Lloyd R. Bailey - "Remember! Remember!" (February 22, 1976)

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	♪ At his feet the six-winged seraph ♪	0:10
	♪ Cherubim, with sleepless eye ♪	0:17
	♪ Veil their faces to the presence ♪	0:25
	♪ As with ceaseless voice they cry ♪	0:32
	♪ Alleluia, Alleluia ♪	0:40
	♪ Alleluia, Lord, most high ♪	0:50
	(hymnal organ music)	1:05
	(choral music)	1:46
	♪ Amen ♪	5:22
Minister 1	God has promised that when we confess,	5:41
	we will be forgiven.	5:46
	In returning and rest,	5:48
	we will be made whole.	5:51
	In quietness and confidence,	5:54
	we shall find our strength.	5:58
	With this assurance,	6:02
	let us make our corporate confession.	6:04
	Let us pray.	6:07
All	Oh Lord, our God.	6:10
	We remember your word	6:12
	that we should love you with all our heart	6:15
	and with all our soul,	6:18
	and with all our mind.	6:21
	We confess that we have been halfhearted	6:23
	in our commitment to you.	6:27
	We remember your word,	6:30
	"Let justice roll down like water	6:32
	and righteousness like an ever flowing stream."	6:36
	We confess that our lives and institutions	6:40
	are not always just and righteous.	6:45
Minister 1	And now,	6:49
	let us each make our personal confession	6:50
	in the silence of this holy place.	6:53
	Hear these, our prayers, oh Lord.	7:13
	Amen.	7:17
	Accept and believe the power and the promise of God's word	7:19
	that through grace and love,	7:24
	we will be forgiven	7:27
	and we'll be given permission and power	7:29
	to begin life anew.	7:33
	Live boldly from this day forward,	7:36
	rejoicing in God's all encompassing forgiveness	7:39
	and sustaining law.	7:44
	Amen.	7:47
	(hymnal organ music)	7:50
	(choral music)	8:24
Lector	Our scripture this morning,	13:03
	is from the book of Numbers,	13:04
	the 15th chapter.	13:05
	"The Lord said to Moses,	13:09
	'Speak to the people of Israel and bid them to make tassels	13:10
	on the corners of their garments	13:14
	throughout their generations.	13:16
	And to put upon the tassel of each corner,	13:18
	a cord of blue.	13:20
	And it shall be to you a tassel to look upon	13:22
	and remember all the commandments of the Lord,	13:25
	to do them.	13:28
	Not to follow after your own heart	13:29
	and your own eyes,	13:32
	which you are inclined to go after wantonly.	13:33
	So you shall remember and do all my commandments,	13:36
	and be wholly to your God.	13:39
	I am the Lord, your God,	13:42
	who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God.	13:44
	I am the Lord, your God.'"	13:48
	Here ends the reading of the word.	13:52
	(hymnal organ music)	13:54
	(choral music)	14:03
Minister 1	Let us with one voice,	14:41
	make our affirmation of faith.	14:42
All	We are not alone.	14:46
	We live in God's world.	14:49
	We believe in God who has created and is creating,	14:51
	who has come in the truly human Jesus	14:57
	to reconcile and make me,	15:01
	who works in us and others through the spirit.	15:04
	We trust God	15:09
	who calls us to be the church	15:11
	to celebrate life and its fullness,	15:14
	to love and serve others,	15:18
	to seek justice and resist evil,	15:20
	to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,	15:24
	our judge and our hope.	15:28
	In life, in death,	15:31
	in life beyond death.	15:34
Minister 1	We are not-	15:36
People	God is with us.
All	We are not alone.	15:38
	Thanks be to God.	15:41
Minister 1	The Lord be with you.	15:43
People	And with your spirit.	15:46
Minister 1	Let us pray.	15:48
	Oh, holy God.	15:57
	We praise your name.	15:59
	Our thoughts cannot encompass you.	16:02
	Yet, you make the universe your dwelling place.	16:05
	And you make us your people.	16:09
	We cannot measure or imagine the depth of your wisdom,	16:13
	yet your wisdom is friendly to us	16:19
	and teaches us to call each other brother and sister.	16:23
	And to know you as very personal and caring.	16:27
	Your spirit is more subtle than breadth or wind.	16:33
	We do not know where it comes from or where it goes,	16:38
	but it does penetrate our human hearts.	16:43
	And though we begin as strangers,	16:47
	your spirit unites us,	16:51
	and we come to love and understand each other	16:54
	in deeper and richer ways.	16:57
	You are close to us,	17:02
	God of strength.	17:05
	You are nearby,	17:07
	God of mystery.	17:09
	You do not want us to find our meaning in this world,	17:14
	nor do you want us to separate ourselves	17:18
	out of this world.	17:22
	You tell us to love you.	17:24
	But the only face we see that belongs to you,	17:27
	is the face of our brothers and sisters.	17:30
	We are the hesitant bounds of your light,	17:35
	the fragile witnesses to your life.	17:39
	Help our faith to grow	17:43
	so that whatever is in store for us,	17:47
	whether good times or bad,	17:51
	these events may be filled with your love and your truth.	17:54
	Hear us now,	18:02
	as we pray for those who need our love and care,	18:03
	and prayers,	18:08
	for those who are still suffering	18:11
	from the destruction of earthquakes,	18:13
	or war, or terrors or oppression.	18:16
	Open our eyes and hearts to respond to their need	18:22
	and the need of others	18:26
	whose suffer is greatly but anonymously.	18:28
	For those who are hungry,	18:34
	open our hearts and our hands,	18:37
	that we may respond to their immediate need.	18:40
	Use our minds and wills	18:44
	to create a world whose resources can feed all people.	18:48
	For those who are sick in heart and mind and body,	18:55
	use our hands, our voices, our skills	19:01
	to be healing agents of your grace.	19:06
	And now hear us, oh Lord,	19:10
	as we lift for your love and care,	19:13
	persons for whom our heart at this time is very heavy.	19:16
	And hear us as we pray the prayer Jesus has taught us.	19:42
All	Our father who art in heaven,	19:48
	hallowed be thy name.	19:52
	Thy kingdom come,	19:55
	thy will be done	19:57
	on earth as it is in heaven.	19:59
	Give us this day our daily bread.	20:03
	And forgive us our trespasses,	20:06
	as forgive those who trespass against us.	20:09
	And lead us not into temptation,	20:13
	but deliver us from evil.	20:16
	For thine is the kingdom,	20:19
	and the power and the glory,	20:21
	for ever and ever.	20:25
	Amen	20:27
Minister	I'd like to ask you to note, particularly,	20:30
	two announcements of coming events	20:32
	that you find in the bulletin.	20:35
	First is the play, "The Sanctuary",	20:36
	which will be produced in this chapel	20:39
	on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.	20:42
	I have read the script	20:45
	and I have seen it in rehearsal.	20:47
	And I will say to you,	20:50
	"It is worth your time."	20:51
	God speaks to us in the ancient word	20:54
	and the contemporary word.	20:57
	This play is a part of our total ministry.	21:00
	You will benefit by sharing in it.	21:04
	And the second announcement is	21:09
	that I'll invite you to worship with us	21:11
	on Thursday evening at 06:30	21:14
	in the Memorial Chapel.	21:17
	It's the service of worship for all persons.	21:20
	And Dr. Herb Edwards,	21:22
	who is the professor of Black Church Studies	21:24
	in the Divinity School	21:26
	and preaches every Sunday in a local church,	21:28
	will speak to us.	21:31
	This will be an opportunity for you to hear a person	21:32
	that is worth hearing.	21:36
	Again, a part of our total ministry.	21:38
	Welcome to our pulpit.	21:42
	We listen for your word, Lord.	21:43
Minister 2	Admittedly,	21:58
	the text for the morning is a most unusual one.	21:59
	It is the passage from the book of Numbers	22:03
	about wearing tassels or fringes	22:04
	on the edges of our garments.	22:07
	So usual is it	22:10
	that perhaps many of you will not even have been aware	22:11
	that such advice was contained anywhere in the Bible.	22:13
	And almost certainly, you will never have heard a sermon,	22:17
	based upon this text.	22:20
	This is likely a first in the history of the chapel.	22:22
	I must exclude, of course, Mr. Estes,	22:26
	who is the lector of the morning.	22:28
	His wife has written the paper for me on this text	22:30
	and has preached from it	22:32
	on at least four occasions.	22:33
	And yet for all its strangeness,	22:36
	for all its seeming irrelevance,	22:38
	I begin with a basic assumption about it	22:41
	and with an assumption about you.	22:43
	Concerning the text,	22:47
	my assumption is this,	22:48
	that it has not come down to us by accident.	22:50
	It is not some curious note on Israelite fashion,	22:55
	which might have been abandoned somewhere along the way.	22:58
	Rather it has come to us as the result of a crisis	23:02
	in the history of our community.	23:05
	At some point, yet to be discussed,	23:08
	its advice met the needs of our spiritual ancestors	23:11
	in a way that no other text could.	23:14
	It supplied an answer to two questions	23:18
	that every one of us must ask ourselves.	23:20
	And which every religious community,	23:24
	must ask themselves.	23:26
	First, "Who am I?"	23:28
	And second, in the present difficult circumstances,	23:31
	"How can I remember who I am?"	23:34
	That is, this text is an essential part	23:38
	of the community's story.	23:41
	It belongs to her identity forming	23:43
	and identity sustaining narrative.	23:45
	And because this text had the power	23:49
	to inform and to sustain,	23:51
	it was repeated and handed down	23:53
	and has eventually been entrusted to us.	23:56
	Thus, it has been tested in the crucible of history	24:00
	and approved by the succeeding generations.	24:02
	Shall we this morning dare say therefore	24:06
	that it is irrelevant in the present	24:09
	and has nothing to say to us.	24:11
	And now for my second assumption,	24:15
	the one about you,	24:17
	and it is this,	24:18
	that your very presence here is an indication	24:20
	of your willingness to hear this text attentively.	24:23
	May I dare say	24:28
	that it is a witness to your willingness to obey it.	24:29
	For those who identify themselves	24:34
	with the church or the synagogue,	24:36
	the scriptures are authority,	24:37
	however one may identify and define that nebulous term.	24:40
	This means that we are not free	24:45
	to ignore this text or any text,	24:47
	for that matter.	24:49
	We are not free to say that this is merely Old Testament	24:50
	as if that were not scripture.	24:53
	What we are free to do is to listen to this text carefully,	24:56
	to revere the collected wisdom	25:00
	of those who have handed it down to us.	25:02
	And to wrestle with its meaning then,	25:06
	and its meaning now.	25:08
	If these two basic assumptions may be granted,	25:12
	I turn now to the basic question,	25:14
	"What was the intent of this text	25:17
	and what possible importance has it for us?"	25:21
	Let us be clear that the passage is not basically	25:26
	about an item of dress.	25:28
	Its concern is with something far more profound	25:31
	and more pervasive than that.	25:34
	It would be a serious mistake, therefore,	25:37
	to literalize this text	25:39
	and then conclude that fringes on the edges of garments,	25:42
	are now out of fashion	25:44
	and we are off the hook.	25:45
	Christians in particular have been guilty of this	25:48
	for they often regard the text as legalistic and antiquated.	25:51
	It is perhaps from the most desperate moment	25:57
	in all of Israel's history	25:59
	that this text has come to us.	26:00
	It is from the time of the Babylonian exile	26:03
	in the 6th century BC.	26:05
	A time when all of those traditional reminders of identity,	26:08
	have been swept away,	26:11
	all of those tangible objects and customs,	26:13
	which tell us who we are,	26:16
	have been destroyed.	26:18
	The government has been abolished.	26:20
	The temple has been reduced to rubble.	26:23
	The economy is wrecked.	26:26
	And thousands of our neighbors have been taken away	26:28
	to a concentration camp,	26:30
	hundreds of miles away in Babylonia.	26:34
	The question asked of the prophet, Ezekiel,	26:38
	must've been a common one.	26:39
	"How can we live?"	26:42
	Or as the psalmist puts it,	26:45
	"How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"	26:46
	It would have been easy under the circumstances	26:50
	for the community to lose its vision,	26:52
	to surrender its sense of special purpose	26:55
	and to be assimilated to the culture of its captors.	26:58
	And if this did not happen,	27:02
	and it did not,	27:03
	it must've been in some measure	27:05
	because of the imaginative	27:06
	and profound religious leadership.	27:07
	And what they proposed was	27:11
	that the old reminders of identity,	27:12
	such things as land and King and temple,	27:14
	be replaced with other reminders,	27:18
	which are more individual and less destructible.	27:20
	For example, people in the area had been wearing tassels	27:25
	on the edges of their garments	27:27
	for generations and centuries.	27:29
	Their purpose was largely decorative,	27:31
	but now a new explanation for these tassels is given,	27:35
	indeed, they are given a religious dimension.	27:38
	They are to serve as a constant reminder to the wearer	27:42
	that he is not free to do as he pleases,	27:45
	not free to accept the customs and the attitudes	27:48
	of the new culture in which he finds himself.	27:51
	He may dwell in a strange land,	27:54
	but his basic identity must and can remain unchanged.	27:56
	The necessity for reminders then and now,	28:03
	is even illustrated in the way our text is arranged.	28:06
	Our spiritual ancestors have placed together,	28:11
	three unrelated stories.	28:13
	First, the people are encouraged to remember	28:17
	that God has chosen them for a special purpose	28:19
	and that they're to obey and keep values and norms.	28:23
	But the text confesses that lapses of memory are likely,	28:27
	given human nature.	28:30
	Then there is the story used to illustrate this fact	28:33
	of a man who gathers wood for a fire on the Sabbath day.	28:36
	And then last of all,	28:40
	comes the strange text of the morning	28:41
	about tassels on the edges of our garments.	28:42
	It's concern is not merely that the Sabbath be remembered,	28:47
	but that all of life come under scrutiny.	28:49
	The basic concern is not dress as an end in itself,	28:53
	but the creation of a mentality,	28:56
	the preservation of an identity,	28:59
	a commitment,	29:02
	a way of life.	29:03
	So much for what the text might have meant.	29:06
	And now we come to the difficult question.	29:08
	And this is the one at which sermons easily go astray.	29:12
	And it is this,	29:15
	"What does the text mean for the believing community now?"	29:17
	And here also, I begin with an assumption and it is this,	29:23
	that the identity crisis of the ancient Israelites	29:28
	was not unique to them.	29:30
	The difficulty of remembering who we are	29:33
	transcends all time and place.	29:36
	The rabbis at the time of the new Testament,	29:41
	make this abundantly clear.	29:43
	They are puzzled about the text	29:46
	because it says,	29:47
	that the corner tassel must have a blue thread.	29:48
	They do not know why.	29:51
	We do not know why.	29:53
	It has long been forgotten.	29:54
	It may have had some magical purpose.	29:57
	But the rabbis see in this text an inhuman nature,	30:01
	a possibility for the preservation of identity.	30:05
	So they will reinterpret it now	30:08
	and give it a religious dimension.	30:09
	Why is it blue?	30:11
	Because blue is the color of the sky.	30:13
	And the sky reminds us of God.	30:17
	And hence we remember what we owe him.	30:20
	And are moved to obey out of gratitude.	30:23
	The problem of remembering who we are is also attested	30:27
	in early Christianity.	30:30
	And I suspect that it surfaces	30:32
	in the lives of contemporary questions,	30:33
	and contemporary people as well.	30:35
	It does in my life	30:38
	and I assume that about you,	30:39
	that is, our text has endured over the generations,	30:42
	simply because it recognizes a perennial human condition.	30:45
	And because it proposes a workable solution.	30:50
	Our problem is not so much	30:55
	that we deliberately will to disobey.	30:56
	It is not that we voluntarily renounced the values	31:00
	of the church or the synagogue.	31:02
	It is rather that we lack concrete reminders.	31:05
	Sitting here in this sanctuary with its stained glass,	31:09
	with its music,	31:12
	with its liturgy,	31:13
	in our Sunday dress,	31:14
	our identity is indeed easy to recall.	31:16
	But tomorrow it will be another story.	31:20
	We will be in another building	31:23
	with other persons,	31:25
	surrounded by different pressures.	31:26
	And it will be easy to forget	31:29
	and to become a reflection	31:31
	of the values of the culture around us.	31:32
	Let me give you two illustrations	31:36
	of how I forget my identity	31:37
	and perhaps how you forget yours.	31:39
	If you do not like these impressions of mine,	31:42
	please do not be bothered.	31:44
	I'm sure you can think of plenty of illustrations	31:45
	of your own.	31:48
	You have your own failings as I have mine.	31:50
	The first is this,	31:54
	a few years ago,	31:56
	the adults of this country,	31:57
	most of them nominally Christian,	31:59
	were faced with the task of electing a new president.	32:02
	And upon this choice rested in some measure,	32:06
	the entire tone of government,	32:09
	the direction in which the Supreme court would move	32:11
	through new appointments,	32:14
	the availability of aid for the hungry,	32:16
	jobs for the unemployed,	32:18
	safer products for the consumer,	32:20
	the list could go on and on.	32:23
	It may be argued at least in retrospect,	32:26
	that the values of the church were largely ignored	32:28
	by its voting members.	32:31
	We rejected a man who had grown up in a Methodist parsonage	32:35
	and who had demonstrated his loyalty to the church	32:39
	in many of his legislative decisions.	32:41
	Were we and are we conscious,	32:44
	of who we are?	32:49
	The personal story is relatively minor in consequence,	32:53
	but nonetheless painful for me to remember.	32:55
	While on my way to squander some money	32:59
	on a useless entertainment,	33:01
	I was approached by a man	33:04
	on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee.	33:05
	He was very rumpled and apparently hungry,	33:08
	and desired a small handout.	33:11
	But I had learned from hard experience in New York City	33:14
	that this can be a setup for a robbery,	33:17
	and so I gave the man a wide berth,	33:19
	much to his despairing expression	33:22
	and went merrily on my way to squander money,	33:25
	more money perhaps than he would have spent in a week.	33:27
	I simply had forgotten who I was.	33:32
	And the problem is	33:36
	that I experience many such failures every day of my life.	33:37
	The sad thing is that the Church is moving away	33:45
	from insisting upon tangible reminders	33:47
	that would help us remember.	33:50
	For example, the Roman Catholic Church for a long time,	33:53
	prescribed a special diet for Friday.	33:56
	But then, unfortunately, abandoned the practice.	34:00
	Protestants on the other hand,	34:05
	tend to frown upon such things,	34:06
	thinking themselves too mature to need them,	34:08
	but it is they who have the greatest identity crisis of all.	34:11
	The text for the morning calls upon me to remember	34:17
	what God has done for me and of my resultant obligations.	34:20
	But more than this,	34:26
	it points to the necessity for tangible reminders	34:27
	throughout every waking hour.	34:30
	Whether they be tassels on the edge of my garments	34:33
	or some other system that I may devise,	34:36
	is relatively unimportant.	34:38
	What is important for me and for you is the conviction	34:41
	that without them,	34:45
	I and you will betray the church at every step.	34:47
	We need repeatedly to be asked, "Who are you?	34:52
	Who are you?	34:58
	And who am I?"	35:01
	My friends, this text has challenged,	35:05
	and directed,	35:07
	and preserved our community now for 2,500 years.	35:08
	May it be an occasion for reflection	35:15
	and a blessing for you,	35:17
	as it has been for all those generations,	35:19
	who in their wisdom,	35:21
	preserved it for us.	35:22
	And so may we learn to remember.	35:26
	Remember.	35:30
	That is my prayer for you.	35:33
	And the prayer for me.	35:37
	Amen.	35:40
	(hymnal organ music)	35:41
	(choral music)	36:05
	(hymnal organ music)	39:03
	(choral music)	40:49
	(hymnal organ music)	42:29
	(choral music)	42:35
	(hymnal organ music)	43:11
	(choral music)	43:16
	(hymnal organ music)	43:57
	(choral music)	44:07
	(hymnal organ music)	44:55
	(choral music)	45:00
	(hymnal organ music)	46:19
	(choral music)	46:30
	(hymnal organ music)	47:26
	(hymnal organ music)	48:02
	(choral music)	48:21
Minister 1	God of justice and God of law,	49:30
	receive this offering which we bring to you.	49:34
	May these gifts be symbols of a consecration,	49:38
	which knows no limit,	49:42
	which holds nothing back from you who desire	49:45
	that all of your children may have fullness of life.	49:49
	All this, we pray, in the spirit of Jesus, the Christ.	49:55
	Amen.	50:01
	(hymnal organ music)	50:03
	(choral music)	50:47
	The Lord bless you and keep you.	53:09
	The Lord be gracious to you.	53:13
	The Lord's countenance be upon you	53:16
	and give you peace this day and every day.	53:18
	♪ Amen ♪	53:27
	♪ Amen ♪	53:35
	♪ Amen ♪	53:46
	♪ Amen ♪	54:01
	♪ Amen ♪	54:12
	♪ Amen ♪	54:27
	(bell tolling)	54:48
	(bell tolling)	54:52
	(bell tolling)	54:56
	(hymnal organ music)	55:07

Item Info

Title:

Lloyd R. Bailey - "Remember! Remember!" (February 22, 1976)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4js9n895

Date:

February 22, 1976

Speaker:

Bailey, Lloyd R.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0820
ref6840_m1e
uachapelsermaud
duke:628339
dcrau002780
ark:/87924/r4js9n895
8bd9f380-25c0-49b2-abd5-71048e815d2c

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

Related Resources:

See below

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

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Lloyd R. Bailey - "Remember! Remember!" (February 22, 1976)

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