John Symington - "The Basis of a Christian Society" (July 21, 1963)
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| - | And so useless. | 0:06 |
| There are children who were mentally deficient. | 0:08 | |
| Little mongols. | 0:13 | |
| Those whose physical appearance | 0:15 | |
| would always indicate arrested development | 0:18 | |
| in the mother's womb. | 0:20 | |
| There were children with misshapen bodies | 0:23 | |
| and distorted limbs. | 0:28 | |
| A special class for epileptics. | 0:30 | |
| Those who were never learned to read a single word, | 0:34 | |
| unless they were taught in a special way | 0:38 | |
| because of their visual and mental processes. | 0:41 | |
| Though there were all gathered together. | 0:46 | |
| Now, frankly, | 0:50 | |
| I regretted my first visit to that school. | 0:51 | |
| I made up my mind. | 0:57 | |
| I must try not to show surprise, | 0:59 | |
| concern, or even horror | 1:04 | |
| in face of so much tragedy and unhappiness. | 1:06 | |
| Tragic and unhappy. | 1:13 | |
| It was one of the finest and the bravest, | 1:16 | |
| and the most wonderful communities | 1:21 | |
| I've ever been privileged to enter. | 1:23 | |
| To visit it was a thrilling and an exhilarating experience. | 1:27 | |
| The physical appearances were as bad, | 1:34 | |
| perhaps worst than anticipated. | 1:37 | |
| But what cheerfulness. | 1:40 | |
| What a sense of purpose. | 1:43 | |
| What unforced, natural friendliness. | 1:46 | |
| What a magnificent acceptance of circumstances. | 1:51 | |
| What a triumph over handicaps. | 1:56 | |
| The children were happy and contented, | 2:00 | |
| there wasn't a slightest doubt of that. | 2:02 | |
| There was no sign of pity here. | 2:05 | |
| No whining, no complaining, | 2:08 | |
| no apologizing to any visitor for what he might see or hear. | 2:13 | |
| In fact, anyone going with the forebodings | 2:19 | |
| I had on that first occasion, | 2:23 | |
| would want to apologize to a wonderful staff | 2:27 | |
| and to children among whom they worked miracles. | 2:32 | |
| To apologize most humbly, | 2:37 | |
| for being so reluctant to approach them. | 2:40 | |
| Feeling it would be an upsetting, | 2:44 | |
| if not an unpleasant experience. | 2:48 | |
| While I was discussing the whole affair | 2:52 | |
| with the head of the school. | 2:55 | |
| How was it that they had thus triumphed over handicaps. | 2:57 | |
| How was it that those who went prepared | 3:04 | |
| to pity remained to wonder. | 3:07 | |
| How could hope then cheerfulness predominate | 3:10 | |
| in a situation which seemed to deny the very possibility. | 3:14 | |
| Well, she said, | 3:21 | |
| we have two rules in this school | 3:23 | |
| and everyone keeps them and that's the secret. | 3:28 | |
| The first rule is, | 3:33 | |
| everybody is useful. | 3:36 | |
| The second, | 3:39 | |
| no one laughs at anyone else. | 3:41 | |
| Everybody is useful. | 3:46 | |
| We can easily see what a transforming effect | 3:49 | |
| that could have on any terribly | 3:52 | |
| handicapped little boy or girl. | 3:55 | |
| Everybody is useful, | 3:59 | |
| there are no exceptions and that means you. | 4:00 | |
| And no one laughs at anyone else. | 4:05 | |
| Laughter can be very cruel sometimes, | 4:10 | |
| especially the laughter of children | 4:14 | |
| although they don't mean it that way at all. | 4:17 | |
| Some of those children had been at other schools first. | 4:21 | |
| Carrying their handicaps, their eccentricities, | 4:28 | |
| their odd ways among normal children, | 4:33 | |
| and not infrequently they had been the butt of a few, | 4:39 | |
| laughed at and jeered at | 4:45 | |
| and sent home with breaking hearts. | 4:49 | |
| But not now. | 4:52 | |
| No one laughed at anyone else. | 4:54 | |
| That fear was removed. | 4:59 | |
| All around you was a new dignity | 5:01 | |
| and a new security. | 5:06 | |
| A real concern and respect for your neighbor. | 5:10 | |
| Everybody was useful. | 5:19 | |
| There was no varying of the one's talent | 5:21 | |
| or even of the fraction of one talent here, | 5:24 | |
| as if it didn't matter. | 5:28 | |
| It was put to use carefully, | 5:32 | |
| and its usefulness was of the same value, the same wealth, | 5:36 | |
| as that offered by those who were perfectly fit, | 5:41 | |
| mentally and physically. | 5:45 | |
| Now, what comment might we make on those two rules. | 5:49 | |
| Adopted by everyone in this brave, | 5:55 | |
| but handicapped little community. | 6:00 | |
| They were formed by a woman of character | 6:05 | |
| with love in her heart who found her vocation | 6:09 | |
| working for those whose need was very great. | 6:13 | |
| Well, I think a fair comment would be this, | 6:18 | |
| that they are both out of the gospel. | 6:23 | |
| Out of the gospel. | 6:26 | |
| Now, I don't mean that the head of this school | 6:28 | |
| sat down with the Bible and searched through | 6:33 | |
| the scriptures looking for passages or texts | 6:37 | |
| that suggested this is how you ought to do your job, | 6:41 | |
| this is how you ought to run your school. | 6:45 | |
| If even if she did ask | 6:51 | |
| I don't think she could have found such passages or texts. | 6:52 | |
| No, she came to certain conclusions, | 6:58 | |
| not by studying the scriptures, | 7:03 | |
| but through years of trying to help | 7:07 | |
| little handicapped children because she loved them. | 7:10 | |
| We have two rules she said. | 7:13 | |
| Everybody is useful. | 7:15 | |
| No one laughs at anyone else. | 7:18 | |
| And they're New Testament Principles through and through. | 7:22 | |
| The principle that we can all serve. | 7:29 | |
| We're all useful | 7:33 | |
| no matter how inadequate our resources. | 7:35 | |
| That one aspect of the great doctrine | 7:40 | |
| of Christian stewardship that we must accept, | 7:43 | |
| if we believe in the serenity of God | 7:48 | |
| and in the lordship of Jesus Christ. | 7:51 | |
| And the other principle, | 7:55 | |
| that people matter. | 7:59 | |
| All our sons and daughters of God, | 8:01 | |
| they should be recognized and treated as such. | 8:05 | |
| And they came to her, as the force of religious truth | 8:10 | |
| always comes to us most humanly out of our own experience, | 8:15 | |
| came to her after years of trial and error | 8:21 | |
| trying to build up a happy community of little children. | 8:26 | |
| Now, the parable threat in this chapel today, | 8:32 | |
| our Lord's parable of his talents, | 8:36 | |
| emphasizes the first rule accepted in that school | 8:40 | |
| as a principle to which we must adhere | 8:47 | |
| if we are to be fulfilled God's purpose | 8:51 | |
| and to be obedient to his commands. | 8:53 | |
| The parable of his talents. | 8:57 | |
| Now, I daresay, we sometimes felt | 9:00 | |
| there was something unfair about that story. | 9:04 | |
| A talent for the sum of money, | 9:09 | |
| but in this case Jesus took it as being symbolic | 9:11 | |
| of any endowment of body or of mind. | 9:16 | |
| The unfairness seems to lie in the fact | 9:21 | |
| that the man who was rebuked and the man who was punished | 9:25 | |
| was the man who had least of all, | 9:30 | |
| the one-talented man. | 9:32 | |
| If he'd had ten talents, or five talents, | 9:35 | |
| or three talents, or even two talents, | 9:40 | |
| but when I ask you, what could anyone do with so little? | 9:45 | |
| And in sheer disgust, | 9:50 | |
| he pushed it out of sight. | 9:52 | |
| This is not one of the easiest parables to understand. | 9:55 | |
| Although it's given a word to our language. | 10:00 | |
| But certain texts are obvious. | 10:05 | |
| The one-talented man pulled the center of the stage | 10:08 | |
| and it's almost certain that Jesus was confronted | 10:14 | |
| with people like him, | 10:17 | |
| and he wanted to shake them up. | 10:20 | |
| He wanted to alarm them. | 10:23 | |
| There were one-talented men all around him as he spoke, | 10:26 | |
| the disciples among them. | 10:31 | |
| Very ordinary men without influence or wealth, | 10:34 | |
| or any particular brilliance. | 10:39 | |
| Now the word of a man who hid his one talent | 10:43 | |
| saying what's the good of that? | 10:49 | |
| What on earth can I do with this particular situation? | 10:52 | |
| Is relevant in our day and it shows itself | 10:57 | |
| in a perfectly terrifying growth of irresponsibility. | 11:02 | |
| Yes, indeed, | 11:10 | |
| the lives of men seem to be increasingly manipulated | 11:12 | |
| by the pressure of great political, and social, | 11:18 | |
| and scientific forces, | 11:24 | |
| and in these circumstances it's terribly easy | 11:27 | |
| to be overwhelmed with a sense of our unimportance, | 11:33 | |
| of the sheer facetiousness of anything | 11:37 | |
| that we can try to do. | 11:42 | |
| The rule of the school was, | 11:44 | |
| everybody is useful. | 11:48 | |
| Jesus told this parable to rebuke those who said, | 11:51 | |
| but what can I possibly do in this situation? | 11:56 | |
| Those who forgot that they were God's Stewards. | 12:02 | |
| That however little they thought they had received, | 12:07 | |
| they held it in trust. | 12:11 | |
| There's scarcely a fear in life | 12:13 | |
| where progress is not impeded | 12:17 | |
| by those who have ceased to care. | 12:20 | |
| Who will not accept responsibility. | 12:25 | |
| Who, because they can do so little, do nothing at all. | 12:29 | |
| In that parable, no one receives nothing. | 12:35 | |
| We all get something and far too frequently | 12:41 | |
| it's pushed out of sight. | 12:46 | |
| What can I possibly do in this situation? | 12:48 | |
| The name of Wilfred Grenfell | 12:53 | |
| will always be associated with Labrador. | 12:57 | |
| As a young man, he went out to practice as a doctor | 13:02 | |
| among the Eskimo because he was convinced as a Christian, | 13:08 | |
| that was what God wanted him to do. | 13:15 | |
| He found the people of Labrador suffering terribly | 13:19 | |
| from scurvy. | 13:23 | |
| There was a lack of green food. | 13:25 | |
| The modern drugs for dealing with the disease | 13:29 | |
| were not then available. | 13:33 | |
| Little agriculture was attempted, | 13:36 | |
| the Eskimo didn't know how and they needed help. | 13:39 | |
| At one point, Grenfell sent an SOS to Britain, | 13:44 | |
| I want someone to grow cabbages | 13:50 | |
| for the love of God in Labrador. | 13:55 | |
| And he got his volunteers. | 13:58 | |
| Those who were determined at least | 14:02 | |
| not to bury one talent, whatever else they had. | 14:05 | |
| The rules of the school, | 14:11 | |
| everyone is useful. | 14:14 | |
| No one laughs at anyone else. | 14:17 | |
| And that's a variation of a principle | 14:21 | |
| woven in and out of the New Testament. | 14:26 | |
| That other people matter. | 14:31 | |
| All our sons and daughters of God | 14:35 | |
| should be recognized and treated as such. | 14:39 | |
| I command you that you love one another, | 14:45 | |
| means I command you that you matter to one another. | 14:50 | |
| Love for Jesus Christ meant caring for people. | 14:57 | |
| The love of which the New Testament speaks. | 15:05 | |
| The love which Paul had in mind when he said, | 15:09 | |
| owe nothing to any man but to love one another. | 15:13 | |
| He that loveth another fulfilleth the Lord. | 15:18 | |
| That love lifts us outside the realm of things | 15:23 | |
| which is done in the midst of the realm of persons. | 15:29 | |
| We will learn to look upon life with new eyes, | 15:35 | |
| to accept responsibilities | 15:40 | |
| we would never had accepted before. | 15:43 | |
| The cross says to us, | 15:48 | |
| that's what men and women are worth to God, | 15:52 | |
| that's how much he cares for them. | 15:56 | |
| Are not five sparrows sold for two pence or for two cents? | 16:00 | |
| And not one of them is forgotten before God. | 16:07 | |
| Are you not of more value than many sparrows? | 16:13 | |
| Jesus Christ chose the cheapest thing in the marketplace, | 16:18 | |
| a tiny little sparrow netted with hundreds of others | 16:26 | |
| and sold as food, | 16:31 | |
| bought in the marketplace by poor people | 16:34 | |
| who couldn't afford a more expensive bird. | 16:39 | |
| The cheapest thing in the marketplace, | 16:44 | |
| how much did they cost? | 16:47 | |
| It was quite probable, | 16:50 | |
| the normal cost would be four sparrows for two cents. | 16:51 | |
| But sometimes you got a bargain. | 16:57 | |
| A cut price. | 17:00 | |
| A throwaway. | 17:01 | |
| Here you are! | 17:03 | |
| To clear the stall, five sparrows for two cents. | 17:04 | |
| The cheapest thing in the marketplace. | 17:12 | |
| That cut price. Throwaway sparrow. | 17:16 | |
| How like Our Lord to take | 17:21 | |
| a simple vivid figure of speech like this | 17:24 | |
| to drive home an eternal truth, | 17:29 | |
| that all men and women have infinite value | 17:34 | |
| in the eyes of God. | 17:39 | |
| And their wealth, and their dignity should be recognized. | 17:41 | |
| Speaking of refugees and the politically disinherited, | 17:48 | |
| George Orwell once spoke about unpersons. | 17:54 | |
| Unpersons, that terrible phrase, | 18:00 | |
| it can be applied in wider fears. | 18:04 | |
| No one laughs at anyone else. | 18:09 | |
| It can be hard and cruel in a school playground, | 18:14 | |
| laughing or jeering, | 18:20 | |
| At Dark Jimmy or Silly Willy. | 18:24 | |
| But when you find that kind of thing among adults, | 18:28 | |
| you have today, | 18:35 | |
| the worst denials of Christ's teaching | 18:38 | |
| about human relationships. | 18:42 | |
| For the laughing and jeering can take the form | 18:46 | |
| of pitying them with content and inferior, | 18:51 | |
| perhaps, because their skins of a different color, | 18:57 | |
| because of their social background, | 19:03 | |
| because they're not rich enough, | 19:07 | |
| or not clever enough, | 19:10 | |
| because they've sinned and been found out. | 19:13 | |
| We can deny the wealth of others, | 19:18 | |
| by indifference to human need. | 19:21 | |
| We can deny it when we use people as a means to an end. | 19:24 | |
| The rules which the life of that wonderful, | 19:32 | |
| very wonderful school were built, | 19:36 | |
| where everybody is useful. | 19:39 | |
| No one laughs at anyone else. | 19:43 | |
| And the principle, We can alone build up | 19:46 | |
| and sustain a Christian society. | 19:51 | |
| How we can all serve no matter how inadequate our resources | 19:57 | |
| and other people matter. | 20:04 | |
| Let us pray. | 20:08 | |
| Almighty God, who sent thy son to save not only men's souls, | 20:13 | |
| but their bodies. | 20:20 | |
| We pray for the outcasts, the hungry, the persecuted, | 20:23 | |
| the unjustly treated, the underprivileged everywhere. | 20:31 | |
| When before thee O God, | 20:38 | |
| we look at those maybe see in them, | 20:41 | |
| and beside them, Christ crucified. | 20:47 | |
| If anywhere in this world we can be used | 20:52 | |
| as instruments of thy mercy, | 20:58 | |
| then O God send us there, | 21:01 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 21:06 | |
| Amen. | 21:10 | |
| - | The Lord lift up the light his countenance | 21:26 |
| upon you and give you peace. | 21:29 | |
| Amen. | 21:32 | |
| (choir sings) | 21:37 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 21:38 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 21:42 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 21:47 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 21:55 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 22:02 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 22:09 |