O. Kelly Ingram - "A Christian Sermon" (December 21, 1969)

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	(organ music)	0:03
-	Of the wrath and big the abiding crowd	0:21
	and wondering way is on forgiveness.	0:24
	Sing glory to God and good will to men.	0:28
	(organ music)	0:35
	If we were never alone or always too busy,	4:21
	perhaps we might even believe what we know is not true	4:26
	but no one is taken in, at least not all the time.	4:32
	In our bath, on the highway,	4:37
	in the middle of the night,	4:41
	we know very well that we are not unlucky but evil.	4:43
	Let us therefore be contrived but without anxiety.	4:49
	Let us acknowledge our defeat but without despair.	4:55
	Let us pray.	5:00
	Our hearts run easy, O God,	5:06
	for though we are loathed to confess	5:10
	that we have sinned yet we know that all we have done	5:12
	has been far from good.	5:17
	We have lapsed from the best we have known	5:20
	and have suffered our worst impulses to have their way.	5:24
	We have been proud refusing to learn	5:29
	what it means to be humble.	5:33
	We have been guarded and defensive	5:36
	for we are weak and full of fear.	5:39
	We have been neglectful	5:43
	of those we felt we could afford to ignore	5:45
	and have been indifferent to human need.	5:48
	Standing as we do in the confusion of a world	5:53
	not accustomed to peace,	5:56
	we have failed both individually and as a nation	5:59
	to heed thy message of peace on earth, good will to men,	6:04
	and in times of frustration we have ceased to have hope.	6:10
	Grant that in this hour our lives may be filled	6:17
	with the light of thy love,	6:21
	that we might reflect that light in the darkness of futility	6:24
	and the horror of casual human cruelty.	6:29
	Renew us with that creative strength	6:33
	to experience what we have been created to be	6:36
	and called to do in Jesus Christ, our redeemer.	6:41
	Amen.	6:46
	This is the message we have heard from him	6:50
	and proclaimed to you that God is light	6:53
	and in him there's no darkness at all.	6:58
	If we walk in the light as he is in the light,	7:01
	we have fellowship with one another	7:06
	and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.	7:10
	If we confess our sins he is faithful and just	7:15
	and will forgive our sins	7:20
	and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.	7:22
	(organ music)	7:35
	(choir music)	8:53
-	On this Christmas Sunday in the Duke Chapel,	16:15
	we are to have two scripture readings	16:23
	pertaining to the Christmas event,	16:28
	both of them directly relating to Mary, the mother of Jesus.	16:33
	The first one will be the reading of the annunciation,	16:41
	which I shall read from the first chapter of Luke	16:45
	beginning with chapter 26	16:50
	and the second one we will read responsively together	16:55
	after we sing the Gloria Patria	17:00
	when we read canticle number 612	17:04
	that being the Magnificat.	17:08
	Here now the reading of the annunciation.	17:13
	In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God	17:19
	to a city of Galilee named Nazareth.	17:25
	To a virgin betrothed to a man who's name was Joseph	17:33
	of the house of David.	17:41
	Virgin's name was Mary.	17:44
	And he came to her and said, "Hail, oh favored one.	17:49
	The Lord is with you."	17:56
	But she was greatly troubled at the saying	18:00
	and considered in her mind	18:03
	what sort of greeting this might be.	18:05
	The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid Mary.	18:10
	Well you have found favor with God	18:17
	and behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son.	18:22
	And you shall call his name Jesus.	18:28
	He will be great and will be called the son of the most high	18:35
	and the Lord God will give to him	18:42
	the throne of his father David.	18:45
	And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.	18:50
	And of his kingdom there will be no end."	18:55
	And Mary said to the angel,	19:01
	"How can this be since I have no husband."	19:04
	The angel said to her, "The holy spirit will come upon you	19:10
	and the power of the most high will overshadow you.	19:16
	Therefore the child to be born will be called holy.	19:23
	The son of God."	19:29
	Amen.	19:33
	(organ music)	19:37
-	Will you turn now to selection number	20:33
	6, 12 in your handoff	20:36
	and join in the responsive reading of the Magnificat.	20:38
	My soul doth magnify the Lord.	20:46
-	And my spirit has rejoiced in God my savior.	20:50
-	For he has regarded.	20:54
-	The holiness of his family.	20:56
-	For behold from his forth.	20:59
-	All generations will call me blessed	21:02
-	For he that is mighty has magnified me.	21:06
-	And the holy is his name.	21:10
-	And his mercy is on them that fear him	21:13
-	Throughout all generations	21:17
-	He has shown strength with his arm	21:19
-	He has scattered the proud	21:23
	with imagination to their hearts.	21:25
-	He has put down the mighty from their seats.	21:28
-	Exalted those of humble estate	21:32
-	He has the filled the hungry with good things.	21:35
-	And the rich he has sent empty away.	21:39
-	And remembering his mercy hath helped his servant Israel.	21:43
-	As he promised to our poor fathers, Abraham,	21:48
	and his seed forever.	21:52
-	The Lord be with you.	21:56
-	And with your spirit.	21:58
-	Let us pray.	22:00
	Great and merciful God bless us as we enter again	22:14
	into thy presence and let thy spirit of wisdom	22:19
	and mercy move this day and the lives of thy servants.	22:24
	Let their be light for those who are perplexed.	22:30
	Peace for those who strive against themselves.	22:35
	Strength for the wary.	22:40
	And patience for those who suffer.	22:42
	Today as we remember the birth of him	22:47
	who had no place to lay his head,	22:50
	we pray for all those sorts and conditions of men	22:54
	to whom he gave special thought and care.	22:58
	Especially we pray for the neglected child	23:04
	no longer with an open hearts, for the persecuted	23:08
	victim of the world's fate and fury,	23:14
	for the tramp belonging to no one drifting endlessly	23:19
	without hope, for the lonely unable to experience	23:24
	the joy of giving and receiving love,	23:31
	for the anxiety ridden scurrying hysterically	23:36
	in search of security,	23:41
	for the poor forgotten or ignored in a nation of aphrites,	23:44
	for the soldier far from home in a war torn land,	23:52
	for the exiled and imprisoned separated from family	24:00
	and loved ones.	24:05
	Lord of all mercy we are all faced with doubts,	24:09
	attacked by fears and subject to sin.	24:15
	Strengthen us with Christ spirit.	24:20
	Give us hope and thy mercy	24:23
	and bring us into thy joy.	24:27
	In the name of him who taught us when we pray to say	24:30
	our father who art in heaven,	24:35
	hallowed be thy name.	24:40
	Thy kingdom come.	24:43
	Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.	24:45
	Give us this day our daily bread.	24:50
	And forgive us our trespasses,	24:54
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	24:57
	And lead us not into temptation,	25:02
	but deliver us from evil.	25:05
	For thine is the kingdom, and the power,	25:08
	and the glory forever.	25:12
	Amen.	25:15
-	For 30 years I have been preaching Christmas sermons	25:39
	usually basing the homily	25:47
	on the second chapter of Luke	25:49
	in order to avoid the accounts to virgin birth.	25:55
	Today, I want to deal with that	26:05
	part of the Christmas story.	26:10
	You already heard the reading of the annunciation	26:15
	from the first chapter of Luke.	26:20
	You participated in the reading of the Magnificat.	26:25
	And now I want you to hear the account	26:33
	of the virgin birth as it is	26:37
	contained in the first chapter of Matthew.	26:43
	Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way.	26:49
	When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph.	26:54
	Before they came together she was found to be with child	27:00
	of the holy spirit.	27:04
	And her husband Joseph being a just man	27:08
	and unwilling to put her to shame	27:15
	resolved to divorce her quietly.	27:19
	But as he considered this,	27:25
	behold an angel of the Lord	27:28
	appeared to him in a dream saying,	27:32
	"Joseph, son of David,	27:38
	do not fear to take Mary your wife	27:41
	for that which is conceived in her is of the holy spirit.	27:46
	She will bear a son.	27:53
	You should call his name Jesus.	27:56
	For he will save his people from their sins."	27:59
	All this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken	28:05
	by the prophet.	28:10
	Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son	28:13
	and his name shall be called Emmanuel,	28:20
	which means God with us.	28:24
	Few preachers are willing to jeopardize the experience	28:33
	of the so called real meaning of Christmas	28:37
	in order to deal seriously with the virgin birth.	28:43
	And so, this part of our Christmas heritage	28:49
	has become a kind of skeleton	28:52
	in our modern theological	28:56
	conceptual closets	28:59
	and when dragged out	29:03
	it is defended stoutly	29:05
	or explained away with some embarrassment.	29:11
	In protestant camps there is a spectrum.	29:19
	On the far right are the zealous fundamentalist	29:27
	who make belief in the virgin birth,	29:33
	the acid test of Christian faith.	29:36
	On the left are the biblically	29:40
	illiterate Christians,	29:45
	which is perhaps a contradiction of terms	29:48
	who just set the entire matter aside	29:53
	and address themselves to what they take to be	29:56
	the ethical heart of Christianity.	29:59
	In the middle are those who see the virgin birth stories	30:05
	as mythical attempts to express	30:09
	the meaning of Jesus or faith,	30:12
	by which they do not mean that the stories	30:18
	are to be dismissed as being untrue	30:23
	but rather that we shall not become so engrossed	30:28
	in the defense of the details of the story	30:32
	that we miss the point of the story.	30:37
	We could avoid controversy all together	30:45
	by confining ourselves I suppose	30:48
	to the second chapter of Luke,	30:52
	to the shepherds and the angels and,	30:56
	indeed, many good sermons,	30:59
	Christmas sermons that have been based	31:01
	on the angel's song.	31:03
	But I have a feeling that the historical message	31:09
	of the church and the reason for Christmas	31:14
	can be seen in still another helpful perspective.	31:18
	A reverent attention	31:24
	to these perplexing allusions	31:27
	to an event utterly beyond comprehension	31:32
	by the modern mind.	31:37
	It is important now	31:42
	that we understand one another at the outset.	31:46
	I am not interested in the dogmatic emphasis	31:51
	on the idea of the virgin birth.	31:56
	For one thing the New Testament would simply not support	32:01
	making it a cardinal principle	32:06
	of the Christian faith.	32:10
	There is just no mention of the virgin birth	32:13
	outside the two Christmas stories.	32:16
	On the other hand, the virgin birth stories	32:20
	seem to have been part	32:24
	and parcel of the basic narratives,	32:25
	not mere glosses added on by super zealous believers.	32:30
	Also, there is the fact	32:37
	that no other essential teaching	32:40
	about Christ	32:44
	depends on belief in the virgin birth.	32:47
	The sinlessness of Jesus is not thereby established	32:54
	because he retains his maternal human heritage	33:00
	by way of Mary.	33:06
	And only the most fanatical member	33:08
	of the women's liberation movement would deny	33:11
	a feminine addiction to sin at least equal	33:15
	to anything Joseph might have contributed.	33:20
	Vindication of Old Testament prophecy	33:26
	is suggested by Matthew himself	33:29
	but the prophecy he cites,	33:34
	Isaiah 7:14,	33:38
	refers to a Parthenos, a virgin,	33:41
	only in the Greek translation.	33:48
	In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament,	33:53
	Almah, the word that is employed,	33:56
	simply means a young woman.	34:02
	If he is vindicating prophecy it is not	34:06
	one concerning the virgin birth.	34:09
	It is one concerning the birth of Emmanuel.	34:14
	God with us.	34:18
	It would be indeed a sad day for Christians	34:23
	if we started requiring loyalty oaths of one another	34:28
	and began screening out all those	34:34
	who do not believe in the virgin birth.	34:37
	When I read the New Testament, I get the feeling	34:42
	that the total impression	34:46
	made by Christ on the disciples	34:50
	is prior in importance to their belief	34:53
	in the virgin birth.	34:58
	They have experienced faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ	35:01
	in the wake of the resurrection.	35:06
	Their experience with the resurrected Lord	35:10
	caused them to echo the words of a centurion	35:14
	surely this was the son of God.	35:18
	And because they believed him to be the son of God	35:23
	they were willing to believe the virgin birth stories.	35:28
	They did not tell the stories in an attempt	35:34
	to sanction or prove a divinity	35:39
	that is in doubt.	35:44
	On the contrary,	35:47
	the undoubted divinity of Jesus Christ	35:49
	sanctioned their belief in the virgin birth.	35:54
	Our generation finds few defenders of the virgin birth	36:01
	as a dogma necessary to be believed.	36:06
	To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is enough for salvation	36:11
	and scripture does not exact confession in the virgin birth.	36:16
	Rufus Moseley, who was described by E. Stanley Jones	36:21
	as the happiest of all the mystics,	36:26
	spent the night in our home on several occasions.	36:30
	One morning he reported that he had awakened at 4 a.m.	36:36
	and had remained in bed until my wife and I	36:41
	went to fetch him at seven.	36:44
	When asked what he did in bed	36:48
	and in the dark for three hours he responded,	36:51
	"Jesus and I talked with one another."	36:56
	"Well what did you talk about?" I asked	37:01
	with more tongue in cheek	37:04
	than was becoming in a young minister.	37:05
	"About the virgin birth", he replied.	37:09
	"Well what did Jesus say about the virgin birth?", I asked.	37:13
	To which Mosley replied,	37:18
	"He said that he was born of a virgin	37:20
	but that he accepted those who do not see it	37:23
	and understand it."	37:26
	Now that seems to be an appropriately Christian attitude	37:30
	toward the idea of the virgin birth.	37:36
	Matthew and Luke present the virgin birth as plain fact.	37:44
	So they perceived it.	37:51
	So the early church perceived it.	37:54
	So faithful men and woman have understood it in the past	37:57
	and even now.	38:02
	It is reported as fact	38:06
	but not as an argument in support	38:10
	of anything else.	38:14
	But it is precisely because there is no extrinsic reason	38:17
	for its origination or its perennial currency	38:23
	that it could simply be a fact.	38:28
	H.R. MacKintosh had summed up the case for us.	38:33
	It is not unfair on the whole to pass the judgment	38:37
	that for history the really strong argument	38:41
	in favor of the virgin birth is the difficulty	38:44
	of accounting for the story,	38:50
	otherwise than on the assumption of its truth.	38:52
	So there it seems to be summed up.	38:59
	Possibly a fact	39:02
	but not a dogma one must believe.	39:06
	But the value of the virgin birth has not been	39:14
	in the idea itself	39:18
	or in the event it signifies.	39:21
	Its value has been in the gestalt	39:26
	of truth that encircles it.	39:31
	The virgin birth is not an explanation.	39:36
	It is the affirmation of mystery and miracle.	39:41
	It affirms that here	39:47
	God is at work.	39:51
	The really improbable thing is not that the son of God	39:56
	in taking flesh should born of a virgin.	40:01
	It is rather that the son of God should take flesh at all.	40:07
	The words of scripture factual and spiritual	40:15
	offers the virgin birth as an outward sign	40:20
	of the divinity of the grace and truth	40:26
	that came by Jesus Christ.	40:30
	Here we begin to get at the	40:36
	central meaning of Christmas.	40:39
	For like the virgin birth, it is the	40:44
	affirmation of mystery and miracle.	40:48
	Always in our experience of God	40:56
	there is a tantalizing realization	41:01
	that we are dealing with one who hides himself.	41:04
	Life is one intimation after another that our lives	41:11
	are in his hands and faith	41:16
	is that consciousness	41:20
	that above and beneath and all around	41:22
	our experiences there is greater meaning	41:26
	than we apprehend in the moment.	41:31
	The virgin birth has spoken to Christians	41:37
	throughout our history about trust	41:42
	that God's promises will be kept.	41:45
	And those promises can be kept	41:52
	because of the all creative power of God.	41:58
	Stories of God's intervention to make possible	42:06
	new life in improbable	42:11
	circumstances are numerous	42:15
	in the Old Testament.	42:19
	The classical example is the birth of Isaac.	42:22
	What a time they must've had	42:28
	telling that tale around the campfires	42:30
	in the days of the old tradition.	42:33
-	The divine agent announces to Abraham that Sarah	42:38
	will have a son.	42:42
	And Sarah, who was eavesdropping, heard the announcement.	42:45
	Now both she and Abraham were advanced in age.	42:52
	I like the way the J document	42:57
	says that she was beyond menopause.	43:00
	It says, "It had ceased to be with Sarah	43:04
	after the manner of women.	43:07
	So Sarah laughed. After all,	43:11
	who should know better than she?	43:14
	And the Lord said to Abraham with annoyance,	43:19
	"Why did Sarah laugh?	43:24
	Is anything too hard for the Lord?"	43:27
	The story of the virgin birth of Jesus	43:33
	and the story of the birth of Isaac	43:37
	share a common ground here.	43:40
	Both represent the conviction	43:44
	that God can do whatever	43:47
	he has of mind to do.	43:50
	We think we're open to new truths from any source.	43:55
	But the figure most descriptive of our situation	44:03
	is not that of a man in a glass dome	44:08
	permitting light to come in from all directions.	44:12
	On the contrary, a figure more descriptive of us	44:16
	is that of a man groping his way down a trench	44:21
	seven feet deep with blinders on his eyes.	44:25
	Captives of empiricism,	44:32
	we ask can this sort of thing happen?	44:37
	Can Jesus our Lord be born of a virgin?	44:43
	And in all honesty we answer no.	44:51
	Not in our experience.	44:55
	Always we have done business on an entirely different plane.	44:59
	We really we circle our self-made cage	45:07
	like a pacing lion	45:11
	chanting the dirge of our self appointed death.	45:14
	What has been is what will be	45:19
	and what has been done is what will be done.	45:21
	And there is nothing new under the sun.	45:25
	But for Christians	45:31
	the virgin birth is a way of saying	45:34
	there is a power that can break the vicious circle.	45:37
	History does not have to be cyclical.	45:43
	It can become linear with a point of origin,	45:48
	dramatic points along the way, moving to a day no more	45:54
	in the intention of God who has all creative power.	45:59
	The virgin birth	46:09
	not only speaks to us about God's power.	46:12
	It also says something about God's intention.	46:17
	It is the church's way of saying	46:25
	that God finds	46:28
	ways to break through into the human scene	46:30
	because of his saving intention.	46:37
	God can do whatever he has a mind to do,	46:43
	and the virgin birth is a symbol that the God	46:49
	who can break into	46:53
	what appears to be a closed order	46:57
	has in fact done so.	47:01
	Our human condition is such that	47:09
	we are caught in a spiral	47:12
	leading us downward from God.	47:15
	A need to secure ourselves by demonstrating that we can	47:20
	secure ourselves to the application of our cunning	47:25
	and a desperate assertion of self-trust	47:31
	spurred on by equally desperate	47:35
	feelings of insecurity.	47:39
	Thus do we move away from God.	47:43
	Most men said Thomas Erskine our soul possessed	47:48
	by themselves that they have no vacuum	47:53
	into which God's deep waters may rise.	47:56
	In one of his memorable sermons James Stewart	48:03
	has reminded us that it is when men understand	48:07
	their part, when they experience the darkness	48:11
	that descends when all the flickering candles	48:16
	of personal merit have gone out	48:20
	and they find themselves in self despair,	48:24
	it is then that they have discerned, rising	48:28
	out of the gloom to meet them, the light that never was	48:33
	on sea or land.	48:38
	The God who can break into our experience	48:42
	is the God who does initiate	48:46
	saving encounters with us.	48:52
	Men have felt the foundations shake beneath their feet	48:56
	only to understand what it means to sing rock of ages.	49:03
	The text for Stewart's sermon	49:11
	is Luke 21:28.	49:14
	"When these things begin to come to pass	49:17
	then look up and lift up your heads	49:21
	for your redemption draweth nigh."	49:26
	And the things to which Jesus is referring represent	49:31
	the most devastating catalog of crisis and convulsion	49:36
	of formidable ruthless forces laying havoc	49:41
	with men's dreams.	49:46
	Nation rising again nation.	49:49
	Earthquakes, famines, pestilences, fearful sights	49:53
	and signs from heaven, persecutions, inquisitions,	49:58
	racial hatreds, martyrdoms,	50:03
	the whole world gone mad.	50:06
	When these things come to pass, said Jesus,	50:11
	then look up and lift up your heads	50:17
	for your redemption draweth nigh.	50:23
	Despite all our efforts to fence him out,	50:31
	God breaks through and confirms himself	50:36
	as light in our darkness,	50:41
	as strength in our weakness,	50:44
	as the meaningful end to what seemed to be	50:48
	a meaningless collage.	50:52
	Our times	51:00
	threaten to supply the entire catalog	51:04
	of catastrophes mentioned by Jesus.	51:10
	We are more hopelessly ensnared	51:16
	in the irreconcilable claims	51:21
	and counter-claims of nations that breathe war	51:24
	than ever before	51:29
	and less inclined to heed the counsels of pure justice.	51:33
	Demographers can only warn us that the face of the earth	51:39
	will become a swarming mass of humanity	51:44
	who cannot hope to enjoy privacy and abundance	51:48
	only further dehumanization	51:54
	with increasing populations.	51:58
	Environmental scientists chart the pollution	52:03
	of the atmosphere and our rivers and streams	52:06
	and tell us we're passed the point of no return.	52:11
	We can only submit to progressive toxication	52:16
	by our self-administered poisons.	52:21
	Moral philosophers have confirmed man	52:28
	is so hopelessly imprisoned in his commitment	52:31
	to self and group interests that he cannot identify	52:35
	with the common cause of man.	52:40
	Class warfare therefore is inevitable	52:45
	and the achievement of social unity impossible	52:49
	until there has been a thoroughgoing bloodbath.	52:53
	Is there no one to gainsay	53:02
	these scientifically informed,	53:06
	statically supported, intellectually respectable,	53:10
	computerized doomsday warnings?	53:16
	I do not think they can be convincingly disputed.	53:24
	If we agree to operate within	53:31
	their frame of reference.	53:35
	That is if we agree that the ultimate issue	53:40
	of all these matters is determined only by factors	53:44
	that can be observed, cataloged and computerized	53:49
	but Christian faith cannot be content	53:57
	with that small realm of reality.	54:02
	We admit additional factors	54:08
	into our environment.	54:12
	We expect unscheduled	54:15
	performances by unseen forces	54:18
	who will largely determine the ultimate issue.	54:23
	That statement will scandalize some of my students,	54:30
	as well as students throughout the rest of the university.	54:36
	But I think Christian faith must stand its ground	54:40
	at this point.	54:44
	I am not trying to touch the moral nerves	54:48
	that make Christians feel responsible	54:52
	for the outcome of the issues before humanity.	54:55
	To be sure we are mankind come of age	55:00
	one must act responsibly because he is a co-laborer	55:06
	with God and not a further	55:11
	impediment in the way of God.	55:15
	But ultimately the way things turn out	55:20
	depends on the quality	55:25
	on the quality of emergence.	55:28
	Ultimately,	55:34
	the way things turn out depends	55:37
	on something that will appear	55:41
	that is not scheduled factors	55:45
	that we do not control.	55:48
	Factors and resources will be introduced	55:52
	into the picture that	55:57
	we have not even begun to dream of.	55:59
	This is what Christmas is about I think.	56:04
	This is what the virgin birth,	56:11
	whether it happened or not,	56:15
	has to say to us.	56:20
	God is neither the absentee being of deism	56:25
	who serves only as an intellectual device	56:29
	to explain something.	56:33
	Nor the unreactive impersonal steam	56:37
	in the motor of the universe.	56:40
	Christians have experienced	56:44
	the dramatic intervention	56:48
	of saving factors in their personal	56:51
	and social lives.	56:55
	They have felt the lift, the law, the forgiveness	56:59
	and the joy of a ministry in the name of Jesus Christ	57:03
	and because they have been saved from hopelessness	57:10
	and despair	57:13
	they have not the least bit of shame	57:16
	in affirming that the virgin birth	57:21
	is a way of thinking about God who has broken	57:25
	through into our experience	57:30
	and who has come to save us.	57:34
	Behold a virgin shall conceive	57:40
	and bear son	57:46
	and his name shall be called Emmanuel,	57:49
	which means God with us.	57:55
	Amen.	58:02
	(choir music)	58:11

Item Info

Title:

O. Kelly Ingram - "A Christian Sermon" (December 21, 1969)

Description:

While the virgin birth is not an essential doctrine of Christian faith it does demonstrate an essential doctrine of Christian faith, namely, that God has broken into human history in order to work mighty acts of salvation for the sake of humankind. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Sermon start time: (Part 1) 25:39. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 58:05.
Key quotation: “The value of the virgin birth has not been in the ideal itself or in the event it signifies. Its value has been in the gestalt of truth that encircles it. The virgin birth is not an explanation. It is the affirmation of mystery and miracle.”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r40z71b3q

Date:

December 21, 1969

Speaker:

Ingram, O. Kelly (Osmond Kelly), 1918-

Liturgical Calendar:

Christmas

Biblical Book:

Luke

Chapter and Verse:

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0503
ref6211_ydm
uachapelsermaud
duke:321281
dcrau001793
ark:/87924/r40z71b3q
9637ea46-9477-4020-bf86-48ab17b74f73

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

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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