Howard C. Wilkinson - "Blessed Are the Meek" (September 15, 1963)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(soft musical tone) | 0:12 | |
- | Let us all offer God, our prayer of dedication, | 0:48 |
Almighty and eternal God, | 0:52 | |
thou are the source and ground of all that is, | 0:55 | |
in gratitude, in humility and in compassion, | 1:01 | |
we bring these token about our gratitude and love, | 1:07 | |
beseeching thee to accept them and us, | 1:12 | |
for use in the service of thy love, | 1:18 | |
whom we know in Jesus the Christ, Amen. | 1:21 | |
- | The New Testament lesson is taken from | 1:56 |
the fifth chapter of the gospel according to Saint Matthew, | 1:57 | |
the first through the 11th verses. | 2:01 | |
Seeing the crowds, He went up on the mountain | 2:06 | |
and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him. | 2:09 | |
And He opened His mouth and taught them saying, | 2:13 | |
blessed are the poor in spirit, | 2:17 | |
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. | 2:20 | |
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. | 2:23 | |
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. | 2:29 | |
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, | 2:36 | |
for they shall be satisfied. | 2:41 | |
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. | 2:44 | |
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. | 2:50 | |
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called | 2:56 | |
sons of God. | 3:01 | |
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, | 3:04 | |
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. | 3:09 | |
Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you | 3:13 | |
and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely | 3:16 | |
on my account. | 3:21 | |
He runs the reading of the morning lesson. | 3:24 | |
- | This is freshmen Sunday, in the Duke Chapel | 3:48 |
and the various elect group of young men and young women | 3:53 | |
have congregated here in the chapel to worship Almighty God. | 3:59 | |
You young men are aware that each one of you was selected | 4:06 | |
from among three applicants to come to Duke. | 4:12 | |
You young women are even more highly selected. | 4:17 | |
Five times as many young women made application | 4:22 | |
for the freshmen class of Duke that are now here. | 4:26 | |
Even this does not take into account | 4:33 | |
the fact that vast numbers of both men and women | 4:36 | |
would have applied, if they had thought they had | 4:39 | |
the ghost of a chance of being admitted. | 4:43 | |
Now all of you have been told this several times over, | 4:48 | |
and I guess it makes you feel pretty good about yourselves. | 4:51 | |
Added to all of this, | 4:56 | |
you made the discovery when you arrived on campus, | 4:58 | |
that the upperclassmen, the upperclassmen | 5:01 | |
were standing ready to carry your suitcases. | 5:05 | |
By now, therefore, you must be feeling pretty proud | 5:10 | |
of your station in life. | 5:14 | |
But here comes an anticlimax, | 5:17 | |
if not a very heavy disappointment. | 5:21 | |
In chapel you discover that the freshman sermon | 5:25 | |
is on the outrageous topic, | 5:30 | |
Blessed are the Meek, | 5:32 | |
would not a sermon on such topic as | 5:38 | |
blessed are the proud victors, the more appropriate, | 5:40 | |
or at least more flattering. | 5:43 | |
Well, not only it did freshmen, but Americans in general, | 5:47 | |
ordinarily do not like the sound of the word meek. | 5:51 | |
We think of meekness as a liability, | 5:57 | |
rather than as an asset. | 5:59 | |
We visualize the meek person as being timid, | 6:03 | |
spineless, proudly fearful, resigned, | 6:10 | |
and concerning some of our henpeck brothers, | 6:18 | |
we say they are meek as a mouses, | 6:22 | |
and yet, whatever it was, that our Lord Jesus Christ | 6:28 | |
had in mind when He used the word, | 6:34 | |
it was something which he highly recommended. | 6:38 | |
Blessed, He said, are the meek. | 6:43 | |
Also Christ said concerning himself, | 6:47 | |
I am meek and lowly of heart. | 6:49 | |
And of course, even the apostle Paul listed meekness | 6:55 | |
as one of the fruits of the spirit. | 6:58 | |
Perhaps in a situation like this, | 7:03 | |
the best thing we could do at this point | 7:05 | |
would be to take a new look at the word which Jesus used. | 7:07 | |
You know, very often the meaning of a word will change | 7:14 | |
with the passing of years. | 7:17 | |
For instance, in the case of the word, let, | 7:20 | |
its meaning has been exactly reversed since the year 1611, | 7:23 | |
when the King James translation of the Bible was published. | 7:28 | |
In Paul's letter to the Romans, | 7:35 | |
the King James version translates chapter one, | 7:37 | |
verse 13 as follows; | 7:39 | |
I purposed to come onto you, but was let hitherto, | 7:42 | |
meaning that Paul was prevented from coming. | 7:48 | |
Now however, the word let signifies, | 7:52 | |
not prevention but permission. | 7:55 | |
Maybe something of comparable significance | 8:01 | |
has happened to this word meek, | 8:04 | |
Jesus used the language of the people | 8:08 | |
of His own time and place. | 8:09 | |
And of course that was Aramaic, | 8:11 | |
but His teachings were written down later in Greek | 8:14 | |
and the Greek word, which was here, translated meek is | 8:17 | |
praus, praus. | 8:21 | |
And now it is very important or a consideration of this | 8:25 | |
teaching of Jesus that we know of what that word meant | 8:29 | |
in New Testament times. | 8:32 | |
Well, not being an authority on Greek, | 8:35 | |
I went to one who is Dr. Kenneth Clark, | 8:38 | |
my former professor of New Testament | 8:41 | |
in the Duke Divinity School. | 8:43 | |
He told me, of the ancestry of this word | 8:46 | |
of its root meaning and of its likely significance | 8:49 | |
in the context of the teaching which Jesus gave. | 8:52 | |
The word meek or praus, | 8:56 | |
was used in reference to the training of animals originally. | 9:00 | |
The man had to find a horse, which he wanted to train. | 9:06 | |
He would spend many hours, days, weeks | 9:10 | |
in seeking to instill certain habits in this horse. | 9:15 | |
At first, the trainer would have to use compulsion. | 9:20 | |
He would have to prevent the horse from being violent | 9:23 | |
by a superior force of his own. | 9:25 | |
He would have to make the animal do his beating | 9:29 | |
by coercion at times. | 9:33 | |
Finally, though, the successful trainer | 9:36 | |
would enlist the animals obedience | 9:38 | |
without the use of a chain or a rope or a weapon. | 9:43 | |
At last, the horse would do his masters will, voluntarily | 9:48 | |
from an inner discipline, | 9:54 | |
without the need for exterior compulsion. | 9:57 | |
Then the animal was trained, | 10:03 | |
then the animal was gentle. | 10:06 | |
He was obedient, | 10:08 | |
he was voluntarily responsive to the command of his master. | 10:10 | |
He was not violent, not headstrong, not arrogant. | 10:16 | |
He was willing to follow where his master might lead. | 10:21 | |
Now, when the animal achieved this state, | 10:25 | |
he was said to be praus, meek. | 10:31 | |
It is clear from this, | 10:37 | |
that there are two threads of meaning | 10:38 | |
running through this word, | 10:40 | |
as the New Testament presents it to us | 10:42 | |
here in the teaching of Jesus. | 10:44 | |
One is the concept of inter discipline of obedience to God | 10:46 | |
because of voluntary will as opposed to outer compulsion. | 10:49 | |
The second is the quality of gentleness and of non-violence. | 10:54 | |
Now let's take a closer look at these two threads, | 11:00 | |
one at a time. | 11:02 | |
First, the idea of inter discipline of voluntary obedience. | 11:05 | |
On Friday noon, | 11:12 | |
when you had lunch with your faculty advisor, | 11:13 | |
you may have asked him or her, | 11:17 | |
what do you teach at Duke? | 11:19 | |
If you ask that question, | 11:23 | |
the chances are you did not receive a straight answer. | 11:24 | |
That is your faculty advisor did not answer you | 11:29 | |
in the language of your question. | 11:32 | |
He probably did not say, | 11:35 | |
I teach Biochemistry or I teach English. | 11:37 | |
It's likely that he answered your question in these terms, | 11:43 | |
my discipline is Biochemistry or my discipline is English. | 11:49 | |
Why did he answer you in this fashion? | 11:57 | |
He did it because he thinks of his vocation as a professor | 12:01 | |
in the university in dimensions which go | 12:04 | |
considerably beyond merely showing up at the classroom | 12:07 | |
at the appointed hour to give a lecture. | 12:11 | |
He spoke of discipline because he thinks of himself | 12:16 | |
as a perpetual learner, as well as an occasional teacher. | 12:20 | |
The scholar whose field is Physics, | 12:28 | |
dedicates himself to finding out about Physics, | 12:30 | |
the following where Physics might lead him | 12:34 | |
to a being submissive to the mastery of the truth. | 12:39 | |
He is humble before a fact, he is teachable. | 12:44 | |
He is willing to be trained by wisdom. | 12:49 | |
In short, he voluntarily is obedient to the demands | 12:53 | |
of his field of research and teaching. | 12:58 | |
Yes, Physics is his discipline. | 13:03 | |
He means literally what he says. | 13:09 | |
To make the point just a bit clearer, | 13:15 | |
let me say that if we had, which we don't, | 13:17 | |
a man of great wealth on the faculty | 13:21 | |
who wanted to teach just now and then, | 13:24 | |
and who had a certain competence in some chosen field, | 13:27 | |
let's say History, | 13:30 | |
but who spent most of his time playing golf and stock market | 13:31 | |
and who only came on campus one hour a week to teach, | 13:35 | |
we could not correctly say that History is his discipline. | 13:39 | |
It would be open to question whether he had | 13:47 | |
any discipline at all. | 13:49 | |
We simply would say that he teaches History. | 13:53 | |
So in academic life, the field of knowledge, | 13:58 | |
the search for truth is the master. | 14:02 | |
And the scholar, whether he be professor or student | 14:08 | |
is so to speak, the animal under discipline. | 14:11 | |
Now, all that I've been saying here | 14:17 | |
has a very direct bearing upon your life | 14:21 | |
as members of the freshmen class. | 14:24 | |
You are now beginning a period which will probably last | 14:27 | |
at least four years, during which your vocation | 14:31 | |
is that of a student. | 14:35 | |
You will not be expected to practice medicine or law, | 14:38 | |
during this period. | 14:41 | |
You will not be expected to be the directing head | 14:43 | |
of a manufacturing plant. | 14:45 | |
Under God, you're serious calling is to learn | 14:48 | |
during this period. | 14:53 | |
The concept of discipline is basic | 14:56 | |
to your entire vocation as a student. | 15:00 | |
Now, to the extent that you depend upon exterior coercion, | 15:05 | |
grades, parental nagging, deans and the like | 15:11 | |
to make yourself learn, | 15:15 | |
to that extent you will fail to be a true scholar. | 15:19 | |
But to the extent that you learned from voluntary obedience | 15:24 | |
to the search for truth. | 15:27 | |
From a discipline determination to follow | 15:30 | |
knowledge and wisdom wherever they lead, | 15:33 | |
to that extent you will fulfill your God-given vocation, | 15:36 | |
as a student. | 15:41 | |
I hope that each of you will come to know | 15:44 | |
the pure joy of pursuing a field of inquiry, | 15:49 | |
simply because you think it is important. | 15:54 | |
Not because it is required by exterior demands. | 15:59 | |
I hope that each of you will be laid hold off | 16:04 | |
by some great idea to the extent that | 16:09 | |
you will sacrifice some lesser interest of yours | 16:12 | |
in order to have time to follow this ideal | 16:15 | |
where it leads you. | 16:18 | |
But this matter of inter discipline versus exterior controls | 16:22 | |
has another facet, which is worthy of our attention | 16:27 | |
this morning. | 16:30 | |
I refer here to your religion. | 16:32 | |
I do not know to what extent your religious observances | 16:35 | |
have been voluntary prior to coming to Duke. | 16:40 | |
But I do know that here, at least | 16:44 | |
you are on your own. | 16:46 | |
No one, no one is going to compel you to come to chapel. | 16:48 | |
No one is going to check on you to see | 16:56 | |
if you're reading your Bible every day. | 16:58 | |
Whether you say your prayers will be | 17:01 | |
in the most literal sense, strictly between you and God. | 17:04 | |
So you now have a chance to enter into a thrilling new life | 17:09 | |
with Jesus Christ in which you follow Him entirely | 17:14 | |
by voluntary obedience, | 17:20 | |
in which you are responsive to the Heavenly Father's will | 17:23 | |
through a firm inner discipline. | 17:26 | |
Religious activities here at Duke are numerous | 17:32 | |
they're varied, and they're much alive. | 17:36 | |
The chapel services, the university religious council, | 17:39 | |
the YW and the YMCA, the denominational groups together | 17:44 | |
and list the service and talents of many hundreds | 17:50 | |
of Duke students and faculty. | 17:52 | |
We have sought to impress upon you | 17:56 | |
the fact that we do have a varied program, | 18:00 | |
we have had upfront here in the chapel this morning, | 18:03 | |
the leaders of all of our various groups, | 18:05 | |
not because we believe in the tobacco theology | 18:08 | |
that it's what's up front that counts, | 18:11 | |
but because we wanted to let you know that there is | 18:15 | |
a solidarity in the Christian witness here on this campus. | 18:21 | |
But the point I want to make now is | 18:28 | |
that everything that every person does | 18:31 | |
in every one of these expressions of religious life | 18:33 | |
on this campus is totally voluntary. | 18:36 | |
I invite each one of you freshmen, | 18:42 | |
to learn the joy of obedience voluntarily to Almighty God. | 18:44 | |
I invite you to experience the thrill of self-respect, | 18:52 | |
which comes from being honest on exams, | 18:56 | |
simply because you are honorable, | 19:00 | |
of respecting your date because you want to be respectable, | 19:05 | |
of treating persons of all races equally, | 19:11 | |
purely because of an inner sense of | 19:14 | |
obedience to fairness and justice, | 19:16 | |
of saying no two alcoholic drinks, | 19:20 | |
simply because you desire always to be at your best | 19:26 | |
physically, mentally, and morally. | 19:29 | |
The person who is responsible to the will of God, | 19:35 | |
because of an inter discipline of will. | 19:38 | |
I tell you knows an excitement, | 19:41 | |
which is impossible for the person to know | 19:44 | |
who only goes through religious motions | 19:47 | |
under the lash of exterior compulsion | 19:50 | |
of one sort or another. | 19:53 | |
But now let's turn and have a look at that | 19:57 | |
second thread of meaning, | 20:00 | |
which runs through the New Testament Greek word, | 20:01 | |
which has been translated as meek. | 20:04 | |
You will recall that it deals with gentleness | 20:07 | |
and non-violence. | 20:10 | |
For the Greeks, an animal which merited the word praus | 20:13 | |
was one which voluntarily did not strike out at its master, | 20:18 | |
which was gentle to all who came about. | 20:23 | |
It did not exhibit a haughty spirit. | 20:26 | |
The meek person as Jesus visualized him was not timid | 20:30 | |
or spineless or browbeaten or hand packed | 20:34 | |
or fearful or resigned. | 20:37 | |
He had courage, courage even to a cross, if necessary. | 20:40 | |
He had unswerving determination to be decent, | 20:46 | |
which no threat could change. | 20:49 | |
You will recall that Jesus Christ pointed to Himself | 20:53 | |
as an example of meekness, and see how meek He was. | 20:56 | |
He was gentle enough to stoop down with towel and basin | 21:00 | |
to wash the dirt from the feet of His disciples. | 21:04 | |
But while He was doing it, | 21:08 | |
He used that opportunity to remind them that He was God. | 21:12 | |
He called me teacher and Lord and you say, | 21:20 | |
well for so I am, He said, while He was washing | 21:23 | |
their feet gently. | 21:27 | |
He was gentle, yes, but not timid. | 21:30 | |
He commanded respect from all who encountered Him | 21:34 | |
in any situation of life. | 21:37 | |
He taught them as one who had authority. | 21:40 | |
So true meekness is a combination | 21:44 | |
of strong inter discipline, | 21:49 | |
which obeys God through voluntary responsiveness | 21:52 | |
to His will and of nonviolent gentleness, | 21:54 | |
which is unwilling to harm others. | 21:58 | |
You see, it's a kind of determined humbleness. | 22:02 | |
It's a courageous type of kindness. | 22:05 | |
It knows where it is going and for whom and how. | 22:09 | |
Recently our nation witnessed an example of such meekness | 22:15 | |
when 200,000 people converged on a single city | 22:21 | |
to make a single point in a single day. | 22:26 | |
And when they had gone, not one person had been harmed, | 22:32 | |
not one arrest had been made, not one law had been broken. | 22:38 | |
That is gentle discipline. | 22:45 | |
In encyclopedia of religion has a definition of meekness, | 22:50 | |
which is certainly worth our hearing. | 22:55 | |
It is self-respect without vanities | 22:57 | |
and patients' submission to injury and offense | 23:00 | |
without resentment or retaliation. | 23:04 | |
It connotes not feebleness of will or easy compliance | 23:07 | |
with wrongdoing, | 23:11 | |
but rather that firm and constant mastery of oneself | 23:12 | |
under provocation, which springs from | 23:17 | |
calm and trustful surrender to God's will, | 23:20 | |
and which accepts hard and perplexing experiences | 23:25 | |
as a part of the discipline of Christian life. | 23:28 | |
This then describes the meek and Jesus Christ said, | 23:33 | |
they are blessing. | 23:37 | |
He also said one other thing about the meek. | 23:40 | |
He said, they will inherit the earth. | 23:44 | |
Let's see, I got that right. | 23:54 | |
They will inherit the earth. | 23:58 | |
In fact, He assigned this as being the reason why | 24:07 | |
they are blessed. | 24:11 | |
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. | 24:15 | |
He talked that meekness is the road to mastery. | 24:21 | |
Now this thought, my friends, | 24:25 | |
does not sell itself immediately to the mind | 24:28 | |
of the secular American today. | 24:31 | |
The bustling organization man of the second half | 24:35 | |
of the 20th century, finds this just a bit hard to swallow. | 24:38 | |
He may discover no difficulty in believing that | 24:47 | |
the meek are ticketed for heaven when they die. | 24:51 | |
But it's seldom occurs to him that they will first inherit | 24:54 | |
the earth prior to moving on to heaven. | 24:58 | |
Now, before dismissing this statement of Jesus | 25:02 | |
as being utter nonsense, | 25:05 | |
let's remind ourselves that Christ is not talking here about | 25:07 | |
the timid and the spineless, | 25:11 | |
but about the discipline than the non-violent | 25:14 | |
about those whom Charles and Kennedy called | 25:17 | |
"the terrible meek". | 25:20 | |
Perhaps if for a moment we were to substitute | 25:23 | |
the word disciplined for the word meek, | 25:27 | |
we shall have less trouble understanding | 25:30 | |
the prediction which Jesus made. | 25:32 | |
And now with that substitute, let's ask this question | 25:35 | |
who inherits Chemistry? | 25:37 | |
The teachable, or the proud, | 25:41 | |
the discipline or the domineering. | 25:44 | |
Suppose that I decide tomorrow morning | 25:47 | |
that I'm going to master Chemistry. | 25:50 | |
I walk into the laboratory and I pick up a stool | 25:53 | |
and swinging around my head a time or two | 25:55 | |
and let it smash into a roll of beakers, | 25:57 | |
which go crashing to the floor. | 26:00 | |
And then I mowed down a few test tubes and bunsen burners. | 26:01 | |
And the last I leap up on top of one of the tables | 26:05 | |
and pronounced myself, the conqueror of Chemistry. | 26:08 | |
Have I inherited the world of Chemistry? | 26:16 | |
Have I mastered it? | 26:19 | |
No, about all I would have done, | 26:22 | |
by this time, is to prompt everyone inside, | 26:26 | |
to make a dive for the telephone, | 26:29 | |
to call for the men in white coats to come quickly. | 26:30 | |
How does one master Chemistry by being meek, | 26:36 | |
Louie Pastore was humbled before and dedicated to Chemistry. | 26:44 | |
He inherited it's world. | 26:50 | |
How does one inherit music, by being a slave? | 26:53 | |
Paderewski confided to a man who asked him | 27:02 | |
how come he was a genius? | 27:05 | |
The explanation that before he was a genius, | 27:07 | |
he was a drudge, a disciplined drudge. | 27:10 | |
How does one inherit the world of Medicine? | 27:17 | |
By a headstrong swashbuckling approach, hardly. | 27:21 | |
Druggist who expect to inherit this world | 27:27 | |
must submit to the most exacting discipline. | 27:31 | |
They must learn with the most open mind they can command. | 27:37 | |
One of the drugs with which they deal, | 27:44 | |
maybe taken safely in doses of one, 500 of one grain. | 27:47 | |
If they sell a customer one, 300 of a grain, | 27:55 | |
it will kill him. | 28:00 | |
Bob Pettit, who was a member of | 28:05 | |
the Hawk's pro basketball team, | 28:08 | |
which won the world championship in 1958 | 28:10 | |
was asked by a group of people this summer, | 28:14 | |
to give an exhibition of some of his skills. | 28:17 | |
All of us watched with great fascination | 28:20 | |
at the skill with which Bob Pettit used the basketball. | 28:22 | |
He was in command of the world of basketball. | 28:29 | |
He had inherited it. | 28:31 | |
Somebody asked him at the end of the exhibition, | 28:35 | |
what it takes to be as good as he is. | 28:38 | |
Bob Pettit grinned and replied without a second hesitation, | 28:42 | |
three hours a day for eight years, | 28:46 | |
three hours a day for eight years. | 28:50 | |
The followers of Mahatma Gandhi were thoroughly disciplined | 28:57 | |
and thoroughly gentle. | 29:02 | |
They inherited India. | 29:04 | |
You see the really strange thing about this saying of Jesus | 29:08 | |
is that he didn't say the meek should inherit the earth, | 29:11 | |
or wouldn't it be nice if they did, | 29:16 | |
but that they shall inherit the earth. | 29:20 | |
Elsewhere, He predicted that whoever exalts himself | 29:25 | |
will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. | 29:30 | |
In saying this, of course, our Lord was playing on a string, | 29:39 | |
which had been sounded in the Old Testament, | 29:42 | |
as you noticed when Bob Mill read the Old Testament lesson, | 29:44 | |
for the teaching of Jesus, the last half of the beatitude, | 29:48 | |
which is the text of this sermon is a direct quote | 29:52 | |
from this Old Testament passage. | 29:55 | |
We Christians of course, | 30:00 | |
take this word on the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. | 30:02 | |
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. | 30:07 | |
Now friends, this sermon does not mean | 30:12 | |
that any freshmen needs to deny | 30:16 | |
that he has the qualifications, | 30:18 | |
which prompted the university to admit him | 30:20 | |
in preference to the many others who applied | 30:23 | |
for admission and were not accepted. | 30:26 | |
It does mean that whatever abilities | 30:29 | |
you have brought to this university | 30:32 | |
should be dedicated in true meekness | 30:36 | |
through the learning vocation and for the glory of God. | 30:41 | |
Now, if you do that, what worlds you will inherit | 30:47 | |
in so doing, are at this moment and exciting uncertainty. | 30:52 | |
But that you will inherit is an exciting certainty. | 31:00 | |
Oh God, our heavenly father who has called us to this place | 31:14 | |
at this time, to learn by truth, grant us grace, | 31:18 | |
that we may learn those spiritual virtues, | 31:24 | |
which are the fruit of the spirit, | 31:28 | |
in Jesus name. | 31:31 | |
Amen. | 31:32 | |
And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ | 31:34 | |
and the love of God, the Father Almighty, | 31:38 | |
and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit | 31:41 | |
be with you all. | 31:44 |
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