Transcript

I thank you John for a very gracious introduction. I wish it were true and to Gerald Lord and the committee for inviting me to be here and to you for being here. I think I saw a couple of you yesterday afternoon sailing over my house. I recalled sitting here that it was in this place and it was Minister's Week at which I was first introduced to the larger body beyond the bounds of the seminary and the university to the ministers and Church of the Southeast. Brooks Holifield introduced me then and then Bishop Cannon at the South Georgia Conference at Valdosta and then again he gave me another chance at the North Georgia Conference at Augusta within the first year of my coming here and I'm grateful and have good memories of that and have looked forward to this occasion so that those memories might be renewed. This is the text for now. From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised and Peter took him and began to rebuke him saying God forbid Lord this shall never happen to you but he turned and said to Peter get behind me Satan you're a hindrance to me you're not on the side of God but of man then Jesus told his disciples if anyone would come after me deny yourself take up your cross and follow me for whoever would save life will lose it whoever loses life for my sake will find it for what will it profit anyone to gain the whole world and forfeit one's life or what shall one give in return for one's life. The subject is death and when I said it to myself I knew then I should offer a word of explanation not apology but explanation. It does seem in Congress and inappropriate for the season we're in the Easter season. It seems inappropriate to the theme of this gathering for we have spoken of visions and dreams in every plenary session dealing with the future of the world and of the church and of theology and death seems not to fit in any discussion of future. It seems most inappropriate to the closing service but certainly should end with some kind of balloon in the air some hallelujah if not a challenge at least doxology because we go from here home why speak now of death. Well let me say that it is not because I participate in the do me and gloomy conversation about the church I don't. It's not because I have by some revelation heard the slipping of the silent sheet over the face of the church. I have not heard the flap of the vultures wing. I've heard no death rattle in its throat. I have not been reading the coroner's report about the church. It isn't that. Well I do I do participate with you in the regret of the deadliness that's in the church in so many quarters and in its pulpits sometimes and in its classrooms sometime and in its meetings sometime. I hate the deadliness as much as you. You remember Charles Dickens commenting once about being in a gathering of divines in a very ecclesiastical setting and the meeting extended itself long long time droning away unimportant subjects treated without feeling and Mr. Dickens interrupted the proceedings by saying I have a suggestion why don't we move to a table and sit around the table and hold hands and see if we can make contact with the living. We've all been to those meetings. But my word of explanation is this that I am taught that we are to deal with the subject of death by the fact of the incarnation because if the incarnation does not include death then what's the point. If our Lord stops short of death tempted as we are in every way but stopped short of death then how can he bear our griefs and know our sorrows. It incarnation insists that we talk about it and the gospel insists that we talk about it. You cannot preach the gospel and not speak of the death of Jesus. You cannot even describe the Christian life and go without speaking of Jesus death for the death of Jesus is continued in the life of the Christian. Sometimes in dramatic ways like Paul I bear on my body the stigmata let no one trouble me anymore. I continue to make up in myself what is lacking of the suffering of Christ. I die every day maybe not that dramatic but if you call yourself a Christian you have to think upon participate in the death of Jesus. The future of the church depends on it. I think this is the subject that deals with the future of the church and so I participate in the future thinking of this whole assembly by speaking to you of death. And we've been together now 75 years isn't it? Isn't that time enough to be close enough to bring up the most painful of all the subjects? The subject of death. I have to talk about it because in the New Testament when Jesus introduced the subject of his own death he introduced the subject of the death of the church. I must go into Jerusalem and be killed and if anybody comes after me the church that follows me must bear the cross and yet among us at least in my hearing we have spoken of the death of Jesus as though it were the life of the world but we have spoken of the death of the church as though it were the end of the world. We need to talk about this. I do not know, you do not know, none of us know when Jesus first began to think about his own death. The Bible is not psychological and therefore we do not have access to his feelings and his thinking especially in the younger years which are not accessible to us at all. It's true the Gospel writers put the subject of his death quite early in their narratives. All of them do. Matthew tells us in chapter 2 of the terrifying and terrible Herod and the massacre of the children at Bethlehem and though Jesus was able by the hand of God to slip the noose of that massacre it's only the most naive among us who would suppose that the Herod family would thereafter leave him alone they will come back again and again. Matthew chapter 2 Mark chapter 2 and they said to him why don't your disciples fast and he said at a wedding party you don't fast at a party but the time is coming when the groom will be taken away and then they'll fast in that day. Mark chapter 2 Luke and Simeon took the baby six weeks old in his arms and said to Mary because of this child a sword will pierce your heart. Luke chapter 2. John and he took a whip and he drove out the money changers turned over the table spilled the coins and cleansed the temple and he gave it according to John this interpretation destroy this temple and I will build it again in three days. He spoke of the temple of his body. John chapter 2 but the fact that the Gospel writers introduced quite early the subject of Jesus death does not mean that the subject was quite early in the mind of Jesus though I would not be surprised really. It comes up quite early every mother while carrying the baby in her womb cannot avoid the thought of death and then when the baby comes and seems so frail in those early months fussing in the night and up she gets and fussing in the night and up she gets and fussing in the night and up she gets and then she gets up because she doesn't hear the baby fussing in the night. I would have gotten up myself if Nadia had waked me. You know as well as I do that the subject of death comes up when I'm invited to sit around and talk informally with high school students in churches and they get comfortable enough with each other and with me to talk about things really. Always one of them will ask about death because there's not a high school youngster in this country who cannot give you the name of the friend who is dead either at his or her own hands or because death put on bloody boots and walked the center lane of the highway and broke the glass. I don't know how early it came to the mind of Jesus. There is no evidence in my judgment that it was a melancholy cloud over his life that he was a sad and morose person. He was not a hamlet as far as I can tell. He was not an Abraham Lincoln as far as I can tell. No evidence of preoccupation with the subject of death like Saint Ignatius of Antioch. So thrilled that he was arrested and facing martyrdom and writing letters to all the churches along the way to Rome saying please don't pray for me. I think they're gonna kill me. He loved it. He was looking for a cross. I find none of that even though the thought of death has been in the minds of some of the greatest preachers of the English language. Two of the greatest if not the two greatest. John Donne, Fred Robertson, how often they thought of death. And it comes up once in a while and Jesus is pictured as someone who thinks of death even of his own death. That was quite the thing in the 60s when I first began to teach in seminary talking about death not just the death of institutions and down with the government and down with the church and down with all authority but I mean death. Even self slaughter as a testimony to the world. I wish to make a statement to burn myself in public and I recall with what shuddering pain when first I heard interpreted the temptation of Jesus to leap from the pinnacle of the temple as the contemplation of suicide as a statement against the authorities of his day. It is my reading of the gospel that he was not that way that he resisted it. John, John says that he hid from the authorities when he was in Jerusalem. He withdrew out by the Jordan River and at night he went out into a garden away from the people and away from the city when the sun went down and spent the evening in Gethsemane and when the hour came when death came close enough for him to taste it the amber tasted the corner of his mouth when the mist was in his face and the fog was in his throat he did not embrace it he screamed and said God please everything is possible not this. We don't know how soon he began to think of it he seems to have resisted it. It is that resisting death that was addressed by Charles Sandberg the real name of Carl Sandberg before he changed his name to Carl his name was Charles and in an early untitled poem he spoke to the young vigorous Jesus. Take up your cross and go the thornway he said and if a sponge of vinegar be offered you on the tip of a spear accept it. Souls are woven of endurance God knows. Whenever it came to his mind we do know from the Gospels that Jesus found it difficult to talk about death. Matthew and Mark say he withdrew to a very private place far to the north at the site of the ancient city of Panias at Caesarea Philippi away from everybody who knew him and there in private with the twelve began to speak of it of course in private Luke says he withdrew and he was praying and they were with him when he brought it up even John with his transcendent Christ the one from above who knows everything even John says that when the Greeks came seeking Jesus said now now my soul is troubled there is a law in nature he said that a seed has to die when it falls in the ground otherwise it will abide there alone it has to die to give life there is a law among my disciples that if anybody would live first that person must die now what shall I say father make me exempt from this no no no no it was very difficult for him to talk to the disciples about it of course it was it always is it's not a subject easily brought up nor easily pursued and the difficulty of it was the difficulty it placed upon his friends it's by my experience and the and the nature of my reading on the matter that the great pain in the subject of death is not to think about our own death for of that we have no experience but to think of what it does to those who love us there's the pain but he brought it up and it created such an unusual response one would have thought that there would have been a heavy silence whenever death is brought up when first in our family I finally had the courage to say I think we need to make a will it was silent all day it's such a it's such a private subject justice grief does not count its wounds so death recalls from any rehearsal of its nature we just don't say anything about it and it creates such an unusual response in this case not unusual when you think about it because there's such a reaction from Simon Peter in the others no no no because you see the strongest thing we know the strongest thing we know is life and to speak of ending life you can't speak that way life is tenacious it is difficult to die you look through the glass at the maternity ward and some of those babies some I'm premature about as big as your hand and some of those little babies about the size of your hand have open heart surgery within three four months and they live they live life is so tenacious and strong I learned this first when I've killed a snake as a boy I was chopping cotton for some of you that means with a hoe under the sun and getting the weeds out of the cotton for you I was about seven years old I was chopping cotton a snake was called before me I began to chop the snake I went to tell my father and he lectured me about killing snakes indiscriminately but a snake is a snake it still is pretty much a snake and he told me about all the benefits of snakes and how they kept down the rodents and all in that I shouldn't do that and had I already done it I said yes I've killed him and I went back and the snake was still moving and the tail was I went back and I said I don't think I've killed him and he came over and he said but he will die I said well why doesn't he hurry up and die and he said oh snakes never die until sundown did you know that if a turtle snaps you it won't turn loose till it thunders but if you kill a snake it will not die till sundown he said now hang the snake on the fence and it will die at sundown I without enthusiasm finish the day of work always looking over toward the fence and seeing just a little wiggle of the end of the tail and my last picture of the clothes of that day was the moving of the snake's tail and I saw something of the mystery of life and how tenacious and tough it is and then Jesus just brings it up in Simon Peter said no and they got in an argument and the language of the gospel is the language of exorcism as though we're a demon being cast out and Jesus rebuked Peter and Peter rebuked Jesus and they yelled at each other but the subject was clear Jesus subject was death Simon Peter's subject was survival the lines were drawn just as they are when he goes on to speak of the death of the church for he turned and said to all of them if the church would follow after me it must deny itself take up its cross and we have the same reaction not the death of the church we're all working to keep the church from dying Jesus you sound like all those other people said it's declining isn't it it's dying isn't it's dying the church is dying Jesus you sound like everybody else we're going to survive we are survivors this will never happen to you we'll change doctors we'll get a transfusion I'll bring in somebody else we'll have some gimmicks we'll do something we'll keep this thing afloat we'll keep this thing alive we will survive well Jesus you had just said you have just said the gates of death will not prevail against it now didn't you mean that and he said yes but what I meant by that was you will die but death will not be final you will live again but we prefer that the church be immortal and triumphant if you would follow after me no and I'm embarrassed that I can preach so easily on the death of Jesus for the life of the world and I get so upset when anybody speaks of the death of the church now not any death just any death not just any old death will do well death can be as meaningless as life as the old proverb says just because he died doesn't mean he ever lived death can be meaningless death talk can be absolutely sick it was kind of sick back in the 60s when I think of all those seminarians swarming me and explaining why they wouldn't come to class because they had important things to do and all in the mid 60s and that talk of death some of it was sick telling God how to do the church do the church in I went to the dedication service beautiful building tall tower great facilities all kinds of marvelous things I was there for the dedication it was at the University at Oklahoma and the young man campus ministered to give a prayer had a very brief prayer Lord burned down this building and scattered these people for the sake of the gospel oh no some of that kind of talk is sick just as a lot of the survival talk is sick all the things that are being offered to us as the way to survive well it looks like some of our best givers now are passing away we're gonna have to cut back and you know if we don't build up a pretty heavy financial reserve at our church I don't know that we're going to be able to survive so let's take the money we've been sending out in the mission to the world and put it in reserve and let it be drawing interest because the time may come when we may not even be able to pay the salary and pay this and that and I think we better fix the building and do this and that and then once the but while let's bring in a hot shot maybe can rev us up and have a special program and have a beauty queen come and witness and and maybe have a basketball star come and double dribble and say something about God and let's let's just you know but we got to be listen there are a lot of good books on how to keep it going go buy some more of those books listen you can even get a book that has a sermon in it for every Sunday you don't even have to open your Bible let's get with the program survival survival it's sick the talk of survival is sick Jesus is not asking us to play at the edge of death he's not asking for suicide what he is saying is for the church if it would be his church to give its life now what does give you life mean it means that the church is willing to empty its pockets for somebody else's children it means that the church will treat as mother and father persons who are not your mother and father it means that the church will treat as brother and sister people that are not kind to you that you will invite to a meal and sit down with people and eat who lie totally beyond the bounds of social respectability it means touch untouchables it means stand up and advocate what's right and good in the world people are a little sick of the church just being descriptive and value-free the church is an advocate of something and speaks for something even in the face of difference and perhaps even dividing the house it means to continue to be an evangelist even when the world is snickering behind its hand about evangelists it means to witness to Jesus Christ and to reach to the rest of the world even when the paint is peeling in your own sanctuary give your life now that's painful of course it's painful to me to think about I'm as selfish as anyone here and the preening and the pruning tease me with a kind of pleasure but once in a while I meet somebody who's taken the full measure of this I was at one summer teaching at Princeton we're in the refactory and found a place at a table there was a young woman there your student yes I'm a graduate student in what field theology or really yes we talked she was a Roman Catholic nun not long she had not been long she said I was a buyer for maces in New York I had a nice apartment everything was just really going my way and she said in fact I was engaged to be married in about two months before the wedding I had prayed I had thought I had prayed I had thought I called him he came over I gave him the ring he didn't understand but he took the ring and he left she said sometime later I was on the subway in New York I was wearing my nun's habit all the seats were taken I was standing holding the strap and when I suddenly realized facing me holding the strap right in front of me was he I said hello he said hello and she said we both cried and said goodbye again I said does it still hurt and she says very much then why did she do it she did it because not everybody lives by the principle it feels good according to Jesus the only way the only way and by that I mean the only way that the church can avoid dying is give its life that little poem by Charles/Carl Sandberg he said was not addressed to Jesus that's a mistake he says it's addressed to the church take up your cross and go the thornway and if a sponge of vinegar be offered you on the tip of a spear accepted souls are made of endurance God knows