Robert E. Luccock - "Mirrors of Self - Discovery" (May 6, 1962)
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Transcript
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- | Into thy hands I commend my spirit. | 0:04 |
Own wills to the will of the heavenly Father. | 0:18 | |
May we pray. | 0:23 | |
Gracious God who didst give thine only Son, | 0:28 | |
even Jesus, to suffer death on a cross for our. | 0:32 | |
Testing one, two, three. | 0:43 | |
Testing one, two, three. | 0:44 | |
What is your name? | 1:16 | |
Twice on the pages of scripture, | 1:20 | |
once in the Old Testament and once in the New, | 1:24 | |
this identical question is asked. | 1:30 | |
In each instance, a great proof | 1:36 | |
about life is revealed in its asking | 1:39 | |
and in the answer which is given. | 1:45 | |
The angel asks of Jacob | 1:51 | |
in the legendary story of Israel's beginning, | 1:54 | |
what is your name? | 1:59 | |
When he replied Jacob, | 2:03 | |
the angel answered, "Your name shall no more | 2:07 | |
"be called Jacob, but Israel, | 2:11 | |
"for you have striven with God and with men." | 2:15 | |
In the New Testament, | 2:23 | |
Jesus asked the Gerasene demoniac, "What is your name?" | 2:25 | |
And the man cried, "My name is Legion." | 2:33 | |
But before Christ finished with him on that day, | 2:38 | |
the demented man found himself, | 2:43 | |
discovered a new name for himself. | 2:47 | |
And so, that question comes across | 2:53 | |
the years to us this morning. | 2:57 | |
What is your name? | 3:02 | |
During World War II at an army boxing tournament in France, | 3:07 | |
between two bouts, they led around the ring | 3:13 | |
a soldier who had lost his memory. | 3:18 | |
The hope was that from the Army Corps of spectators | 3:23 | |
with whom he had served, | 3:27 | |
one man at least might recognize him | 3:30 | |
and so assist in his cure. | 3:34 | |
None, however, ever did. | 3:38 | |
As the frustrated man was led down from the ring, | 3:41 | |
he threw out his arms and cried, | 3:45 | |
"Will nobody tell me who I am?" | 3:48 | |
Is this not both parable and symbol | 3:54 | |
of the situation in which we all find ourselves? | 3:59 | |
Every person must discover who he is and what he is, | 4:05 | |
but how can we do this in a world | 4:13 | |
that dehumanizes us of our selfhood? | 4:16 | |
G.K. Chesterton, the master of paradox, | 4:22 | |
sums up the situation in these words. | 4:26 | |
Every man has forgotten who he is. | 4:30 | |
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego. | 4:35 | |
The ego is more distant than any star. | 4:40 | |
We are all under the same mental calamity. | 4:46 | |
We have all forgotten our names. | 4:49 | |
We have all forgotten who we really are. | 4:53 | |
All that we call common sense and rationality | 4:57 | |
and practicality only means | 5:02 | |
that for certain dead levels of life, | 5:04 | |
we forget that we have forgotten. | 5:08 | |
And all that we call spirit and art and ecstasy | 5:12 | |
only means that for one awful instant, | 5:17 | |
we remember that we forget. | 5:22 | |
How did you find out who you are? | 5:27 | |
Into what mirror can we look for self-discovery? | 5:32 | |
The idea of asking this question, | 5:39 | |
though not much of the answer, | 5:42 | |
came to me from an article by Archibald MacLeish | 5:44 | |
published in LIFE magazine | 5:49 | |
shortly after the death of Ernest Hemingway last July. | 5:51 | |
Said MacLeish of Hemingway, his mirror was danger. | 5:58 | |
Along with all the rest of us, | 6:05 | |
Hemingway had to find some means of self-discovery. | 6:07 | |
According to MacLeish, Hemingway found himself, | 6:13 | |
discovered what kind of a person he really was, | 6:18 | |
experienced the essence and the truth of life | 6:23 | |
in those moments when he looked danger in the face, | 6:27 | |
while fighting a war, while flying a plane, | 6:32 | |
while hunting big game or facing death in the bull ring. | 6:36 | |
What mirrors are there that might tell me who I am? | 6:44 | |
What my name means? | 6:50 | |
Where is the meaning of your name | 6:53 | |
most clearly reflected back to you? | 6:55 | |
Obviously, danger is a mirror that reveals a man to himself. | 7:00 | |
Death is a mirror to show any man who he really is. | 7:07 | |
Money, power, disappointment, deprivation, | 7:12 | |
these all tell us much about ourselves, | 7:19 | |
give us identity as person. | 7:23 | |
But this morning, I think of three mirrors in particular | 7:28 | |
into which a man may look to know himself | 7:32 | |
as of God and as a Christian. | 7:38 | |
Will you look first into the mirror of creation? | 7:44 | |
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. | 7:51 | |
The earth was without form and void, | 7:56 | |
and darkness was upon the face of the deep, | 7:59 | |
and the spirit of God was moving | 8:03 | |
over the face of the waters. | 8:05 | |
And then God said, "Let us make man in our own image." | 8:09 | |
So God created man in his own image. | 8:14 | |
And God saw everything that he had made, | 8:19 | |
and behold, it was very good. | 8:23 | |
What do you see when you look in the mirror of creation? | 8:28 | |
How do you see yourself in that picture? | 8:35 | |
Something of an astronomical biological accident, | 8:38 | |
froth, so to speak, thrown up by the ocean | 8:45 | |
of purposeless evolution? | 8:49 | |
Or do you see yourself as part of God's purpose, | 8:53 | |
belonging to his design, | 8:59 | |
related with meaning to his whole creation? | 9:01 | |
Let me read a piece of poetry written a good many years ago. | 9:07 | |
Test yourself as you hear it. | 9:13 | |
What does it say to you? | 9:16 | |
"Oh most high, almighty good Lord God, | 9:20 | |
"to thee belong, praise, glory, honor, and all blessing. | 9:25 | |
"Praised be my Lord God, with all his creatures, | 9:31 | |
"and especially our brother, the sun, | 9:35 | |
"who brings us the day and who brings us the light. | 9:38 | |
"Praised be my Lord for our sister, the moon, | 9:42 | |
"and for the stars, the which he has set clear | 9:45 | |
"and lovely in the heavens. | 9:50 | |
"Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, | 9:53 | |
"and for air and clouds, calms, and all weather | 9:56 | |
"by which thou upholdest life and all creatures. | 10:01 | |
"Praised be my Lord for our sister water, | 10:06 | |
"who is very serviceable to us, | 10:09 | |
"and humble and precious and clean. | 10:12 | |
"Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, | 10:16 | |
"through whom thou give us light in the darkness. | 10:20 | |
"Praised be my Lord for our mother, | 10:24 | |
"the earth, the which doth sustain us and keep us. | 10:27 | |
"Praised be my Lord for all those | 10:33 | |
"who pardon one another for love's sake, | 10:36 | |
"and to endure weakness and tribulation. | 10:40 | |
"Praised be my Lord for our sister, | 10:44 | |
"the death of the body, from which no man escapeth. | 10:47 | |
"Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin. | 10:51 | |
"Blessed are those who die and die most holy will, | 10:55 | |
"for the second death shall have no power to do them harm. | 10:58 | |
"Praise ye and bless the Lord and give thanks to him, | 11:04 | |
"and serve him with great humility." | 11:07 | |
Can you see yourself in that mirror? | 11:13 | |
One is tempted to ask, what sense can Francis of Assisi's | 11:18 | |
"Canticle of the Sun" make to the children | 11:24 | |
of a scientific age? | 11:28 | |
But is this not a way of saying | 11:31 | |
through poetic metaphor and image | 11:34 | |
that we are God's creation, | 11:38 | |
related to everything that God has made? | 11:42 | |
Francis of all people sworn to a vow of poverty | 11:47 | |
was not blinking at the fallen aspect of God's creation. | 11:53 | |
Evil has come to blight | 11:58 | |
and smear the innocence and holiness of creation. | 12:00 | |
The man of faith does not need to close his eyes | 12:05 | |
to any of that to be able still to say | 12:09 | |
not only that God's creation is good, | 12:13 | |
but that man cannot be really understood | 12:18 | |
except in relation to God. | 12:22 | |
As D.W. Cleverly Ford says, | 12:26 | |
neither Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, nor Freud | 12:30 | |
hold the key to this interpretation | 12:36 | |
because they always see mankind apart from God. | 12:41 | |
Dig down deep enough into man, they say, | 12:47 | |
and you will find the answer to your problem, | 12:49 | |
but this is what the book of Genesis says. | 12:53 | |
See man in relation to God, | 12:57 | |
and you will find the answer to your problems. | 13:01 | |
And it uses a unique expression to describe this insight. | 13:04 | |
It says, man is made in God's image. | 13:09 | |
And it makes a difference how we see ourselves | 13:15 | |
in the mirror of creation, | 13:19 | |
whether the fashioning of a God of purpose, | 13:22 | |
the work of a God of spirit, | 13:26 | |
creatures of a God of goodness. | 13:29 | |
Agonizing, it never ceases to be | 13:34 | |
for us to come to terms with the fact of evil. | 13:39 | |
We do and we must strive with God | 13:45 | |
through every discipline of knowledge and life, | 13:50 | |
as did Jacob, as did Job, as did Jeremiah. | 13:56 | |
But we find in the faith that we are made | 14:05 | |
in God's image an identity | 14:08 | |
in which to make that struggle with evil. | 14:13 | |
"The Agony and the Ecstasy" by Irving Stone | 14:19 | |
is the story of Michelangelo. | 14:22 | |
In it, we see his never-finished struggle | 14:26 | |
to release from himself into the marble | 14:30 | |
the ideal, the faith, the artistic beauty, | 14:34 | |
and the moral truth that was in his soul and imagination. | 14:40 | |
And all of that mighty work | 14:45 | |
came from Michelangelo's mind and hands | 14:47 | |
because he knew himself to be a creature | 14:49 | |
and a servant of the most high, made in the image of God. | 14:54 | |
When Lorenzo de' Medici told Michelangelo | 15:00 | |
he could give one of his early statues to Savonarola | 15:03 | |
to be burned in a purge of all art | 15:08 | |
that that preacher thought godless, | 15:11 | |
Michelangelo said, "But suppose, excellency, | 15:14 | |
"that I had already offered the piece to God, | 15:19 | |
"the God who created man in his own image of goodness | 15:24 | |
"and strength and beauty. | 15:27 | |
"Savonarola says that man is vile. | 15:29 | |
"Would God have created us in hate?" | 15:33 | |
And from that beginning until the completion of his life | 15:39 | |
and work in the dome of St Peter's, | 15:43 | |
the sculptor was trying to carry into his marble | 15:47 | |
the vision of a more luminous world | 15:52 | |
than the one that surrounded him. | 15:55 | |
He was trying with all his might to overtake a vision. | 15:58 | |
To achieve what Michelangelo did | 16:06 | |
is not necessary or possible, | 16:09 | |
but from Michelangelo's task and motivation, | 16:14 | |
no one need exclude himself to discover meaning | 16:20 | |
and beauty in the world, | 16:25 | |
to speak for God as one of God's creatures, | 16:28 | |
to overtake a vision, | 16:32 | |
whether this be in the creation of a home | 16:35 | |
or a friendship or a community or a beauty or a work. | 16:40 | |
And if the vision tarry, wait for it, | 16:50 | |
for it will surely come. | 16:54 | |
To know that one is a creature of God | 16:58 | |
is to discover his dependence upon God, | 17:02 | |
to know a humility before God, | 17:05 | |
to find a confidence in God, | 17:09 | |
both in his purposes of love | 17:13 | |
and in his power to say, what is your name, creature? | 17:16 | |
Will you look in a second mirror, compassion? | 17:26 | |
Then the king will say, "To those on his right hand, | 17:33 | |
"come all blessed of my father and inherit the kingdom | 17:37 | |
"prepared for you from the foundation of the world, | 17:41 | |
"for I was hungry and you gave me food. | 17:46 | |
"I was thirsty and you gave me drink. | 17:48 | |
"I was a stranger and you welcomed me. | 17:51 | |
"I was naked and you clothed me. | 17:54 | |
"I was sick and you visited me. | 17:57 | |
"I was in prison and you came to me. | 18:00 | |
"As you did it to one of the least of these, | 18:04 | |
"my brothers, you did it to me." | 18:07 | |
What do you see when you look in that mirror, | 18:12 | |
the mirror of the dispossessed of the earth? | 18:19 | |
Do you see an obligation and involvement, | 18:24 | |
because we are all creatures of the one God? | 18:29 | |
One can look into the mirrors of the world's misery | 18:34 | |
and discover himself there as servant. | 18:41 | |
And these mirrors are all close at hand | 18:46 | |
for us to look into. | 18:49 | |
A West Side Story could be told of every city in America, | 18:53 | |
of those dispossessed by the urban blight, | 18:59 | |
of the abundant life, which creation affords. | 19:03 | |
From north and south and east and west | 19:09 | |
to the uttermost parts of the earth | 19:13 | |
sound the cries of race and clan, | 19:16 | |
of the dispossessed by the circumstance of color, | 19:23 | |
of their inheritance as children of God | 19:31 | |
in the family of man. | 19:34 | |
Numbered in the millions are the world's refugees | 19:37 | |
from war and dictatorship, | 19:41 | |
those dispossessed of home and hope. | 19:45 | |
I see these reflections of the dispossessed | 19:52 | |
when I have courage to look in those mirrors. | 19:56 | |
But even if I cared, | 20:01 | |
what can I do about social revolution, | 20:03 | |
about racial strife, about war? | 20:08 | |
How can I be servant to these? | 20:13 | |
Here what Albert Schweitzer says to such. | 20:19 | |
The hidden forces of goodness are embodied | 20:24 | |
in those persons who carry on as a secondary pursuit | 20:28 | |
the immediate personal service | 20:33 | |
which they cannot make their life work. | 20:36 | |
The lot of the many is to have as a profession, | 20:40 | |
the earning of their living | 20:46 | |
and the satisfaction of society's claims on them | 20:48 | |
a more or less soulless labor | 20:52 | |
in which they can give out little | 20:55 | |
or nothing of their human qualities | 20:57 | |
because in that labor, | 21:00 | |
they have to be little better than human machines. | 21:02 | |
And yet, no one finds himself | 21:06 | |
in the position of having no possible opportunity | 21:09 | |
of giving himself to others as a human being. | 21:13 | |
Anyone can rescue his human life | 21:19 | |
in spite of his professional life. | 21:21 | |
Who sees as every opportunity of being a man | 21:25 | |
by means of personal action, | 21:30 | |
however unpretending for the good of fellow men | 21:33 | |
who need the help of fellow man? | 21:39 | |
Such a man enlists in the service | 21:43 | |
of the spiritual and the good. | 21:46 | |
No fate can prevent a man from giving to others | 21:50 | |
this direct human service side by side with his life work. | 21:55 | |
Many people, discovering that they are creatures of God, | 22:06 | |
have gone on to learn more of what it means | 22:11 | |
to be made in God's image when they have felt their way | 22:14 | |
into the fellowship of those who bear the marks of pain. | 22:19 | |
Jesus said to Peter, "You are Simon. | 22:27 | |
"You shall be my servant, Peter" | 22:31 | |
What is your name? | 22:37 | |
Servant? | 22:40 | |
And look now in one more mirror, commitment. | 22:43 | |
And he called the multitude to him | 22:51 | |
with his disciples and said to them, | 22:54 | |
"If any man will be my disciple, | 22:57 | |
"let him take up his cross and follow me, | 23:01 | |
"for whoever would save his life will lose it. | 23:05 | |
"And whoever loses his life for my sake | 23:09 | |
"and the gospel shall find it." | 23:12 | |
What do you see when you look into the mirror | 23:16 | |
of mankind's sin and the world's evil? | 23:20 | |
Do you see God's absence, | 23:25 | |
as Mr. W.H. Auden once expressed it? | 23:28 | |
Do you see what the character | 23:33 | |
in Albert Camus' novel, "The Stranger" | 23:34 | |
a benign indifference of the universe? | 23:38 | |
Or do you see God come into the very midst of sin | 23:43 | |
and darkness at Calvary, | 23:48 | |
taking the wounds upon himself in reconciling | 23:51 | |
and forgiving love to break the power of sin, | 23:56 | |
to rob evil of its certainty, to destroy life? | 24:00 | |
And by the way of the cross, God giving man a reason to hope | 24:05 | |
and a way of salvation in their evil. | 24:10 | |
Ernest Gordon, in his book, "The Valley of the River Kwai" | 24:16 | |
tells of the effect on the allied prisoners of war | 24:22 | |
of three men who gave their lives in sacrifice | 24:27 | |
for others in Thailand, during World War II. | 24:33 | |
A miracle of transformation occurred. | 24:38 | |
Men who had hated their tormentors, | 24:41 | |
despised and abused each other | 24:44 | |
and lost all respect for themselves, became new creations | 24:47 | |
in the power of Christ's redeeming spirit. | 24:54 | |
Here, one incident, as Gordon recounts it. | 24:58 | |
"At the end of our day's work, | 25:04 | |
"the Japanese guard declared that a shovel was missing. | 25:07 | |
"He insisted that someone had stolen it | 25:11 | |
"to sell it to the ties. | 25:14 | |
"He strolled up and down in front of the men, | 25:16 | |
"ranting and denouncing them for their wickedness. | 25:18 | |
"Screaming in broken English, | 25:22 | |
"he demanded that the guilty one step forward | 25:24 | |
"to take his punishment. | 25:28 | |
"No one moved. | 25:30 | |
"'All die,' he shrieked, | 25:32 | |
"and to show that he meant what he said, | 25:34 | |
"he pulled back the bolt, | 25:36 | |
"put the rifle to his shoulder and looked down the sights, | 25:38 | |
"ready to fire at the first man he saw at the end of them. | 25:42 | |
"At that moment, the Argyll stepped forward, | 25:47 | |
"stood stiffly at attention and said calmly, 'I did it.' | 25:50 | |
"The guard unleashed his whipped up fury and hatred. | 25:56 | |
"He kicked and beat the hapless prisoner, | 26:00 | |
"and still the Argyll stood originally at attention. | 26:04 | |
"With blood streaming down his face, he made no sound. | 26:08 | |
"With a final howl, the guard brought his rifle barrel | 26:13 | |
"down on the skull of the Argyll, | 26:17 | |
"who sank limply to the ground and did not move. | 26:20 | |
"The men of the work detail picked up their comrade's body, | 26:25 | |
"shouldered their tools, and marched back to camp. | 26:30 | |
"And when the tools were counted again at the guardhouse, | 26:34 | |
"no shovel was missing. | 26:38 | |
"As this story was retold, | 26:43 | |
"remarkably, the admiration for the Argyll | 26:45 | |
"transcended hatred for the Japanese guard. | 26:49 | |
"In the radiance of that sacrifice | 26:55 | |
"and two others of the same sort, | 26:57 | |
"a miracle began to happen to the men | 27:00 | |
"for whom the lives had been given. | 27:03 | |
"Where there had been darkness, | 27:07 | |
"now there were forces of light. | 27:09 | |
"Where despair, hope. | 27:12 | |
"Where fear, faith. | 27:14 | |
"Where hate, love. | 27:17 | |
"And later, as the prisoners were being shipped | 27:20 | |
"to a new camp farther on the rail line, | 27:23 | |
"they found their car on a siding | 27:28 | |
"next to a carload of Japanese wounded unfortunates, | 27:30 | |
"on their own and without medical care." | 27:35 | |
Says Gordon, "The wounded men looked at us forlornly | 27:38 | |
"as they sat with their heads | 27:42 | |
"resting against the carriages, waiting for death. | 27:43 | |
"They had been discarded as expendable, the refuse of war. | 27:47 | |
"These were the enemy. | 27:53 | |
"Without a word, most of the officers in my section | 27:56 | |
"unbuckled their packs, took out part of their ration | 28:01 | |
"and a rag or two, and with water canteens in their hand, | 28:04 | |
"went over to the Japanese train, | 28:08 | |
"knelt down by the enemy to give food and water, | 28:11 | |
"to clean and bind up their wounds. | 28:14 | |
"I regarded," says Garden, "My comrades with wonder. | 28:18 | |
"18 months ago they would've joined readily | 28:23 | |
"in the destruction of our captors | 28:25 | |
"had they fallen into their hands. | 28:28 | |
"Now, these same officers were dressing the enemy's wounds. | 28:31 | |
"We had experienced a moment of grace | 28:36 | |
"in those blood-stained railway cars. | 28:40 | |
"God had broken through the barriers of our prejudice | 28:43 | |
"and had given us the will to obey his command, | 28:48 | |
"thou shalt love. | 28:52 | |
"We were beginning to understand | 28:55 | |
"that as there were no easy ways for God, | 28:58 | |
"so there were no easy ways for us. | 29:02 | |
"God, we saw, was honoring us | 29:06 | |
"by allowing us to share in his agony | 29:09 | |
"for the world he loves. | 29:13 | |
"God, in finding us, had enabled us to find our brother. | 29:15 | |
"At the point marked by the cross, we found ourselves." | 29:21 | |
There is truth in a single great sentence. | 29:31 | |
What is your name? | 29:38 | |
Disciple. | 29:42 | |
When Jacob in wrestling with the angel said, | 29:44 | |
"What is your name?" | 29:48 | |
He got no answer, but he received a blessing. | 29:50 | |
And what Jacob said is instructive for us. | 29:54 | |
I have seen God face to face. | 29:58 | |
My life is preserved. | 30:01 | |
My spirit, my integrity, my identity. | 30:04 | |
Jacob found himself and learned a new name | 30:08 | |
in his face-to-face encounter with the living God. | 30:13 | |
And this is where each one of us may get a new name | 30:19 | |
to know ourselves as creatures of God, | 30:24 | |
to discover what it means to be a creature | 30:28 | |
of the Holy God, a child of the covenant, | 30:31 | |
and to find out what God's holiness compels us to do. | 30:34 | |
And the Gerasene demoniac, | 30:41 | |
in his meeting with Christ, knew at last who he was. | 30:43 | |
And he begged Jesus that he might be with him. | 30:49 | |
And the master sent him back | 30:53 | |
to his own to witness there. | 30:55 | |
And such can happen to every person here | 31:00 | |
in this chapel this morning, | 31:04 | |
to go back to his own and to witness there. | 31:08 | |
What is your name? | 31:14 | |
Christ can show you | 31:18 | |
in the mirror of God's creation to be God's creature, | 31:20 | |
in the mirror of man's need to be men's servant, | 31:26 | |
in the love of his cross to be his disciple. | 31:33 | |
Whoever so loses his life for Christ's sake shall find it. | 31:40 | |
That is to say, he shall find who he really is. | 31:47 | |
Let us pray. | 31:54 |
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