William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 11, 1984)

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-	Received him with joy, threw a party for him,	0:03
	and all was forgiven.	0:06
	Matthew tells a similar story.	0:09
	I preached on it a few Sundays ago here in the chapel.	0:12
	A man goes out and hires some workers	0:16
	to work in his vineyard early in the morning.	0:18
	Goes out in the middle of the day,	0:21
	hires some more people.	0:22
	An hour before quitting time, goes out again.	0:24
	Then, when the sun goes down and everyone is called in,	0:29
	he pays even the people who got there late,	0:32
	they get paid as much as those who'd been working	0:39
	in the vines all day.	0:41
	There is grumbling.	0:45
	"Do you begrudge my generosity?"	0:47
	the master asked the grumbling workers.	0:51
	And we love that little parable,	0:56
	because it means that what we hoped is right,	1:00
	there's still time.	1:03
	So what if you haven't opened the book?	1:07
	There's only a couple weeks til the exam.	1:10
	There's still time.	1:12
	(congregation laughing)	1:14
	So what if you haven't gotten your life together,	1:16
	don't worry, the Father waits,	1:19
	you may be the eleventh-hour worker	1:20
	who gets just as much grace as those	1:23
	who've been in the vineyards all day long.	1:25
	There will always be a tomorrow.	1:28
	God's Kingdom is like that, says Jesus.	1:30
	God is in the grace business.	1:34
	There will always be a tomorrow	1:38
	for homecomings and decisions.	1:40
	Why trouble ourselves about the present	1:45
	when there's always grace for the future?	1:47
	Of course, all would be well if Matthew	1:52
	told only one story:	1:55
	the one about the laborers in the vineyard.	1:58
	We could let grace be grace, a gift could be a gift,	2:01
	and we could drift on through today	2:04
	to an ever-open tomorrow.	2:06
	Ah, but Matthew tells other stories.	2:11
	A group of girls are invited to a wedding party.	2:15
	Well, they meant to go get oil for their lamps,	2:19
	but it was first one thing and then another,	2:22
	and then when the call finally came out,	2:25
	"Come to the party," the oil is gone.	2:27
	They have to go buy more oil,	2:31
	and by the time they get to the party,	2:33
	it has begun without them.	2:38
	The door is shut.	2:41
	They cry out, they bang at the door,	2:44
	they claw at the door, but no, no,	2:46
	you had your chance, it's over now.	2:48
	No more tomorrow.	2:51
	Or today's lesson from the Gospel:	2:55
	When you see the fig tree blossom,	2:59
	anybody can tell what time it is.	3:02
	No one knew the time.	3:05
	When Noah built the ark, his neighbors ate and drank	3:09
	at backyard patio parties, they looked over the fence,	3:11
	they saw that crazy old man hammering feverishly away.	3:14
	If they had only known, the clouds which gathered	3:19
	on the horizon would spoil more than their picnic.	3:23
	Jesus says, "Thieves don't send engraved announcements	3:30
	to alert you of a nocturnal visit."	3:34
	That's the way God is.	3:39
	The way life is, sometimes.	3:42
	It can just come upon you like a thief in the night.	3:47
	Jesus, Jew that he was,	3:53
	had no Greek view of history.	3:57
	Unlike the Greeks, Israel viewed history	4:01
	not as a never-ending circle, but as a straight line	4:04
	with a beginning and an end.	4:09
	In the Bible, human history begins in Genesis;	4:12
	it ends in Revelation.	4:15
	There is a beginning and end.	4:22
	Someday there will be no tomorrow.	4:28
	The invitation is given, when it is rejected	4:33
	it goes elsewhere, the door is opened, then it is shut.	4:37
	The gavel comes down, the ticking clock is silent,	4:41
	the little up and down line	4:46
	on the bleeper becomes steady,	4:48
	and it's over.	4:53
	There is no more tomorrow.	4:56
	That's a word that isn't popular these days, is it?	5:03
	We'd rather Matthew tell us stories	5:07
	about eleventh-hour workers and good little bad boys	5:08
	who get grace rather than about procrastinators	5:12
	who end up out in the cold.	5:15
	A recent survey, 99 percent of Americans like	5:19
	the story of the prodigal sun better than	5:22
	the story of the foolish virgins or the thief in the night.	5:24
	(congregation chuckling)	5:28
	And that was possibly the way it was	5:31
	for the church in Matthew's day.	5:33
	The time of crisis was over.	5:36
	It's hard to live every day, day-in, day-out,	5:40
	as if there's no tomorrow.	5:43
	Jesus had promised that he was returning soon	5:47
	to reclaim the faithful, but where was he?	5:49
	They'd been waiting and waiting.	5:55
	By the time the Gospel of Matthew was written,	5:59
	the church had been waiting	6:03
	for maybe 75 or 80 years for the return of Christ--	6:04
	that's a long time to stand on tiptoes.	6:08
	It's hard to maintain a sense of crisis for 80 years.	6:12
	And therein was the problem:	6:18
	"there will always be a tomorrow,"	6:21
	some must have said, after all there had been	6:25
	about 29,000 tomorrows	6:27
	since Jesus had promised he was returning.	6:30
	The once taut church relaxed,	6:36
	it loosened its grip,	6:39
	settled down into the everyday-ness of things.	6:43
	And that, our stories indicate, is dangerous.	6:47
	To live as if there will always be a tomorrow	6:54
	is to be a fool.	6:56
	The best-selling religious book of all time	6:59
	is a rather shoddy piece of rehashed millennialism	7:03
	called The Late, Great Planet Earth.	7:07
	50 million people have paid good money	7:11
	to read Mr. Hal Lindsey's view of the end,	7:14
	and yet the most disturbing thing,	7:19
	it isn't only Jerry Falwell, Hal Lindsey,	7:20
	and James Watt talking this way.	7:23
	The gathering ecological crisis,	7:27
	the threat of nuclear war, international monetary problems,	7:30
	suddenly, it seems as if all kinds of people	7:35
	are talking apocalyptic.	7:38
	Everybody but the church.	7:42
	The liberal, contented church	7:45
	that long ago made peace with the present and decided not	7:49
	to think too much about tomorrow.	7:54
	Next year, next administration,	7:58
	maybe we'll sit down with the Russians and talk disarmament.	8:02
	There's still time!	8:05
	It is so easy to be fooled.	8:11
	Here we sit with all this substantial stone enclosing us.	8:15
	This church has been here for 50 years,	8:21
	so it's not too unreasonable to assume	8:24
	it'll be here 50 more.	8:27
	You'll come home for your 50th reunion,	8:31
	and everybody will look exactly as they do now, right?	8:35
	A few Sundays ago, after the service ended	8:44
	in this vast, eternal looking neo-Gothic place,	8:48
	tourists were milling around in the nave,	8:53
	looking at the windows, admiring the carving.	8:57
	A man slumped to the floor.	9:03
	His wife cried out, the Duke Emergency Team was called.	9:06
	Later, as I sat with her over at the emergency room,	9:12
	she told me they had moved to North Carolina	9:17
	less than a month ago.	9:19
	Early retirement it was to be, in this climate,	9:22
	more hospitable than Iowa.	9:25
	They had come to Durham to walk in the Duke Gardens,	9:29
	to visit the chapel.	9:32
	He had no history of heart disease.	9:36
	She went in to see the chapel, she left a widow.	9:41
	Who are we kidding?	9:49
	We who smile and go about our business,	9:51
	raise our children, build our houses,	9:54
	go to football games, take afternoon naps,	9:56
	all under the vast shadow of the great, dark mushroom cloud,	9:59
	the flash, the roar, the rush of wind and rubble	10:05
	and for the race, there's no tomorrow.	10:08
	Is that why not everyone thinks it's such a grand idea	10:14
	to return to homecoming and class reunions?	10:17
	These occasions make time seem so linear.	10:23
	Life so finite.	10:29
	That bittersweet realization that	10:34
	the ever-rolling stream of time bears all our dreams away.	10:37
	It was at the funeral of her beloved husband,	10:45
	she asked if she could say a few words	10:48
	to the gathered congregation.	10:50
	"If you're going to love somebody,"	10:53
	she said with tears in her eyes,	10:55
	"for God's sake, do it today.	10:57
	"If you're going to tell somebody	11:02
	"that they're special to you, do it now."	11:04
	She had become wise the hard way.	11:12
	Jesus says we can live any way we want,	11:19
	we can put off life as if there were always a tomorrow.	11:22
	We can make it all look so secure and solid and eternal,	11:25
	yet for me, for you, for us all	11:31
	there will be that day when there is no tomorrow.	11:33
	The invitation comes, the door opens	11:40
	and light shines through, the word is spoken.	11:44
	And then the waters rise, the bell tolls,	11:50
	and it is time,	11:55
	for good or ill, it's time.	11:58
	Of that day and hour, no one knows.	12:04
	Watch.	12:10
	Well I was serving a little church in rural Georgia,	12:14
	and let me tell you, there's not much more rural	12:18
	than rural Georgia.	12:20
	(congregation laughing)	12:21
	One of my members had a relative who died	12:23
	and Patsy and I went to the funeral as a show of support.	12:25
	The funeral was in a hot, crowded, little,	12:30
	off-brand Baptist country church.	12:32
	I'd never seen anything like it.	12:37
	They wheeled the coffin in, the preacher began to preach,	12:40
	he shouted, he fumed, spit, flayed his arms.	12:43
	"It's too late for old Joe," he screamed.	12:47
	"He might have wanted to do this or that in life,	12:50
	"too late for him now, he's dead.	12:53
	"It's all over for him.	12:56
	"He might have wanted to straighten out his life,	12:59
	"but he can't now, it's over."	13:02
	What a comfort this must be	13:08
	to the grieving family, I thought.	13:10
	(congregation laughing)	13:12
	"But it ain't too late for you, brothers and sisters.	13:14
	"People drop dead every day, so why wait?	13:18
	"Now is the day for decision, now is the day	13:21
	"to give your life to Jesus.	13:23
	"Come, give your life to Jesus."	13:26
	Well, it was the worst thing I had ever heard.	13:30
	(congregation laughing)	13:32
	"Can you imagine a preacher doing that kind of thing	13:34
	to a grieving family?" I asked Patsy on the way home.	13:37
	I've never heard anything so cheap,	13:41
	manipulative, inappropriate.	13:43
	I would never preach a sermon like that at a funeral.	13:46
	She agreed.	13:50
	She agreed that it was tacky, manipulative, calloused.	13:52
	Of course, she added,	13:59
	worst of all, what he said was true.	14:03
	(electronic interference)	14:18
	(organ music)	14:21
	(congregation singing hymn)	14:45
-	I believe in God, the Father Almighty,	17:31
	maker of heaven and earth;	17:34
	And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord;	17:36
	who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,	17:40
	born of the Virgin Mary,	17:43
	suffered under Pontius Pilate,	17:45
	was crucified, dead, and buried;	17:47
	he descended into hell, the third day he rose from the dead;	17:50
	he ascended into heaven,	17:56
	and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;	17:58
	from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.	18:02
	I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,	18:06
	the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,	18:10
	the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.	18:15
	Amen.	18:19
	The Lord be with you.	18:21
-	And also with you.	18:23
-	Let us pray.	18:25
	(congregation shuffling)	18:26
	Eternal Spirit, whose timelessness outshines	18:38
	all our earthly achievements, we worship thee.	18:43
	Very mysterious is this universe into which	18:50
	Thou hast given us birth.	18:52
	From the freshness of April that passes	18:56
	to the chill of November,	18:58
	soon to be restored by the quiet of a winter's sleep,	19:01
	we stand in awe before the mystery of Thy creative powers,	19:06
	O God, completely beyond our abilities	19:10
	to predict, to master, or to comprehend.	19:13
	Lift us up, we beseech Thee, creating God,	19:20
	from ingratitude to thankfulness.	19:23
	Strangely co-mingled is our life of things,	19:27
	good and evil, happy and sad.	19:31
	Forgive our eyes, their tendency to see only the shadows.	19:35
	Grant us an hour of joyous thanksgiving.	19:40
	Let memory be our sacrament, reminding us	19:43
	of places where beauty dwells,	19:47
	of friendships that bless us,	19:50
	of moments when Thy presence has healed us.	19:53
	Tune our spirits once again to gratitude.	19:58
	Lift us up, we beseech Thee, redeeming God,	20:04
	from cowardice to courage, remembering this Veterans' Day	20:07
	those who have given their lives to win the peace.	20:12
	Grant us the persistence to pray for peace,	20:16
	to struggle for peace, to suffer for peace,	20:20
	that we may study war no more.	20:24
	Joining hands with those we call our enemies,	20:28
	we beseech Thee, O God, help us to recognize	20:32
	and to overcome the real enemies of humankind:	20:36
	ignorance, poverty, disease,	20:41
	hatred, oppression.	20:45
	Tune our hearts, O God, to courage.	20:49
	Lift us, we pray Thee, sustaining God,	20:55
	from selfishness to service.	20:58
	Teach us the compassion of Christ,	21:02
	who emptied Himself even unto death on a cross.	21:05
	Grant us the hope which rises above frustration,	21:10
	the patience to endure the strain of waiting.	21:14
	Dedicate us afresh to the never-ending task	21:18
	of putting the needs of others over our own satisfactions.	21:22
	Direct our hands to service.	21:28
	So, may we run and not grow weary,	21:32
	walk and not faint,	21:36
	and love will be all-in-all in this wonderful,	21:39
	terrible, beautiful world.	21:43
	Amen.	21:47
	And now, let us offer our gifts and ourselves to God.	21:52
	(organ music)	22:00
	(choir singing)	23:53
	(organ music)	28:35
	♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪	28:59
	♪ Praise Him all creatures here below ♪	29:05
	♪ Alleluia, Alleluia! ♪	29:11
	♪ Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts ♪	29:18
	♪ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ♪	29:24
	♪ Alleluia, Alleluia, ♪	29:30
	♪ Alleluia, Alleluia, ♪	29:37
	♪ Alleluia! ♪	29:43
	♪ Amen. ♪	29:51
-	O God, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth.	30:04
	One age declares Thy goodness to another,	30:08
	and Thy steadfast love is the mainstay	30:12
	of our ever-restless hearts.	30:15
	So, we offer these gifts unto Thee	30:18
	in joyful thanksgiving for Thy plenteous blessings	30:20
	towards us, that Thy name may ever be glorified	30:23
	and the work of Thy Kingdom ever increased.	30:28
	This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ,	30:32
	who taught us to pray with confidence:	30:35
	Our Father who art in heaven,	30:38
	hallowed be thy name.	30:41
	Thy kingdom come.	30:43
	Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.	30:45
	Give us this day our daily bread,	30:49
	and forgive us our trespasses,	30:51
	as we forgive those who trespass against us,	30:54
	and lead us not into temptation,	30:58
	but deliver us from evil.	31:00
	For thine in the Kingdom, and the power,	31:02
	and the glory forever.	31:05
	Amen.	31:08
	(organ music)	31:10
	(congregation singing hymn)	31:55
	(organ music)	34:22
	And now, let us go forth in peace	35:04
	to love and serve God and our neighbor in all that we do,	35:06
	and may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,	35:10
	the love of God and the communion and fellowship	35:13
	of the Holy Spirit be with you all.	35:16
	♪ Amen ♪	35:19
	♪ Amen ♪	35:22
	♪ Amen ♪	35:25
	♪ Amen ♪	35:30
	♪ Amen ♪	35:35
	♪ Amen ♪	35:42
	♪ Amen. ♪	35:50
	(organ music)	36:10
	(congregation talking)	40:09

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Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 11, 1984)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 39:33. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 48:48.
The parables of Vineyard Workers and the Prodigal Son portray a God who is so gracious that it’s never too late for people to believe and convert. Yet the preacher argues from the Stories of the Waiting Virgins and the Thieves coming in the middle of the night, to show the urgency of conversion. He admonishes people that they cannot live as if there is always a tomorrow, and encourages them to seize the precious time of salvation. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r45t3gf4k

Date:

November 11, 1984

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

Matthew

Chapter and Verse:

Matthew 24:32-44

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0236
ref7993_rly
uachapelsermaud
duke:320279
dcrau001224
ark:/87924/r45t3gf4k
149a2919-088a-4848-a310-1b09f4c9f718

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 11, 1984)

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1. William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 11, 1984)

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William H. Willimon - "What Time Is It?" (November 11, 1984)

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