Van Bogard Dunn - "Living in the Proverbs" (July 7, 1957; May 25, 1958)

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Pastor 1	As Christ hath loved us.	0:04
	Thy life is within our souls,	0:07
	but our selfishness hath hindered thee.	0:10
	We have not lived by faith.	0:14
	We have resisted thy spirit.	0:17
	We have neglected thine inspirations.	0:20
	Forgive what we have been.	0:24
	Help us to amend what we are.	0:27
	And in thy spirit, direct what we shall be,	0:30
	that thou mayest come into the full glory of thy creation,	0:35
	in us and in all men	0:40
	through Jesus Christ, our lord.	0:43
	Amen.	0:47
	And now, as our savior, Christ, hath taught us,	0:49
	we humbly pray.	0:53
	Our Father, who art in heaven,	0:55
	hallowed be thy name.	0:59
	Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,	1:02
	on earth as it is in heaven.	1:06
	Give us this day our daily bread,	1:09
	and forgive us our trespasses,	1:12
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	1:15
	And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.	1:20
	For thine is the kingdom,	1:26
	and the power and the glory forever.	1:28
	Amen.	1:33
	(church organ playing faintly)	1:40
	(church choir singing)	2:33
Pastor 2	Let us hear now	7:42
	the reading of the morning lesson.	7:43
	"You have heard that it was said,	7:48
	'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'	7:51
	But I say to you, love your enemies	7:55
	and pray for those who persecute you,	7:59
	so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven;	8:02
	for he makes his sun rise on the evil and all the good,	8:07
	and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.	8:12
	For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?	8:16
	Do not even the tax collectors do the same?	8:21
	And if you salute only your brethren,	8:25
	what more are you doing than others?	8:28
	Do not even the Gentiles do the same?	8:31
	You therefore must be perfect,	8:35
	as your heavenly father is perfect."	8:39
	May God bless this reading of his Holy Word.	8:44
	Amen.	8:48
	(church organ playing)	8:51
	(church choir singing)	9:08
Pastor 1	The Lord be with you.	10:29
Congregation	And with your spirit.	10:32
Pastor 1	Let us pray.	10:33
	Let us offer unto God our prayer of thanksgiving.	10:41
	For the life which thou hast given and preserved,	10:47
	for the world in which we dwell,	10:52
	and for the hope of everlasting blessedness,	10:56
	we thank thee, oh God.	11:01
	For all the difficulties and distresses which have molded us	11:05
	and for he consolations which have refreshed our weariness,	11:11
	we thank thee, oh God.	11:17
	For comfort and help,	11:21
	in sorrow, in pain, in bereavement,	11:25
	we thank thee, oh God.	11:32
	For the warnings of thy spirit speaking to our spirits,	11:36
	when the sky was bright and all men spake well of us,	11:42
	we thank thee, oh God.	11:48
	For the life and doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ,	11:52
	for his love and sacrifice,	11:57
	for his boundless compassion,	12:02
	and for the glorious company of those	12:06
	who have followed him in weakness unto victory,	12:08
	we thank thee, oh God.	12:14
	Let us offer unto God our prayer of intercession	12:20
	for the world.	12:23
	Oh God, the creator and sustainer of all mankind,	12:26
	we pray for all thy family upon earth,	12:31
	and for every agency of world cooperation,	12:36
	that it may grow in usefulness and power.	12:40
	For thy universal church,	12:45
	for the world organization of nations,	12:49
	for international federations of labor,	12:54
	industry, and commerce, we beseech thee.	12:57
	For all the departments of state,	13:04
	for all ambassadors, ministers, and diplomats.	13:08
	For all prophets and pioneers	13:14
	who have seen the promised land (inaudible)	13:17
	and dedicated their lives to its service.	13:21
	For the common folk in every land	13:26
	who long to live in peace and quietness,	13:31
	we beseech thee.	13:36
	Let us offer unto God our prayer of intercession	13:40
	for the church.	13:43
	Most gracious Father,	13:46
	we humbly beseech thee for thy Holy Catholic Church.	13:48
	Fill it with all truth, in all truth, with all peace.	13:54
	Where it is corrupt, purge it.	14:00
	Where it is an error, direct it.	14:06
	Where anything is a myth, reform it.	14:11
	Where it is right, strengthen and confirm it.	14:17
	Where it is in want, furnish it.	14:23
	Where it is divided and went asunder,	14:28
	do thou make up the bridges in it,	14:32
	for the sake of thy son whose church it is.	14:36
	And let us offer unto God	14:43
	our prayer of supplication for ourselves,	14:44
	a God of company of his people.	14:51
	O God whose days are without end,	14:57
	and whose mercies cannot be numbered,	15:02
	make us, we beseech thee, deeply sensible of the shortness	15:06
	and uncertainty of human existence,	15:12
	and let thy holy spirit lead us through this present world	15:18
	in holiness and righteousness	15:23
	all the days of our lives,	15:27
	that when we shall have served thee in our generation,	15:31
	we may be gathered unto our fathers,	15:36
	having the testimony of a good conscience	15:40
	in the communion of thy holy church,	15:46
	in the confidence of a certain faith,	15:51
	in the comfort of our reasonable religious and holy hope,	15:56
	in favor with thee, our God,	16:04
	and in charity with the world,	16:08
	and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ	16:14
	be with us all evermore.	16:19
	Amen.	16:25
	(church organ playing)	16:30
	(lively church music)	19:43
	(church choir singing)	20:30
Pastor 2	Almighty God,	23:51
	in whom we live and move and have our being,	23:53
	we present unto thee these gifts,	23:57
	the symbols of ourselves, our souls and bodies,	24:02
	to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee	24:09
	and to thy son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.	24:17
	Amen.	24:24
	(church organ playing faintly)	24:27
Pastor 2	Let us pray.	25:05
	May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts	25:11
	be acceptable in thy sight,	25:17
	O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.	25:20
	Amen.	25:25
	Shortly after we had moved to Jackson, Tennessee,	25:33
	we were visiting in West Kentucky.	25:37
	And I overheard my small daughter,	25:41
	who is now approaching her seventh birthday,	25:44
	trying to describe just exactly where we lived in Jackson.	25:47
	She said, "We don't live in the downtown of Jackson.	25:53
	We live out in the Proverbs."	25:56
	And I wonder if that isn't exactly our trouble,	26:02
	that we do live out in the Proverbs.	26:06
	Perhaps we have reduced	26:11
	the great soaring throughs of Christianity	26:12
	to a shrewd calculating wisdom that will enable us	26:17
	to get along in this world.	26:21
	I think that living in the Proverbs	26:26
	must have been some of the trouble	26:30
	with the people in the First Century.	26:32
	I have just read for you a passage of scripture	26:36
	from the fifth chapter of Matthew.	26:39
	This is a part of the familiar sermon on the mountain.	26:42
	I think that in this passage of scripture,	26:46
	Jesus is attacking life in the Proverbs.	26:49
	He is contrasting the exciting, thrilling venture of life	26:55
	in the kingdom with a life of shrewdness,	27:02
	a calculating, a pedestrian life	27:05
	that seeks to measure out its affection	27:10
	according to affection received.	27:14
	Specifically, this passage of scripture	27:20
	is an attack against all forms of exclusivism	27:24
	in our affection.	27:29
	Jesus was addressing his words through good men.	27:34
	I think he was addressing his words through the best men	27:38
	that he could have found in his century,	27:41
	just as you and I this morning would represent	27:46
	the best of the life of this community.	27:49
	And as Jesus talked to these men,	27:53
	he found it necessary to contrast	27:57
	what had been said to them with what he wanted to accept,	28:00
	what he wanted them to accept	28:05
	as the demand of God for their life.	28:06
	He said, "You have heard	28:10
	that you ought to love your neighbor and hate your enemy.	28:15
	But I say to you, love your enemies	28:20
	and pray for those who persecute you."	28:24
	And then Jesus went on to illustrate	28:31
	the kind of life that he wanted men to live.	28:33
	And I think you see some of the genius of Jesus	28:38
	in the way he illustrates his kind of life.	28:42
	I find that in my own preaching,	28:45
	when I want to illustrate the great attributes of God,	28:47
	I turn again and again to the trivial,	28:51
	and I lift up the sentimental and the boggling,	28:54
	and try to use these things to illustrate the life of God.	28:58
	But here, Jesus turns to the life of God	29:03
	in order to illustrate what the life of man ought to be.	29:07
	He points to that all-inclusive providence of God,	29:13
	which causes his sun and his rain	29:17
	to come up on the good and the evil,	29:21
	the just and the unjust.	29:23
	Now I don't find that particularly convincing.	29:27
	You see, I can't see the nature of what Jesus saw it.	29:31
	I can look at it as seriously and as earnestly as I can.	29:36
	And I seek to find there a love and the tenderness	29:42
	and the compassion, and somehow rather, it escapes me.	29:46
	And especially it escapes me at a time like this	29:50
	when we have just seen the claw of nature,	29:53
	the cruelty and the hardness of nature.	29:57
	All of these things come rising to my mind	30:01
	when I try to see the love of God in his providence.	30:05
	And frankly, I can't see it.	30:10
	Perhaps someday, I may be able to see it there,	30:13
	but if it is ever possible for me to see it there,	30:17
	it will be because I have seen this love of God	30:20
	commended to me in something else.	30:24
	Jesus speaks with authority in this passage of scripture	30:27
	because he lived the kind of life	30:31
	that caused another to say of him,	30:34
	"God commended his own love toward us	30:36
	And that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."	30:40
	Now when Jesus said that we should be perfect,	30:49
	perfect even as God is perfect.	30:54
	Perfect with a love that is all-inclusive.	30:59
	He said something that lays upon my life and upon your life	31:04
	a demand that we cannot escape.	31:08
	We cannot escape it in the life of the church.	31:11
	It may well be that we can escape it somewhere else.	31:15
	But if we take this redemptive community serious,	31:18
	then it follows that this is something that comes to us	31:23
	with a tremendous demand.	31:26
	As I read the New Testament, sometimes I get the idea	31:32
	that Jesus is speaking to me in a vacuum,	31:37
	that he's speaking to individuals	31:39
	who never lived as I lived,	31:41
	but it does not take a whole lot of imagination	31:44
	to realize that those who heard	31:47
	this staggering statement the first time	31:49
	were men who lived in families,	31:52
	they were men who participated	31:55
	in the religious institution of their community,	31:57
	they had civic responsibility,	32:00
	and he spoke to them about an all-inclusive law	32:03
	that could only be expressed through these institutions.	32:06
	And yet, somehow rather, as men responded to him,	32:10
	they found that these institutions	32:13
	were shattered and destroyed	32:15
	and then put together again by what he had said	32:17
	and by what he wants.	32:21
	So then, let us turn to look at our own lives.	32:25
	Lives that are lived in relationship to other people.	32:32
	Let us look at the dear beloved institutions of our life.	32:38
	You know, I have a family,	32:46
	and I think that I am a good family man.	32:50
	Sometimes my wife has a different idea about that,	32:54
	but I try to love my children	32:59
	and I try to provide for my wife,	33:04
	and I find myself, again and again,	33:09
	realizing that there is some conflict	33:12
	between my human love for my family	33:14
	and this demand that Jesus makes upon my life	33:18
	for a perfect love.	33:22
	An active goodwill that is all-inclusive.	33:25
	And when I experienced these conflicts in my own life,	33:31
	I find myself throwing up my hands and saying to myself,	33:36
	"God, you cannot expect that of me.	33:43
	You cannot expect me to give up certain things	33:47
	within the circle of my home.	33:52
	You cannot expect me to realize	33:54
	that there is a higher loyalty	33:56
	than the loyalty that I owe to my family."	33:59
	And yet, again and again,	34:03
	this is exactly what God asked me to do in Christ.	34:06
	And I believe that, again and again,	34:11
	it is exactly what God asked you to do in Christ.	34:13
	I mentioned my daughter a moment ago,	34:20
	how easy it is for a preacher to make capital homiletical,	34:24
	capital of the lives of these children.	34:29
	Not everything that my Susan says can be used in a sermon.	34:33
	There are some things that she says to me	34:39
	and to her brother and her sister	34:42
	that are devilish and I think are mean and wicked.	34:45
	She's not very old, but how mean she can be.	34:51
	And if I love her simply as one who can capitalize	34:58
	on the nice things that she said,	35:02
	before long, I find it that I do not love her at all.	35:06
	I can only love her under God,	35:11
	and I can only love her	35:15
	with a love that includes those things	35:17
	that are very unlovable about her.	35:19
	And it is our experience in the church	35:23
	that as we give up the family of man,	35:25
	we receive again the family of God.	35:29
	You must be perfect.	35:34
	And when Jesus said that long ago,	35:40
	it must have been difficult to accept.	35:42
	And when he speaks to us,	35:47
	it is still difficult to accept it.	35:49
	And yet it is the best news about family life	35:53
	that we have ever heard.	35:56
	For in hating our fathers and our mothers,	35:59
	in hating our brothers and our sisters,	36:04
	in hating them so that we might love God,	36:09
	then we find impossible,	36:14
	not as a direct result, but as a byproduct,	36:15
	love these as they should be loved under God.	36:20
	There is another institution that is dear to our hearts.	36:28
	You are here this morning in this chapel	36:35
	because you love the church,	36:38
	because you are devoted to it.	36:42
	And our experience in the church, again and again,	36:46
	is a tragic experience.	36:49
	It is an experience of struggle and trial.	36:52
	For we find that this demand of Jesus	36:59
	is a judgment upon the life of the church itself.	37:02
	Now, I'm a Methodist.	37:07
	I think that there are a lot of reasons why I'm a Methodist.	37:10
	One good reason is because my father	37:15
	was a Methodist preacher	37:17
	and I had very little chance to be anything else.	37:18
	Now I have discovered in the city of Jackson, Tennessee,	37:24
	a tendency on my part to identify the church of God,	37:29
	not simply with the Methodist church,	37:33
	but with my particular local congregation.	37:36
	We're trying to build a church.	37:40
	And because we were trying to build a church,	37:43
	it is absolutely necessary	37:45
	that we attracted people into that congregation.	37:47
	And I go out beating the bushes	37:51
	and compelling them to come in.	37:53
	And I find myself in opposition	37:56
	to the six other Methodist ministers in that small city.	37:58
	And I draw a circle that shuts them out.	38:03
	I draw a circle that shuts out	38:06
	the life of their congregation.	38:08
	And I feel that the kingdom of God will only come	38:11
	through the Forest Heights Methodist Church.	38:15
	And I loathe who steal my (inaudible)	38:19
	And I'm sure that they hate me	38:25
	when I'm successful in stealing them.	38:27
	Now If I behave in that manner	38:30
	toward other Methodist ministers,	38:32
	you can imagine I do when I get into contact	38:34
	with Baptist and Presbyterians	38:36
	and members of the Church of Christ, and so on.	38:38
	You see, it is so easy to make our church life	38:45
	a thing of life into Proverbs,	38:52
	a shrew calculating wisdom of the world,	38:56
	where we use it to shore up and cough up	39:00
	and strengthen the exclusiveness of our affection.	39:03
	Be ye therefore perfect.	39:12
	You must be perfect.	39:15
	This comes as a shattering judgment	39:20
	upon the life of the church.	39:22
	But the very fact that this demand	39:25
	is in the life of the church opens up for us,	39:26
	the possibility of giving up the church of man	39:30
	and finding within this redemptive community	39:33
	the church of God.	39:36
	I'm not talking about any easy ecumenism.	39:40
	I'm not speaking of high level	39:46
	inter-denominational relationship.	39:48
	I'm speaking of that in life of the church	39:52
	which begins to reach out and to embrace,	39:55
	a life that moves within us, sometimes against our own will,	40:01
	but moves nevertheless.	40:05
	It does not come necessarily in the dramatic.	40:09
	It may come in the ordinary, in the common place,	40:14
	it may come in the life of a little church,	40:19
	it may come in the life of a big church.	40:23
	I heard of this this past week,	40:28
	a Presbyterian minister,	40:31
	a Presbyterian minister committed to his own denomination,	40:35
	performing a marriage ceremony in an Episcopal church.	40:42
	The rector of that Episcopal church,	40:48
	being a man committed to his own tradition.	40:50
	But somehow rather, their commitment to that tradition	40:55
	was a commitment to God himself,	41:00
	and through that commitment, they were able to cooperate	41:03
	in joining together a man and a woman in holy matrimony.	41:06
	This is the perfection of the life of the church.	41:14
	You must be perfect.	41:21
	We have just passed through the celebration	41:28
	of July the Fourth.	41:34
	And when we come to July Fourth,	41:37
	we are all conscious of the fact	41:39
	that we live within the state	41:41
	and that we have a responsibility that is civic.	41:45
	Now, what about this nation of ours?	41:51
	Does this demand of Jesus come home to the life	41:55
	that we are seeking to live in this community?	42:00
	Does it have anything to say about our civic responsibility?	42:06
	You know, it's so easy to be pagan and still be American.	42:11
	I hear a lot about America for 100% of America.	42:18
	You know who a 100% American is?	42:26
	A 100% American, according to the propaganda,	42:31
	is a man who shares all my prejudices,	42:36
	who bolsters up all my dogmatism,	42:40
	who draws a circle around his civic responsibility,	42:44
	and shuts out all those who are different.	42:49
	And you know the people who are different.	42:52
	(inaudible)	42:56
	Are we doing anything exceptional,	42:58
	when through the life of the state,	43:00
	we simply love those who love us,	43:02
	when we give our active goodwill	43:06
	to those who have given their active goodwill to us.	43:08
	Have we done anything that sets us apart	43:13
	as peculiar and different?	43:15
	There is nothing exceptional about that conflict.	43:18
	The pagans (inaudible)	43:22
	Now how should a Christian accept this demand	43:27
	for perfection within the life?	43:31
	Now do not misunderstand me.	43:35
	I would not attempt this morning	43:38
	to give you any discourse on political science.	43:40
	I know nothing about that, or practically nothing about it.	43:42
	But I am a Christian, or seeking to be a Christian,	43:47
	and I am a citizen,	43:53
	and my Christianity must work out in the life of the state	43:56
	or I am studied in that particular area of my growth.	43:59
	I read just a few months ago a book	44:06
	that was written by a man in tribute to his father.	44:08
	J.C. Smuts has written a moving biography	44:15
	describing the greatness of his father,	44:19
	Jan Christian Smuts.	44:22
	Now you all know that General Smuts	44:24
	was a leader in the Boer Rebellion.	44:27
	He served as a general in the Boer Army,	44:32
	fighting the British empire.	44:35
	A man intensely nationalistic.	44:38
	And in that war,	44:42
	after he had fought to the best of his ability,	44:43
	he was honorably defeated.	44:47
	Now because of his Christian background,	44:50
	because of the tradition of Christianity	44:54
	that had gotten into his life,	44:57
	he stopped after this defeat	45:01
	to ask himself what it meant for South Africa.	45:04
	And he decided that it meant	45:08
	that if South Africa were to have any place	45:11
	in the life of the world,	45:14
	South Africa had to develop a nationalism	45:16
	that was more inclusive.	45:20
	So Jan Christian Smuts joined the British empire	45:23
	because he could not defeat it	45:26
	and because he saw something good in it.	45:28
	And he became a prime minister within the British empire,	45:31
	expressing his fierce nationalism in a larger loyal.	45:38
	And then at the close of the First World War,	45:44
	again, he had fought honorably.	45:47
	This time, he had been on the winning side,	45:50
	and he looked at the defeated nations,	45:54
	especially he looked at Germany.	45:56
	Germany who had been the enemy of his people.	45:59
	And he stood within the committees	46:02
	that were seeking to fashion a League of Nations,	46:05
	and he fought for some sort of redemptive relationship	46:08
	with Germany within the League of Nations.	46:12
	And he saw again that if his nation	46:16
	wants to achieve greatness within the community of nations,	46:21
	he had to have a loyalty and active goodwill	46:25
	that would include even his enemies.	46:30
	And then after the failure of the League of Nations,	46:35
	Jan Christian Smuts, as an old man,	46:37
	fought through the Second World War,	46:40
	and then came to this country	46:43
	and went out to San Francisco	46:45
	to serve as the architect for the United Nations,	46:47
	without dissolution,	46:52
	realistically appraising the life of the world,	46:54
	taking the highest ideals	46:58
	that had possessed his soul,	47:00
	and seeking to work those ideals out	47:02
	in civic responsibility.	47:04
	I think Jan Christian Smuts gave up	47:07
	somewhere along the road the city of man,	47:09
	and he found coming back to him the city of God.	47:12
	Where are you living?	47:21
	Are you living out in the Proverbs?	47:25
	Are you seeking to use your religious experience	47:29
	as a thing to support the exclusiveness of your affection?	47:32
	Have you set up these dear, dear idols	47:38
	and worship before them, the home and the church and state?	47:40
	If you are living out in the Proverbs,	47:48
	you must move downtown in the kingdom.	47:49
	And there at the very crossroad of time and eternity,	47:55
	you must take upon yourself the yoke of the kingdom.	48:02
	And because of what God is, you must be perfect.	48:07
	And true and active goodwill that is all-inclusive.	48:15
	We can't find in our relationships, the family of God,	48:21
	the church of God, and the city of God.	48:27
	You must be perfect.	48:34
	Understand?	48:41
	(mumbled speech)	48:42
	The grace of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ,	48:49
	the love of God, and the fellowship of the holy spirit	48:53
	be with us all now and forever.	48:57
	("Amen")	49:09
	(church bells ringing)	50:37
	(church organ playing)	50:52

Item Info

Title:

Van Bogard Dunn - "Living in the Proverbs" (July 7, 1957; May 25, 1958)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r47944v73

Date:

July 7, 1957
May 25, 1958

Speaker:

Dunn, Van Bogard

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0038
ref5297_rpv
uachapelsermaud
duke:627900
dcrau002087
ark:/87924/r47944v73
9b87cef0-779d-459b-b645-f64e83e687b7

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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:

No Re-Use

In Copyright

Rights Note:

This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection

Van Bogard Dunn - "Living in the Proverbs" (July 7, 1957; May 25, 1958)

Transcript

Item Info

Duke University Archives

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