Robert T. Young - "One Day's Dose Is Enough" (October 17, 1976)
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| (soft organ-pipe music) | 0:34 | |
| (fast-paced organ-pipe music) | 7:46 | |
| (choir sings) | 13:18 | |
| (fast-paced organ-pipe music) | 14:27 | |
| (choir sings) | 15:07 | |
| - | Enter not into judgment with thy servant oh Lord, | 20:01 |
| for in eyesight shall no person living be justified. | 20:06 | |
| I will arise and go my father and say, | 20:11 | |
| "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against thee, | 20:15 | |
| and I'm no more worthy to be called by son." | 20:20 | |
| Let us voice our corporate confession. | 20:24 | |
| All | This is our property that we do not belong | 20:31 |
| to each other nor serve one another. | 20:35 | |
| We each go our own way and do not care for our neighbor. | 20:39 | |
| We pray thee oh Lord, redeem us from this estrangement, | 20:45 | |
| redeem us out of this loneliness, | 20:51 | |
| deliver us from the sin that divides us. | 20:54 | |
| Join us closely in true love. | 20:58 | |
| Have mercy upon all by children. | 21:01 | |
| Lord we be believe help thou our unbelief | 21:05 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 21:10 | |
| Amen. | 21:13 | |
| Let us continue in silent confession. | 21:15 | |
| Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. | 22:04 | |
| Behold, the old has passed away and the new has come. | 22:09 | |
| All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us | 22:14 | |
| to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. | 22:18 | |
| That is God was in Christ, reconciling persons to himself, | 22:23 | |
| not counting their trespasses against them | 22:29 | |
| and entrusting to them. The message of reconciliation. | 22:32 | |
| So let us give ourselves to that life of reconciliation. | 22:37 | |
| Amen. | 22:43 | |
| (fast-paced organ music) | 23:08 | |
| ♪ Praise him our Lord ♪ | 23:21 | |
| ♪ Praise him our Lord ♪ | 23:26 | |
| ♪ Praise him our Lord ♪ | 23:28 | |
| ♪ He shall be sent to the living ♪ | 23:32 | |
| ♪ Praise ♪ | 23:39 | |
| ♪ Praise him in the love ♪ | 23:41 | |
| ♪ Praise him, praise him ♪ | 23:46 | |
| ♪ Praise all his might love ♪ | 23:48 | |
| ♪ Praise him according to his excellence praises ♪ | 23:51 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 23:55 | |
| ♪ Till the sunset ♪ | 23:59 | |
| ♪ Praise him with the suffering and harm ♪ | 24:21 | |
| ♪ Praise him with praise with suffering and harm ♪ | 24:24 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 24:28 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 24:31 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 24:34 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 24:36 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 24:38 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 24:45 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 25:15 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 25:47 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 25:51 | |
| ♪ Praise him ♪ | 25:55 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 26:01 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 26:05 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 26:08 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 26:17 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 26:27 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 26:36 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 26:45 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 26:56 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 27:06 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 27:20 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 27:30 | |
| - | Will the congregation please stand for the reading | 28:02 |
| of the gospel. | 28:05 | |
| "Therefore I tell you do not be anxious about your life, | 28:11 | |
| what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, | 28:16 | |
| nor about your body what you shall put on. | 28:20 | |
| Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing. | 28:24 | |
| Look at the birds of the air, | 28:31 | |
| they neither sew nor reap nor gather into barns. | 28:34 | |
| And yet your heavenly father feeds them. | 28:39 | |
| Are you not of more value than they? | 28:43 | |
| And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit | 28:47 | |
| to his span of life? | 28:50 | |
| And why be anxious about clothing? | 28:53 | |
| Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, | 28:57 | |
| they neither toil nor spin. | 29:01 | |
| And yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory | 29:04 | |
| was not a raid like of these. | 29:09 | |
| But if God so closed the grass of the field, | 29:13 | |
| which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, | 29:16 | |
| will not He much more cloth you, oh, men of little faith, | 29:22 | |
| Therefore do not be anxious saying, | 29:29 | |
| what shall we eat or what shall we drink? | 29:33 | |
| Or what shall we wear? | 29:38 | |
| For the Gentiles seek all these things. | 29:41 | |
| And your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. | 29:44 | |
| But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, | 29:50 | |
| and all these things shall be yours as well. | 29:55 | |
| Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow | 30:00 | |
| for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. | 30:04 | |
| Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day." | 30:08 | |
| Here ends today's reading of the scriptures. | 30:15 | |
| (fast-paced organ music) | 30:18 | |
| (choir sings) | 30:27 | |
| - | Let us affirm what we believe. | 31:02 |
| All | We believe in God who has created and is creating, | 31:05 |
| who has come in the truly human Jesus, | 31:11 | |
| to reconcile and make new, | 31:14 | |
| who works in us and others by the spirit. | 31:17 | |
| We trust God who calls us to be the church, | 31:21 | |
| to celebrate life and its fullness, | 31:26 | |
| to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, | 31:29 | |
| to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen our judge and our hope | 31:36 | |
| in life in death, in life beyond death. | 31:43 | |
| God is with us, we are not alone. | 31:48 | |
| Thanks be to God. | 31:52 | |
| The Lord be with you. | 31:54 | |
| Congregation | And with the spirit. | 31:55 |
| - | Let us pray. | 31:57 |
| Oh God, source of the light that never fades | 32:11 | |
| and of the life that never ends, | 32:16 | |
| apart from whom all is darkness and death. | 32:19 | |
| We lift our hearts to thee out of anguish | 32:24 | |
| and complacency and boredom and bewilderment. | 32:29 | |
| We ask for life. | 32:35 | |
| Deliver us from the staleness of routine. | 32:39 | |
| From the moral lethargy of the conventional wisdom. | 32:43 | |
| From the dearth of imagination | 32:48 | |
| that dares not expect anything new in our lives. | 32:51 | |
| And direct our heads and hearts to places and persons | 32:57 | |
| where the flame of life is kindled and kept bright. | 33:02 | |
| Empower us to risk painful decisions as we choose | 33:07 | |
| the ways that sustain life. | 33:12 | |
| Keep ever before us, oh God, | 33:18 | |
| that vision of the kingdom proclaimed by our Lord. | 33:21 | |
| And in all our decisions, let us be in communities | 33:25 | |
| whose allegiance is rooted in the quest for justice, | 33:30 | |
| the practice of compassion, the conviction that great dreams | 33:34 | |
| have small beginnings like mustard seed and yeast, | 33:40 | |
| like salt and the light of a candle. | 33:47 | |
| Let us be such a people in whom forgiveness | 33:52 | |
| is a clear reality. | 33:57 | |
| And a daring and expectant heart | 33:59 | |
| is a sign of our faithfulness. | 34:03 | |
| So give us eyes to see and ears to hear. | 34:07 | |
| That the presence of this kingdom in our midst may be known. | 34:11 | |
| And give us the courage and compassion to join thee, | 34:16 | |
| our risen Lord, at all the broken edges | 34:20 | |
| of this earthly life. | 34:24 | |
| Engage us fresh in the making of a new humanity, | 34:28 | |
| that we may know at every critical juncture of our life, | 34:33 | |
| our work, our study, our family, our national choices, | 34:38 | |
| the role of this nation in the world, | 34:45 | |
| that we might as a people resist the power of death over us. | 34:48 | |
| And in every instance of our lives affirm that life. | 34:54 | |
| That was and is in Christ Jesus. | 35:00 | |
| In whose name we are now bold to pray as he taught us saying | 35:04 | |
| "Our father who art in heaven, | 35:08 | |
| hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, | 35:12 | |
| thy will be done | 35:14 | |
| on earth as it is in heaven. | 35:19 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread | 35:22 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those | 35:25 | |
| who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, | 35:29 | |
| but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, | 35:34 | |
| and the power, and the glory forever." | 35:39 | |
| Amen. | 35:43 | |
| I would like to call your attention to the fact that | 35:49 | |
| at 7:00 PM tonight in the Divinity School Student Lounge, | 35:52 | |
| Dr. Shelton Smith, who is an exemplary Christian educator | 35:58 | |
| and man of great moral passion, | 36:03 | |
| will lead an open discussion | 36:08 | |
| on black power in the Carter campaign. | 36:09 | |
| That's at seven o'clock in the Divinity School Lounge. | 36:14 | |
| - | In the sermon on the Mount. | 36:35 |
| Jesus says, "Do not be anxious about your life. | 36:38 | |
| For which of you by being anxious can add | 36:46 | |
| to your span of life. | 36:49 | |
| Oh, you of little faith. | 36:53 | |
| Therefore do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat | 36:57 | |
| or what shall we drink, or what shall we put on? | 37:00 | |
| Surely your heavenly Father knows | 37:04 | |
| that you need all these things, | 37:06 | |
| but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, | 37:08 | |
| and all these things shall be yours as well." | 37:12 | |
| Therefore Jesus concludes, | 37:16 | |
| "Do not be anxious about tomorrow | 37:18 | |
| for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. | 37:21 | |
| Let the days on troubles be sufficient | 37:24 | |
| for that particular day." | 37:28 | |
| Do not be anxious. | 37:32 | |
| Do not be anxious. | 37:35 | |
| Jesus says and yet | 37:38 | |
| we as children of God and brothers | 37:42 | |
| and sisters of Jesus Christ are anxious. | 37:45 | |
| Roger Shinn of Union Theological Seminary | 37:50 | |
| in New York City says that | 37:53 | |
| "Anxiety is life's deepest personal problem." | 37:54 | |
| And so, as I thought about these words of our Lord, | 38:01 | |
| and as I tried to prepare for the sermon, I said to myself, | 38:03 | |
| Bob, what are those things that make you anxious? | 38:06 | |
| And the whole host of anxiety producing fears roll up | 38:12 | |
| and out of me. | 38:16 | |
| I was talking with a friend of mine this week | 38:19 | |
| as I was working on the sermon and he said, | 38:21 | |
| "What is the sermon about?" | 38:24 | |
| And I said, "Well, the topic one day's dose is enough." | 38:26 | |
| I'm going to try to talk about how one day's troubles | 38:30 | |
| are all that we can bear at times. | 38:33 | |
| He said, well, you know, this is only Wednesday, | 38:36 | |
| he said, you shouldn't worry about that until Sunday. | 38:39 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 38:42 | |
| But I do, just like some of you | 38:46 | |
| and perhaps all of you students, | 38:49 | |
| become anxious over midterm or over papers. | 38:53 | |
| It may be reassuring to you as it is to me to know | 38:58 | |
| that even some of the professors around this place | 39:01 | |
| become anxious at times about lectures they must give, | 39:03 | |
| lectures they must give and papers they must write. | 39:10 | |
| Some of us even become anxious | 39:15 | |
| when the field goal kicker tries trots on the field | 39:17 | |
| to kick a 57 yard field goal. | 39:21 | |
| But real anxieties for me, | 39:26 | |
| come from my fear of death, the pain, | 39:32 | |
| sickness, cancer, | 39:38 | |
| falling, failing, | 39:41 | |
| loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, | 39:45 | |
| being rejected, losing, | 39:50 | |
| darkness, night, | 39:54 | |
| lightening, storms, not succeeding, | 39:57 | |
| not having enough money, not being loved, | 40:03 | |
| not loving, not being wanted, | 40:07 | |
| not being needed. | 40:12 | |
| I'm afraid to live because to live life at its fullest | 40:14 | |
| might be more than I could stand. | 40:17 | |
| I'm afraid to die because I don't want to face | 40:20 | |
| the unknown and the unknowable. | 40:23 | |
| I'm afraid to do to be too successful | 40:25 | |
| to get more than I really think I can handle. | 40:28 | |
| I'm afraid of being a failure because | 40:31 | |
| to fail might be more than I could bear. | 40:33 | |
| I doubt honestly my friends that there | 40:37 | |
| is any ordinary human fear that we Americans have had | 40:39 | |
| that has not crossed my mind, or slept in my thoughts, | 40:44 | |
| or walked by my side or sunk deep in my soul. | 40:47 | |
| And you have probably had these same fears, some of them, | 40:52 | |
| most of them, or some similar to them. | 40:57 | |
| So let's look again at this passage, | 41:01 | |
| from the sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, | 41:03 | |
| "Oh, you of little faith." | 41:04 | |
| How in the world did Jesus know that these were people | 41:07 | |
| of little faith? | 41:10 | |
| He had just met them. | 41:11 | |
| They had been together for just a short while, | 41:12 | |
| he knew little about them and they knew little about Him. | 41:15 | |
| How then did He know that they were people of little faith? | 41:18 | |
| Well, you know, we could say that Jesus as the son of God | 41:22 | |
| was omnipotent and omniscient, | 41:25 | |
| that there is that he was all powerful and all knowing, | 41:28 | |
| and that may well be the precise situation, | 41:32 | |
| that may be exactly how he knew. | 41:34 | |
| However, I would prefer to believe that Jesus could speak | 41:36 | |
| with authority about the little faith of the disciples | 41:40 | |
| because Jesus knew human nature as it truly is. | 41:44 | |
| He knew that we all live with little faith. | 41:48 | |
| That for faith indeed is fleeting. | 41:52 | |
| That we get just a glimpse that our grip slips away | 41:54 | |
| just as quickly as it grasps. | 41:58 | |
| That we know one moment and that we know not the next. | 42:00 | |
| That we hear and then are deaf. | 42:04 | |
| That we see and then go blind. | 42:05 | |
| Jesus knew that faith for all of us comes and goes. | 42:08 | |
| Samuel H. Miller, former Dean of Harvard Divinity School | 42:16 | |
| puts it in one of his books this way. | 42:19 | |
| "Believing means that we must stand at the edge | 42:21 | |
| of uncertainty where the dark dims the sureness | 42:25 | |
| of our sight, and we must still find a solid add stone | 42:29 | |
| for one step forward. | 42:34 | |
| It means that we must do more than add things together | 42:36 | |
| in a precarious pile. | 42:39 | |
| We must find a way to fit them all together." | 42:41 | |
| We must do more than just add things together | 42:47 | |
| in a precarious pile, we must find some way to fit together. | 42:50 | |
| Jesus knows that we have little faith and yet with just | 42:54 | |
| a little faith, he says, meaning can come. | 42:58 | |
| A second thing, Victor Frankel in his book, | 43:02 | |
| "Man's Search for Meaning" quotes Niche as saying, | 43:05 | |
| "The person who has applied to live for, | 43:09 | |
| can bear with almost anyhow." | 43:13 | |
| Jesus says in this passage that the why | 43:19 | |
| is not food or clothes. | 43:22 | |
| It is not the outward and the external. | 43:24 | |
| The why is not the physical or the material. | 43:27 | |
| God knows that each of us needs food and drink and shelter. | 43:30 | |
| These are essential to sustain life, | 43:34 | |
| but the why my friends is essential to give life meaning. | 43:37 | |
| And it doesn't come from peanut butter and crackers | 43:43 | |
| or Coca-Colas, or the new vested suits, | 43:45 | |
| or the skirts that are an inch and a half below your knees. | 43:48 | |
| John Powell writes, | 43:53 | |
| "I am what I am committed to." | 43:55 | |
| This meaning comes from within and to the inner life. | 44:01 | |
| This is the kingdom of God, the righteousness, | 44:05 | |
| the rightness of life, the reality and the fullness of life, | 44:08 | |
| and it is these that we are to seek. | 44:12 | |
| But one word of caution here, | 44:15 | |
| Jesus says in this passage, it's something rather strange | 44:17 | |
| that I really don't understand, | 44:20 | |
| but He says that if we discover our why for life, | 44:21 | |
| that is if we seek first the kingdom of God | 44:24 | |
| and God's righteousness, | 44:26 | |
| then all these other things will be ours as well. | 44:28 | |
| Now, some of us may think that if we seek first | 44:31 | |
| the kingdom of God, then an abundance of things | 44:34 | |
| that is of goods and commodities will come our way. | 44:36 | |
| I don't really think so. | 44:39 | |
| It may be that some will never have even | 44:41 | |
| the essentials of life. | 44:45 | |
| Indeed, this very moment, there are millions | 44:47 | |
| of our fellow Christians on this earth | 44:49 | |
| who do not have the essentials of life. | 44:51 | |
| Seems to me that what Jesus is saying here is that | 44:55 | |
| if we seek the why, that is the kingdom of God, | 44:57 | |
| if we seek real meaning of life, | 45:00 | |
| then the whats will be seen in proper perspective. | 45:02 | |
| With a why to live, or whether we eat or drink, | 45:07 | |
| or have clothes to wear, or whether we starve, or thirsty, | 45:10 | |
| or go naked becomes secondary in importance. | 45:14 | |
| Now wait a minute, not that these matters are unimportant, | 45:16 | |
| it is just that they are in the background | 45:20 | |
| when we are seeking for real meaning in life. | 45:23 | |
| And Victor Frankel years and a German concentration camp | 45:26 | |
| during world war II, our living testimony to the fact | 45:29 | |
| that one can indeed know meaning in the midst of hunger | 45:33 | |
| and pain and deprivation and misery and death. | 45:38 | |
| A third thing. | 45:44 | |
| Anxiety is a part of the fabric of the human predicament. | 45:47 | |
| To live is to be intention. | 45:55 | |
| To live is to know anxiety. | 45:58 | |
| Anxiety is written into the book of life. | 46:01 | |
| Anxiety is carved into the sculpture, | 46:04 | |
| a sculpture of every man and every woman. | 46:07 | |
| Anxiety is real, honest, present, | 46:10 | |
| and personal for all of us, and Jesus knew this. | 46:14 | |
| Jesus did not say, seek you first the kingdom of God, | 46:19 | |
| and you will have no anxiety, no worry, no fear. | 46:24 | |
| And this is my argument with some contemporary preaching. | 46:27 | |
| No, Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God. | 46:32 | |
| And then the very next thing that He said was, | 46:38 | |
| "Do not be anxious about tomorrow | 46:40 | |
| for tomorrow will be anxious enough for itself." | 46:42 | |
| Even after you seek the kingdom of God, | 46:46 | |
| you may still be anxious tomorrow. | 46:49 | |
| In other words, yesterday's tomorrow that is today | 46:54 | |
| has all the anxiety in it that we need or can handle. | 46:57 | |
| Jesus knows that each day has its own anxieties. | 47:05 | |
| Just don't let yourself wallow in yesterday | 47:09 | |
| or be full of worry about tomorrow. | 47:12 | |
| Today has its own cares and they are enough. | 47:14 | |
| Indeed my friends, and for many of you, | 47:18 | |
| you know this only too well because of events | 47:22 | |
| of recent weeks. | 47:25 | |
| Indeed some days, one day has in it more than we seem | 47:26 | |
| to be able to bear. | 47:31 | |
| John McGuire in his little book, | 47:37 | |
| "The Dance of the Pilgrim Rights". | 47:38 | |
| The world in which we live as depicted | 47:41 | |
| by contemporary American novelists, | 47:45 | |
| and as reflected in their own titles, | 47:48 | |
| the world is lonely, strange, | 47:50 | |
| hollow, or alien. | 47:54 | |
| The hero is shipwrecked, thirsty, be set by disaster. | 47:57 | |
| And in the history of these people | 48:03 | |
| on earth comments Ignazio Silone. | 48:06 | |
| "It is still an always | 48:09 | |
| a less Good Friday." | 48:12 | |
| And for some of us it seems as if | 48:19 | |
| every day is Good Friday, | 48:24 | |
| lonely, strange, desperate, | 48:33 | |
| separated, forgotten, weary. | 48:36 | |
| And we wonder where to turn or what to do. | 48:40 | |
| Like Richard in Christopher Fry "The dark is Light Enough", | 48:44 | |
| As the countess speaks. | 48:49 | |
| Richard sometimes reminds me of an unhappy gentleman | 48:53 | |
| who comes to the shore of a January sea, | 48:59 | |
| heroically strips to swim and then seems powerless | 49:03 | |
| to advance or to retire, | 49:08 | |
| either to take the shock of the water or to immerse himself | 49:11 | |
| again in his warm clothes. | 49:15 | |
| And so stands cursing the sea, | 49:18 | |
| the air, the season, | 49:23 | |
| anything except himself as blue as a plucked goose. | 49:26 | |
| It would be very well if he would one day plunge | 49:33 | |
| or dress himself again. | 49:39 | |
| We do stand very often at the edge | 49:45 | |
| of a frozen ICC called the world. | 49:48 | |
| We know not whether to take the plunge, the risk, | 49:52 | |
| or whether to dress ourselves and settle down again. | 49:55 | |
| All of this is simply to say that Jesus saw anxiety | 50:02 | |
| as part and parcel of our living, and so do we. | 50:06 | |
| To live is to know anxiety, | 50:11 | |
| one day's dose at a time. | 50:14 | |
| Indeed, one day's dose is enough. | 50:18 | |
| And now this word, | 50:25 | |
| God is in the midst of our anxiety. | 50:27 | |
| This is the real message that Jesus is trying to get us | 50:34 | |
| to understand for the other side of fear is faith, | 50:38 | |
| and the other side of doubt is assurance. | 50:43 | |
| The side of despair is hope, and the other side of anxiety | 50:47 | |
| is peace and calm within oneself. | 50:52 | |
| Now mind you, I'm not talking about two sides of a curtain, | 50:56 | |
| or two sides of a coin, or two sides of a wall. | 50:59 | |
| If this were true, then our experiences | 51:02 | |
| such as I've just mentioned, would be divided. | 51:04 | |
| They would really have no connection with each other, | 51:07 | |
| but I'm really talking about two sides of a person, | 51:09 | |
| two dimensions of a person, two parts of a person, | 51:12 | |
| two kinds of experiences of any person, | 51:16 | |
| or there is always the one. | 51:19 | |
| The one person who feels and knows fear and faith, | 51:22 | |
| doubt and assurance, anxiety and peace, despair and hope. | 51:27 | |
| And God is in the person. | 51:33 | |
| God is in all of these experiences. | 51:38 | |
| I believe that God is in the fear, the anxiety, | 51:41 | |
| and the doubt, and the despair, | 51:44 | |
| just as surely as God is in the faith, and the assurance, | 51:45 | |
| and the peace, and the hope. | 51:48 | |
| But how often do we forget that? | 51:52 | |
| We think that our Lord likes us to use a colloquial phrase | 51:55 | |
| or is with us or cares about us or knows us or accepts us | 51:58 | |
| or comes to us just when we are good and faithful | 52:03 | |
| and loving, and whole and calm and at peace. | 52:06 | |
| And I say, that's blasphemous. | 52:08 | |
| I have come not to call the righteous but sinners | 52:13 | |
| to repentance, the well don't have any need of a doctor, | 52:16 | |
| it is the sick who need a physician. | 52:20 | |
| I have come to seek and to save the loss, | 52:22 | |
| to lift the broken hearted, to set the prisoner free, | 52:24 | |
| to release the captive, to strengthen the oppressed, | 52:27 | |
| not come to me all who are well and whole and strong, | 52:30 | |
| but come to me all who labor and are heavy laden. | 52:34 | |
| Thus, if you and I are sinner, if you and I are not well, | 52:38 | |
| if you and I have anxiety, if you and I are broken hearted, | 52:42 | |
| if you and I are in prison, | 52:47 | |
| any kind of prison that keeps us closed in, | 52:48 | |
| if you and I are captive or are oppressed or are burdened, | 52:51 | |
| then God in Christ has come, is come for you and for me. | 52:55 | |
| God is in the anxiety because God is in the midst of us. | 53:03 | |
| God is in life. | 53:07 | |
| This is what incarnation is all about. | 53:09 | |
| That God came in all the divine fullness to be with us | 53:12 | |
| in all of our living. | 53:16 | |
| This is what crucifixion is all about. | 53:18 | |
| That there are death filling moments of anxiety and fear | 53:20 | |
| and despair for each of us and God in Christ knows them | 53:24 | |
| and has been there. | 53:28 | |
| This also is what resurrection is all about. | 53:29 | |
| That God comes to us in any death moment, fear moment, | 53:32 | |
| despair moment, and brings us to life. | 53:35 | |
| This is what it is to know Jesus the Christ. | 53:40 | |
| To know the one who was fully human, fully divine, | 53:44 | |
| to know Christ as the one who came to fulfill us, | 53:46 | |
| to make us whole, to understand, to accept us, | 53:49 | |
| to be with us, to love us just as we are, anxieties and all. | 53:52 | |
| Albert Schweitzer concludes his great book, | 53:58 | |
| the "Quest of the Historical Jesus". | 54:02 | |
| That some of the most beautiful, powerful, poignant, poetic, | 54:05 | |
| personal words that have ever been written | 54:09 | |
| about the Christian faith, he writes, | 54:12 | |
| "The Christ comes to us | 54:16 | |
| as one unknown, | 54:20 | |
| Without a name as of old by the Lakeside. | 54:23 | |
| Christ came to those who knew and not. | 54:30 | |
| And Christ speaks to us the same word "follow thou me." | 54:34 | |
| And Christ sets us to tasks | 54:42 | |
| which he has to fulfill for our time. | 54:44 | |
| He commands, | 54:48 | |
| "And to those who obey Him, | 54:52 | |
| Whether they be wise or simple, | 54:56 | |
| He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, | 55:00 | |
| the sufferings, which they shall pass through | 55:05 | |
| in his fellowship. | 55:09 | |
| And as in an inevitable mystery, | 55:11 | |
| they shall learn In their own experience | 55:17 | |
| who the Christ is." | 55:22 | |
| So my friends In the midst of life, | 55:28 | |
| In the midst of anxiety, often so full that one day | 55:33 | |
| has more than enough. | 55:38 | |
| In the midst of our very present moment of personal need | 55:41 | |
| we shall know, | 55:46 | |
| through this ineffable mystery, | 55:49 | |
| who the Lord Jesus Christ is, | 55:53 | |
| in the real and in the now. | 55:59 | |
| Do not be anxious for the tomorrow, | 56:04 | |
| For tomorrow will be anxious for itself. | 56:08 | |
| Let the days own troubles | 56:13 | |
| be sufficient for that day. | 56:18 | |
| And may the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ | 56:23 | |
| be with you. | 56:29 | |
| Amen. | 56:34 | |
| (soft organ-pipe music) | 56:46 | |
| (choir sings) | 57:14 | |
| (soft organ-pipe music) | 59:52 | |
| (choir sings) | 1:02:11 | |
| - | The naked cloth, the prisoners released, | 1:06:29 |
| and the strangers be friends, Amen. | 1:06:33 | |
| (soft organ-pipe music) | 1:06:40 | |
| (choir sings) | 1:07:23 | |
| - | Oh Lord, we besiege thee mercifully to receive | 1:11:06 |
| the prayers of thy people who call upon thee. | 1:11:10 | |
| And grant that they may both perceive | 1:11:14 | |
| and know what things they ought to do. | 1:11:17 | |
| And also may have grace and power faithfully | 1:11:20 | |
| to fulfill the same through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 1:11:24 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 1:11:36 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 1:11:44 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 1:11:54 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 1:12:10 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 1:12:22 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 1:12:39 | |
| (bell chimes) | 1:13:00 | |
| (fast-paced organ pipe music) | 1:13:21 |
