David A. Hubbard - "Righteousness: Right or Wrong?" (March 27, 1977)
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| Announcer | Duke University double service of worship | 0:04 |
| Passion Sunday, fifth Sunday in Lent, March 27th, 1977. | 0:07 | |
| (gentle organ music) | 0:23 | |
| (pensive organ music) | 3:15 | |
| (light airy organ music) | 6:12 | |
| (soft organ music) | 9:50 | |
| ♪ Beautiful Savior, Lord of the nations ♪ | 17:48 | |
| ♪ Son of God and Son of Man ♪ | 18:03 | |
| ♪ Glory and honor, praise, adoration ♪ | 18:17 | |
| ♪ Now and forevermore be Thine ♪ | 18:30 | |
| ♪ Now and forevermore be Thine ♪ | 18:42 | |
| (bright organ music) | 19:06 | |
| (choir vocalizing) | 19:44 | |
| - | We gathered here today to celebrate, | 23:32 |
| to celebrate this holy season of Lent | 23:36 | |
| when the days begin to lengthen | 23:39 | |
| and new light dawns anew upon us all. | 23:41 | |
| We're here to celebrate the Word become flesh, | 23:47 | |
| to be reminded of God's eternal and ever present grace, | 23:52 | |
| to celebrate the goodness of worship | 23:58 | |
| with friends and family and neighbors. | 24:00 | |
| Let us truly celebrate in word and in spirit. | 24:05 | |
| Therefore in God's presence, we lift our hearts | 24:13 | |
| and our spirits and let us now bow our heads | 24:16 | |
| and join our voices to confess our sin | 24:20 | |
| and our need of forgiveness and new strength. | 24:23 | |
| Let us pray together. | 24:27 | |
| Have mercy upon us, O God, according to Thy loving-kindness, | 24:31 | |
| According to the multitude of thy tender mercies | 24:37 | |
| blot out our transgressions. | 24:41 | |
| Wash us thoroughly from our iniquities, | 24:44 | |
| and cleanse us from our sins. | 24:47 | |
| For we acknowledge our transgressions; | 24:51 | |
| and our sin is ever before us. | 24:54 | |
| Create in us clean hearts, O God; | 24:57 | |
| and renew a right spirit within us | 25:01 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 25:04 | |
| Amen. | 25:07 | |
| With these words of corporate confession | 25:38 | |
| and with our words of personal confession, | 25:41 | |
| let us hear now this word of assurance | 25:45 | |
| the Lord of life has said, "I have heard you. | 25:48 | |
| Your brokenness is made whole. Your weakness is strength." | 25:54 | |
| Open the door to your heart and the Lord of Life | 26:01 | |
| shall surely come in. | 26:04 | |
| By the grace of God, my friends, we are accepted. | 26:08 | |
| Let us open the door to our future. | 26:15 | |
| Let us receive now the power and love | 26:18 | |
| and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus Christ. | 26:22 | |
| Amen. | 26:27 | |
| (gentle organ music) | 26:31 | |
| (choir sings in foreign language) | 26:50 | |
| (choir sings in foreign language) | 28:03 | |
| - | Hear the Word of God from James 1:19-27. | 30:45 |
| "Know this, my beloved brethren. | 30:51 | |
| Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, | 30:54 | |
| slow to anger, | 30:58 | |
| for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. | 31:00 | |
| Therefore put away all filthiness | 31:05 | |
| and rank growth of wickedness | 31:08 | |
| and receive with meekness the implanted word, | 31:10 | |
| which is able to save your souls. | 31:13 | |
| But be doers of the word, | 31:17 | |
| and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. | 31:18 | |
| For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, | 31:23 | |
| he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; | 31:28 | |
| for he observes himself and goes away | 31:33 | |
| and at once forgets what he was like. | 31:36 | |
| But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, | 31:40 | |
| and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets | 31:44 | |
| but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. | 31:49 | |
| If any one thinks he is religious, | 31:54 | |
| and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, | 31:57 | |
| this man's religion is vain. | 32:02 | |
| Religion that is pure and undefiled | 32:05 | |
| before God and the Father is this: | 32:08 | |
| to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, | 32:11 | |
| and to keep oneself unstained from the world." | 32:15 | |
| Here ends the reading of the word of God. | 32:19 | |
| (bright organ music) | 32:22 | |
| (choir singing indistinctly) | 32:32 | |
| ♪ Amen, amen ♪ | 32:57 | |
| - | Let us affirm what we believe. | 33:10 |
| We believe in God: who has created and is creating, | 33:13 | |
| who has come into truly human Jesus | 33:18 | |
| to reconcile and make new, | 33:22 | |
| who works in us and others by the spirit. | 33:25 | |
| We trust God who calls us to be the church, | 33:29 | |
| to celebrate life in its fullness, | 33:34 | |
| to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, | 33:37 | |
| to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen, | 33:43 | |
| our judge and our hope, | 33:47 | |
| in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. | 33:50 | |
| We are not alone. Thanks be to God. | 33:57 | |
| The Lord be with you. | 34:03 | |
| - | And with your spirit. | 34:05 |
| - | Let us pray. | 34:07 |
| O God receive us now as children of Yours | 34:18 | |
| into Your presence once again. | 34:23 | |
| We come surely one by one, | 34:29 | |
| but we come also with an awareness | 34:31 | |
| that we do belong to one another and we do belong to You. | 34:33 | |
| We thank you, O God, for this holy season, | 34:42 | |
| when we are reminded again of Your amazing love for us | 34:47 | |
| and that while we were yet sinners, were and are, | 34:50 | |
| Christ died for us. | 34:56 | |
| We give thanks particularly, O God, | 35:02 | |
| for the beauty of springtime on the Duke campus, | 35:04 | |
| its flowers and trees and shrubs and grass | 35:09 | |
| burst forth with new life, | 35:12 | |
| and help us at times such as this, O God, | 35:16 | |
| not to take these simple beauties for granted, | 35:19 | |
| but to rejoice and give thanks | 35:24 | |
| for the fullness of life, which is ours. | 35:27 | |
| O God, we offer now our prayers of intercession | 35:33 | |
| for homes and families and friends and those who love us, | 35:38 | |
| for those who are lonely and forgotten, | 35:46 | |
| for those who suffer injustice, | 35:50 | |
| for those who have no work | 35:53 | |
| and those for whom work is boring and unfulfilling, | 35:55 | |
| for those who work and seek for peace and health | 36:00 | |
| among all peoples. | 36:03 | |
| Bless with your gracious presence, O God, | 36:07 | |
| those who are sick and sad, | 36:12 | |
| those who are weary and bereaved, | 36:16 | |
| and those who are dying. | 36:20 | |
| Bring fullness of life, wholeness of life | 36:25 | |
| to all persons who turn to You, O God, | 36:30 | |
| O God, God of mercy, Got of peace, God of love, | 36:36 | |
| God of hope, God of assurance. | 36:41 | |
| We, Your children, ask for ourselves | 36:46 | |
| mercy, peace, hope, love, assurance. | 36:50 | |
| Give to each of us the word which our individual soul, | 36:58 | |
| our individual person needs this day. | 37:01 | |
| O almighty God, who in Jesus Christ | 37:07 | |
| did conquer tears by crying, pain by suffering, | 37:11 | |
| and death by dying. | 37:16 | |
| Grant that we who remember his suffering death | 37:20 | |
| may by Your grace receive now that life, | 37:22 | |
| which can and will overcome both sin and death. | 37:27 | |
| In You, O God, and through Jesus Christ, our Lord, | 37:37 | |
| may we find life, know life and live life. | 37:43 | |
| Hear us as we pray together now the prayer, | 37:51 | |
| which our Lord has taught his disciples, praying: | 37:54 | |
| Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; | 37:58 | |
| Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done | 38:05 | |
| on earth as it is in heaven. | 38:09 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread; | 38:12 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses | 38:15 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us; | 38:18 | |
| and lead us not into temptation, | 38:22 | |
| but deliver us from evil. | 38:25 | |
| For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. | 38:27 | |
| Amen. | 38:34 | |
| May I remind you that tonight we will have another | 38:40 | |
| in our series of organ concerts | 38:43 | |
| on the new Benjamin Duke Memorial organ. | 38:47 | |
| The organist for the concert this evening | 38:52 | |
| is Charles Krigbaum who is professor of organ | 38:56 | |
| and university organist at Yale University. | 39:01 | |
| You will find a word about him in the bulletin today | 39:05 | |
| and also the program for the concert this evening. | 39:08 | |
| Those of you in the chapel this morning, | 39:12 | |
| and those listening are all invited to come | 39:13 | |
| and share in this service tonight. | 39:16 | |
| Now remind you also that a week from today on Palm Sunday, | 39:20 | |
| with a very special service, | 39:23 | |
| we began the observance of Holy Week in the chapel | 39:24 | |
| and on the Duke campus. | 39:28 | |
| You are invited to that service | 39:30 | |
| and also to the Monday, Thursday communion service | 39:32 | |
| and to a service at noon on Good Friday. | 39:35 | |
| And then on Easter Sunday, | 39:38 | |
| we celebrate the Day of the Resurrection of our Lord | 39:39 | |
| with an Easter sunrise service, | 39:42 | |
| which is an hour earlier for us this year | 39:44 | |
| than we have been ordinarily having it. | 39:46 | |
| We've been taking the comfortable way | 39:48 | |
| and having it at seven o'clock, rather than at sunrise. | 39:51 | |
| We're gonna change that this year. | 39:54 | |
| So the service issue will begin at six o'clock | 39:55 | |
| in Duke gardens, and then at nine o'clock and at 11 o'clock, | 39:58 | |
| we will have services here in the chapel. | 40:02 | |
| And then that evening, Easter Sunday evening, | 40:05 | |
| the North Carolina symphony and the choir | 40:07 | |
| will present an Easter concert for us all. | 40:09 | |
| It's our privilege today, this weekend, | 40:13 | |
| to have on the Duke campus the Reverend Dr. David Hubbard, | 40:16 | |
| who is professor of Old Testament studies | 40:21 | |
| and president of Fuller Theological Seminary | 40:24 | |
| in Pasadena, California. | 40:27 | |
| Dr. Hubbard currently is serving as the president | 40:31 | |
| of the Association of Theological Schools | 40:37 | |
| in the United States and Canada, | 40:39 | |
| that is, he is presiding over those | 40:42 | |
| who are deans and presidents of theological schools | 40:44 | |
| in the United States and Canada, | 40:47 | |
| a recognition of his leadership and his competency. | 40:51 | |
| He is indeed well known as a writer, as a preacher, | 40:55 | |
| as a teacher and as an administrator. | 41:02 | |
| He's known to an international radio audience | 41:06 | |
| by the word, which he proclaims on the Joyful Sound. | 41:08 | |
| We are very pleased to have him at Duke, | 41:14 | |
| and we look forward to the word which he will share with us | 41:18 | |
| "Righteousness, right or wrong?" | 41:20 | |
| Dr. Hubbard, welcome. | 41:24 | |
| - | Shall we pray together? | 41:53 |
| Will you speak, Lord, in the stillness | 42:01 | |
| while we wait on Thy? | 42:03 | |
| Hushed, our hearts to listen with expectancy, | 42:07 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 42:16 | |
| Amen. | 42:20 | |
| The national news magazines, like Time and Newsweek, | 42:27 | |
| mislead us regularly. | 42:35 | |
| I'm not speaking of the accuracy of their news stories, | 42:40 | |
| which by and large in my experience | 42:43 | |
| are about as good or as bad as what you'd find | 42:45 | |
| in the major urban papers or the press, | 42:47 | |
| the major wire services. | 42:50 | |
| And it's not that their editing is more biased | 42:54 | |
| than other kinds of editing. | 42:57 | |
| It's the format itself that gives me trouble. | 43:00 | |
| You know what it is: you leaf through the sections | 43:04 | |
| of a magazine like Time, pass the letters to the editor | 43:07 | |
| and a few ads, some national news, | 43:11 | |
| which doesn't look a great deal better now | 43:14 | |
| that it's printed in color, | 43:16 | |
| on through the international affairs, | 43:20 | |
| some vignettes in the lives of famous people, | 43:24 | |
| and then through sections like lifestyle, | 43:27 | |
| an essay or two, more ads, a section on art, | 43:33 | |
| section on law, show business, you leaf through, | 43:41 | |
| and in this particular issue, when you get to page 81, | 43:46 | |
| you come to religion, | 43:51 | |
| a compartment in the catalog of life | 43:53 | |
| as spelled out in the news magazines. | 43:57 | |
| Now it's so happens that Ken Woodward | 44:00 | |
| who's religion editor for Newsweek | 44:04 | |
| in this particular issue with Andrew Young on the cover, | 44:07 | |
| found nothing of religious significance | 44:10 | |
| happening in the world, and so religion is bypassed. | 44:14 | |
| It's that compartmental model, which is the problem. | 44:20 | |
| It suggests that religion is a topic, | 44:26 | |
| an area of life along with others. | 44:29 | |
| Now, I don't know whether I dare say this in North Carolina, | 44:35 | |
| but religion is not a topic alongside of sports. | 44:42 | |
| Let it be heard in Chapel Hill, in Charlotte, | 44:51 | |
| that religion is not a category along with basketball. | 44:55 | |
| And if that be heresy, make the most of it. | 45:00 | |
| The very format of the magazines is misleading. | 45:04 | |
| Religious faith, if it means anything, | 45:11 | |
| means that it is an overarching canopy | 45:14 | |
| that governs and controls what we value, | 45:16 | |
| what we believe and how we live. | 45:20 | |
| Politics is important, of course. | 45:26 | |
| It's important for one reason, | 45:30 | |
| because it's one of the ways in which love and justice | 45:32 | |
| are to work their way out in society. | 45:34 | |
| And we want to know as much as we can about literature, | 45:38 | |
| because what are the dramas, the poems, the novels | 45:41 | |
| that move us except revelations of the strengths | 45:45 | |
| and weaknesses of the dilemmas and potentials | 45:49 | |
| of the human spirit. | 45:52 | |
| Law. | 45:56 | |
| What is that, but a way of regulating, | 45:58 | |
| of checking the ravages of human sin, | 46:02 | |
| as we're so prone to express that sin in society. | 46:06 | |
| But overarching all of those topics | 46:13 | |
| and giving them their shape, their style, | 46:17 | |
| their true information is what we believe | 46:20 | |
| about the ultimates of life, | 46:26 | |
| as God has revealed those ultimates in Jesus Christ. | 46:29 | |
| Now, even when we understand | 46:36 | |
| how our religious faith has to permeate | 46:39 | |
| these other categories, | 46:41 | |
| even when we set aside the Time or Newsweek model of life, | 46:43 | |
| we may have trouble knowing how best we express | 46:48 | |
| our religious convictions | 46:52 | |
| as they touch on other areas of life. | 46:53 | |
| The early church had that problem. | 46:57 | |
| In the midst of persecution, oppression, | 46:59 | |
| misunderstanding, and rejection, | 47:03 | |
| it was very easy for those first Christians | 47:06 | |
| to express their religious fervor in wrath and indignation | 47:10 | |
| toward those that were making life so difficult for them. | 47:16 | |
| And it's to that situation that the letter of James speaks, | 47:19 | |
| when he says, "be slow to speak, | 47:24 | |
| be quick to listen, | 47:33 | |
| be slow to anger." | 47:37 | |
| Now this is not a course 101A | 47:41 | |
| in interpersonal communications, | 47:45 | |
| where we're told, if you listen a little more, | 47:49 | |
| you'll understand more of what's going on | 47:51 | |
| in the other person's heart and spirit, | 47:54 | |
| and we're all prone to talk first and to listen last, | 47:55 | |
| and so forth. | 47:58 | |
| I'm not against all that stuff. And I don't think James was. | 47:59 | |
| but in this particular piece he's saying | 48:03 | |
| is be slow to speak the word of God | 48:06 | |
| and be quick to hear it, | 48:13 | |
| be slow to use the Word of God | 48:16 | |
| in wrathful anger or vindictiveness. | 48:19 | |
| The Bible gives us precedent along this line | 48:23 | |
| in the Psalms, doesn't it? | 48:25 | |
| Where the men and women of Israel | 48:28 | |
| deeply wounded by their enemies, | 48:30 | |
| threatened at times and exile by their captors | 48:32 | |
| very often invoked the wrath of God | 48:36 | |
| upon the heads of their enemy. | 48:39 | |
| And it may well be that the early church | 48:43 | |
| was prone to reach back into that earlier expression | 48:45 | |
| of redemptive history and to call wrath and anger | 48:49 | |
| upon their enemies. | 48:55 | |
| It may have been that they, like Peter at times, | 48:56 | |
| wanted to cease the sword and cut the ear. | 48:59 | |
| And James says, "Back away, | 49:04 | |
| listen to the Word of God, | 49:08 | |
| be slow to speak, quick to hear." | 49:11 | |
| And then in that very telling summary, | 49:19 | |
| he says, "For the wrath of our humanity," | 49:22 | |
| the wrath of man, "does not work the righteousness of God." | 49:27 | |
| You see, one of our desires | 49:34 | |
| is we understand how important our biblical faith is to us | 49:35 | |
| is to see that biblical faith set everything right | 49:40 | |
| and to see it set everything right at once. | 49:43 | |
| And it makes us angry to see things wrong. | 49:46 | |
| And we find ourselves responding in anger | 49:49 | |
| to the outrages of life. | 49:54 | |
| James says, watch out for such emotions. | 50:02 | |
| God does better with anger than you do. | 50:06 | |
| God is better at final judgment than you are. | 50:10 | |
| And he says, one of the things that wrath does | 50:15 | |
| is to crowd God from the judge's bench | 50:19 | |
| to snatch the robe from His shoulders, | 50:22 | |
| to clutch the gavel from His hand, | 50:25 | |
| and it puts us in our broken and fallen and prejudice | 50:28 | |
| and weak humanity in the position of that ultimate judging. | 50:32 | |
| Anger makes us the judge of the other person's wrongs, | 50:38 | |
| and at the same time tends to obscure our own sinfulness | 50:43 | |
| from our eye. | 50:47 | |
| And so all of a sudden we're puffed up with righteousness | 50:48 | |
| as though the Trinity had been expanded to four members, | 50:52 | |
| and we had the ability and the perspective | 50:56 | |
| to bring judgment upon the world. | 51:00 | |
| Our wrath, human wrath, James says, | 51:03 | |
| does not work the righteousness of God, | 51:09 | |
| no matter how eager we are to let that wrath express itself. | 51:11 | |
| I didn't bring a New Yorker magazine | 51:17 | |
| because I didn't know if it would be proper | 51:19 | |
| to turn this pulpit into a magazine rack. | 51:21 | |
| But the New Yorker magazine is a bit wrathful, | 51:24 | |
| a bit angry in its very format. | 51:29 | |
| Now, it does it low key with a teasing | 51:31 | |
| and those little snippets in the bottom of the columns, | 51:33 | |
| where it finds all the mistakes that have been made | 51:36 | |
| in the last few weeks and the press, | 51:38 | |
| all the misprints, all the garbled sentences, | 51:39 | |
| all the non sequitors and so forth. | 51:42 | |
| And then it tweaks everybody throughout the land | 51:44 | |
| with a kind of highest style of New York superciliousness | 51:47 | |
| looking down upon the foibles of all those people | 51:52 | |
| out in the flatlands that can't spell or proofread. | 51:55 | |
| And if we know anything from psychology, | 52:00 | |
| it's that behind teasing, there is hostility. | 52:01 | |
| And James is saying that justice, | 52:08 | |
| the compartmentalised model of religious faith | 52:10 | |
| as seen in Time and Newsweek | 52:15 | |
| will not pass biblical scrutiny. | 52:18 | |
| Neither will that expression of our Christian superiority | 52:21 | |
| that finds us all was angry at everyone else, | 52:25 | |
| as though we were the judges do it. | 52:28 | |
| And so neither the New Yorker nor Newsweek | 52:31 | |
| is the model for what we do. | 52:36 | |
| In fact, James says, you have to look in another book. | 52:37 | |
| You have to hear the Word of God. | 52:41 | |
| And he says, the key to the right kind of righteousness | 52:44 | |
| is listening with meekness. | 52:49 | |
| "Listen meekly," he says, "to the implanted word, | 52:53 | |
| which is able to make you wise unto salvation." | 52:58 | |
| We listen to the words of judgment upon us. | 53:06 | |
| We who would so in our anger liked to be judged | 53:10 | |
| as the expression of our religious fervor, | 53:13 | |
| have to look at the word and see ourselves judged. | 53:18 | |
| We see the word calling us broken, calling us falling, | 53:23 | |
| calling us idolaters, calling us greedy. | 53:28 | |
| The word and the power of its judgment has a way of saying, | 53:37 | |
| "deal with your own problems | 53:46 | |
| before you take that angry gavel | 53:50 | |
| and smash it down on the bar of history | 53:52 | |
| as though you were God." | 53:57 | |
| Listen meekly to the word, to its word of judgment, | 54:04 | |
| and to its word of grace. | 54:11 | |
| Let it tell you how God loved you while you were his enemy. | 54:16 | |
| Let it tell you how He sent Jesus Christ | 54:22 | |
| to deliver from the anger to come. | 54:25 | |
| Let it tell you how much He cares | 54:30 | |
| and how much He cares just at that point | 54:34 | |
| where we have done those things that make it hard for us | 54:37 | |
| to care for ourselves or for anyone else to care about us. | 54:41 | |
| At that moment, the meaning of the cross, | 54:45 | |
| the meaning of the comfort of the Holy Spirit, | 54:49 | |
| the meaning of the truth | 54:52 | |
| that God has loved us in Jesus Christ, | 54:54 | |
| will break in upon us, as we listen and look at the Word. | 54:57 | |
| God told Habakkuk to write a vision, | 55:07 | |
| so that people could read it on the run. | 55:10 | |
| James says, that's all right for Habakkuk, | 55:14 | |
| but you need to look more penetratingly at the Word of God. | 55:17 | |
| Don't be like the person | 55:23 | |
| who takes the fleeting look in the mirror | 55:24 | |
| and adjusts a hair or two and rolls on. | 55:26 | |
| Let the Word of God hold the picture of you before yourself | 55:29 | |
| so that you can truly see yourself as judged by God | 55:35 | |
| and as loved by Him. | 55:39 | |
| And in that listening with meekness to the Word, | 55:44 | |
| which the Holy Spirit has implanted in us | 55:51 | |
| and insinuated into our personalities, | 55:53 | |
| in that listening with meekness, | 55:58 | |
| we have the first step of true righteousness. | 56:01 | |
| There's a friend of mine | 56:09 | |
| who was involved in the freedom riots. | 56:10 | |
| He told me a very interesting story the other day | 56:13 | |
| about being taken to jail in an encounter in a bus station | 56:16 | |
| during the days when they were seeking | 56:20 | |
| to integrate some of the facilities. | 56:22 | |
| A group of cabbies were outside the bus station | 56:26 | |
| and became angry | 56:30 | |
| and then began to beat on some of the people. | 56:31 | |
| My friend was beaten badly, taken to jail, | 56:34 | |
| and one of the cab drivers was taken with him. | 56:38 | |
| When his friends came to bail him out, | 56:43 | |
| he refused to accept the posting of the bond, | 56:48 | |
| until they went back and got money | 56:52 | |
| to bail out the cab driver. | 56:55 | |
| Here was a friend who had looked in the mirror of the Word | 56:59 | |
| and seen the nature of the loving judging grace of God, | 57:03 | |
| and who had looked at it long enough | 57:09 | |
| for it to penetrate his whole person. | 57:11 | |
| And he refused to accept his own freedom, | 57:15 | |
| until his friends had also secured the freedom | 57:19 | |
| of the person who had attacked him. | 57:24 | |
| Anger does not work the righteousness of God, | 57:28 | |
| but meek listening to the Word begins to do it. | 57:32 | |
| And out of that meek listening | 57:37 | |
| there comes loving with meaning, | 57:40 | |
| doing the Word is the forceful way that James puts this, | 57:45 | |
| not just hearing, but acting upon what has heard, | 57:50 | |
| believing what the Word says about our sinfulness, | 57:54 | |
| believing what the Word says about our weakness, | 57:59 | |
| about our ignorance, about our need for God, | 58:02 | |
| and then believing what the Word says about the grace | 58:06 | |
| that meets us in our lostness | 58:09 | |
| and captures us as part of God's people and God's family. | 58:13 | |
| When we listen with meekness, | 58:22 | |
| we're ready to love with meaning in doing the Word. | 58:25 | |
| And in caring for the widow and the orphan, | 58:31 | |
| now this statement, the true religion is undefiled | 58:37 | |
| is to care for the widow and the orphan in their need, | 58:39 | |
| and to keep oneself unstained from the world | 58:42 | |
| is not a trite pious platitude. | 58:44 | |
| It's not a flipped statement of moral cliche at all. | 58:47 | |
| We have to see it in a setting | 58:52 | |
| of a profound theological reality, | 58:54 | |
| that the love for the widow and the orphan | 58:58 | |
| is the best evidence that the listening with meekness | 59:00 | |
| has taken place. | 59:04 | |
| We have caught the story. | 59:05 | |
| We have caught the fact that it's a story of God | 59:07 | |
| loving us in our helplessness. | 59:10 | |
| And when that story is implanted in our lives, | 59:13 | |
| when the grace of forgiveness is received and experienced, | 59:17 | |
| then we demonstrate that we understand its meaning | 59:21 | |
| by the reaching out to those | 59:25 | |
| whose love can do us very little good, | 59:27 | |
| who have very little to return, except their own gratitude, | 59:31 | |
| whose stories do not make the headline, | 59:36 | |
| the care of whom is not a ladder to power or influence. | 59:39 | |
| And the story of love in the time of weakness and need | 59:45 | |
| is a story acted out in the double drama | 59:50 | |
| of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection. | 59:54 | |
| But in the second half of that drama as well, | 59:59 | |
| the drama of the people of God moving out to make that love | 1:00:02 | |
| demonstrable and visible in the circumstances where we live. | 1:00:07 | |
| Keeping yourself unstained from the world, | 1:00:16 | |
| what can that mean but to summarize exactly | 1:00:21 | |
| what we've talked about? | 1:00:24 | |
| What does the world do? | 1:00:25 | |
| It does not hear the word of judgment or of grace. | 1:00:27 | |
| What does the world do? | 1:00:30 | |
| It does not listen meekly to the Word of God. | 1:00:32 | |
| It thinks it knows all the answers. | 1:00:35 | |
| And to keep oneself unstained from the world | 1:00:40 | |
| is not to wrap our skirts of separatism around us | 1:00:43 | |
| and criticize the world for its bad habits. | 1:00:47 | |
| It's to reject the essence of the world view, | 1:00:50 | |
| which is that I can take the gavel of judgment | 1:00:54 | |
| in my own hand and in anger and hostility | 1:00:57 | |
| lash out at those with whom I disagree, | 1:01:00 | |
| and in the pride of my self-righteousness | 1:01:03 | |
| assume that I do not need God's grace and help | 1:01:05 | |
| the way others do. | 1:01:08 | |
| Some of us have had to work this through this text | 1:01:16 | |
| in the last few weeks, | 1:01:20 | |
| as the headlines have come dipped in blood from east Africa. | 1:01:22 | |
| And we were ready to dislike Amin, | 1:01:32 | |
| we were ready to pray for wrath on his head early on, | 1:01:37 | |
| because we'd seen on national television | 1:01:40 | |
| two presentations of Entebbe, | 1:01:42 | |
| which gave us a kind of a caricature, | 1:01:46 | |
| a profile of what Amin may be like. | 1:01:49 | |
| And then when the news came, | 1:01:54 | |
| then when the news came that the Archbishop | 1:01:57 | |
| and some of his associates had been murdered, | 1:02:00 | |
| that the sword of persecution | 1:02:04 | |
| was being lowered on the necks of the Christians in Uganda, | 1:02:06 | |
| can imagine the outrage with which we were filled, | 1:02:10 | |
| and I'm sure you share it. | 1:02:14 | |
| My mind went back to one of the high evenings of my life | 1:02:16 | |
| in December, 1975 at Nairobi, | 1:02:21 | |
| an evening with our Archbishop, | 1:02:24 | |
| and evening of discussion of the east African revival | 1:02:28 | |
| in the way in which the Spirit of God | 1:02:32 | |
| had been changing hearts and lives | 1:02:34 | |
| in unbroken patterns for 40 years, | 1:02:36 | |
| sitting with the Archbishop and one of his bishops, | 1:02:39 | |
| other layman from Uganda and hearing that story, | 1:02:43 | |
| hearing the Archbishop say that his great delight | 1:02:48 | |
| was to carry the gospel out to the villages | 1:02:51 | |
| and to preach the living Word | 1:02:54 | |
| and to see men and women confess Jesus Christ | 1:02:55 | |
| as Lord and savior. | 1:02:59 | |
| And then to think that that man was done in, | 1:03:01 | |
| that Christian brother, that spiritual giant. | 1:03:05 | |
| And how we want to take the gavel of judgment | 1:03:11 | |
| in our own hands and do something about it. | 1:03:14 | |
| And how the Word of God says, | 1:03:20 | |
| let me handle the ultimate judgment. | 1:03:24 | |
| You don't do that very well. | 1:03:27 | |
| But your task is to work righteousness and love | 1:03:31 | |
| and bring justice where you can, | 1:03:35 | |
| in the care of the widow and the orphan. | 1:03:39 | |
| The ultimate questions of history will be in God's hands, | 1:03:45 | |
| but in biblical language, | 1:03:52 | |
| judgment and justice are the same word. | 1:03:53 | |
| And my contribution to judgment | 1:03:59 | |
| is not the ultimate vindication on my enemies | 1:04:02 | |
| or the enemies of God. | 1:04:05 | |
| That's in a higher hands than mine. | 1:04:07 | |
| My contribution to judgment and yours is so to hear, | 1:04:10 | |
| so to listen with meekness to the implanted word, | 1:04:18 | |
| that we reach out wherever we have power, | 1:04:24 | |
| wherever we have opportunity, | 1:04:26 | |
| to make the story of the sacrificial love of God | 1:04:29 | |
| in Jesus Christ crystal clear. | 1:04:33 | |
| And it's not from the news magazines | 1:04:37 | |
| that we got our model of life. | 1:04:39 | |
| It's from the Word of God, which like a mirror, | 1:04:43 | |
| shows us how much we need and how much God has done. | 1:04:46 | |
| It's from the word of God, which like a light | 1:04:51 | |
| blazens the trail for us to go out into the world | 1:04:54 | |
| with the loving deeds of grace | 1:04:59 | |
| that show that by faith our name is written into the story. | 1:05:01 | |
| We have become part of the plot | 1:05:07 | |
| that God is bringing to its great denouement in our history. | 1:05:10 | |
| So be it in the name of the Father and the Son | 1:05:17 | |
| and of the Holy Spirit. | 1:05:23 | |
| Amen. | 1:05:26 | |
| (gentle organ music) | 1:05:37 | |
| (choir vocalizing) | 1:06:29 | |
| (soft organ music) | 1:09:29 | |
| (choir sings in foreign language) | 1:10:31 | |
| (dramatic organ music) | 1:13:36 | |
| (choir sings in foreign language) | 1:13:40 | |
| (choir sings in foreign language) | 1:14:48 | |
| (bright organ music) | 1:17:39 | |
| (choir sings in foreign language) | 1:17:46 | |
| (uplifting organ music) | 1:19:14 | |
| ♪ Praise God, from whom all blessings flow ♪ | 1:19:29 | |
| ♪ Praise Him, all creatures here below ♪ | 1:19:37 | |
| ♪ Praise Him above, ye heav'nly host ♪ | 1:19:45 | |
| ♪ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ♪ | 1:19:52 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 1:20:01 | |
| - | We give thanks, O God, for these gifts, | 1:20:15 |
| which come from grateful hearts and unselfish spirits. | 1:20:17 | |
| Bless each gift with Your Spirit, | 1:20:23 | |
| that every penny given may be used to bring | 1:20:27 | |
| a more blessed life to some brother or sister of ours. | 1:20:30 | |
| May our giving be multiplied by Your power | 1:20:35 | |
| and touched by Your Spirit. | 1:20:38 | |
| And may we, O God, give not only our gifts, | 1:20:41 | |
| may we give ourselves to You | 1:20:44 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 1:20:48 | |
| (bright organ music) | 1:20:56 | |
| (choir vocalizing) | 1:21:20 | |
| Without bowing your head or closing your eyes, | 1:24:17 | |
| will you receive now this benediction, this blessing, | 1:24:22 | |
| which I offer in the name of Christ. | 1:24:25 | |
| The love of God, | 1:24:28 | |
| the grace of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, | 1:24:31 | |
| the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit | 1:24:35 | |
| be with you this day and forever. | 1:24:39 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 1:24:46 | |
| (light organ music) | 1:25:04 |