James C. Howell - "We Say These Same Prayers Every Week" (February 21, 1999)

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-	Back in the '70s, Annie Dillard spent a couple of years	0:08
	on an island in Puget Sound and there was only one church	0:13
	on that island.	0:17
	So she went and worshiped there every Sunday,	0:19
	and the priest would pray the prescribed prayers	0:20
	from his prayer book; prayers of confession,	0:25
	petition, and thanksgiving.	0:28
	It went week after week and one Sunday he was kneeling	0:32
	at the altar praying the prayers and he stopped in the midst	0:35
	of the prayers and he looked up to the ceiling and he said,	0:37
	"Lord, we say these same prayers to you every week."	0:40
	And then he resumed his prayers.	0:46
	And Annie Dillard said,	0:49
	"Because of this, I like him very much."	0:50
	We say the same prayers every Sunday.	0:56
	One of the prayers we pray each week	0:58
	is a prayer of confession, and you would think	1:00
	this would be more effective.	1:02
	By confessing our sin week after week that we would make	1:06
	a dent in our sinfulness, that sin would somehow	1:08
	yield to such persistence.	1:12
	Praying, kind of like riding a bicycle, you fall off a few	1:15
	times, but after while you get the knack of it and then,	1:17
	you're a holy person.	1:21
	But sin has this	1:24
	persistence.	1:26
	It would be easier in a way if we could adopt a child's view	1:28
	of sin, that the world was manufactured with 14,782 rules,	1:31
	and a sin is an infraction against one of those rules,	1:37
	but over time we could practice and get it down pat	1:40
	and not sin as much.	1:43
	Or it would be convenient, indeed, if the attitude that	1:46
	many people have were correct that God, in his old age,	1:50
	has become a little more relaxed in his demands upon us.	1:55
	God's mellowed out a bit.	1:59
	God is now grading on the curve, if you will.	2:00
	We're not doin' so good, but relatively speaking, B minus.	2:04
	You pass.	2:10
	The mess that we're in is huge and we need not	2:13
	be naive about it.	2:17
	Naive, I think, like Lancelot Du Lac.	2:19
	In the musical, Camelot, he's heard the summons to come	2:24
	to King Arthur's roundtable, and in what I think	2:27
	is the funniest part of the musical, along the way,	2:31
	he sings a song called C'est Moi when he's boasting	2:33
	of his great prowess, his strength, his holiness,	2:37
	and above all, his unsurpassed humility.	2:41
	And in the course of that song,	2:46
	the funniest moment comes when he sings:	2:47
	♪ Had I been made the partner of Eve ♪	2:49
	♪ We'd be in Eden still ♪	2:54
	And the problem was, he became the partner of Guinevere,	2:59
	who already had a partner,	3:04
	King Arthur.	3:06
	And so the roundtable was fractured.	3:10
	Through the history of the church this doctrine	3:14
	has been called the Doctrine of Original Sin.	3:15
	It's almost as if genetically we become sinners,	3:17
	it's passed to us automatically by our parents.	3:20
	Not many people in the '90s want to buy into this,	3:23
	but I would suggest to you that the apple does not	3:25
	fall far from the tree.	3:28
	I was at a nursing home recently out of town.	3:30
	One of our members went elsewhere,	3:32
	so I went over to visit her.	3:34
	There were some of us sitting around in the common room,	3:36
	and we hadn't exchanged names or anything,	3:39
	and the conversation drifted toward where are you from.	3:41
	And there was an old man standing there and he said,	3:46
	well, I'm from a place that probably none of you've	3:48
	ever heard of.	3:50
	I'm from Oakboro.	3:51
	And I said, Oakboro?	3:52
	Man, my dad grew up in Oakboro!	3:54
	I've been there 1000 times.	3:56
	This guy leaned in and he looked at me and he said,	3:59
	"Are you Artis Howell's boy"?	4:03
	And I said, I can't tell you how glad I am that you asked.	4:07
	I'm not Artis Howell's boy.	4:10
	Artis Howell's boy's 75 years old.	4:12
	I'm Artis Howell's grandson.	4:17
	My dad, Cecil, is Artis Howell's boy.	4:18
	This man said, oh yeah.	4:22
	Artis used to deliver my mail.	4:24
	I know all these people in your family.	4:26
	I know Ray Dean and Thamine and Cropsy and Zulna and Nezzy.	4:28
	We have great names in the Howell family.	4:32
	I've tried to get Lisa to use some on our children,	4:36
	to no avail.	4:40
	He saw something	4:41
	in my face.	4:44
	It would that it were only appearance that gets passed on.	4:47
	You see, my father also is,	4:51
	he's this really stubborn creature.	4:53
	I've always been exasperated with his stubbornness.	4:54
	His stubbornness is only matched by the stubbornness of	4:56
	Cecil Howell's boy.	5:00
	And I think there's this darkness at the back side	5:04
	of my soul that comes from my mother's side of the family.	5:06
	Far from all the stuff that we get from our families,	5:11
	we find ourselves enmeshed in this culture.	5:13
	We live in a culture that is materialistic and cynical,	5:17
	and if you're breathing, you just got it.	5:20
	You can't shake it.	5:24
	You can leave church today and say,	5:25
	I'm not going to be materialistic any longer.	5:26
	You're not gonna make it 'til one o'clock.	5:30
	(audience laughs)	5:32
	We've just got it.	5:35
	Sin.	5:37
	The complexion of this thing.	5:39
	God puts Adam and Eve in a garden that is called Eden.	5:40
	The word Eden means bliss, or paradise.	5:44
	And they've got the full run of the garden,	5:49
	but there's one tree that they're supposed to avoid,	5:51
	and the lure of that tree is that if you eat of its fruit	5:54
	then you will be	5:58
	like	6:00
	God.	6:01
	And that's what we very much want to be like.	6:02
	We want to be immortal.	6:05
	We want control.	6:08
	Even if we believe in God, we tend to want to use God	6:11
	to get what we want so that we can still be at the center	6:13
	of the universe.	6:16
	Maybe it's like Prometheus scaling the heights,	6:19
	stealing the fire of the gods.	6:22
	Or as most common students learn the line	6:26
	from Milton's Paradise Lost,	6:28
	"Here we may reign secure, and in my choice to reign	6:31
	"is worth ambition though in hell.	6:36
	"Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven."	6:40
	We've heard all that 1000 times.	6:44
	What we don't pay as close attention to is how Milton	6:45
	describes what life is like when we choose to reign	6:48
	instead of to serve.	6:52
	He describes it as "hideous ruin,	6:54
	"a dungeon, horrible,	6:59
	"darkness visible,	7:03
	"regions of sorrow."	7:07
	It's almost as if, in life, we get some little bit	7:11
	of paradise, but then we discover that it is so	7:14
	fragile.	7:19
	You're feelin' fine and you go to the doctor for your	7:22
	annual checkup and before you know it, you're being bounced	7:24
	from pillar to post in the healthcare system,	7:27
	and you're scared to death for your life.	7:29
	Or you're drivin' down the road one day	7:34
	and just for a second you look the wrong way and	7:35
	your life's never the same.	7:40
	One day you're under stress and you say somethin' that you	7:44
	don't even really believe, but you can't take it back.	7:46
	Or in a weak moment you indulge in desire that you normally	7:52
	would never have dreamed of indulging.	7:55
	And then your marriage	8:00
	is in shreds.	8:03
	Our own Reynolds Price, when he discovered that he had	8:06
	cancer in his spinal cord, had a dream or a vision,	8:09
	in which Jesus appeared to him by the Sea of Galilee.	8:14
	And Jesus came to Reynolds and said, your sins are forgiven.	8:18
	Reynolds said, well that's not exactly	8:23
	what I was worried about.	8:25
	It's not so much that we are great rule-breakers.	8:28
	It is rather that we find ourselves	8:32
	in this predicament in life.	8:34
	It's right there in Genesis chapter three.	8:36
	It says that human life is one of fatigue,	8:38
	and mortality,	8:43
	and frustration,	8:45
	and maybe we are not so much	8:48
	like Prometheus scaling the heights to steal the fire	8:50
	of the gods, but rather we are more like Sisyphus,	8:53
	condemned to push a stone up a steep precipice only	8:57
	to get near the top and have that stone roll back down	9:02
	so that we may start all over again.	9:04
	The question remains, why do we say these	9:07
	same prayers every Sunday?	9:10
	Couple years ago, late in August, I got a phone call	9:15
	from a man in another state.	9:18
	He says, is this Dr. Howell?	9:19
	Yes.	9:21
	He said, my kid is entering Davidson College this year.	9:22
	I want you to get to know him.	9:26
	I said, I look forward to meeting him very much.	9:27
	He said, I want you to be sure that he's in church.	9:31
	I said, I hope he comes.	9:35
	He said, no no no, you don't understand me.	9:36
	I want you to be sure that my kid is in church.	9:38
	This is gettin' on my nerves a little.	9:41
	So I said, well, at our church we're not very good	9:43
	at insuring church attendance.	9:46
	This made him kind of mad.	9:50
	I asked him, I said why do you want your kid	9:52
	to be in church?	9:53
	He said, 'cause I want my kid to behave.	9:55
	And I said, well, at our church we're not very good	10:00
	at behavior control either.	10:02
	And this made him really mad, and he said well then	10:05
	what the (grunt) are you good at?	10:06
	And I don't know, I was in kind of a cheeky mood,	10:10
	and he was getting on my nerves,	10:12
	and so I gave him a smartalecky answer.	10:13
	I said, we're not good at insuring church attendance,	10:16
	and we're not very good at behavior control.	10:20
	What we are good at is capturing imaginations	10:21
	and setting them on fire.	10:25
	The guy hung up in a harrumph.	10:30
	I thought about it later and I thought that is what	10:33
	the church oughta be good at,	10:35
	capturing imaginations,	10:38
	setting them on fire,	10:41
	helping all of us, above all, to hear God's call.	10:45
	One of the reasons Adam and Eve wind up at the wrong tree	10:51
	is that they are neglecting their vocation.	10:54
	God put them in the garden with a task, to till it,	10:57
	to take care of it, to make it fruitful.	11:00
	God calls each of us to something in life to be here	11:03
	instead of there, to do this instead of that,	11:08
	to engage in what we do in a special kind of way.	11:11
	My grandfather was a rural mail carrier, but he carried	11:14
	that out as if he were on a mission from God.	11:18
	I used to ride around with him when I was a little boy.	11:23
	He would deliver medicine to shut-ins.	11:25
	He would pray with people who were sick.	11:29
	This man I talked to in the nursing home told me he had	11:33
	been the recipient of one of my grandfather's prayers.	11:36
	God calls	11:42
	each of us, and everything depends on whether we hear	11:45
	that call,	11:49
	and respond.	11:51
	I remember when I was in college,	11:52
	I was an engineering major.	11:54
	I was good at science.	11:55
	My father was an engineer.	11:56
	All the men that I knew primarily were engineers.	11:57
	In the midst of college, I got involved in a church.	12:02
	This is always risky business.	12:04
	And as I was involved in the church,	12:07
	I heard the call to be a minister.	12:09
	The hardest person to tell, clearly was my father,	12:12
	because he not only dreamed of me being an engineer,	12:14
	but he was not a churchgoer.	12:18
	He couldn't imagine why somebody would want to go to church,	12:22
	much less spend their life in it.	12:24
	So the day came we were driving down the interstate,	12:26
	and I said, Dad, I've decided what	12:28
	I'm going to do after graduation.	12:30
	He said, what is it, son?	12:32
	I said, I'm gonna be a minister.	12:33
	I nearly wasn't a minister because we nearly crashed	12:37
	right out there on the highway.	12:39
	There was this long argument ensued.	12:43
	I'll never forget one thing my dad said,	12:46
	which I thought was crazy at the time.	12:49
	He said, son,	12:52
	you've got a chance to be somebody,	12:55
	don't waste it.	13:00
	I think that's God's very word to each of us.	13:05
	You've got a chance to be somebody,	13:10
	don't waste it.	13:14
	Oh, they're the sirens of our culture.	13:18
	They poke out that finger.	13:20
	They seduce us toward what glitters and what has a stack	13:21
	of money on the top of it.	13:25
	Our only hope to keep from shipwreck against those rocks	13:28
	is to hear the sweeter song.	13:31
	There is another song, it tells about a little boy	13:34
	who was born, he came from his mother's womb as naked	13:38
	as Adam and Eve.	13:42
	He grew.	13:46
	He shone light into our darkness.	13:48
	He went into the wilderness.	13:54
	He was tempted to seize that power of being like God,	13:55
	but instead, he refused it and took the route	14:00
	of obedience to God.	14:03
	He came to another garden,	14:05
	and in that garden he prayed,	14:09
	"Not my will,	14:12
	"but your will be done."	14:16
	And that landed him on a tree,	14:20
	an olive shaft,	14:23
	on which Jesus was crucified to bring life and hope	14:26
	to all of us who are fatigued, who are lost,	14:31
	who are sinners, who find ourselves headed	14:35
	toward hideous ruin.	14:38
	And on that cross,	14:42
	he looked to the sinner next to him,	14:45
	and said,	14:49
	"Today,	14:51
	you will be with me	14:54
	in	14:56
	Paradise."	14:58
	And that is why we say these same prayers	15:04
	every	15:09
	week.	15:11

Item Info

Title:

James C. Howell - "We Say These Same Prayers Every Week" (February 21, 1999)

Description:

Sermon start time: 00:08. Sermon end time: 15:12.
This sermon explores why liturgical prayers are repeated week after week. He concludes that human beings, like Sisyphus, are cursed to push our own sin up a hill throughout our lives. At the end, he offers the cross as a solution for this. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: "The mess that we're in is huge, and we need not be naive about it."

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4959cn7f

Date:

February 21, 1999

Speaker:

Howell, James C.

Liturgical Calendar:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0946
ref10049_kn4
uachapelsermaud
duke:320612
dcrau001590
ark:/87924/r4959cn7f
aaa41650-ed9f-4952-9d44-76918e5ecc93

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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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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