J. Russell Chandran - "The Upward Call of Christ" (February 21, 1965)
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| (banging sound) | 0:03 | |
| (rattling sound) | 0:05 | |
| - | First of all, I would like to say a very sincere thank you | 0:27 |
| for the warm welcome that has been given to me. | 0:30 | |
| I regard this as a rare privilege in my life | 0:36 | |
| to worship with this great congregation. | 0:41 | |
| This is my first visit to Duke University | 0:46 | |
| and to North Carolina, | 0:50 | |
| but this is not the first time I have come to know | 0:52 | |
| of this great place. | 0:56 | |
| For a long time, I have wanted to visit Duke | 0:58 | |
| I am now very happy indeed, to have this opportunity. | 1:03 | |
| The text I have chosen for this morning | 1:10 | |
| is found in St. Paul's episode | 1:14 | |
| to the Philippians chapter three, verse 14, | 1:17 | |
| "I press on toward the goal for the price | 1:24 | |
| of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." | 1:30 | |
| The new English Bible translate this as, | 1:35 | |
| "I press towards the goal to win the price, | 1:39 | |
| which is God's call to the life above in Christ Jesus, | 1:45 | |
| We are familiar with the slogan, | 1:54 | |
| "religion is the opiate of the people." | 1:57 | |
| Religion has been associated with a static pattern of life. | 2:02 | |
| Some people even describe this as a kind of tranquilizer | 2:09 | |
| to bring quietness, comfort and peace, | 2:14 | |
| when man faces a world of turmoil and troubles. | 2:18 | |
| Christianity too has often been regarded | 2:24 | |
| as a kind of static pattern of life. | 2:27 | |
| Every religion has their creed, their cultures | 2:32 | |
| and producers of certain culture gives a certain code | 2:37 | |
| of models to live by, and every religion has produced | 2:42 | |
| their set of doctrines. | 2:46 | |
| Christianity also has its own creed and cultures code | 2:49 | |
| of models and doctrines. | 2:54 | |
| And very often Christianity just takes its place | 2:58 | |
| alongside of other religions. | 3:04 | |
| However, in recent times, many have been talking | 3:08 | |
| about Christianity going beyond religion, | 3:12 | |
| the religionless Christianity as some have described it. | 3:18 | |
| And in many books written in recent times | 3:22 | |
| have in some ways disturbed Christians in many parts | 3:26 | |
| of the world, which A.T. Robinson's book, "Honest to God," | 3:32 | |
| Bonhoeffer's writings, | 3:38 | |
| speaking of "Religionless Christianity, | 3:40 | |
| books on the secular interpretation of the gospel | 3:43 | |
| and all these have disturbed Christians. | 3:47 | |
| But when we look into the Bible, | 3:53 | |
| there too, we discover that a dissatisfaction | 3:56 | |
| against a static pattern of religious life | 4:01 | |
| is at the very core of the biblical faith. | 4:06 | |
| For example, the Deuteronomy writer reflects on the history | 4:10 | |
| of the Hebrew people and raises the question | 4:15 | |
| why after all God chose these people Israel? | 4:19 | |
| He points out that it was the result of God's love | 4:25 | |
| and it was not because of anything, | 4:29 | |
| especially a bachelors are great | 4:31 | |
| in the Hebrew people themselves. | 4:33 | |
| But what was the nature of God's love for Israel? | 4:36 | |
| And in answering that question, | 4:42 | |
| He has an interesting picture, | 4:45 | |
| the picture of an eagle building its nest, laying eggs, | 4:48 | |
| hatching them and caring for the young ones. | 4:56 | |
| And then staring up the nest, | 5:00 | |
| throwing the young eaglets out forcing them | 5:04 | |
| to learn to fly themselves. | 5:09 | |
| And then he also has the picture of the mother eagle | 5:12 | |
| spreading its wings so that if the eaglets fall, | 5:18 | |
| they will fall on the wings. | 5:22 | |
| Here's a picture of God leading His people | 5:27 | |
| out of secure positions, into positions of danger, | 5:32 | |
| into new insights, into new dimensions of the knowledge | 5:37 | |
| of God's love. | 5:41 | |
| Of course when you read the whole Old Testament, | 5:45 | |
| you also come to the teaching of the prophets | 5:47 | |
| that God's love was not just directed | 5:50 | |
| to the people of Israel. | 5:52 | |
| The same love was extended to all the peoples of the earth. | 5:55 | |
| We also read in the Psalmist, | 6:03 | |
| in Psalm 61, "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." | 6:04 | |
| There you have a kind of vision of always wanting to go | 6:13 | |
| beyond oneself when you are caught up in faith in God. | 6:18 | |
| Saint Paul, in his episode to the Philippians | 6:25 | |
| as also in other epistle, | 6:29 | |
| gives a testimony about his religious experience. | 6:31 | |
| And in this epistle, | 6:36 | |
| he speaks of his background as a very religious person, | 6:37 | |
| as a very strict Pharisee, | 6:43 | |
| trying to live according to the law, | 6:45 | |
| he was a man full of zeal for God | 6:49 | |
| and for the religion of Israel. | 6:53 | |
| And he could say looking back on his Hebrew faith, | 6:56 | |
| that he regarded himself as blameless according to the law. | 7:02 | |
| He had fulfilled the requirements of the Hebrew religion | 7:07 | |
| and that religion was good. | 7:12 | |
| But then he comes to know Christ | 7:15 | |
| and after his knowledge of Christ, | 7:20 | |
| he does not any longer have that complacent attitude | 7:23 | |
| that he was blameless, | 7:26 | |
| he rather learn to regard himself as a sinner | 7:29 | |
| as the least among the saints | 7:34 | |
| as one who has not yet reached the goal, | 7:37 | |
| the goal is far off, now he's only running the race. | 7:41 | |
| He cannot call himself perfect yet | 7:49 | |
| because Christ has given him what he calls an upward call. | 7:53 | |
| And the goal he is thriving for, | 8:00 | |
| is a life where he will be guided by this upward call | 8:03 | |
| in the heavenly places with Christ. | 8:10 | |
| We find the same kind of emphasis in Jesus teaching. | 8:14 | |
| He said that among those born of women, | 8:19 | |
| there is non greater than John the Baptist, | 8:23 | |
| but the least in the kingdom of God, | 8:26 | |
| which he came to elaborate, is greater than he, | 8:30 | |
| he came to lead people beyond | 8:35 | |
| what John the Baptist had conceived. | 8:38 | |
| Again He said, "Except your righteousness exceed | 8:42 | |
| the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, | 8:46 | |
| you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." | 8:49 | |
| Apostle John had the same kind of insight. | 8:54 | |
| After many years of Christian life, | 8:59 | |
| he writes, "It is not yet made manifest what we shall be, | 9:02 | |
| but when we see Him as He is, we shall be like Him." | 9:08 | |
| That means he developed the insight | 9:15 | |
| that Christ is beyond him. | 9:17 | |
| He has not yet known the fullness of Christ | 9:21 | |
| and the whole Christian life is one of knowing Christ | 9:24 | |
| in his fullness. | 9:31 | |
| To be a Christian is to be involved | 9:34 | |
| in the redemptive activity of God in Christ. | 9:37 | |
| The Holy Spirit of God has taken hold of the church | 9:41 | |
| and is leading the church | 9:45 | |
| to greater and greater understanding of the mystery of God | 9:47 | |
| in creating this world and placing us in it. | 9:52 | |
| Certainly God has never meant life on this planet | 9:57 | |
| to be a dull and a static one. | 10:00 | |
| Man's history on this planet is one of unceasing adventure. | 10:04 | |
| Man is never satisfied with what he has | 10:09 | |
| or with what he has achieved. | 10:12 | |
| He wants to climb the highest peaks, | 10:15 | |
| he wants to go down and explore the depths of the oceans. | 10:20 | |
| And now we are living at a time when new visitors | 10:25 | |
| of knowledge have opened up in the splitting of the atom | 10:28 | |
| and discovering the powers embedded in the atom | 10:34 | |
| and with the energy that man | 10:39 | |
| has been able to release out of the atom. | 10:42 | |
| Man seeks to explore into out of space. | 10:45 | |
| Only for this weekend, | 10:50 | |
| we got the news of the new photographs taken off the moon. | 10:52 | |
| That's only one part of man's adventure | 10:58 | |
| into the future adventure into space. | 11:01 | |
| We do not yet know what science has in store for us, | 11:05 | |
| God has given us that wisdom | 11:10 | |
| and that unceasing quest for more knowledge. | 11:14 | |
| Now, war against the thrills of such scientific exploration, | 11:21 | |
| such adventury nature, religious life often appears | 11:25 | |
| to be rather prosaic and dull, | 11:30 | |
| religious life often appears to be a life of a trial | 11:35 | |
| from secular adventure. | 11:38 | |
| Now, just pause a minute and think, can this be true, | 11:43 | |
| if we believe that Christ, the son of God died on the cross | 11:49 | |
| to give a salvation? | 11:55 | |
| If our place in nature is so adventurous. | 12:00 | |
| Can the life to which God has brought us | 12:05 | |
| through the death of Christ on the cross | 12:08 | |
| be less adventurous? | 12:11 | |
| Certainly saint Paul learned | 12:15 | |
| that it could not be less adventurous, | 12:18 | |
| he learned that the life that Christ brought him | 12:21 | |
| was one of unending adventure, unending race, | 12:26 | |
| and the price for that race | 12:33 | |
| is the upward call of God in Christ. | 12:35 | |
| We have been reminded that this day | 12:39 | |
| is the World Day of Prayer for students. | 12:43 | |
| And when we pray for students, | 12:46 | |
| we remember the many problems that students face | 12:49 | |
| in different parts of the world | 12:52 | |
| because of unsettling political situations | 12:55 | |
| because of their being refugees in some parts of the world, | 12:59 | |
| because of their struggle with poverty and other problems. | 13:03 | |
| We remember the students with all their needs, | 13:08 | |
| but our prayer for our students, | 13:13 | |
| is not just a prayer remembering their physical, | 13:17 | |
| intellectual and social needs, | 13:21 | |
| we also pray that during their student period, | 13:25 | |
| they regained this vision, which St. Paul had | 13:30 | |
| the vision that Christian life | 13:36 | |
| is a life of unending exploration towards the highest | 13:39 | |
| that God has given us. | 13:44 | |
| We pray that students throughout the world gain this vision. | 13:49 | |
| In the further gaining of this vision, | 13:56 | |
| there are certain signs, especially irrelevant for our time, | 13:58 | |
| there are signs which we can read and understand | 14:04 | |
| that God is still leading us beyond religion, | 14:09 | |
| beyond the static pattern of life | 14:14 | |
| to higher dimensions of Christian life. | 14:17 | |
| I would like to draw your attention to three points. | 14:20 | |
| First, we are now given a fresh vision of the Catholicity | 14:25 | |
| of the church. | 14:30 | |
| Our membership in the church is certainly | 14:33 | |
| through particular churches, through the Methodist church, | 14:36 | |
| through the Anglican church, | 14:41 | |
| through the Presbyterian church and so on, | 14:42 | |
| but our membership in the charity is not fulfilled | 14:45 | |
| until we go beyond such particular denominations. | 14:51 | |
| We are reminded about this by the communical movement | 14:57 | |
| and by the church union movement. | 15:01 | |
| I was brought up as a congregationalist in South India. | 15:03 | |
| My wife was an Anglican and in the region | 15:08 | |
| where I grew up as a boy, | 15:11 | |
| there where Missouri Synod Lutheran | 15:14 | |
| and we were told that we could not pray together. | 15:17 | |
| They would not regard us as Christians | 15:22 | |
| and some of us will not regard them as Christians. | 15:24 | |
| The same thing was true between the Protestants | 15:27 | |
| and the Roman Catholics. | 15:30 | |
| We often refer to them as Catholics and not as Christians. | 15:33 | |
| And similarly, they refer to us as Protestants | 15:36 | |
| and not Christians. | 15:39 | |
| But now my wife and I are both members | 15:41 | |
| of the church of South India, the United church, | 15:44 | |
| which has brought together four different denominations | 15:48 | |
| in South India, but the church of South India | 15:50 | |
| is itself not an end, | 15:53 | |
| we are now having conversations with the Lutherans | 15:56 | |
| and Missouri Synod Lutheran are also involved | 15:59 | |
| in that conversation. | 16:02 | |
| And our goal for union in South India is, | 16:04 | |
| the bringing together into one visible fellowship | 16:09 | |
| all those who believe in Jesus Christ | 16:11 | |
| and similar church union projects are at work | 16:16 | |
| throughout the world. | 16:20 | |
| And this year, the new United church | 16:22 | |
| is going to be integrated in December in Nigeria. | 16:26 | |
| We also live at a time when through the Vatican council, | 16:33 | |
| the Roman Catholic church has moved | 16:37 | |
| much further than where they were. | 16:39 | |
| One of the decrees issued by the Vatican council, | 16:43 | |
| the Communismal, the decree on Christian unity, | 16:47 | |
| they emphasizes the need for cooperation | 16:52 | |
| among all Christians. | 16:55 | |
| And only this week and this past week, | 16:57 | |
| they have decided to cooperate | 17:01 | |
| with the world council of churches | 17:02 | |
| for the constellation of common problems. | 17:04 | |
| Christian Church is being led by the Holy Spirit | 17:09 | |
| to manifest its people unity in Christ. | 17:15 | |
| And we are taught that our membership | 17:19 | |
| in the church is really meant to manifest | 17:22 | |
| our membership in the one universal body of Christ | 17:27 | |
| that God is gathering from all nations | 17:31 | |
| and tongues and peoples. | 17:35 | |
| Pope John 23rd, in one of his summons in 1962, | 17:39 | |
| taught his church about the goal | 17:44 | |
| of Christian prayer and Christian worship. | 17:47 | |
| This is what he said, "To go to church must mean | 17:50 | |
| for you to go up to cleanse yourselves, | 17:55 | |
| to extend the horizon of an individual lives, | 18:00 | |
| to the cares of the whole Catholicity, | 18:03 | |
| your hearts beating in unison with the hearts | 18:06 | |
| of your brothers in the faith and of all others | 18:10 | |
| who are your brothers also, | 18:15 | |
| because all we are redeemed in the blood of Christ." | 18:18 | |
| It is towards the realization of that fellowship | 18:22 | |
| we gather here to worship. | 18:26 | |
| Secondly, God has also given us the vision | 18:30 | |
| of what has been called a secular ecumenism. | 18:35 | |
| This was an expression used by one of the leaders | 18:40 | |
| of the Indian church, Mr. Imam Thomas, at the conference | 18:43 | |
| of the commission on world mission and evangelism | 18:47 | |
| held in Mexico in December of 1963. | 18:51 | |
| Perhaps the meaning of this can be illustrated | 18:57 | |
| by the experience throughout the world | 19:01 | |
| following the assassination of president Kennedy. | 19:05 | |
| As soon as the news of his assassination came, | 19:09 | |
| there was a sense of loss felt by almost all people. | 19:13 | |
| Certainly in India, his loss was regarded | 19:20 | |
| as greater than the loss of some top defense personnel, | 19:23 | |
| which occurred at the same time. | 19:28 | |
| Why? | 19:31 | |
| Because people throughout the world had learned | 19:33 | |
| that Kennedy was expressing in his concern for justice, | 19:38 | |
| peace, removal of poverty, and human well being in general. | 19:42 | |
| What mankind throughout the world was after he in a way | 19:49 | |
| was the spokesman of the earnings | 19:55 | |
| of people throughout the world. | 20:00 | |
| And now in many nations, in Asia, in Africa, | 20:03 | |
| in Latin America and the rest of the world also, | 20:09 | |
| programs for social uplift, for political rehabilitation | 20:13 | |
| are taking place on the basis of human dignity. | 20:18 | |
| Negro used to say that, | 20:23 | |
| the purpose of the national planning India, | 20:25 | |
| the five-year programs would not be achieved | 20:29 | |
| until visible results are seen in the way people live. | 20:32 | |
| He wanted to see people better clothed, better fed, | 20:37 | |
| better educated, better housed | 20:43 | |
| and he said that every Indian citizen | 20:47 | |
| should be lifted up to a level of dignity. | 20:50 | |
| That was the purpose of what Indian government calls | 20:54 | |
| the socialist pattern of society. | 20:58 | |
| Now, this is not just a human concern. | 21:02 | |
| This was better expressed by Jesus Christ Himself | 21:06 | |
| when He summed up His mission | 21:09 | |
| in the words of the Nazareth manifesto, | 21:11 | |
| "The spirit of the Lord is upon me | 21:14 | |
| because he has anointed me to proclaim the release | 21:17 | |
| to the captives and the recovery of sight | 21:20 | |
| to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed | 21:23 | |
| to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, | 21:28 | |
| the Jubilee year of the Lord." | 21:33 | |
| And then Hebrew thought the Jubilee year was meant | 21:36 | |
| for every Israelite to return to his ancestral heritage. | 21:40 | |
| That was a symbol of God's plan for man. | 21:48 | |
| Every citizen, every human person is meant to be a member | 21:52 | |
| of the household of God, | 21:58 | |
| with a full dignity of being fellow heir with Christ, | 22:01 | |
| a for child of God created in the image of God himself. | 22:06 | |
| Now that is the goal for which Christ came. | 22:13 | |
| So, what is known as this secular ecumenism, | 22:17 | |
| the concern which brings all mankind together? | 22:24 | |
| This concern is one in which Christians are called | 22:28 | |
| to participate by membership in the church. | 22:33 | |
| And our concern will take us much further | 22:37 | |
| than socialist pattern of society, our economic justice, | 22:40 | |
| or whatever program man may produce, | 22:44 | |
| because this concern is expressed in the concern | 22:48 | |
| of the good shepherd who came to lay down his life | 22:51 | |
| for the sheep in order that even if one lost sheep | 22:55 | |
| is gone astray, he will leave the 99 | 22:59 | |
| and go and bring the lost sheep back. | 23:03 | |
| We live in a world of not just one lost sheep in India, | 23:08 | |
| the country of 450 million people, | 23:12 | |
| about 60 percent of that large population | 23:15 | |
| is living substandard lives | 23:18 | |
| without any sense of their dignity, | 23:23 | |
| without any reason to respect themselves, | 23:26 | |
| they have to be awakened, | 23:30 | |
| and they have to be restored to the full dignity | 23:32 | |
| of the people of God. | 23:35 | |
| But this can happen only if people who know | 23:38 | |
| the love of Christ will see | 23:41 | |
| that big gap between the wealthy and the poor, | 23:44 | |
| between the developed nations | 23:48 | |
| and the undeveloped nations that this gap is removed. | 23:49 | |
| The leader of the British Council of Churches recently said | 23:55 | |
| that churches really are to tell their nations | 23:58 | |
| that they know we helped their programs of development | 24:01 | |
| so that the resources may be shared with other peoples. | 24:04 | |
| Certainly that is a concern God has given to the church | 24:08 | |
| or the participation in secular ecumenism. | 24:13 | |
| And thirdly, the church has also given a new vision | 24:17 | |
| of the reconciling ministry of Christ, | 24:23 | |
| Saint Paul, as it reflected on the death of Christ, | 24:26 | |
| he said, "Through the death of Christ, | 24:29 | |
| the Jew and the Gentile are reconciled. | 24:32 | |
| The separating wall of hostility is broken down | 24:36 | |
| and the two are made into one new man." | 24:39 | |
| And that was the vision Saint Paul had, | 24:44 | |
| and until that vision is fulfilled, | 24:47 | |
| Christ's work is not consummated. | 24:49 | |
| Of course, the middle of world of partition | 24:53 | |
| is not just the wall of partition | 24:54 | |
| between the Jew and the Gentile. | 24:56 | |
| There are many other walls of partition separating man | 24:58 | |
| from man, even when through science | 25:00 | |
| and modern communication, | 25:03 | |
| the world have come much closer together. | 25:04 | |
| We know that there are many new tensions, | 25:08 | |
| tensions between India and Pakistan, | 25:12 | |
| between India and China is not Vietnam and south Vietnam, | 25:15 | |
| between the east and the west, | 25:19 | |
| many new tensions separate man from man. | 25:22 | |
| And here, Christ death has given a new vision to the church, | 25:28 | |
| a new vision of bringing the power of the death of Christ | 25:35 | |
| and his resurrection into human relationships. | 25:39 | |
| This does not come mechanically, | 25:43 | |
| this can come only when we reflect | 25:47 | |
| on what Christ death means to us | 25:50 | |
| and what that means to our relationships with others. | 25:53 | |
| Seven years ago, | 25:56 | |
| when my wife and I were coming to this country from India, | 25:58 | |
| taking the Pacific route, | 26:01 | |
| we spent a couple of weeks in the Philippines | 26:03 | |
| and there we called on a friend of ours, a Filipino family. | 26:08 | |
| And they have discovered that two Japanese students | 26:15 | |
| were living with them. | 26:18 | |
| And we also discovered that during the war, | 26:22 | |
| this family had lost their only son, | 26:26 | |
| because he was brutally killed by the Japanese soldiers. | 26:31 | |
| You can imagine what the feelings of such a family would be | 26:37 | |
| against the Japanese. | 26:41 | |
| But they also reflected on the meaning | 26:45 | |
| of their Christian faith and the result | 26:49 | |
| of that kind of killing and war | 26:53 | |
| in the relationships between the Filipino people | 26:56 | |
| and the Japanese people. | 26:59 | |
| And therefore they deliberately took the decision | 27:03 | |
| of having two Japanese students in their home, | 27:06 | |
| so that every day they can remember what Christ death | 27:10 | |
| for the people he breaks down the wall of hostility, | 27:17 | |
| the wall of enmity, | 27:23 | |
| this is what the church is called to witness to the world. | 27:26 | |
| We are not simply to accept the political barriers | 27:30 | |
| that exists, political barriers keep coming up. | 27:35 | |
| And sometimes these political barriers | 27:39 | |
| are being strengthened by ideas of enmity, | 27:41 | |
| enmity between the so called free people | 27:45 | |
| and the communist people and we sometimes assume | 27:47 | |
| that the communists are all bad people | 27:52 | |
| they're outside the scope of God's love, are they? | 27:55 | |
| Is that what we have learned in Christ, | 28:00 | |
| Christ love will not be fulfilled until all these barriers | 28:03 | |
| are turned down and the church has given to the world | 28:09 | |
| in order that the church may bear witness | 28:12 | |
| to that love Christ. | 28:17 | |
| Christ has given us a vision, | 28:20 | |
| a vision of the upward call of God, | 28:23 | |
| which will keep us on the move, | 28:26 | |
| striving for the new dimensions of fellowship | 28:28 | |
| and the church and members of the church can never have rest | 28:33 | |
| until the purpose of the gathering of all things in Christ | 28:40 | |
| is ultimately fulfilled. | 28:44 | |
| And to his name, be all praise and honor, now and forever. | 28:47 | |
| Amen. | 28:54 | |
| (machine roaring) | 28:56 | |
| Oh, thou who has called us out of darkness | 29:07 | |
| into thy marvelous light through thy son Jesus Christ, | 29:11 | |
| fulfill in us the mighty work | 29:16 | |
| which thou has begun, renew in us the vision of thy kingdom, | 29:19 | |
| and give us the joy of running the race | 29:28 | |
| for the upward call of Christ | 29:31 | |
| to the glory of thy holy name, | 29:34 | |
| through Jesus Christ Our Lord. | 29:37 | |
| Amen. | 29:40 |