William Sloane Coffin, Jr. - "Burdened with Erudition and Paralyzed with Indecision: A Sermon on Learned Paralytics" (March 12, 1967)

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Man	"And when Jesus returned to Capernaum	0:42
	"after some days, it was reported that he was at home.	0:44
	"And many were gathered together,	0:48
	"so that there was no longer room for them,	0:50
	"not even about the door.	0:52
	"And he was preaching the word to them.	0:54
	"And they came bringing to him a paralytic,	0:57
	"carried by four men.	0:59
	"And when they could not get near him because of the crowd,	1:02
	"they removed the roof above him,	1:05
	"and when they had made an opening,	1:08
	"they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay.	1:10
	"And when Jesus saw their faith,	1:14
	"he said to the paralytic, 'My son,	1:17
	"your sins are forgiven.'	1:20
	"Now some of the scribes were sitting there,	1:24
	"questioning in their hearts.	1:26
	"'Why does this man speak thus?	1:29
	"It is blasphemy.	1:30
	"Who can forgive sins but God alone?'	1:31
	"And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit	1:35
	"that they thus questioned within themselves,	1:39
	"said to them, 'Why do you question thus in your hearts?	1:42
	"Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven,	1:45
	"or rise and walk?	1:49
	"But I say to you,	1:54
	"but that you may know that the son of man has authority	1:58
	"on earth to forgive sins,'	2:01
	"he said to the paralytic, 'I say to you,	2:03
	"rise, take up your pallet and go home.'	2:06
	"And he rose and immediately took up the pallet,	2:10
	"and went out before them all.	2:13
	"So that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying,	2:15
	"'We never saw anything like this.'"	2:20
	The end of the reading, of God's holy word,	2:24
	may God bless unto us this reading.	2:27
	Earlier this week, an unseasonable warmth melted	2:32
	most of Connecticut's remaining snow.	2:37
	But thanks to a truly genial drainage system,	2:41
	on what we call the old campus at Yale,	2:43
	none of this snow was lost.	2:46
	It simply rearranged itself in	2:48
	an unending series of puddles.	2:50
	While most of these were muddy, some few were clear.	2:54
	And by that afternoon, it was possible to rediscover	2:58
	the childhood joy of puddle gazing.	3:03
	To wonder anew how so vast and expanse of earth and sky	3:07
	could be contained in such a small body of water.	3:12
	No less wondrous is how so much	3:19
	of the story of earth and heaven	3:23
	can be captured in small Biblical narratives.	3:25
	We just read the story of Jesus and the paralytic.	3:32
	How Jesus, the great disseminator of life,	3:36
	healed the man whose life had become one long suicide.	3:39
	Here we see the eternal disseminator of God's freedom	3:45
	confronting the eternal paralysis of the human will.	3:49
	Once again, we're prompted to reflect on that phrase	3:54
	on which we cannot reflect too much.	3:58
	Deo servire summa libertas.	4:01
	To serve God is the highest freedom.	4:07
	It is man's natural proper role,	4:15
	to rebel against God.	4:19
	And I think we can safely surmise that	4:22
	in all of human history God never met an opponent	4:24
	more redoubtable than Jesus himself.	4:27
	With typical power and imagination,	4:31
	Nikos Kazantzakis, in The Last Temptation of Christ,	4:34
	has portrayed the young Jesus racked	4:38
	with conflicting desires but with none more passionate	4:41
	than the desire to escape the burden of divinity.	4:46
	Sensing the nature of the struggle	4:51
	and all excited by it, his rabbi, aged uncle	4:53
	approaches his mother.	4:58
	Hail Mary, God is all powerful.	5:02
	His designs are inscrutable.	5:05
	Your son might be, but Mary,	5:08
	whose eyes by now are drained dry	5:13
	with the agony of watching her son struggle,	5:15
	cries out, have pity on me.	5:18
	A prophet? No, no.	5:20
	And if God has so written, let him rub it out.	5:25
	I want my son like everyone else.	5:29
	Nothing more, nothing less.	5:33
	The rabbi leans heavily on his crosier and gets up.	5:38
	Mary, he says severely, if God listened to mothers,	5:43
	we would all rot away in a bog of security	5:48
	and easy living.	5:51
	Then he goes to her son and says, with all tenderness,	5:54
	Jesus, Jesus my child,	5:59
	how long are you going to resist him?	6:02
	And then the entire cottage shakes	6:07
	with a savage shout, until I die!	6:11
	The soil of Israel is in labor.	6:18
	Unable to give birth and screaming.	6:20
	But out of the struggle of man with God,	6:25
	a messiah comes.	6:29
	Man's anxiety becomes God's love	6:32
	in person on earth.	6:37
	Jesus abandons the struggle of man with God	6:39
	to take up the struggle of God with man.	6:42
	Abandons all self protection	6:46
	for utter vulnerability.	6:50
	What I'm trying to say is that a submission	6:55
	which comes too quickly is simply	6:57
	a facade for repressed rebellion.	6:59
	Jesus' struggle is long and hard	7:03
	and ends in voluntary, total self surrender.	7:06
	And that's why his authority is peculiar.	7:13
	Hannah Arendt in a recent essay points out sympathetically	7:17
	that truth has not only a persuasive	7:20
	but a coercive nature.	7:23
	With a result, the truth tellers tend toward tyranny.	7:25
	Not so much because of a character weakness,	7:30
	as because they are under a strange and strong compulsion.	7:33
	This is something for good Christians to remember,	7:38
	for when piety becomes fanaticism,	7:41
	then faith becomes arrogance	7:45
	and goodness inevitably becomes cruelty.	7:48
	But Jesus is no fanatic, no tyrant.	7:53
	While he confronts people with his and their beliefs,	7:58
	never does he try to do their believing for them.	8:02
	And I suppose what I'm really trying to say,	8:08
	is that a truly strong man is always tender.	8:12
	So it must have been this combination of strength	8:19
	and tenderness that drew the crowds of Capernaum	8:23
	to the home of Peter and Andrew.	8:26
	And prompted the four friends to bring to Jesus	8:29
	the man who had become such a burden to them	8:32
	and to himself.	8:36
	I think we must assume that the man was crippled	8:39
	not by any lesion of a nerve,	8:41
	a trauma of the cerebral cortex,	8:43
	but by total paralysis of the will.	8:46
	His was that paralyzing cramp of the soul	8:51
	that one sees in mental hospitals,	8:55
	more properly called in Russian hospitals,	8:58
	for the soul sick because the mental derangement	9:00
	is an effect and not a cause.	9:04
	In short, as we can see in mental hospitals,	9:08
	this man was quite literally scared sick.	9:12
	Now as such, he lies there on his pallet	9:18
	as a symbol of us all, partially paralyzed as we all are.	9:23
	For whose hand here is free to be extended to anyone?	9:28
	Whose eyes are free to see the truth as it is,	9:33
	because all our eyes are in part paralyzed	9:38
	by the status symbols about us.	9:41
	Whose feet are free, free to walk in any walk of life.	9:45
	No, in all honesty, we are not born into freedom.	9:51
	We are born into lack of freedom,	9:54
	and the church is right only with baptism	9:56
	does freedom begin to enter in.	9:59
	Only with God behind us does freedom lie before us.	10:02
	So we must take our stand with baptism against birth.	10:08
	Witness to our given freedom against our	10:13
	inherited lack of freedom.	10:16
	And this becomes strikingly clear when we realize	10:19
	that the question of freedom is not the question from what,	10:22
	but the question for what.	10:26
	He is truly free, who is unhindered	10:31
	for what he counts the good.	10:35
	Freedom of choice, to be or not to be.	10:39
	That is the form of freedom. But to be able to choose.	10:43
	To be. That is the meaning of freedom.	10:47
	Now we're coming nearer to the meaning	10:53
	of deo servire summa libertas.	10:55
	For modern technology, for instance,	10:58
	cannot free us to serve what we count the good.	11:00
	In a strange way, modern civilization,	11:06
	far from solving our difficulties,	11:08
	seems rather to internalize them.	11:10
	We're better cared for, but we have more cares.	11:14
	The physical support of modern society is	11:18
	more than offset by the psychological pressures,	11:20
	which is why Berdyaev correctly prophesied	11:24
	that when bread has been assured	11:27
	then God becomes a hard and inescapable reality	11:29
	instead of an escape from harsh reality.	11:33
	Modern education too cannot free us	11:38
	for what we count the good.	11:41
	For often as not education drives a wedge	11:44
	between thought and action instead	11:47
	of enabling action of a higher kind.	11:49
	And modern education design's so often is	11:54
	to help people meet all the demands	11:56
	at the expense of their capacity to set inner goals.	11:59
	It's turning out people who are burdened	12:04
	with erudition and paralyzed with indecision.	12:06
	The academic community is often as not a crowd	12:11
	of learned paralytics.	12:15
	But let us recognize that this is always bound	12:19
	to be the case, for anguish is born of fear	12:22
	and fear is born of knowledge.	12:26
	And hence, the history of paralysis begins	12:28
	at the foot of the tree of knowledge.	12:33
	How unfree we are,	12:39
	comes clearer yet when we realize	12:43
	that this whole nation of the most advanced technology	12:46
	and in many ways of the most advanced educational system	12:51
	in the world,	12:54
	is today paralyzed in a kind of lock step	12:56
	to a world ideological view already doomed	13:00
	beyond reprieve to belong to a bygone age.	13:04
	Again and again, Europeans are shocked	13:09
	at our paralysis of thought and action.	13:12
	And I shall never forget how shocked I was	13:16
	when two east European Marxists stopped by not long ago.	13:20
	And their question was how do you do it?	13:25
	How do you do it?	13:27
	And knowing that they were just back	13:30
	from the midwest I assumed of course	13:31
	they were talking about our great agricultural achievements,	13:33
	because if you know the Soviets are still planting	13:36
	that miracle grain.	13:38
	You plant it in the Ukraine, and it comes up in Canada.	13:40
	(audience laughs)	13:43
	But not at all.	13:44
	What they had in mind, they quickly made clear,	13:47
	was something quite different.	13:49
	We have, they said, watched CBS, NBC, ABC.	13:51
	What's the difference.	13:57
	Your radio programs are equally uniform.	14:00
	And they were nice enough not to say, uniformly bad.	14:04
	With the expression of certain editorials	14:08
	in the St. Louis Dispatch and the New York Times	14:10
	and the Louisville Courier, all your editorial policy	14:12
	across the country seems to be very much the same.	14:15
	So how do you do it?	14:18
	How do you achieve such effective thought control	14:20
	without resorting to terror?	14:23
	(audience laughs)	14:26
	What an irony, that soon Communists will be coming	14:27
	to the leading democracy of the world	14:31
	in order to study effective methods of thought control.	14:33
	So perhaps this nation has its symbol in our story.	14:39
	Perhaps this nation is symbolized by Capernaum,	14:44
	whose inhabitants apparently worse off	14:49
	than the cripple because their pride-swollen face had	14:51
	so closed up their eyes that they were unable	14:54
	to perceive their own paralysis.	14:56
	And so we read the prophecy, and you Capernaum,	14:59
	will you be exalted in heaven? No.	15:03
	You will be brought down to Hades.	15:07
	The way that great powerful Roman is pictured	15:11
	in Michelangelo's last judgment being brought down to Hades,	15:15
	one hand over his eye and a look of dire understanding	15:18
	on his face.	15:21
	He understood, but too late.	15:23
	And the prophecy was singularly fulfilled,	15:28
	for one of the most difficult paths	15:32
	in sacred typography is to discover the sight of Capernaum.	15:34
	But let us get back to the paralytic.	15:42
	For the problem we are dealing with is deeply personal	15:44
	and deeply religious.	15:48
	And the prayer we heard earlier,	15:52
	which I think was said for most of us, certainly.	15:54
	Intimated love, if we're talking about God's love,	15:59
	it is not blind but visionary.	16:01
	And as an x-ray pierces the body to perceive the disease,	16:06
	so Jesus' love pierced the heart of this man.	16:10
	Because he perceived that his will was paralyzed by guilt.	16:14
	The guilt of all who dare to	16:19
	fail to be themselves.	16:22
	Who failed to dare to be themselves.	16:27
	But Jesus does not judge him,	16:30
	as no doubt the moralistic scribes expected him to do.	16:33
	For that would have been to humiliate him	16:38
	at the level of his deepest failures.	16:39
	God is not trying to turn us all	16:42
	into miserable little heaps of humanity.	16:44
	Nor did Jesus punish him.	16:49
	Because punishing by assuaging the guilt,	16:52
	makes the old way of life bearable anew.	16:56
	Rather he simply says to him, and his words combine	17:01
	a kind of somber explicitness with a kind of vibrant warmth.	17:05
	My son, your sins are forgiven.	17:12
	And then the miracle takes place.	17:17
	The man believes him.	17:20
	Believed that there is more mercy	17:23
	in Christ than sin in him.	17:25
	And he is free, free at last	17:29
	from the powers of death militant,	17:30
	and one of the most joyful hieroglyphics	17:34
	in early Christian art is a picture of a man	17:38
	bouncing along the road with a terribly light	17:42
	bed on his back.	17:46
	But now the final	17:52
	and crucial work.	17:57
	Most of us are not like that cripple.	17:59
	We don't think we're that paralyzed.	18:02
	So we are more like the others in Capernaum	18:06
	of whom we were speaking.	18:08
	And therefore roles have been tragically reversed.	18:10
	In the story, it is the cripple who is in agony.	18:17
	Not Christ.	18:20
	But when we meet Christ, it is not in the house	18:22
	of Peter and Andrew, but at calvary.	18:25
	And the pain that is ours because we cannot love is	18:30
	totally overshadowed by the pain of him	18:35
	who can but love.	18:37
	And what is so killing to Jesus of course	18:41
	is not the nails and the spear	18:43
	but having so much love to give	18:46
	and so few to receive it.	18:49
	Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I	18:51
	and you would not.	18:56
	It is man's natural role to rebel.	19:00
	To argue with God. To shake angry fists at God.	19:04
	But let's be honest in this Lenten season.	19:09
	Take your bed to the foot of the cross.	19:13
	Look up. See what's going on.	19:17
	And hear that great cry from the heart,	19:21
	still calling out father, forgive them.	19:24
	And go ahead and argue. What have you got to say.	19:29
	What have any of us to say.	19:35
	Except perhaps, oh lamb of God that taketh	19:38
	away the sins of the world,	19:42
	have mercy upon us.	19:45
	Let us pray.	19:48
	Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open.	19:54
	All desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden.	19:58
	Plan the thoughts of our hearts	20:03
	by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit.	20:06
	That we may perfectly love thee	20:09
	and worthily magnify they holy name.	20:12
	Through Jesus Christ our lord.	20:15
	Amen.	20:18
	(somber music)	20:22

Item Info

Title:

William Sloane Coffin, Jr. - "Burdened with Erudition and Paralyzed with Indecision: A Sermon on Learned Paralytics" (March 12, 1967)

Description:

We, like the paralytic man from the Gospel lesson, suffer from a type of paralysis: paralysis of the will. We are born into this world unfree, and it is only by the work of God, beginning with baptism, that we may find ourselves free for the purpose of doing what is good and true. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Sermon start time: (Part 1) 2:32. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 20:20.
Key quotation: “Only with God behind us does freedom lie before us.”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4qn5zr8b

Date:

March 12, 1967

Speaker:

Coffin, William Sloane, Jr., 1924-2006

Biblical Book:

Mark

Chapter and Verse:

Mark 2:1-12

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0374
ref5951_9su
uachapelsermaud
duke:320566
dcrau001788
ark:/87924/r4qn5zr8b
c86b9d37-eb37-4879-9e23-c8ab80f84d76

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

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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William Sloane Coffin, Jr. - "Burdened with Erudition and Paralyzed with Indecision: A Sermon on Learned Paralytics" (March 12, 1967)

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1. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. - "Burdened With Erudition and Paralyzed With Indecision - A Sermon on Learned Paralytics" (March 12, 1967)

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William Sloane Coffin, Jr. - "Burdened with Erudition and Paralyzed with Indecision: A Sermon on Learned Paralytics" (March 12, 1967)

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