Creighton Lacy - "From Being Anxious or Secure" (December 2, 1962)
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| - | Let us pray. | 0:04 |
| - | Hear us, oh, here us Lord, | 0:08 |
| to thee a sinner is more music, | 0:11 | |
| When he prays than spheres' or angels'. | 0:14 | |
| Praises is be in panegyric alleluias. | 0:16 | |
| Hear us, for till thou hear us, Lord. | 0:20 | |
| We know not what to say. | 0:25 | |
| Amen. | 0:29 | |
| The words which we have just prayed, | 0:38 | |
| are from the litany of John Donne, | 0:41 | |
| one of the earliest and most brilliant of English poets. | 0:43 | |
| He lived at the time of Shakespeare, | 0:47 | |
| and wrote some of the finest love songs of his age, | 0:49 | |
| and yet he was also strange as it may seem a parish priest, | 0:53 | |
| and the author of a great many prayers and hymns. | 0:57 | |
| My text today is taken from another stanza of the litany, | 1:02 | |
| which reads, | 1:06 | |
| from being anxious, or secure. | 1:08 | |
| Dull clods of sadness, or light squibs of mirth. | 1:12 | |
| From needing danger, to be good, | 1:19 | |
| from owing thee yesterday's tears today. | 1:23 | |
| From bribing Thee with alms, | 1:28 | |
| to excuse some sin more burdenous. | 1:31 | |
| Good Lord, deliver us. | 1:35 | |
| From being anxious, or secure. | 1:41 | |
| Good Lord deliver us. | 1:46 | |
| Those two words, anxious or secure | 1:52 | |
| sound like a contradiction. | 1:54 | |
| How often we pray that we may lose our anxiety, | 1:56 | |
| and find security, | 2:00 | |
| that we may replace, | 2:02 | |
| worry with trust and certainty. | 2:04 | |
| Nevertheless, | 2:08 | |
| this prayer that God will deliver us from both anxiety, | 2:09 | |
| and security, is more even than divine paradox. | 2:12 | |
| It is a profound blending of truth, | 2:18 | |
| and faith, as important in our daily lives, | 2:21 | |
| as in our Christian gospel. | 2:24 | |
| The anxieties of undergraduate days loom large, | 2:28 | |
| dates and grades and money in that order, | 2:33 | |
| but let the voice of experience assure you paranthetically, | 2:38 | |
| that amid these Gothic towers, | 2:42 | |
| you have more security, than you will ever have again. | 2:45 | |
| we are all familiar with two commandments of Jesus, | 2:51 | |
| not to be worried or anxious, | 2:55 | |
| to those of us who presume however, | 2:58 | |
| unworthly to stand in his pulpit. | 3:00 | |
| He says, "when they deliver you up", | 3:04 | |
| and believe me anyone standing on | 3:07 | |
| this spot in duke chapel, feels delivered up. | 3:09 | |
| "When they deliver you up, do not be anxious, | 3:14 | |
| how you are to speak or what you are to say, | 3:17 | |
| for what you are to say will be given to you in, | 3:20 | |
| that hour for it is not you who speak, | 3:22 | |
| but the spirit of your father speaking through you." | 3:26 | |
| Some of us preachers, unfortunately, | 3:31 | |
| do not take these words of the master, seriously enough, | 3:33 | |
| with the result that the message from God is buried, | 3:36 | |
| under polished language and clever illustrations, | 3:40 | |
| but all of us have heard other speakers who take, | 3:44 | |
| this assurance too literally, | 3:46 | |
| and stand up in the pulpit with nothing to say, | 3:49 | |
| nothing, at least that sounds | 3:52 | |
| like the spirit of the heavenly father speaking through us, | 3:54 | |
| but all of us in our | 4:00 | |
| everyday speech need to think about this verse, however. | 4:02 | |
| The opportunities to witness for Christ do not always occur | 4:06 | |
| in public meetings. | 4:10 | |
| As Christians, we need to ask ourselves constantly, | 4:13 | |
| whether in the classroom, | 4:16 | |
| or on the football field. | 4:18 | |
| In the laboratory, | 4:20 | |
| or in the office. | 4:21 | |
| In dealing with our roommates or with the janitors. | 4:24 | |
| The words of our mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 4:27 | |
| are acceptable in the sight of God, | 4:31 | |
| our strength and our Redeemer. | 4:34 | |
| But, there is an even more familiar, | 4:39 | |
| yet perplexing assurance. | 4:41 | |
| Do not be anxious about your life, | 4:43 | |
| what you shall eat, | 4:45 | |
| or what you shall drink, | 4:46 | |
| nor about your body, what you shall put on. | 4:47 | |
| Your heavenly father knows | 4:51 | |
| that you need them all. | 4:52 | |
| Seek first, his kingdom and his righteousness, | 4:54 | |
| and all these things shall be yours as well. | 4:58 | |
| Be not therefore anxious for the Morrow, | 5:02 | |
| for the Morrow will be anxious for itself. | 5:05 | |
| We who call ourselves practical moderns, | 5:09 | |
| find this disturbing to say the least. | 5:12 | |
| It's a natural human concern to, | 5:15 | |
| wanna know where the next dollar is coming from. | 5:17 | |
| Imagine my astonishment, | 5:21 | |
| the other day to see a student sending off a money order. | 5:22 | |
| I had assumed that it was a one-way traffic | 5:25 | |
| from thousands of parents into Duke Station, | 5:27 | |
| but it's only sensible and realistic | 5:32 | |
| to keep sufficient savings for a rainy day. | 5:34 | |
| It's simple common sense to, | 5:37 | |
| "go to the ant thou sluggard, | 5:39 | |
| consider her ways and be wise", | 5:42 | |
| as the book of Proverbs advises. | 5:44 | |
| It's good American tradition to admire frugality, | 5:46 | |
| and thrift than hard work. | 5:50 | |
| In fact, as Horace Greeley, who put it, | 5:53 | |
| "The darkest hour of any man's life is, | 5:55 | |
| when he sits down to plan | 5:58 | |
| how to get money without earning it." | 6:00 | |
| Yet, beyond our selfish concerns, | 6:04 | |
| Jesus' words here, | 6:07 | |
| pose the searching problem of other people's suffering. | 6:08 | |
| We cannot believe, | 6:13 | |
| that all human beings throughout the world, | 6:14 | |
| who starved or thirst or freeze are evil, | 6:18 | |
| we cannot maintain as Christians that, | 6:26 | |
| poverty and misery are always the fault of the victims. | 6:28 | |
| It seems that best around about kind of justice to seek | 6:32 | |
| the Kingdom of Heaven and expect, | 6:36 | |
| that all our material needs will be added unto us. | 6:37 | |
| One clue is given in the new testament epistles. | 6:44 | |
| According to my small Bible concordance, | 6:47 | |
| the noun anxiety occurs only twice. | 6:50 | |
| The first letter of Peter says, | 6:55 | |
| "humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, | 6:57 | |
| that He may exalt you in due time casting all your anxiety | 7:00 | |
| upon Him, because he cares for you." | 7:05 | |
| All of us, I venture to say, | 7:13 | |
| I prayed for deliverance from anxiety, | 7:14 | |
| of all forms of suffering. | 7:17 | |
| Worry is perhaps the most widespread, | 7:19 | |
| one of the hardest to bare, | 7:23 | |
| often costly and its effect, | 7:25 | |
| and probably the most unnecessary. | 7:29 | |
| So I say this, | 7:31 | |
| with full awareness of approaching examinations. | 7:32 | |
| when anxiety becomes extreme, | 7:36 | |
| it takes the dreadful form of panic, | 7:39 | |
| and fear may be paralyzing, | 7:41 | |
| and crippling at the very time | 7:43 | |
| when we need strength of body and clarity of mind. | 7:45 | |
| We admit that fruitless, faceless worry | 7:50 | |
| is either annoying disease or a soul searing sin, | 7:54 | |
| and we have all felt in time of crisis, | 8:00 | |
| large or small, | 8:02 | |
| the relief, | 8:04 | |
| the freedom, | 8:06 | |
| the peace of casting, | 8:08 | |
| all our anxiety upon God, who cares for us, | 8:09 | |
| but there is another kind of anxiety from, | 8:16 | |
| which we should never be free. | 8:18 | |
| The reaction which we usually speak of | 8:20 | |
| with a better word, concern. | 8:22 | |
| Paul wrote to the Corinthians, | 8:26 | |
| "besides those things, which are without, | 8:28 | |
| there is that which presses upon me daily, | 8:30 | |
| anxiety for all the churches." | 8:34 | |
| How deeply all of us feel that kind of concern of intervals | 8:39 | |
| for our families and friends, | 8:42 | |
| how deeply as Christians, | 8:46 | |
| we ought to feel that kind of anxiety | 8:48 | |
| for the churches of the world, | 8:50 | |
| those under prosecution, | 8:53 | |
| and more subtle pressures, | 8:55 | |
| or those which in complete freedom, | 8:57 | |
| deny their Lord by denying brotherhood. | 9:00 | |
| Rabbi leibman, reminded us in his bestseller, peace of mind, | 9:06 | |
| "that our susceptibility to anxiety is | 9:10 | |
| the soil of our human growth." | 9:13 | |
| Let us never pray to be delivered from the kind of concern | 9:17 | |
| that produces progress and creativity. | 9:20 | |
| Fear of disease, such as polio and cancer | 9:24 | |
| inspires us to seek for causes and for cures. | 9:28 | |
| Fear of war, may someday lead mankind to build | 9:32 | |
| a world of justice and brotherhood. | 9:36 | |
| Fear of poverty is inducing many nations | 9:41 | |
| to embark on great social and economic experiments, | 9:43 | |
| along many lines. | 9:47 | |
| These efforts, which we in America call social security, | 9:51 | |
| turn our thoughts now toward | 9:55 | |
| that other word of John Donne, | 9:57 | |
| "from being secure, good Lord deliver us." | 9:59 | |
| Why should we pray to be delivered from feeling secure? | 10:06 | |
| Is security not the one thing | 10:09 | |
| that frees us in turn from anxiety? | 10:11 | |
| Can we not confidently affirm | 10:15 | |
| that the world will guarantee us anxiety, | 10:17 | |
| but our faith in God provides security. | 10:20 | |
| It's not as simple as that. | 10:25 | |
| Speaking of social security, | 10:28 | |
| a prominent preacher said in | 10:30 | |
| the Christian century sometime ago, | 10:32 | |
| "its' extension has been one of | 10:35 | |
| the greatest acts of justice in our history. | 10:36 | |
| It is a convincing affirmation | 10:40 | |
| that a nation's wealth and responsibility is its' people," | 10:42 | |
| but the same writer continued, | 10:49 | |
| "yet, the quest for security can be distorted | 10:51 | |
| and perverted until it becomes the exclusive aim in life, | 10:54 | |
| blocking out nearly everything else," | 10:59 | |
| and he told up a New Yorker cartoon in | 11:03 | |
| which a man is proposing to a girl, in these words, | 11:05 | |
| "I have a good basic salary with escalator clause, | 11:09 | |
| social security and diamond insurance, | 11:12 | |
| old age benefits, unemployment compensation, | 11:15 | |
| and the pension plan. | 11:18 | |
| When you marry me?" | 11:19 | |
| Now, the tragic conclusion is | 11:22 | |
| that most modern girls would jump eagerly | 11:23 | |
| at such a proposal. | 11:26 | |
| For security today, | 11:28 | |
| so often takes precedence, | 11:29 | |
| over love or kindness or understanding. | 11:32 | |
| Sometime ago I had a visit | 11:38 | |
| from a brand new graduate of this institution. | 11:39 | |
| Who had always dreamed of studying for the law, | 11:42 | |
| but because he had a wife and baby daughter, | 11:46 | |
| he was abandoning that dream, | 11:48 | |
| and sat around in the barber shop, | 11:50 | |
| waiting for replies from his job applications | 11:52 | |
| to big industrial firms across the country, | 11:55 | |
| which could guarantee him security and steady income. | 11:58 | |
| From sacrificing our dreams, | 12:03 | |
| from letting our courage rust, | 12:07 | |
| from being base secure. | 12:10 | |
| Oh Lord, deliver us. | 12:14 | |
| Or, take the military phase of our 20th century life. | 12:19 | |
| In my college day, | 12:23 | |
| the phrase collective security was in every headline | 12:24 | |
| and in every foreign policy debate, | 12:27 | |
| it is heard less frequently today, | 12:30 | |
| but the idea is inherent in the United Nations | 12:32 | |
| and in mutual assistance treaties. | 12:35 | |
| The agreement on which NATO | 12:39 | |
| and the European Defense Community rest | 12:41 | |
| was originally called the Atlantic Security Pact. | 12:44 | |
| When it was signed, | 12:48 | |
| the realistic journalism of life magazine commented. | 12:49 | |
| "It is a military Alliance, | 12:54 | |
| an instrument of security, | 12:56 | |
| it has already made | 12:59 | |
| and will continue to make | 13:01 | |
| for more, not less tension in the world." | 13:03 | |
| Yet the nuclear age confirms an ancient truth, | 13:10 | |
| that there is no such thing as absolute security, | 13:13 | |
| and any nation which undertakes it | 13:16 | |
| will become a Garrison state, | 13:18 | |
| or a bankrupt state or both. | 13:21 | |
| Similarly, the fourth national study conference on | 13:26 | |
| the churches and world order warned, | 13:28 | |
| "according to the Christian gospel, | 13:32 | |
| nations, as well as men that are concerned solely | 13:34 | |
| with security and self-defense, | 13:38 | |
| lose even these." | 13:40 | |
| When we seek simply to have security, | 13:43 | |
| we get into a vicious circle. | 13:46 | |
| We never have enough. | 13:48 | |
| So it is with all our efforts to achieve security in | 13:53 | |
| this life, they make for more, rather than less tension. | 13:56 | |
| What about the religious field? | 14:04 | |
| We think instantly of the great Psalms of trust and comfort | 14:07 | |
| and faith, other names for security, | 14:11 | |
| yet for us to call ourselves Christians, | 14:16 | |
| it may be shocking to discover | 14:18 | |
| that all the biblical references to anxious or anxiety | 14:19 | |
| are in the new Testament, | 14:26 | |
| and all the references to secure or security | 14:28 | |
| are in the old Testament, | 14:32 | |
| And another fact of the four or five times | 14:36 | |
| that the noun security appears in | 14:38 | |
| the American revised version, | 14:41 | |
| all are unfavorable or dangerous, | 14:43 | |
| not something admirable. | 14:48 | |
| In Judges. | 14:51 | |
| The people that were there in dwelled in security, | 14:52 | |
| for there was none in the land possessing authority, | 14:55 | |
| and they had no dealings with any man. | 14:58 | |
| Security, in those terms then was the kind of hibernation | 15:02 | |
| as undesirable as it is impossible in | 15:06 | |
| this modern world, | 15:09 | |
| as proof of the poor quality of this type of security. | 15:12 | |
| The king James version translates | 15:15 | |
| the phrase they dwelt careless. | 15:18 | |
| The second passage in job, begins hopefully, | 15:22 | |
| "God giveth the mighty to be in security, | 15:27 | |
| and they rest thereon," | 15:29 | |
| but it goes on to say, | 15:32 | |
| "they are exalted. | 15:34 | |
| yet a little while and they are gone. | 15:36 | |
| Yea, they are brought low. | 15:38 | |
| They are taken out of the way as all others." | 15:39 | |
| Here is a clear-cut warning to people of our own day, | 15:44 | |
| who are inclined to put their trust in wreaking tube, | 15:47 | |
| and iron shard. | 15:51 | |
| Job is warning that all the empires and peoples | 15:53 | |
| who pride themselves on power and security | 15:56 | |
| are eventually brought low and swept away. | 16:00 | |
| And the book of Daniel refers to a king of fierce | 16:05 | |
| countenance, a contemptible person. | 16:08 | |
| The devil, or the enemy, | 16:11 | |
| in their security, shall he destroy many. | 16:14 | |
| He shall come in time of security | 16:18 | |
| and shall obtain the kingdom by flattery's | 16:20 | |
| in time of security shall he come even upon | 16:23 | |
| the fattest places of the province. | 16:25 | |
| Days of security then, for the nation or the individual | 16:30 | |
| are dangerous because they lead to false confidence, | 16:35 | |
| and laziness, | 16:38 | |
| the material comfort, | 16:40 | |
| which blinds us to spiritual realities | 16:42 | |
| and the needs of others. | 16:44 | |
| The pride which goeth before a fall. | 16:47 | |
| From this eternally contemporary book, | 16:52 | |
| which we call the Bible, | 16:54 | |
| John Donne got his idea, | 16:57 | |
| that security is to be feared and avoided. | 16:58 | |
| We call it self-contentment, complacency, | 17:03 | |
| but we often use the term false security. | 17:07 | |
| Even in modern usage, | 17:11 | |
| security has a deadening effect on life. | 17:12 | |
| One of the clearest lessons of history is the growth, | 17:16 | |
| and progress come from periods of insecurity | 17:19 | |
| because of real and desperate need | 17:23 | |
| the periods of security and complacency | 17:26 | |
| lead often into decay and death, | 17:28 | |
| in both physical and spiritual realms. | 17:31 | |
| Albert Schweitzer is wisely remarked, | 17:36 | |
| "The good conscience, is an invention of the devil." | 17:39 | |
| Look out he warns, when your conscience tells you | 17:43 | |
| that all is well, | 17:46 | |
| whether it be with your nation or with your own soul. | 17:47 | |
| Another 17th century poet just after John Donne, | 17:52 | |
| Thomas Traherne put it that; | 17:55 | |
| "Contentment is a sleepy thing. | 17:58 | |
| If it in death alone must die. | 18:01 | |
| A quiet mind is worse than poverty, | 18:04 | |
| unless it from enjoyment spring, | 18:07 | |
| true joys alone contentment do inspire, | 18:10 | |
| enrich content and make our courage higher. | 18:14 | |
| Content alone's a dead and silent stone." | 18:19 | |
| I suspect that Jesus had this truth in mind when he spoke | 18:27 | |
| those perplexing words, | 18:30 | |
| "I come not to bring peace, | 18:32 | |
| but a sword," | 18:34 | |
| for Jesus was a revolutionary, | 18:36 | |
| and never, never, | 18:38 | |
| never, sought security as one of the goals of life. | 18:41 | |
| Security that means contentment, satisfaction, complacency. | 18:46 | |
| No. | 18:51 | |
| In individuals and nations, that is a dead end, | 18:54 | |
| a moral cancer, | 18:58 | |
| a dead and silenced stone. | 19:00 | |
| From being thus secure. | 19:04 | |
| Good Lord deliver us. | 19:07 | |
| But, security that is rooted in faith, | 19:11 | |
| there is a different thing. | 19:13 | |
| Security that swallows up anxiety by trusting God. | 19:16 | |
| Now we're getting close to the center of spiritual truth, | 19:20 | |
| which is the only real truth. | 19:24 | |
| We shall never find absolute peace | 19:28 | |
| and certainty in this life, | 19:31 | |
| least of all in this tumultuous 20th century. | 19:32 | |
| Saint Augustine voiced, the simple fact, | 19:37 | |
| some 1700 years ago, that, | 19:40 | |
| "Our hearts are restless, | 19:42 | |
| until they find their rest in thee." | 19:45 | |
| Jesus and his farewell message to | 19:48 | |
| the disciples told them the same thing. | 19:50 | |
| "My peace, I leave with you. | 19:54 | |
| My peace I give unto you, | 19:57 | |
| not as the world giveth, give I unto you." | 20:00 | |
| Let us pray God to deliver us from | 20:06 | |
| the foolish petty selfish worries of life, | 20:09 | |
| but fill us continually with Christ, divine discontent | 20:14 | |
| with his refusal to be satisfied in | 20:18 | |
| the face of injustice and misery and sin, | 20:21 | |
| with his energy and his concern for all mankind. | 20:25 | |
| Let us pray, God also to deliver us from false security | 20:33 | |
| from the self satisfaction, | 20:38 | |
| and ills that are dangerous to us as a nation | 20:39 | |
| and to our individual souls, | 20:43 | |
| but fill us full to overflowing | 20:47 | |
| with trust in God's abiding Providence | 20:49 | |
| and with delight in his service. | 20:53 | |
| C.S. Lewis, who has been called, | 20:58 | |
| undoubtedly the most influential lay defender | 21:00 | |
| of Christianity in England and America, | 21:03 | |
| writes in the Problem of Pain, | 21:06 | |
| "The settled happiness and security, which we all desire. | 21:09 | |
| God withholds from us by the very nature of the world, | 21:14 | |
| but joy, pleasure and merriment. | 21:19 | |
| He has scattered broadcast. | 21:24 | |
| We are never safe, | 21:27 | |
| but we have plenty of fun and some ecstasy. | 21:30 | |
| Let us pray, | 21:37 | |
| That we may change to evenness, | 21:48 | |
| this intermittent aguise piety. | 21:51 | |
| That snatching cramps of wickedness | 21:55 | |
| and apoplexies of fast sin may die. | 21:57 | |
| That music of thy promises, | 22:02 | |
| not threats in thunder may awaken us to our just offices, | 22:04 | |
| what in thy book, thou dost, | 22:11 | |
| or creatures say, | 22:13 | |
| that we may hear, Lord, | 22:16 | |
| hear us when we pray. | 22:19 | |
| Spare us oh God, our loving father from national pride, | 22:23 | |
| from material pride, | 22:28 | |
| from spiritual pride, | 22:30 | |
| may we never make a selfish security our goal, | 22:33 | |
| but rather be continually anxious for the needy | 22:36 | |
| and the suffering, of all the world, | 22:39 | |
| but give us ever an abiding trust in thee, | 22:43 | |
| a faith that amid the tensions | 22:46 | |
| and uncertainties of this life, | 22:48 | |
| Thou are eternal, | 22:51 | |
| absolute, unchanging, | 22:53 | |
| and full of love. | 22:57 | |
| From being anxious or secure, | 23:00 | |
| good Lord deliver us. | 23:04 | |
| Now may the Lord of peace himself, | 23:09 | |
| give you peace at all times in all the ways. | 23:12 | |
| The Lord be with you all. | 23:16 | |
| (choir singing) | 23:25 |
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