Gerald Lee Wilson - "I and Thou: Inc., Ltd., Blessed" (December 15, 1996)

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-	The second lesson is from	0:05
	the Gospel according to Saint John.	0:07
	There was a man sent from God whose name was John.	0:10
	He came as a witness to testify to the light	0:15
	so that all might believe through him.	0:19
	He, himself, was not the light	0:22
	but he came to testify to the light.	0:25
	This is the testimony given by John	0:28
	when the Jews sent priests and Levites	0:31
	from Jerusalem to ask him,	0:34
	"Who are you?"	0:37
	He confessed and did not deny it	0:39
	but confessed, "I am not the Messiah."	0:42
	And they ask him, "What then? Are you Elijah?"	0:46
	He said, "I am not."	0:51
	"Are you the prophet?"	0:54
	He answered, "No."	0:56
	Then they said to him, "Who are you?	0:59
	"Let us have an answer for those who sent us.	1:02
	"What do you say about yourself?"	1:06
	He said, "I am the voice of one crying out	1:09
	"in the wilderness.	1:13
	"Make straight the way of the Lord,	1:14
	"as the prophet Isaiah said."	1:17
	Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.	1:21
	They ask him, "Why then are you baptizing,	1:24
	"if you are needn't the Messiah,	1:29
	"nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?"	1:31
	John answered them,	1:35
	"I baptize with water.	1:37
	"Among you stands one whom you do not know.	1:39
	"The one who is coming after me,	1:43
	"I am not worthy to untie the thong of this sandal."	1:45
	This took place in Bethany across the Jordan,	1:50
	where John was baptizing.	1:53
	This is the word of the Lord.	1:56
-	(congregation) Thanks be to God.	1:59
-	Let us pray.	2:10
	Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts	2:13
	be acceptable in thy sight.	2:18
	O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.	2:21
	Amen.	2:24
	We begin with a scene from our home,	2:28
	which may have been duplicated in many homes.	2:33
	Perhaps, even yours.	2:38
	When our daughter was growing up	2:42
	and before we became empty-nesters,	2:45
	the same scene occurred 253 times, it seems.	2:48
	Our daughter Holly would come to us	2:55
	with some perfectly ridiculous request	2:57
	and we being responsible Duke parents would say, "No."	3:02
	Holly's response would always be the same,	3:10
	"Why can't I? It's my life.	3:14
	"I can do with it what I wanna do!"	3:17
	Being rational, logical, chilled out parents	3:22
	with a couple of Duke degrees,	3:26
	our answer was the one we swore before we had a child	3:29
	that we would never, ever give,	3:33
	"The answer's no 'cause we said so, that's why."	3:37
	And then would follow in our household	3:42
	what the historians might call the era of great sulking.	3:45
	However, on the 254th or was it the 323rd time,	3:53
	doesn't make a difference.	3:58
	We came up with another answer to that question,	3:59
	"Why can't I do it? It's my life."	4:04
	We said, simply, "No.	4:09
	"It's not your life or at least not completely.	4:12
	"You are the CEO of your life, to be sure,	4:17
	"but in a real sense, you're just a holding company	4:21
	"for all of the people who have invested in you."	4:26
	Though we were rather smugly pleased with that answer,	4:33
	Holly looked at us like this time we had really lost it.	4:38
	Then followed, another era of great sulking.	4:44
	The point was lost on her,	4:50
	but I hope it's not lost here this morning.	4:51
	In a real sense, for each of us,	4:56
	I and thou, me and you,	4:59
	our lives are not our own to do as we please,	5:01
	but each of us is a corporation	5:07
	owned by all of those who have invested in us	5:12
	over our lifetime.	5:15
	This, of course, is what John Donne was saying, in a sense,	5:18
	when he said no man is an island.	5:21
	A great preacher of another age, Joseph Ford Newton said,	5:24
	"A person is only half himself,	5:29
	"his friends are the other half."	5:32
	And of course, Tennyson's Ulysses,	5:35
	"I am a part of all that I have met."	5:37
	On this morning, I want to put some old wine in new stems.	5:42
	And in so doing, acknowledge our debt	5:47
	and express our gratitude on this Founder's Day Sunday	5:50
	and third Sunday in Advent.	5:54
	If we can think of ourselves as corporations,	5:59
	then we automatically think of our stockholders.	6:01
	All of those who've invested in us	6:05
	over the course of our lifetime,	6:07
	beginning, of course, with our parents	6:08
	and our families, and including our spouse,	6:11
	and all of those throughout our lives.	6:14
	And in thinking of these stockholders,	6:18
	we have a dual agenda.	6:20
	First of all, we want to express our debt of gratitude	6:24
	and secondly, there's the matter of accountability.	6:29
	Now let me list a few of the stockholders in me	6:35
	and thank them, if you will.	6:38
	I want you to make your own list.	6:39
	Please wait until the end of the service, of course,	6:41
	or at least 'til the end of the sermon.	6:43
	In this university setting,	6:47
	and on this occasion,	6:49
	we are especially mindful of the fact	6:50
	that teachers are, by nature, investors.	6:53
	They invest in people.	6:58
	I think of all of those teachers who have invested in me	7:01
	and those to whom I owe a debt of gratitude	7:03
	and a reckoning of accountability.	7:09
	At Duke, such names as Shelton Smith, Stuart Henry,	7:11
	Jim Cleland, Bill Holly come to mind.	7:16
	Great teachers, great investors,	7:20
	great human beings.	7:23
	And in this context, I keep thinking about	7:26
	something I read several years ago	7:28
	and I'm not quite sure	7:30
	whether it really fits in at this point	7:31
	or whether it represents the kind of	7:34
	stream of consciousness thought	7:36
	that we southerners are so good at.	7:38
	We may not be able to organize ourselves out of a paper bag,	7:42
	make that a burlap bag,	7:46
	but we do know the joys of free association.	7:47
	At any rate, here it is.	7:53
	One of the most fascinating books	7:55
	that I have read in a long time	7:57
	was John E. Mack's biography of T.E. Lawrence,	7:58
	Lawrence of Arabia.	8:03
	Entitled A Prince of Our Disorder.	8:05
	And in his introduction to this book,	8:10
	Mack wrote of Lawrence,	8:13
	and I really think this describes so much of Duke's mission,	8:14
	"Lawrence possessed, to a unique degree,	8:19
	"a quality I have called the capacity of enabling.	8:22
	"He enabled others to make use of abilities	8:28
	"they had always possessed,	8:31
	"but until their acquaintance with him,	8:33
	"had failed to utilize.	8:37
	"This enabling ranged from helping an airman	8:41
	"enjoy a day's work to encouraging a people	8:43
	"and its leader to achieve a revolution	8:46
	"they could not have accomplished unaided.	8:50
	"Enabling depends upon a unique kind of relationship	8:54
	"between the enabler and the enabled.	8:58
	"In some ways," writes Mack,	9:00
	"It resembles the relation between a teacher and a student."	9:02
	There we have it, you know.	9:10
	Our teachers, our enablers, our investors.	9:11
	Come to think of it,	9:17
	isn't this really what's being talked about	9:18
	in the indenture of Duke University?	9:21
	Which is reproduced on the bronze plaque	9:23
	just beyond the chapel here?	9:26
	Isn't this what's being said when it says,	9:28
	the indenture says,	9:30
	"Through changing generations of students,	9:32
	"the objective has been to encourage individuals	9:36
	"to achieve to the extent of their capacities,	9:39
	"an understanding and an appreciation	9:42
	"of the world in which they live.	9:44
	"Their relationship to it, their opportunities,	9:47
	"and their responsibilities."	9:50
	There's a flip side to this coin also, by the way.	9:54
	It's expressed very simply,	9:58
	by Anna in Rodgers and Hammerstein's, The King and I,	10:00
	when she sings,	10:05
	"If you become a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught."	10:06
	How true it is.	10:13
	If you become a teacher, by your students, you'll be taught.	10:14
	I think of those students to whom I owe	10:19
	both a debt of gratitude and accountability.	10:21
	Bobby and Warren, Alex and Allison,	10:26
	and Lisa and Logan and Jeff and Sherry,	10:29
	and Bill and Giovanni, even maybe Takis,	10:31
	and maybe, even more probable, Arie.	10:38
	I could go on with my list, as could you,	10:41
	until this list became longer	10:44
	than an old testament list of begats.	10:46
	The point is made,	10:50
	each of us has a long list of stockholders	10:53
	to whom we owe a debt of gratitude	10:56
	and to whom we are in accountable	10:59
	for what they have invested in us.	11:01
	And of course, there is the investment made in a us,	11:05
	a symbol here today	11:09
	by Washington, Duke, and James Buchanan Duke,	11:10
	and the continuing investment made by the Duke family,	11:13
	and the Founder's Society,	11:17
	and all of those connected with the university.	11:18
	What do we say on this occasion?	11:23
	Simply, the second most beautiful phrase	11:26
	in the English language,	11:29
	"Thank you. Thank you."	11:31
	We move on,	11:36
	continuing the metaphor of the business world	11:37
	as sort of a convenient peg to hang our thoughts on.	11:39
	We move on to point out	11:43
	the fact that each of us	11:46
	is not only incorporated, Inc., if you will.	11:47
	To use the words, American business,	11:51
	but also limited LTD,	11:53
	as the British world would have it.	11:56
	When you think about it, the metaphors not a bad one.	12:00
	We each have our own collection of stockholders,	12:04
	but each of our stockholders	12:07
	has only limited liability for us.	12:09
	Sometimes this concept of limited liability	12:14
	is one we don't really want to acknowledge.	12:17
	All too often, we seek to shift responsibility	12:21
	for our limitations from ourselves to our stockholders.	12:24
	Not too long ago, I heard a psychologist say	12:30
	that part of human development,	12:32
	part of the process of moving into adulthood,	12:34
	is recognizing our limitations	12:40
	and our potential within those limitations.	12:43
	I think this also implies	12:46
	that not only do we recognize our limitations,	12:48
	but we also accept responsibility for them.	12:52
	It may be another slight digression, at this point,	12:58
	but I can't help but think of Mark Twain's witticism.	13:02
	There was a man in our town,	13:06
	whom everyone said had and inferiority complex.	13:08
	He didn't have a complex, he was just plain inferior.	13:12
	No, we're all limited in some ways.	13:18
	We are all inferior in some areas,	13:22
	that's not the problem.	13:24
	The problem is accepting responsibility	13:26
	for these limitations.	13:29
	But all too often as Dean Willimon pointed out last Sunday,	13:32
	we resort to a victim mentality.	13:35
	We pass the buck, we blame others for our limitations.	13:40
	This occurs in large part, I think, for two reasons.	13:45
	First, all too often,	13:50
	we are obsessed with autobiography and forget history.	13:53
	We see ourselves as exceptions	13:58
	to the laws of cause and effect.	14:01
	We live lives as someone has said, of rootless expediency.	14:04
	But then we want to blame our roots for our failures.	14:11
	Second, in our own special way,	14:17
	we reduce the demands on ourselves	14:20
	and correspondingly raise to unrealistic levels,	14:23
	our demands on others,	14:28
	in terms of what we expect them to do for us.	14:30
	And if it doesn't work out, you see,	14:34
	we can hold them responsible.	14:35
	But it doesn't really work that way.	14:38
	Others can invest in us to be sure,	14:41
	but their liability is limited.	14:45
	We are responsible for ourselves.	14:48
	And so in this convergence of Founder's Day	14:55
	and the third Sunday in Advent,	15:00
	we wonder if the two have anything in common	15:02
	other than the accident of time.	15:06
	In actuality, they do have quite a bit in common.	15:09
	Both Founder's Day and the third Sunday in Advent	15:13
	represent events which have had	15:17
	a crucial impact on our lives.	15:20
	Both Founder's Day Sunday and the third Sunday in Advent	15:25
	are about more than events,	15:30
	they are about continuing processes	15:32
	and they remind us of the extent	15:35
	to which we have been blessed.	15:39
	On this third Sunday in Advent in the Christian year,	15:44
	we continue to celebrate the birth	15:48
	of one destined to make the ultimate investment in us.	15:51
	We focus on a manger, but in romanticizing that manger,	15:55
	we sometimes fail to note	16:00
	that it is a theologically crowded one.	16:02
	Cradling not only a babe, but also a cross and a crown.	16:06
	And so we think of this greatest investment made in us	16:13
	with gratitude.	16:16
	Or as we read this morning from the Psalms,	16:17
	the Lord has done great things for us.	16:20
	We are glad.	16:24
	Likewise on this special Sunday, we express our gratitude	16:27
	and acknowledge the extent to which we have been blessed	16:32
	by the presence of this university in our lives.	16:37
	History is filled with examples	16:43
	of people with nerve, but no vision.	16:45
	Those with vision, but no nerve.	16:49
	In the founders of this university,	16:53
	Washington, Duke, and James Buchanan Duke,	16:55
	and their descendants,	16:59
	as well as its outstanding leaders,	17:01
	we have witnessed a unique combination	17:04
	of both vision and nerve.	17:07
	What kind of vision?	17:13
	What kind of nerve did it take	17:15
	for a man like Washington Duke to offer a century ago,	17:18
	$100,000 for Trinity College	17:22
	to open its doors to women	17:25
	and to place them on an equal footing with men?	17:26
	All of this in a time and in a region,	17:29
	where one native writer	17:33
	could write with little fear of contradiction:	17:34
	"Men are the suns and women are the moons,	17:38
	living through the reflective glory of their husbands."	17:42
	Courage, vision,	17:46
	in that kind of time, that kind of mentality.	17:49
	Or the vision and the nerve	17:54
	involved in the defensive academic freedom	17:56
	in the John Spencer Bassett affair in 1903.	17:58
	When Bassett committed what was viewed as civic heresy	18:02
	and even more sadly, in most quarters, religious heresy,	18:06
	by questioning prevailing doctrines about race relations.	18:12
	As Dr. Richard Lischer pointed out	18:21
	so aptly and so eloquently on this occasion last year,	18:23
	the vision and the nerve involved	18:28
	in the creation of the Duke endowment	18:31
	and the establishing of a university based on faith	18:34
	in the eternal union of education and religion.	18:37
	I love that phrase.	18:41
	The eternal union of education and religion	18:42
	in a time as Lischer pointed out,	18:47
	not noted as one of the great ages of faith.	18:49
	Let me conclude	18:56
	by relating a personal Duke experience.	18:59
	One that I think illustrates the enormous	19:04
	and the lasting impact of the Duke family's investment.	19:09
	Several years ago,	19:15
	a day or two before graduation,	19:18
	I walked over to the pits.	19:20
	I think the official name now is the Great Hall.	19:22
	It was blue and white, keeps changing.	19:25
	The students call it the pits though.	19:28
	I sat down to have a cup of coffee with a graduating senior	19:31
	and he was pretty mellow.	19:37
	He was reminiscing about his four years at Duke	19:39
	and then he made a comment on his Duke experience	19:44
	that I'll never forget.	19:47
	He said, "You know, Dean Wilson?	19:50
	If the freshman me could meet the senior me,	19:53
	we wouldn't know each other."	19:58
	Now think about that.	20:01
	If the freshman me could meet the senior me,	20:02
	we wouldn't know each other.	20:07
	And I thought then, what a return Duke received	20:11
	on it's investment in this young man.	20:15
	And I think now, that those comments represent	20:18
	a far more accurate measure of our success as a university.	20:22
	A better index of the return	20:27
	the founders of this university have received	20:29
	on their investment.	20:32
	Far better than any list	20:34
	that appears in US News and World Report,	20:37
	even though, of course,	20:40
	we applauded their accuracy and good judgment.	20:41
	Today, we recognize an event that occurred 72 years ago,	20:49
	but what we are celebrating is more than an event.	20:56
	It is a process, a continuing process,	21:00
	for the long range investment of our founders	21:06
	was not only indeed,	21:09
	not primarily in buildings, but in people.	21:11
	In us.	21:16
	Amen. Let us pray.	21:19
	Almighty God, on this day we reach back into time	21:22
	to two events which stand not still in silent-like stone,	21:26
	but flow with energy and life like water.	21:31
	We thank you for the eternal gift of our Lord and Savior,	21:36
	and for the continuing gift	21:40
	from the founders of this university.	21:42
	We are indeed blessed.	21:45
	Amen.	21:50

Item Info

Title:

Gerald Lee Wilson - "I and Thou: Inc., Ltd., Blessed" (December 15, 1996)

Description:

Sermon start time: 02:28. Sermon end time: 21:51.
We do not own our own lives, but owe a debt of gratitude and are accountable to all of those who have invested in us over the years. We must not, though, take this to mean that we are not responsible for our lives and our limitations. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “Our lives are not our own to do as we please, but each of us is a corporation owned by all of those who have invested in us over our lifetime.”

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4dr2pq19

Date:

December 15, 1996

Speaker:

Wilson, Gerald Lee

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 CS-0836
ref9820_su3
uachapelsermaud
duke:321255
dcrau001481
ark:/87924/r4dr2pq19
8e29adc4-f334-413e-a854-d14237940386

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