Albert C. Outler - "Man Alive!" (October 29, 1961)

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-	In the 10th chapter of the gospel according to Saint John,	0:21
	and in the 10th verse,	0:26
	there is a text to which I call your attention,	0:29
	and then which I hope we will listen for and hear	0:32
	a word from the Lord.	0:38
	And Jesus said, "I am come that they God's sheep,	0:42
	"may have life and may have it in all its fullness.	0:52
	"Life in all its fullness."	1:02
	The centrum and the persistent of the urgent problem in life	1:10
	of course, is life itself.	1:16
	Its quality, its meaning, its destiny.	1:19
	What does it mean to be alive, really alive?	1:26
	What difference is there between their existence	1:34
	and life at its full potential,	1:41
	between impoverished and abundant living?	1:45
	This problem of life is posed for us	1:50
	by the experiences of living and working, but partly also	1:53
	by the tragic facts of life's denials and negations.	1:58
	By our experiences of transience and evanescence,	2:05
	and by the other present prospect	2:12
	and fore knowledge of death.	2:16
	Anyway you take it, anyway you turn,	2:20
	there is the challenge of life, constant, unavoidable.	2:24
	The ways in which men and women respond to this challenge	2:31
	are depressingly varied and insufficient.	2:37
	Still, every style of life, every behavior pattern,	2:42
	every basic conviction and goal,	2:49
	one way or another is an instance of life	2:54
	trying to come to terms with itself.	2:59
	You cannot deny life's challenge,	3:04
	either, for even to try to do this,	3:07
	and to run away from life, and to hide, to cut your risks,	3:14
	is itself a way, and a poor way	3:22
	of coming to terms with life.	3:27
	As a great sociologist Kurt Levine,	3:29
	used to talk about life spaces.	3:31
	The human beings total experience,	3:35
	the concurrent unity between the self and the world.	3:39
	The vital sum of the conscious and the half conscious,	3:44
	and the unconscious dispositions and attitudes	3:49
	which give color and value tone, and to experience.	3:51
	Our deepest anxieties arise from the sense of dread	3:58
	that our life spaces have become, or may become vacant,	4:03
	distorted, incoherent.	4:11
	One of those taunting reframes in modern literature	4:16
	is that chorus in "Murder in the Cathedral",	4:19
	where the women of Canterbury bespeak their fear,	4:23
	of having the drab vicissitudes of a dull piece upset.	4:27
	"Seven years, they say, "seven years we have lived quietly,	4:35
	"succeeded in avoiding notice.	4:40
	"Living and partly living.	4:43
	"There have been oppression and luxury.	4:47
	"There have been poverty and license.	4:48
	"There has been minor injustice,	4:51
	"yet, we have gone on living,	4:53
	"living and partly living.	4:56
	"Living and partly living.	5:00
	"One year, the apples are abundant	5:03
	"another year the plums are lacking,	5:06
	"yet, we have gone on living, living and partly living.	5:08
	"Living and partly living."	5:15
	Now, there's a burlesque version of this same theme	5:20
	and the new story about the oil man out at Midland,	5:23
	who was lying upon his death bed.	5:29
	And he said to his solicitors and hovering wife,	5:32
	"And honey, I'd like to be buried in the car."	5:38
	Now, to translate this off to (inaudible),	5:41
	this means in the Cadillac.	5:45
	And she says, "Darling, if that's what you want,	5:48
	"that's the way it'll be."	5:50
	And he died, and she made arrangements	5:53
	and they got a dragline and made a proper size grave	5:57
	and a crane for the committal service.	6:02
	And as the coffin and the corpse	6:05
	were being lowered into the grave,	6:09
	one of his friends nudged the other at the grave side	6:13
	and said, "And boy, now that's what I call, really living."	6:17
	Every way you turn in the New Testament,	6:25
	I think you will see a deep interest in this struggle	6:27
	about life's meaning.	6:32
	In this struggle of life with life and of life with death.	6:34
	But one of the most interesting ways	6:40
	in which this problem is dealt with,	6:42
	is by borrowing and adapting a linguistic distinction	6:46
	that the New Testament people picked up	6:52
	from the classical tradition, between bios and zoe.	6:56
	Now we know these terms as they occur	7:02
	in biology and zoology.	7:06
	But you could hardly guess from the difference	7:10
	between biology and zoology,	7:14
	and what the New Testament has in mind between bios,	7:17
	as the where with all of life and the what with all of life.	7:23
	And zoe, which regularly means life itself.	7:28
	Life in its fullness, life at its best.	7:35
	In the story of the prodigal son,	7:40
	the restless boy demands his share of the paternal estate,	7:43
	and the father as the story goes,	7:47
	divides and then hands over to this boy,	7:51
	his bios, his money and goods.	7:57
	And it was this bios, this life, this where with all of life	8:05
	that the boy and proceeded then to squander.	8:10
	And bios can be used to refer to physical vitality,	8:15
	as in our expression, step lively.	8:20
	It can refer to one's livelihood,	8:24
	how he makes a good living or a kind of a poor living.	8:28
	It can either refer to one's public career	8:34
	or one's public life.	8:38
	But every where in the New Testament	8:41
	and at least generally in the classical tradition,	8:45
	bios has the connotation of the substructure of life.	8:49
	The material means of life, the structures and processes	8:55
	by which life goes on.	9:04
	Now, zoe, on the other hand,	9:08
	always has to do with life in its ideal,	9:11
	or divinely ordained reality.	9:17
	Life as God designed it to be.	9:22
	Life as it may grow to flower and fruit	9:24
	from this sub soil of material subsistence	9:28
	and the molds of culture.	9:32
	Life, as it finds the power to defy deaths power	9:35
	to negate the power of life.	9:40
	Life at its full stretch of freedom, intelligence and love.	9:44
	And above all, life in communion with God.	9:51
	Now this is Jesus' message	9:57
	in the parable of the good shepherd.	9:59
	This parable is shaped around a complex metaphor,	10:02
	taken from the commonplaces of the experiences	10:05
	of a pastoral society.	10:09
	And this is, in some ways misleading.	10:12
	For most of us have not had very much firsthand experience	10:16
	in a pastoral encounter with sheep.	10:23
	That is to say, pastoral encounter with live sheep,	10:29
	with four footed wooly sheep.	10:33
	And what is worse, there are a great many people	10:37
	in the modern world, who do not know how deprived they are	10:39
	because they do not understand what it means to be a pastor,	10:43
	in it's original and literal sense.	10:48
	I speak of this with some complacence because as it happens,	10:52
	this gap in my experience was filled in two years ago.	10:56
	Our then high school senior, David,	11:02
	had declared his interest in agriculture over things urban.	11:06
	And we had arranged for him to commute	11:10
	out to the nearest small town high school,	11:13
	where they had an FFA program.	11:16
	But then as it turned out,	11:20
	he had to have an animal husbandry project at home.	11:22
	And what it was, was sheep.	11:28
	Two (inaudible) use in the fall and winter,	11:32
	three lambs in the spring,	11:36
	and all of this in a sizeable backyard	11:39
	in an upper middle class neighborhood in Dallas.	11:41
	Thank God, it was a neighborhood,	11:46
	and thought we have good neighbors	11:48
	and our sheep became something of a neighborhood project,	11:50
	especially for the kids.	11:53
	Now, you will endure to despair the details	11:56
	of how everybody in our family, including the dog	11:59
	became amateur pastors,	12:03
	with dad as the unlicensed veterinarian.	12:06
	Because, we discovered that city vest	12:09
	are not trained for sheep,	12:12
	and country vets charge outrageously	12:13
	when they are called into the city.	12:16
	But the upshot of the avail was that	12:20
	it brought home the pastoral imagery of the Bible	12:23
	more vividly than I would have ever imagined.	12:26
	And for sheep, will quite easily the most important	12:30
	domestic animals in the biblical world.	12:33
	A great deal of the economy and culture of that world	12:36
	was intertwined with the business of shepherding.	12:40
	And now sheep en masse or in flock,	12:44
	are not very bright creatures,	12:47
	but they have their attraction.	12:50
	And a healthy sheep is as lively a creature	12:53
	as you will ever have to deal with.	12:56
	Now, an oriental sheep fold was a kind of a co-op.	13:00
	Several flocks shelter,	13:04
	then one fold with their respective shepherds	13:06
	coming in and out and doing business through the doorkeeper.	13:12
	There was, you see, typically only one gate.	13:20
	And the gatekeepers job was crucial	13:25
	in this whole arrangement.	13:28
	Sheep were valuable prizes for rustlers.	13:31
	You can rustle a sheep over a sheepfold wall,	13:34
	as you cannot easily do with a steer or a horse.	13:37
	Now all of these things were commonplace	13:43
	to the people who heard this parable of the good shepherd.	13:44
	Although not even the disciples could first grasp	13:47
	Jesus application of the parable to Himself,	13:51
	and to His mission and to His work in the world.	13:55
	He speaks of Himself as the door or the gate,	14:00
	and then again, as the gatekeeper,	14:04
	one who knows the rightful owners of the several flocks	14:06
	and who keeps watching ward against the thieves and robbers,	14:10
	the rustlers.	14:14
	And then He speaks of Himself as the good shepherd.	14:16
	One who has sheep and who knows their needs,	14:18
	and who is more interested in their safety and wellbeing	14:23
	than in His own.	14:28
	He contrast Himself with the hireling,	14:30
	who has no stake in the business,	14:34
	no investment in the flock.	14:36
	And so feel free to decide	14:38
	when danger has used up his wages.	14:41
	And so, Jesus focuses these pastoral metaphors	14:46
	upon His declaration of purpose in the world.	14:50
	The reason for His coming, the reason for His being here,	14:56
	is that men may have life and have it in its fullness.	15:02
	Men may have life and have life up to its potential.	15:11
	Men may be alive.	15:17
	Now, the word of course, is the way, life itself.	15:21
	And this use of zoe is not to disparage or despise bios.	15:26
	Sheep have to have the wherewithal to live.	15:32
	And it is an anti-biblical asceticism	15:35
	that despises the material basis of life.	15:38
	Your heavenly Father knows	15:42
	that you have need of these material things.	15:45
	But, the problem remains, and it is particularly poignant	15:49
	for men and women and nevertheless,	15:55
	than in these days of hour.	15:59
	The question of the means and the ends, of living and life.	16:02
	As this question gets rather complicated	16:09
	by the pressures of priority and pride	16:12
	that fill out daily realm.	16:16
	If in the course of making a living or getting a living,	16:19
	or getting ready to live	16:24
	or struggling for minimum subsistence,	16:26
	you don't really come alive, don't appreciate or express	16:29
	or fulfill your life's faith,	16:35
	and then something very tragic has happened or is happening.	16:39
	If from the fear of life, or the lust for life,	16:44
	or the confusion as to what life is all about,	16:49
	a human being is diverted or derailed, or shattered,	16:53
	then something priceless is wasted and ruined.	16:57
	A human creativity has to come out of the energy left over	17:04
	after our needs as bio social animals have been met.	17:09
	No surplus, no creativity.	17:14
	This is why material competence is so very important,	17:18
	but it is also why materialism,	17:23
	the preoccupation with material competence,	17:27
	invariably corrupts the men who take it for a style of life.	17:31
	It is also why in a contest between a hungry materialism	17:39
	and a sybaritic materialism,	17:45
	the soft guys always finish last.	17:49
	If the current struggle for man's minds and commitments	17:53
	is a struggle between two materialisms,	17:56
	then we might as well face it,	18:00
	the lean and the mean have an advantage	18:03
	over the sentimental and the well intentioned.	18:08
	Now there's no need amongst thoughtful folk	18:16
	to be label the irony of confusing that,	18:18
	where with all of life and life itself.	18:21
	And to be label the unfairly obvious things	18:24
	about the spiritual poverty of a thing minded,	18:28
	gadget ridden, money mad, power obsessed society.	18:32
	What are you doing in a university,	18:37
	if you don't know that the quality of life	18:39
	does not consist in the abundance of things, of bios?	18:42
	What are you here for, if you do not already realize	18:49
	that materialism is a stultification	18:54
	of the real possibilities of human living?	18:58
	Surely, we agree with these parts of our minds and hearts	19:02
	that abundant life is a moral and spiritual affair.	19:07
	It's the experience of having one's life space full	19:11
	and resonant with intellectual excitement, model integrity,	19:15
	spiritual dedication.	19:21
	But, now, what is our life potential?	19:24
	Nobody knows for certain,	19:28
	but certainly it includes the peaks of delight	19:30
	and achievement that all too often we suppose are reserved	19:34
	for the geniuses, the saints, and the other guys.	19:39
	In a first rate book called	19:46
	the "Human Potential", Gardner Murphy	19:48
	has a whimsical suggestion that goes like this.	19:51
	"My thesis, he says, "is very simple,	19:54
	"and to a reasonable psychologist, very shocking.	19:57
	"If it is katydid nature to scrape,	20:02
	"frog nature to croak, wobbler nature to wobble,	20:08
	"then it must be human nature to play	20:15
	"the 'Air for the G-string' on a Stradivarius."	20:19
	And this may sound a try for homiletical	20:25
	for a great psychologist,	20:28
	and you yourself might like to vary the questions there,	20:29
	are aspiration and proportion, but the thesis is sound.	20:33
	On the one hand, bios is simply not enough for man alive.	20:39
	On the other hand, the typical human life	20:47
	has all too little zoe, all too little real fulfillment.	20:50
	And here's where we come to a crisis	20:58
	in this sort of reflection about life.	21:01
	And for our normal impulse,	21:04
	is to suppose that if we all ought to have more zoe,	21:05
	then let's gird ourselves for extra effort.	21:09
	Than to, let's choose more firmly	21:13
	between living and partly living.	21:16
	You may suppose that I am exalting you	21:20
	to a more careful rearrangement in your budgeted vitalities	21:23
	and in the allocation of your vital energies,	21:29
	and cheering you on to more zoe.	21:33
	But this is the last thing in the New Testament	21:39
	as a real possibility when it is talking about life.	21:44
	Now, bios, it is true, is more or less at our disposal.	21:50
	What we have, our material life of organic bio social life	21:54
	is more or less our own to have and to hold	21:59
	from this time forward, for better or for worse.	22:03
	But zoe, is not really our own.	22:07
	It is always spoken off as a gift, as a benefit,	22:14
	as a blessing.	22:20
	It is one might almost say, God's metamorphosis of bios.	22:23
	Every human life in its in most an utmost essence	22:32
	is a specific creation of God Himself.	22:37
	We receive it from God, we enjoy it in Him,	22:41
	we hold it in trust to Him.	22:45
	You are not your own, you are bought with a price.	22:48
	And the life which is given us, we must receive and use	22:53
	and be prepared to hand it back and to leave it	23:02
	in God's keeping.	23:07
	The abundant life which Jesus came to bring to man	23:09
	is not therefore, an augmentation of life.	23:13
	Where with all, nor even an addition of resolution	23:16
	and human effort.	23:21
	It is rather, the reinvigoration of moral concern	23:22
	of our spiritual power to respond to God,	23:28
	to commune with God and to live by God's grace	23:32
	in God's good world.	23:37
	Faith is not just believing that life is more than meat	23:39
	and the body more than raiment and that sort of thing.	23:43
	It is in essence our being willing to receive our lives	23:46
	from God and to be glad to have it so.	23:51
	Unfaith or bad faith is the effort to snatch our lives,	23:56
	to possess this gift from God,	24:02
	and then to dispose of it, by and for ourselves.	24:05
	Thus, Jesus, can say, "I am the life,	24:12
	"the mediator between the source of life, the giver of life	24:17
	"and our actual life spaces."	24:22
	Really to live, is to live from God, for God, to God.	24:26
	Zoe is at every moment and in its totality,	24:35
	an exercise of faith and enterprise our faith.	24:40
	If we are really to have life in its fullness,	24:45
	we must be willing to live it on God's terms	24:48
	and within the order of His providence and love and care.	24:51
	In a time like this, a time of war,	24:57
	a time of nerves stretching, tension and conflict.	25:01
	When the tides of materialism and barbarism and inhumanity	25:05
	are all running so strongly	25:09
	against the vitalities of the spirit,	25:11
	and the moral order in the human community.	25:14
	We will have to do much more than increase our efforts	25:17
	on behalf of personal or even national self enhancement,	25:21
	survival and glory.	25:26
	As men and as a nation, we shall not be worthy to survive	25:29
	in this struggle for survival,	25:33
	if we merely oppose one bios to another,	25:35
	set one materialism over against another,	25:38
	organize our freedom merely to oppose enslavement.	25:41
	As men of faith and freedom, we must be willing to seek	25:47
	and to receive the gifts of life from God.	25:51
	And we must learn to cherish and to enjoy them	25:55
	without fear and without greed.	25:59
	And we must take these gifts of life	26:03
	and make them an offertory to God and to our human brethren	26:06
	in self-sacrificing, self-fulfilling service.	26:13
	And finally, we must come to rest our hopes and confidence	26:19
	in God's purpose and God's power,	26:23
	to redeem and to fulfill our lives	26:27
	in the face of the threats of transience,	26:31
	evanescence, half-life and death.	26:37
	Jesus, said, "I am come that men may really live,	26:42
	"really achieve their full potential,	26:47
	"really learn to live and die in the love of God.	26:50
	"And in the certitude that God is Himself victor	26:57
	"and victor yet to be."	27:04
	And so to live in that devotion,	27:07
	which love and gratitude and confidence create and sustain.	27:10
	Eternal life in the midst of our historic exist,	27:18
	under the eye and by the power of God.	27:27
	What more could men aspire to?	27:34
	But what less should men alive settle fall?"	27:38
	Let us pray.	27:47
	Almighty God, who art the author and giver of life,	27:54
	whose service is our perfect freedom.	27:59
	Bestow our wills to be willing	28:03
	to receive our lives at thy hands,	28:06
	to live our lives in thy fear and favor.	28:10
	That in the agonies of decision and responsibility	28:14
	of our time,	28:18
	we may not confuse life's where, with all with life itself,	28:19
	nor ever be content with less than that fullness of life,	28:24
	which thou does promise and provide.	28:29
	Grant therefore that in all the changes and chances	28:33
	of our mortality, our hearts may be surely fixed on thee,	28:37
	whom to know is life and peace.	28:43
	And this we pray in the name of Him,	28:48
	who came that we might truly live,	28:50
	our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.	28:54
	Amen.	28:58

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Title:

Albert C. Outler - "Man Alive!" (October 29, 1961)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4k072273

Date:

October 29, 1961

Speaker:

Outler, Albert C.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0161
ref5528_pzj
uachapelsermaud
duke:628323
dcrau002177
ark:/87924/r4k072273
d842edc4-7650-4490-a52e-b8efda931583

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Albert C. Outler - "Man Alive!" (October 29, 1961)

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