James T. Cleland - "Harvest Home" (November 22, 1964)

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-	Be acceptable,	0:03
	in thy sight,	0:06
	oh Lord our strength	0:07
	and our redeemer ,	0:10
	Amen.	0:13
	There are,	0:20
	two valid approaches,	0:21
	to the observation of,	0:24
	thanks giving day.	0:26
	One is to see in it,	0:31
	a high day,	0:34
	in our national history.	0:36
	An opportunity to appreciate the religious point of view	0:40
	of our forefathers,	0:45
	in new England	0:47
	and Virginia.	0:49
	They believed that it was God,	0:52
	who had brought them	0:55
	to this good land,	0:56
	where they might live as,	0:59
	freemen.	1:01
	We might have sung about it.	1:04
	Oh God, beneath thy guiding hand,	1:06
	our exiled father,	1:10
	crossed the sea,	1:12
	laws,	1:15
	freedom,	1:17
	truth, and faith in God,	1:18
	came with those exiles or the waves,	1:20
	and hear thy name oh God of love.	1:26
	Their children's children,	1:29
	still adore.	1:33
	This is,	1:37
	one,	1:38
	authentic,	1:39
	evaluation,	1:40
	of Thanksgiving day.	1:42
	A second approach is to recognize in this annual holiday	1:47
	and holy day.	1:51
	The continuance of the ancient festival,	1:54
	of the harvest.	1:58
	Rooted for us in the old Testament	2:01
	and maintained by the Christian Church,	2:04
	through the century.	2:08
	Seed time and harvest have not failed.	2:11
	Hallelujah,	2:15
	( foreign language)	2:18
	Thanks be to God.	2:21
	Thus, there is a legitimate double emphasis,	2:26
	one acknowledged by president Johnson	2:30
	in his proclamation of Thanksgiving day.	2:33
	But today we shall concentrate on the second aspect,	2:38
	the harvest	2:43
	home	2:45
	accent.	2:46
	Nothing new will be said in this sermon.	2:48
	It will be an endeavor to recall a note that some of us,	2:54
	many of us,	2:59
	have loved long since	3:01
	and lost awhile.	3:04
	Now, because of the impact of urban and suburban living,	3:08
	some of us have become strangers,	3:13
	to nature.	3:17
	That is to the physical universe	3:19
	as contrasted with man's creation.	3:21
	God made the country	3:25
	and man,	3:27
	made the town.	3:28
	That's no new reflection,	3:31
	it was said by William Cooper,	3:34
	in the 18th century.	3:36
	The country is often a foreign country,	3:39
	strange and unappreciated,	3:44
	despite,	3:47
	our dependence,	3:48
	upon it.	3:50
	We echo,	3:52
	in	3:53
	adult tones,	3:54
	the despairing cry of the city urchin,	3:56
	writing from a summer camp,	4:00
	"Take me home,	4:02
	our milk comes from	4:04
	dirty old cows	4:06
	instead of from clean new bottles."	4:08
	Now, the adjectives we associate with milk	4:14
	are,	4:16
	pasteurized,	4:17
	homogenized.	4:19
	We're almost lulled into a sense of safe security	4:22
	by the ignorant milk man's confident statement,	4:27
	"All our milk has been paralyzed,	4:31
	by a government anarchist."	4:34
	We are a generation of the ANP,	4:40
	the colonial store, the piggly wiggly,	4:42
	and yet I recall our Polish made in Massachusetts,	4:48
	walking in her bare feet,	4:53
	across the newly ploughed fields,	4:55
	throwing renewed strength,	5:00
	from the soil.	5:03
	She was a contemporary female,	5:06
	Antaeus.	5:09
	Do you remember Antaeus?	5:11
	He was a giant,	5:14
	the son of Poseidon,	5:17
	the God of the Mediterranean sea	5:19
	and of Gaea,	5:22
	Ge,	5:24
	the personification of the earth,	5:25
	whose strength was invincible,	5:27
	so long as he remained in contact,	5:31
	with his mother earth.	5:35
	Hercules discovered this.	5:39
	He lifted,	5:43
	Antaeus,	5:44
	from the earth	5:45
	and crushed him,	5:48
	in the air.	5:50
	Some of us are in mid air.	5:53
	Out contact with the soil.	5:57
	Therefore, we are vulnerable.	6:01
	Which of us like Robert Burns,	6:05
	would think of writing poems to a Daisy?	6:07
	To a mouse,	6:12
	or a mirabile dicto ,	6:15
	to a louse	6:18
	Don't look so disgusted.	6:21
	It's quite appropriate to mention a Louse, in a sermon,	6:24
	because Burns,	6:29
	saw that viste,	6:31
	on a lady's bonnet, in church,	6:33
	that's the subtitle of the poem.	6:37
	Maybe Wordsworth was right when he wrote,	6:41
	Little we see in Nature,	6:44
	that is ours.	6:47
	The Hebrew who composed the Psalm 104,	6:50
	our morning lesson, loved nature.	6:53
	He talks of Springs,	6:56
	gushing forth from, in the valleys	6:58
	and wild asses, quenching their thirst.	7:01
	He delights that grass grows for the cattle	7:05
	and that birds build their nests in the cedars of Lebanon.	7:09
	He is in ruptures about wine,	7:15
	which gladdens the heart of man,	7:18
	and bread which strengthens him,	7:21
	and behind all this provision	7:24
	for beasts,	7:27
	as well as for man.	7:28
	He sees God,	7:31
	in action.	7:33
	These all look to thee,	7:36
	to give them their food in due season.	7:39
	Clean thou give us to them, they gather it up.	7:42
	When thou open us thy hand,	7:46
	they are filled with good things.	7:49
	When thou send us through out thy spirit, they are created,	7:52
	and thou reneweth the face of the ground.	7:57
	And you know how he finished his psalm?	8:02
	Bless the Lord, oh my soul,	8:04
	praise the Lord.	8:08
	He saw God,	8:11
	in action.	8:13
	God who made	8:14
	and who makes,	8:15
	the wattle.	8:18
	It was because of God that these, the men are fed,	8:19
	and sustained	8:25
	and maintained.	8:27
	That theme permeates the Old Testament,	8:28
	and it is sang, to a pastoral accompaniment.	8:32
	The Lord is my shepherd.	8:36
	He shall feed his flock,	8:40
	like a Shephard, will hear that song,	8:43
	by our cry in two weeks, and the Messiah.	8:46
	We are the people of his pasture	8:51
	and the New Testament says, amen.	8:56
	Listen to Jesus.	8:58
	Look at the birds of the air.	9:00
	They neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns,	9:04
	and yet your heavenly father feeds them.	9:08
	Are you not of more value, than they?	9:13
	His analogies and teaching regularly drawn from nature,	9:18
	a lost sheep.	9:22
	The lilies of the field,	9:25
	two sparrows,	9:28
	the benison of rain	9:31
	and the benediction of the sun.	9:33
	God, for Jesus, was creator	9:37
	and sustainer.	9:40
	Now, the emphasis on God as Redeemer,	9:43
	never an old,	9:46
	never superseded,	9:48
	never displaced his prior confidence in God,	9:51
	as creator	9:56
	and sustainer.	9:58
	This is what Jews	10:01
	and Christians remember	10:03
	in the harvest festival,	10:06
	and this is what Thanksgiving day is primarily about.	10:09
	We hear so much these days about,	10:18
	God,	10:21
	in history.	10:22
	God, in history,	10:24
	it's a valid affirmation	10:27
	and enthusiasm.	10:29
	The Bible is full of it,	10:31
	and Christian theology is actively dependent on it.	10:33
	The secular historian may shake his head at this	10:37
	and over this,	10:41
	but (indistint)	10:43
	holy history or literally the history of salvation,	10:46
	attempts to see God,	10:51
	at work,	10:53
	in the world,	10:55
	for man's welfare,	10:56
	in the ongoing of life.	10:58
	And yet, let it be noted,	11:02
	underlying,	11:06
	and undergirding	11:07
	the God in history,	11:10
	is the God of nature.	11:13
	No nature,	11:17
	no history,	11:19
	and the Thanksgiving festival gives us a set chance,	11:22
	to ruminate on our birth	11:26
	and growth,	11:29
	on our coming here	11:31
	and on our being here.	11:33
	Now, we've seen that a theology of nature	11:36
	is of importance in the Bible,	11:40
	especially for some of the psalmist and for our Lord,	11:42
	but it's not absent from men's reflecting,	11:47
	in the resulting Judeo Christian heritage.	11:52
	Listing to Francis of Assisi,	11:56
	the Troubadour,	11:59
	saint,	12:01
	in his song of the creature,	12:02
	praised be my Lord God, with all his creatures,	12:05
	and especially our brother,	12:10
	the sun,	12:13
	who brings us the day and who brings us the light.	12:16
	Fair is he and shines with great splendor.	12:21
	Oh Lord,	12:25
	he signifies to us,	12:27
	thee.	12:30
	Praised be my Lord, for our sister, the moon,	12:32
	and for the stars,	12:38
	that which he has set,	12:40
	clear and lovely,	12:41
	in heaven.	12:44
	Praised be my Lord,	12:46
	for our brother the wind	12:47
	and for air	12:51
	and plought,	12:53
	calms	12:55
	and all weathers,	12:56
	by which they uphold this life,	12:58
	in all creatures.	13:01
	For missing to words with,	13:06
	probably more,	13:08
	pantheist,	13:10
	than Christian.	13:12
	Listen to them trying to figure out	13:14
	what	13:16
	nature means to him.	13:17
	A few miles,	13:20
	above 10 to Mabee.	13:22
	And I have felt the presence,	13:26
	that disturbs me.	13:30
	With the joy of elevated crops,	13:32
	a sense of blim,	13:36
	of something far more deeply inter fused,	13:39
	whose dwelling is the light of setting suns	13:43
	on the round ocean and the living air	13:47
	and the blue sky	13:50
	and	13:53
	in the mind	13:54
	of man.	13:55
	A motion and the spirit,	13:58
	that impels all thinking things,	14:01
	all objects of all thought	14:04
	and rolls through all things.	14:07
	Therefore,	14:10
	I'm I still,	14:12
	a lover of the Meadows,	14:14
	and the woods	14:17
	and mountains,	14:19
	or listen to path of the confession of faith of one,	14:23
	who was both president of our country and a fisherman.	14:28
	Life is not comprised	14:36
	entirely of making a living,	14:39
	or of arguing about the future,	14:43
	or defaming the past.	14:46
	Life,	14:50
	is the break of waves,	14:51
	in the sun,	14:53
	the contemplation of the eternal flow of the stream,	14:56
	the stretch of forest and mountain	15:02
	and their manifestation of the maker.	15:04
	It has all these that sooth our troubles,	15:08
	shame our wickedness,	15:13
	and inspire us to esteem our fellow men,	15:16
	especially other fishermen.	15:20
	That was, Herbert Hoover.	15:26
	These men breathe, what Lawrence Houseman has called,	15:30
	the music of sympathy,	15:34
	between nature and man.	15:38
	They look into	15:42
	and through nature,	15:43
	to sense the God of nature,	15:45
	and their reaction is one of gratitude of Thanksgiving.	15:47
	They know what Queen Elizabeth meant.	15:53
	In that private prayer,	15:57
	which he wrote,	15:59
	about,	16:00
	1596,	16:01
	which has become the basis of the general Thanksgiving.	16:04
	We bless thee for our creation,	16:11
	preservation	16:16
	and all the blessings of this life.	16:18
	Now this is not the whole gospel.	16:24
	Just as it is not the whole content	16:29
	of the prayer of Thanksgiving.	16:31
	It is brought to completion,	16:34
	in redemption,	16:37
	but redemption is not the emphasis	16:40
	of Thanksgiving day.	16:43
	We are concerned with something more widespread,	16:46
	more primitive, more basic than redemption.	16:49
	One cannot be redeemed,	16:54
	if he hasn't been created and preserved.	16:57
	This is the festival of happy creatures ,	17:01
	saying,	17:05
	thank you,	17:06
	to him who made them	17:07
	and who continues to care for them.	17:10
	The God of Thanksgiving day is the creator and preserver.	17:14
	Now,	17:21
	how can we show our thanks?	17:22
	All that our various interwoven ways,	17:25
	we have already shown our thanks,	17:30
	by coming,	17:35
	to,	17:35
	church,	17:37
	and sharing in this public service of Thanksgiving	17:39
	in anticipation of Thursday.	17:42
	Perhaps we shall go again, on Thanksgiving morning.	17:46
	I hope the communion table,	17:51
	will be flanked	17:54
	with shivvers of wheat,	17:55
	and that the congregation will bring loaves	17:59
	and vegetables and fruits	18:02
	and jars of jam and bottles of preserves,	18:03
	to be stacked on and around the altar,	18:08
	as our sacrifice,	18:12
	of Thanksgiving,	18:15
	Perhaps we shall go to a service of holy communion.	18:18
	If we do,	18:23
	let us remember two things,	18:25
	in founding that feast,	18:29
	our Lord used,	18:33
	ordinary food,	18:35
	bread,	18:38
	and wine,	18:40
	to symbolize the sustainance of heaven,	18:42
	and remember this also, in the prayer,	18:46
	which he taught his disciples,	18:49
	he asked for bread	18:54
	before he asked,	18:58
	for the forgiveness,	19:01
	of sins.	19:03
	First,	19:06
	give us this day,	19:07
	our daily bread,	19:09
	then,	19:13
	forgive us our trespasses,	19:14
	as we forgive those who trespass against us,	19:17
	and remember too,	19:23
	that one name for the Lord's supper,	19:24
	is Eucharist.	19:27
	You know what that means?,Thanksgiving.	19:29
	The giving of thanks,	19:34
	And perhaps for some of us,	19:39
	our Thanksgiving will be shown by,	19:41
	distributing the food stacked around the altar	19:45
	to the poor folk in our community.	19:49
	Maybe we shall send a care package,	19:53
	overseas.	19:57
	Jesus said that if in love, we gave food to the hungry	19:59
	and drink to the thirsty,	20:04
	we gave it to him,	20:07
	and we would find ourselves	20:10
	with visas for the kingdom of God.	20:12
	In as much, as you have done it	20:17
	unto one of the least of these, my brethren,	20:20
	he have done it unto me,	20:25
	therefore, come ye blessed of my father.	20:27
	Inherit the kingdom prepared for you,	20:32
	from the foundation of the weather.	20:34
	That perhaps, some of us this Thursday,	20:39
	will,	20:41
	make plans	20:42
	for the future,	20:44
	that we shall move,	20:47
	say into the whole realm,	20:49
	of conservation.	20:52
	You know how reckless we have been	20:55
	with our natural resources.	20:57
	The despoiling of our forest,	21:00
	the ugliness of strip mining,	21:03
	river pollution,	21:06
	the man made,	21:09
	smog.	21:10
	Do you know, the prayer of intercession,	21:12
	which asks that,	21:13
	beauty may be given to our towns	21:15
	and left,	21:19
	to our countryside.	21:22
	Did Ogden Nash, have that in mind when he wrote,	21:24
	I think that I shall never see,	21:28
	a billboard,	21:31
	lovely as a tree.	21:33
	Perhaps unless the billboards fall,	21:36
	I'll never see a tree at all.	21:39
	Reverence for the God of nature,	21:47
	may lead some of us into legislatures,	21:49
	to fight,	21:54
	so that the beauty,	21:56
	may be left,	21:58
	to our countryside.	22:00
	Well,	22:03
	whatever we do on Thursday,	22:04
	let it be done with,	22:08
	joy,	22:10
	With the joy,	22:13
	which the smile,	22:14
	on the face of gratitude.	22:16
	Let it be done with laughter.	22:20
	With laughter which is the effervescence,	22:23
	of appreciation.	22:27
	Let it be done with fun,	22:31
	with fun,	22:35
	which is the spontaneous reaction,	22:36
	to the happy aknowlegment of the care of God.	22:40
	Our creator,	22:45
	and,	22:48
	our preserver,	22:49
	Amen.	22:52
	Let us pray.	22:54
	Oh, most merciful father who has blessed the laborers	23:01
	of the husband, man,	23:06
	in the return of the fruits of the earth.	23:08
	We give the humble and hearty thanks, for this thy bounty.	23:12
	Beseeching thee to continue by loving kindness to us.	23:17
	That our land may still yield hard increase,	23:22
	to thy glory,	23:27
	and our comfort,	23:29
	and may the blessing of God,	23:31
	come upon you abundantly.	23:34
	May it keep you,	23:37
	strong and tranquil,	23:39
	in the truth of his promises,	23:41
	through Jesus Christ.	23:44
	Our Lord.	23:47

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "Harvest Home" (November 22, 1964)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4b56j57d

Date:

November 22, 1964

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0274
ref5751_z9b
uachapelsermaud
duke:627888
dcrau002274
ark:/87924/r4b56j57d
863c4854-e0d5-4045-94d6-00f7b80f4371

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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United States
North Carolina
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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James T. Cleland - "Harvest Home" (November 22, 1964)

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1. James T. Cleland - "Harvest Home" (November 22, 1964)

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James T. Cleland - "Harvest Home" (November 22, 1964)

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