(church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) ♪ Amen ♪ - If we claim to be sinless, we are self deceived and strangers to the truth. If we confess our sins, God may be trusted to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from every kind of wrong. Let us pray. (indistinct choir singing) Let us continue our prayer in unison. "Forgive us, our sins, oh Lord, the sins of the present and the sins of the past, the sins of our souls and the sins of our bodies, the sins which we have done to please ourselves and the sins which we have done to please others. Forgive us our casual sins and our deliberate sins. Forgive us them, oh lord. Forgive them all for Jesus Christ's sake, Amen." And hear these words of the assurance of pardon, believe the good news of the Gospel. In Jesus Christ we are forgiven. Being forgiven let us offer unto God the prayer, which Jesus taught his disciples, saying, "Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen." (mellow music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) The Lord be with you. Let us pray. Let us offer first a prayer of thanks. We thank thee, gracious God, for things we take for granted, for another day of life, for bread upon the table for friends who love us in spite of what we are, for mercy given us beyond our deserving, for the immeasurable joy of joy, for the holy saints and for the holy heretics, for the opportunity of worship in this good place, for Jesus Christ, our risen Lord unto whom with thee, and the Holy Spirit, be all glory and majesty world without end. Let us offer a prayer of intercession at a time of tragedy on our campus. Almighty and eternal God, who art the God of the living and of the dead, we commend unto thee the spirit of our fellow student Shelton Adams in the confident assurance that thou hast received him unto thyself. Strengthen, we beseech thee, his family and his friends. Let their faith in thee and our remembrance of them steady them in the hours of sorrow. May they be comforted by their confidence in life that is eternal as promised and sealed unto us by thy son, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. Let us offer a prayer of supplication for ourselves. Oh thou in whose boundless being are laid up all treasures of wisdom, truth and holiness, grant us through constant fellowship with thee the true graces of Christian character, a grace of courage, whether in suffering or in danger, the grace of preparedness lest we enter into temptation, the grace to treat others as we would have others treat us, the grace of charity, that we may refrain from hasty judgment, the grace of silence that we may refrain from hasty speech, the grace of forgiveness toward all who have wronged us, the grace of tenderness towards all who are weaker, and the grace of steadfastness in continuing to desire that thou wilt do as now we pray. Our Father God, by whom we live and on whom our hopes are built grant us ears to hear, eyes to see, wills to obey, hearts to love. Then declare what thou wilt. Reveal what thou wilt. Command what thou wilt. Demand what thou wilt. And let each one of us answer, speak Lord for thy servant here. Amen. - The lesson for today is from Amos chapter five, verses seven to 15, 21 to 24. "Oh, you who turned justice to wormwood and cast down righteousness on the earth! He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name; who makes destruction flash forth against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress. They hate him, who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks the truth. Therefore because you trample upon the poor and take from him exactions of wheat, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. For I know how many are your transgressions, how great are your sins. You who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate. Therefore he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time. Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of Hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of Hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph." "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts, I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Here ends the reading of the lesson, Amen. (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) ♪ Amen, Amen♪ - Let us affirm our faith in God. We believe in God who has created and is creating, who has come in the true man Jesus to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by his spirit. We trust him. He calls us to be in his church to celebrate his presence, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen, our judge and our hope in life in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God. - During an election campaign, as on the 4th of July or on inauguration day, amid all the pious and ringing rhetoric, there was a serious yearning and a stirring of conscience in America about first principles in our national life and behavior. In campaign 72, we can expect a mounting crescendo of noise from each party, making its messianic claims of virtue in holy war against the vice of the other party. We are called on to throw the rascals out, to let the saints go marching in or from the other side to keep the rascals out so that the saints can continue their righteous rule. It may be appropriate here and now not to preach an election sermon as the Puritan pastors in New England always did, but to consider by the light of Christian norms, something of our national ethos and the relationship of religious faith to political practice. Despite the legal separation of church and state and the steady secularization of common life, there remains a more than sentimental tie between religious faith and our national ethos. When we ask what is the esprit de corps of the body politic, we acknowledge that it is something spiritual and something seriously threatened. Mr. Nixon, in his inaugural address spoke of a crisis of the spirit and promised that it would be met by an answer of the spirit. On another occasion he said, "it is the character of a nation that determines whether it survives no matter how rich or strong it is, a civilization cannot endure without spiritual and moral strength." Mr. McGovern bids America to come home again. Where's home? From where have we strayed? The answer is given in terms of the moral and spiritual values or the faith of our fathers. Now we must not be romantic here about the church piety of the Founding Fathers. Sorry, but George Washington did not kneel in prayer in the snow at Valley Forge. He would not kneel in prayer, even in the church of which he was vestry man. In the era of the Revolution perhaps four to 7% of Americans were church members. But inner piety that's another matter. It is not being romantic to claim that there was a profound sense of reverence that informed common life, that man lived in an accountability to a transcendent Lord, the Supreme judge of the universe, to whom the signers of the Declaration of Independence appealed. You remember quote "for the rectitude of our intentions" end quote. And the phrase comes at the end for more than political effect. And Washington wrote quote "reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle," end quote. Providence was not just the name of a village in Rhode Island. It was a living reality arching over all. This reverence, this fear of the Lord undergirded the sense of moral responsibility in the American character that emerged in the new nation as de Tocqueville and others observed and prevailed to a much larger degree than now. Men could trust each other and walk without fear, leaving their doors unlocked in part because of a shared sense of accountability to God and to the moral commandments. This kind of honor system, grounded in reverence kept the fabric of communities strong. It is this quality of life that has been thinning and tearing. There are bad breakdowns, brutalities, and inhumanities, callous disregard for persons and property and our political leadership gropes for the recovery of moral rectitude. They reach for a center, a center, not as some mid point between the radical left and the conservative right, but center as the core or the heart or the home that is the authentic spirit of America. In this search and recall there has developed alongside of the traditional faiths of the churches, a new kind of religion. Call it civil religion. It is essentially a belief in the American way of life, which has its own aura of sanctity. The high priests of this religion, sometimes even in clerical garb, call on us to join, whatever be our official church creed, in a new credo. I believe in America first, the land of the free, at least the free white and the home of the brave, and as the messiah and protector for the free world. It is a religion in the sense that whatever is taken as of absolute and supreme worth, is deity to be worshiped. America is God. The ethics of this civil religion celebrates the Reader's Digest virtues of free enterprise, individualism, self-reliance, competition, brotherhood, progress, prosperity, happiness. These presumably have made America great. What happens now to Christianity at the hands of civil religion? A very subtle process of conversion. The God of our fathers, the Supreme judge of the universe now becomes an American ally, a prop, a helper, a copilot, in whatever be our American mission or as he was called by the late J Edgar Hoover, our greatest secret weapon. This nation under God is read to mean God is on our side for we are his chosen, blessed people. Lately, for some, the God of the Christian faith has even been summoned as a divine chaplain in a holy war against the godless enemy. At an Honor America Day service on the 4th of July a year or two ago before the Washington Monument a placard was fervently paraded, which read "God, Guts, and Gunpowder maintain Liberty". Much more discreetly and soberly the services of worship held regularly in the East room of the White House celebrate the values of the American way as fostered and sustained by traditional Judaism and Christianity in all its plural forms. The invited preachers are carefully screened ahead of time to be sure that they subscribe to the civil religion and say nothing offensive or upsetting. The prophet Amos of the Old Testament would not be invited. It's interesting to ponder whether a prophet of the New Testament named Jesus of Nazareth would be on the approved list. Set against this civil religion, the prophetic religion of the Bible, the faith of an Amos, an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, a Christ, a Saint Paul they are two radically different religions because their gods are different. The God Amos recalls to Israel is the transcendent power who makes the seven stars and Orion and turns the shadow of night into morning, who holds Israel to the same rigid standard of justice, like a plumb line that he holds all the other nations or Isaiah's holy God, high and lifted up. Who in the name of the Lord, berates his people as a rebellious people whose kings say to the seers, see not and to the prophets prophesy not to us what is right. Speak to us smooth things. There are two words, in particular, which prophetic religion says to civil religion and to us who practice its devotional exercises laying on its altars our sacrifices of burnt offerings and burnt bodies. The first is the word of judgment and criticism against taking the American way of life for the true God. If righteousness exalted a nation self-righteousness may destroy it. The pretense that American values are absolute, that we are righteous in all our ways deafens us to the voices that come from all around the world, that we are wanton in our cruelty and brutality, arrogant in our use of power abroad and at home rich in things and poor in soul. Oh, I know well enough that a stance of contrition and repentance is not the usual one for nations to take in confronting each other in diplomatic negotiation. And in an election campaign, no candidate is likely, by the rules of the game, to advertise the truth that we are morally corrupt. Yet it would be a sign, not of weakness, but of spiritual strength to sound the prophetic note of contrition. Lincoln was perhaps one of the last among our presidents who had the theological sensitivity to hear the wrath of God in the events of his time and to speak the word of repentance. Quote he said, "it is the duty of nations as well as of men to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow. Yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon." Few among our leaders honor the truth of the verse from Proverbs. He who rules his city. He who rules his spirit is greater than he who takes the city. The second word that prophetic religion says to civil religion is that morality pertains to public policy as much as to private life. Currently, we see a rising tide of a new evangelical sweeping fervor on campus, off campus, campus Crusades for Christ Explo '72 in Texas this last summer, T '73 coming up are all good signs of a positive search for a positive faith. This evangelical surge fills the spiritual vacuum left by the collapse of the liberal student Christian movement. It is a recall to the truth that indeed out of the heart are the issues of life. But if you look carefully at the content of the message of the revivalist and ask what is involved in decisions for Christ, the answer is given as private purity and rarely in terms of public policy. Christian character has to do with prayer, faith, trust, love, peace, joy. Public policy has to do with economics and power politics, international relations, business affairs. And the evangelist keeps these two spheres apart. At Explo '72 in Dallas, among the 85,000 young people cheering for Jesus in the Cotton Bowl, making more noise than even the Dallas Cowboys evoke with a winning touchdown almost nothing was said from the podium about the war in Indo-China, about ecology, business ethics, social welfare. And from the standpoint of prophetic religion that simply won't do. Private character cannot be split from public policy. As a tree is known by its fruits a man's character shows in the public policies he adopts, how he acts as a voter, citizen, producer, consumer as much as how he acts at home. Who is this Christ to whom one gives one's heart? Is he just a kind savior who makes me happy? Who takes me off of drugs? The kind of Methodist methadone? Is he not rather one who with the prophets lashed out at conspicuous piety, drove the money changers out of the temple, called Israel back to public righteousness and justice? As a people, only as we seek the Lord of the Universe before whom the nations are like a drop from a bucket and the generations of men rise and pass away, only as we hear his wrath in the events of our present history, and only as we do justice internationally and intra-nationally, may we be prepared to find grace, forgiveness, renewal, and be brought home again. Amen, let us pray. May the words of our mouth, the thoughts of our hearts, together with the actions of our lives be found acceptable in thy sight. Oh Lord, our strength, and our Redeemer, Amen. (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) ♪ Amen ♪ (church organ music) (choir vocalizing) (indistinct choir singing) (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ - Here we offer and present unto thee Oh Lord, our minted and our printed blood, the symbol of ourselves to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto thee in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen. (church organ music) (church organ music) (indistinct choir singing) (bell rings) (church organ music)