(hymnal organ music) 

- My friends, the scriptures call us to confession in these words. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord. And he will have mercy upon him, and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. Let us join in the unison confession. Oh Lord, most holy, you have found us wanting and yet you have not forsaken us. Deliver us in these days of Lent and devotion from all the luxuries and comforts of a smug private righteousness. We confess our insincerities, our self-righteous poses and our dubious devotions. Lift up our hearts as we recall the labor of our Lord and grant us His grace to take upon ourselves the burden of life's sin which darkens our time, and will not be lightened except by the cross of suffering. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Jesus said, he who comes to me I will not cast out. In His name, I declare unto you as you have confessed, so you're forgiven, amen. (light flute music) (indistinct chanting) (hymnal music) 

- The scripture lessons this morning are taken from the 33rd chapter of Ezekiel, verses seven through 16. The first letter of John, the second chapter verses one through three and 15 through 17. And from the gospel according to Mark, the first chapter verses nine through 12. Here are the word of God. So you Son of Man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life. And you Son of Man, say to the house of Israel, thus have you said our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we waste away because of them. How then can we live? Say to them, as I live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways for why will you die, O house of Israel. And you Son of Man, say to your people, the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses. And as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness. And the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins. Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live yet if he trusts in his righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous deed shall be remembered but in the inequity that he has committed, he shall die. Again, though I say to the wicked, you shall surely die, yet if he turns from his sin and does what is lawful and right, if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has taken by robbery and walks in the statutes of life, committing no inequity, he shall surely live. He shall not die. None of the sins that he had committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is lawful and right. He shall surely live. My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and He is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this, we may be sure that we know Him if we keep His commandments. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father, but is of the world. And the world passes away and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever. Please stand for the reading of the gospel. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when He came up out of the water, immediately, He saw the heavens open and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven. "Thou art, my beloved son. With thee I am well pleased. The Spirit immediately drove Him out into the wilderness. Thus ends the reading of the scripture. (hymnal organ music) 

- We live in God's will, 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 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. The Lord be with you. (indistinct). Let us pray. Almighty God, thou who art the creator of our lives and the savior of our souls, make us aware of thy presence as we lift our hearts to thee in prayer. Speak to us each according to his own need. Forgive our way waywardness, and give peace to our hearts. By thy grace, make us more Christ-like in our relationships, not given to fault-finding and sharp speech, but generous and kindly in our conversations. Bring comfort to the sorrowing and courage to the fearful of heart. Stand by thy children who for weary months have anxiously cared for the sick. To those who pass through the valley of the shadow of death, give the touch of thy hand that they may fear no evil. Look in tenderness and pity upon thy children in the lands of starvation, and give us the grace that we may reach out hands of helpfulness and love to them. Grant thy blessing upon the president of the United States and all who represent us in government. Imbue them with the spirit of wisdom, goodness, and truth, and so rule their hearts and bless their endeavors that justice and peace may everywhere prevail. Guide our nation as we seek to conserve our resources and organize our way that the wounds of our people may be healed. In all things, draw us to the mind of Christ that thy lost image may be traced again, and that we may be one with thee. And now hear us as with one voice we pray, 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. 

- I wanna call your attention to an announcement on the back. I come, sort of asking with a special announcement. My name is Drick Boyd, and I am a sort of chairman right now of the Duke University Christian Council Hunger Committee. And a number of you will remember the fast we had last November for hunger relief, and a number of you participated in that. Well, this semester we're having a one-meal-a-week fest, Asking people to give up one regular meal a week and then donate that money they would have spent on food for that particular meal to a fund for the hungry. Now your money will either go to Oxfam America, which was the group we used last in November, in the past November, for overseas relief or for a fund that is being collected for the hungry and malnourished here in Durham. When you make the donation, you make the choice. Yu have a choice. The money we collected on Thursday, now I realize for a number of you, that's sort of inconvenient 'cause you're not around campus. Just send it in the care of the chapel and indicate, that it is for the fast, and then whether you would want it to go to Oxfam America or for Fund for Durham. I would really urge you all to participate in this for at least a couple of reasons. One, I think we have a tendency to sometimes forget that just how affluent we are here in America. I just read a statistic the other day that America has 6% of the, excuse me, 6% of the world's resources or uses 6% of the world's resources. Ah, excuse me. 6% of the world's population and uses 50% of the world's resources. So the rest of the world, the 94% get the rest of it, the rest of the resources that the world has to offer. And this puts a great responsibility on us because we have a lot of wealth. And so, to them that much is given, much is required. And I would just ask you all to really consider just how well off we are, and to give just one meal a week to some of those who could really use that food to just survive. If anybody has any questions or anything, I'll be down in the Memorial Chapel and will be willing to talk to anyone, thank you. 

- May I add a word of support to Drick's announcement? Many of you participated enthusiastically and generously in the efforts last fall. Let me encourage you to do the same again now. Drick will be available. For those of you who might be interested in working with the hunger committee, he will be available in the Memorial Chapel to talk with you following this service, and we will be pleased again to act as an instrument to handle any contributions you might wish to make to this cause. You have no way of knowing this, but it's a human interest kind of thing that I like for us to know and be aware of. We had a, have a grandfather, granddaughter leading us in worship today, Bishop Garrison, who is on the faculty of the Divinity School, retired Bishop of the Dakotas area and his granddaughter, Kim LaPratt, who is a member of the worship committee of the chapel and a member of the class of '76 of Trinity College. I know you share with me the appreciation we have of their leadership of our worship this morning. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I wonder how many of you this morning can identify with me to my difficulty in seeing myself as a real sinner. When we pray as we do every Sunday, the prayer of confession, does this really involve you? When we talk of lent as a time of repentance and confession, do you think that this is a time for this for you? When Jesus says all have sinned, does this speak to you? When John writes, if anyone sin, do you say I sin? About a year ago now I was riding to Atlanta with three other ministers from the university here. And among many other things, which we said and which I said, at one point in our trip, I said, one of my real problems as a human being is that I have a hard time seeing myself as a real sinner. I'm not mean or cruel or heartless. I've not killed anyone, or robbed a bank, or raped anybody. I don't slander or gossip or lie. I believe in God and goodness, love and caring for others. I'm a pretty good husband, father and family man. I try to be responsible in my work and treat my fellow workers right. I try to be kind and helpful and understanding. I believe in right and wrong, and I think I support the right and oppose the wrong. I'm a rather decent, honest, good citizen, probably the good old typical quote, middle-class American Christian. And so I have a hard time seeing myself as sinful. I guess I often think I'm like the person described in the book of Revelation where God says, would that you were either hot or cold, but you are neither. And I will spew you out of my mouth. Would that I were either hot or cold, and yet lent comes and I search my soul and I know full well that I am a sinner, perhaps even among the most dangerous kind. Those who feel self-assured and secure and do not know the true state of their own souls. This is why John's words which Kim read for us a while ago from the first epistle of John, really speak to me today. It's not only what he says, but it's the way he says it. For you see, John could have come on strong, like Jesus' first sermon. You remember Jesus said, repent and believe the good news for the kingdom of God is at hand. Or John could have brought us all up short like Isaiah in the temple when he said, woe is me for I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Or John could have been very direct, like the psalmist who wrote, my sin is ever before me. I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother's womb. Yes, John could have been very abrupt and straightforward, like most of the preaching I grew up hearing and much of the so-called evangelical preaching today, which goes like this. You are a sinner condemned to hell, you must repent and confess your sins, you must believe in God as revealed in Jesus Christ or you are doomed to eternal damnation. That's the way I've heard it. Now I know there is some truth in this approach to the gospel, but I also know that there is some danger in this approach and that I do not need. That's precisely why John's way touches me this morning. John's words have a poignant personal appeal. My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the expiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. My little children, tender, touchy, warm, human, kind, caring, loving, compassionate. The kind of words that have given this writing a special appeal for the church from the very beginning, with the picture of the aged John, the last survivor of the 12 giving his repeated and unvarying counsel to a new generation of believers in Christ. Little children, love one another. My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin. John's writings appeal to us because of his recurring testimony that God is love, and that love is the way of life for us. So this passage is most appropriate for lent and for the first Sunday in lent. For this is the time for self-examination, for penitence, for repentance, for confronting one's sinfulness, for confession, then for forgiveness and newness of life. It is a time when the harshness of God's judgment and the demands of obedience to God, and our failures can become very real to us. A hard time, a painful time, a trying and testing and traumatic time, or at least it has the potential to be. Listen to these words of the psalmist as he laments his condition. Have mercy on me, O God. Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions only too well and my sin is ever before me. Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother's womb. Take away my sin and I shall be pure. Wash me and I shall be cleaner than snow. John surely knew the reality of sin and its toll on the human soul. But he addresses it for all of us with real tenderness and sensitivity. Sin, our sin, my sin is hard to face. My sin is hard to accept. My sin is hard to admit, hard to acknowledge, hard to confess. It is difficult for us as children of God to confront our brokenness, and our failure before God and one another. And John knows that. That's why he begins, my little children. It's like my dearest wife, or my dear son, or my loving dog, or my beloved Bran. My little children, he says. And he speaks tenderly and lovingly to us. It reminds me of some words that I heard the Reverend Willie Wright say one Sunday in Wardlaw Hill, Church of Scotland, where I worked as associate to this saint of a man who had served in this church and in this particular community for 35 years, I've known him to have as many as three funerals in one day or seven weddings on another. One Sunday after he had struggled and suffered particularly hard with this people all week, I heard him stand in that pulpit and say, "My dear friends, the longer I am with you", and he was 72 at that time. "The longer I am with you, the less I want to speak in condemnation and judgment of you. And the more I want to speak in compassion and support of you." My little children, I'm writing this to you so that you may not sin, personally, tenderly, lovingly. That's the word for today. "Whatever Became of Sin" is the title of a timely and insightful book by psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Menninger. In it, he talks of this sin, which John was writing to have his little children avoid and what has become of sin in our day. Menninger writes, has the sense of morality vanished from the people? Has the rue of expediency, of success, of technological triumph replaced the necessity for moral integrity? Everything was succeeding for a while. Progress was the order of the day. But now the new God seem to have failed us while the old God is said, at least by some, to be dead. Things are all wrong. And so we turn angrily seeking someone to blame who started the wretched interminable war, who ruined our air and oceans, who filled our beautiful lakes and rivers with filth, who beggared our paupers, who crushed our blacks, who alienated our youth, who corrupted our business morals, our politics, our judicial systems, no one? Who is the evil designer against the welfare of man? Is no one to blame when so much is wrong? In all of the laments and reproaches made by seers and prophet today, one misses any mention of sin. It was a word once in everybody's mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles? Sin, Menninger says, with an eye in the middle, is no one any longer guilty of anything? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented and repaired or atoned for? Is it only that someone may be stupid or sick or criminal or asleep? Wrong things are being done we know. Tears are being sewn in the wheat field at night, but is no one responsible? No one answerable for these acts? Anxiety and depression, we all acknowledge and even vague guilt feelings, but has no one committed any sins? What is this sin which is hard and painful to face, to confess? Which our society seems to gloss over and refuse to admit which John is writing his little children to avoid. Again, to quote Menninger, "Sin" he says, "Is behavior that violates the moral code or the individual conscience or both. It is behavior which pains or harms or destroys my neighbor or me. Webster tells us that sin is transgression of the law of God. Disobedience of the divine will, moral failure. Sin is failure to realize in conduct and character, the moral ideal, at least as fully as possible under the circumstances, failure to do as one ought toward one's fellow man. Dr. Seward Hiltner, psychologist, theologian at Princeton says that Christian theology has seen sin and these complimentary ways as rebellion, as a strangement, and as error in performance. Well, now, as I think of our world and our community, and even closer of my home and my family and myself, in the light of these descriptions of sin, I'm beginning to have less difficulty seeing myself as sinful. Now, the words of John, come to me again, my little children, I'm writing this to you so that you may not sin. Let's stop there. Okay. I sin, I am sinner, I am sinful, I can enumerate the acts and can describe the condition. What now, John? But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and He is the expiation for our sins. That's it. There we have it. That's the way, there is the hope. There's a current popular song that includes the words, There's a page that aches for a word which speaks on a theme that is timeless. Here is a theme that is timeless. As L. Harold DeWolf writes, whatever else may be true of God beyond all we can know or think, in the mystery to us, the utter mystery of His greatness, at least this is true of Him. He knows us and cares for us. To use John's words, loves us with an everlasting love. If anyone does sin, John is not accusing here. He says, if. So this is for you and for me to decide. He's really calling us to a life of sinlessness, a life lived in love of God and love of one's neighbor. But, if anyone does sin, it is an individual personal matter. If anyone, now mind you, he doesn't say if the church or if the crowd or if the university administration, or if the student body, or if the community, or if our country, but if anyone. Does anyone? Do you? Do I? Do you answer that for yourself as I most for myself? But if you or I do sin, we have an advocate, which means a friend, a supporter, a defender, one who will stand by us, argue our case, defend our cause and carry us through. This advocate is Jesus, the Christ and more. He is the expiation for our sins, and I've heard that word ever since I was a little bitty boy. And I just learned what it means. He's the purifier. The one who cleans out the soiled spots, removes the taint, expunges all the evidence, but not for us only, but also for the whole world. Notice, will you, that the possibility for sin is singular, but if anyone sin, so it is your, or my single individual personal decision and act. But the assurance of forgiveness and redemption is for all. We have an advocate. The expiation for our sins and not for ours only, but for the whole world. This is that theme, which is timeless. God was in Christ, reconciling us to God and to one another, bringing us in our brokenness back to God and back to one another. It is Christ accepting us as we are and showing us God as God is. This is the atonement. God in Christ for us and our sins, this is what advent and Christmas and Ash Wednesday and Lent and crucifixion and resurrection, Good Friday and Easter are all about. God in Christ on the cross for any little child who may sin. The cross, Paul Scherrer says, is where I must look up into the face of God's eternal judgment on my sins and into the face of His eternal mercy on my soul. This Christ is the advocate, the expiation for my sins, the Christ of the cross. GA Studdert Kennedy was an Anglican priest in World War I. He was known as Woodbine Willie in some of his poems. Written from the frontline trenches are the most moving I've ever read. He wrote another poem. It speaks to me this morning and may say something to you as we face ourselves, and as we seek new life on this first Sunday in advent. It's entitled "Come Unto Me". "Come Unto Me". It sounds like mockery. A voice that calls a wounded man across a weary space he cannot travel for, for we would come to thee. We long to see thy face, but we're wounded sore, and evermore our weakness binds us. Darkness blinds us. We stretch our hands out vainly toward the shore where thou are waiting for thine all. We groan and try and fail again. We cannot come. We are but children. Come thou to us, O Lord. Come down and find us shepherd of the sheep. We cannot come to thee. It is so dark, (indistinct) I hear a voice that sounds across the sea. I come to thee. My little children, I'm writing this to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Let us pray. Dear God, all that we ought to have thought and have not thought, all that we ought to have said and have not said, all that we ought to have done and have not done, all that we ought not to have thought and yet have thought, all that we ought not to have spoken and yet have spoken, all that we ought not to have done and yet have done, for thoughts, works and words, we pray, O God, for forgiveness and repent with penance. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (organ music) (hymnal music) (organ music) 

- All things come of thee, O Lord and of thy known have we given thee, amen. (organ music) 

- The grace of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit abide with you now and forever. Amen. ♪ A-a-a-a-men ♪ ♪ A-a-a-a-men ♪ ♪ A-a-a-a-Men ♪ (organ music)