- What do the words of Christ really mean? As long as you did it to one of these, you did it to me. Give one a cup of cold water and you give it to me. Somehow what emerges from the slums of New York, or the shacks of Appalachia, or the migrant farm workers of North Carolina is not the face of Christ, but the features of crucified man. We must see Christ in our less fortunate brothers and sisters. Wherever they are, and whatever their condition. That is what gives Christian value to that cup of cold water. But let's come closer to home. Right here to this campus at Duke. If we are true Christians, we should see Christ in every Duke student. Now that can be a tall order. But I really mean it. Is this some kind of Christian pantheism? No, it is not. I think it's a deep understanding of the Incarnation. We must seek Christ in each other. Do we realize what kindness and compassion can do even in the worst of scenarios? Remember The Elephant Man, the play, the movie? When a compassionate surgeon, Dr. Frederick Treves, first saw the Elephant Man, John Merrick was 20. He was terribly misshapen. The most disgusting specimen of humanity that Dr. Treves had ever seen. Giant nodes extended his head like masses of dough. Another mass of bone protruded like a stump from his mouth, making it only a slobbering aperture, turning speech for him into torture. From his back hung sac-like masses of flesh. From his chest, a bag of flesh. Like dewlaps suspended from the neck of a lizard. When Treves came upon him by accident or providence, Merrick was a circus freak, exploited by his ability to shock, to make people throw up. He had no other way to live. He was shunned, recalled Treves, housed like a wild beast, and got his only view of the world from a peephole in a showman's cart. Two years later, Treves housed Merrick in the London Hospital, with his own sitting room. Merrick, he discovered, was highly intelligent, acutely sensitive, romantically imaginative. Against all the odds, his genetic disorder and the cruelty of his fellows had not embittered him. He was gentle and affectionate, free of cynicism and resentment. With never an unkind word for anyone. Merrick was even able to face others without embarrassment. And that transformation began when a young widow entered his room one day, wished him good morning, and shook his hand. Merrick sobbed uncontrollably. Apart from his mother, she was the first woman who had ever smiled at him, ever touched his hand. From then on, he lost his shyness and loved to see his door open and the world flock to him. For here, Treves noted, was a being with the brain of a man, the fancies of a youth, and the imagination of a child. After three years and four months in London Hospital, death came unexpectedly to John Merrick, in 1890 at the age of 26. And time and again before that tragic April afternoon, the Elephant Man told Treves, "I am happy every hour of the day." Now how is it that such physical deformation, such pain and humiliation, did not lead to a deformed personality? John Merrick confounds so many of our pet theories about personality, about human living, about good and evil. He exemplifies quite rudely how much potentiality for life and love, for joy and laughter, lies deep within the scarred and disfigured. Needing only a smile or a touch to release it. Now, if Treves did what he did for John Merrick, the Elephant Man, out of a human motive, he did well. But if he did it for a Christian motive, that was faith in action. And you Duke students don't have far to go to put your faith in action. Here at Duke, there are no John Merricks. But right in the dorms, right down the corridor, there are students who need your help. Who need companionship in their loneliness. And compassion and understanding in their confusions and sorrows. You can bring out their inner worth. God is in each of us. And it is for this reason, that Saint John pleads, "Little children, love one another." Which brings us to our third point, God's love. If someone were to tell me, Burke, sum up Christianity in one single word, I suppose I'd demur and say, well, can you give me a couple semesters? Nope, one word. What about a lecture? Nope, one word. A sermon? No. A teeny weeny sermon? No, one word. If you push me into a corner, I'd have to answer love. Love is the only word that explains God's creation of everything and everyone. Love is at the basis of God's special relationship to the Hebrew people. Love is at the bottom of the Incarnation. Only love is believable. In the first place, only love makes Christ believable. Only love makes sense out of the next two weeks. The two weeks of the Passion. The Passion of Christ, something happened to Jesus. But what happened to him? What he suffered makes sense only in the context of what he did. And one thing he did supremely, more than anything else, better than anyone else, he loved. Saint John highlights this in the first page of his Passion. When Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. But if love alone makes Christ believable, surely love alone makes the Christian believable. For Christianity is not an idea floating around in outer space. Christianity is people. In a sobering phrase, God's people. Christ and Christianity will be believable only if my love makes me believable. And so here is the importance of the next two weeks, the two weeks of the Passion, love must get through to me. The love of him who is the suffering servant beyond compare. It must transform my love, so that the men and women I touch resonate my touch because they see on my face the image of Christ, the Christ who loved to the end. A rather famous Jesuit once said, "I suppose I've done some fairly good things in my lifetime. "But you know, if God were not somehow there, "It would all be rather silly, wouldn't it?" Silly, it would be utterly impossible. In Augustan's powerful phrase, "If we but turn to God, that itself is a gift of God. Once I realize that, I can take Christian delight in myself. And what a mighty God has done Through a lowly person, I can like me. And so for every Christian, there are two special sins that crucify Christ again. Pride and despair. Each of these is rooted in the same heresy. That the world can be saved by human wisdom. N-O says Saint Paul, no. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. God chose you and me. Let God work his wonders in you, and you may take delight in God and in yourself. In the meantime, my dear fellow Duke students, you represent all the students I've known over the last 48 years, you and they have pushed me, you've challenged me, you've exasperated me, and you've edified me. And I am grateful to you. My feeling for you and my prayer for you is best expressed in the words of Paul's letter to the Christians at Philippi. I give thanks to God each time I remember you. Always in every prayer of mine, for all of you. I make my prayer with joy. For of this I am certain, that he who began the good in you will bring it to completion, ready for the day when Jesus Christ comes. May your love abound more and more in the fullness of its knowledge and the depth of its perception. So that you can learn to prize what is of real value. May nothing cloud your conscience or hinder your progress till the day Christ comes. May you reap through Jesus Christ the full harvest of your justification to God's glory and praise, amen. (organ music) (choral music) 

- Let us affirm what we believe. We believe in God, who has created and is creating, who has come in the truly human Jesus, to reconcile and make new. Who works in us and others by the Spirit. We trust God, who calls us to be the Church, to celebrate life and its fullness, 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. The Lord be with you. 

- And also with you. 

- Let us pray. Oh God, eternal spirit, grant us grace to worship you in spirit and in truth. You have so made us that the glory of our lives is not in things below or around us that we master, but in the divine above us that masters us. Grant us an hour of such spiritual wealth, made aware of your eternal realities, captured by a vision of the Christ-like life to be lifted up out of our littleness by dedication to abiding values and to your everlasting purposes. You, oh God, surely see us a generation victorious over the hazards of war, and yet frustrated and even confused by the problems of peace. From a dismaying world, we come into your sanctuary, and here we pray for an hour of spiritual insight, that with thankful hearts, we may see afresh the light which even this darkness has not been able to put out. For the heritage of the Christian gospel, for all the saints who from their labors rest, for the noble succession of seers and prophets, for Christ, your son, who has given us a kingdom that cannot be shaken. For our friends who renew our faith in goodness and beauty, in integrity and love. And for you, your love, oh God, we give you thanks. Now marshal within us in these momentous times such resources of the spirit that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Come and minister to our intimate personal needs. Oh spirit of the living God, walk through this place now, and be the help and comfort, the inspiration and sustenance of our very souls. In temptation, in illness, in disappointment and depression, in defeat when we are tempted to give up, and in success when we are tempted to be proud, oh God, restore our souls. May we hear your voice speaking to each of us, reassuring us, challenging us, summoning us to dedicated and victorious living. Hear now the unspoken prayers that rise in silence from the depths of our hearts. And to those needs that can find no voice, save for your ear alone, minister according to the riches of your grace, in Christ Jesus, our savior and lord, the one who came to live among us and who taught us to pray, 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. (joyful organ music) (man sings in foreign language) (choir sings in foreign language) (man sings in foreign language) (French horn music) (choir sings in foreign language) ("Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow") ♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪ ♪ Praise Him, all creatures here below ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Praise Him above ye heavenly host ♪ ♪ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ 

- Oh Lord our God, send down upon us your holy spirit to cleanse our hearts, to make holy our gifts, and to perfect the offering of ourselves to you. Through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray, amen. (organ music) (choir sings indistinctly) 

- The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord's face shine upon you. The Lord's countenance be upon you, both now and forever, and give you peace. (choral music) (organ music) (parishioners chatting indistinctly) (organ music) (parishioners chatting indistinctly)