James A. Jones - "The Marks of Honor" (June 7, 1959)
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| (static noise) | 0:03 | |
| (metal clanking) | 0:09 | |
| (footsteps shuffling) | 0:14 | |
| (static noise) | 0:19 | |
| (footsteps shuffling) | 0:30 | |
| - | There are two things which I wish | 0:34 |
| first of all, to say preliminarily. | 0:36 | |
| First, that I am particularly grateful | 0:41 | |
| for the privilege of sharing | 0:43 | |
| in this significant occasion. | 0:45 | |
| For many of you | 0:50 | |
| who are in the service of worship this morning, | 0:51 | |
| you have come to one of those peaks | 0:54 | |
| in the ever ascending range of the mountains of life. | 0:57 | |
| And we are here with you to rejoice | 1:04 | |
| and for you to offer our prayers and good wishes. | 1:08 | |
| For parents particularly, | 1:14 | |
| this is a time when recollection is augmented in its joys | 1:17 | |
| by the splendor of prospects which lie | 1:22 | |
| before the members of the church in your own house. | 1:25 | |
| And for the university itself, | 1:31 | |
| this really is a time when once more, | 1:35 | |
| it has completed a share of the job which is assigned to it. | 1:38 | |
| So, because of the meaningfulness of the day, | 1:45 | |
| I express my gratitude for the opportunity to join in. | 1:50 | |
| The second thing I wish to say is this, | 1:56 | |
| there haven't been many baccalaureate seasons | 2:00 | |
| in the last good many years, which I have not attended. | 2:03 | |
| Seeing that we have a rather sizeable family | 2:09 | |
| as families go today, | 2:12 | |
| that they have moved at least a few of them into maturity | 2:15 | |
| and some of them into later adolescence. | 2:18 | |
| I have been a part of commencement seasons | 2:22 | |
| it seems as though | 2:25 | |
| since the mind of man runneth not to the contrary. | 2:27 | |
| And I've always been disturbed by one fact, | 2:31 | |
| that speakers are disposed to say | 2:36 | |
| that what they have in mind to declare | 2:40 | |
| is reserved to students | 2:43 | |
| who sit immediately in front of them. | 2:45 | |
| There is no room for spectators in the worship of God. | 2:51 | |
| And that is the purpose by which here we are assembled. | 2:58 | |
| I presume to think that the theme | 3:04 | |
| to which we turn our attention, | 3:06 | |
| is a theme that engages us, everyone | 3:10 | |
| else we would not be here. | 3:13 | |
| That is to discern, if we may, | 3:16 | |
| in the hope of making the fact real in our lives, | 3:20 | |
| what are the marks of honor. | 3:24 | |
| One of the basic troubles about time is the trouble | 3:31 | |
| that comes from our lack of facility in communication. | 3:36 | |
| And one of the key three, | 3:40 | |
| so that particular difficulty is semantic. | 3:41 | |
| We simply do not understand where, | 3:46 | |
| so that when one political philosophy for instance | 3:51 | |
| uses the term Republic, it means one faith. | 3:54 | |
| When a contradictory political philosophy | 3:59 | |
| uses the term it means something entirely up. | 4:02 | |
| When we use the term freedom in this land of the free | 4:08 | |
| and home of the brave. | 4:12 | |
| We may well mean since we have a background of Liberty, | 4:14 | |
| the right to certain cherish imminence, | 4:20 | |
| or the privilege to enjoy specific luxury. | 4:23 | |
| The most of the world freedom means the opportunity | 4:29 | |
| to go to bed without being hungry, | 4:32 | |
| ought to be delivered from the haunting prospect, | 4:36 | |
| all the knock on the door in the dark of the night. | 4:40 | |
| So, it is with a word honor. | 4:45 | |
| Generally, we mean that it is composed of industry | 4:48 | |
| and reliability and the common role of decency | 4:53 | |
| in our accepted use of the word. | 4:59 | |
| Now, my preference this morning is to give body to | 5:04 | |
| that word in the hope that we may really understand | 5:08 | |
| what is the quest of the honorable. | 5:15 | |
| There are many places to look to find description. | 5:21 | |
| I turned to the 139th Psalm. | 5:25 | |
| The Psalm book next to the revelation one has in | 5:30 | |
| the new Testament is for those of us so Christians. | 5:33 | |
| The dearest and most profound of all books, | 5:37 | |
| here are the problems of the human mind and | 5:42 | |
| the perplexities of the human spirit. | 5:46 | |
| Stand out in boldest relief. | 5:49 | |
| Here is uncompromising | 5:54 | |
| and at times irreverent dishonest. | 5:57 | |
| Here is a frank statement. | 6:02 | |
| That man is brought up against apprehensions and confronted | 6:05 | |
| with adversities, | 6:11 | |
| for which the resources of his spirit are not competent. | 6:13 | |
| And the 139th Psalm is the confession of | 6:19 | |
| a perplexed and of an honorable man. | 6:23 | |
| Primarily it says two things. | 6:29 | |
| The two things which are basic to all religions, | 6:32 | |
| one of them is that God is in the midst of life, | 6:37 | |
| no remote detached spirit, | 6:43 | |
| unconcerned with the troubles of this fractured Earth. | 6:48 | |
| Not dwelling in lucid interspace world and world | 6:53 | |
| where never creeps a cloud, nor moves a wind. | 6:59 | |
| Nor ever sound of human sorrow mouths | 7:02 | |
| to mar his sacred everlasting call. | 7:06 | |
| He is here in it, | 7:11 | |
| up to the neck, if we may say or better still, | 7:14 | |
| up to our cloths. | 7:19 | |
| The second fact is, | 7:23 | |
| that a man can come for God, | 7:26 | |
| not only is God in the midst of life, | 7:31 | |
| but life that is faithful and venturesome and honorable. | 7:34 | |
| Can count for him. | 7:41 | |
| But how? | 7:46 | |
| Three things come out of this Psalm | 7:49 | |
| particularly in it's closing versus, | 7:52 | |
| the first mark of an honorable man is | 7:56 | |
| that he is capable of a genuine hate. | 8:00 | |
| Do not, I hate them all or all that hate be. | 8:08 | |
| Well, I recognize that this is the all the, | 8:15 | |
| so that word love, | 8:18 | |
| which we bound bandy about with such promiscuity today, | 8:20 | |
| I recognize as well that in this systematic time, | 8:26 | |
| it is not proper to plea bar antagonism, | 8:30 | |
| which can lend man from man and | 8:34 | |
| separate Reverend within the same house. | 8:37 | |
| But there is an urgency upon us my friends, | 8:41 | |
| that we learn that in the world there is what | 8:45 | |
| Willa Cather calls creative hate. | 8:48 | |
| In her novel, The Song of the Lark, | 8:54 | |
| she makes one of her characters to say, | 8:56 | |
| if you love the good thing, | 8:59 | |
| vitally enough to give up for it all but one must give up. | 9:02 | |
| Then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. | 9:08 | |
| I tell you, she proceeds. | 9:15 | |
| I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate, | 9:18 | |
| a contempt that drives you to fight, | 9:23 | |
| makes you risk everything, costs everything. | 9:28 | |
| In the end makes you a long sight, | 9:33 | |
| better than ever you thought you could be. | 9:38 | |
| Well, in our day, | 9:44 | |
| the problem is that we have robbed tolerance of it's rigor, | 9:47 | |
| and we have made the strangest bedfellows | 9:53 | |
| of contradictory notions. | 9:57 | |
| We have an epigram which affirms, | 10:00 | |
| that a man is known by his friend, as indeed he is, | 10:03 | |
| but there is another side to that fact. | 10:09 | |
| He is known as well by his enemy. | 10:12 | |
| Not only those with whom he stabbed, | 10:18 | |
| But those against whom he stands. | 10:23 | |
| Not only the principles, | 10:27 | |
| which he espouses with a full measure of his devotion, | 10:30 | |
| but the principles which he | 10:35 | |
| despises with the full resources of his personnel. | 10:36 | |
| Johnny Hutton, one time minister of Westminster Church at | 10:43 | |
| Buckingham Gate, long time editor, the British weekly, | 10:46 | |
| put it all in a sense, in a phrase when he said, | 10:51 | |
| a man must be one thing or the other. | 10:55 | |
| Violent if need be, | 11:00 | |
| you see, this is our problem. | 11:05 | |
| The public health officer is all for pure war | 11:10 | |
| But he also all against contaminated water | 11:17 | |
| here in North Carolina, more than two generations ago now | 11:23 | |
| a man went across the state in behalf of education | 11:28 | |
| and he found himself championing every procedure | 11:35 | |
| that would push back the frontiers of the minds of people | 11:39 | |
| in this state. | 11:43 | |
| in the process, he found himself a raid, | 11:45 | |
| not only with those who believed in education, | 11:49 | |
| but against those who put hurdles in it's path. | 11:54 | |
| And the same kind of problem will confront all of us so long | 12:02 | |
| as we make this Pilgrim journey of life, | 12:07 | |
| we need to be delivered from the mood that says, | 12:13 | |
| whatever one must do, one must not rock the boat. | 12:16 | |
| Don't for the sake of good taste and decency make a scene. | 12:23 | |
| Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you. | 12:30 | |
| That the human race has gone powerless in the hearts and | 12:33 | |
| on the shoulders of men and women who dare to rock the boat. | 12:38 | |
| And do in spite of the innocuous proprieties | 12:44 | |
| of a quiet time. | 12:48 | |
| But quite willing to make a scene. | 12:50 | |
| So, I ask the question, not primarily what are we far, | 12:57 | |
| but without reserve and without regret, | 13:04 | |
| what are we against? | 13:10 | |
| But there's a second thing. | 13:18 | |
| Do not hate them, oh, Lord that take thee. | 13:20 | |
| Am I not greed with those that rise up against thee. | 13:24 | |
| I hate them with a prepping tape. | 13:28 | |
| I count them mine own images. | 13:33 | |
| This is the word of a man who's good and full. | 13:39 | |
| This is the word of a man who not contemplating life. | 13:44 | |
| He's preparing some way or other to make | 13:47 | |
| a conquest of it or be defeated by it. | 13:50 | |
| This is not just a point of view. | 13:55 | |
| This is a call to a procedure, | 13:58 | |
| a set of Hayes, | 14:03 | |
| to get on with duty. | 14:07 | |
| We know, of course, | 14:13 | |
| even those of us who graduated some years ago, | 14:15 | |
| that many of the significant educational processes | 14:18 | |
| do not go on in the classroom. | 14:23 | |
| They go on in what we used to call, | 14:26 | |
| I do not know what they call them now, | 14:28 | |
| but they used to be called bull sessions. | 14:30 | |
| Perhaps they've been adorned with the nomenclature | 14:33 | |
| given to it by psychology now in group dynamics. | 14:36 | |
| Are ecclesiastically, are academically | 14:42 | |
| given even the more respectable term, | 14:45 | |
| to what we call a panel discussion. | 14:47 | |
| But, the truth about the business is we learn as we discuss | 14:50 | |
| methods between ourselves. | 14:55 | |
| Where the alert, the vigorous, | 14:58 | |
| the dedicated mind bounces it points of view | 15:02 | |
| off against the intelligence about, well, | 15:08 | |
| now this is virtual, but in the moral realm, | 15:13 | |
| every virtue has its corresponding vice | 15:16 | |
| and there is vice to be found here. | 15:20 | |
| The vice are discussing the map. | 15:25 | |
| The point that one uses discussion as the delayed tactic to | 15:29 | |
| be delivered from the embarrassment and the adversity of | 15:36 | |
| doing anything about the question. | 15:40 | |
| Of holding back would that calculating move | 15:45 | |
| until all the answers read, | 15:49 | |
| are being discerned or a sophisticate. | 15:52 | |
| Sophisticate and not really running off the end the roll. | 15:57 | |
| Edmund Burke, who was any historian knows, | 16:05 | |
| had some other traits of his character | 16:08 | |
| at least had the trait of saying some | 16:11 | |
| significant things attractiveness. | 16:14 | |
| And what in the midst of political | 16:17 | |
| and military and economic adversity. | 16:21 | |
| He stood before his colleagues in England and said, | 16:24 | |
| I am come to a time of life in which it is not permitted | 16:28 | |
| that we should trifle for with our existence. | 16:35 | |
| I am fallen into a state of the world, | 16:41 | |
| he continued that will not suffer me to play at | 16:43 | |
| liberal sports or to enfeeble the part I am bound to play | 16:48 | |
| by smaller collateral consideration. | 16:55 | |
| The moral state of mankind fills me with dismay and horror, | 16:59 | |
| the abyss of hell itself, | 17:06 | |
| seems to yawn before it. | 17:09 | |
| I'm a must fake, feel | 17:12 | |
| and act according to the exigencies of this tremendous seat. | 17:16 | |
| Well, if that was a work his day, how apt is it for us? | 17:28 | |
| How much treachery is to be found all about us | 17:35 | |
| in men and women like ourselves. | 17:40 | |
| And even in us, time and again, | 17:44 | |
| who play at little sports and gets the paid feeling | 17:47 | |
| and deed at life smaller and collateral consideration. | 17:55 | |
| Cause no man has the right to that arrogant | 18:03 | |
| thought of you that claims to know it all, | 18:06 | |
| to have every answer to every question. | 18:10 | |
| Life doesn't insist that we answer the question. | 18:14 | |
| It only insists that we try. | 18:19 | |
| In Kabbalah and illustration immediately at hand, | 18:25 | |
| the Duke hospital is always in quest for | 18:29 | |
| new and better measures of treating disease. | 18:33 | |
| But, what a slander on the honored name of a hospital, | 18:38 | |
| if the physician did nothing at all | 18:43 | |
| until he was assured by the research pathologist | 18:47 | |
| that here sir, is the ultimate word, | 18:50 | |
| but after the treatment can only be symptomatic. | 18:56 | |
| Who knows, since ease of pain, maybe cure of pain, | 19:00 | |
| but at least the man must try and you must try personally. | 19:06 | |
| Haunting us today is the moral risk of leisure. | 19:16 | |
| We have the combination that produces | 19:21 | |
| remarkably because of our technological skills. | 19:24 | |
| We have produced a nation that can do more than the world | 19:28 | |
| ever imagined could be done in the | 19:32 | |
| space of a few hours a week. | 19:34 | |
| This may be one of the true heavens before the moral fiber | 19:38 | |
| of the America of our children, | 19:42 | |
| but there is another point of view, belonging to leisure. | 19:47 | |
| And that is the idea that one must sit loosely, | 19:50 | |
| He must take it easy. | 19:55 | |
| This part of you has begun to spill over into the | 19:59 | |
| whole of life until we imagined that we | 20:02 | |
| cannot really get involved in the duty. | 20:06 | |
| The end of which is not clearly in view. | 20:10 | |
| And with the end, finding satisfaction for ourselves. | 20:14 | |
| In our easy going, ease-loving times, | 20:22 | |
| we need to remember that along every | 20:27 | |
| step of the way of life, there is this sign. | 20:30 | |
| No mercy. | 20:36 | |
| You have two sorts of people, | 20:43 | |
| whether in the church or out of it, | 20:44 | |
| whether under God or not, | 20:47 | |
| whether at the top of the heap or halfway down | 20:50 | |
| or at the bottom, two sorts who always ask of life, | 20:53 | |
| what is in it for me? | 20:59 | |
| Or what is in it from me? | 21:03 | |
| And here, honor draws it's line, | 21:11 | |
| we shall not solve all the issues, | 21:17 | |
| but at least we shall be in the frame. | 21:21 | |
| The third thing, | 21:28 | |
| the honorable man is a man who's capable of a genuine hate, | 21:31 | |
| who is beset with a sense of hate | 21:36 | |
| and will let me preserve the pattern of preachers | 21:41 | |
| time and again, simply to make remembrance easy. | 21:44 | |
| Here the individual who was marked with an unwary poll, | 21:48 | |
| the Psalm ends with a prayer, | 21:54 | |
| lead me in the way everlasting. | 21:57 | |
| Honor has it's passion, | 22:03 | |
| it has it's duty. | 22:06 | |
| It also has it's Psalm. | 22:09 | |
| You notice the Psalm is dependent upon God to | 22:13 | |
| lead him in the way everlasting. | 22:16 | |
| This is one of those profound insights of | 22:20 | |
| this remarkable book, because religion has known | 22:23 | |
| all along the treck of man's journey. | 22:29 | |
| That it's only music is the music of pain. | 22:33 | |
| The true discernment is not to be found simply among those | 22:42 | |
| who know not primarily, | 22:45 | |
| but to be found among those who believe | 22:49 | |
| and who believing, proceed. | 22:54 | |
| We may not know the way and who does, | 22:59 | |
| who knows how to resolve the tangle issues, | 23:03 | |
| which beset our frightened time. | 23:06 | |
| Who could rise at any forum of international affairs | 23:10 | |
| are to go no further than our own state, | 23:14 | |
| for some of us native state. | 23:16 | |
| And say, this is the way in which to | 23:19 | |
| walk and all the issues shall beset. | 23:21 | |
| We do not know, but we have song because we know God knows. | 23:25 | |
| And we have song because we believe | 23:34 | |
| that there is a way everlasting. | 23:38 | |
| For each of us, private and personally, | 23:44 | |
| and for all of us, socially and pup, | 23:51 | |
| this means that man is not loose in the world. | 23:56 | |
| It means also he is not alone. | 23:59 | |
| One came 2000 years ago now, | 24:04 | |
| who had some convictions you will recall, | 24:09 | |
| convictions that seemed to make him | 24:13 | |
| enemy of many in his own generation. | 24:16 | |
| And one of the terrifying things about Jesus | 24:20 | |
| and his ministry in the world is that | 24:25 | |
| a man can take his stand against him and | 24:28 | |
| swear at him in his face and Jesus let's him do it. | 24:31 | |
| He came and made his enemies, | 24:39 | |
| he came and had his duties and kept two of them. | 24:43 | |
| He kept two of them to the end | 24:47 | |
| and those who knew him best. | 24:51 | |
| And those who knew the world in which they live called him, | 24:54 | |
| the way. | 25:00 | |
| Let me be personal, several years ago on | 25:05 | |
| an assignment for a mission agency, I was in central Africa. | 25:08 | |
| I took time off from duty and went hunting. | 25:14 | |
| I found myself late in the afternoon, | 25:18 | |
| far from the camp and with no sense of direction and | 25:20 | |
| incapable even of asking my native guide how to proceed. | 25:24 | |
| So, I scampered out and the little I knew of the | 25:29 | |
| native dialect and inquired about the way to the camp. | 25:33 | |
| And I shall never forget how he answered, | 25:38 | |
| he pointed to himself and said, | 25:42 | |
| one of the words I knew, | 25:44 | |
| which was the word in Sheila meaning path. | 25:45 | |
| And his own name, | 25:49 | |
| which was in Guinea | 25:50 | |
| and pointing to himself, said, | 25:53 | |
| Sheila God. | 25:56 | |
| And as the night came, | 26:01 | |
| darkness covered the face of the Earth | 26:05 | |
| and I literally knew not which way to turn, | 26:07 | |
| I followed him as the path | 26:11 | |
| and I came to camp. | 26:16 | |
| Well, I propose him as the way of honor | 26:22 | |
| and keeping faith with him as life's noblest purpose. | 26:27 | |
| Well, if he is the way, under the God for us all, | 26:33 | |
| then we should learn the way of proper passion | 26:41 | |
| and holy duty. | 26:48 | |
| And on this made hope | 26:52 | |
| and we can walk this Pilgrim path with confidence | 26:58 | |
| and urgency | 27:05 | |
| and courage. | 27:08 | |
| Let us pray. | 27:15 | |
| Grant to us grace oh Lord, | 27:23 | |
| to find thy will for our lives and to serve thee | 27:26 | |
| with fullness of devotion. | 27:29 | |
| And now may the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, | 27:33 | |
| the love of God, | 27:38 | |
| the fellowship of the holy spirit be and the bide with us | 27:40 | |
| and with all whom we love and with all | 27:46 | |
| who love thy kingdom everywhere, | 27:49 | |
| forevermore. | 27:54 | |
| (static noise) | 27:57 | |
| (soft choir music) | 28:03 | |
| (choir music intensifies) | 28:11 | |
| (choir vocalizing) | 28:21 | |
| (choir music crescendos) | 28:36 | |
| (soft choir music) | 28:44 | |
| (choir music fades) | 29:06 | |
| (static noise) | 29:13 | |
| (distant bell chiming) | 29:21 | |
| (upbeat organ playing) | 29:35 | |
| (organ music intensifies) | 30:17 | |
| (static noise) | 30:31 |