Robert E. Cushman - "Soul, Thou Hast Much Goods" (November 11, 1962)

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	(gentle music)	0:04
Speaker	"And when Jesus drew nigh,	0:36
	he saw the city and wept over it.	0:39
	saying, If thou hadst known in this day,	0:45
	even thou, the things which belong unto peace!	0:50
	but now they are hid from thine eyes."	0:57
	What I am prompted to say this morning,	1:06
	may turn out to be neither a sermon nor the lecture.	1:09
	And if you arrive at that conclusion,	1:15
	I shall have no quarrel with it.	1:17
	Perhaps it may prove to be,	1:23
	to steal a phrase from Samuel Taylor Coleridge,	1:26
	simply an aid to reflection.	1:33
	I hope also, and they took Christian reflection.	1:36
	Surely it is the business of intelligence	1:41
	to reflect upon experience to the end of guiding it	1:44
	rather than being driven by it and let engulfed in it.	1:49
	Likewise, it is the business of Christian intelligence	1:56
	to do the same thing,	2:00
	with a view to illuminating the dark places of life,	2:01
	we must traverse, we are the light of the Christian faith.	2:06
	Recently, we have had quite an experience,	2:12
	for some, it was a challenge of faith and to faith.	2:18
	For some it took the form of an encounter with nothingness.	2:24
	Two weeks ago, this morning,	2:30
	we called the university to prayer,	2:33
	in a moment of grave human crisis.	2:36
	It was a crisis not only of our own nation,	2:41
	but some believe for the whole of mankind.	2:45
	That is if we are to accredit the experts regarding	2:50
	the potentials of Thermo nuclear warfare.	2:54
	And that same Sunday evening,	2:59
	the crisis had eased in the succeeding days that receded,	3:02
	but who even yet can say it has passed.	3:08
	Some fear it will not pass in our time.	3:13
	There are some who believe that during	3:19
	those few critical days,	3:21
	all of us stood as it were on a brink of doom,	3:24
	looking however, incredulously into an indescribable abes.	3:29
	Imagination, fortunately was incompetent for the task	3:35
	and therefore perhaps saved us from panic.	3:41
	Nevertheless, perhaps no previous moment in human history	3:47
	ever presented to so many,	3:54
	so playing a prospect of so great a loss.	3:57
	Whether we were men and women of faith, or of little faith,	4:03
	or of no faith, for some hours and days,	4:06
	we all looked intermittently,	4:12
	I believe into the face of the ultimate.	4:14
	To say so now with candor is part of what I mean by	4:19
	reflection upon experience.	4:25
	If we looked into the face of the ultimate,	4:29
	it is also a part of reflection to ask ourselves,	4:33
	what did we see there?	4:38
	This of course is everyone's own secrets.	4:41
	Some perhaps found themselves asking the question	4:47
	of our scripture of the morning,	4:51
	and the things which thou has prepared, whose shall they be?	4:55
	But this perhaps only gives us away,	5:01
	but I suspect that what we had clearest glimpse of	5:06
	in confronting the ultimate was ourselves.	5:10
	The kind of people we are, as gauged by the things	5:15
	we were in danger of losing.	5:21
	What came to focus were the things we have lived for and by,	5:25
	the things which we have allowed to confer	5:33
	our customary sense of identity and well-being	5:37
	and the loss of which threatened to annihilate boat.	5:41
	Who, for example, would we be without institutional	5:49
	and legal structures?	5:55
	Our businesses, the social arrangements	5:58
	in which we find our place, social security, family life,	6:02
	home, school, books, records, TV, automobile,	6:08
	scooters, boats, horses, dogs, bird, gun, stocks,	6:17
	yes, even in their present declined bonds,	6:26
	bank accounts and out on name clubs,	6:31
	who would we be without these	6:36
	and the prospect of a summer vacation?	6:38
	So thou has much good,	6:43
	but who and what would we be without them?	6:48
	Were we to have any being left in their absence?	6:53
	This was one of the questions.	6:58
	Now, on reflection, I suspect that the measure	7:03
	in which our identity and sense of wellbeing	7:06
	is in fact manifest to us in association with these things,	7:10
	the more the ultimate confronting us in those days	7:15
	took on the aspect of total loss.	7:18
	On further reflection, I suspect also	7:22
	that the more we find our identity through association	7:26
	with these things, the more we are prone as individuals	7:29
	or as a nation to understand our defense against total loss	7:34
	as a defense of these things.	7:39
	For it is in terms of these visible and tangible structures	7:44
	and their continuing availability that we tend to apprehend	7:49
	our identity and measure our wellbeing	7:54
	and to retain our assurance of both.	7:58
	But in the extremity of those days,	8:03
	the material structures that give assurance of our identity	8:06
	were seemingly quite defenseless.	8:11
	Unto that extend in this plain	8:16
	that we in those days were also quite defenseless.	8:18
	And so I could not help recalling again and again	8:24
	in those days and since the lament of Jesus over Jerusalem.	8:28
	"If thou hadst known in this day,	8:32
	even thou, the things which belong unto peace!	8:37
	but now they are hid from thine eyes."	8:42
	And what shall we say to these things?	8:47
	Shall we say, I will say to my soul,	8:48
	so they'll hast much goods.	8:51
	Yes.	8:55
	But in the hour of defenselessness,	8:57
	there is no assurance in it.	8:59
	And hence we are ones to concede.	9:02
	And so as he, lay it up treasure for himself,	9:07
	and this is not rich toward God.	9:12
	Jesus laments over Jerusalem, was the compassion	9:17
	of infinite regret for the blindness of his own people.	9:22
	If his history was to show, it was too late for Jerusalem.	9:28
	then further in reflection, urge the question,	9:35
	was it also too late for us?	9:42
	If after two millennia, we did not yet know	9:45
	the things that belong on to peace.	9:49
	Was there now to be no more reprieve,	9:53
	no chance for further learning.	9:58
	And the crisis was ample proof of our little learning,	10:02
	ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth,	10:07
	in the words of the collect, this dispute.	10:11
	This despite the generality of our education,	10:17
	the multiplication of our many knowledges,	10:24
	the vast resources of our libraries	10:28
	and our monumental universities.	10:32
	We're not even these, especially the universities,	10:37
	the servants of governments in the business of something	10:41
	called national defense.	10:44
	If these two, along with everything else,	10:48
	slithered towards the brink of ruin	10:50
	with no sure grasp upon the things that belong on the peace	10:51
	then was visible elsewhere.	10:55
	Let's admit it.	10:58
	In some, reflection strongly suggests that the crisis	11:03
	through which mankind recently passed,	11:10
	proclaimed rather conspicuously the bankruptcy	11:16
	of human resourcefulness.	11:19
	And this, we better understand if we are to learn anything	11:24
	from civilizations, recent brush with death on a scaffold,	11:28
	the trapdoor of which was somehow, somehow not sprung.	11:35
	And the bankruptcy was this,	11:41
	that there was no way less to peace except	11:45
	by incurring the jeopardy of total war.	11:50
	The fearful ordeal was premised upon the supposition	11:55
	that no way remain to preserve the material	11:59
	and institutional structures, upon which our identity	12:03
	and well-being as a people depend,	12:07
	save at the calculated risk of their extermination.	12:10
	Reflection suggests in retrospect,	12:16
	that Bertrand Russell, the Mad Hatter of modern philosophy,	12:21
	was not all together wrong, in this course was madness	12:28
	because in the interest of civilizations defense,	12:36
	it took it as its means what must become if you used,	12:40
	man's final self reputation.	12:45
	Employing the ultimate threat,	12:49
	it risked the total destruction	12:53
	of a good it aim to conserve.	12:55
	And pursuing the preservation of some good,	12:58
	it the risked, I think, the annihilation	13:02
	of the general good.	13:05
	Russell calls this madness.	13:08
	As a logician, he does rightly, it is in principle,	13:11
	self reputation or a kind of existential self contradiction.	13:16
	Now, despite the Bravos of all the party liners	13:25
	at that time seeking election,	13:29
	reflection suggests that human affairs has reached the point	13:33
	of ultimate absurdity.	13:37
	When sincere but helpless governmental leaders,	13:40
	are endorsed to the genocidal expedient	13:44
	of defending their people's existence	13:47
	by means which it's actually employed,	13:50
	seem to assure the destruction of that existence	13:54
	and that wellbeing.	13:57
	But this friends is where we are.	14:00
	It is helpless self computation.	14:05
	It is bankruptcy of human resourcefulness	14:09
	and a governmental order.	14:12
	All further discussion, it seems to me begins here.	14:16
	Now political orders, commonly called governments	14:22
	are legitimate, as every political theorist might know,	14:27
	only if the order they enforce is not imperiled	14:33
	by the means through which they enforce it.	14:36
	Or again, a government can justify its right of rule	14:40
	only if the good it secures by the exercise	14:46
	of its lawful power is greater than the limitations	14:49
	it imposes in restraint of disorder.	14:53
	Or once more, a government is legitimized,	14:57
	if the sacrifices it exacts of its citizen ray	15:02
	for the common good do not exceed the benefits,	15:06
	it'd be stolen.	15:10
	But in our recent brush with that, you know,	15:13
	our recent crisis there is disclosed,	15:18
	what for a long time has been evident in an atomic age,	15:21
	this, that in atomic power, a world power	15:26
	can now guarantee the material structures of the nation	15:33
	only at the risk of destroying all of them.	15:38
	The part from some mysterious divine overruling,	15:42
	it cannot venture the risk without accepting	15:47
	the eventuality.	15:51
	This does not take courage, I think,	15:54
	but something more nearly like the resolution	15:58
	of desperation and bankruptcy.	16:01
	Reflection suggests that the new political fact of our time	16:06
	is that sovereign nations	16:12
	with the power of total destruction have outlived	16:15
	both their utility and their justification.	16:18
	They point beyond themselves to an imperative necessity,	16:22
	no longer Tennyson's dream but a desperate need	16:27
	of a parliament of nations in the Federation of the world.	16:33
	Now, there is such a thing as Christian reflection	16:39
	in addition to just playing reflection.	16:43
	So then we asked, what can we say about	16:48
	these annihilating absurdities of modern man's predicament	16:53
	from the standpoint of the Christian faith?	16:56
	What can we say?	16:58
	Perhaps this in the first place,	17:01
	when sovereign states,	17:06
	in the interest of human good.	17:11
	Yes, in the interest of human good,	17:15
	calculating the risk the annihilation of human good.	17:18
	They have not only attained to bankruptcy of their powers	17:23
	for good and to absurdity of self contradiction,	17:27
	they do something worse in the Christian view of the matter.	17:30
	They've adventure to become as God knowing good and evil.	17:34
	For no government can risk the wellbeing of its people	17:42
	at the jeopardy of the existence of its people,	17:46
	without pretending to know what it is not given	17:50
	to man to know,	17:53
	namely that non-existence is preferable to limitation	17:55
	of existence.	18:01
	But as this is the presumption of the suicide,	18:04
	it is also the presumption of the genocide.	18:09
	Russell May call it madness.	18:13
	The Greeks called it hebras,	18:17
	more presumption to deity,	18:20
	For Christians, I am obliged to say,	18:23
	most call it the sin of blasphemy.	18:25
	It is no excuse to say that some governments	18:31
	find themselves in this horrible dilemma,	18:34
	they do indeed.	18:37
	And this because of an utterly new fact in human history,	18:39
	that wasn't the fact, the decade ago.	18:43
	That is the fact of national sovereignty,	18:48
	and it's in compatibility with another fact,	18:53
	man's new technological capacity for total destruction.	18:57
	Our recent encounter with nothing is powerfully illumines,	19:03
	the defenselessness of mankind against	19:08
	these two facts in combination.	19:10
	However, well intentioned the governmental power	19:14
	that combines them, regardingly.	19:17
	The time is now overdue, for the Christian conscience	19:22
	to inform itself on three questions.	19:27
	First, what are the exercise of such dual power	19:31
	as I have described and the decision to do so,	19:36
	is really courage or the hopeless resolution	19:41
	of governmental desperation.	19:47
	Two: whether this exercise of power	19:50
	is the just rule of the governed	19:56
	or something that approximates tyranny?	19:59
	Three: whether it is defense of the right,	20:05
	or from the Christian standpoint,	20:11
	something approaching the user patient of God's power	20:13
	of our human life and destiny?	20:16
	On these questions, the Christian conscience	20:20
	needs to become informed.	20:24
	Those to be sure who do not believe in God,	20:28
	do not mind playing God.	20:31
	Indeed they have no God to stop them	20:35
	and possibly no alternative.	20:36
	But it is almost as bad and certainly justice dangerous	20:40
	to play God unintentionally and unwittingly	20:45
	despite our protestations.	20:49
	And this brings me to a second point in Christian reflection	20:54
	upon our recent and continuing encounter with nothingness,	20:57
	whatever the forthcoming symposium on dimensions of defense	21:02
	may disclose this week for our edification,	21:06
	it would do well to begin by recognizing	21:11
	that this is not a dangerous world merely because in it,	21:15
	there are bad guys who endanger good guys,	21:19
	that is true.	21:26
	The problem, however, is somewhat more subtle	21:28
	from the Christian standpoint.	21:32
	And from this standpoint, the world is hideous	21:34
	is in a hideously dangerous position,	21:38
	because there are no guys at all good enough	21:43
	to exercise at one and the same time,	21:48
	the power of national sovereignty	21:52
	and the power of thermonuclear destruction.	21:55
	I said that 16 years ago in this pulpit.	21:59
	I think it may be appropriate to say it again.	22:04
	A new fact of our time is that with the present level	22:10
	of so-called technological achievements,	22:16
	the price tag plan lay, the price tag	22:20
	of unrestricted national sovereignty	22:23
	seems to be the perpetual risk	22:26
	of both self-annihilation and genocide.	22:29
	In such a world, the experts who take it for granted.	22:34
	And simply the highly informed bookies,	22:40
	who hope they know how to read and play the odd.	22:43
	But those who do not understand the new fact of our time	22:49
	cannot hope to begin to learn for our time,	22:54
	the things that belong on to peace.	22:59
	Finally, from our recent encounter with nothingness,	23:05
	there is a third reflection that is assisted	23:09
	by our Christian faith.	23:14
	It is indeed the hard core of the gospel,	23:17
	it has come to pass in our time that not suicide,	23:21
	but genocide is the likely option before us.	23:25
	So if we, as a nation and the people are reduced	23:30
	to the absurdity of destroying ourselves	23:35
	in defense of ourselves, then it might be,	23:37
	we are in great need of a new concept of defense.	23:39
	And point of fact, we might be in the world might be	23:46
	just right for serious attention	23:50
	to the paradox of the Christian faith.	23:53
	The paradox was long ago offered	23:56
	in our Lord's familiar words, that were not very well	23:59
	understood by Jerusalem.	24:03
	"He that strives to save his own life shall lose it."	24:07
	That's the first part.	24:14
	And the second is, the absurdity or apparent absurdity	24:17
	that "he who is prepared to lose his own life	24:23
	for God's sake shall keep it."	24:26
	The new fact of our time is, that mere self defensiveness	24:31
	is with diabolic logic the surest way to self-destruction.	24:36
	Never before in history was it so plainly evident that he,	24:41
	that takes to the sword shall perish by the sword.	24:45
	Never before it wasn't so manifest that in this course	24:50
	do not lie the things that belong on the peace.	24:54
	I may have not be on full and deep reflection,	25:00
	that the way out of this perpetual existence	25:05
	under the sword of Damocles is the other way,	25:08
	not the way of self reputation and contradiction,	25:12
	but the way of paradox.	25:16
	The way that was hid from the eyes of Jesus' contemporaries	25:19
	and is still largely hid from ours.	25:23
	Paradox is the way of seeming contradiction,	25:27
	that is however, actually self confirmation.	25:30
	It is the way of hidden wisdom and apparent losing	25:36
	of the life as the only way to find and keep it.	25:39
	This can be translated into the political realities	25:43
	of our world.	25:47
	It is not restricted to the sacrifice of the cross	25:49
	on Calvary, though the cross is it's everlasting sign	25:52
	and Sentinel in terms of the political realities	25:56
	of our time.	26:00
	This losing the life is not primarily	26:02
	our first of all world disarmament,	26:04
	disarmament will be its consequence.	26:08
	Losing the life means for our time and history,	26:11
	I think the limitation of national sovereignty,	26:14
	in a real Federation of national states	26:19
	under the rule of world law.	26:22
	As a nation, right now, we have our opportunity	26:25
	as well as recognize our desperate need	26:30
	and clear a directive to enhance the power and authority	26:33
	of the United nations,	26:38
	to assist in every way we are able to assist it,	26:40
	to transcend its limited sovereignty	26:45
	and to advance into a real Federation of people.	26:49
	This is the only answer to the threat of Cuba.	26:53
	It is impossible, consider the alternative.	26:57
	This I believe is what it means today as a nation,	27:03
	in terms of political realities,	27:08
	to lose our life in order to find it,	27:11
	this or something like it is the will of God for our time.	27:14
	And all of that will, I do not hesitate to say	27:19
	that the lady who died in New York	27:22
	this past week was a prop.	27:23
	This is that which truly come parts	27:29
	with the paradox of the gospel	27:33
	and must replace the imperiling,	27:36
	and self-destructive contradiction	27:38
	within mankind, present international political existence.	27:42
	We do not learn these things,	27:49
	the things which belong onto peace and our true defense,	27:52
	then they shall forever be hid from our eyes.	27:59
	In such a case, Jesus laments over Jerusalem	28:03
	will be repeated over the Gothams of the 20th century.	28:07
	James Russell has it about right here in,	28:14
	once to every man with nation comes the moment to decide	28:19
	in the strife of proof with fault sword,	28:25
	for the good or evil side,	28:30
	by the light of burning martyrs.	28:33
	Christ by bleeding feet we track,	28:36
	toiling up new Calvary's ever	28:40
	with a cross that turns not back.	28:44
	New occasion, teach new duty.	28:50
	Time makes ancient good on coop.	28:55
	They must upward still and onward who would keep	28:58
	abreast of proof.	29:04
	Oh man, let us pray.	29:09
	Now, the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.	29:18
	(background noise drowns out other sounds)	29:23

Item Info

Title:

Robert E. Cushman - "Soul, Thou Hast Much Goods" (November 11, 1962)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4154jq52

Date:

November 11, 1962

Speaker:

Cushman, Robert E.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0207
ref5616_i9t
uachapelsermaud
duke:628314
dcrau002215
ark:/87924/r4154jq52
77839a5a-a8a1-4f57-bde1-816c0f57a813

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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