Eugene C. (L) Smith - Sermon Untitled (October 25, 1964)

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-	What one thing do you wish more than anything else?	0:31
	If I could wave a magic wand and give you one thing,	0:39
	what would you ask for?	0:46
	And I don't mean stand up here	0:48
	and let other people hear you,	0:50
	but, in your secret desire.	0:52
	What one thing do you want more than anything else?	1:00
	Popularity?	1:08
	Some skill?	1:13
	Conquering of some habits?	1:20
	Money?	1:25
	What would be the one best thing for you?	1:31
	This is what St. Paul was writing about	1:41
	to that little church in Philippi that he loved so much.	1:43
	It is my prayer that the what,	1:48
	that your love may grow more and more.	1:56
	If we thinking of the one best thing for us,	2:04
	think of love,	2:11
	we probably would think of wanting to be loved.	2:15
	There is some wisdom in this.	2:23
	Being loved is necessary to the good life,	2:26
	but Paul was wiser	2:31
	and spoke of the ability to love.	2:35
	The most important gift,	2:41
	history has a strange way of underscoring	2:48
	these sometimes surprising insights of scripture.	2:51
	Just two illustrations,	2:57
	the Ponderous Tome by	3:00
	William Alanson White on psychotherapy,	3:03
	scores of analyses of the situations	3:08
	of people in mental breakdown	3:12
	with each an examination of the possibilities of recovery	3:16
	and in each prognosis,	3:23
	a study of the degree to which,	3:25
	resentment,	3:28
	suspicion,	3:31
	hostility,	3:34
	have become habitual	3:36
	to the degree that they are habitual,	3:41
	the chance for recovery from mental breakdown is less.	3:46
	Love is essential to mental health.	3:53
	Another illustration on the opposite side,	3:57
	a professor of psychiatry at Verdict,	4:01
	whose hobby has been a lifetime study	4:06
	of what he calls, five great systems of human wisdom.	4:09
	They seem very different than one way.	4:16
	The ancient Hindu system of Yogi,	4:18
	the secret devotionals of the church order,	4:22
	the symbolism of the	4:30
	Roman Catholic mass dynamically interpreted,	4:31
	a symbolism of some of the higher orders of Masonic ritual,	4:37
	and the classical writings of contemporary psychoanalysis.	4:44
	For this purpose eliminate the theological factor.	4:50
	And here one has an amazing similarity	4:55
	and description of the basic human problem.	5:00
	The struggle of the human spirit for liberation	5:06
	from artificial and unnecessary restriction.	5:10
	And in each of these different as they may seem	5:16
	the description of the movement toward maturity,	5:22
	towards freedom is the same.	5:27
	The movement away from suspicion,	5:32
	to trust,	5:35
	from doubt,	5:38
	to faith,	5:40
	from hostility,	5:42
	to love.	5:45
	How wise St. Paul was.	5:49
	It is my prayer	5:53
	that your love may grow.	5:58
	Now how does love grow?	6:03
	May grow more and more rich in knowledge.	6:07
	Christian love is not just a sentimentalized goodwill.	6:12
	Christian love is fed by facts.	6:17
	No movement in history	6:24
	has placed such a priority upon knowledge	6:26
	as the Christian movement.	6:30
	It was a school master of Europe,	6:33
	it was a school master of North America	6:38
	in our decisive year.	6:40
	For several centuries,	6:45
	the school master of Latin America.	6:47
	Until the last decades the school master of Africa.	6:51
	Asia has its ancient systems of education,	6:57
	but they've been revolutionized by the impact	6:59
	of the ideals of Christian education.	7:02
	And the picture of the wise man	7:08
	worshiping at the feet of the Christ child	7:09
	there is profound truth.	7:11
	The Christian movement has taken the commandment,	7:16
	thou shall love the Lord thy God,	7:19
	with all my mind	7:21
	and clouded into history	7:23
	with amazingly fruitful harvest.	7:26
	And today the question is urgent,	7:30
	one hates to use Russia so much as a scare,	7:33
	but let's look at this relationship.	7:39
	According to UNESCO figures,	7:43
	Russia today with 9% on the world's population	7:48
	is printing 20% of the world's books.	7:52
	The United States with 6% on the world's population	7:59
	enjoying 46% of the world's wealth	8:04
	is producing 3% of the world's books.	8:10
	In the last two years,	8:18
	Russia has produced more books in English alone	8:22
	than were produced in the United States.	8:27
	But the issue is still more personal.	8:32
	The Russian people whose per capita income is	8:39
	that of the lowest per capita income	8:49
	represented in this sanctuary.	8:51
	Our buying on an average of prices many book per capita,	8:55
	as people of the United States.	9:00
	Now it may seem a strange question to ask,	9:06
	but it becomes one of the overriding questions	9:08
	in the life of this nation,	9:10
	how much do you read?	9:14
	The real question to ask students,	9:19
	is how many books do you read that you don't have to read?	9:21
	How long has it been since you've stretched your brain	9:27
	on a tough book that nobody made you read?	9:30
	When you're on vacation,	9:37
	which do you prefer, a book or television?	9:40
	When you're home and can do what you want,	9:47
	do you keep a tough book open?	9:48
	So if you have 1/2 an hour you can try no idea.	9:50
	The increasing mental laziness	9:58
	of so many people in our nation,	10:06
	it's to me the most dangerous element	10:11
	in our relationships with Russia as of this moment.	10:13
	It is my prayer that your love may grow more and more	10:18
	in knowledge.	10:21
	And writes Paul,	10:25
	in all manner of insight.	10:27
	The word insight is one reason why I like so much	10:31
	this translation of Dr. Moffitt.	10:35
	From the point of view of a layman	10:41
	in the field of psychology,	10:42
	I wonder if we can't say,	10:45
	and I'm sure that this is biblically sound,	10:47
	that the word insight in this context really means,	10:50
	the ability to apply knowledge out there	10:55
	to one self in here	10:59
	so that one is changed by those facts.	11:04
	Knowledge takes brains,	11:11
	insight takes brains plus courage,	11:14
	the rareness and the most precious form	11:20
	of courage in the world,	11:23
	the ability to be honest with yourself.	11:26
	I am sure this is what the scripture means,	11:32
	be transformed by the renewing of your mind.	11:36
	I was 16 years with about a missions	11:44
	of the Methodist Church,	11:45
	and that time we had to move on missionary three time.	11:46
	A remarkable person,	11:50
	one of the foundations in the United States	11:52
	publishing a book recently	11:55
	on a certain technical field in foreign aid	11:56
	wrote to this missionary	11:59
	that he was one of the ablest persons in his field	12:00
	in all the world.	12:03
	The first time I met him, his wife showed me an essay	12:05
	he had written on the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians.	12:08
	One of the most beautiful essays	12:14
	on the meaning of love I have ever read.	12:18
	We've had to move him three times	12:24
	because he is so irritable in some of his relationships,	12:28
	that five years is about the longest he can be left	12:33
	with the same group of people.	12:37
	He has a great deal of knowledge about love,	12:40
	but it has never become insight.	12:43
	This may be the most decisive issue	12:49
	about the education you've gotta do,	12:51
	whether knowledge becomes insight.	12:54
	It is my prayer wrote St. Paul,	13:04
	that your love may grow more and more rich in knowledge	13:05
	and an all manner of insight.	13:08
	And now we begin to see	13:11
	the kind of logic which St. Paul has.	13:13
	It's not like the logic of John Calvin.	13:17
	That logic is like having a bulldozer	13:21
	and setting all the controls	13:23
	and then just ploughing remorselessly	13:24
	through whatever you meet.	13:26
	The logic of St. Paul is more like a bird in flight,	13:28
	like a swallow with the sunset.	13:32
	If you look from the outside you see no reason	13:35
	for all these dotting and movings,	13:37
	but there is a strong internal logic.	13:39
	We saw with St. Paul,	13:42
	and now we see it.	13:44
	What is the result of love fed by facts,	13:47
	becoming insight?	13:49
	First,	13:51
	enabling you to have a sense our plot is vital,	13:54
	don't we need it.	14:03
	We live in an over stimulated century.	14:07
	We are threatened by having too many good things to do.	14:13
	We are surrounded by people,	14:21
	so busy doing good things that they disintegrate.	14:23
	The real issue in this world	14:30
	is having the courage to say no to many good things	14:31
	in order to do the vital things.	14:36
	It is quite possible in the church	14:43
	to be so busy doing good things for God that you go to hell.	14:45
	That you have time for God himself,	14:50
	never know what prayer really can mean,	14:52
	can become a stranger to yourself.	14:56
	It's possible to be so busy reading good books	14:58
	that you never learn anything vital,	15:02
	because you don't read the great book.	15:07
	How do we know what is vital?	15:12
	Oh, for this some people want rules,	15:17
	this is child.	15:21
	Rules won't work	15:24
	they're out of date they farther codified,	15:26
	the world moves on.	15:29
	How do you know what is vital?	15:32
	It is this process of growth,	15:35
	love fed by facts becoming insight then you know.	15:38
	The first result enabling you to have	15:44
	a sense of what is vital and the second,	15:48
	more surprising and rewarding still	15:52
	that you may be transparent.	15:58
	That's why there is a second reason	16:04
	I liked Dr. Moffitt's translation so much.	16:05
	Transparency I suppose is the best test	16:08
	of the Christian life.	16:13
	And transparency I suppose it's the one thing	16:17
	which some of us fear most.	16:19
	The proligerous amount of nervous energy,	16:25
	which we pour into pretending,	16:30
	hoping that people will not see what we really think,	16:36
	will not know what we really feel,	16:42
	cannot tell our actual desire.	16:46
	I think it may be true	16:56
	that most of our really bad dreams at night	16:58
	result from this implication of our fear	17:03
	that we should find out what is really within it.	17:06
	Joshua L. Liebman,	17:15
	wrote that book called Peace of Mind.	17:17
	It stayed at the top of the best seller list	17:20
	for long months.	17:22
	But the most remarkable thing about that book	17:26
	was not the way it's sold,	17:28
	but that one could write such a book and forget to say	17:31
	the most important thing about peace of mind.	17:34
	For the secret of peace of mind is transparency.	17:37
	One of the most delightful illustrations,	17:46
	which is to give was that Socrates.	17:48
	You remember how you (murmurs) hated him,	17:54
	and wrote the play to lampoon him.	17:58
	Now I see in your hometown,	18:02
	whenever a play like this were to be produced,	18:03
	everybody went.	18:06
	And if one of the greatest writers of comedy	18:09
	on our history were to write a play	18:12
	for the sole purpose of making fun of you,	18:13
	what you would do when the play was presented?	18:19
	Well, I probably would have headed to high hills	18:24
	and find me a dark cave and hide in the shadows,	18:27
	but not Socrates.	18:31
	He knew this was gonna be a good play	18:34
	he wanted to see it,	18:36
	and he got a good seat.	18:38
	They run with laughter as he was lampooned,	18:41
	what did he do?	18:44
	He roared with laughter.	18:46
	You remember that in those days they wore masks	18:51
	and an artist I think unknown to Socrates	18:55
	had made a mask which was superb replica	19:00
	of Socrates' own face.	19:03
	There was no possibility of mistake	19:06
	as to who was being Lampooned,	19:08
	and premiere to this unknown artist.	19:12
	At the end remember, Socrates stood	19:17
	so that the people could see	19:23
	what a great job this artist had done in making a face	19:24
	that looked just like Socrates,	19:27
	this is transparency.	19:32
	He was what he was he wasn't going to pretend.	19:35
	As far as the extent of him,	19:42
	he had himself off his own hand,	19:44
	this is peace of mind.	19:49
	You might try it someday	19:56
	it might interest you.	20:00
	And you know I'm sure	20:05
	that this is much easier for you	20:08
	than it was for Socrates,	20:10
	for you know something vitally important,	20:15
	which Socrates did not know.	20:17
	So its dynamics involved him as much as you,	20:20
	have you believe it or not	20:27
	you have a right to know,	20:29
	that since Christ died upon the cross,	20:35
	your sins are not held against you.	20:40
	Any sin which you confess	20:45
	is forgiven,	20:51
	God doesn't remember it against you.	20:56
	You know you'll see far better than Socrates	21:00
	that you have nothing to hide.	21:03
	And because of this incredible action of God's love,	21:08
	even the meanest and the dirtiest thing of out of your past,	21:14
	if you will be honest about it to God	21:20
	becomes to you strangely asset,	21:25
	a source of wisdom that you can use for future,	21:31
	that you may be transparent.	21:39
	And then finally, two last results	21:48
	that you may be of no harm to anyone	21:56
	in view of the day of Christ.	22:01
	Now that last phrase is a tough one.	22:05
	In view of the day of Christ,	22:10
	I don't remember any of my seminary Greek,	22:11
	but I will never forget the lecture given one day	22:13
	by Dr. Davies on the prepositions used in the Greek texts.	22:16
	Whenever the gospel say that Jesus looked at a person,	22:24
	always the meaning of the Greek text is that he looked into,	22:31
	instead of at.	22:38
	Then if you'll go back and see some of his encounters	22:42
	you'll understand what happened.	22:46
	We romanticize a great deal about him,	22:49
	I do not know whether we would enjoy meeting him,	22:52
	of whom the ancient prayer says,	22:58
	unto whom all hearts are opened,	23:00
	all desires known	23:04
	and from whom no secrets are hid.	23:08
	Would you like to have him look into you?	23:13
	Could he look all the way down	23:28
	and find no desire	23:34
	to be of harm to anyone?	23:38
	You see it is these hidden hostilities	23:50
	which we protect so jealously	23:53
	that the major reason we are so afraid of transparency,	23:57
	these points	24:04
	how much we need this prayer of Paul	24:09
	that our love fed by truth,	24:13
	applied to ourselves until we grow intact,	24:18
	so that we may have a sense	24:25
	of what is vital and be transparent,	24:26
	free from this kind of clinging hostility	24:28
	which is our poison.	24:32
	And then last,	24:37
	you're not covered without harvest of righteousness,	24:40
	which Jesus Christ produces	24:43
	to the glory and the praise of God.	24:45
	I didn't know whether I'd have time,	24:47
	but now I wanna say just two things.	24:49
	The first is that,	24:54
	I can't preach the rest of this sermon really,	24:57
	but you can.	25:01
	He said, I don't know you well enough,	25:06
	but every one of you illustrates this lie.	25:10
	This verse begins with love it ends with people.	25:14
	The harvest of righteousness is what happens to people	25:18
	because you live like this.	25:22
	There are marvelous stories here	25:30
	of the harvest of righteousness which you have shown	25:34
	and what you have done for people	25:40
	because you have lived more like this verse	25:42
	than you yourself realize.	25:45
	I wish I could illustrate from you	25:47
	because many of you are far closer to this than you know.	25:53
	But you see our problem is that	25:57
	our harvest is spotting.	26:00
	This is a promise of a full harvest.	26:05
	Now I will take time to see,	26:13
	to tell you the most moving	26:15
	picture of this I have seen recently.	26:19
	And if there is a newspaper reporter in here,	26:21
	I must ask this not be printed.	26:24
	A recent visit to East Berlin.	26:28
	I came in from Poland into Czechoslovakia.	26:32
	The people in Poland and Czechoslovakia	26:37
	are obviously less tense than they were even five years ago,	26:39
	you can see it in the way they walk the streets,	26:44
	it's fun to walk those streets at night	26:49
	in Poland and Czechoslovakia,	26:51
	it's something you would never see in the States	26:53
	where they share joy of just a family walking together	26:55
	quietly on the streets is enough to feel the streets,	26:59
	and these were either draft times of the night.	27:04
	And there's a nice atmosphere as you watch their faces.	27:08
	But then go into East Germany	27:12
	And immediately you can tell when you crossed the line,	27:14
	greater prosperity,	27:17
	houses that are better painted,	27:20
	the streets are better repaired	27:22
	the clothes are better.	27:23
	And so it's the greatest shock to get into East Berlin.	27:25
	I got there by accident.	27:30
	The first time was put on a train to go to Leipzig,	27:31
	I don't yet know what happened	27:35
	we ended in East Berlin.	27:36
	My visa set to go only to Leipzig.	27:38
	I was with two friends from Czechoslovakia.	27:44
	We got off in an enormous railroad station,	27:48
	before the war the kind of thing crowded	27:53
	now strangely empty.	27:55
	There's all this service were being held this morning	27:57
	and there were no preacher, no choir and no congregation.	27:59
	We walked through this emptiness up steps to a street	28:04
	and there was no traffic,	28:11
	the lights were poor.	28:13
	And the bit of the sunlight that was left	28:17
	one could see the buildings	28:19
	and the great gaps between from the bombings	28:22
	where no buildings had appeared,	28:26
	and there was no traffic.	28:29
	I said to my friends	28:33
	that we must not call the Methodist	28:34
	because I was violating a visa	28:37
	and I knew that what we did would be known to the police.	28:39
	Well, one of them might often telephoned	28:43
	to hotel after hotel there was no space.	28:46
	And then looked the name Methodist,	28:50
	a district superintendent called.	28:55
	I stood on the street knowing that in just East Berlin,	29:01
	there are a million and a 1/2 people	29:05
	haunted by this emptiness.	29:09
	What kind of an atmosphere is it	29:13
	that drives people off of the street?	29:14
	This strange darkness.	29:19
	Then like an explosion of sunlight	29:22
	was the face of this boy, 11 years old,	29:26
	I learned his name was Mateo,	29:31
	open, square, secure this infectious grand,	29:33
	he came up to me and said, "You're coming to my home."	29:39
	And I found they'd called this method of test,	29:44
	he'd send his boy.	29:46
	So we picked up our luggage.	29:49
	We walked seven or eight strangely empty and silent blocks.	29:51
	We got to this apartment house.	29:57
	Then in Harlem I would've felt at home	30:01
	because the steps creaked in the walls,	30:03
	if they'd had any pain was peeling,	30:08
	it was not dirty it was incredibly decrypted.	30:10
	And as in any communist country the minutes at one appears,	30:14
	there is a face looking over the wall	30:17
	the inevitable reporter.	30:20
	We climbed the steps I said nothing.	30:24
	I was obviously enough American without my accent.	30:26
	Mateo led us into a door,	30:32
	we entered the apartment the door was shut behind.	30:35
	The cheerful one,	30:41
	the father and mother were gone,	30:47
	the daughter 16, a daughter 21.	30:49
	The older daughter used to haunt me.	30:52
	She had polio as a child.	30:55
	When it came time for her to enter the university,	30:57
	she was not allowed because she was active in the church.	30:59
	And the best job that you to can get,	31:04
	and she has a first-class mind	31:07
	is to be a secretary to her father.	31:09
	Now, her youngest sister has come along	31:13
	and things are more relaxed on her.	31:14
	Younger sister is in medical school at government expense.	31:15
	I don't know what this does to you.	31:19
	I think about Utah often.	31:23
	They got supper for us.	31:26
	I wanted to see Stalin LA,	31:28
	and I wanted to see the wall at night from the east side,	31:30
	I'd seen it often from the west.	31:33
	We went, the Stalin LA, the old,	31:36
	it's not the Karl Marx LA that's a showplace.	31:39
	A street three quarters of a mile long,	31:42
	lavish building,	31:48
	very modern apartment houses,	31:50
	beautifully equipped star windows.	31:52
	All of the best housing in East Berlin they're jammed,	31:56
	but no people.	32:01
	Brilliantly left two blocks you might find 20 people,	32:04
	like a stage of a theater that is set,	32:09
	and the actors forgot to appear.	32:12
	Then we went down to the east side of the wall.	32:14
	We went down a street which I have known in its busy days.	32:19
	And there isn't a city in Durham or Raleigh quite as busy.	32:22
	We walked two blocks and didn't see a person.	32:25
	A street car went by it had two conductors,	32:28
	about 1/2 an hour later it came back	32:32
	it had nobody in, not a passenger either time.	32:35
	We got back to the apartment about 11,	32:40
	the supper dishes are still on the table.	32:44
	I was put in the master bedroom,	32:47
	the cleanliness of this place,	32:50
	the orderliness and the tightness of it.	32:51
	The only place to iron in the apartment	32:54
	was very neatly set up on the top of the dresser table	32:57
	there was in the apartment.	33:01
	We have to leave at six at five o'clock,	33:05
	Mateo got up and got breakfast for us.	33:08
	I wanted to go back,	33:12
	I wanted to see if the place was as warm and radiant	33:13
	as this incredible memory.	33:16
	So during later meetings in West Berlin I made two trips.	33:19
	The first time since I had to send a telegram,	33:24
	I was followed by the police, three men.	33:26
	Not uninteresting it's kind of fun.	33:30
	You know, you see if they can play tricks on them,	33:33
	and they see if they can play tricks on you.	33:35
	And you'll go into a store and ask directions,	33:39
	and as soon as you get out	33:41
	one of them darts in to see what you asked.	33:41
	So you go back in and ask for the directions again,	33:43
	just to enjoy their embarrassment.	33:45
	But then when you get to the apartment	33:52
	and you start climbing the five flights of steps,	33:54
	and three of them follow you	33:57
	up to the all five flights of steps	33:58
	and stand behind you when you knock at the door,	34:02
	it is not amusing.	34:04
	That night the parents were there.	34:13
	The father asking questions so eagerly about Africa,	34:16
	the hunger to know about the rest of the world.	34:20
	I finally said to them,	34:25
	"Do you have trouble with the police	34:31
	because you have visitors from the west?"	34:32
	Because I saw from the guest book	34:34
	that they had many visitors from the west.	34:35
	The mother is an attractive brunette	34:38
	with remarkable strength.	34:43
	Now I can understand a man saying this,	34:45
	I can understand any one of us saying it alone	34:47
	but when a mother says this	34:49
	with the welfare of children involved,	34:51
	she said, slowly and thoughtfully,	34:54
	"Yes, we sometimes have trouble with the police,	34:59
	but we have decided we will not stop.	35:05
	We want our home to be a bridge	35:10
	between the east and the west.	35:17
	This is why we think God put us here."	35:21
	And I thought of two things.	35:32
	One verse, "The light shineth in the dark,	35:36
	the darkness comprehended it not."	35:40
	And I thought of this last phrase of our scripture,	35:43
	the life of that family covered	35:47
	with that harvest of righteous,	35:49
	which Jesus Christ produces,	35:52
	to the glory and the praise of God.	35:56
	Amen.	36:03
	We will hear this scripture as our prayer.	36:13
	Grant oh God, our father for each here.	36:20

Item Info

Title:

Eugene C. (L) Smith - Sermon Untitled (October 25, 1964)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4hh6h72g

Date:

October 25, 1964

Speaker:

Smith, Eugene C. (L)

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0271
ref5745_g3k
uachapelsermaud
duke:628476
dcrau002272
ark:/87924/r4hh6h72g
2f1ce94e-2572-4d15-bb3e-24be689994d4

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

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

Rights:

No Re-Use

In Copyright

Rights Note:

This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Eugene C. (L) Smith - Sermon Untitled (October 25, 1964)

Transcript

Item Info

Duke University Archives

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