L. Gregory Jones - "Eyes on the Prize" (October 3, 1999)
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| - | The gospel lesson is from the gospel | 0:13 |
| according to Saint Mathew, the 21st chapter | 0:15 | |
| reading from the 33rd through the 46th verses. | 0:18 | |
| " Listen to another parable. | 0:23 | |
| "There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, | 0:25 | |
| "put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, | 0:28 | |
| "and built a watch-tower. | 0:31 | |
| "Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. | 0:33 | |
| "When the harvest time had come, | 0:36 | |
| "he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. | 0:37 | |
| "But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, | 0:42 | |
| "killed another and stoned another. | 0:44 | |
| "Again he sent other slaves, more than the first | 0:47 | |
| "and they treated them in the same way. | 0:50 | |
| "Finally he sent his son to them saying, | 0:53 | |
| "They will respect my son. | 0:55 | |
| "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, | 0:58 | |
| "This is the heir; come, let us kill him | 1:01 | |
| "and get his inheritance. | 1:05 | |
| "So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, | 1:07 | |
| "and killed him. | 1:10 | |
| "Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, | 1:12 | |
| "what will he do to those tenants? | 1:15 | |
| "They said to him, he will put those wretches | 1:18 | |
| "to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard | 1:21 | |
| "to other tenants who will give him the produce | 1:23 | |
| "at the harvest time. | 1:27 | |
| "Jesus said to them, have you never read in the Scriptures, | 1:29 | |
| "the stone that the builders rejected | 1:33 | |
| "has become the cornerstone. | 1:35 | |
| "This was the Lord's doing and it is amazing in our eyes. | 1:37 | |
| "Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God | 1:42 | |
| "will be taken away from you and given to a people | 1:44 | |
| "that produces the fruits of the kingdom. | 1:47 | |
| "The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, | 1:50 | |
| "and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. | 1:53 | |
| "When the chief priests and the Pharisees | 1:57 | |
| "heard his parables, they realized | 1:59 | |
| that he was speaking about them. | 2:02 | |
| "They wanted to arrest him | 2:04 | |
| "but they feared the crowds | 2:07 | |
| "because they regarded him as a prophet." | 2:09 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 2:13 | |
| - | Let us pray. | 2:30 |
| Gracious God made the words of my mouth, | 2:36 | |
| and the meditations of all of our hearts | 2:39 | |
| be acceptable in thy sight. | 2:42 | |
| O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. | 2:44 | |
| Amen. | 2:48 | |
| What a glorious weekend we have celebrated | 2:51 | |
| here at Duke University. | 2:54 | |
| Going back to Thursday afternoon | 2:57 | |
| and the founders convocation, | 2:59 | |
| a stirring address by Mary Siemens | 3:01 | |
| reminding us of the heritage of Duke University. | 3:04 | |
| The mystical relationship that so many of us have | 3:08 | |
| with this university and with a wonderful community | 3:12 | |
| of people over the years. | 3:15 | |
| Activities through the weekend, | 3:18 | |
| the unveiling of the statue | 3:21 | |
| of Benjamin Newton Duke on Saturday. | 3:23 | |
| Truly a great and visionary man, a faithful man. | 3:27 | |
| Celebration of the Founders Society. | 3:32 | |
| We gather this morning as part of Founders Weekend. | 3:36 | |
| And I am privileged to be | 3:42 | |
| the Joseph Harrison Jackson preacher, | 3:43 | |
| a legacy to one of the true giants and greatest preachers | 3:46 | |
| of the 20th century. | 3:50 | |
| And to top it all off, its World Communion Sunday. | 3:52 | |
| We truly are blessed with a multiple overwhelming | 3:58 | |
| of goodness and celebration this weekend. | 4:02 | |
| But I have a problem. | 4:08 | |
| You see the text for today were not chosen by me | 4:11 | |
| but are assigned as part of the lectionary. | 4:16 | |
| And as you heard the President and Dr. Smith | 4:21 | |
| read those lessons I had a choice. | 4:24 | |
| Here on Founders Weekend I could either preach | 4:27 | |
| from the gospel and the parable of the wicked tenants | 4:31 | |
| or the passage from Philippians, where Paul writes, | 4:35 | |
| "Forgetting what lies behind." | 4:39 | |
| Upon reflection, I concluded that forgetting | 4:48 | |
| was better than wickedness. | 4:50 | |
| And so we turn to the epistle to the Philippians. | 4:54 | |
| What could Paul possibly mean | 4:59 | |
| about forgetting what lies behind and how might that bear | 5:01 | |
| on our celebration of the founding of Duke University | 5:06 | |
| and of the men and women whose benefaction | 5:12 | |
| and whose contributions of resources and time and energy | 5:14 | |
| through these last 75 years have made such a difference? | 5:18 | |
| Well, surely Paul doesn't literally mean to forget the past, | 5:26 | |
| after all in the verses which immediately precede that | 5:31 | |
| he has just recounted some features of his life, | 5:34 | |
| recalling his life as someone who could have pride | 5:38 | |
| in the flesh, that he was blameless before the law. | 5:42 | |
| He recalls the past. | 5:48 | |
| But then he says, I count all of my accomplishments | 5:51 | |
| and remember this is not a story | 5:54 | |
| of someone who had had a wretched life before a conversion. | 5:58 | |
| Paul understands his life | 6:03 | |
| to have been one of accomplishments, | 6:05 | |
| blameless before the law. | 6:06 | |
| But now he counts it as rubbish | 6:10 | |
| because of his new life. | 6:15 | |
| And he enjoins us to forget what lies behind | 6:17 | |
| for the sake of looking forward to what lies ahead. | 6:21 | |
| To the glory of God in Jesus Christ | 6:25 | |
| or as he puts it, the prize of the heavenly call | 6:28 | |
| of God in Christ Jesus. | 6:32 | |
| He calls us to set our eyes on the prize, | 6:35 | |
| to look to the future. | 6:38 | |
| To remember that when we're driving a car, | 6:41 | |
| the front windshield is always much larger | 6:46 | |
| than the rearview mirror. | 6:49 | |
| Oh, but we're tempted, we're tempted. | 6:52 | |
| Not simply to honor the past but to dwell on it. | 6:56 | |
| To want to live in it | 7:00 | |
| regardless of whether our life has been blameless | 7:02 | |
| or whether it is a history of suffering and sin | 7:06 | |
| and injustice and oppression, | 7:10 | |
| oh, it's easy to wanna live in the past. | 7:12 | |
| In the book of Numbers, | 7:17 | |
| there's a story of the Israelites out in the wilderness | 7:20 | |
| and Moses sends out 12 spies to spy out the promised land. | 7:23 | |
| And the spies come back. | 7:28 | |
| They had a majority report and a minority report. | 7:32 | |
| The majority report was offered by 10 of the spies | 7:35 | |
| they say, "Yes, the the promised land is a beautiful sight. | 7:38 | |
| "It's a land flowing with milk and honey | 7:41 | |
| "but there are too many obstacles. | 7:44 | |
| "There are people we'd have to go through | 7:47 | |
| "who look like giants. | 7:49 | |
| "We better not do it, we better go back to Egypt." | 7:51 | |
| Only two of the 12 spies | 7:55 | |
| say that, "We ought to go forward | 8:00 | |
| "that if it is God calling us into the future, | 8:01 | |
| "we ought to trust that God will lead us there | 8:05 | |
| "and help us to overcome whatever obstacles we face." | 8:09 | |
| The Israelites are asked which report to accept. | 8:15 | |
| And they accept the majority report. | 8:21 | |
| They cry out to Moses, "Let us go back to Egypt." | 8:24 | |
| My father used to say that every church he'd ever known | 8:30 | |
| had a back to Egypt committee in it. | 8:33 | |
| Every person I've ever known, myself included, | 8:38 | |
| has a part of our soul | 8:42 | |
| claimed by the back to Egypt committee. | 8:45 | |
| We look to the future, to uncertainty, | 8:48 | |
| to risk, to change, to vulnerability | 8:52 | |
| and then we want to go back to Egypt. | 8:57 | |
| We want to dwell on the past. | 8:59 | |
| We want to live there, because it's safer, it's familiar. | 9:02 | |
| But Paul doesn't want us | 9:10 | |
| simply to dwell on the past, | 9:13 | |
| to live in the past, | 9:16 | |
| to focus on it. | 9:18 | |
| Rather, Paul calls us to honor the past | 9:20 | |
| but only in the context of setting our sights | 9:25 | |
| for the sake of the future, | 9:29 | |
| to have our eyes on the prize | 9:32 | |
| and not just any prize | 9:36 | |
| but focused on God in Christ Jesus. | 9:38 | |
| It is because of the glory of what Paul experiences | 9:45 | |
| of life in Christ that he can count even a successful life | 9:48 | |
| in the past as rubbish | 9:53 | |
| because transformation has occurred. | 9:57 | |
| To keep your eyes on the prize. | 10:02 | |
| It is that kind of focus, | 10:06 | |
| which I think made Benjamin Newton Duke's | 10:08 | |
| life so extraordinary. | 10:11 | |
| He was an industrialist, a businessman, | 10:15 | |
| a trustee of Trinity College, | 10:19 | |
| one of the founders of Duke University | 10:23 | |
| but he was also an extraordinarily generous and faithful man | 10:27 | |
| who gave generously not only to educational institutions | 10:33 | |
| of Trinity and Duke but also to black colleges, | 10:38 | |
| and to orphanages. | 10:43 | |
| And it was sad of him that he had never turned down | 10:46 | |
| a request from a needy preacher. | 10:49 | |
| He had that kind of faithfulness. | 10:55 | |
| That kind of vision. | 10:58 | |
| After he died, George Allen | 11:00 | |
| reported having heard B.N. Duke's wife say at his funeral, | 11:04 | |
| "This was a saint on earth." | 11:11 | |
| He had that kind of impact. | 11:15 | |
| That kind of expansive vision | 11:17 | |
| that didn't ask whether something could be done but how. | 11:19 | |
| That changed people's lives. | 11:25 | |
| That reached out to others. | 11:28 | |
| It was that kind of focus, that kind of vision | 11:31 | |
| that in the early 1960s inspired | 11:35 | |
| black children in Birmingham, Alabama | 11:39 | |
| to march out of a church, two by two | 11:42 | |
| to challenge Bull Connor and the situation in Birmingham. | 11:48 | |
| The Children's march was a testimony | 11:55 | |
| to vision being put into action, | 11:59 | |
| focusing not on what had been in the past | 12:02 | |
| but on faithful witness in the present | 12:05 | |
| for the sake of a different future. | 12:07 | |
| And we learned that six and seven year old children | 12:11 | |
| had more power than the fire hoses. | 12:15 | |
| It is that kind of vision of keeping our eyes | 12:21 | |
| set on the prize, of allowing God to call us forth | 12:23 | |
| into a new future | 12:27 | |
| animated Duke University in its founding. | 12:32 | |
| A vision of having this glorious chapel | 12:37 | |
| not only built to the honor and glory of God | 12:40 | |
| but placing it at the center of the campus | 12:44 | |
| so that erudition and religion would be linked together | 12:47 | |
| in a recognition that truth and wisdom | 12:52 | |
| and faithfulness are not at odds but go together. | 12:56 | |
| In a time when many people are wondering | 13:03 | |
| whether education has lost its course, | 13:08 | |
| whether we have any sense of purpose and vision | 13:11 | |
| of what animates us. | 13:13 | |
| May we remain faithful to the vision of James B. | 13:16 | |
| and Benjamin N. and those men and women through the years | 13:21 | |
| who have continued to link together | 13:26 | |
| the importance of every edition and religion, | 13:28 | |
| knowledge and vital piety. | 13:33 | |
| It is what has shaped, not only this university, | 13:37 | |
| but also so many lives that have passed through it. | 13:41 | |
| Paul calls us to look forward to the future. | 13:47 | |
| On this Founders Day, we are called also to honor the past, | 13:53 | |
| to give thanks for the witness of our forebearers. | 13:59 | |
| Jaroslav Pelikan makes an important distinction | 14:05 | |
| between tradition and traditionalism. | 14:09 | |
| Tradition, Pelican writes, "Is the living faith of the dead. | 14:14 | |
| "Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." | 14:20 | |
| Let us always be heirs of tradition | 14:27 | |
| without being captured by traditionalism. | 14:31 | |
| Let us look forward to the future. | 14:36 | |
| In so doing, let us focus on Christ Jesus. | 14:39 | |
| Sometimes these days when we think about a race, | 14:45 | |
| one of Paul's favorite metaphors of running the race, | 14:48 | |
| we think about it as an individual contest | 14:54 | |
| of superhuman focused effort. | 14:57 | |
| But that's not really the way the race is to be run. | 15:01 | |
| It's not for isolated individuals | 15:05 | |
| because the race that Paul calls us to | 15:07 | |
| is not measured by success, it's not measured by net worth, | 15:09 | |
| it's not measured by the number of degrees, | 15:13 | |
| it is measured by our faithfulness. | 15:16 | |
| There's a story told of an event in the Special Olympics | 15:21 | |
| that was held in Seattle a number of years ago. | 15:25 | |
| Nine young men and women lined up at the starting line | 15:30 | |
| for the 100-yard dash. | 15:34 | |
| The gun went off, and eight of those people came running | 15:38 | |
| down toward the finish line. | 15:43 | |
| The ninth one stumbled right out of the blocks | 15:47 | |
| and fell down and hurt his knees. | 15:51 | |
| And he cried out and then he cried. | 15:56 | |
| All eight of the other runners stopped, looked around, | 16:01 | |
| saw that he had fallen down. | 16:09 | |
| They went back to help him up. | 16:13 | |
| One girl with down syndrome, kissed him on the forehead | 16:17 | |
| and on the knee and said, "There that will make it better." | 16:20 | |
| They helped him up. | 16:27 | |
| And then all nine of them joined arms | 16:29 | |
| and they walked all the way to the finish line together. | 16:34 | |
| That's the kind of vision of the race we're involved in. | 16:41 | |
| Not one where we're trying to outdo the other, | 16:46 | |
| not one where we're trying to beat the other, | 16:49 | |
| but one where we are concerned | 16:53 | |
| with the welfare of all the others. | 16:57 | |
| If our vision and our pursuit of truth and wisdom | 17:02 | |
| and faithfulness does not include an expansive vision | 17:05 | |
| of what it means to serve and help others, | 17:09 | |
| then we will have fallen way short in the race. | 17:13 | |
| Benjamin Duke didn't turn people away. | 17:20 | |
| We need to be a people in the pursuit of truth and wisdom | 17:26 | |
| but also in the service of others. | 17:30 | |
| For there is no better way to finish the race | 17:35 | |
| than to do so in the company, arm and arm | 17:39 | |
| of our brothers and sisters. | 17:43 | |
| For at the close of our lives, | 17:47 | |
| when we are face to face with God, | 17:50 | |
| the question won't be why weren't you Paul? | 17:53 | |
| Why weren't you Benjamin Newton Duke? | 17:58 | |
| Why weren't you Joseph Jackson? | 18:01 | |
| Why weren't you Mother Teresa? | 18:03 | |
| The question will be, | 18:07 | |
| what did you do in your life to show faithfulness to God? | 18:09 | |
| What did you do to pursue truth and wisdom? | 18:17 | |
| What did you do to help and serve others? | 18:20 | |
| May we all be in a position to have it said of us | 18:26 | |
| so that we would not have to say it ourselves? | 18:29 | |
| What Sarah Duke said of her late husband, | 18:33 | |
| "This was a saint on earth." | 18:36 | |
| At Duke University, we talk a lot | 18:41 | |
| about our goals for the future. | 18:44 | |
| We invoke that wonderful phrase of former president Sanford | 18:46 | |
| that Duke is marked by an outrageous ambition. | 18:50 | |
| And that has led us forward to extraordinary heights. | 18:56 | |
| But I would say that we are always to link | 19:01 | |
| that outrageous ambition | 19:05 | |
| to extravagant faithfulness. | 19:08 | |
| To keep our eyes on the prize | 19:12 | |
| of the call of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. | 19:18 | |
| As we gather to celebrate communion this morning, | 19:23 | |
| we commune with the Dukes, | 19:29 | |
| with Joseph Jackson, | 19:35 | |
| with the saints of the church through all the ages, | 19:38 | |
| and with our brothers and sisters | 19:42 | |
| in all the corners of the world. | 19:44 | |
| As we do so, | 19:50 | |
| let us remind ourselves that as we honor the past | 19:53 | |
| God is calling us forth to a bright and exciting future | 19:57 | |
| and calling us all to rededicate our lives | 20:04 | |
| to extravagant faithfulness | 20:08 | |
| keeping our eyes on the prize. | 20:11 |