Robert L. Johnson - "Sin Abounding" (May 29, 1977)

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-	Duke University Chapel service of worship,	0:04
	seventh Sunday after Easter May 29th, 1977.	0:07
	(upbeat music)	0:25
-	Our dear friends on a day as gorgeous	17:21
	as this day really is,	17:23
	one can hardly do anything but rejoice and give thanks.	17:27
	And it is good, so to do.	17:32
	But as we do, let us remember to confess our need	17:36
	continually for God's grace.	17:40
	For often, as we look at the beauty around us,	17:45
	we're reminded of the brokenness within us.	17:47
	Often, as we look at the faithfulness of God in the world,	17:51
	we may be reminded of the faithlessness of our own lives.	17:56
	We do not confess our sins	18:02
	to be right or belittle ourselves,	18:05
	but to ask again for God's grace,	18:08
	to receive God's forgiveness	18:12
	and define strength to go on.	18:15
	In that assurance then,	18:18
	let us together confess our sin to almighty God.	18:20
	You did not come oh God to judge us,	18:28
	but to seek those who are lost,	18:31
	to set free those who are imprisoned in guilt and fear,	18:35
	and to save us when our hearts accuse us,	18:39
	take us as we are with all our sinful past in this world,	18:44
	you are greater than our heart	18:51
	and greater than all our guilt.	18:53
	You are the creator of a new future for us	18:57
	and a God of love forever and ever.	19:00
	Let us continue now with our silent words	19:05
	and prayers of confession to God.	19:10
	My dear friends, I invite you to believe and to know	19:42
	God is tenderness and compassion for you,	19:49
	for me, for today, and forever. Amen.	19:57
	(upbeat music)	20:12
	The Old Testament lesson	22:59
	was found in the book of Psalm 51,	23:02
	reading verse one through 17.	23:06
	Let us hear the word of God.	23:09
	"Have mercy on me, O God,	23:12
	"according to thy steadfast love,	23:16
	"according to thy abundant mercy,	23:19
	"blot out my transgressions.	23:21
	"Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity	23:25
	"and cleanse me from my sin.	23:27
	"For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me,	23:31
	"against thee, the only have I sin	23:37
	"and done that which is evil in thy sight	23:40
	"so that they are justified in thy sentence	23:43
	"and blameless in thy judgment.	23:46
	"Behold, I was brought forth in inequity,	23:48
	"and in sin did my mother conceive me.	23:52
	"Behold thou desires truth in the inward being,	23:56
	"therefore teach me wisdom in my secret part,	24:00
	"purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean,	24:05
	"wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.	24:09
	"Fill me with joy and gladness.	24:13
	"Let the bones, which thou has broken, rejoice.	24:15
	"Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities,	24:20
	"creating me a clean heart, O God,	24:26
	"and put a right and new spirit within me.	24:30
	"Cast me not away from thy presence	24:35
	"and take not thy Holy Spirit from me,	24:37
	"restore to me the joy of my salvation	24:40
	"and uphold me with the willing spirit.	24:44
	"Then I will teach transgressors thy ways	24:47
	"and sinners will return to thee.	24:51
	"Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God,	24:53
	"Thou God of my salvation,	24:56
	"and my tongue will sing aloud of thy deliverance.	24:59
	"O Lord, open down my lips,	25:04
	"and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.	25:07
	"For thou has no delight in sacrifice,	25:11
	"where I to give a burnt offering	25:15
	"thou which to not be pleased.	25:17
	"The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit,	25:19
	"a broken and contrite heart, O God,	25:25
	"thou will not despise."	25:29
	From St. Paul's letter to the Romans,	25:34
	Chapter 5 reading versus 18 through 21.	25:40
	"Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men.	25:48
	"So one man's active righteousness	25:57
	"leads to acquittal and life for all men.	26:01
	"For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners,	26:07
	"so by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous.	26:11
	"Law came in to increase the trespass,	26:17
	"but where sin increased grace abounded all the more,	26:21
	"so that as sin reign in death,	26:26
	"grace also might reign through righteousness	26:31
	"to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord."	26:35
	Here ends the reading of the lessons for today.	26:42
	(upbeat music)	26:46
	Let us affirm what we believe.	27:30
	We believe in God who has created and is creating,	27:33
	who has come in the truly human Jesus	27:38
	to reconcile and make new,	27:41
	who works in us and others by the spirit.	27:44
	We trust God who calls us to be the church,	27:48
	to celebrate life and its fullness,	27:53
	to love and serve others,	27:56
	to seek justice and resist evil,	27:59
	to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen,	28:02
	our judge and our hope,	28:06
	in life, in death,	28:09
	in life beyond death, God is with us.	28:12
	We are not alone, thanks be to God.	28:16
	The Lord be with you.	28:22
-	And with your spirit.	28:23
-	Let us pray.	28:25
	Almighty and everlasting God, for this day,	28:34
	another day of life and love and friends	28:40
	and joy and goodness,	28:44
	another day to see, to touch, to smell, to listen, to walk,	28:47
	to talk, to give, to receive,	28:51
	to believe, to hope, to know,	28:54
	another day to live,	28:57
	for this day we give thanks to you.	29:01
	For all those who have not these possibilities today,	29:08
	we do pray.	29:13
	For those who face surgery or recovery	29:15
	or illness or pain or grief or loneliness	29:20
	or hurt or bitterness or sadness.	29:27
	For those who fear the coming of night,	29:34
	for those who are anxious about what lies	29:40
	around the next corner of their lives,	29:43
	for those who have no one to turn to and nowhere to go,	29:48
	for all these, O God, we ask your special blessing,	29:53
	O God, be our constant companion and presence on the way,	29:57
	be with each of us as the deepest possible awareness	30:07
	within an awareness,	30:11
	which is constantly opening our minds to ideas	30:12
	and to possibilities and to relationships.	30:16
	An awareness, which is constantly opening our hearts	30:23
	to trust, to hope, to sharing and giving,	30:27
	to hear the cry of those around us and to respond,	30:32
	open us to an awareness	30:38
	which is constantly opening all of our senses	30:40
	to the hidden joys, to the tiny discoveries,	30:43
	to the little celebrations,	30:51
	and also O almighty God an awareness,	30:55
	which will open us to the overarching wonder	30:58
	of your gift of creation and life.	31:03
	Grant now we pray you, O God,	31:11
	that in all things in success or failure, in dark or light,	31:14
	in openings or closings, we may find and know you,	31:18
	and in finding you,	31:26
	find all that we can ever ask or hope for.	31:28
	So precious, loving, caring, God.	31:33
	May we live this day in the fullness	31:40
	of all its beauty and goodness,	31:42
	may we live it in the joy of your presence.	31:46
	We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord,	31:51
	indeed our savior who taught us to pray as we say together.	31:54
	Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name;	32:01
	Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth	32:07
	as it is in heaven.	32:12
	Give us this day our daily bread;	32:14
	and forgive us our trespasses	32:18
	as we forgive those who trespass against us;	32:20
	and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.	32:24
	For thine is the kingdom, and the power,	32:30
	and the glory, forever.	32:33
	We welcome you to Duke Chapel	32:40
	for this service of worship today.	32:41
	And if you travel on this holiday weekend,	32:46
	we wish you safe travelings,	32:48
	and trust that you can worship here with us again soon.	32:51
	If you are in school here this summer,	32:55
	or are on campus in any capacity	32:59
	and would like to meet some new folks,	33:01
	you're invited to the Clellan House Lounge tonight	33:04
	at seven o'clock for a short film and some socializing	33:08
	and meeting of new friends.	33:13
	At about this time, or maybe just a few minutes go,	33:16
	there was a shotgun tee off	33:20
	at the Duke Celebrities, Golf Classic today.	33:23
	I'm glad everyone is not there,	33:29
	but may I invite you this afternoon	33:32
	as a part of your Sunday relaxation and celebration	33:35
	to go and join in this affair.	33:40
	There are many celebrities there	33:44
	whom I imagine you would like to see and maybe even meet.	33:45
	You might see a good golf shot or two, I'm not sure.	33:50
	But the cause is good,	33:54
	it is hope that someone hundred thousand dollars or so	33:56
	will be raised for the Pediatrics Center in the hospital.	33:59
	The cost for the golf exhibition this afternoon,	34:03
	and tomorrow is $3 for adults and 75 cents for children,	34:06
	and it should be a beautiful day	34:11
	to be out on the Duke Golf Course.	34:13
	So I urge you to go and have a good time.	34:14
	It is our privilege today	34:19
	to have the Reverend Robert Johnson,	34:20
	the Southern Regional Director	34:23
	for the National Institute for Campus Ministries	34:25
	as our guest preacher.	34:27
	Many of us know him as friend and colleague,	34:29
	as confidant and as personal share in ministry here	34:33
	and in other places.	34:39
	Bob is a native of Florida,	34:41
	did his undergraduate work at Carolina,	34:44
	his seminary work at Union in New York,	34:46
	and a THM at Harvard.	34:49
	He and his wife, Barbara, who live in Chapel Hill	34:53
	have two sons,	34:56
	Paul who just completed his first year	34:57
	as an Angier B. Duke scholar here at Duke,	35:01
	and a son. Chris,	35:04
	who at this moment is recovering from surgery	35:06
	in Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill,	35:08
	and Bob we wish him well.	35:10
	Today, we're delighted to have you with us.	35:11
	I told him before we came out,	35:15
	that I'm eager to hear a sermon entitled sin abounding.	35:16
	Bob, God's blessings on you as you bring the word.	35:22
-	I don't want to put a damper on this lovely day,	35:34
	but I do want to put in a good word this morning for sin.	35:38
	I fully do this realizing	35:43
	that this particular doctrine of the Christian faith	35:45
	is not in especially high vogue these days.	35:48
	But without it, without a sense of sin,	35:53
	any notion we have of grace is cheap and banal.	35:58
	Without an awareness of the persistency	36:04
	and the depth of human sin,	36:09
	faith is reduced to a shallow optimism.	36:12
	And what is left is not the tragic hope	36:17
	that is in the gospel of Christ,	36:20
	but a sentimental humanism that turns inward	36:24
	and relishes in our day such romantic literature	36:28
	as Jonathan Livingston Seagull,	36:32
	and the journals of Carlos Castaneda.	36:35
	To be sure the reality of sin in its Christian sense	36:41
	is hard to comprehend,	36:44
	the word has been mightly abused in our time.	36:48
	When a psychiatrist in T. S. Eliot's play,	36:53
	The Cocktail Party,	36:56
	is told by a patient that she suffers from a sense of sin,	36:59
	she is quick to go on and point out	37:04
	that what she means is not a sense of immorality.	37:06
	She says, "I'd always been taught to disbelieve in sin	37:11
	"in our family."	37:16
	I don't mean that it was ever mentioned,	37:19
	but anything wrong from our point of view	37:22
	was either bad form or psychological.	37:26
	And bad form always led to disaster,	37:29
	because the people who I knew disapproved of it.	37:33
	But when everything's bad form or mental kinks,	37:37
	you either become bad form and cease to care,	37:41
	or else, if you care, you must be kinky.	37:46
	This modern misunderstanding of sin	37:52
	is further illustrated in Archibald MacLeish	37:54
	great reworking of the Job's story in J.B.	37:59
	Here he has instead of the comforters of Job,	38:04
	Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar,	38:07
	three diagnosticians of the human condition	38:12
	in the form of a Marxist, a Freudian,	38:15
	and a Calvinist.	38:21
	The Marxist comes to J.B. and says,	38:23
	God is history.	38:26
	Guilt is a sociological accident,	38:28
	wrong class, wrong century.	38:31
	You pay for your luck with your licks, that's all.	38:35
	And the Fraudian comes along and gives J.B this comfort.	38:38
	Guilt is a psycho phenomenal situation,	38:43
	an illusion, a disease, a sickness,	38:46
	And then the Calvinist comes along	38:50
	and brings his diagnosis.	38:53
	What is your fault?	38:57
	Man's heart is evil.	38:58
	What have you done? Man's will is evil.	39:01
	Your fault, your sin are heart and will.	39:06
	The warm at heart, the willful will corrupted	39:10
	with its foul imagining.	39:15
	And poor J.B. crouches from such comfort stunned,	39:19
	and he replies to the Calvinist,	39:24
	"Yours is the cruelest comfort of all,	39:27
	"making the creator of the universe,	39:32
	"the miss creator of man kind.	39:34
	"A party to the crime he punishes."	39:38
	I suspect that a good many of us share that reaction of J.B.	39:44
	The notion of original sin as embellished by phrases,	39:51
	such as total depravity and the prayer,	39:56
	there is no help in us.	40:00
	Suggest to most contemporaries	40:03
	that the Christian understanding of sin	40:05
	leaves you with three strikes against you at birth	40:07
	and precious little incentive for moral integrity.	40:11
	Against this distorted notion of sin,	40:16
	I would like to argue that a sense of sin	40:21
	contributes to rather than diminishes the grandeur	40:23
	and the nobility of the human drama.	40:29
	A sense of sin protects you against the terrible illusion,	40:32
	but give way to despair and despotism.	40:38
	A sure dimension of this truth can be grasp	40:44
	by reflecting on the idealism	40:47
	that gave birth to the French and the Russian revolutions.	40:50
	As over against the sober Calvinism	40:56
	that governs some of the critical framers	41:00
	of the American constitution.	41:02
	Or the same truth can be searched out in weighing	41:06
	the character of the human figures	41:09
	in Shakespeare Dostoevsky or Faulkner.	41:12
	It is not just that a sense of sin	41:18
	makes for a greater sense of drama,	41:21
	but that we are drawn to flawed characters	41:25
	who are working out a resolution in their lives.	41:29
	So history can no longer be seen	41:35
	as simply a struggle between the good guys and the bad guys.	41:37
	As Clarence Darrow said,	41:44
	"Morally, we are neither black nor white.	41:45
	"We are all speckled."	41:50
	Well, as you can see, I've given away my bias.	41:54
	I'm clearly at the start all in favor of sin.	41:57
	In fact, I believe with Reinhold Niebuhr,	42:02
	that sin is the most empirically verifiable doctrine	42:04
	that Christians have.	42:09
	And in view of the Christian faith,	42:12
	in view of the modern age,	42:17
	the Christian faith becomes more and more attractive to me.	42:18
	I mean, explicitly when the Christian faith	42:24
	is seen over against the narcissism,	42:26
	the self law of so much popular religion	42:30
	and popular psychology.	42:36
	Most especially, I mean that brand of California Buddhism,	42:39
	Which says the gospel is to feel,	42:46
	to relate, to expand your consciousness,	42:51
	to get in with your body,	42:55
	to get in touch with your feelings.	42:57
	But whatever you do, don't deal with the objective, others,	43:00
	in your situation.	43:05
	Bracket out history and politics,	43:07
	and don't allow for any element	43:10
	of transcendent judgment over your lives.	43:14
	I suspect several years from now	43:21
	that our successors will have a few laughs at our expense	43:22
	over the incredible scene of a whole generation	43:29
	quoting Fritz Perls, Desiderata,	43:32
	which is label the prayer of the Gestalt movement.	43:36
	You know, the posters that proliferated through the 60s,	43:42
	I do my thing, and you do your thing.	43:47
	I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,	43:50
	and you're not in this world to live up to mine.	43:54
	If by chance we find one another, it's beautiful.	43:58
	If not, it can't be helped.	44:03
	It's sort of a case of laissez-faire philosophy.	44:07
	Or we have moved in the way	44:15
	of making a theology, and ideology	44:18
	out of a popular psychology.	44:23
	I'm okay, you're okay.	44:27
	Making an end out of a valid means.	44:30
	All of this, in the time of Watergate, Vietnam,	44:35
	starving millions,	44:44
	the Wilmington Tens still languishing in prison.	44:45
	Auto Workers and management	44:50
	combining to oppose environmental measures,	44:52
	and the intransigence of South Africa and Rhodesia.	44:58
	It is a cheap modeling indulgent philosophy	45:04
	to say of this world that it's okay.	45:10
	So bear with me as I try to make sense	45:17
	of that element of Christian faith	45:19
	that has been affirmed in our history	45:23
	by the likes of Jonathan Edwards and Sam Ervin,	45:26
	Reinhold Niebuhr, William Faulkner and Walker Percy.	45:32
	First, let me set the Christian understanding of sin	45:39
	in a broader historical context,	45:43
	because I think it is true to say that the emphasis	45:46
	and accent on guilt in sin	45:50
	was much stronger in the Western branch of Christendom	45:54
	than in the Eastern.	45:58
	By that, I mean the Greek and the Russian Orthodox churches,	46:00
	which tended to emphasize death rather than sin	46:04
	as the primary threat to human existence,	46:07
	and therefore their theologies and liturgies	46:10
	affirm life over death,	46:13
	light over darkness.	46:16
	Another clue would be	46:21
	to compare the Christian position on sin	46:22
	with say that of some of the Eastern religions.	46:25
	For the Buddhist, for instance,	46:29
	the world is not seen as falling.	46:32
	Creation does not exist with a tragic flaw.	46:36
	The world rather is illusion Maya, unreal.	46:41
	And the fault is in the viewer.	46:45
	And the endpoint of salvation for the Buddhist	46:49
	is some individualized internal experience nirvana.	46:54
	Whereas for Christians,	47:00
	the endpoint of salvation that you move to is a social,	47:01
	and a political symbol, the kingdom of God.	47:07
	Now with that as background,	47:12
	let us attend to the primary sources of our faith,	47:14
	the apostolic writings and the gospels.	47:17
	The argument I used to hear as I grew up in liberal circles	47:22
	in the Methodist church	47:27
	was that sin was basically introduced	47:30
	into the Christian world by Paul,	47:32
	then embellished by Augustine, systematized by Calvin,	47:36
	emotionalized by Jonathan Edwards,	47:42
	and jazzed up in a sophisticated way for moderns	47:44
	by the likes of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.	47:48
	The argument suggested that Jesus did not believe in sin.	47:52
	I well remember Grand Old Man of the Methodist church,	47:58
	D. D. Holt, arguing late into the night this case with me.	48:02
	Jesus believed in lawship, D. D. argued.	48:09
	He never talked about sin and grace, those are Paul's terms.	48:13
	Jesus called us to a new standard of life	48:18
	in the sermon on the Mount.	48:21
	Paul was the one who messed up the simple gospel of Jesus	48:23
	with all this doctrine.	48:28
	Well, I think it is true to say that Paul	48:30
	and others had the burden of working out	48:34
	in some systematic coherent fashion,	48:36
	the implications of Jesus life, death, and resurrection.	48:41
	But it would be false to say that Jesus	48:47
	did not believe in sin.	48:49
	His first word as he rushes onto the rise of history,	48:53
	in that breathless gospel of Mark is repent,	48:59
	the kingdom is at hand.	49:04
	And his parables suggest over and over again,	49:07
	rather severe measure of judgment	49:11
	for those without compassion.	49:15
	And even the sermon on the Mount has that electric line.	49:19
	If you being evil,	49:24
	know how to give good gifts to your children.	49:28
	But I think the great weight of Jesus teaching	49:33
	is best captured in two polar elements of his teaching,	49:36
	in the woes, and in the beatitudes.	49:43
	The woes and the beatitudes go together.	49:48
	They suggest together a picture of spiritual health,	49:53
	a picture wherein we are blessed and wherein we are damned.	49:58
	The woes you remember were addressed to those	50:06
	whose nature was overreaching,	50:10
	who violated the rights of others.	50:13
	They were priests, lawyers, theologians.	50:17
	They were those who would both kill the prophets	50:23
	and then build memorials to them.	50:25
	They trespassed on human sensibilities.	50:29
	On the other hand,	50:34
	the beatitudes were addressed to those	50:35
	who lived with a great lack in their lives.	50:38
	Those who had been broken in life, who had been hurt.	50:43
	The poor, the mourning,	50:48
	those who hungered for righteousness, the peacemakers.	50:51
	They are blessed Jesus says	50:56
	because they are broken in life,	50:58
	and they know God's grace in their brokenness.	51:01
	Those to whom the beatitudes are addressed,	51:07
	live with a great sense of debt, of what they lack.	51:09
	But they know as in the Magnificat,	51:15
	that the Lord fills the hungry with good things,	51:19
	but scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts.	51:23
	Two groups of folk are captured in the woes	51:29
	and the beatitudes.	51:34
	And there is not one of us who has not at one point	51:37
	found ourselves in one of those groups.	51:41
	For the double nature of what Christians call sin	51:46
	is delineated in these words of Jesus,	51:51
	in the woes and in the beatitudes.	51:54
	For sin is both pride, hubris,	51:58
	and it is also emptiness or despair.	52:03
	It is the sins of omission,	52:09
	and it is the sins of commission.	52:12
	It is the active trespass,	52:16
	which Methodist Catholics and Episcopalians	52:20
	tend to pray in the Lord's prayer.	52:22
	Trespass upon the freedom and dignity of another,	52:26
	and it is the death, the despair of passivity.	52:29
	It is doing too much, and it is doing too little.	52:35
	It is curious how in the history of the church,	52:42
	we put the accent at different times in different places.	52:44
	Reinhold Niebuhr in his theology	52:50
	tended to place the accent more on pride.	52:52
	Paul Tillich tended to put the accent	52:56
	more on alienation, separation, to spare.	52:58
	Humanly speaking it does seem	53:05
	as if alienation precedes pride,	53:07
	and you can go back to the story of the garden of Eden	53:13
	for ample illustration here.	53:18
	That is that when we become aware of the fact of death	53:21
	and the flux of time and our insecurity in this world,	53:25
	we try desperately to establish some kind of security	53:30
	through all sorts of action,	53:34
	denying death in our need of others.	53:37
	And so deaths issue into trespasses, despair into pride,	53:41
	and we are in constant need of forgiveness for both.	53:49
	How and where does that forgiveness occur?	53:55
	Well, it occurs in communities of memory and hope	53:59
	who remind the members of the community	54:06
	of their constant slippage from health,	54:11
	health and holiness being the same,	54:14
	and point to and demonstrate the grace that is their hope.	54:17
	Alan Paton of South Africa	54:25
	loves to tell the story of a rabbi	54:27
	who urged all fateful people to keep it all times	54:31
	two slips of paper, one in each pocket.	54:35
	When you're feeling proud and complacent, rich in spirit,	54:39
	you reach into one pocket and pull out a slip up that says,	54:44
	"I am dust and ashes."	54:49
	When you are dejected and despairing,	54:54
	you reach into the other pocket	54:58
	and pull out a slip of paper that says,	55:00
	"For your sake, this world was created." That's good.	55:03
	And any good liturgy and any healthy community	55:13
	performs that function and puts us	55:18
	into the brackets of alpha and omega.	55:21
	When it reminds us, as Pascal says	55:25
	of both the grandeur and the misery Of humankind.	55:27
	And all of us are in need of that community	55:36
	of need and trespass.	55:42
	Before sin is ever expressed in acts, it is a condition,	55:46
	the given existential human condition.	55:54
	And we fall into sin and heresy whenever,	55:58
	however, suddenly we try to exempt ourselves	56:02
	from the human condition.	56:08
	We tend sometimes to think that only	56:11
	if we can change people's minds	56:14
	to know the good is to do it.	56:18
	Or if only we could change people's politics,	56:21
	or if only we could revamp the economic systems	56:26
	of the world,	56:30
	we will have liberated humankind from sin, no way.	56:30
	Rednecks and Eggheads, Democrats and Republicans,	56:39
	capitalists and communists,	56:45
	all are tainted with a potentiality of trespassing	56:48
	upon their neighbor,	56:54
	and sinking into the circle of self interest.	56:56
	The best and the brightest of academia	57:02
	were co-opted into sanctioning our Vietnam Policy,	57:08
	from Harvard to Yale, to Princeton, to Chapel Hill to Duke.	57:13
	And when the Carnegie Commission on the year, 2000 in 1965,	57:19
	took a look at the future,	57:24
	the best academics of this country came forth	57:28
	with an extravagant view of the future,	57:31
	the Vietnam war was solved very quickly.	57:36
	And it took in the midst of those proceedings,	57:40
	a sober word from the Harvard sociologist, David Reisman,	57:43
	who stood and said,	57:48
	"You people have been writing and thinking	57:49
	"as if this nation never went through a civil war."	57:52
	We tend to forget, and we are saved by our memory,	57:59
	as we are saved by our hope.	58:04
	We are also saved by God's grace,	58:10
	which forgives our trespasses and nurtures our hunger,	58:12
	and meets our despair with courage	58:19
	and our poverty of spirit with resolution	58:22
	and purposefulness.	58:24
	Indeed there is partial salvation	58:27
	just in the knowledge of our sin	58:29
	as we are freed of illusions chased in our pride,	58:33
	Reminded that each and all of us are frail children of dust,	58:39
	and feeble is frail.	58:46
	So does our awareness of the human condition expose us	58:50
	to the abounding ubiquitous character of grace in our world.	58:56
	Grace at the core, grace at the depths.	59:03
	Grace at all the broken edges of this earth.	59:08
	So late in his life, a broken and bankrupt Rembrandt,	59:17
	could in the immediate days before his death,	59:24
	paint that last blowing picture of Simeon	59:30
	waiting in the temple,	59:34
	reaching out his arms for the Christ child.	59:37
	It was his own not the midst.	59:42
	Lord, now let us thy servant depart in peace,	59:46
	for I have seen thy salvation.	59:51
	William Faulkner could look deep into the human heart	59:57
	and know its mendacity and cruelty,	1:00:02
	and heedless lack of compassion.	1:00:06
	And yet affirm the presence of grace and forgiveness,	1:00:10
	the courage to say no to death,	1:00:16
	the capacity to endure and prevail.	1:00:21
	Those who claim the gift of grace	1:00:30
	without knowing the power of sin abounding	1:00:35
	will never find themselves at Pentecost,	1:00:40
	where the spirit comes to make us one,	1:00:45
	filling the gaps and holes in our lives,	1:00:50
	making us creatures of glad and generous hearts.	1:00:55
	I was fortunate enough to have as a teacher in seminary,	1:01:02
	a man who has been credited	1:01:08
	with making sin respectable in our time, Reinhold Niebuhr.	1:01:10
	He was an awesome man,	1:01:17
	he was an awesome preacher and teacher,	1:01:19
	someone from the South	1:01:21
	once calling judgment day in britches	1:01:22
	and it's an apt description.	1:01:25
	His words tumbled forth,	1:01:28
	and his mind was always several minutes	1:01:30
	ahead of his capacity to express his thoughts.	1:01:33
	But he was the one who helped me	1:01:37
	understand that awareness of sin,	1:01:39
	the true flawed tragic character of humankind,	1:01:43
	that that awareness is the first step	1:01:48
	in appropriating the good news of Jesus Christ.	1:01:52
	Indeed, it is part of the good news.	1:01:56
	And in his late years, Niebuhr capsuled the depth	1:01:59
	and the range of Christian faith	1:02:03
	in words I continue to regard	1:02:05
	as the best statement I have found.	1:02:09
	And if I had the capacity to make posters,	1:02:12
	this would be my poster.	1:02:16
	It goes like this:	1:02:19
	Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,	1:02:22
	therefore we must be saved by hope.	1:02:28
	Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense	1:02:32
	in any immediate context of history,	1:02:36
	therefore, we must be saved by faith.	1:02:40
	Nothing we do however virtuous can be accomplished alone,	1:02:44
	therefore we are saved by love.	1:02:50
	And the final clincher,	1:02:54
	no virtuous act is quite as virtuous	1:02:57
	from the standpoint of our friend or our foe	1:03:00
	as from our standpoint.	1:03:05
	Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love,	1:03:08
	which is forgiveness.	1:03:13
	To that all I can say is, amen.	1:03:16
	Let us pray.	1:03:20
	Deliver us, O Lord, of truth and mercy,	1:03:29
	from all those vain glorious pretensions,	1:03:33
	whereby we try to escape our frailty,	1:03:37
	and pretend we are something we indeed are not.	1:03:41
	Bring us home to ourselves,	1:03:46
	let us embrace our flawed and unfinished histories.	1:03:49
	Forgive us, fill us with thy Holy Spirit.	1:03:55
	Help us to do justly,	1:04:02
	and ever to walk humbly in thy love. Amen.	1:04:05
	(upbeat music)	1:04:12
-	And to you, O God, who have given us everything,	1:15:21
	we now give these gifts.	1:15:26
	In addition to our gifts,	1:15:31
	may we give ourselves our lives	1:15:34
	as full perfect and sufficient sacrifices unto you.	1:15:39
	Who God let us not leave this place this day	1:15:46
	without some deeper awareness of your love for us	1:15:51
	and some deeper commitment of our lives to you,	1:15:56
	through Jesus Christ, who loves us,	1:16:02
	with an ever present everlasting love. Amen.	1:16:07
	(upbeat music)	1:16:15
	As some of you know, someone told me a good while ago	1:19:26
	that a benediction is not only a prayer,	1:19:30
	but it is a blessing from one Christian to another,	1:19:33
	or from one person to another.	1:19:38
	In this context, it is a Christian blessing	1:19:40
	from one to others.	1:19:43
	And so without bowing heads or closing eyes,	1:19:46
	will you receive this blessing which I offer you now	1:19:49
	in the name of Christ,	1:19:52
	the grace of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ,	1:19:55
	the love of God,	1:19:59
	the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit	1:20:02
	be with you and with those whom you love,	1:20:07
	this day and forever.	1:20:13
	♪ Amen ♪	1:20:22
	♪ Amen ♪	1:20:29
	♪ Amen ♪	1:20:36
	♪ Amen ♪	1:20:51
	♪ Amen ♪	1:21:01
	♪ Amen ♪	1:21:13
	(upbeat music)	1:21:30

Item Info

Title:

Robert L. Johnson - "Sin Abounding" (May 29, 1977)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r42j6d56k

Date:

May 29, 1977

Speaker:

Johnson, Robert L.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0900
ref7003_4p3
uachapelsermaud
duke:628187
dcrau002846
ark:/87924/r42j6d56k
eebf2b86-66df-47a4-95b3-55d2d1c213c6

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings

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Language:

English

Location:

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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Robert L. Johnson - "Sin Abounding" (May 29, 1977)

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Duke University Archives