W. Arthur Kale - "The Quest for Maturity"; McMurry S. Richey - "Communicating Our Faith" (November 2, 1958) / Duke Chapel Recordings / Duke Digital Repository

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Will you join me in prayer?

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Lord, speak to me that I may speak

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in living echoes of thy tone.

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Amen.

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I have just been reviewing some correspondence

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between a man and a group of his friends

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with whom he was having serious disagreement.

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And I find that this man has been able to do something

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that few persons are able ever to do.

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He could speak his mind, frankly,

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while at the same time he cultivated the affection

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of those whom he was criticizing.

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He wrote them a series of letters

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in which he spoke strong, severe statements.

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He rebuked them repeatedly,

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stating some very sharp things

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that must have cut deeply into their souls.

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Yet these letters I have examined

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contain also a gentle tone

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and a very brotherly spirit.

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Now, the man of whom I speak,

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as you may have surmised from what I have just said,

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and from the reading of the scripture lesson

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by Dave Sims earlier in this hour,

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that the person of whom I speak now is St. Paul.

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On Dad's Day, it is perhaps not out of order

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that we study together St. Paul's correspondence

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with an unruly church in the Greek city of Corinth.

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This series of letters that we have in our new testaments

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is not unlike the correspondence between fathers and sons

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in our own America today.

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For the great apostle looked upon

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his Corinthian Christian friends, really as his children,

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often quite unruly and now going through the experience

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of growing pains.

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They were seeking a maturity.

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Maturity never comes easily.

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It is a lonely virtue.

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Men spend their lives seeking it.

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Truly these Corinthian Christians

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had not found it at this time.

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They were a tiny band of persons

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truly interested in the faith

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they had learned from St. Paul.

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but truly a weak body, nevertheless,

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only loosely organized and full of blunders.

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St. Paul had lived among them for, perhaps, 18 months.

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This was three or four years earlier.

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He had won them as converts to the Christian faith and way,

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but now he had moved on to another city.

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And with Paul away from them,

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they were having troubles.

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Corinth was a city located on a tiny neck of land,

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perhaps only four miles wide,

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connecting the Northern section of Greece

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with the Southern section sometimes called the Peloponnese.

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On this narrow isthmus,

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the city was built where the traffic of great commerce

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tramped back in forth from north to south

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and south to north every day

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and where sea traffic likewise traveled

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from west to east and east to west.

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In that busy atmosphere,

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a struggling handful of Christian converts

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was almost entirely lost.

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Moreover, in a very prominent place in the city's life,

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geographically and sociologically and religiously speaking,

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was a mighty institution known as the temple of Aphrodite,

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Goddess of Love, the center of corruption,

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where 1,000 so-called priestesses

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applied their trade daily and nightly.

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The band of Christian converts were contaminated.

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St. Paul heard something of their troubles.

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Reports came to him while living in Ephesus

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and he could not restrain himself.

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He sat down and wrote a series of letters,

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the letters being carried to Corinth

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in the midst of some personal visits.

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He was preparing to go for what the New Testament

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refers to as his third visit.

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And also in the New Testament is a fragment

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of what scholars call the stern letter.

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He had tried a variety of approaches.

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He had tried gentleness and a bit of prodding.

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He had endeavored with cajolery

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and a bit of irony to rebuke them.

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And now in this particular letter,

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he spoke sternly and rebuked them for their yielding

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to the idolatry and immorality of Corinthian life.

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He rebuked them for their inner strife and division.

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He rebuked them for their own criticisms

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of his behavior and attitude.

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And then very close to the end

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of this so-called stern letter,

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he inserted a gentle yet firm admonition.

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I want you to catch it.

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In the quite brilliant JB Phillips translation

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of verse nine or the second half

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of verse nine of chapter 13,

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St. Paul says to these Corinthian Christians,

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what you need is to grow up.

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Or as the JB Phillips translation puts it,

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my ambition for you is true Christian maturity.

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True Christian maturity.

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I cannot escape remembering on Dad's day,

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that across America,

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there are unnumbered fathers who say to their sons

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with some regularity, boy, when will you grow up?

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I cannot escape feeling this morning that across America,

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there are citizens of our own land

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dreaming of the day when in governmental life

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and community life as well as in church affairs,

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America will grow up.

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I am likewise persuaded that across the Earth today,

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peoples we call strange and foreign

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are asking with considerable seriousness,

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not to mention anxiety,

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the question, when will America grow up?

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I am encouraged a bit.

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There is some evidence that America is at long last

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interested in mature living and behavior.

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One bit of encouraging evidence came this last summer

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with the publication of the Rockefeller Report on Education.

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Many of you have seen the original copies.

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Some of you have seen the printed publication

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in booklet form, and others certainly have seen

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the report of it in the magazines

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and the rather outstanding editorial,

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which appeared in Life Magazine early in July.

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The Rockefeller Report on Education has the caption,

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the pursuit of excellence.

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A reference is made to the traditional

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human rights declaration that is so basic

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in our American life.

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A reference is made to life,

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liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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What says the Rockefeller Report?

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We are proposing now a complimentary right,

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the right to pursue excellence.

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Now for the rest of my time this morning,

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let me describe sketchily four meanings of maturity

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for the consideration of Americans who might per chance

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be interested in the pursuit of excellence.

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For Americans who are not quite content

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with mere happiness hunting,

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with mere security and peace of mind

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and convenience and luxury,

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who are not merely interested in getting a college degree

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and in having a delightful weekend called Dad's Day,

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but who are concerned that individually

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and by families and as students and faculty

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and parents and patrons, and as citizens likewise,

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we pursue steadfastly this goal, excellence

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or to return to St. Paul's phraseology,

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the lonely virtue of maturity

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might become for us an ambition.

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And we might join him in declaring to ourselves

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our ambition is true Christian maturity.

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Now, I begin with the obvious.

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Maturity, declares St. Paul

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in the Corinthian correspondence,

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includes the ability to discuss candidly one's differences

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with his fellows.

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That was what St. Paul was doing.

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He criticized the Corinthians for their immorality,

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for their party divisions,

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for their own yielding to temptation

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in that tremendous wicked city where they lived.

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They, in turn, had criticized and were criticizing him.

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They talked about his poor appearance.

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They spoke of his lack of skill as a speaker.

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They particularly said a critical thing or two

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about his interest in money alone.

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"All you want of us," they said,

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"is the money we contribute to the causes

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"in which you're interested.

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Moreover, they compared him with certain other speakers

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and representatives of Christ's cause among them

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and said of him, "Really, Paul, we're not greatly impressed

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"with your brand of the Christian faith.

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"You really do not believe in Christ as others do."

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And so St. Paul was able, candidly, to give an answer

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to their criticisms and at the same time to criticize them

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and be quite severe as he did so.

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Yet he won their affections.

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And he put it in writing.

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To put your strong sentiments in writing

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is often risky business.

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When a careless driver puts a crimp

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in the fender of your car, you can tell him off

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and your action will be looked upon

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as mere letting off steam,

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but to write him a threatening letter

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makes the affair much more serious.

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You can whisper sweet nothing's in your date's ear,

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and your behavior is looked upon as delightful pastime,

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but to put the same sentiments in a letter

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results in the loss of your fraternity pin.

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All of us know very well that a businessman

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may write a very caustic letter to a competitor,

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but he must always tear it up.

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He never mails it.

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It is bad business to mail a threatening

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or caustic letter of any kind.

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Well St. Paul was able to do it.

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He put it in writing and he came him out with this saying,

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"I want you Christians in Corinth to grow up.

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"My ambition for you is true Christian maturity."

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Could America, do you think,

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achieve sufficient maturity

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that we could discuss controversial matters

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intelligently, with honesty of purpose,

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with chief interest in light and no interest in heat.

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I was quite thrilled, even excited, two weeks ago tonight

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in a church in Atlanta to listen to a preacher

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who was speaking on a controversial subject.

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His subject for the evening being,

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is divorce a solution?

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He gave light to his interpretation.

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I was curious about some other subjects

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in the series of sermons.

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And so I inquired and I learned that tonight,

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just two weeks from the night I heard him,

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he was to discuss the question,

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is segregation biblical?

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And just one week later, he had announced for his subject,

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are capital and labor helping capitalism become Christian?

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I think that's a mature approach.

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It excites me to discover

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that one clergyman at least is able

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with that mature approach to present to his congregation

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some light and helpful thought.

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Incidentally, the church was packed

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almost in the way our church here this morning was packed

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to hear that sermon.

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The second item I mentioned as a meaning

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for the term maturity from St. Paul's letters

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for the consideration of Americans

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interested in the pursuit of excellence,

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may be stated as follows.

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Maturity means a readiness to display patience

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amid disappointment and discouragement.

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I am sure St. Paul must have been out of sorts

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with those Corinthians at times.

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It's perfectly obvious that he was

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if you read certain sections of his correspondence

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and yet he was patient with them

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and sought to commend to them the virtue and value

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and appropriateness and necessity for patience.

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Another term for this particular thought

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might be the word fortitude.

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Never allow a momentary defeat or a postponement of action

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to take from you your sense of purpose

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and your steadfastness of purpose.

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America is in the era when she will have to cultivate

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the virtue of patience.

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A short list of the areas where patience is needed

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might be made such as the area where we struggle

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across the Earth for freedom.

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We talk about freedom.

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We print learned statements, scholarly statements about it.

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We print popular statements about it.

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We discuss it in drawing room

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and across the family dining table.

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But alas across the earth,

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there are people who are not free

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and the day of full freedom is yonder in the distance

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in an unknown era.

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We do not know when it will be achieved,

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But does that mean we abandon our effort?

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It does not.

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It means with patience and steadfastness,

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we continue to labor for it.

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Or take the battle for education.

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We are in an era when we have interest to be sure.

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We are building new institutions

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and trying to strengthen older ones

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and yet across this continent, particularly,

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and in other sections of the Earth as well,

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there is a vast deal of anti-intellectualism,

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well organized, powerfully established,

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and strongly motivated giving us great resistance.

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Or take the ideal of brotherhood

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from New Testament days until hours, we've dreamed of it.

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And into our democratic America, we've put this concept.

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We've written it there, indelibly we think,

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and yet no real brotherhood is present among us.

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Does that mean we abandon our labors?

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It does not.

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It does mean that we must have patience not to stop,

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not even to feel discouraged.

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The third meaning from St. Paul's correspondence

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with the Corinthians concerning maturity

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is maturity means a willingness regularly

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to engage in self-examination.

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In another verse of this 13th chapter

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of Second Corinthians, verse five,

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St. Paul says to those Christians in Corinth,

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I want you to test yourselves.

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I want you not to apply any easygoing

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and surface-like test.

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No popular poll among yourselves concerning sentiments.

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I want you honestly to search your heart, each of you.

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And then as an institution, as a body,

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I want you with seriousness to examine,

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for a very definite purpose, examine yourselves

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to see whether you are holding on to your faith.

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It was another way of reminding those Corinthians

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of the seriousness of abandoning one's faith.

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It was largely because they were not full of faith,

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that they were tempted and that immorality

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and corruption had crept into their ranks.

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The church in Corinth was called

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to be a distinctive institution in Corinthian life.

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They were not asked to adjust to their environment.

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Adjustment to one's environment is not the Christian way

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and it's not the way of maturity.

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The key term in the text I'm using this morning

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is the word perfecting, or again, the word maturity,

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depending upon your translation of the Greek word.

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St Paul said, "You must not adjust and compromise and adapt.

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"Rather you are to offer your distinctive testimony

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"in that pagan and wicked atmosphere of Corinth."

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And the best way to be distinctive is to be natural,

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to be what you are expected to be,

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what you're called to be,

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to be what God wants you to be, namely a Christian witness.

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I dream for you.

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My ambition for you is true Christian maturity.

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No cheap imitation of any other faith,

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no posing as if you possess something you do not have,

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but true Christian maturity.

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Well, this same quality is greatly needed in our time,

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in my home and yours, in our university, in our government,

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in the Christian Church, our role is to be what under God,

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we are distinctively called to be.

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All this bother and concern upon us

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to imitate so many others is both dangerous and wicked.

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Oh, America when at long last will you cultivate

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and achieve such maturity that you can be yourself

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in the family of nations?

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To be mature, involves the willingness

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to examine and test one's self at that point.

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And finally and quickly, maturity means self-sacrifice

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for a cause greater than self.

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Those Corinthian people

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were chiefly interested in themselves.

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They were demanding too much for self.

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In another part of this correspondence,

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St. Paul lifts high the concept of the cross,

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and challenged them to cross bearing,

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which essentially is self-forgetfulness and self-emptying.

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I recall at the moment,

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the story spoken of by Myron C. Wiki,

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who was counseling a group of so-called crusade scholars

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from several oriental countries a few years ago,

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and into his council room, there came a Korean boy

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and a Japanese boy,

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Myron Wiki reports the following testimony

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from the lips of the Korean student.

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Looking to his Japanese colleague, he said,

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"You know, when I first came to know you,

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"I was suspicious and bitter.

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"I remember that it was soldiers from your country

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"that bombed my country and took the lives

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"of my family and neighbors.

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"I determined to hate you.

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"But now after these weeks of Christian fellowship with you,

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"I have come to the conclusion that it is more important

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"to be Christian than it is to be Korean."

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Quickly, I come to the very core of our American life today

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and ask, is it a farfetched dream that America

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could someday be mature enough,

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not merely to lift the symbol of the cross

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before the conscience of mankind,

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but literally to become a cross bearer

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and as a great gigantic cross bearer,

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get beneath the load of humanity in this difficult era

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and literally swing the human race

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upward toward peace, toward brotherhood,

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toward the city of God.

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That I am persuaded would be mature living.

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Let us pray.

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May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ

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and the love of God, the Father,

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and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

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As a Jewish family gathers

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around the Passover festival table to partake

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of its symbolic foods

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and participate in the traditional service or Seder,

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the youngest of the celebrants

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will put to the oldest four questions,

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which are part of one question.

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"Why is this night

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"different from all other nights?" he asks.

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"Why do we eat only unleavened bread tonight?

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"And why only bitter herbs

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"and why dip them in salt water

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"and why recline about the table?"

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"I'm glad you asked the questions you did,"

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replies the leader, "for the story of this night

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"was just what I wanted you to know."

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And so the child's questions about the meaning

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of the symbolisms of the feast are the cues

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for the leader to retell, once more, the story

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that has been retold countless times for 30 centuries.

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The old, old story of the mighty acts of God

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in delivering his people from bondage,

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in directing their exodus

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and their wilderness years of finding themselves,

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in giving them a land where they were to dwell

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in faithfulness to his commandments.

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These remembered mighty acts of God are an outward

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and visible sign of a continuing inward

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and spiritual grace pervading their history.

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As God called them forth, made his will known to them,

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forgave their rebelliousness

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and brought them to a new self-understanding

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as his covenant people.

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For you are a people holy to the Lord your God,

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Deuteronomy reminded them.

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The Lord has chosen you not for your numbers

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or righteousness,

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or you were few and rebellious, but out of love,

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It is of his love and faithfulness

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that he has brought you out with a mighty hand

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and redeemed you from the house of bondage.

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Know, therefore, that the Lord he is God,

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the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love

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with those who love him and keep his commandments

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to a 1,000 generations.

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It is in the historical indicative

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of this gracious, faithful love

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that the imperative of the law of God

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for his people's life is rooted.

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And it is an imperative.

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Take heed lest you forget the Lord,

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direly warns Deuteronomy,

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and admonishes hell the God who is loved

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and saved will brook no apostacy of his people,

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no unfaithfulness to their covenant,

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But it is in grateful response to this prior love

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so concretely manifest in their history

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that they are to love the Lord their God,

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with all their heart and soul and might,

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to cherish his words in their heart

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and teach them diligently to their children,

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to talk of them at home and away, night and day,

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to let his words govern the work of their hands,

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the seeing of their eyes and all they're going out

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and coming in.

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They are to live in constant remembrance of

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and response to God's love and law,

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to mark the relevance of his word

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to every moment of their existence.

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Hence when the child asks his father,

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the meaning of Passover and its symbols,

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he is probing not only the Lord of long ago,

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and when as in Deuteronomy,

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your son asks you in time to come,

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what is the meaning of the testimonies

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and the statutes and the ordinances,

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which the Lord our God has commanded you?

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He is opening the way for more than interpretation

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of the commands.

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Beyond their own realization

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of the implications of their questions,

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these sons are inquiring after the source

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and meaning of the historical community

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in which they have come to selfhood

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and thus after the meaning of their lives,

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the nature and ground of their duty and their good,

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the motivation of the faithful obedience

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to which they're called.

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The sons are asking in effect, who am I?

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Who are we?

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What are we meant to be and do?

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And whence such meaning of our existence?

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Their answers grow out of their story.

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We have been saying they, as we recall their story

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and its meaning for them.

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But who are we?

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What is a meaning of our existence as a corporate body,

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the church, and as individual members thereof?

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What is the source of our historic and present community,

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the directive for our life and work,

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the motivation for our response?

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What are we meant to be and do

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both now and in the years ahead?

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These questions are not new to any of us.

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So we may rarely put them in this explicit form.

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There are fundamental questions,

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which we are always engaged in answering,

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if not in word and idea, then in life,

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in attitude, decision, action.

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And what we acknowledge as our faith,

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we too communicate.

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Let us consider now not these questions themselves,

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but some ways in which we receive

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and communicate regarding them.

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One way of dealing with them is to view ourselves

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against the Deuteronomic view of the covenant,

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the covenant people of God,

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to remember that we are they.

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Their story is our story.

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We belong to their continuing historical covenant community

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called into being and constituted by the gracious

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initiative of God and nourished, guided, rebuked

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and renewed by him down the ages until this day.

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For the old story is a continued story

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of a continuing community.

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And it has a way of being brought up to date

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over and over.

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Prophet and Psalmist and teacher

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and priest in ancient times,

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harked back repeatedly to the beginning of their story

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of God's dealing with his people

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and then brought the story up

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to date with fresh news of its current meaning,

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its claim upon them.

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And the New Testament reviews

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and reconceives the whole matter of the faithful

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witnessing community and its story to tell to the nations.

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You know its Christ's good news

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of the action of God in Jesus Christ,

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the revelation of his wisdom,

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his power and his reconciling love.

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The reconstituting of a new Israel,

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a new or renewed community of which we are members.

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And we can add the continuing revealing events

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through his spirit in the church down the centuries

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and still say the ancient story

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is the beginning of our story too.

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There is one body and one spirit

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just as you recall to the one hope

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that belongs to your call.

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One Lord, one faith, one baptism,

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one God and father of us all,

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who is above all and through all and in all.

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One of the striking aspects of the new Christian teachings

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emerging in our generation, the new yet old ones,

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may be found in the recovery of this biblical

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theological perspective on our existence.

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From a protagorean, man is the measure of all things.

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We are turning to Jeremiah's acknowledgement

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of an eternal measure of man.

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I know, oh Lord, that the way of man is not in himself.

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It is not in man that walketh to direct his own steps.

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Yet this is not, as might appear,

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a regression to Biblicism,

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to truth all laid out in words to be taken literally,

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but from between black Morocco covers.

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For what we want and have discovered to us

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and communicate with others,

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in anguishing over the fundamental questions

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of our existence, is not simply ideas or propositions,

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but ultimate reality.

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God confronting us through the ancient story

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and through and in the nurturing community,

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the living active God encountering us through the events,

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speaking to our condition now.

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God represented in the symbols of Passover,

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nay more in the symbols of Christ and his church.

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So we are not antiquarians.

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We need the answer to our existence

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in the present action of God in his community.

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This leads us to a second point regarding our learning

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and communicating the faith.

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It is primarily through the community,

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through relationships with persons,

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through participation in their activity

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that God becomes known to us.

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It is in such relationships that we come to selfhood

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in a community, carrying a culture, a tradition,

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a faith born of historic experience

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in a community of family and church,

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now illuminating life's meaning,

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now celebrating it in worship.

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A little Danish boy came into our apartment community

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a few years ago, an engaging child

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who could not speak English.

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One of the neighbors suggested sitting him down

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and instructing him in our language

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and then playing with him.

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But a younger one less sophisticated,

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less of an intellectual,

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simply went out to him in comradeship

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and involved him in play

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and let the English words fall as they might and it worked.

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The Passover story is more than words.

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It is drama.

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It is action.

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It is community.

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The meaning to the questioner and to the others

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lies deeper than words in trust, in claim,

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in commitment, in obedience,

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in the communicated or shared reverence,

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anticipation, joy, gratitude and loyalty

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on the part of elders

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in the total response of life.

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The relation between the dramatized service

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and the daily outlook and practice,

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all this catches the individual up into the past

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and present response of his community to God.

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So in the family and in the church at worship

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celebrating the festivals that mark the great days

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of the Christian here and carry its message.

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so with the family and the church,

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joining in service to others in advocacy of causes,

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in devotion to what is right,

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we find illumination, involvement,

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relationships through which God speaks,

47:29

communicates with us.

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Amos Wilder has warned us against conceiving Christianity

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as chiefly verbal and confessional proclamation.

47:43

This, he says, risks separating

47:50

God's dealing with our ears

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from his dealing with the rest of our lives.

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What God did in Christ, he says,

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was more than to announce a message.

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It was to bring a new kind of community to birth,

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to affect a new social creation.

48:08

To be a Christian, he goes on,

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to be a Christian is something that goes deeper

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than our ideas and confessions

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and deeper than our code of behavior.

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It means our incorporation in a stream of history

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and in the redemptive events, which determine that stream.

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It means belonging to a community whose members participate

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in a shared drama of the past in a revelatory history.

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This is evidently more than a matter

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of hearing the cult story preached, he continues.

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It's a matter of sharing in the cult right

48:48

and in the total life of the cult community.

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To share in his life is to appropriate the revelation

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in just as real a sense as to hear it proclaimed.

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Christians have said that this way in which God is mediated

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to the members of the community

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through the historical community, both church and family,

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means for us, the spirit of God at work.

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This is part of what we talk about

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when we mention the Holy Spirit.

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We, all of us in this chapel,

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could have much in our own lives illuminated,

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if with the eyes of faith, we could see how God has worked

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in our own past, in our family and in our church.

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If we could see how in our earliest years the love,

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the acceptance, the forgiveness of a mother and a father,

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the toleration of brothers and sisters,

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forgiveness there too.

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The sense of belonging as we move outside the family,

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and yet have it as a sort of home base

50:38

from which to meet the challenge

50:43

of a three-year-old's

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or a five-year-old's excursion into society.

50:48

The years between when,

50:55

as parts of our gangs and fellowships

50:57

and early loves, we feel accepted, belonging,

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secure, able to meet life's crises.

51:15

Could we see the spirit of God at work

51:26

in these and all other instances

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of the upbuilding of community of love?

51:36

And could we anticipate the times

51:43

when we too can be in families,

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the channels of such acceptance

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and forgiveness and love?

51:55

Yet when we've said all that the stark fact is

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that the community, both the church and the family,

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the community is a weak and selfish

52:12

and erring and sinful one too.

52:17

And that you and I, as we come to worship today,

52:21

bring bondages and hurts,

52:25

which alongside the edifications and the securities

52:29

and the forgiveness have been built into our lives.

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Built there because fathers and mothers, like us,

52:44

were not fully in the love and grace of God

52:51

and could not give fully that empowering security

52:56

and forgiveness and encouragement

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needed for the fullness of life.

53:07

And so we met life with some hurts and distortions,

53:10

some evasions, some fears and deep anxieties.

53:17

And we, in our own time, go on to perpetuate these,

53:25

perpetuate them in others to whom we communicate,

53:34

not only our faith, but our unfaith, our rebellion,

53:39

our failure, our sin.

53:46

Yet the word continues to come to us

53:51

through our story and through our community

53:56

of what God really wants us to be.

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And how, in spite of all the mess we've made,

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the failures we have endured and perpetuated,

54:12

God remakes and restores and reconciles.

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One word more on communicating our faith.

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In the Passover story, which we attended to,

54:36

and in the historic Christian Church,

54:42

there have been special ministries of leadership,

54:45

some gifts of grace, to be sure,

54:50

to apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers,

54:53

but there have been common gifts of grace,

54:58

which are all the more needed

55:03

for every member of the community

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is a mediator of the spirit.

55:09

And one can't help thinking as he contemplates

55:15

the tremendous potential of (indistinct)

55:19

of what the church might come to,

55:25

of what Christian families might come to,

55:29

if young people trained here in the religious insights

55:33

that could illuminate their lives and their life together,

55:38

could go on into the churches and into their families

55:43

to be true mediators of the word

55:48

and grace of Jesus Christ.

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Let us pray.

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Now unto him, who is able to do exceeding

56:13

abundantly above all that we ask or think,

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according to the power that worketh in us, unto him,

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be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages,

56:25

a world without end.

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Amen.

56:32

W. Arthur Kale - "The Quest for Maturity"; McMurry S. Richey - "Communicating Our Faith" (November 2, 1958)

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