James T. Cleland - "A Gospel of Salvation" (October 20, 1963)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
("Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow) | 0:06 | |
♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪ | 1:03 | |
♪ Praise Him all creatures here below ♪ | 1:10 | |
♪ Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts ♪ | 1:19 | |
♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪ | 1:28 | |
♪ Amen ♪ | 1:40 | |
- | We give thee but thine own, | 1:48 |
whate'er the gift may be. | 1:51 | |
All that we have is thine alone. | 1:53 | |
A trust, O Lord, from thee. | 1:56 | |
Amen. | 1:59 | |
(reverent music) | 2:03 | |
- | Let us pray. | 2:28 |
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 2:31 | |
be acceptable in thy sight, | 2:37 | |
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. | 2:38 | |
Amen. | 2:48 | |
Many of us have been in London. | 2:56 | |
While there, some of us have visited Westminster Abbey, | 3:02 | |
the parish church of the British empire. | 3:09 | |
Those of us who have not visited Westminster Abbey, | 3:15 | |
know it through television. | 3:19 | |
The scene of the coronation, | 3:23 | |
the mausoleum of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth, | 3:27 | |
the place of memory of Milton and Handel | 3:33 | |
and Darwin and Gladstone. | 3:39 | |
The grave of the unknown soldier. | 3:44 | |
It is an unforgettable spot. | 3:48 | |
Yet one visitor declined to be overly impressed | 3:53 | |
with the deceased celebrities | 3:58 | |
in this all-British hall of fame. | 4:02 | |
She finally blurted out to the guide, "Young man. | 4:06 | |
All this is very interesting, but what I want to know is | 4:12 | |
has anyone been saved here recently?" | 4:19 | |
Has anyone been saved here recently? | 4:26 | |
It's a valid question to ask in a church. | 4:30 | |
And Westminster Abbey is a church. | 4:34 | |
The church's business is in part salvation. | 4:38 | |
You've all heard that before, | 4:45 | |
but you're probably muttering to yourselves, | 4:47 | |
"Okay, but what is salvation?" | 4:49 | |
Etymologically the word is derived | 4:56 | |
from the Latin adjective salvus, which means well. | 4:58 | |
That in turn points to the noun salus, which means health. | 5:05 | |
And so the lady's question to the astonished guide | 5:14 | |
may be paraphrased, has anybody been put back | 5:17 | |
into good condition here recently? | 5:22 | |
Has anyone discovered what it means | 5:27 | |
to be healthy here recently? | 5:30 | |
It's a shocking question to hear, | 5:36 | |
especially if all one wanted to see in Westminster Abbey | 5:39 | |
was the coronation chair, | 5:43 | |
which has as its seat the Stone of Scone, | 5:48 | |
stolen by the English long ago from Scotland. | 5:53 | |
But the lady asked a haunting question | 6:02 | |
and we'd better have a look at it together. | 6:07 | |
Now, one of the best ways to understand what health is | 6:11 | |
may be to consider the opposite: disease, sickness. | 6:15 | |
Moreover, it's wise to remember | 6:21 | |
that sickness is often a psychosomatic problem, | 6:24 | |
an illness of the body and soul thought of as one entity | 6:30 | |
with no hyphen between psycho and somatic. | 6:35 | |
This sickness of man, which disturbs him in soul and body, | 6:42 | |
may reveal itself in any or all of the three manifestations. | 6:48 | |
There is first a sense of helplessness, of impotence. | 6:54 | |
This is more than the weakness of a child, | 7:02 | |
which can be counteracted | 7:07 | |
by a confident dependence on his parents. | 7:09 | |
It is the hopeless helplessness of to the adult | 7:15 | |
who may well desire to return to the safety of the womb. | 7:21 | |
It may express itself in the blurted-out sincerity of, | 7:29 | |
"I wish I had never been born." | 7:33 | |
May be caused by fear of that | 7:38 | |
which is new and strange and unexpected | 7:40 | |
or by an overwhelming sense | 7:47 | |
of the uselessness of one's toil. | 7:50 | |
One who feels hopelessly helpless is sick, | 7:55 | |
psychically and maybe psychosomatically. | 8:02 | |
The human sickness may secondly reveal itself | 8:10 | |
in a purposelessness, | 8:13 | |
an uncertainty about where to turn, where to go. | 8:16 | |
Life makes no sense. | 8:22 | |
Now you're recalling the words | 8:26 | |
which Shakespeare put into the mouth of Macbeth: | 8:28 | |
"Life's but a walking shadow, | 8:33 | |
a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage | 8:39 | |
and then is heard no more. | 8:44 | |
It is a tale told by an idiot, | 8:49 | |
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." | 8:54 | |
Life signifies nothing and death makes even less sense. | 9:02 | |
You remember of the epitaph on the grave of a child. | 9:09 | |
Child, age three weeks. | 9:14 | |
Three weeks in Cheltenham Churchyard. | 9:16 | |
"It was so soon that I am done for, | 9:21 | |
I wonder what I was begun for." | 9:27 | |
No wonder there was wonder. | 9:31 | |
We wonder regularly in the sense | 9:35 | |
of puzzlement, bewilderment, perplexity. | 9:37 | |
We are nonplussed, dumbfounded, | 9:40 | |
we are tired of living and scared of dying, like Hamlet. | 9:44 | |
We really don't know where we're going, | 9:54 | |
but we're on our way. | 9:56 | |
We think enough along this line, | 10:00 | |
we become sick, psychosomatically. | 10:02 | |
Helplessness, purposelessness. | 10:07 | |
There's a third manifestation of man's sickness: guilt. | 10:11 | |
Now this is not the same as wickedness or perversity | 10:20 | |
though it's connected with them. | 10:23 | |
It is the realization that one may be justly charged, | 10:26 | |
justly charged with responsibility for his improper conduct. | 10:34 | |
He knows he is guilty, even if no one else does. | 10:44 | |
He may even be guilty before God. | 10:50 | |
It is bad enough to be an embarrassed criminal | 10:54 | |
standing before a judge or a dean. | 10:58 | |
It's worse to be a sensible sinner | 11:05 | |
standing with head bowed in the presence of God. | 11:09 | |
One of the Psalmists caught that when he wrote, | 11:13 | |
"But I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. | 11:16 | |
Against thee, thee only have I sinned | 11:23 | |
and done that which is evil in thy sight. | 11:27 | |
So that thou art justified in thy sentencing | 11:31 | |
and blameless in thy judgment. | 11:36 | |
Paul went even deeper into the guilt sickness, | 11:42 | |
even deeper than the Psalmist. | 11:47 | |
"For of the good that would I do not, | 11:51 | |
but the evil which I would not, that I do." | 11:58 | |
And one can almost hear the man yelling, | 12:05 | |
"Oh, wretched man that I am! | 12:11 | |
Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" | 12:15 | |
Now this has to be a really sick, | 12:20 | |
smitten with guilt, conscience. | 12:24 | |
All right, there is the sickness in three manifestations. | 12:28 | |
But our topic is salvation. | 12:32 | |
Health. | 12:37 | |
Is there a remedy? | 12:41 | |
Is there a doctor in the house? | 12:43 | |
The Christian answer is yes. | 12:47 | |
Jesus the Christ is a physician sent by God. | 12:52 | |
Listen to him. | 12:59 | |
"Those who are well have no need of a physician, | 13:01 | |
but those who are sick. | 13:05 | |
I came not to call the righteous," | 13:09 | |
that is, those who out in good condition, "but sinners." | 13:14 | |
That is the spiritually sick, the hopeless, | 13:20 | |
the purposeless, the guilty. | 13:23 | |
Do you recall the meaning of the name Jesus? | 13:26 | |
It is savior. | 13:30 | |
That is he who brings salvation, help. | 13:33 | |
Paul Tillich translates it precisely the healer. | 13:38 | |
Now Jesus' technique of healing was | 13:44 | |
to refer his patients to God, | 13:48 | |
to a God who wished men well, | 13:53 | |
to a God who wanted people to be in good condition. | 13:57 | |
That is, in right relations | 14:01 | |
with themselves and with their fellows. | 14:03 | |
To a God who had sent Jesus to cure the sick. | 14:07 | |
Yes, the psychosomatically sick. | 14:11 | |
To the helpless, Jesus brought the good news | 14:17 | |
that they should rely on God | 14:24 | |
as a child relies on his parents. | 14:28 | |
You remember what he said to his disciples | 14:33 | |
who were safeguarding him against a stampede of children? | 14:36 | |
"Let the children come to me. | 14:41 | |
Don't hinder them, for such belongs the Kingdom of God. | 14:44 | |
Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive | 14:52 | |
the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter therein." | 14:57 | |
Now, this is not a plea for the Christian | 15:05 | |
to be a spiritual Dennis the Menace or a pious sweetie pie, | 15:09 | |
or even a member of some ecclesiastical | 15:18 | |
Peanuts youth fellowship. | 15:21 | |
It asks that we recognize, accept | 15:28 | |
and rely upon our utter dependence | 15:34 | |
on God who created us, sustains us | 15:39 | |
and who will put us back into good condition | 15:46 | |
if we will but accept the dependent relation | 15:49 | |
of a child to a father. | 15:54 | |
Now, this may seem to some of you | 15:57 | |
what an Englishman has called | 16:00 | |
the acceptance of bleeding charity. | 16:02 | |
Well, it is just that. | 16:06 | |
Well, you've got to spell bleeding charity | 16:09 | |
a capital B and a capital C. | 16:11 | |
It is the acceptance of bleeding charity. | 16:14 | |
And it's one way to cure helplessness. | 16:19 | |
To the purposeless, Jesus gave direction. | 16:26 | |
Love God, love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. | 16:31 | |
Now this offers a spiritual polestar by which to steer. | 16:37 | |
It means that even here on Earth, | 16:41 | |
we shall so far as in us lies | 16:45 | |
live the life of the Kingdom of God. | 16:49 | |
And because we act in goodwill, | 16:54 | |
giving cups of cold water to the thirsty, | 16:59 | |
or building up a pipeline of pure water | 17:04 | |
for a droughty community, we shall one day | 17:07 | |
walk right through the gates of the new Jerusalem. | 17:11 | |
Purposelessness will be supplanted by a goal, | 17:17 | |
a goal which will be reached, hereafter if not here. | 17:21 | |
And to the guilty, Jesus brought good news. | 17:28 | |
The gospel of forgiveness for the guilt of sin | 17:34 | |
and deliverance from the power of sin. | 17:39 | |
This was discovered by folk like the woman at the well | 17:44 | |
and Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter. | 17:49 | |
And after his death and resurrection, | 17:55 | |
this double victory over sin, forgiveness and deliverance, | 17:59 | |
was the experience of a host whom no man can number, | 18:04 | |
but some of whom you and I can name | 18:12 | |
in our hearts right now. | 18:16 | |
Jesus not only forgave sin while on Earth, | 18:22 | |
His spirit still takes away the sin of the world. | 18:28 | |
The guilty are not merely acquitted, they are absolved. | 18:35 | |
Now this is the message of the New Testament. | 18:43 | |
God, of His own free will, through Jesus Christ, | 18:47 | |
brought and brings the salvation which is health | 18:53 | |
to the helpless, the purposeless, the guilty. | 18:58 | |
He does it not because we are worthy, | 19:04 | |
we know we're not, but because He can't help it. | 19:10 | |
You see, His nature is love. | 19:18 | |
And throughout the centuries, the church has sought | 19:26 | |
not only to teach this fact, but to explain it. | 19:29 | |
And right here, the trouble begins, | 19:32 | |
because the explanations differ. | 19:36 | |
The advocates squabble among themselves | 19:40 | |
and the divisions of Christiandom perpetuate the difference. | 19:45 | |
For example, the epistle to the Hebrews | 19:51 | |
pictures the Christ in Jewish terms, | 19:54 | |
an eternal high priest who carries himself daily | 19:58 | |
into the celestial holies of holy | 20:04 | |
to atone for the sins of the world. | 20:08 | |
But we are not Jews. | 20:12 | |
Anselm tackles the problem like a Roman lawyer. | 20:17 | |
The problem of how the eternal law of justice | 20:22 | |
can be satisfied in a scheme of salvation, | 20:28 | |
which accentuates divine forgiveness. | 20:32 | |
How can you tie together justice and forgiveness? | 20:36 | |
But we are not Romans. | 20:42 | |
Abelard works out a model theory of man's atonement with God | 20:45 | |
based on the fact that the revelation of God's love in Jesus | 20:52 | |
stirs man's heart to a repentance, | 20:57 | |
which makes him whole, healthy again. | 21:00 | |
But if you read Abelard, | 21:05 | |
you'll have difficulty grasping the whole of it. | 21:06 | |
And the classic theory concentrates on the resurrection, | 21:11 | |
where Jesus broke the power of death, | 21:16 | |
therefore He broke the power of sin | 21:20 | |
because the wages of sin are death, | 21:22 | |
Therefore He broke the power of Satan, | 21:24 | |
and He enables man to share in the victory. | 21:29 | |
And this annoys those of us | 21:33 | |
who would make the cross central in God's saving act. | 21:35 | |
But if we ask the proponents of these four theories | 21:41 | |
if there were any basic agreement among them, | 21:45 | |
they might well answer, if they'd calm down enough, "Yes." | 21:50 | |
The forgiveness, the redemption, the salvation, | 21:58 | |
the renewed health of man is primarily, | 22:04 | |
solely due to God and to His agent, Jesus Christ. | 22:08 | |
And if we, surprised at their unanimity, | 22:16 | |
asked another question, "Can you prove it?" | 22:19 | |
They might well answer, "Yes." | 22:25 | |
Go and talk with someone who has experienced | 22:28 | |
the fact of salvation, renewed health. | 22:32 | |
Well, let's try it. | 22:36 | |
Saint Paul, what was your problem? | 22:39 | |
Why did you become a Christian? | 22:44 | |
I became a Christian because Judaism didn't work for me. | 22:50 | |
I kept the law, how I kept it. | 22:57 | |
But it never gave me the confidence it was supposed to give | 23:02 | |
that I was right with God. | 23:08 | |
Even persecuting the Christians, | 23:10 | |
I had a feeling of hopeless helplessness. | 23:13 | |
And then I discovered | 23:18 | |
that one is right with God if he wants to be. | 23:22 | |
Know why? | 23:31 | |
Because God wants it. | 23:33 | |
That's what He was telling us in Jesus Christ. | 23:36 | |
You just accept that, and you're well again, | 23:40 | |
the bottom drops out of your helplessness. | 23:43 | |
You remember what I wrote to the Romans? | 23:46 | |
"Wretched man that I am, | 23:48 | |
who will deliver me from this body of death? | 23:51 | |
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." | 23:55 | |
It worked. | 24:02 | |
Now let's ask someone else. | 24:06 | |
What about purposelessness? | 24:08 | |
A British officer, a confessed Christian, | 24:11 | |
in the First World War, | 24:17 | |
has told us how he steadied a battalion | 24:20 | |
before it went over the top against the German lines. | 24:24 | |
He just said three things. | 24:29 | |
"If we live, it's victory. | 24:32 | |
If we're wounded, it's blighted, that's home. | 24:38 | |
If we are killed, it's the resurrection." | 24:45 | |
Oh, they couldn't lose on that faith. | 24:51 | |
Three goals. All good. | 24:55 | |
And the Christian faith, | 24:59 | |
which removes purposelessness within the third. | 25:01 | |
"If we are killed, it's the resurrection." | 25:04 | |
The troops weren't safe, no. | 25:08 | |
But they could be saved. | 25:13 | |
What about guilt? | 25:16 | |
Well, here I'd like to talk with Zacchaeus. | 25:18 | |
He was a sinner. | 25:22 | |
In fact, he was an official sinner. | 25:24 | |
Anyone who collected taxes was automatically a sinner. | 25:26 | |
Maybe that's a sound idea, I don't know. | 25:31 | |
He was a sinner, an official sinner, because though a Jew | 25:37 | |
he collected Roman taxes from his fellow Jews. | 25:40 | |
He therefore knew ostracism. | 25:45 | |
He probably also knew guilt. | 25:48 | |
His response to Jesus' visit to his home | 25:52 | |
suggests that he was well aware of the economic shenanigans | 25:54 | |
through which a tax collector lined his own pockets. | 25:59 | |
Jesus talked with him. | 26:04 | |
And what a response Zacchaeus made. | 26:06 | |
"Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. | 26:09 | |
And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, | 26:17 | |
I'll restore it fourfold." | 26:22 | |
400%. | 26:25 | |
Now, when you touch a man's pocket like that, | 26:28 | |
you've touched his heart. | 26:30 | |
And Jesus gave him His blessing. | 26:34 | |
"Today, salvation," that is, health, | 26:36 | |
"has come come to this house." | 26:42 | |
Freed from guilt, delivered from the sin | 26:46 | |
which so easily beset him, found of God, | 26:50 | |
Zacchaeus began to act at once in Godlike fashion. | 26:53 | |
His past had been redeemed, his present transformed, | 26:58 | |
and his future redirected. | 27:01 | |
Now it is known that in each of these three cases, | 27:06 | |
salvation began here, on Earth. | 27:10 | |
It'll have to wait for its completion until after death, | 27:16 | |
but this Earth is the site of God's saving work | 27:21 | |
and of men's restoration to health. | 27:27 | |
Jesus was and is God's physician. | 27:31 | |
Has anyone been saved here recently? | 27:40 | |
In Duke Chapel? | 27:45 | |
The answer is with us, in person. | 27:50 | |
There are alumni who found health here | 27:55 | |
when they were undergraduates, | 28:00 | |
and worship with us today on homecoming Sunday. | 28:04 | |
It's not surprising to find them. | 28:10 | |
Our legend of Zacchaeus tells us why they are here with us. | 28:14 | |
Zacchaeus used to disappear | 28:20 | |
from the bustle of the marketplace now and again. | 28:23 | |
One day an inquisitive person followed him | 28:26 | |
and saw him stop at a certain tree | 28:32 | |
and touch it almost with a caress. | 28:37 | |
When he was asked why he did it, Zacchaeus answered, | 28:41 | |
"It was from this tree that I first saw my Lord. | 28:44 | |
And when I get all hot and bothered and worried, | 28:52 | |
I come out here and I stand beside it and I meet Him again." | 28:58 | |
And he, and some of our alumni, and many of us can add, | 29:09 | |
"And we are well again." | 29:21 | |
This is one aspect of the gospel of salvation. | 29:27 | |
Let us pray. | 29:35 | |
Almighty and eternal God, thou healer of men, | 29:42 | |
we do give thee humble and hearty thanks | 29:47 | |
for thy goodness to thy creatures | 29:49 | |
in curing our helplessness | 29:53 | |
in giving direction to our lives | 29:56 | |
and in forgiving and delivering us | 30:00 | |
from the guilt and power of sin, | 30:02 | |
through the life, death and resurrection of thy son, | 30:07 | |
Jesus Christ our Lord. | 30:11 | |
And may the blessing of the Lord come upon you abundantly. | 30:15 | |
May it keep you strong and tranquil | 30:20 | |
in the truth of His promises this day and forever more. | 30:23 | |
(reverent music) | 30:32 |
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