Howard C. Wilkinson - "Our World in New Perspective" (September 18, 1966)

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-	I once was in a congregation	0:17
	and saw the preacher mount the pulpit.	0:20
	And he said, "Before I have begin my sermon	0:25
	I have something I want to say."	0:29
	I am somewhat like that preacher,	0:34
	except that I have something else to say	0:36
	before I commence my sermon.	0:39
	That something else	0:43
	is a word of the warmest and heartiest welcome	0:44
	to each of you.	0:47
	Some of you are seated here in the nave.	0:50
	Some of you are seated in the overflow chapel.	0:53
	Some of you are worshiping by radio.	0:56
	All of you are welcome.	1:00
	Most of you are freshmen,	1:03
	and I don't know where all you have come from,	1:06
	but you're here now, and that is what matters.	1:09
	Some of you are upperclassmen who have come back	1:12
	to orient the freshmen to this campus.	1:16
	Some of you are upperclassmen who came back early	1:21
	to be engaged yesterday afternoon	1:26
	with representatives from West Virginia.	1:29
	If we did not know you already,	1:32
	we would be able to recognize you in chapel this morning	1:35
	by the pleased expressions on your faces.	1:38
	However, I will not harp on that.	1:41
	We-	1:45
	(congregation laughs)	1:46
	Some of you I recognize as being from distant cities	1:48
	who have come here for this service today,	1:53
	you are welcome too.	1:56
	Now this is an interdenominational service.	1:59
	It is conducted every Sunday morning here at 11 O'clock,	2:03
	and it is for you.	2:07
	You do not tamper with your membership in the church	2:10
	to which you belong to worship here.	2:14
	This is a worshiping community, a temporary community	2:18
	as any university is for the students,	2:22
	but it's very meaningful and very permanent for you	2:26
	while you are here.	2:29
	You remain a member of your local church,	2:31
	but you worship here with Christians	2:35
	from around the world and of every denomination.	2:37
	From our point of view, as here in the chancel	2:41
	we look at the congregation, you all look alike	2:44
	and we cannot tell which is Lutheran and which is Methodist.	2:47
	You Presbyterians look as baptized as the Baptist do.	2:53
	You Quakers look as Episcopalian as the Anglicans.	2:57
	And of course our Catholic brothers are most welcome	3:01
	in the congregation and they are here every Sunday.	3:04
	This is your service.	3:10
	The choir, the preachers,	3:13
	the presiding ministers, the ushers, the collectors,	3:14
	the congregation are members of many denominations.	3:18
	I would like to draw a distinction	3:24
	between an interdenominational service	3:25
	and a non-denominational service.	3:28
	This is not a non-denominational service.	3:30
	It is interdenominational and you are welcome.	3:34
	Well, I have said my other word.	3:39
	Now to come to the original word	3:41
	that I came into the pulpit to give.	3:44
	Less than a month ago, a manmade device	3:49
	which we named Lunar Orbiter	3:54
	completed a carefully planned journey	3:57
	from the earth to the moon	4:00
	and promptly went into orbit around the moon.	4:02
	In response to electronic signals from the earth,	4:06
	it began taking pictures of various points of interest	4:12
	on the moon.	4:17
	On August 25, three weeks ago,	4:19
	it flashed back to earth a photograph	4:24
	taken from a point beyond the horizon of the moon.	4:27
	In the foreground of this picture	4:32
	and taking up most of the area of the photograph	4:35
	was the curved horizon of the moon.	4:39
	In the distant background,	4:45
	and looking by comparison very small, was the earth.	4:48
	The whole earth was contained	4:58
	in a tiny section of this picture.	5:00
	There it was, round as an orange	5:05
	and seeming about a small as an orange.	5:08
	Now the crowning blow to me was that as a former Texan,	5:12
	my native state was not even visible in the picture at all.	5:16
	When on August 26th, that picture was published	5:23
	on the front page of newspapers across America.	5:28
	The human race got its first sight in history	5:32
	of a picture of the earth,	5:37
	as it appears when viewed	5:39
	from a distant point in the universe.	5:41
	It was all the more impressive,	5:45
	because the picture showed a large and vast Lunar horizon	5:47
	in the foreground,	5:52
	completely dwarfing the earth by comparison.	5:54
	I believe that the publication of that picture	6:00
	had a subtle but powerfully disquieting effect	6:02
	upon the subconscious minds of a great many people	6:06
	on the earth.	6:10
	It shocked them into the facing of something,	6:12
	which actually they knew to be a fact,	6:15
	but which they had been assuming was not a fact.	6:18
	Now, parenthetically, let me digress a moment	6:24
	and say that if you have not already,	6:27
	learn the force of unexamined assumptions,	6:31
	please do not delay another week	6:36
	before learning about the force of unexamined assumptions.	6:39
	An era which is proclaimed	6:45
	can be and probably will be examined	6:49
	and found to be what it is.	6:52
	But an era which is not proclaimed,	6:55
	which is held as an unexamined, quiet assumption	7:00
	can be much more influential and do much more damage,	7:05
	precisely because it is quietly unexamined.	7:10
	Well, the assumption which was shattered	7:15
	by the publication of this picture was	7:17
	that our world is the center of the universe.	7:21
	That's the assumption.	7:25
	That we have been emotionally basking in.	7:27
	Earthlings have assumed that this planet	7:30
	was the chief center of activity and interest	7:32
	in the entire universe.	7:35
	That the moon served pretty much the same purpose	7:37
	of a 40 watt electric light bulb	7:40
	hanging from a tree in your backyard	7:43
	to give you a pale light by night.	7:45
	And that the sun is a huge heat lamp	7:49
	hanging up there somewhere in the firmament	7:52
	to provide us with light and warmth by day.	7:56
	You know, even the pictures	8:02
	which have been taken by our astronauts	8:04
	as they circumnavigated the globe	8:06
	have tended to bolster this emotional assumption.	8:10
	Although these pictures have perhaps shown the moon	8:15
	and other heavenly bodies with greater clarity than before,	8:18
	and even though the one that was on the front page	8:23
	of this morning's Durham newspaper	8:25
	shows the curved horizon of the earth.	8:28
	Nevertheless, our world has loomed in these pictures	8:34
	as being by far the most significant reality in the picture.	8:38
	Everything else in the universe has been pictured	8:45
	and evaluated in relation to how it appears	8:49
	from an earth based and earthbound set of cameras.	8:53
	But more importantly, from an earthbound set of assumptions.	8:58
	This earthbound set of assumptions,	9:07
	of course is ministered to our vanity and pride.	9:09
	Comfort is no end.	9:11
	They have made us feel very important in our own sight.	9:14
	Then along came the August 26th picture,	9:21
	taken from deep in space.	9:24
	Now this was no artist's conception	9:28
	of how we might look when viewed from beyond the earth.	9:30
	It was no astronomer's sketch	9:36
	of what his theory might call for.	9:39
	It was a photograph of our world in new perspective.	9:43
	The dictionary offers several definitions	9:51
	of the word perspective.	9:54
	The one I have in mind just now is,	9:56
	the capacity to view things in their true relations	9:59
	or relative importance.	10:06
	So what I'm saying is that this photograph of our world,	10:10
	taken by a manmade camera,	10:15
	has shown us our world in a new relation	10:19
	and a new importance, relatively speaking.	10:22
	It has arrested us with stunning evidence	10:27
	of the fact that our planet looks pretty small	10:31
	when seen in perspective,	10:35
	and that we are not the overwhelming center of everything,	10:38
	which we have emotionally assumed ourselves to be.	10:42
	And so, we shall have to reexamine the dimensions	10:47
	of our own importance	10:51
	in the light of this new perspective.	10:52
	Before doing that, however,	10:57
	it will be worth our taking just a few minutes	10:59
	to notice a significant parallel to this.	11:01
	Now it is my opinion that during this weekend,	11:07
	perhaps, even today.	11:10
	Perhaps, even just now in this service,	11:12
	something is beginning to happen to you freshman.	11:17
	In the area of your emotional assumptions,	11:22
	which is very similar	11:26
	to what began to happen to all of our people on August 26th.	11:29
	Think for a moment	11:34
	about the home you left to come to this university.	11:36
	In your mind's eye, there is your hometown or city,	11:41
	your neighborhood, the street or road on which you live,	11:46
	your house, yard, inside the house, your own room.	11:51
	In the room, your bed, your souvenirs,	12:00
	scrapbooks, a little secret places	12:04
	where you hid the things you wanted no one else to see.	12:08
	There are the telltale reminders	12:13
	of some crushing disappointments in the past.	12:16
	Perhaps, the clippings or the dried petals	12:20
	of some surprising victory.	12:23
	There on the doorstep is the dog,	12:26
	who thinks you're the greatest.	12:29
	There may be a parent, a neighbor,	12:32
	a friend who has often acted	12:38
	as though everything that was made was made just for you.	12:41
	In a real sense, that has been your world.	12:49
	And for you, perhaps,	12:54
	that world has emotionally seemed	12:57
	to be the center of the universe.	13:00
	And yet this morning, in your mind's eye, as you look back	13:05
	and take a mental picture of that world,	13:10
	it is different from the mental picture you had of it	13:14
	when you turned from it to come here.	13:18
	In the foreground of this morning's picture,	13:22
	whether you are looking from the top	13:28
	of the Duke chapel tower or from a bench underneath,	13:31
	a spreading Oak tree on East campus,	13:35
	or from a Bleacher in Duke stadium	13:38
	or maybe from the drapery window	13:42
	of the freshly occupied York Hilton dormitory.	13:45
	In the foreground of the picture,	13:52
	is a vastly, arching, gothic horizon looming very large	13:57
	and taking up most of the space of that picture.	14:06
	On that close academic horizon are nearly 7,000 students	14:12
	from many lands,	14:18
	and numerous distinguished professors,	14:20
	whose heads are full of exciting knowledge	14:22
	you've never dreamed of,	14:25
	but in the distance, in the background of that picture,	14:28
	in your mind, you noticed that world	14:34
	from which you so recently have come.	14:37
	That world of your dog and your scrapbook,	14:41
	that world in which you felt so very secure and so very big.	14:45
	Now, all at once, it appears to be so very small.	14:50
	So very remote, about the size of an orange.	14:58
	You being a part of that world,	15:04
	see yourself now in new perspective,	15:06
	for as you look about you, even here in this chapel,	15:10
	you see, sitting here worshiping with you 2000 other people,	15:14
	very few of whom even know your name.	15:20
	They don't know that you're from Spring Branch	15:26
	or from Manawa or Salisbury	15:29
	or Flat Rock or Overland Park or Albany,	15:33
	your world, you viewed now in new perspective	15:40
	are no longer the center of the universe	15:47
	or even the center of the university.	15:50
	Even as our planet, when pictured from afar	15:56
	is seen to be only one small unit among millions,	15:59
	so you see and now you feel yourself	16:03
	to be only one small unit among a host of others.	16:07
	Well, many, many centuries ago,	16:13
	another person had that same feeling.	16:16
	He had strolled out of his tent into the desert night,	16:19
	and through the dry atmosphere, he saw clearly,	16:24
	the sparkling planets overhead.	16:27
	The bright full moon, the uncounted stars	16:30
	in the vast reaches of a mighty universe.	16:35
	Two thoughts impressed themselves upon his mind.	16:39
	The first was a thought about the majesty	16:44
	and greatness of a creator who could make	16:46
	and sustain such a universe.	16:49
	And realizing that he stood in the presence of this God,	16:52
	he explained the words our choir sang a little while ago,	16:57
	how excellent is thy name in all the earth.	17:01
	And the second thought which impressed itself upon his mind	17:07
	had to do with his own size and importance	17:12
	in relation to the vastness of the created universe.	17:15
	And so long before Lunar Orbiter	17:19
	took its distant picture of the earth,	17:22
	the psalmist got the point.	17:24
	He cried out, when I look at the heavens,	17:28
	the work of thy fingers,	17:32
	the moon and the stars which thou has established,	17:34
	what is man that thou mindful of him	17:38
	and the son of man that thou doesn't care for him?	17:44
	Friends, that's a good question.	17:50
	It is the most logical question to ask	17:53
	as we look at that August 26th photograph	17:56
	of the world and new perspective.	17:58
	It is the central question for you to ask,	18:01
	as you see yourself as a freshman	18:05
	on the threshold of the university.	18:07
	Who am I?	18:11
	What is the significance of my existence	18:14
	on a tiny planet, in a vast universe?	18:17
	What does it mean now that I have emotionally discovered	18:21
	that I am only one among thousands	18:25
	and the entire universe does not revolve around me?	18:28
	Well, I'm preaching this sermon today,	18:35
	not primarily to offer answers to these questions,	18:38
	I'm preaching it chiefly to provide a setting	18:43
	for the questions.	18:46
	And to try to clarify the dimensions of the questions.	18:49
	You will have to work through the answers for yourself.	18:54
	And it may take you four years to discover them.	18:58
	But let me suggest in closing,	19:03
	that you will find it profitable	19:06
	to walk down two avenues of thought,	19:08
	as you seek to find and to fashion the answers.	19:11
	First, I believe you will discover your new perspective	19:16
	enhancing your personal importance	19:24
	rather than destroying it,	19:29
	which is a more challenging thought after all.	19:33
	To realize that you live on a world in a one planet universe	19:36
	or that you are an integral part	19:42
	of an unimaginably majestic universe.	19:46
	Which is more exciting?	19:53
	The thought that you live in a world so small	19:56
	and uneventful, that you can be the central reality in it,	19:58
	or the thought that you are a part of a great university,	20:03
	in a great world of people and events	20:08
	which call forth from you the best you have to give.	20:12
	Which is better?	20:18
	To be the soloist in a one member choir,	20:21
	or to be a part of a great university chapel choir	20:24
	and learn to sing the greatest oratorios ever composed.	20:27
	Is it better to practice medieval alchemy	20:33
	in your own backyard where you are king,	20:36
	or to be one humble student of chemistry	20:40
	among many in a great laboratory	20:43
	and live on the frontier of fantastic discovery?	20:47
	Which?	20:51
	The second avenue of thought,	20:55
	along which you may walk toward an answer	20:56
	to the psalmist question, is the one which he chose himself,	20:58
	realizing how small a particle he was	21:05
	among the dust of the universe,	21:08
	how small a pebble he was upon a beach of time and space	21:11
	as great as this one,	21:17
	his only claim to importance had to rest upon	21:20
	what the creator had created him to be.	21:26
	The psalmist knew he was the valuable	21:31
	only because God valued him.	21:33
	But precisely because God did invest him with value,	21:39
	he was very significant.	21:44
	This kind of importance is so much greater	21:48
	than the importance of relative size	21:51
	that there can be no comparison at all.	21:55
	Quality over quantity.	21:57
	Therefore to his own question before God,	22:02
	what is man that thou mindful of Him?	22:06
	He gave before God the answer,	22:10
	thou has made him little less than God	22:14
	and crowned him with glory and majesty.	22:19
	He was describing the 1966 freshman class, you.	22:26
	The writer of the apostle of Hebrews read this Psalm	22:35
	and quoted part of it to his readers,	22:39
	didn't seem to know where it came from.	22:41
	Then he forfeited and forted rather,	22:43
	he fortified the psalmist thought by adding the assertion	22:46
	that Jesus Christ, the son of God	22:52
	is not ashamed to call us his brothers.	22:56
	In all the gospels, we find record that Christ taught,	23:00
	we are important because God gives us importance.	23:04
	We may be tiny,	23:10
	we may live in a universe of unthinkably vast space,	23:11
	but the very hairs of our heads are numbered.	23:17
	The apostle Paul wrote to his friends,	23:22
	beloved, now are we sons of God.	23:25
	A few minutes ago after pointing out	23:32
	that the August 26th photograph	23:34
	showed the earth to be relatively small,	23:37
	I said, this will cause us	23:39
	to reexamine the dimensions of our own importance	23:41
	in the light of this new perspective.	23:45
	When we do that reexamination, if we do it thoroughly,	23:48
	and if we take seriously the radical insights	23:53
	of christian faith,	23:55
	we will see how false, utterly false and brittle	23:57
	was our sense of importance	24:02
	when it was founded upon the thought of ourselves	24:04
	being the center of everything,	24:07
	and how very sane it is	24:10
	and how really comforting to acknowledge God	24:14
	as the center of all meaning	24:19
	and ourselves as His beloved sons.	24:22
	Our sense of self value as humans	24:27
	does not rest upon our own greatness,	24:30
	nor upon our achievements.	24:33
	We are not great because we have IBM machines	24:37
	and automation and cybernetics, nuclear fishing,	24:39
	Zirocks and antibiotics, or any of those things.	24:42
	Indeed, every advance we make in human wisdom and creativity	24:47
	only shows more clearly how finite man is	24:53
	and how dependent he is upon God	24:57
	for the ground of his value.	25:00
	Was it not a manmade camera, in a manmade spacecraft	25:03
	that snapped the photograph of the world,	25:09
	which made us look so small?	25:11
	Was it not a manmade collection of hydrogen bombs,	25:16
	equipped with manmade rockets and manmade submarines	25:22
	which have brought man so close	25:25
	to the brink of annihilation that only God can now save us?	25:27
	But even as we are no more important or valuable	25:34
	when we build a great technology,	25:37
	so we are no less important when we discover	25:40
	that we are only one among many	25:43
	and no less important when we see our world as a tiny planet	25:46
	in God's vast universe.	25:50
	It is God who made us.	25:53
	It is the living God who values us.	25:57
	The freshman in the pew beside you this morning	26:01
	may not know your name, but God does.	26:04
	The person in the pew in front of you	26:08
	may not know where you are from,	26:11
	but there is one who does know	26:14
	and who Himself is from everlasting to everlasting,	26:16
	the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.	26:22
	And under His name, be glory in the church by Christ Jesus	26:27
	throughout all ages, world without end.	26:31
	Almighty God, the creator of the universe	26:41
	and the Lord of the university,	26:44
	we give thee thanks that thou has taught us	26:47
	to call thee, father.	26:49
	And we pray for grace to act as members of thy family.	26:53
-	The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and the love of God	27:00
	and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.	27:03
	(indistinct)	27:13
	(bell rings)	28:54
	(bright piano music)	29:05

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "Our World in New Perspective" (September 18, 1966)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4bp0244m

Date:

September 18, 1966

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0354
ref5911_m0g
uachapelsermaud
duke:628496
dcrau002350
ark:/87924/r4bp0244m
50f1a5d2-2ee5-475b-b3f0-7e02649f567a

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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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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Howard C. Wilkinson - "Our World in New Perspective" (September 18, 1966)

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1. Howard C. Wilkinson - "Our World in New Perspective" (September 18, 1966)

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