	Here, there is no cheap religious hustle	40:20
	of our franchised versions of Christianity.	40:23
	Praise the Lord, and overlook the misery in world,	40:28
	or love Jesus, and everything,	40:34
	I mean, everything, will be wonderful.	40:36
	No cheap religious hustle here.	40:43
	In the strength of his relationship with Christ,	40:49
	Matthew was changed.	40:53
	Probably not in the ways Matthew had all planned out,	40:56
	but in a beautiful, far more substantial way.	41:02
	And that is the promise.	41:11
	And now unto God the Father,	41:18
	God the Son, God the Holy Ghost,	41:20
	We ascribe all might, majesty, dominion, and power,	41:23
	hence forth and forever more, amen.	41:26
	(soft music)	41:34
	(singing faintly)	42:27
	(soft music)	46:32
	(singing faintly)	48:19
	(soft music)	53:17
	(singing faintly)	53:59
-	Good Father of us all,	55:06
	we give thanks for the gift of thy grace.	55:07
	Of thy blessings, we have all received,	55:11
	and so we bring now these our gifts.	55:13
	Grant thy blessing upon them,	55:16
	and bless each act of dedication and commitment onto thee,	55:19
	and lead us to follow thee	55:24
	through Christ our Lord, amen.	55:25
	(soft music)	55:40
	(singing faintly)	56:32
	And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,	59:58
	the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,	1:00:02
	be with you all, amen.	1:00:05
	♪ Amen ♪	1:00:14
	♪ Amen ♪	1:00:20
	♪ Amen ♪	1:00:26
	♪ Amen ♪	1:00:40
	♪ Amen ♪	1:00:48
	♪ Amen ♪	1:00:58
	(upbeat music)	1:01:16

Item Info

Title:

Thomas Woodward - "For Me, Terrifying Words" (August 17, 1975)

Description:

Crotwell uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to urge empathy and identification with the figure of the Samaritan. Even if one's own life is hard, we must demand from ourselves the capacity to care for others. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: "I am convinced such identifications with people's conditions is one of the critical dimensions of our Christian community, and is the basis of all our social action."

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4vx0b48x

Date:

August 17, 1975

Speaker:

Woodward, Thomas

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Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0787
ref6774_cqu
uachapelsermaud
duke:628274
dcrau002752
ark:/87924/r4vx0b48x
b7434aae-c5ef-440e-978b-3fe64b6ca7b7

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Thomas Woodward - "For Me, Terrifying Words" (August 17, 1975)

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