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Absolve us, oh God, from every kind of sin,
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forgive us for trying to be clever
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when we should have sought wisdom.
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Heal us from the disease of trying to make names
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for ourselves when we should
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have been seeking to glorify thy name.
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Enable us, oh Lord, to find pardon now
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and to attain everlasting redemption in the world to come
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through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
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Amen.
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And hear these words of assurance, of pardon,
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as the heaven is high above the earth,
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so great is God's mercy to them that fear him.
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Like as a father pitieth his children
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so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.
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If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just
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to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
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from all unrighteousness.
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Therefore, be of good courage.
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(bright organ music)
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(women singing brightly in Latin)
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(bright organ music)
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(women singing brightly in Latin)
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(bright organ music)
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(women singing brightly in Latin)
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(bright organ music)
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(women singing brightly in Latin)
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(bright organ music)
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Let us hear the Word of God as it is contained
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in the scriptures of the New Testament.
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First in the book of the Acts 17:22.
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"So Paul standing in the middle of the Areopagus said,
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"'Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way,
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"'you are very religious.
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"'For as I passed along and observed the objects
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"'of your worship, I found also an altar
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with this inscription, to an unknown God.
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"'What therefore you worship as unknown,
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"'this I proclaim to you.
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"'The God who made the world and everything in it,
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"'being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in shrines
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"'made by man, nor is he served by human hands
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"'as though he needed anything.
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"'Since he himself gives to all men life
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"'and breath and everything, and he made from one
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"'every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth,
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"'having determined allotted periods
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"'and the boundaries of their habitation,
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"'that they should seek God in the hope
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"'that they might feel after him and find him.
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"'Yet, he is not far from each one of us.
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"'For in him, we live and move and have our being.
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"'As even some of your poets have said,
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"'for we are, indeed his offspring.'"
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And in the epistle of Paul to the Romans 1:18.
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"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
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"against all ungodliness and wickedness of men,
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"who by their wickedness suppress the truth.
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"For what can be known about God is plain to them
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"because God has shown it to them.
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"Ever since the creation of the world,
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"his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity
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"has been clearly perceived in the things
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"that have been made.
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"So they are without excuse.
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"For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God
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"or give thanks to him.
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"But they became futile in their thinking
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"and their senseless minds were darkened.
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"Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
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"and exchanged the glory of the immortal God
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"for images resembling mortal man or birds
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"or animals, or reptiles."
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Amen and may God bless unto us the reading of his holy Word.
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(bright organ music)
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♪ Glory be to the Father ♪
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♪ And to the Son and to the Holy Ghost ♪
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♪ As it was in the beginning ♪
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♪ Is now and ever shall be ♪
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♪ The world without end, amen, amen ♪
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The Lord be with you.
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And also with you.
Let us pray.
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Most gracious Father, who, for every new generation,
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preparest thy blessing,
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we thy people offer this prayer of thanksgiving.
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For the power thou hast given us
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to lay hold of things unseen.
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For the strong sense we have that this world
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is not our abiding home.
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For our restless hearts, which nothing finite can satisfy,
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we give thee thanks, O God.
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For the invasion of our souls by thy Holy Spirit,
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for all human love and goodness that speaks to us of thee,
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for the fullness of thy glory outpoured in Jesus Christ,
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we give thee thanks, O God, thou author of every good.
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Let us offer a prayer of intercession for our country.
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Grant us, O God, a vision of our land,
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perish, she might be, land of justice
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where none shall prey on others,
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a land of plenty where vice and poverty
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shall cease to fester,
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a land of brotherhood where success
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shall be founded on service
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and honor be given to worth alone,
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a land of peace where order need no longer rest on force,
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but on the love of all for their country.
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And grant us, O God, to pledge our time and strength
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and thought to hasten the day of her beauty
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and righteousness through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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Let us offer a prayer of intercession for the armed forces.
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O Lord God, our Father, our Savior, our might,
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we commend to thy keeping all those
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who are venturing their lives, that whether by life
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or by death, they may win for the whole world
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the fruits of their sacrifice and a holy peace.
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We ask this in the name of him who is the Prince of Peace.
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Let us offer a prayer of intercession
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for all who labor for peace.
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Almighty and merciful God, who wouldest have the kingdoms
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of this world become the kingdom of thy Son,
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bestow thy blessing upon all who labor for peace
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and for righteousness among the peoples,
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that the day may be hastened when war shall be no more
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and thy holy will shall govern the nations upon earth
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through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
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Let us offer a prayer of supplication that we ourselves
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may have a realization of God.
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Deepen and quicken within us, O God,
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the sense of thy presence and refresh us with thy power.
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Quiet our understanding and give ease to our hearts
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by bringing us close to things, infinite and eternal.
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Grant us dignity in our own eyes
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by taking us into thy service.
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Humble us by laying bare before us our littleness
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and our sin, and then exalt us by revealing thyself
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to us as our counselor, our Father and our friend.
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And let us offer our last prayer for ourselves.
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Help us this day, O God, to serve thee devoutly,
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and the world busily.
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May we do our work wisely, give succor secretly,
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go to our meat appetitely, sit thereat discreetly,
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arise temperately, please our friend duly,
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go to our bed merrily and sleep surely,
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for the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Now as our Savior, Christ hath taught us,
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we humbly pray together.
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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
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Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
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on earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread,
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and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those
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who trespass against us, and lead us not
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into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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For thine is the kingdom and the power
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and the glory forever.
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Amen.
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May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.
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Amen.
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The apostle Paul addressed his Athenian audience
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in these words.
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"Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way,
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"you are very religious."
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He continued, "For as I passed along and observed
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"the objects of your worship, I found also an altar
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"with this inscription: to an unknown God.
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"What you therefore worship as unknown,
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"this I proclaim to you."
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Paul assumed, and rightly, that his audience
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was consciously and deliberately religious.
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While God was not known, he was somehow acknowledged
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and sought and worshiped.
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Modern men, and all of us are modern, more or less,
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all of us are more or less affected by modernity.
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Modern men are not Athenians.
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Instead of raising altars to God, known or unknown,
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we are disposed to ignore or even to entomb him.
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The gods are dead.
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More and more, modern man sees the gods
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as obstacles to his freedom and he believes
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that he will not be truly free
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until he has killed the last god.
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When in 1880, the German philosopher,
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Friedrich Nietzsche first proclaimed the death of God,
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he spoke as a prophet of the modern world.
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In our own time, even some theologians turned atheologians,
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believe that it is necessary to accept,
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and even to assume the death of God and to think
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and to build on the basis of this fact.
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In his letter to the Romans, Paul assumed again,
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that men are religious and that at least God's existence
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can be known to them.
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Paul writes about men generally.
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"What can be known about God is plain to them
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"because God has shown it to them.
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"Ever since the creation of the world,
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"his eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived
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"in the things that have been made," in other words,
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the creation itself witnesses
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to the existence of the creator.
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But for modern man, the very word creation
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speaks not of God, but of man, the creator.
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Perhaps the highest compliment that one modern man
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pays to another is to say of him that he is creative.
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Paul believed that knowledge of the existence of God,
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of God's existence, is possible even for fallen man.
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According to the Biblical tradition,
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after the fall, man's relationship with God
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was radically different.
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Man was estranged from God.
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Man had lost the possibility of encountering
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and understanding God, but he kept enough intelligence
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to rediscover the traces of God,
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the traces of God in nature and in his own consciousness.
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The death of God is an old phenomenon
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in the history of religions.
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It is not something new.
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Among many archaic peoples, one find traces of belief
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in what the ethnologists called high gods.
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These are supreme beings who are believed
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to have created the world and to have sojourned on earth
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and to have established the laws
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and the institutions of this world.
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The high god is believed, subsequently,
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to have withdrawn from the world,
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to have retired to the highest heaven,
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where he is rather indifferent to human life.
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He became increasingly remote and transcendent,
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and among many peoples, this high god
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was ultimately forgotten.
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This forgetting of the high god,
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this oblivion of the high god, the creator god,
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was equivalent to his death.
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The disappearance of the high gods among primitive peoples,
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however, did not mean the end of religion.
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Quite the contrary.
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For it was with the death of the high gods
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that there appeared the vivid and dramatic pantheons
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of divinities representing the powers and vitalities
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of the world, the powers and vitalities
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on which man believed his life to depend day by day.
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The religious life came to center in the worship
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and propitiation of these concrete vital deities.
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The high god, the creator god, if some memory of him
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survived, was usually without any regular worship
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and was resorted to, if at all,
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only in times of extreme crisis.
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In a time of prolonged drought,
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of severe epidemic and the like.
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In other words, when life itself, life personified
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and represented by the vital deities,
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when life itself was threatened.
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Something of the same attitude appeared
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among the ancient Hebrews.
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Whenever they were living in a time of relative peace
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and prosperity, they abandoned Yahweh, the God of Israel,
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and they drew near to the Baals of the Canaanites
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and neighboring peoples, the gods of field and flock,
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gods personifying and dispensing the powers of fertility.
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It took some historical crisis or catastrophe
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to cause them to turn again to God.
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Thus one reads, for example, in 1 Samuel the 12th chapter.
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"And they cried to the Lord and said,
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"'We have sinned, because we have forsaken the Lord
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"'and have served the Baals and the Ashtoreths,
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"but now, deliver us out of the hands of our enemies,
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"and we will serve thee.'"
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In Nietzsche's prophecy, the death of God
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means the end of religion.
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After the death of the Judeo-Christian God,
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according to Nietzsche, man has to live by himself,
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alone in a radically desacralized world.
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Apart from the question of whether this prophecy
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of Nietzsche will come true, we have to face the fact
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that great numbers of modern men have chosen,
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often, consciously and deliberately to live in this way.
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Unlike Paul's Athenians,
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they do not consider themselves religious.
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Indeed, they cannot.
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This is a phenomenon of the modern world.
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Something seems to have happened to man.
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A secular, non-religious mode of existence seems
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to have become a real possibility for human existence,
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and many are trying to realize this possibility
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in their own lives.
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The distinguished historian of religion, Mircea Eliade,
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has suggested that one may speak,
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in Judeo-Christian terms of a second fall, a second fall.
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After the second fall, which corresponds to the death of God
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as proclaimed by Nietzsche, "Modern man,"
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writes Eliade, "Modern man has lost the possibility
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"of experiencing the sacred at the conscious level,
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"but he continues to be nourished
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"and guided by his unconscious."
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This is to say that modern man has rejected religion
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at the conscious level, but that it survives
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buried in his unconscious.
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It has descended into the depths of man.
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Modern man wants to be, and indeed declares himself to be
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areligious, completely rid of the sacred.
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Writes Eliade of this modern man,
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"On the level of everyday consciousness,
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"he is, perhaps, right, but he continues to participate
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"in the sacred, through his dreams and his daydreams
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"through certain attitudes.
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"His love of nature, for example,
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"through his distractions," his reading, the theater,
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"through his nostalgia and his impulses."
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I believe that Eliade is right in his insistence
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that much of the experience and behavior of modern man
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and especially of modern youth is unrecognizably religious
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for the reason that it is unconscious and unconventional.
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According to Nietzsche, it was, as a historical being,
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as a being making history that man killed God.
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Man's second fall, to use Judeo-Christian language.
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Man second fall was a historical event,
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as the first fall, the fall in Eden, was not.
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After this assassination, this deicide,
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man is forced to live exclusively in history,
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as a being made by history and a being who makes history.
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There is, for him, nothing, nothing which transcends history
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and no meaning beyond history.
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But is man's existence totally, completely,
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a historical existence, or are there kinds
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of human experience, dimensions of human experience,
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which reveal man's desire for and his possibilities of
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transcending the historically conditioned character
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of his existence?
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Can a man realize the freedom of the spirit,
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and achieve liberation in life?
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I'm convinced that this possibility exists
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and that indeed, it is being sought,
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especially by young people,
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and that its sources and its motivations
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are profoundly, if unrecognizably religious.
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The contemporary interest in Oriental religions
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and the unfortunate experimentation
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00:32:26.070 --> 00:32:30.477
with chemically induced states of consciousness are,
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perhaps, among the contemporary expressions of it.
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I think it is important to realize that this desire
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to transcend the limits of totally historical existence
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does not necessarily lead to a renunciation
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of history and its tension.
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Many young people are profoundly concerned
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about contemporary historical conditions and events,
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the racial situation, the destruction of Vietnam and others,
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but they come to these historical conditions and events
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00:33:23.750 --> 00:33:28.750
with a freedom which most of us do not possess.
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They have not renounced history,
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but they have renounced the idolatry of history.
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The apostle Paul declared
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to the consciously religious Athenians,
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"What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you."
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And what he proclaimed was Jesus Christ,
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Jesus Christ was coming to the religious Athenians.
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But how does Jesus Christ, indeed, how can Jesus Christ
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come to the unconsciously religious modern man?
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Dare we speak of and hope for a second coming
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of Christ to man twice fallen?
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00:34:42.890 --> 00:34:45.233
And if so, how will he come?
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00:34:47.130 --> 00:34:50.733
And how shall we recognize his coming?
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00:34:53.740 --> 00:34:58.633
Will he come again from out of the past,
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00:35:00.090 --> 00:35:02.930
will he somehow leap to us
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00:35:04.580 --> 00:35:08.870
across the history that separates us
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00:35:08.870 --> 00:35:13.870
from his first appearance, a history which, perhaps,
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00:35:14.550 --> 00:35:19.550
has hidden him more than it has disclosed him?
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00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:27.163
We have begun to rediscover his humanity.
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Jesus, the man among men, Jesus, the man for others.
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00:35:42.360 --> 00:35:47.023
But how shall we rediscover his divinity?
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Jesus, as God's Word to us,
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and more, God's presence among us.
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Jesus as Immanuel, God with us.
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Will he come to us from out of the depths
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of our unconscious, into the light of consciousness?
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00:36:15.700 --> 00:36:18.913
Will he come by way of resurrection,
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00:36:20.320 --> 00:36:23.223
from his place of burial within us?
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00:36:25.680 --> 00:36:30.680
The Belgian priest, Louis Beirnaert, has written,
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00:36:33.957 --> 00:36:38.697
"The incarnation must not be reduced
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00:36:38.697 --> 00:36:41.823
"to the taking on of the flesh alone.
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00:36:43.127 --> 00:36:47.083
"God has intervened even in the unconscious,
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00:36:48.587 --> 00:36:51.203
"that it may be saved and fulfilled.
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00:36:52.687 --> 00:36:56.827
"Christ descended into hell."
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00:36:59.470 --> 00:37:02.700
While Beirnaert is speaking of a radical
383
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and total incarnation of Christ,
384
00:37:06.510 --> 00:37:11.013
of a Christ whose coming is not only an historical event,
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00:37:12.250 --> 00:37:16.573
but also an event, if you will, in the human psyche.
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00:37:18.970 --> 00:37:23.290
This is not to substitute psychology for religion
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00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.910
or psychoanalysis for the religious transformation
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00:37:29.910 --> 00:37:31.293
of human personality.
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00:37:32.540 --> 00:37:36.050
It is, rather, to acknowledge and affirm
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00:37:36.050 --> 00:37:40.183
Christ's presence in the depths of man's being.
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00:37:41.630 --> 00:37:45.800
When I speak of his second coming, in this context,
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I mean he is coming forth from the depths
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00:37:49.970 --> 00:37:52.743
into the light of our consciousness.
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Christ has a recognition problem.
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00:37:59.610 --> 00:38:03.740
Modern men knows some of his historical
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00:38:03.740 --> 00:38:08.740
and traditional images and have rejected most of them
397
00:38:09.110 --> 00:38:12.743
as unacceptable or irrelevant.
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00:38:15.300 --> 00:38:20.300
Man's unconscious, as Carl Jung and others have shown us.
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00:38:22.800 --> 00:38:26.990
He is full of images and full of symbols,
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00:38:27.950 --> 00:38:30.593
rich in meaning and import.
401
00:38:31.640 --> 00:38:36.640
May it be that in these images and symbols within us,
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00:38:39.530 --> 00:38:44.070
Christ himself is present, and that if we were
403
00:38:44.070 --> 00:38:46.930
to become conscious of them,
404
00:38:46.930 --> 00:38:50.020
to raise them to the level of consciousness
405
00:38:50.020 --> 00:38:55.020
and to live them, Christ, indeed, would have come again.
406
00:38:58.430 --> 00:39:03.430
Or may it be that Christ will come again to us
407
00:39:05.320 --> 00:39:09.480
through our encounter with people
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00:39:09.480 --> 00:39:12.823
of other religious traditions and communities.
409
00:39:14.700 --> 00:39:19.700
That encounter has already begun, and it has begun,
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00:39:21.150 --> 00:39:24.933
especially for students in colleges and universities.
411
00:39:26.840 --> 00:39:30.153
That encounter is going to widen and deepen.
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00:39:33.030 --> 00:39:35.920
I welcome it, not only as a historian
413
00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:38.593
of religion, but as a Christian.
414
00:39:40.610 --> 00:39:43.600
We too readily assume that the encounter
415
00:39:43.600 --> 00:39:48.310
with Buddhism, Hinduism, and other forms
416
00:39:48.310 --> 00:39:51.890
and expression of religious experience necessarily
417
00:39:51.890 --> 00:39:54.913
lead away from Christ.
418
00:39:56.090 --> 00:39:59.103
In our meeting with men of other faiths,
419
00:40:00.210 --> 00:40:05.210
we have the possibility, the possibility of discovering
420
00:40:05.770 --> 00:40:09.260
both the real distinctiveness of Jesus Christ
421
00:40:10.500 --> 00:40:15.100
and of grasping new and fresh meanings of Christ
422
00:40:17.010 --> 00:40:21.840
to which we are blinded by the provincialism
423
00:40:22.780 --> 00:40:25.083
of our own history and culture.
424
00:40:26.960 --> 00:40:31.960
Christ may indeed come to us in our meeting with others.
425
00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:41.600
The early Christians expected the second coming
426
00:40:41.600 --> 00:40:45.470
of Christ as a future event,
427
00:40:45.470 --> 00:40:49.863
perhaps in their own lifetime, but in the future.
428
00:40:51.710 --> 00:40:56.443
They knew neither when nor how, but they lived
429
00:40:57.860 --> 00:41:01.323
in confident and joyful expectation.
430
00:41:03.510 --> 00:41:08.510
We must confess that we know neither when nor how,
431
00:41:10.440 --> 00:41:15.440
but let us live in their hope, making it our own.
432
00:41:19.690 --> 00:41:24.690
Listen to the words, the words with which
433
00:41:24.890 --> 00:41:26.223
the New Testament closes.
434
00:41:28.597 --> 00:41:32.073
"He who testifies to these things says,
435
00:41:33.107 --> 00:41:35.693
"Surely, I am coming soon.
436
00:41:37.357 --> 00:41:39.053
"Come Lord Jesus.
437
00:41:40.137 --> 00:41:45.137
"The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints.
438
00:41:46.037 --> 00:41:46.870
"Amen."
439
00:41:49.150 --> 00:41:49.983
Let us pray.
440
00:41:53.930 --> 00:41:58.930
O God, in whom we live and move and have our being,
441
00:42:07.710 --> 00:42:10.320
whose existence does not depend
442
00:42:10.320 --> 00:42:12.963
on our acknowledgement of thee,
443
00:42:15.460 --> 00:42:19.643
and whose love and power sustains us unawares,
444
00:42:22.400 --> 00:42:26.043
we give thee thanks for thy patience with us,
445
00:42:27.730 --> 00:42:29.873
and for thy persistence.
446
00:42:32.170 --> 00:42:34.933
O God, who art always present,
447
00:42:36.150 --> 00:42:39.083
even when we are far from thee,
448
00:42:41.050 --> 00:42:43.393
make thy presence known to us,
449
00:42:45.330 --> 00:42:50.330
that we may love and serve thee in newness of life.
450
00:42:53.060 --> 00:42:54.890
In Christ's name, amen.
451
00:43:00.382 --> 00:43:03.465
(bright organ music)
452
00:43:52.341 --> 00:43:57.008
(bright organ music drowns out singing)
453
00:44:19.334 --> 00:44:22.417
(bright organ music)
454
00:44:31.910 --> 00:44:36.577
(bright organ music drowns out singing)
455
00:45:06.205 --> 00:45:10.872
(bright organ music drowns out singing)
456
00:45:43.050 --> 00:45:45.050
♪ Amen ♪
457
00:45:52.449 --> 00:45:55.616
(gentle organ music)
458
00:46:35.896 --> 00:46:39.229
(heartfelt organ music)
459
00:47:29.416 --> 00:47:32.499
(gentle organ music)
460
00:48:24.104 --> 00:48:27.271
(somber organ music)
461
00:48:35.897 --> 00:48:39.314
(women singing in Latin)
462
00:49:00.645 --> 00:49:03.728
(somber organ music)
463
00:49:07.374 --> 00:49:10.791
(women singing in Latin)
464
00:49:26.889 --> 00:49:29.972
(somber organ music)
465
00:49:33.331 --> 00:49:36.748
(women singing in Latin)
466
00:49:56.918 --> 00:50:00.001
(somber organ music)
467
00:50:03.629 --> 00:50:07.046
(women singing in Latin)
468
00:50:20.170 --> 00:50:23.253
(somber organ music)
469
00:50:27.890 --> 00:50:31.307
(women singing in Latin)
470
00:50:48.732 --> 00:50:51.815
(somber organ music)
471
00:50:54.421 --> 00:50:57.838
(women singing in Latin)
472
00:51:12.289 --> 00:51:15.372
(somber organ music)
473
00:51:18.551 --> 00:51:21.968
(women singing in Latin)
474
00:51:54.472 --> 00:51:56.972
♪ Hallelujah ♪
475
00:52:04.931 --> 00:52:07.348
♪ Hallelujah ♪
476
00:52:15.845 --> 00:52:18.262
♪ Hallelujah ♪
477
00:52:24.857 --> 00:52:28.024
(somber organ music)
478
00:52:31.634 --> 00:52:36.634
(bright organ music)
("Doxology")
479
00:52:57.828 --> 00:53:02.828
♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪
480
00:53:04.088 --> 00:53:09.088
♪ Praise him all creatures here below ♪
481
00:53:10.644 --> 00:53:15.644
♪ Praise him above ye heavenly hosts ♪
482
00:53:17.024 --> 00:53:22.024
♪ Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost ♪
483
00:53:24.838 --> 00:53:26.838
♪ Amen ♪
484
00:53:32.690 --> 00:53:37.690
All things come of thee, O God, our silver and our gold.
485
00:53:39.434 --> 00:53:43.793
As of thine own do we give thee, as the symbol of ourselves
486
00:53:45.920 --> 00:53:49.943
in the name of Jesus, the Christ, our Lord.
487
00:53:53.583 --> 00:53:57.053
And now to God's gracious mercy and protection,
488
00:53:58.660 --> 00:53:59.793
do I commit you.
489
00:54:01.540 --> 00:54:05.023
May the blessing of God come upon you abundantly.
490
00:54:07.120 --> 00:54:11.340
May it keep you strong and tranquil
491
00:54:11.340 --> 00:54:16.340
in the truth of his promises through Jesus Christ our Lord.
492
00:54:19.670 --> 00:54:20.503
Amen.
493
00:54:22.314 --> 00:54:24.981
(bells ringing)
494
00:54:35.333 --> 00:54:38.416
(bright organ music)
495
00:54:45.213 --> 00:54:49.713
(haunting Baroque style organ music)