Waldo Beach - "Disciplines of Denial" (March 10, 1963)

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-	Who are the affluent comfortable	0:06
	and gay children is the product of tradition.	0:09
	(Indistinct) for some of you	0:24
	that Lent is the season of the Christian year,	0:25
	the 40 day period from Ash Wednesday to Easter,	0:29
	of penitence and penance in preparation for Easter.	0:35
	And in case you didn't notice what with basketball and all	0:42
	we are now in Lent.	0:48
	There have been a few Lenten signs around the campus.	0:53
	At least Hot cross buns were served in the cafeteria.	1:00
	I know that the Episcopalians	1:06
	with their characteristic pension	1:10
	to make the most of the Christian year	1:12
	through a Mardi Gras before Lent began.	1:16
	But for the large part,	1:21
	we don't know what to do about Lent.	1:25
	Maybe go to church or chapel a bit more often,	1:29
	or feel a little more guilty about not going.	1:34
	And maybe	1:39
	while they're look a little more serious than we usually do.	1:40
	And perhaps if we're very devout,	1:46
	follow the VR crutches	1:49
	by giving up ice cream, sundaes	1:52
	or cigarettes for the duration.	1:55
	But Lent means hardly more than	1:59
	a kind of frosting on our buns.	2:01
	A vague nudge to solemnity.	2:06
	I'm proud of our childhood memories.	2:10
	The real purpose of Lent largely neglected or forgotten	2:13
	is that it'd be a time of self-examination,	2:20
	of inner cleansing,	2:23
	of fasting and prayer in imitation of Christ,	2:25
	fasting and prayer in the wilderness.	2:31
	The spiritual logic behind it	2:36
	is that one cannot come	2:41
	into the joyous meaning of the Christian life,	2:42
	except by way of negative purging of self-denial.	2:45
	No cross, no crown.	2:53
	The positive meaning of redemption	2:57
	is found only along a via negativa.	3:00
	Through the disciplines of denial.	3:06
	The classic paradigm for the inner meaning of Lent	3:12
	is found in the scripture of the morning.	3:15
	The story of the rich young ruler.	3:18
	Here is dramatized the encounter of us all	3:22
	with the one who sets the ultimate terms of our life.	3:28
	We are in the rich young ruler	3:33
	who run up and asked,	3:37
	" What must I do to find eternal life?"	3:41
	Or to translate it into terms we would use,	3:46
	to find the point of it all,	3:50
	to find authentic existence.	3:54
	And God is in Christ,	3:58
	confronting us with the stringent answer.	4:01
	You lack one thing,	4:06
	go sell what you have give to the poor,	4:09
	and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.	4:15
	When taken, not in its extra and all	4:24
	or crude or literal sense,	4:26
	but in its internal sense, this word of Christ	4:28
	catches the meaning of Christian self-denial.	4:33
	There are three levels represented.	4:37
	Three dimensions of self-denial subtly interrelated.	4:40
	And the validity of each depends on the next level down.	4:46
	There are three directions of giving	4:53
	suggested by three preposition.	4:58
	And in the definitions of the moral life,	5:03
	prepositions count for everything.	5:06
	The first is suggested by the phrase,	5:11
	go sell what you have give up your possessions.	5:15
	Here is the usual and traditional discipline of denial	5:24
	and the most familiar in the Catholic tradition.	5:28
	The way of renunciation.	5:32
	To give up the things that one owns	5:35
	is the necessary beginning of self discovery.	5:38
	The obvious moral reason	5:44
	for giving up in the Christian sense	5:46
	is not that it does things for one's win or one's figure,	5:51
	but that it clears the sight clouded by distraction	5:58
	and preoccupied with things.	6:03
	Possessed by our possessions, as the law says.	6:07
	We cannot possibly make out the lineaments of eternal life	6:11
	bothered by this and that.	6:18
	All Martha's cumbered with many things	6:21
	lacking Mary's single eyed devotion	6:27
	to the one important thing.	6:32
	The monk, the nun really has something	6:37
	which today's operator in Suburbia lacks.	6:42
	Who is surrounded,	6:49
	almost drowned in things.	6:51
	A monk walking through a Supermarket drugstore	6:55
	is free knowing all the things he doesn't need.	7:03
	In calm possession of a detachment	7:09
	from the superficial junk	7:13
	to which we are frantically attached.	7:16
	Simplify.	7:20
	Simplify.	7:22
	This was Thoreau's counsel.	7:24
	We would do well to heed his word.	7:27
	If we could only hear it within the den of canned music,	7:31
	the racket of traffic.	7:36
	We might well take a leaf from the notebook of the monk,	7:41
	and give up for Lent, some cherished physical pleasure.	7:46
	The aesthetic from Eastern culture has a moral point.	7:54
	We in the West eat too much.	8:01
	To see clearly with a mind's eye	8:07
	into the nature of reality.	8:10
	There's a deep moral wisdom	8:13
	in the discipline of self denial of things.	8:14
	Lent should be the season to recall it.	8:18
	But giving up by itself is only superficial.	8:24
	Indeed it is laden with danger	8:32
	unless related to a deeper moral purpose.	8:34
	The second give.	8:38
	To give to self denial,	8:40
	renunciation for the good of neighbor.	8:46
	Go give up what you have and give to the poor.	8:52
	Here is a reading of the Christian life.	8:57
	More like that of the classical reformers	9:00
	we should renounce in order to fulfill the law of charity.	9:03
	We give up in order to give to.	9:09
	The discipline of sacrifice	9:15
	is one practiced not only in the context of the soul,	9:18
	in the world of things,	9:22
	but also in the context of the world of neighbor needs.	9:24
	And in the Protestant tradition especially	9:29
	we are to go without,	9:32
	in order that the neighbors should go with.	9:34
	The law of love surrounds the ethics of renunciation.	9:38
	Social concern, service.	9:43
	Returning of the goods one renounces for oneself	9:47
	to the common market.	9:50
	Here is fulfillment of the law.	9:53
	But even these two gives lack the one thing needful.	9:56
	"What lack I yet?" asks the Ernest attractive young ruler.	10:05
	One who has observed the law all the way up,	10:12
	from Sunday school,	10:16
	to give up and to give to may be done	10:18
	out of a pinched and narrow spirit.	10:23
	Jesus carried on a running attack against the Pharisees	10:27
	who practiced a conspicuous self mortification,	10:32
	a conspicuous arms giving on the street corners.	10:38
	Morally exactly like the conspicuous consumption	10:44
	of the suburban status seeker.	10:47
	Just in the Pharisees, it was conspicuous austerity.	10:51
	Both are done in order to be seen of men.	10:57
	The disciplines of self denial and of charity	11:02
	may be perverted in their spirit	11:05
	by a self centered spirit.	11:09
	Incurvatus in Se.	11:14
	To use Luther's phrase,	11:20
	a heart turned in on itself,	11:22
	which misses eternal life	11:25
	by doing all the right outward things	11:28
	for the wrong inward reason.	11:30
	The third give of the Christian life	11:36
	at the heart of the matter	11:39
	is to give in.	11:44
	And come follow me.	11:47
	At the circumference of existence, renunciation.	11:52
	Closer in charity, social concern at the core,	11:58
	the surrender of the self to the sovereignty of God.	12:08
	The validity of giving up and giving to	12:14
	rests upon the inner bent of the will	12:19
	that has given in to the overwhelming demand of God's grace.	12:22
	Oh I know there's much cheap and slick talk	12:33
	in church circles about surrender,	12:37
	conversion.	12:43
	This most difficult and subtle aspect of the Christian life	12:46
	is often by the evangelist	12:52
	perverted into some sort of emotional flip.	12:54
	To talk of surrender and self-denial,	13:01
	maybe an odd incongruity amid all this respectable elegance	13:06
	among the cautious and well satisfied generation,	13:14
	the term surrender is alien.	13:20
	Really impossible.	13:25
	This is the duke chapel, not a camp meeting or a revival.	13:27
	It's just not done to surrender around here.	13:34
	Yet despite the misuse,	13:45
	the misunderstanding of the term,	13:48
	it stands as indispensable to give in.	13:51
	It means in essence that the self centered self	13:57
	is taken out of its radical egocentricity.	14:02
	Is transformed by radical theo centricity	14:07
	into God-centered centered existence.	14:14
	It requires that the self come forth from its I castle,	14:18
	tear down all its elaborate self defenses	14:24
	and self justifications	14:28
	and give itself over to the sovereignty	14:31
	of the king of the universe.	14:35
	Then authentic existence,	14:38
	the great possession of eternal life	14:43
	is by the miracle of grace	14:47
	handed back to the self.	14:50
	Then to the giving up of renunciation	14:55
	is redeemed from cautious anxiety.	15:02
	It is made easy within its exaction's.	15:07
	And the giving to of charity	15:13
	is redeemed from paternalism	15:16
	or from the earning of merit badges by kindnesses.	15:21
	Lay this story of the rich young ruler	15:30
	against our Lenten life in this pleasant university,	15:34
	running through this four year dress rehearsal	15:41
	for life in Suburbia.	15:44
	Story all seems very far away and long ago	15:48
	yet we are mirrored in the story.	15:54
	It has a jarring contemporaneity about it.	15:59
	Story is reviewed and judgment	16:04
	before it is promised and renewal.	16:08
	As the gospel is always bad news before it is good news.	16:12
	Hold the story up against our life	16:19
	we do rather badly on all of the three gives.	16:22
	Giving up.	16:28
	We don't give up much.	16:31
	The report on the campus chest	16:35
	on West campus was, what was it?	16:38
	$700 this spring	16:41
	averaging out to 21 cents per student.	16:43
	Compare what we spend on ourselves in a day.	16:50
	Compare the budget for the Shanty Clear	16:56
	with a Campus Chest.	17:01
	Lent becomes an embarrassment.	17:03
	We don't give to very much.	17:08
	There are yes projects in town	17:13
	Edge Month, Project Nicaragua,	17:17
	summer projects on which we do well	17:23
	where Duke students are magnificently giving hours,	17:26
	energy, finding a kind of significance in it.	17:32
	A richness of possession lacking in the dorm.	17:38
	But mostly we feed ourselves in cozy and cotton splendor	17:44
	and fend off all consideration of the world's hurt	17:52
	and the world's hunger	17:56
	by practical considerations.	17:58
	And who gives in to the sovereign demands of God in Christ.	18:03
	Egocentricity is the spiritual ailment endemic	18:12
	to American university culture.	18:17
	We are all spoiled children and operators.	18:21
	With a curious deep bias in us,	18:30
	which expects our universe to hand a Suburban happiness	18:33
	to us on a platter.	18:39
	With all the fringe benefits.	18:42
	All we have to do is to offer	18:45
	the credentials of a college degree is our ticket.	18:48
	The story of the rich young ruler	18:56
	does not have a happy ending.	18:58
	He went away with a heavy heart	19:03
	for he had great possession.	19:07
	or so he thought.	19:10
	The encounter was a failure.	19:14
	So when we are encountered by the one who offers	19:19
	the terms of authentic existence,	19:23
	we are attracted, caught by this powerful winsomeness.	19:26
	But only for a moment.	19:35
	On second thought,	19:38
	we go away because we have a busy schedule	19:39
	and great possessions or so we think.	19:46
	But our hearts are restless	19:51
	as we move on to live in what Reese man calls	19:54
	the suburban sadness.	19:58
	Surfeited by honey and caught in traffic.	20:02
	Self denial, we shrug	20:09
	maybe all right for the monks and the missionaries,	20:13
	but not for me.	20:19
	Yet we are forever haunted	20:22
	by a summon from beyond ourselves.	20:24
	That we cannot quite shake off or drown out	20:28
	the word of perpetual relentless exacting rebuke	20:34
	and gracious invitation.	20:43
	Whoever shall seek his life shall lose it.	20:48
	Whoever will lose his life for my sake	20:54
	and the gospel will find it.	20:58
	Amen, let us pray.	21:05
	Almighty God who recalls us at this season	21:17
	to the special memory of the life and death of thy Son.	21:23
	And through his memory prompts us	21:29
	to the disciplines of self-examination and self-denial.	21:31
	Grant we beseech thee	21:39
	that the resolves we speak easily with our lips in worship,	21:41
	maybe self practiced in daily deed	21:48
	that we may come to understand the meaning of his death	21:54
	and resurrection whom we call our Lord	21:58
	and to a single obedience through him	22:04
	to be in knowledge of whom	22:10
	stands our eternal life.	22:14
	Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,	22:19
	the love of God and the communion of the holy spirit	22:23
	be with you all.	22:29

Item Info

Title:

Waldo Beach - "Disciplines of Denial" (March 10, 1963)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r49w0f133

Date:

March 10, 1963

Speaker:

Beach, Waldo

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0218
ref5642_n96
uachapelsermaud
duke:628382
dcrau002225
ark:/87924/r49w0f133
3af58ca6-2234-4fbb-ad40-a6115bb5f427

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Waldo Beach - "Disciplines of Denial" (March 10, 1963)

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