Paul Carruth - "Who Is Neighbor?" (July 14, 1963)

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	(church organ playing)	0:03
	(bright church music)	1:14
	(church choir singing)	1:21
	("Doxology")	4:29
	♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪	4:58
	♪ Praise Him, all creatures here below ♪	5:05
	♪ Praise Him above, ye heavenly host ♪	5:11
	♪ Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ♪	5:18
	♪ Amen ♪	5:27
-	Accept, O Lord, these gifts and our lives,	5:37
	which we dedicate unto Thee at this moment	5:42
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	5:47
	Amen.	5:51
	(gentle church music)	5:54
-	How good it is	6:24
	that you have come this morning.	6:25
	Being the stranger here myself,	6:29
	if I had not had the encouragement of your presence,	6:32
	I might have been completely over odd	6:37
	in coming, yet once again, into the magnificent beauty	6:41
	and splendor of this great chapel.	6:45
	The text is taken from the gospel lesson,	6:52
	which was read from the 39th verse of this 22nd chapter	6:55
	of the gospel of St. Matthew.	7:00
	"And the second is like it,	7:02
	'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"	7:05
	During World War II,	7:12
	after he had watched an artillery bombardment	7:14
	tear a town to shreds,	7:17
	(inaudible) was amazed, a few minutes later,	7:20
	to see people coming out of the rubble	7:24
	and calmly going about their routine activities.	7:26
	Soft and apparently quite vulnerable to the horrors of war,	7:32
	the human being, (inaudible) concluded,	7:37
	is tougher than brick or steel,	7:40
	for when the mightiest fortifications were destroyed,	7:44
	these creatures of flesh and blood were still carrying on.	7:48
	I like to remember this whenever I start to talk about love,	7:55
	for it seems that there is an assumption	8:01
	that love is a tender plant that must be cuddled	8:03
	and protected and kept in a greenhouse atmosphere.	8:07
	There is seemingly an acceptance of the idea	8:12
	that it cannot survive the heat of day,	8:15
	out where men really live.	8:18
	And there, where the real issues of life are faced,	8:21
	it is thought that men must turn	8:25
	to some other guide for action.	8:27
	If this be true,	8:32
	then the words of the text must be questioned.	8:34
	We must wonder whether the command to love God and neighbor	8:39
	are primary and basic,	8:43
	or whether this is simply an extra of life	8:46
	that must be placed on down the list	8:51
	after the necessity of looking after oneself.	8:53
	A lay delegate to a recent annual conference	9:01
	was packing his bags to return home	9:05
	before the conference was over,	9:08
	and he said, "I've got to leave while I still believe	9:10
	in the Methodist Church."	9:14
	Obviously the man had expected a gathering of people	9:16
	different from those he had known at home,	9:20
	and he was visibly shaken to discover	9:23
	that the same littleness and pettiness	9:26
	the people exhibited elsewhere,	9:29
	they should also reveal at an annual conference session.	9:32
	He added, "I've heard more talk about loving one another	9:38
	and seeing less evidence of it here	9:43
	than I've ever seen before."	9:46
	Now, when the world accuses the Church	9:50
	and heaps upon Her scorn and criticism,	9:54
	those of us who love Her leap to Her defense	9:56
	and find joy and pride in pointing to the fact	10:00
	that out of the life of the church,	10:03
	the whole level of human existence	10:06
	has found its means of elevating itself	10:08
	far above what it could ever have known otherwise.	10:11
	That of all the agencies that have appeared	10:15
	upon the scene of history, the Church has done more	10:17
	to make life on this planet livable	10:22
	than any other agency.	10:24
	Indeed, we might almost say every other agency combined.	10:26
	But when a remark such as this delegate made	10:32
	comes out of the life of the church itself,	10:36
	it gives us pause.	10:41
	With all the mighty machinery of the church,	10:45
	with all the tremendous activity in which we engage,	10:48
	if we are not able to demonstrate	10:52
	a genuine concern for one another,	10:54
	then our plight is pitiable indeed.	10:58
	Actually, the publicans and the people of the world	11:02
	have learned to swap little acts of kindness.	11:05
	And our Lord will not let us off	11:11
	with the careless or half-hearted answer to the challenge	11:13
	that was put in the delegate's comment,	11:19
	for He has set it down as the basic	11:21
	and primary responsibility of all men,	11:23
	yes, all men in the church and out,	11:27
	that after love for God, they should love one another.	11:31
	They should love neighbor as self.	11:40
	"God's command drives us to our neighbor", Luther declared.	11:45
	And the record of the church, from the beginning,	11:50
	has been one of winsome concern for others.	11:52
	Someone has commented that the early Christians	11:58
	won the world in their day,	12:01
	not so much by the convincing skill of their logic,	12:03
	as by the contagion of their love.	12:08
	See how the Christians love one another, it was said,	12:12
	and the gates of hell could not withstand	12:16
	the battering power of hearts devoted to God,	12:19
	and hence expressing that love to fellow man.	12:23
	Now, the non-Christian may assume	12:29
	that self-preservation is the first law of nature.	12:31
	But inevitably, the Christian comes back	12:36
	to the fundamental commandment of God,	12:40
	to love God, then second, to love neighbor as oneself,	12:43
	and he remembers that it was God, not nature,	12:48
	who made the world.	12:51
	As St. Augustine commented that, "There was no need	12:55
	of a commandment for man to love himself and his own body."	12:57
	He added, "Nothing seems to be said about love for ourselves	13:03
	and yet when it is said,	13:07
	'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself',	13:08
	it at once becomes evident that our love for ourselves	13:11
	has not been overlooked."	13:16
	Oh, you may say, "I despise myself",	13:18
	but this is only an expression of concern about yourself.	13:22
	You may dislike your weakness or your lack of beauty,	13:27
	but these are expressions of your desire	13:32
	that you should possess all the qualities that you admire,	13:34
	whether you have them now or not.	13:39
	Even thoughts of suicide	13:42
	are selfish preoccupations with oneself,	13:43
	and suicide has been aptly described	13:49
	as the most self-centered and selfish of all acts.	13:51
	So St. Augustine entitled a chapter of his writings,	13:57
	the command to love God and thy neighbor	14:01
	includes the command to love ourselves.	14:03
	His discussion offers no comfort	14:06
	to those who would promote love of self.	14:09
	Actually, as we have seen,	14:11
	this is an assumption from which we are drawn	14:14
	toward a commitment to God and neighbor.	14:18
	Now, very closely identified with love of self	14:23
	is another easy form of love.	14:27
	This is the love of love.	14:30
	This kind of loving is that of make-believe.	14:35
	It separates itself from reality	14:40
	so that there is no barrier to any desire.	14:42
	The divorce courts are filled by this kind of love,	14:46
	for it assumes that all the problems which appear	14:51
	to warn of the solemn responsibility of marriage	14:54
	will be banished by sheer romance.	14:58
	In the name of loving love,	15:02
	every kind of immorality will be excused.	15:04
	Feeling this kind of love, it becomes easy to pretend	15:08
	urgent concern for the downtrodden, the victims of disease,	15:12
	the poor masses of Africa or Asia,	15:16
	and even shed tears with these people	15:20
	without becoming actually involved with them at all.	15:23
	The emotions are turned inward rather than outward,	15:29
	for this is an easy, undemanding love of love.	15:34
	Dostoevsky in Brothers Karamazov	15:42
	had one of his characters to declare,	15:45
	"The more I love humanity in general,	15:48
	the less I love man in particular.	15:53
	As soon as anyone is near me,	15:57
	his personality disturbs my self-complacency	15:59
	and restricts my freedom.	16:02
	In 24 hours", he goes on, "I began to hate the best of men.	16:04
	One, because he is too long over his dinner,	16:09
	the other is because he has a cold	16:13
	and keeps on blowing his nose.	16:15
	I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me,	16:18
	but it has always happened	16:23
	that the more I detest men individually,	16:25
	the more ardent becomes my love for humanity."	16:30
	Be in love with love.	16:36
	And also, it is easy to love sheer friendliness.	16:41
	What goes under the banner of friendship	16:47
	is often only a regard for the concern	16:49
	that has been shown to us by others.	16:52
	"I like him because he is so nice"	16:56
	may actually mean that we do not like the person at all.	17:00
	We may simply like the courtesy,	17:05
	the ego-building acts that increase our sense of valuing,	17:09
	promote our self-love.	17:13
	In this scheme of things, one is considered a true friend	17:16
	if he helps us regardless of all other considerations.	17:20
	It is not the other person we love,	17:26
	but the increase in our own self-love	17:30
	that that person brings.	17:33
	Jesus said, "They who love only those who love them."	17:37
	In other words, love only those who promote our self-love.	17:42
	These have already received all the reward they will get.	17:47
	Again and again, He calls us beyond ourselves,	17:51
	from easy love to hard love.	17:54
	In His call to love others, even our enemies,	17:58
	Jesus opens our eyes to the essential selfishness	18:02
	of much of what passes for our love for friends.	18:06
	Here's a good example in our Lord's description	18:11
	of the scene of the Judgment.	18:13
	The righteous, in this scene, have served God	18:16
	by simply giving a cup of cold water in His name.	18:20
	And they're surprised that God is honoring them for it.	18:25
	But in this story, the whole point turns on the fact	18:31
	that the water was given simply for the sake of neighbor.	18:35
	And it is made clear that if the unrighteous had realized	18:41
	that neighbor was God in disguise,	18:46
	in order to win God's approval,	18:49
	they too, would have clothed the naked,	18:51
	visited the prisoner, given the cup of cold water.	18:54
	Again, in the response to the question,	19:00
	"What must I do to save my life?"	19:02
	Our Lord's answer was that the only way	19:06
	to save self is to lose it,	19:09
	to turn it loose for something outside ourselves.	19:13
	But the real test of following the commandment to love God	19:19
	is found in our willingness to invert our self-love	19:24
	and to project it to our neighbor,	19:29
	to move from easy love to hard love.	19:32
	In the Parable of the Good Samaritan,	19:38
	the question is turned around from "who is my neighbor"	19:40
	to "who is neighbor."	19:45
	No longer can I inquire as to who is my neighbor,	19:49
	but I must ask if I myself am being a neighbor,	19:54
	for the very word, neighbor, is a threat	20:00
	to self-love and easy love.	20:03
	Luther declares, "Everyone should put on his neighbor	20:08
	and so conduct himself toward him	20:12
	as if he were in the other place."	20:14
	A Christian man lives not in himself,	20:17
	but in Christ and his neighbor.	20:21
	This is hard love,	20:25
	but we are talking here not about neighbor in the abstract,	20:28
	but the man next door, the person with whom we work,	20:33
	that individual with whom we must strive to get along,	20:38
	that annoying child that lives down the street.	20:43
	This is hard love for it calls	20:49
	for stripping ourselves of our selfishness,	20:51
	to put self on the cross,	20:55
	and then discovering that Christ has been enthralled.	20:58
	Hard love calls for loving when nobody knows.	21:04
	Now there is a great deal of pretense here.	21:12
	More often than not, the secret good that is done	21:15
	is carried out in such a way that it becomes an open secret,	21:19
	and I've noticed that often	21:24
	people whose good deeds were officially secret	21:26
	have extracted a double portion of gratitude and praise	21:30
	over a period of time,	21:34
	as little by little, the important people are let in	21:35
	on what is supposedly private information.	21:40
	Love that is directed toward neighbor	21:46
	is concerned with the neighbor,	21:49
	and neither with concealing nor advertising the deed.	21:54
	It is hard love when one must love with the knowledge	22:03
	that we are not going to be paid back	22:08
	even with gratitude.	22:10
	How often we are offended when the courtesy we show	22:12
	is simply accepted without any appreciation.	22:16
	Actually, in our heart of hearts, we resent it	22:20
	when no indebtedness is acknowledged for our good deed	22:23
	by even a 'thank you',	22:28
	and yet Jesus called for us to do good deeds	22:31
	for those who cannot pay us back.	22:33
	And I think we might add, even with thanks.	22:36
	Only in this way are we delivered, delivered completely,	22:40
	from doing the deed for love of ourselves.	22:46
	One of the hardest tests of love	22:53
	is to love without waiting for worth.	22:56
	How important this is?	23:01
	Remember, we do not wait for worthiness in ourselves	23:03
	to love ourselves,	23:06
	but self-love makes us desire worth or worthiness.	23:08
	Even the worst criminal continues to love himself	23:15
	and to look forward to the day	23:18
	when things will be better for him.	23:19
	Let us never forget that if God had waited	23:23
	for us to be worthy of His love,	23:28
	then Christ would not have come,	23:32
	nor can we find great comfort in the thought	23:36
	that we love a person not for what he is	23:39
	but for what he may become.	23:42
	Now, we hear this often,	23:46
	but it seems to me this is pure sham,	23:47
	for it means that we do not love the person at all.	23:51
	We love only an idea.	23:53
	We have fallen once more into the trap of easy love,	23:57
	of being simply in love with love.	24:01
	No, we must love the person simply for himself,	24:06
	just as he is.	24:13
	Look once more at the Parable of the Good Samaritan,	24:15
	with what consummate skill the story is told.	24:19
	There is no wasting of words or actions.	24:23
	The Samaritan does not inquire	24:27
	into the worth of the man he helps.	24:29
	He simply does those things that are necessary.	24:33
	There is no expression of thanks in the story,	24:38
	or any promise of repaying him of any kind, whatsoever.	24:42
	To be a true neighbor is to lose our own desire	24:48
	for reward of any kind, even a secret one,	24:53
	and to serve for the sake of the other person.	24:59
	Now I don't know about you, but when I come to this point,	25:05
	then I must ask, "Is it possible to love at all?"	25:10
	And there come to us words	25:17
	that our Lord used in another connection	25:19
	when He said, "These things are impossible with men,	25:23
	but all things are possible with God."	25:25
	And we find our answer, the possibility of love	25:31
	because it has pleased God,	25:36
	to call to us in the person of our neighbor,	25:39
	and our surrender to God	25:45
	means a waiting and a preparedness for the summons to Him	25:48
	in loving service to our fellows.	25:53
	And thus, St. Paul speaks to the very depths of our souls	25:58
	when he wrote to the Philippians and to us,	26:05
	"If there is any encouragement in Christ,	26:11
	any incentive of love, any participation in the spirit,	26:15
	any affection and sympathy,	26:20
	complete my joy by being of the same mind,	26:22
	having the same love, being in full-accord and of one mind.	26:26
	Do nothing from selfishness or conceit,	26:31
	but in humility, count others better than yourselves.	26:35
	Let each of you look not only to his own interest,	26:40
	but also to the interest of others.	26:44
	Have this mind among yourselves	26:47
	which you have in Christ Jesus,	26:51
	who, though He was in the form of God,	26:54
	did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,	26:58
	but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant,	27:02
	being born in the likeness of men."	27:09
	Let us pray.	27:16
	O Thou, before whom we come having love	27:23
	for the most part, just ourselves,	27:28
	and have so engaged in easy love	27:32
	through the days and the years,	27:34
	that we are almost unprepared even to think about hard love,	27:38
	grant us, we pray Thee, that sense of Thy presence	27:44
	and the touch of Thy hand upon us	27:49
	that in service to our fellow men,	27:52
	we may discover that we have come close	27:57
	to the basic and fundamental commandment,	28:02
	to love God and to love neighbor.	28:06
	Let us stand.	28:10
	And now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling	28:14
	and to present you faultless before His presence	28:18
	with exceeding great joy,	28:21
	to the only wise God, our savior, be glory and majesty,	28:23
	dominion and power both now and forevermore.	28:27

Item Info

Title:

Paul Carruth - "Who Is Neighbor?" (July 14, 1963)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r40c4xm0m

Date:

July 14, 1963

Speaker:

Carruth, Paul

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0234
ref5673_emv
uachapelsermaud
duke:628027
dcrau002240
ark:/87924/r40c4xm0m
e1fe0501-e104-4763-a6d3-1e32e6037871

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings

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United States
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Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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