Donald J. Welch - "Dormez Vous?" (November 27, 1966)

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-	Gifts which return to thee in Thanksgiving	0:03
	for thy manifold and great mercies,	0:05
	realizing that thy loving hand	0:08
	hath given us all that we possess.	0:10
	grant that we may always be faithful stewards	0:13
	of thy bounty, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.	0:16
	(quiet shuffling)	0:29
-	Grace be unto you and peace from God our father	0:34
	and the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.	0:39
	you know what time it is?	0:45
	it is full time now, for you to wake from sleep.	0:50
	for salvation is nearer to us now	0:55
	than when we first believed.	0:58
	I first remember hearing these words	1:03
	when I was present with several hundred college students	1:08
	in a required chapel service	1:12
	on a small church related college campus.	1:14
	now those of you here who have	1:18
	never had the great privilege	1:20
	of being required to attend chapel	1:22
	on a small church related college campus,	1:25
	have missed a great experience and worship.	1:29
	I too, was a student who went rather reluctantly	1:34
	to the chapel on a dreary Monday morning.	1:38
	the first day of school,	1:42
	following the Thanksgiving recess.	1:44
	having no knowledge then of the church calendar	1:47
	and caring less,	1:50
	I was completely unaware	1:52
	that this day fell in the first week of advent.	1:54
	I only knew that I had been riding a	1:58
	greyhound bus all night	2:01
	in order to make an	2:03
	eight o'clock class that morning.	2:04
	And I had met two classes and now	2:07
	with the 10 o'clock hour,	2:09
	I was ready to settle in for a much needed nap.	2:10
	The organist very kindly played a	2:15
	lullaby type prelude,	2:18
	and then the president of the college in a booming voice	2:21
	over a much too loud public address system	2:24
	read the opening scripture sentences taken from the epistle,	2:28
	so for the first Sunday in advent,	2:33
	and I, and my dozing neighbors were startled to hear,	2:36
	"It is full time now for you to wake from sleep	2:41
	for salvation is nearer to us now	2:45
	than when we first believe."	2:48
	now I have yet to be convinced	2:51
	that these words of Saint Paul,	2:54
	were not addressed to me personally.	2:57
	and now some 18 years later I still hear them	3:01
	as some personal address,	3:04
	calling me by name and inquiring	3:07
	about my state of dormancy.	3:11
	I am the Friar Jacques to whom is asked	3:15
	"Dormez vous,"	3:19
	I am the Brother, John, and	3:22
	at least once a year on this first Sunday in advent	3:24
	I hear the question, Brother John, Are you sleeping?	3:28
	and so in the light of this lesson, from the epistle	3:35
	to the Romans, I turn to you and ask the same question	3:37
	"Dormez Vous?"	3:42
	our immediate response I think is to look	3:46
	upon ourselves as anything but sleeping,	3:49
	but rather	3:53
	wide awake persons	3:54
	for we are the man of the 20th century	3:55
	the participants in the new awakening	3:59
	living in a world, come of age.	4:01
	we may justly be accused of many sins,	4:06
	but certainly not that of sleeping.	4:11
	and yet I wonder in my house,	4:16
	we live by certain little ground rules.	4:20
	most of which I did not make.	4:24
	one of them is this:	4:28
	that no adult is allowed to fall asleep	4:30
	watching television.	4:33
	now, those of you who have been sampling	4:37
	the fair of this year,	4:38
	realize what a difficult rule	4:40
	this is to live by.	4:41
	no matter how sleepy one is,	4:44
	or how dreary the program,	4:46
	the commandment remains thou shall not fall asleep	4:48
	before the television set.	4:52
	now for 12 years, I have been working on a way to	4:55
	catch a little nap during the Sunday afternoon	4:58
	professional football game.	5:00
	I brace myself in chair,	5:03
	lean back my head and doze	5:05
	and when on the outer limits of my auditory	5:08
	consciousness I hear footsteps approach,	5:10
	I fling open my eyelids, look straight ahead	5:14
	and prepare myself for the inevitable question.	5:17
	"Are you asleep?"	5:20
	to which I answer,	5:22
	"No, I'm not asleep.	5:23
	the score is 32 to 19."	5:24
	I have managed to escape on a few occasions	5:28
	but not too long ago, I was caught by the reply	5:31
	"How could you know the score?	5:35
	I turned the TV off 30 minutes ago."	5:38
	(laughter)	5:41
	this may very well be our situation	5:43
	in this enlightened age.	5:48
	We no longer live in a world of	5:50
	myth and superstition.	5:52
	We are a mature people of	5:55
	people according to Bonhoeffer	5:56
	for whom God is no longer a necessary hypothesis.	5:59
	We deal daily with the problems,	6:03
	grace and revolution.	6:05
	We have replaced our puritan and ethical codes	6:07
	with the responsible love	6:09
	and the existential situation.	6:11
	we're on the verge of abolishing	6:14
	poverty and unwanted pregnancies.	6:16
	and we live in a world which is ruled out war.	6:19
	that is just as soon as we clear up this little mess	6:22
	in Vietnam and the other one on the Jordan-Israeli border.	6:25
	we live in a world	6:29
	in which we intend to live in law and peace.	6:30
	we no longer fight urbanization and secularization	6:34
	but we welcome as the promise new age,	6:38
	which may soon usher in the kingdom itself.	6:42
	our scientific knowledge,	6:45
	our technical skills are bursting,	6:48
	with the possibility of abundant life	6:50
	for all mankind.	6:53
	The great society is upon us, and it's a probability.	6:55
	are we asleep?	7:01
	of course not.	7:04
	we know the score.	7:06
	How much of this sounds so similar to the slogans	7:10
	of the 1920s	7:14
	when following the war to end all wars	7:16
	we would rise each morning	7:20
	and look in the mirror and say every day	7:21
	in every way,	7:25
	"I'm getting better and better." and believe it.	7:27
	And do you remember	7:33
	four or five years ago at the most?	7:34
	how worried and concerned we were	7:38
	about the church	7:40
	that the church was irrelevant.	7:42
	it was not dealing with social issues	7:44
	it was captive to suburbanite, middle class mentality	7:47
	and that we were hopelessly divided	7:51
	and the body of Christ was badly broken.	7:53
	and that this was the scandal of Christendom	7:56
	and that the church as an institution was dead.	7:59
	but I no longer hear these accusations	8:03
	indeed I no longer make them.	8:07
	I now find that I'm going from campus to campus	8:09
	from church to church, proclaiming	8:12
	the Church is being renewed.	8:14
	the Church is being renewed,	8:16
	I cry out.	8:18
	look around you and see what is happening in the church.	8:20
	ministers are marching in the streets	8:25
	witnessing the churches at work in the inner city.	8:27
	again, priests are performing in nightclubs and unity.	8:31
	a man you have never seen such a ecumenism.	8:35
	Vatican two has opened up avenues,	8:40
	never believed possible.	8:42
	the council on church union has agreed	8:45
	on preliminary working papers.	8:47
	and the Methodist church	8:49
	has ushered in the new day	8:52
	by uniting with the evangelical United brethren to	8:53
	form the largest Protestant communion in America.	8:56
	and so the question comes to the church.	9:02
	"Are you asleep?"	9:04
	and we answer, "no we're not asleep.	9:06
	we know what the score is"	9:09
	how similar this sounds to the 1920 optimism	9:13
	in the church when we could boldly proclaim	9:18
	and believe the evangelization	9:22
	of the world in our generation.	9:24
	and we sang its theme song, you win the one next	9:28
	to you and I'll win the one next to me.	9:32
	and in no time at all	9:35
	we'll have them all	9:36
	and win them one by one.	9:39
	do you know what time it is?	9:43
	it is full time to wake out of sleep.	9:47
	is this word of Paul to the church	9:53
	drawn a word to us in our day?	9:56
	or do we really believe that we are wide awake?	10:01
	this is not to say that things are not happening	10:07
	in the church and in the world.	10:10
	if one wants to go where the action is	10:12
	there are plenty of floating crap games around	10:15
	and this is an exciting time	10:18
	to be a part of the church no doubt.	10:20
	but perhaps, just perhaps	10:24
	perhaps we do not have the real answer to our situation.	10:28
	perhaps we are not even close.	10:33
	maybe we are not awake to what is happening at all.	10:35
	when I was a boy,	10:42
	I shared a room with three of my brothers.	10:42
	there were nights when I did not sleep well.	10:46
	and during these waking hours	10:48
	I observed a strange phenomenon.	10:50
	one of my brothers would cry	10:54
	out in his sleep	10:55
	and another one would answer.	10:57
	and for five or 10 minutes at a time	11:01
	they would carry on a conversation,	11:03
	yet both were asleep.	11:06
	this was dialogue.	11:09
	and it may be descriptive of the dialogue	11:13
	now being carried on	11:16
	between the church and the world.	11:17
	we may be having a conversation.	11:19
	but perhaps when we wake up, we may discover	11:23
	that we didn't know what we were talking	11:27
	about and that no communication has really taken place,	11:29
	because we were both asleep.	11:34
	advent is the season of the year that,	11:37
	that bothers me.	11:40
	oh, it doesn't bother me.	11:42
	that Christmas has become commercialized.	11:44
	I actually worry about the people who run around worrying	11:46
	about Christmas, becoming commercialized.	11:49
	I heard recently of a department store	11:53
	a department store that said shop at the store	11:56
	which keeps Christ in Christmas.	12:01
	see our huge nativity scene on the ground floor	12:03
	(laughter)	12:08
	and in pulpits all over America today	12:09
	on this first Sunday of Advent,	12:12
	ministers are crying out about	12:13
	the commercialization of this holy season.	12:16
	what am I bothered that	12:21
	on a college and university campuses that we	12:23
	can't keep advent as a penitential season.	12:26
	looking forward to the celebration of the birth of Christ.	12:29
	if we celebrate Christmas on campus at all,	12:33
	we must squeeze it in between the Thanksgiving	12:36
	and Christmas recesses,	12:38
	for God knows that there is no time	12:40
	for Christmas when we come back preparing for exam.	12:43
	what bothers me really about advent is this.	12:48
	just when I think that we've got a good	12:52
	thing going,	12:55
	just when I've worked out the	12:58
	the proper system and related in my own mind	12:59
	belief and action and theology and ethics and	13:02
	the church and the world.	13:06
	and it is at this point every year	13:08
	that advent comes	13:12
	and I am reminded	13:15
	of the incarnation that God broke into history	13:17
	over 1900 years ago	13:21
	in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.	13:24
	and I have to deal with this event.	13:28
	I cannot ignore it.	13:32
	oh I can accept it,	13:34
	and often do from year to year	13:35
	with all of its mythological	13:37
	trappings and become right, pious and	13:38
	sentimental about it all.	13:40
	I light my advent candles and glow right along with them.	13:43
	or on occasions I	13:49
	I can muster up the courage to reject the whole	13:51
	thing altogether as not really being relevant	13:54
	to the system that I've worked out in my own mind.	13:57
	but one thing I cannot do	14:01
	I cannot make it fit into my scheme of things.	14:03
	for it is a reminder,	14:07
	always a reminder, that God is at work in the world in a way	14:09
	which I do not readily comprehend.	14:16
	Alfred Tennyson expressed it some years ago	14:20
	and we sang it as a little noticed	14:23
	fourth stanza of a familiar hymn	14:25
	and he said, our little systems have their day.	14:28
	they have their day and cease to be.	14:32
	they are, but broken lights of thee	14:36
	and thou oh Lord	14:39
	art more than they.	14:42
	and this in a sense	14:45
	is what the Christian Church proclaims	14:48
	that advent had been.	14:50
	that 1,970 years ago were there about that	14:51
	the Roman world had a lot going for it	14:56
	that Judaism at that time and other religions	14:59
	with all of their faults were dealing	15:02
	rather realistically	15:04
	with their culture and then bang.	15:05
	that unknown to any in the power structures	15:09
	God entered the world in Jesus of Nazareth,	15:13
	and nothing could remain the same.	15:18
	this is what bothers me	15:23
	about the proclamation of the church and advent.	15:25
	this is what bothers me	15:28
	about our sophisticated faith and world come of age.	15:30
	it is full time now for,	15:36
	for us to wake	15:38
	out of sleep for salvation is nearer to us now	15:39
	than when we first believe.	15:43
	this last part of the text too.	15:46
	I remember, and so do you, I think.	15:50
	when we first believe the gospel	15:53
	the good news life was simple then.	15:57
	faith was beautiful.	16:02
	everything could be reduced to a personal basis.	16:04
	I had sin, God forgives sin	16:07
	God forgives me and our eschatology had little	16:09
	in it of bombs and wars of grace and poverty.	16:13
	all we needed and know was that if we were to dock	16:17
	we would surely go to heaven.	16:21
	choices were black and white.	16:25
	there were things one should do,	16:27
	and there were things one should avoid.	16:29
	now, there are still those	16:32
	who present this simple solution to our dilemma.	16:34
	Billy Graham and others exhort us to simply	16:38
	make a decision for Christ.	16:40
	moral re armament says have a quiet time every day	16:44
	and live pure lives	16:47
	without great concern over what's going on around you.	16:49
	and there are organizations that urge us to go back	16:53
	to God and others say, go to church, this sunday	16:57
	and take someone with you.	17:01
	you'll both feel better for it.	17:02
	I wake up each morning to a clock radio.	17:06
	and on weekdays, I wake up	17:10
	to a very soft voice talking sentimentally	17:12
	about the simple faith for five minutes.	17:15
	and then I get up and face the world.	17:19
	and on Sundays, I wake	17:21
	up to the old fashioned revival	17:23
	and nostalgically look back	17:26
	to a simple faith that I could affirm all of these	17:29
	are attempts to get back to the time	17:34
	when we first believed	17:37
	that somehow this just doesn't work.	17:40
	it's like seeing an old girlfriend	17:43
	after 10 or 12 years, it just isn't there anymore.	17:44
	now we can no longer live in a world which does	17:50
	not deal seriously with radical secularization	17:54
	the death of God's situation, ethics.	17:58
	and yet the message of advent is this,	18:02
	that in the midst of all of these systems	18:06
	and explanations and schemes and proclamations,	18:08
	that God may be preparing away	18:13
	and that God may be	18:15
	at work in ways strange and unknown to us.	18:17
	and we are not aware	18:21
	of God's continued incarnation because we are lulled	18:22
	into sleep by all the prophets crying out to be heard	18:26
	and in following,	18:30
	we think that we are a wide awake	18:31
	to what God is speaking.	18:33
	it is full time now to wake	18:36
	from sleep for salvation is nearer to us now	18:38
	than when we first believe.	18:42
	when Paul wrote this letter	18:46
	to the church, to Rome, there was an	18:48
	eschatological hope present	18:50
	in the faith of all Christians at this time.	18:52
	and it went like this that no matter what kind	18:55
	of situation we find ourselves in behold,	18:58
	our God will come and save us.	19:01
	it is difficult now to speak	19:05
	of such a hope for very few believe, even in	19:07
	in their best moments	19:12
	that God will break into history to save us.	19:14
	I am troubled by the conclusion I seem to reach the sun.	19:19
	you see, I have this great temptation to say	19:24
	you want to see God at work in the world,	19:27
	now look! Here He is here in east Harlem or	19:28
	in west side Chicago or in Watts or in the Delta ministry	19:33
	in Mississippi or in the Edgemont community center.	19:36
	now maybe he is, but I don't know.	19:40
	what I do wish to proclaim is probably as nebulous	19:46
	as it is naive.	19:48
	it is a simple message of hope	19:51
	that something is happening in our presence in our own age.	19:54
	and that God is being born.	19:59
	I must believe this.	20:03
	I do believe it.	20:05
	if I do not, there is no advent message for me.	20:06
	a number of you, I hope, viewed the gospel	20:10
	according to Saint Matthew this past week,	20:13
	all of us I think were impressed	20:18
	by the frugality of the production	20:19
	by the simpleness of the message.	20:21
	but there is one scene that sort of sticks with me.	20:25
	when Jesus came out of the wilderness	20:29
	after the temptation and was walking	20:32
	along the fields, and there he met a group of peasants.	20:33
	and as he passed by	20:38
	he seemed to whisper to them and say,	20:41
	"Repent. The kingdom of heaven is at hand,"	20:44
	and all week I've been tempted	20:50
	to pass this word along in the corridors	20:51
	of the divinity school, on the streets of the city,	20:54
	repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.	20:58
	this is the message of advent.	21:03
	the season, looking forward to that, which is coming.	21:06
	that is, that there is more to come	21:11
	that this is not the last chapter and that we must wake	21:14
	up and be prepared for what is to come.	21:18
	an old advent hymn which we don't sing states,	21:23
	this very positively.	21:26
	hark, a thrilling voice is sounding Christ	21:29
	is nigh it seems to say.	21:32
	cast away the dreams of darkness	21:35
	all ye children of the day.	21:39
	you know what hour it is.	21:43
	It is full time for us to wake from sleep.	21:46
	the night is far gone.	21:50
	the day is at hand and salvation is nearer	21:53
	to us now	21:58
	than when	22:00
	we first believe.	22:02
	in the name of the father,	22:05
	and of the son and of the holy spirit.	22:06
	amen.	22:10
	even in this enlightened day	22:12
	there may still be a prayer for us in the advent collect	22:14
	from the book of common prayer,	22:18
	let us stand.	22:20
	let us pray.	22:24
	almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works	22:28
	of darkness and put upon us the armor of light.	22:34
	now in the time of this mortal life	22:40
	in which thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us	22:43
	in great humility.	22:47
	that in the last day	22:50
	when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge	22:52
	both the quick and the dead,	22:55
	we may rise to the life	22:59
	immortal through him who liveth and reignith with thee	23:00
	and the holy ghost now and ever, amen.	23:04
	may the peace of God, which passeth	23:10
	to all understanding, abide in your hearts and minds	23:12
	and keep you always in the knowledge and love of God	23:16
	and of his son Jesus Christ are our Lord may the blessing	23:19
	of God, the father, son, and holy spirit be	23:23
	with you and abide with you now and evermore.	23:27

Item Info

Title:

Donald J. Welch - "Dormez Vous?" (November 27, 1966)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4rr1tp0r

Date:

November 27, 1966

Speaker:

Welch, Donald J.

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0363
ref5929_imc
uachapelsermaud
duke:628595
dcrau002359
ark:/87924/r4rr1tp0r
52e8dfea-8a21-4261-bd2b-895d39a31b0f

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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

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Donald J. Welch - "Dormez Vous?" (November 27, 1966)

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1. Donald J. Welch - "Dormez Vous?" (November 27, 1966)

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Donald J. Welch - "Dormez Vous?" (November 27, 1966)

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