- Matched by our own performance. We have expected to find goodness in our environment without being good ourselves. We have taken for granted that the fruits of labor should be ours without our laboring. We have sought a reap where we have not sowed. We have tried to extract the outward symbols of an education from our schools without a thorough dedication to learning. We have sometimes been unwilling to pay the price of what we demand. We have expected to receive friendship without giving it. We have whined when we did not receive kindness. We have often been unkind to ourselves. Even now we expect political conventions to manufacturer national leaders who can solve all the nation's problems, but we have not done all the things which can only be done by us in solving the country's ills. We have complained about your church, oh God. And have declared that it was irrelevant that we have stayed away from its services and have failed to volunteer to do what we could and should have done to help the church do its job and be faithful to its master. We have pretended that we don't live in a moral universe where we get what we give, but as we think about it now, Lord, it seems pretty stupid and really quite wrong. Forgive us, take away our sin, give us a fresh start and better intelligence. Give us a sense of fairness and the grace to live by it for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen. Why is it that we pray to God confessing our sins and asking for forgiveness. As Christians, we do this because he has asked us to do it, and has held out for us a very tantalizing and wonderful promise. God so loved the world, the scriptures say, that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This is indeed good news, and we call it by a word that used to mean good news, the gospel. And because of this good news, we are grateful. Let us express our gratitude to God by turning to number 609 in the Salter section of our hymnal. Act of praise number 609, which is entitled, "Blessed, be the Lord, God of Israel." We will pray together responsively. Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel for he has visited and redeemed his people. And hath the raised up a mighty salvation for us in the house of his servant, David. As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began that we should be saved from our enemies. And from the hand of all that hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our forefathers and to remember his holy covenant, to perform the oath which he swear to our forefather Abraham that he would give us that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies. I'd serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life. And thou child shall be called the prophet of the highest or the how shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins. Through the tender mercy of our God whereby the day spring from on high have visited us. To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (calm organ music begins) (choir begins singing) (choir continues singing in Latin) Let us hear the word of God. First, in the old Testament. The book of the prophet Isaiah, the 53rd chapter at the beginning. Who has believed what we have heard and to whom has the arm of the lord been revealed? But he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him. And no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken smitten by God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him, the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before it shearers is dumb. So he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away and as for his generation, who consider that he was caught off out of the land of the living stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death. Although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. And in the new Testament, in the gospel according to Saint Matthew, the 18th chapter at verse 15, Jesus is speaking. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your proper. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen, even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. And Peter came up and said to Jesus, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him, as many as seven times?" Jesus said to Peter, "I do not say to you seven times, but 70 times seven." amen. Here, end the morning lesson. (organ music begins) (choir begins singing in Latin) The Lord be with you 

- (congregation) And also with you. 

- (Pastor) Let us pray. Almighty God, our heavenly father. We come before your throne of mercy and grace and gifts to ask for blessings, which we need in our lives. We need the routine customary blessings of air to breathe food to eat, rest when we are weary, enlightenment for our minds, friendship for our hearts. We need blessings for unusual experiences that we do not encounter every day, but which we do encounter sometime in our lives. We pray that unusually bright accomplishments may not make us vain. That unexpected disappointments may not break our spirits. That unexpected and even unwanted new truth found in the laboratory, or the library, or the classroom may not too greatly confuse us. We pray that broken human relationships may not discourage us, nor make us forget our relationship to Jesus Christ. In our times of testing, may we not only be faithful, but may we learn what those times have to teach us. Keep us, oh God, from ever assuming that this is just another day, that this is just another hour, just another year. Keep us from presuming that our teachers are supposed to do for us what we should do for ourselves. Keep us as a university from presuming that a national reputation is as important as teaching individual students. Oh God, we come also to pray for our fellows, to pray for our friends, pray for our enemies. We come asking for grace to be given to those who have lost their sense of self-respect. Who do not respect themselves. May they be given the grace, which they need. We come praying for those who are so sick that they oppose all change in society. We intercede for those who are so sick that they feel they must destroy all order and all institutions. We pray for those who have not yet found anything to worship greater than themselves. We pray for those who could not join in our prayer of Thanksgiving a while ago because they are not grateful for the blessings which they have. We ask that they may learn the extent of their dependence upon their fellow man and upon you for everything which they have and enjoy. Oh God, we pray for all of the people now quiet before you here in this chapel for all of the people who are worshiping in other churches or chapels. And for all of the people who deny that you even exist, for we all need you in some special way. And we pray that we all may find you even more than we find your blessings. But most of all we pray that we may have the spirit of prayer which was given to us by your son, Jesus, when he taught us. And we pray to say 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. The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ be with us all. When I was a boy in Glasgow, long, long ago, there hung in our living room a large print of a painting by Sigismund Goetze entitled, "Despised and Rejected". I know nothing about the artist. I know nothing about the merits of the painting. But I have never forgotten its subject. In the center was Jesus the Christ bound to a Roman altar, overshadowed by an angel with the Goetzemini Cup. On each side of the altar, there streamed by a procession of men and women in modern dress. Here was a political agitator and there a common laborer. Here a sportsman with the latest edition of the newspaper, and there a scientists with his test tube. A newsboy shouted the latest society scandal, and a woman went by in widow's weeds. A soldier in uniform and a clergyman, replete with clerical color, stalked along in unconscious company. Only one person had stopped with any look of surprise or wonder or sympathy for the Christ, a nurse, a nurse. Now, what is the picture say? Is it not that for the artist Christ is still despised and rejected by most folk in the every day workaday world? Now that's a little hard to believe. For example, think of the church named for him. Church membership in the United States is still the concern of millions of people. Congregations love such hymns and anthems as "Ferris Lord Jesus", "Jesus Shall Reign", "All Hail the Power of Jesus Name". Books on Jesus are legion and often bestsellers, and think of the Jesus movement among teenagers on our own campus and Explo'72 in Dallas last month. The Jesus generation, the Jesus kids, the Jesus people. And we thank God for the congregations and the hymns and the books and the youngsters. Yet the artist's viewpoint is also true. He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Now, these words were not penned originally to describe Jesus, but it was a wise elderly Christian, maybe Peter, who applied them to Jesus. It may have been an illegitimate use of scripture, but it was effective and long lasting. For many Christians, Jesus does fulfill Isaiah 53. The unattractiveness of Jesus was, and is a fact. It may be a deplorable fact, but it is an authentic fact. That was driven home to me one day, some years ago, with some American friends I had taken refuge from the inevitable and relentless Scottish reign in the Episcopal Cathedral on the island of Cumbria in Scotland. Noticing a crucifix on the altar instead of a cross, one low churchman began to complain volubly and vigorously. He was silenced by the remark of another. The crucifix is the symbol of our modern civilization, not an empty cross. That may be the symbol of the church's resurrection faith. But a crucifix, the symbol of what the world did and does to Jesus. Despised and rejected, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, so very unattractive. Now, why? Well, one reason is familiarity. That is a danger besetting folk like us church goers. It's the temptation that threatens the average Christian. Familiarity does not always breed contempt, but it may beget indifference. That is the risk that Jesus runs with us who come to divine worship. We hear about him so much, that our appreciative sense may be dulled, atrophied. We may become numb and insensitive to the things that pertain to the Christ. He's a name, a religious name, a Sunday name. The routine of church lulls us into an apathy. Now that is partly the fault of the pulpit as can be seen in this instance, related in one of the Yale lectures on preaching, a minister recognizes the most regular attendant at the worship service, a hard working washer woman, who Sunday after Sunday was observed in her pew. He wanted to find the reason for such fidelity, and so asked, "Is it that you enjoy the beautiful music?" And she answered "No, it's not that." Then he tried, "Perhaps you enjoy my sermons." And she answered, "No, it's not that." Stupid question and a worthy answer. "Then what brings you here every week?" She said, "Well, it's like this. I work hard all week and it's no often I get such a comfortable seat with so little to think about." That's partly the cause. The pulpit often gives the pew so little to think about, but it's partly the fault of the pew. You don't expect anything unusual. Therefore you settle down to thole the sermon. Now thole is a Scott's word that means to endure quietly, but steadily. Or you plan next week's affairs. I knew a headmaster's wife who commented to me once, "I love our preacher." Well I said, "Listen, he isn't any good." She said, "Oh, that doesn't worry me, but he preaches for 30 minutes. And in those 30 minutes I can plan the entire work of the school for the next week. I never miss church." Just an old, old story. You weren't particularly excited about what a six year old called this Jesus stuff. Oh, of course we wouldn't kill him as the Roman and Jewish authorities did. We must accept him indifferently or semis eria. Studdert Kennedy, the English propheteer, was worried by that fact and he wrote some verses on it. "When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged him on a tree. They drove the nails through hands and feet and made a Calvary. They crowned him with a crown of thorns red where his wounds went deep for these were crude and cruel days and human life was cheap. When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed him by. They never hurt a hair of him. They only let him die. For men had grown more tender and they would not give him pain. They only just passed out in the street and left him in the rain. Still, Jesus cried, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And still it rained the wintry rain that drenched him through and through. The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see. And Jesus crouched against a wall and cried for Calvary." What can we do about it? What's the remedy for this indifferent familiarity? To state it simple, get to know him. Read the gospels, but forget about the king James version. Read modern translations. Read the New Testament in a foreign language. You will be shocked and shaken by the pungency of much that we never really heard before. Read the lives of Jesus, there are all kinds. Orthodox and heretical, literary and historical, fictitious and critical, Jewish and Christian, psychological studies and environmental studies. There must be one which will interest you. And that will lead you to another. There will be a chain reaction. Read the plays about him. Family Portrait, Good Friday, The Trial of Jesus, The Man Born to be King, Jesus Christ Superstar. They may replace casual familiarity with appreciation and a sense of wonder because Jesus was full of surprising moments. There's another reason for the unattractiveness of Jesus, the intellectual problems that are interwoven with the church's estimate of him. This is an inevitable difficulty for thinking young people. It's probably due to their, to your mental age, especially here in college, where the intellect is, at least in theory, given primacy. A university community is expected to think. We're even trained to think. Life is an intellectual puzzle to be solved by reason. Therefore we doubt, we doubt. That's one of the privileges of being a matriculated student or a faculty member. And the first result of thought is destruction. Plato described the young philosopher as a puppy dog, tearing things to pieces. Now usually religion stands the major shock of the onslaught, and it does not always withstand. And this attitude is aided and abetted by the critical scholarly approach to the Bible. To the books of which it's composed to the history in which it is set to the characters of its men and women, and Jesus does not escape. Moreover, the language of the creeds, in endeavoring to interpret him is, for many of us, out of date, incomprehensible, self-contradictory, and unintelligible. That's a common estimate and it's not altogether wrong. Listen to this comment on the Chalcedonian Formula of 451 AD. The formula in which a council of the church sought to express its reasoned opinion of Jesus the Christ and his relation to God. This is the comment, "It mirrors with accuracy what the church wanted to say. Though in terms which could not successfully embody its fate. To the logical mind, it sounds like distilled nonsense. There the phrases stand side by side in all their seeming contradiction and glorious incredibility. Perfect in deity and perfect in humanity, acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. Not divided or separated into two persons, but one in the same son and only begotten god log us Lord Jesus Christ. It's as though the fathers were determined to affirm their certainties at whatever humiliation to reason. One begins to understand why a French philosopher is reported to have said that metaphysics is the art of bewildering yourself logically. Now the remedy here is to bring understanding to bear on the language of the creeds. We need to know the Greek philosophic vocabulary in which the church tried to clothe the Testament of Jesus. Moreover, we should try to discover why the church said such seemingly contradictory things about him. Perhaps it was because he was apprehended spiritually by them, but not comprehended intellectually by them. The creeds are symbol of the churches wandering gratitude before the fact of Jesus, who seemed to be too great to be measured in terms less than divine. And yet was certainly human. We grasp that, we will begin to understand and even allow for the confusion of statement. I think the creeds of the church are like frozen foot. They are neither palatable, nor digestible 'til they're thawed out. So we must bring warmth to our analysis. The warmth of sympathy, of insight, of a willing effort to understand with humbleness. Then we may begin to appreciate the kind of person Jesus Christ was. Who caused such elevated confusion of statement to be made about him because he was such an unusual fact. But there's a third, and the last reason for the unattractiveness of Jesus. The ethical difficulties that confront his followers, or would be disciples. There are some folk who are afraid to admit that they cannot understand Jesus ethical teaching. Do you know why? They miss a legalism. They object to the amount of interpretation left to them. Do you know how Saint Agustin summed up Christian ethics? Love God and do what you like. Now that's just a source of bewilderment to the average person. They much prefer thou shalt not, with heavy emphasis on the negative. What would Jesus do? That's not easy of answer because on the lowest estimate, he showed marks of genius and genius is hard to take down. There are others who understand the teaching, but don't know how to follow it. As the world is set up, there's a clash of loyalties, both good. I talked about this two weeks ago. In a debate in the house of Lords, regarding a divorce bill, an Archbishop of Canterbury is reported to have said, "As a Christian, I'm against it. As an Englishman, I'm for it. Therefore I shall not vote." Now that is the raw material of tragedy. When two rights, both beloved, are in conflict. Sensitively and honestly the Archbishop realized that Christian and Englishman are not necessarily synonyms. The remedy is to admit the truth in the criticisms, but to go beyond them. Course, Jesus' ethical teaching is hard to understand. That's because he doesn't begin by instructing the reason, he begins by converting the soul. We must be in sympathy with these insights about the fatherhood of God, sonship of the believer, the possible brotherhood of man, the control of the indwelling spirit, before we begin to understand the attitudes or the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, which someone has described as a post graduate course in ethics. It is in theory through faith that one comes to understand and exemplify love. In theory, doctrine is prior to ethical action. Of course Jesus ethical teaching is hard to follow, it's led in the past to crucifixion, beheading, hanging. Now that's not a pleasant pot. That's a basic conflict between the church and the world that you and I live in both at the same time, partly in this, partly in that. Therefore like the Archbishop we compromise, but let us admit that we compromise and not pretend that our acts, any act, are in basic harmony with the ethical demands of our muster. We've just got to go on studying him and learning from him. Isn't that the meaning behind Jesus' answer to Peter's question? "Lord, how often does my brother to sin against me and be forgiven, up to seven times?" Now that's quite a lot. You try to forgive your roommate up to seven times. You'll probably change your roommate unless you're married. Even then you may. I used to think that Peter was niggardly on this point, but now I'm not so sure. What did Jesus answer, seven times? I say 70 times seven. Now Jesus is not advising that we forgive 490 times and then get down to business on the 491st. What he's suggesting is the need for that spontaneity of action which comes from cultivation. That spontaneity of action which comes from cultivation until the spirit of Christ is formed in us. And we almost automatically act as he would. Do you see what all this comes out? The reason for the unattractiveness of Jesus is not primarily found in him, but in his followers. And his interpreters. It's we who bear the name of Christ who are in the main responsible for his rejection. Jesus can still attract hope. Listen to George Bernard Shaw, of all people, talking about Jesus. This man has not been a failure yet, for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way But he has had one quaint triumph. We've always had a curious feeling that though we've crucified Christ on a stick. He somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it. And that if we were better men, we might try his plan. If we were better men, there's the rub. If we weren't so extraordinarily ordinary about the things of Christ, if we weren't so vaguely inaccurate about what we believe concerning him, if we went so consistently ambiguous about our following him, if we were better men and women. He is despised and rejected chiefly because of us. His avowed followers. That need not be. He could be honored and accepted in part because of us. If we would allow him to reveal himself in us, through our careful knowledge of him, our intelligent understanding of him, and our devoted following of him. Let us pray. Almighty God who has called us through Jesus Christ to be thy sons and daughters. Give us so to know Christ in his life at the same mind which was in him, may be in us also, through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen. (organ music begins) (congregation begins singing) (organ continues playing) (choir begins singing in Latin) (organ continues playing) (congregation begins singing) 

- (congregation) ♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah ♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ 

- (Pastor) All mighty God, we present ourselves and these offerings before your altar, praying that together, they might make a witness for Jesus that will be winsome and effective in this needy hour in which we live by your grace. Amen. Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with us all. 

- (choir) ♪ Amen ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ (church bell begins ringing) (organ begins playing)