James T. Cleland - "The Sin of Ingratitude" (July 2, 1961)

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-	Let us pray.	0:13
	Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts	0:17
	be acceptable in thy sight.	0:22
	Oh Lord, our strength, and our Redeemer, amen.	0:26
	Haven't we all discovered, in our reading,	0:39
	required or desultory, that once in a while,	0:44
	we are jarred by something which hurts,	0:50
	laid hold on by something which will not let us go,	0:57
	until we do something about it.	1:02
	We may frown at it, or we may curse it.	1:07
	We may read it to a long, suffering roommate,	1:13
	or we may write a letter to the editor about it.	1:17
	We may throw the disturbing book or paper	1:23
	into the wastebasket, only to fish it out again,	1:29
	to read the surprising paragraph or sentence once more.	1:34
	In such a situation,	1:43
	a preacher writes a sermon about it.	1:45
	That is how this family came into being,	1:50
	because of a story published in a magazine	1:54
	at the end of last year.	1:58
	Here is the story more or less as printed.	2:00
	"A steamer sank in the lake near Chicago.	2:06
	Only 32 persons were rescued, all women.	2:13
	They were saved because of the efforts of one man	2:20
	who swam back and forth between the shore and the ship,	2:25
	rescuing one passenger on each trip.	2:31
	As a result of exhaustion and exposure,	2:37
	the rescuer had to be taken to hospital	2:41
	where he died six weeks later."	2:45
	For now I quote, verbatim,	2:51
	It is said that between the time	2:54
	when he was taken to the hospital	2:58
	and the day of his death,	3:01
	not one of the 32 persons whom he had saved	3:05
	sent a word of thanks, a flower,	3:09
	or even inquired as to his condition.	3:14
	Now we may rightly say that	3:22
	this is a mellow, dramatic incident,	3:24
	an exceptional occurrence,	3:27
	maybe even a lured overstatement of what actually happened.	3:31
	Even so it is indicative of a not uncommon attitude.	3:39
	Many of us could vouch for its possibility,	3:46
	it's probability, even its actuality.	3:50
	We have been on the receiving end of ingratitude.	3:57
	We may, God forgive us, have been on the delivering end.	4:05
	The fact and the fearfulness of ingratitude	4:13
	haunted Shakespeare, judging	4:18
	from his numerous allusions to it.	4:21
	Blow, blow though winter wind	4:25
	though art not so unkind as man's ingratitude.	4:29
	That's an as you like.	4:35
	Or recall these words from Julius Caesar,	4:37
	"For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.	4:41
	Judge, O you gods, how, dearly Caesar loved him.	4:48
	This was the most unkindest cut of all,	4:54
	for when the noble Caesar saw him stab	4:59
	ingratitude more strong than traitors arms	5:04
	quite vanquished him, then burst his mighty heart."	5:08
	King Lear who had some cause to know,	5:18
	referred to ingratitude as that thou marble-hearted fiend.	5:22
	Well, it's hardly less prevalent in the 20th century,	5:30
	Shakespeare would have a field day with it in our times.	5:35
	Now, what are the symptoms of this disease?	5:41
	The indications of ingratitude in a person,	5:44
	or sometimes it's seen	5:52
	in a general attitude of carelessness,	5:53
	which while meaning well,	5:59
	results in neglectfulness	6:01
	because of putting off til tomorrow,	6:03
	what should be done today.	6:07
	Sometimes it's evidenced in a casualness about	6:12
	what others have a right to expect	6:16
	of a fellow human being.	6:20
	Because one has never learned to discipline,	6:24
	to order his life in relation to others.	6:27
	Again, it may be due to downright thoughtlessness,	6:34
	which leads to discourtesy	6:39
	through the failure to imagine oneself	6:42
	in the place of another.	6:46
	Ingratitude betokens an err of insensibility	6:51
	with regard to others,	6:56
	a want to feeling for others,	6:59
	and insensitiveness to Tom, Dick, and Harry,	7:04
	to Martha, Mary, and Margaret.	7:07
	Small boy scout in a Glasgow tram car once rose	7:14
	and gave a lady his seat.	7:19
	She sat down heavily without any acknowledgement	7:23
	of the useful courtesy.	7:28
	The diminutive scout looked at her and said,	7:31
	"I beg your pardon."	7:35
	The lady answered, "I didn't say anything."	7:38
	"Oh," was the reply,	7:43
	"I thought you said thank you."	7:45
	Now, the boy should properly have been spanked,	7:50
	but the surly female was properly squashed.	7:56
	Ingratitude is a witting or unwitting viking of the hand	8:02
	that feeds one.	8:08
	Now, what's the cause, the radical origin of the disease?	8:12
	It's a self-centeredness which focuses upon the self	8:20
	as the hub of reality.	8:25
	Now, self-preservation is certainly necessary	8:30
	for the ongoing of life.	8:35
	Jesus accepted self-love.	8:39
	But the whole Maurice of Western civilization stemming	8:44
	from Greece, from Rome, from Palestine, have	8:49
	never individual self survival on this earth	8:54
	as ultimate, as the good.	9:00
	The nation, the state, the race,	9:05
	the family, have claims on the individual,	9:08
	and yet the world owes me, in the singular,	9:13
	a living is a prevalent attitude.	9:19
	Now, search ingratitude is at bottom no casual affair,	9:25
	no mere matter of unmannerliness or social lapse.	9:31
	Shakespeare pierces to its awfulness in 12th night,	9:39
	where Viola says, "I hate ingratitude,	9:45
	more in a man than lying venous, babbling drunkenness,	9:52
	or any taint of vice whose strong corruption inhabits	10:01
	our frail blood."	10:08
	Now, Viola, maybe whimsically, goes to the root	10:11
	of the matter, ingratitude is a sin of the spirit,	10:14
	for is one whole mark of a person who is irreligious.	10:21
	Certainly, non-Christian in everything but output fashion.	10:27
	Now, I think this fact is often overlooked	10:34
	because ingratitude is in external appearance,	10:37
	a sin of omission, rather than one of commission.	10:42
	Yep, it is one expression of self-centerdness,	10:51
	which is the enemy of the Christian faith.	10:57
	Now, what's the remedy?	11:06
	It varies, social pressure,	11:09
	intelligent self-interest, Madison Avenue politeness,	11:17
	humanistic fellow feeling.	11:27
	They can all help us to overcome this fault,	11:30
	but in so far as we look for the remedy in Christian terms,	11:33
	and we must in this chapel,	11:41
	it lies in an understanding of what the Christian faith	11:45
	is all about.	11:49
	Why does a person become a Christian?	11:53
	What makes him that way?	12:00
	What convinces him that the Christian way is the point	12:05
	of view by which he wishes to live?	12:10
	Now, let us forget about tradition, and environment,	12:13
	and happenstance, and dig down to the root.	12:19
	Let us put an answer into one short sentence,	12:24
	and then try to unravel it.	12:28
	Christian behavior is the consequence of gratitude	12:33
	responding to grace.	12:41
	Christian behavior is the consequence of gratitude	12:47
	responding to grace.	12:53
	Now, that at a first hearing,	12:55
	is about as clear as mud, so let's try to clarify it.	12:57
	New Testament writers are unanimous at one point,	13:03
	a Christian is what he is	13:10
	because he wants to make his whole life	13:15
	a thank you to God.	13:21
	Now, that's because of what God has done for him,	13:26
	as it became peakened in Jesus, the Christ.	13:30
	What the teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus did was	13:33
	to make evident something	13:38
	that should always have been obvious, God cares for man.	13:41
	He's full of Goodwill toward man.	13:49
	He accepts man as worthwhile,	13:54
	despite all his failings and weaknesses and foolishness.	13:58
	That's what lies behind and within the Parables	14:06
	of The Lost Sheep, The Lost Coin, and The Lost Boy.	14:09
	All God wants man to believe is that God cares.	14:18
	Oh, God wants man to say his thank you to Him.	14:26
	All God wants man to do is to express	14:33
	that caring attitude toward (indistinct).	14:37
	Now, the realization of this is what changed Paul	14:43
	from a Pharisee legalist who called God sir,	14:48
	into a churchful son who called God Father.	14:53
	Listen to him as he tells the church of Rome	14:58
	what nonplussed him into becoming a Christian.	15:02
	For when we were still in weakness, Christ died in due time	15:08
	for the ungodly.	15:15
	For the ungodly exclamation point.	15:20
	Why a man will hardly die for the just,	15:24
	though one might bring himself to die,	15:30
	if need be, for a good man,	15:34
	but God proves His love for us by this,	15:38
	that Christ died for us	15:44
	when we were still sinners.	15:48
	Why are we grateful to God?	15:54
	Because He first loved us.	15:58
	That's the truth in the old children's hymn,	16:03
	"Count Your Blessings, Name Them One By One,	16:07
	and It Will Surprise You, What The Lord Has Done."	16:12
	But there's also a horizontal dimension,	16:19
	that's the vertical dimension, relationship between God	16:22
	and man, but there's also a horizontal dimension.	16:25
	We express our gratitude to God, not only by loving him,	16:29
	but by loving other human beings also.	16:34
	We love them even when they are not particularly lovely,	16:41
	because God loves us.	16:51
	After all, as Paul pointed out, God loved us	16:54
	when we weren't particularly lovely.	16:59
	One way in which we can show ourselves as Christian	17:03
	is by concern for others, Jesus said so.	17:07
	He made it clear that he wasn't talking	17:11
	about loving our pins folk, our friends,	17:13
	our own kind folk are nice to us.	17:16
	No, you must love your enemies and help them.	17:20
	Then you will have a rich reward,	17:28
	you will be sons of the Most High,	17:32
	for He is kind, even to the ungrateful and the evil.	17:39
	And John, commenting on that said, "If anyone declares,	17:48
	"I love God," and yet hates his brother, he is a liar.	17:53
	Now, that's a flat enough statement, isn't it?	18:05
	The horizontal implication and application is graciousness	18:09
	to others, that is the coronary of gratitude to God.	18:15
	Do you grasp now why Christian behavior is the consequence	18:21
	of gratitude responding to grace?	18:27
	All right, even if that is the remedy,	18:35
	how can we make it work?	18:38
	What's the mode of treatment?	18:40
	How can we help to make this thankfulness,	18:44
	so that will be freed from the sin of ingratitude?	18:47
	Well, first of all,	18:52
	we can show our thankfulness by consciously remembering it	18:54
	in our worship, corporate and private.	18:59
	If it's true, and it is, that confession	19:05
	has an essential part in all prayer.	19:12
	It is also true that Thanksgiving	19:18
	has an equally essential place.	19:22
	Now, this we're conscious of at special time.	19:26
	In late November, we give public thanks for the harvest.	19:30
	In the Church of Scotland,	19:37
	the sacrament of the Lord's supper is always followed	19:38
	in the evening by what is called the Thanksgiving Service.	19:42
	Thanksgiving for the table spread that day for our benefit.	19:47
	And that service in the evening always concludes	19:53
	with a hallelujah chorus.	19:58
	But in all services of public worship, yes,	20:02
	and in the quiet of our own rooms with the door shut,	20:06
	the element of Thanksgiving should not be forgotten.	20:12
	More than that, we should remember others	20:18
	before the throne of grace,	20:22
	that's the reason for the prayer of intercession.	20:24
	If we can just recall these people as individuals,	20:29
	the man who comes to church alone,	20:35
	because his wife is a Roman Catholic.	20:40
	The lady with the aristocratic air and the troubled heart.	20:45
	The boy or girl whose mother is about	20:54
	to undergo surgery in the hospital.	20:58
	Yes, if we recall them as individuals,	21:02
	instead of lumping them all together	21:05
	in a general intercession,	21:07
	we shall more likely consider each with gratitude	21:11
	when we think of them outside of the terms	21:15
	and the times of prayer.	21:18
	It's more difficult to be thoughtless of others	21:22
	if we have shared our grateful remembrance of them with God,	21:28
	who is the author of our thankfulness.	21:35
	And then second, let us act on our gratitude	21:40
	in word and in deed.	21:46
	Oh, with a letter, with a phone call, with a gift,	21:49
	with a visit, an act of kindness may have a chain reaction.	21:58
	It can beget gratitude in us and in others.	22:06
	I happen to have practically no anti-Jewish feeling.	22:14
	Now, why?	22:20
	It's partly tradition.	22:21
	Harry Golden, that false, staffy and Charlotte editor,	22:25
	wrote me recently saying that Scotland is one,	22:31
	if not the one country in the world,	22:35
	which has no history of antisemitism.	22:39
	Jew and Scott joyfully shocked in their wits on each other.	22:45
	You know the definition of perpetual motion.	22:54
	It's a Jew chasing a Scotsman for an overdue account.	22:58
	(congregation laughing)	23:02
	But pen more to the point, I was saved	23:07
	from drowning by a Jewish classmate,	23:11
	with the wonderful name to me of Jackie Paradise.	23:15
	Now, similarly, I seem to have no anti-Negro feeling.	23:22
	My introduction to the Negro in the South was tendered me	23:27
	by a large, colored, truck driver, who changed a wheel	23:31
	on the Chevrolet as my wife	23:37
	and I were coming to settle in Durham.	23:40
	I can still recall my despair somewhere near Lynchburg,	23:44
	as my feeble jack would not raised the overloaded car.	23:49
	And I recall the ease with which the truck driver,	23:57
	with his jack, completed the operation in under 10 minutes.	24:01
	I also remember that he refused any payment.	24:08
	Now, that Jewish classmate and that colored driver	24:14
	may not have been consciously inspired by gratitude to God	24:21
	in their magnanimous response to me,	24:27
	but I was forced back.	24:32
	On an analysis of my own behavior	24:35
	and my motivation as a Christian, love for one's fellas	24:40
	of any race, of any color, is the oil which keeps	24:48
	the machinery of social life from creaking and rusting.	24:54
	Christian commitment behooves us to act in gratitude.	25:03
	It transforms in these capable neighborliness,	25:11
	into conscious brotherhood, by rendering cheerful,	25:17
	willing service to others.	25:23
	These are two ways then, of applying gratitude,	25:27
	responding to grace, vertically, in our prayers,	25:31
	horizontally, in our social behavior.	25:37
	Why was Luke 17:11-19 read as our scripture lesson?	25:46
	The story about how Lord healing 10 lepers,	25:57
	one came back to express his gratitude.	26:04
	And he to add an awkward touch to the story,	26:12
	was not a kosher Jew, but a half breed Samaritan.	26:17
	And Jesus' comment was	26:25
	"When there are 10 men healed,	26:29
	where are the other nine?	26:37
	Is nobody going to turn and praise God	26:41
	for what has been done except this stranger?"	26:45
	It isn't a degree encouraging to know	26:54
	that one out of 10 said thank you.	26:57
	It's also disconcerting to know	27:05
	that only one out of 10 said thank you.	27:08
	That Chicago incident with which this sermon began	27:18
	would have been no surprise to our Lord,	27:26
	though it would have caused him continuing embarrassment.	27:33
	Amen, let us pray.	27:43
	Oh, might God, our Father,	27:52
	you are full of grace toward the children of men,	27:55
	even when they don't deserve it.	27:59
	Teach us to understand and to accept thy goodwill,	28:03
	in great thankfulness, that our lives may be prayers	28:07
	of thanksgiving to thee, and acts of gratitude	28:13
	to our fellows.	28:17
	Through Jesus Christ, thy word of grace become flesh,	28:20
	even our Lord, and may the blessing	28:26
	of the Lord come upon you abundantly.	28:30
	May it keep you strong and tranquil	28:35
	in the truth of His promises through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	28:39
	(soft music)	28:47
	♪ Oh ♪	28:52
	♪ Oh ♪	28:57
	♪ Oh ♪	29:01
	♪ Oh ♪	29:06
	♪ Oh ♪	29:12
	♪ Oh ♪	29:14

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "The Sin of Ingratitude" (July 2, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4mk6995z

Date:

July 2, 1961

Speaker:

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

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0149
ref5504_z9u
uachapelsermaud
duke:628449
dcrau002166
ark:/87924/r4mk6995z
226a6f37-21a0-43d6-8836-909b7a9edbac

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

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United States
North Carolina
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 - "The Sin of Ingratitude" (July 2, 1961)

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1. James T. Cleland - "The Sin of Ingratitude" (July 2, 1961)

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James T. Cleland - "The Sin of Ingratitude" (July 2, 1961)

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