James T. Cleland - "Camels and a Star" (January 8, 1961)

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-	And I was trained and our Redeemer army	0:31
	In a sermon preached in this chapel last December one	0:45
	entitled advents to Christmas.	0:51
	The suggestion was made that there should be two festivals	0:55
	of Christmas in both of which Christians would take heart.	0:59
	It as much as the closing sentences	1:08
	of that sermon were cut off over the air.	1:10
	Let me repeat them from the radio congregation.	1:15
	The first festival should be celebrated on December 25th	1:20
	the secular Santa Claus decorated streets	1:26
	to Fiesta of the winter Sol.	1:31
	The other should be celebrated on January 6th.	1:36
	The day of the festival of the epiphany belong in the east.	1:40
	The commemoration of the nativity of Christ when the about	1:47
	And maybe the wistful also would give thanks	1:54
	to God for his self revelation in Jesus Christ.	2:00
	Now it behooves me to practice what I preach therefore	2:07
	on this Sunday, nearest epi, let us turn again to Bethle.	2:14
	There are two reasons why the story of the wise men	2:24
	whom we remember on epiphany should appeal to us	2:30
	in a university community in this university community.	2:34
	First, their a of the infant	2:40
	in the manger has been interpreted	2:44
	as the showing of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.	2:48
	The shepherds may represent the humble devout Jews rejoicing	2:54
	at the appearance of the long for Messiah	3:01
	but the wise men were not Hebrews.	3:06
	They were foreigners aliens to the Commonwealth of Israel.	3:11
	So are we, for the most part	3:18
	this Bible story tells us that the Christ child was born	3:23
	for the benefit of non-Jews Wilson.	3:29
	In the second place, the Christ child was thus worshiped	3:35
	not only by the proletarian shepherds	3:40
	but by the learned magi.	3:45
	They were the intelligent here of the east.	3:49
	We too are the intelligence here.	3:57
	So it might be hard to tell from looking	4:02
	at some of it, especially just before exam, but at our best	4:05
	we in a university are a company of scholars	4:13
	the intellectual descendants, the magi.	4:18
	So let us look together at this story coming	4:23
	at it in this way, there was an Oxford university	4:26
	a Roman Catholic chaplain, who was the Bishop sheen	4:32
	of England wise, witty easy to listen to.	4:38
	He was Ronald Knox, one	4:47
	of the intellectual lights of his church	4:49
	in a short article on the intrusion of the wise men.	4:54
	He penned a phrase, which was the primary	4:59
	for this sermon star led and camel born.	5:03
	He used it to describe the journey of the human reason	5:12
	on the theological quest, the spiritual journey	5:16
	of the intelligent let's think about this phrase.	5:21
	Star led and camel born.	5:26
	We know folk who are star led.	5:32
	They have a point of reference outside of themselves	5:36
	freed from the cares and abstractions of this world	5:40
	which gives them something fixed.	5:46
	It's the norm of all their testing.	5:49
	As the wise, men were led by a star	5:53
	as the sailor plots is crossed by the pole star.	5:57
	So they too have a steady fix heavenly body	6:02
	which lets them know both where they are	6:08
	and whether they should go away	6:10
	from the relativity and confusion of my mundane standards.	6:14
	This kind of person has his eye	6:20
	on the super mundane like Browning.	6:22
	He is aware that his reach should exceed his grass	6:27
	because he knows that is what heaven is for.	6:32
	Didn't Emerson advise us to hit our wagon	6:37
	to a star now for such a person in the religious realm.	6:42
	The Christmas epiphany season is just such a point	6:48
	of reference.	6:52
	He's glad that it's brought to his remembrance once a year	6:54
	consciously and dramatically.	6:58
	He's glad that like the wise	7:01
	he too has a heavenly sanction.	7:04
	It lives him.	7:07
	It lifts him above the ordinary tenor of his birthday wave.	7:08
	SCR nephew knew that when he summoned	7:17
	up enough courage to tell the old Skinful to his face	7:21
	but the Christmas season meant to most lung the nurse.	7:26
	I'm sure I've always thought of Christmas time	7:30
	as a good time, a kind forgiving charitable pleasant time.	7:34
	The only time I know of in the long calendar	7:43
	of the year when men and women seem	7:47
	by UN consent to open their shut up hearts freely	7:50
	and to think of people below them as	7:57
	if they were really fellow passengers to the grave	8:00
	and not another race of preachers bound, other journeys	8:06
	and therefore uncle though, it has never a scrap	8:12
	of gold or silver in my pocket.	8:16
	I believe that it has done me good and will do me good.	8:20
	And I say, God bless.	8:26
	He speaks for all of us who are starlet	8:32
	but yet on the other hand, in our more conventional moments	8:39
	in our stumbling through life, as an unreal	8:51
	to so much of this such a person is not usually considered	8:56
	by us as star led, but a star eye.	9:01
	He's a star Gaer in fact	9:08
	we may even judge him by another heavenly body.	9:11
	He's a Luty from Luna, the moon and attic.	9:16
	The top story he's Mo the trouble	9:22
	with many people who hitch their wagon to a star is	9:29
	that they don't leave the rope long enough to	9:33
	allow the wagon to stay in the ground.	9:36
	And a wagon dangling	9:40
	in midair has lost its virtue that it's out of place.	9:42
	A wagon is not a D C eight, isn't even a DC three.	9:50
	This scary eyed idealism is a proclivity	9:58
	of youth and of older people who haven't grown up	10:01
	such people are in a utopian hurry.	10:08
	I know I once was young.	10:11
	Now I'm approaching second childhood.	10:15
	One of the most devastating attacks	10:19
	on the star lead was made	10:22
	by sir Charles Darwin at the Mount Holyoke convocation	10:24
	on science and human values.	10:28
	Some years ago, years an extract from his address	10:31
	which stirred wide and spirited discussion.	10:35
	He not only shook the convocation.	10:42
	He rattled it.	10:44
	Speaking of the Fu on the future of man, he said in part	10:46
	the past history of the human race	10:50
	on earth may be very loosely described	10:53
	as most of the time having been an untidy mess.	10:56
	And I see no reason whatever to expect	11:01
	that it will be different for the most part in the future.	11:04
	My general conclusion about the future	11:09
	of the world then is that it will be like the past.	11:11
	There will be a perpetual struggle	11:16
	for the means of subsistence.	11:19
	It is prosperity.	11:23
	That is the abnormal condition	11:25
	and it would take enormously more than a little good sense	11:30
	for it to be extended to the rest of the world.	11:35
	In saying this I'm leaving a sight.	11:40
	The question which I regard is extremely doubtful	11:43
	whether the human race on the whole has necessary good.	11:48
	Now, if sir Charles's grandfather	11:57
	didn't think much of the origin of the human species	11:59
	his grandson isn't too hopeful	12:04
	about the continuation of so called homo SAP in.	12:06
	Maybe it isn't enough to be star led.	12:13
	Let's try again.	12:16
	We know folk who are camel born	12:21
	perhaps this is a truer analogy	12:25
	for the kind of people we find in academic circles.	12:27
	Oh yes.	12:32
	And among the holo too	12:32
	most of us are astronomers rather than astrologers.	12:34
	We matter fact, we don't get too far	12:42
	off mother earth as far up	12:47
	as a camel's back, but no further.	12:51
	We prefer radar and direction signals	12:55
	and landing beams to a fixed star.	13:00
	We measure, we weigh, we flaw.	13:05
	We know that we accomplish more	13:12
	by perspiration than by inspiration.	13:14
	We keep on keeping on.	13:20
	Then we get a PhD or a PhD	13:23
	the academic way of accomplishing the trivial round.	13:29
	And the daily task is by trusting to a	13:33
	a camel rather than to a star in the living of life.	13:36
	We are cameleers rather than Astro loins.	13:42
	This is even true in our attitude to Christmas.	13:49
	For us, biblical criticism has analyzed the birth narratives	13:52
	until it has paralyzed them.	13:57
	The chambers of commerce have exploited the season	14:01
	until the barter	14:04
	of the marketplace has become the sign of the festival.	14:06
	Present cards visits, oh, let's skip it.	14:11
	Let's forget the Christmas myth.	14:18
	Let us Mount our camels and head in, in our direction.	14:21
	Other than Beth let's plot along.	14:24
	Not expecting too much, not surprised	14:31
	with too little let's stay near Terraferma more or less.	14:35
	Let us accept the fact that we are ordinary people	14:43
	in immersed in the ordinary routine of ordinary living	14:49
	and plot across the Sandy desert, which is ordinary life.	14:55
	But yet on the other hand, in our more inspired moments	15:04
	in our days of real fulfillment	15:13
	there's something lack something unsatisfactory	15:16
	in this approach.	15:20
	Surely this is not what life was meant to be.	15:23
	Not with any enthusiasm.	15:31
	Would we go a mile	15:34
	on this camel after all a camel is not the I ideal means	15:35
	of conveyance it's uncomfortable.	15:44
	Wearying AP to cause mild to deter, not	15:50
	for nothing is a camel called the ship of the desert.	15:57
	And that name was given before Dramamine was invented.	16:02
	Moreover, the danger in this point	16:09
	of view is that we may become camels.	16:11
	We are influenced by what we depend	16:16
	on means transform ends means become	16:18
	in the came is metamorphose into a camel.	16:25
	And the fearful thing is that some people willingly	16:35
	or unwillingly are content with the transformation.	16:38
	Stella Fisher Burgess wrote a poem about them.	16:43
	She calls it.	16:48
	I want to be a camel.	16:50
	I want to be an angel was once the lyric cry	16:53
	then let such go be angels heaven, speed them.	16:57
	But not, I, I want to be a camel and with the camel stand	17:02
	with no career, no destiny, no strategic work at hand	17:10
	for angels must on missions go and has mercy back	17:16
	and social services therefore and rushing round like, okay	17:20
	but camels feel no mighty urge nor duties pushing Palm.	17:25
	They never do committee work or haste a prayer.	17:32
	And som I want to be a camel and like a camel grace	17:36
	with majesty and dignity, my individual old pace	17:43
	oblivious to schedules and to progress I would be.	17:49
	And holy death to crisis and	17:52
	to opportunity as Tora imperturbable Seren	17:56
	in winters far and calm in spring, when	18:03
	off it drops as it not Eaton world impervious to climate	18:07
	be it peaking dust or mud, ye God's grant me	18:14
	camel's life and time to chew my could Q E D.	18:21
	But is that what we really desire to be?	18:32
	Maybe it isn't so fishing to settle for being camel born.	18:36
	Let's try just once more	18:39
	perhaps Monsignor Knox had the right idea.	18:44
	He refused to separate star led and camel born.	18:49
	He declined either alternative by conjoining them.	18:56
	The wise men were starlet and camel born.	19:04
	They were starlet.	19:11
	The norm of judgment was out with and not dependent	19:13
	on what is transitory man, race, class country.	19:18
	They recognized a place for revelation	19:27
	for God's self disclosure and therefore for inspiration	19:30
	but they were camel born.	19:37
	They had to make very human preparation	19:43
	according to their own judgment ability hill.	19:47
	They had to follow the leading	19:54
	of a star to implement the revolution	19:58
	to grasp God's self-disclosure to channel the inspiration.	20:05
	And according to holy pictures that took at least two years	20:15
	wouldn't be difficult to show the need for this combination.	20:26
	This inseparable linking in the various areas	20:30
	of our personal and corporate life in our being here	20:34
	as students in the administration of the policies	20:39
	the university in the making of a home in the construction	20:46
	and day to day carrying out of a nation's foreign policy.	20:55
	But let us look at it together in just one realm.	21:01
	One that's valid for us to examine in this chapel	21:04
	in the attempt to, to grasp that	21:11
	in Jesus Christ of Bethle God has revealed himself.	21:15
	Now, if we are not star led,	21:24
	we shall never lay hold in this.	21:27
	We have to start with the assumption that there is a God	21:31
	that he is the kind of God who would be willing to	21:38
	make a self-disclosure to himself.	21:43
	That the best self-disclosure would be	21:48
	in a person that Jesus Christ measures up	21:52
	to the kind of person we believe God up to be like.	21:59
	The fact revelation is at the very heart Christianity.	22:07
	And at Christmas, one symbol of this is a star	22:14
	but revelation by itself is not enough.	22:22
	Man has to make a conscious response.	22:28
	The star is sued by a camel driver.	22:33
	Now there are those who discover God	22:39
	almost as soon as they respond to the revelation	22:44
	the shepherd recognized God in the infant Jesus	22:52
	the same night	22:57
	as the angels appeared to the, it would be foolish.	22:58
	It would be wrong to deny the validity	23:03
	of instantaneous congression, but some	23:09
	of us are not shepherds.	23:15
	If anything, we're wise men on a journey.	23:20
	We come to the central truth of the Christmas story slowly	23:28
	by degrees, over a long period.	23:35
	Granted our willingness to accept the fact of revelation	23:42
	the star, we still must Mount and dismount	23:47
	and remount our camels daily and pursue with hope.	23:54
	The long journey we examine the Bible records	24:03
	not in ecstatic wonder, but with our minds.	24:10
	Well, as with our hearts	24:18
	we seek to understand those who admit that	24:22
	in Christ God is seen, especially the thoughtful observers	24:27
	Augustine, Alvin Wesley.	24:33
	We watch the relation of this faith to action	24:42
	in men like Grenfell, Labrador, Schweitzer of Africa.	24:47
	And we hope that one day the star will stand still for us.	24:57
	And at that place	25:13
	we shall his mouth and knee and wish then.	25:16
	And not till then, shall we offer him our treasure?	25:25
	What are they the consecration of our head	25:33
	as well as the Devo of our heart.	25:40
	That is for our faith.	25:45
	The hope for end of the theological quest	25:49
	the fulfillment of the spiritual journey	25:55
	of the intelligence who are star led	26:00
	and Tamil for our man and let us pray, oh God	26:08
	who did guide the wise men to behold by son, our Lord	26:26
	show us by heavenly light and give us grace to follow	26:32
	until we find him though the way we so that finding him	26:38
	we may rejoice and honor him and worship the	26:46
	and may God who commanded the light to shine	26:55
	out of darkness, shine evermore in your hearts to the light	26:59
	of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ.	27:08
	Our Lord.	27:15

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "Camels and a Star" (January 8, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4vd6t62t

Date:

January 8, 1961

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0129
ref5462_1ts
uachapelsermaud
duke:628422
dcrau002148
ark:/87924/r4vd6t62t
5207c60b-5c43-471a-adf7-3c5419d509df

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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James T. Cleland - "Camels and a Star" (January 8, 1961)

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