(silence) (faint hymnal singing) (organ music) (hymnal singing drowned by instruments) ♪ Amen ♪ 

- This is the day which the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. The hour come now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. For the Father seek of such to worship him. Let us humbly confess our sins unto almighty God. Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things, which we ought to have done. And we have done those things, which we ought not to have done, but thou Lord have mercy upon us. Spare thou those of God who confess their fault. Restore those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant oh most merciful Father for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life to the glory of thy holy name. Amen. The almighty and merciful Lord grant you absolution and remission of your sins, true repentance, amendment of life and the grace and consolation of his Holy Spirit. Amen. Here the word of God to all who truly turn to him. Come unto me all ye that travel and are heavy Laden and I will refresh you. So God loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all that believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Hear also what St. Paul said, this is a true saying and worthy of all men to be received that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Hear also what St. John said, if any man sin we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous and he is a propitiation for our sins. (organ music) (hymnal singing) These words of the morning lesson from the 42nd Psalm echo those of the anthem the Bach Anthem that we have just heard. As a heart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee oh God. My soul thirst for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God my tears have been my food day and night while men say to me continually, where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I went with the throne and let them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down oh my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God for I shall again praise him my help and my God. My soul is cast down within me. Therefore I remember thee from the land of Jordan and of Herman and from Mount Miza. Deep calls to deep at the thunder of I cataracts all thy waves and thy billows have gone over me. By day, the Lord commands his steadfast love. And at night His song is with me a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, why has thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my body, My adversaries taught me while they say to me continually, where is your God? Why are you cast down oh my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God for I shall again praise him. My help and my God. May God bless unto us this reading and hearing of his holy word. (organ music) (hymnal singing drowned by instruments) ♪ Amen, amen ♪ The Lord be with you. 

- And with your spirit. 

- Let us pray. Oh most merciful God who are to pure eyes and to behold iniquity and has promised forgiveness to all those who confess and forsake their sins. We come before thee in a humble sense of our own unworthiness acknowledging our manifold transgressions of thy righteous laws. That oh gracious Father who desires not the death of a sinner, Look upon us we beseech thee in mercy and forgive us all our transgressions. Make us deeply sensible of the great evil of them and work in us and heart in contrition that we may obtained forgiveness at thy hands who aren't ever ready to receive humble and penitent sinners. Unless through our own frailty are the temptations which encompasses we'd be drawn again into sin. Thou save us we beseech thee, the direction and assistance of thy Holy Spirit. Reform whatever is amiss and the temper and disposition of our souls that no one unclean thoughts unlawful designs our inordinate desires may rest there. Purge our hearts from envy, hatred and malice that we may never suffer the sun to go down upon our wrath, but may always go to our rest in peace, charity and good will with a conscience void of offense toward thee, and towards all men. Accept, oh Lord our intercessions for all mankind. Let the light of thy gospel shine upon all nations. Bless all in authority over us. And especially the President of the United States, the governor of this state, the authorities of this university, that in thy holy fear they may govern the peoples in wisdom, justice and peace, send down thy blessings, both temporal and spiritual upon all of our relations, friends and neighbors. Reward all who have done us good and pardon all those who have done our wishes evil and give them repentance and better minds. Be merciful to all persons who are in danger, trouble sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity that they may have comfort and relief according to their necessities for his sake who went about doing good thy son, our savior Jesus Christ. Through our prayers oh Lord, we join our thanks for all thy mercies, for our being, our reason and all other faculties of soul and body. For our health, friends, food and Raymond and all other comforts and conveniences of life. Above all we thank thee for sending thy only Son into the world to redeem us from eternal death and giving us the knowledge and sense of our duty towards thee. We bless thee for thy patience with the us, not withstanding our many and great provocations. For all the directions, assistance ,and comforts of thy Holy Spirit for thy continual care and watchful providence over us through the whole course of our lives. Give us grace to show our thankfulness and in sincere obedience to his laws, to whose merits and intercession, we receive them all thy son, our Savior Jesus Christ. And now as our Savior Christ has taught us. We're bold to say. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be they 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 other morning, flipping on the car radio I broke suddenly into an intense exchange between a local Eric Severini and a bevy of Housewives exchanging views on gardens and raising Platos and the weather and the signs of the times. The matter of immediate concern was a recent ruling of the army that the chaplains, army chaplains were directed to omit or reference to God in moral guidance program since this violates the constitutional provision for the separation of church and state. Well, the order has since been rescinded by the Secretary of the Defense. God presumably breathed a heavenly sigh of relief when the news came up, that the Secretary of Defense had permitted his name to be used after all, At one point in his career President has called God our greatest secret weapon. But at the time of this exchange that I overheard the directive had evoked a great spasm of consternation among the pious of the land. And one housewife had called in and she was irate. This was about the worst thing that had ever happened to America. Didn't the local pundit think so too? Yes, ma'am said he fervently. Take God out of ours society and we'd be left to ourselves to decide what's right and wrong. That's a fascinating theological judgment here. Is he right? This exchange and the par of concern behind it is signal of a very odd contradiction of temper in the American mind. On the one hand is the increasing secularization of our life, the legal exclusion of traditional religious symbols and concepts and practices from our public life, from schools and courts, constitutional freedom of religion has been extended now to include freedom from religion. The rights of non-belief must be honored equally with the respect for varieties of belief. At Christmas now it's quite proper to sing Jingle Bells in the grade school, but there's only very remote theological implications of that Diddy but it is not proper to sing "Silent Night". And if you wanna pray in public schools, you have to go out behind the barn. On the other hand, there's a resurgence of piety along the Potomac in grasping for spiritual resources to bring us together and as a stay against the mood of despair and failure of nerve. The president has no doubt with serious if baffled intent called for the return to our religious heritage and established a kind of informally required Sunday chapel in the White House. And in recent days in the national celebration of President Eisenhower's passing, the nation turned its TV cameras and its heart almost instinctively in solemn reverence and religious rite to honor him. These are signals of more than a phony rhetoric or a shrewd political gambit. They are expressions of something strongly, if incoherently felt in the American conscience. That there is a religious ground of our life together and of our common morality. And in a time of the shaking of the foundations, we look for this ground of faith. I would like to defend the claim and stand beside the local pundit on the radio. That there is an indispensable link between religious faith and morality. That the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And to depart from evil Is understanding. To put it another way, religious reverence is the ground of our humanity our moral sensitivity, our true civility, and conversely a lack of reverence in the harsh caustic cynic for whom nothing is sacred is the beginning of foolishness and inhumanity. Insofar as reverence for God is our underlying faith we are moved to treat each other in a humane way. In so far as that reverence is absent we become increasingly brutal and heedless in our treatment of neighbors and of things. Any terms we use here are cloudy, imprecise and at admit of a variety of shades of meaning. But an expectation of the biblical phrase, the fear of the Lord may help to make clear the inner connection between religion and moral responsibility. The essence of the religious imagination is reverence for the sacred. This has nothing to do in the first instance with church going, it means simply a sense of awe and wonder and devotion in the presence of the sacred, the divine, the transcendent and a way of seeing and treating everything secular in the light of the sacred. This is faith in God. One may draw the line of connection between theology and morality in either direction from the side of theology in the Hebraic Christian tradition faith in God always involves moral obligation. Authentic worship requires both as its precondition and its fruit actions of care and consideration for the God who is the object of our faith is not an abstract principle, a logical stop to regress of infinite cause or explanations, but a living God, a morally serious God who requires us to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly. Without such moral actions our so-called worship of him is vain. Or take it the other way from morality to God. What constitutes the ground rule of community of our humanity, our civility and considerations, our trust of each other, our trusts and considerations that hold us together even within controversy. I think the word, the phrase responsible love is the single phrase that catches it best. But inside a sense of responsibility is a sense of accountability. In the last analysis to whom or to what are we accountable? To our public? To ourselves alone? To the TV image or to the image of God in us? To whom are we accountable when no one is looking? When the crowd out of sight. Why add up the figure column straight in one's income tax return? Why honor the honor system in taking exams? The Puritan divine, Jeremy Taylor had a true word here. He said, nothing rules a man in private, but God and his conscience, but these give laws in a wilderness and they accuse in a cluster. In some, a sense of accountability to a Lord transcended of the crowd is the true ground of our humanity to each other. The way we treat each other in care, in love. The way we trust each other. Perhaps the most serious moral question before us as a nation is this, can we become one people Living together in peace and justice on purely secular terms of community? Is there any adequate surrogate for our traditional belief in God that gave us a common faith? Or is chaos king of the universe and our life really the war of every man against every man where we stand with Matthew Arnold at Dover Beach has on a darkling plane swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night. This question is not new, it was anticipated a long time ago by the champions of our rights and liberties a John Locke for instance, argued religious tolerance on a religious ground, which also set its limits. He said, "those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God, promises, covenants, oaths, which are the bonds of human society can have no hold upon an atheist, the taking away of God though, but even in thought dissolves all" More recently Walter Lippin has warned us. "The liberties," he says, "the liberties we talk about defending today were established by men who took their conception of man from the great central religious tradition of Western civilization. The liberties we inherit can almost certainly not survive the abandonment of that tradition." In making this confessional statement of the indispensability of God to our morality, I hope I'm not being misunderstood here to be siding with the conservatives who stand for law and order the old way with the establishment and standing against the student rebellion and the civil rights agitators. No, back to God or come to Christ as some of the pious in our midst to may interpret it does not mean that we should all become again, docile, clean shaven middle class, respectable white suburbanites, living in the delusion then that gentility is inborn trait or monopoly of Gentiles. For the God of the Christian faith is the God who requires social justice, whose sons may have to break the peace to secure that common justice. To fight against the institutions and customs and power structures that block the realization of our common humanity. But what I do mean is that a religious sense of accountability, the consideration of the neighbor whom one must oppose is what keeps the demand for rights, civil rights, whatever, viable. Because they derive from a sense of obligation to serve the common good. The ruckus on our campus two months was quite different in spirit from the vigil a year ago. What made the difference? Both were intense militant measures pressing for dry drastic changes in our community power structure. But unless I'm way off, I sensed in the vigil a reverence, a self restraint, a christian sense of accountability. A mutuality of trust and respect among those of sharply opposing points of view. This was tragically absent from the more recent episode marked as it was by distrust, suspicion, disrespect, arrogance, brutality. In short, it was a religious difference in spirit. Ours is a restless, impatient searching generation. It's moral indeed it's religious mood is one of seeking suspicious of all certitudes of elders. Students of today aren't at all interested in the church. They are profoundly interested in theology. Underneath their seemingly childish negativism If I read them a right, they are seeking a way out of the morals of NOE to some sure round of faith. Some yes answer to the idealism that lies right under the surly surface, the idealism that goes with being young of heart. They reach out Looking here and there for moments of joy, for something pure and lovely, for their true identity as Americans. Perhaps Simon and Garfunkel are the best Trudos here of our condition and our mood on a Greyhound bus looking for America. So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine and the moon rose over an open field. Cathy, I'm lost, I said, Though, I knew she was sleeping. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike. They've all come to look for a America. The hint of the answer put here might well be listened to and heated in the America of Catherine Lee Bates who could not have been moved at the scene of the burial of Senator Kennedy at Arlington when the brass choir from Harvard played America. And who could dare not heed the life and death import of the words of that hymn, America, America, God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea America, America, God mend thine every flaw, confine thy soul in self control. Thy liberty in law. Amen. Let us pray. Almighty God, the Lord of our life, the unseen source of our strength who does question our last answer and answer our last question. Do thou by that grace illumine our minds and inspire our hearts that we may be cleared of sight to see and nerved in will to do thy will for our good and thy glory through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen. (hymnal singing drowned by instruments) (instrumental music) (hymnal singing) 

- All things come of thee oh Lord and are thine only have we given thee. For thine oh Lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory. And the majesty. For all that is in the earth is thine. Thine is the kingdom oh Lord and thou art exalted his head above all. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. And the blessing of God almighty the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost be amongst you this day and always. ♪ Amen. ♪ ♪ Amen, amen, amen ♪ ♪ Amen, amen, amen ♪ (silence) (church bell ringing) (instrumental music)