(organ music) (organ music) (choir singing) (organ music) (choir singing) 

- As a forgiven people, we recognize that it is only the love of God that saves us and not we ourselves. Therefore let us confess our sins to almighty God that we may be reconciled unto our maker, the one who redeems us and who sustains us. Please be seated. Most merciful God we confess that we have sinned against in you in thought, word and deed by what we have done and what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways. To the glory of your name. Amen. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. Amen. 

- Let us pray. Open our hearts and minds, oh God, by the power of your holy spirit, so that is the word is read and proclaimed we might hear with joy what you say to us this day. Amen. The first lesson is taken from Acts. Some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, "Unless you are circumcised "according to the custom of Moses, "you cannot be saved." And when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to chose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren, with the following letter. The brethren, both the Apostles and the elders to the brethren who are the gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia. Greeting. Since we have heard that some persons from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what is strangled, and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell. This ends the reading of the first lesson. (organ music) (choir singing) Please rise for the reading of the gospel. The gospel lesson is taken from Saint John. Jesus answered him, "If a man loves me, "he will keep my word "and my Father will love him, "and we will come to him, and make our home with him. "He who does not love me does not keep my words "and the word which you hear is not mine, "but the Father's who sent me. "These things have I spoken to you, "while I am still with you. "But the counselor, the Holy Spirit, "whom the Father will send in my name, "he will teach you all things, "and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. "Peace I leave with you. "My peace I give to you; not as the world gives "do I give I to you. "Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let it be afraid. "You heard me say to you, "'I go away, and I will come to you.' "If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, "because I go to the Father; "for the Father is greater than I. "And now I have told you before it takes place "so that, when it does take place, you may believe." This ends the reading of the gospel. (organ music) (choir singing) 

- Be seated. As minister to the university, I welcome you to the chapel, on this glad day of day of baccalaureate and commencement and I welcome back to the pulpit of Duke Chapel the Reverend Dr. Peter Gomes. Dr. Gomes leads a vibrant ministry from Memorial Church at Harvard University. He has international renown as a gifted interpreter of the Christian faith and we welcome him back to Duke. 

- I read from the 16th chapter of Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, beginning at the first verse. Now concerning the contribution for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may speed me on my journey, wherever I go. For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries. When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am. So let no one despise him. Speed him on his way in peace, that he may return to me, for I am expecting him with the brethren. Here ends the lesson. Let us pray. Help us Lord to become masters of ourselves that we may become servants of others. Take our hands and work through them. Take our minds and think through them. Take our lips and speak through them. And take our hearts and set them on fire, for Christ's sake. Amen. I take as my text the 9th verse of this 16th chapter from 1 Corinthians which we have just read, these words: for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries. For hundreds of years now the old, like ourselves, have assembled the young, like yourselves, before us on occasions very much like this and have inflicted upon them, that is you, one last bit of unsolicited advice. This is the season of the year when this ritual takes place across the land with painful regularity and frequency and the formula for occasions such as this is a variation upon one of the following contentions. The advice that we give to you is something like this: The world is in terrible shape, but you can handle it. (audience laughing) Or the world is in very good shape and you're very lucky to be going out into it. Or finally, the world is in terrible shape and so are you. (audience laughing) Now given this advice, with its mixed signals and its mixed messages, it is possible for any baccalaureate preacher anywhere to preach any sermon on any one of these and this is one of them. Given this advice and this perception, there is reason to understand why there may be among you some who wish to press for some form of student tenure. It was George Plimpton who, a few years ago at a Class Day address at Harvard, looked out at the undergraduates very much like yourselves, about to enter the world, and he said to them, "Ladies and gentlemen of the class of whatever, "I have one word of advice to you. "Don't go. "Terrible out there." But you must go. You've only hired these gowns for one day. You must go. Your parents can't afford to keep you here any longer. Duke University cannot afford to have you stay here any longer, because you now know too much. (audience laughing) You know the university is really in the business of ignorance, not in the business of knowledge. That is why when you know too much, they graduate you, they get you out of the way, very much like your ancestors Adam and Eve. When you know more than is good for you, you are expelled, or as they say to you, graduated from this Eden and they are sent out like yourselves, not because they were dumb. There weren't stupid. But because they knew too much and not for their own good. That of course is an illustration in search of a sermon. Now-- (audience laughing) The preacher's task on an occasion such as this is to try to make some sort of sense of this expulsion, to put as sweet a taste on this poison pill as possible. It is an attempt to sort it out, both to speed you on your way and to welcome you to that place to which you are now going and to do so without imposing too much upon your time, your good sense or your good humor. So I take this task very seriously. For I have a healthy regard for what I know transpires here in Duke University. I take this task seriously, because I care for the world into which you are now to enter. And I take this task most seriously, because I have high hope and confidence in you, in your character, in your mind, in your imagination, in your courage, in your spirit and in your souls. Now it would be very easy and an overwhelming temptation to use this as an opportunity to flatter you and compliment you on all of those skills and abilities that have sustained you here in your days at Duke, accomplishments upon the field, distinctions in the classroom, all of those graces and gifts which has made your presence here worthwhile, but you all know already how clever and bright and attractive you are. You do not need a hired preacher from Harvard to tell you that. (audience laughing) You know better than I do how hard you have worked here, some of you, to make the system work for you and others of you, to avoid any work at all. (audience laughing) Not a few of you candidates are here this morning solely by the grace of God. (audience laughing) You, therefore, and you know who you are; you, therefore, have more reason than most to be thankful and you should have attended all three of these baccalaureate services. (audience laughing) But it is not for us to meditate upon the glories or the difficulties of the past. Our task before us is just that. It is before us, in front of us and my responsibility for you this morning is to help you look at, at the moment, what only I can see. For I am looking at the western doors of this church, out of which, shortly, you shall pass. My task is to raise the question with you, how can you cope with the reality beyond those doors, the reality, the certainty of an uncertain future. Now this is not a very original question. I know that, but then again this is hardly an original occasion. You are not the first nor will you be the last to sit under these auspices and neither you nor I are very original people, as far as that goes. In fact, the only original thing about us is, of course, original sin, but that also is the subject for another sermon at another time. The presumption that we live in a very unique age, which therefore requires some very unique counsel, because we are very unique people facing special and unique problems is, simply put, a not very unique presumption. So to help us frame this, to provide a coat hook upon which to hang these ideas and perhaps you and me together, to help us do this I take as a text, a modest bit of enigmatic prose from Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians; These words, which were probably not heard very often before: for a wide door for effective work has been opened to me and there are many adversaries. Now if you can remember five minutes ago to that chapter from Corinthians which I read to you, you may have wondered what on earth is going on. This is not one of the more familiar and intimate passages from the New Testament. It seems one of those little business notes that Saint Paul is always dashing off, corporate memos to his constituents hither and yon, a combination of homily, gossip, injunction, advice, a preaching, all of that sort of thing, more like a collage of messages taped to the refrigerator door, rather than a philosophical essay or a reasoned discourse. So I'm going to ask you to do what is very easy for you to do and that is forget the travel, forget the offering for the saints at Jerusalem. Don't worry about Macedonia or if you have any idea where it is. Don't get upset trying to sort out who Timothy was or where he was. I'm asking you to focus for a moment at that almost parenthetical statement which I have extracted for my text, that word about a wide door for effective work and the fact that there are many adversaries with it. Now note that the apostle says, about the adversaries, and rather than but. He doesn't say a great door has opened for me, but there are problems on the other side. He doesn't say there is a great opportunity awaiting me, but unfortunately there are also some obstacles. He doesn't even say there is a great opportunity now available to me and I fear there are some problems also. He says there is wide and effective door open to me and there are many adversaries. There are, by definition, adversaries with this open door. There are obstacles that come with every opportunity. They are one and the same process. With every opportunity, there comes adversity and if this is so, so too is the opposite. With adversity, there comes, of necessity, opportunity. Paul recognized that in some sense adversity was not the opposite of opportunity. It was the consequence. He understood, as so many of us do not, that both opportunity and adversity are seasons of grace. They are, together, a part of the normal, ordinary business of living. Now in a university community, especially as privileged a university community as this one is, one frequently is brought up with a view that one has a ticket only to opportunity and a first class ticket to opportunity at that. That is what you will be handed this afternoon, this first class ticket to opportunity. Somehow here, we the sifted few, in Henry James' deliciously original and cynical phrase, "We pay these exorbitant fees "and those of those who teach "are paid these pitiful salaries (audience laughing) "to be protected from adversity of any sort. "We are subsidized in the view "that a care free opportunity belongs to us "as a right and that anything less than this "is the academic equivalent of sin, "which is to say it is unfair." It is unfair, say some of you, that your generation should inherent the threat of nuclear annihilation, thus spoiling your.