James T. Cleland - "The Advent of Sin" (December 3, 1967)

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-	In heaven, hallowed be thy name.	0:03
	Thy kingdom come.	0:07
	Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	0:09
	Give us this day our daily bread	0:13
	and forgive us our trespasses,	0:15
	as we forgive those who trespass against us	0:18
	and lead us not into temptation,	0:21
	but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom	0:24
	and the power and the glory forever, amen.	0:28
-	The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ,	0:52
	be with you all.	0:55
	Dearly beloved, I wish you, each of you and all of you,	0:59
	a happy new year.	1:05
	Now, don't conclude that I am out of my mind,	1:09
	more out of my mind than usual,	1:14
	or that I'm going to disappear from Duke	1:18
	for the next few weeks,	1:21
	though that's a sound idea.	1:24
	It's just that today is the first Sunday in advent	1:28
	and advent marks the beginning of another Christian year.	1:33
	Therefore, what I'm really wishing you is a happy,	1:39
	a blessed new Christian year.	1:44
	Advent is the season in which the church prepares	1:49
	for December 25th, the anniversary of the birth	1:52
	of its Lord, in Bethlehem.	1:57
	The following succession, Christmastide, epiphany,	2:01
	lent, Eastertide, Pentecost, Kingdomtide,	2:07
	and then we arrive at the next new Christian year.	2:15
	These seasons are marked in many churches	2:22
	by the use of five different liturgical colors	2:24
	and the hangings on the holy table,	2:30
	sometimes on the pulpit, on the lectern	2:35
	and in the Bible place markers,	2:39
	and each color has a unique significance.	2:43
	White is the color of perfection,	2:48
	of perfect glory, beauty, holiness, joy.	2:51
	Red is the color of fire, of blood, of fervor.	3:00
	Green signifies life, peace, rest, nourishment, constancy.	3:08
	Violet or purple denotes morning, penitence.	3:17
	Black intimates war, sorrow, after darkness.	3:24
	Now it came as a surprise to me that the color for advent	3:33
	is violet or purple,	3:39
	violet being a kind of bluish purple.	3:43
	For this is the color which denotes morning	3:47
	and is reserved for periods of penitence	3:52
	and preparation for lent	3:56
	and surprise of surprises, for advent,	4:00
	the preparation for the birthday of the Lord of our faith.	4:07
	Now, why should preparation and contrition be so conjoined?	4:13
	Maybe because that advent has taken on a secondary theme,	4:20
	the preparation for the second coming of our Lord.	4:26
	At the end of time,	4:33
	when as the Collect for the first Sunday in advent stresses,	4:35
	He shall come in His glorious majesty	4:39
	to judge both the quick and the dead.	4:43
	Now, many of us with any spiritual sensitivity realize	4:49
	that at such a moment of personal appraisal,	4:53
	we had better be dressed in penitential violet.	4:58
	But may I suggest that even in our preparation	5:04
	for the anniversary of the first coming of Jesus,	5:07
	it may be well for us to appreciate the violet	5:11
	of the table hanging.	5:15
	I have no desire to be a homiletical Scrooge,	5:18
	and I'm not sure that I would preach this sermon	5:24
	on any later Sunday in advent.	5:27
	But I would like to look with you at this Jesus	5:32
	whose birthday we celebrate in 22 days	5:35
	from an unusual perspective.	5:40
	Are you ready?	5:45
	Then listen to part of one verse from our scripture lesson,	5:47
	John 15:21, where Jesus says,	5:51
	"If I had not come and spoken to them,	5:55
	they had not had sin.	6:01
	If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin."	6:04
	One commentator says,	6:11
	that these are the saddest words in scripture.	6:13
	Jesus held himself responsible for a sense of sin.	6:19
	Now what can we do with that in preparation for Christmas?	6:25
	For the sake of clarity,	6:32
	or at least for the sake of less obscurity,	6:35
	we had better have a working definition of sin	6:38
	in front of us.	6:42
	There are three types of model evil,	6:43
	which should be distinguished one from another.	6:46
	There is first, vice,	6:51
	that is conduct, which is definitely harmful	6:54
	to the person engaging in it.	6:58
	Vice is not measured by any norm laid down by God or man.	7:02
	It just does damage to a person physically,	7:09
	maybe psychosomatically morally.	7:15
	For example, overindulgence of any kind, gluttony	7:19
	drunkenness, all work and no play,	7:26
	all play and no work.	7:33
	This is a flat fact vice hearts.	7:36
	There is second, crime.	7:43
	Crime is a breach of the law ratified by society	7:46
	and is punishable by the state	7:51
	or by a branch of any government,	7:54
	which is the guardian of such law.	7:56
	For example, driving along campus drive	8:00
	at 60 miles an hour	8:06
	with the horn resonantly serenading	8:09
	the few faculty homes, which have not deteriorated	8:13
	into university offices.	8:17
	Crime is not to be equated with vice.	8:24
	There is third, sin.	8:30
	Sin is a theological word.	8:33
	It has when correctly used, a divine reference.	8:37
	Therefore, no God, no sin.	8:42
	Its essential character is disobedience of the divine will.	8:48
	When the disobedience is intentional,	8:54
	the sin becomes transgression.	8:58
	but Robert Burns, the Scottish poet called a kenan rong	9:02
	that is annoying wrong.	9:08
	For example, when a Jew breaks the 10 commandments,	9:11
	when a Christian breaks the new commandment	9:16
	that he love God and his neighbor as himself.	9:20
	Sin is not necessarily crime	9:25
	and crime is not necessarily sin.	9:30
	One may insult the law without insulting God,	9:35
	but sin maybe, may be conscious vice.	9:42
	Now Jesus concentrated on sin, that was His job.	9:49
	He wanted to get men into right relations with God,	9:55
	and He knew that sin separates a man from God.	9:58
	His mission was to remove sin.	10:02
	We've heard that often enough.	10:06
	And yet the passage we're looking at says,	10:09
	that He was responsible for sin and for the guilt of sin,	10:12
	the culpability for rejecting God.	10:19
	Are we still looking forward to celebrating His birth?	10:24
	Sin then, is a broken relationship with God,	10:31
	which results in a state of out of touchiness with God.	10:35
	Is Jesus inferring, even asserting in His dictum	10:43
	that no one was a conscious sinner	10:50
	before He came and spoke?	10:52
	Is He proclaiming that out of touchiness with God,	10:57
	is His new doctrine?	11:00
	If so, then He was wrong.	11:04
	People knew about sin long before Jesus was born.	11:08
	His own people, the Jews knew about it.	11:13
	The old Testament is steeped in sin, immersed in it.	11:16
	That's one reason why the old Testament is so interesting.	11:21
	Sin is almost the burden of the old Testament	11:26
	and more sensitive than wound.	11:31
	Listen to the Psalmist who recognized the divergence	11:34
	between his thoughts and God's thoughts.	11:37
	I acknowledged my sin to thee,	11:40
	and I did not hide my iniquity.	11:44
	I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.	11:47
	then thou deeds to forgive, the guilt of my sin.	11:53
	Listen to the one of the prophets	12:01
	who would have been out of a job,	12:04
	if it hadn't been for national sin.	12:07
	"Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity,	12:10
	offspring of evil doers, sons who deal corruptly,	12:15
	they have forsaken the Lord,	12:20
	they have despised the holy one of Israel,	12:22
	they are utterly estranged."	12:25
	Listen to the law, which almost majors in sin,	12:30
	as early as the story of Cain and Abel,	12:35
	God is speaking to Cain.	12:37
	Why are you angry?	12:40
	And why has your countenance fallen?	12:42
	If you do well, will you not be accepted?	12:44
	And if you do not well, sin is coaching at the door.	12:49
	Its desire is for you, but you must master it.	12:56
	Well, he didn't master it.	13:04
	And as early as its fourth chapter,	13:08
	the Bible has its first murder.	13:12
	Long before the birth of Jesus, the Jews knew sin.	13:16
	They knew that it was a theological word linked with God.	13:20
	They knew it was a fact in their national life,	13:24
	in their personal lives.	13:28
	The Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur,	13:30
	the holiest day in the Jewish year	13:34
	was not invented by Jesus.	13:38
	And yet He held himself responsible	13:42
	for creating a sense of sin, why? How?	13:45
	For the author of the fourth gospel,	13:53
	Jesus was the revealer of God, by His actions,	13:56
	by His teaching in His person.	14:02
	He was the light of the world,	14:06
	the one who made luminous, what God requires of man.	14:10
	He who saw Jesus saw God, the image of God.	14:16
	The fourth gospel says so in so many words,	14:22
	"he who has seen me, has seen the Father."	14:25
	There may have been some excuse before	14:30
	for being unaware of the character and will of God,	14:33
	but no longer, God and sin are now clearly defined	14:36
	because they have been illuminatingly revealed	14:44
	in the person of Jesus.	14:47
	For the fourth gospel, sin consists in rejecting Jesus	14:50
	as the revelation of God.	14:57
	Some saw the light and believed,	15:02
	others refused to believe that it was the light,	15:05
	and for the fourth gospel, they are guilty of sin.	15:09
	Now, personally, I understand what the author of John	15:15
	is trying to say about Jesus and sin,	15:19
	but personally I am not completely satisfied.	15:23
	And yet I am convinced that Jesus did something	15:28
	to the definition of sin, which altered its emphasis,	15:31
	maybe even it's essence.	15:35
	Law and laws, were the norm for the Jew.	15:41
	For example, the 10 commandments,	15:47
	the breaking of the law with a capital L,	15:51
	or any of the specific commandments	15:55
	subsumed under law, was sin.	15:58
	But Jesus went behind the factual, observable transgression	16:05
	to the attitude which caused the sinful act.	16:14
	That was the theme of the first part of the morning lesson.	16:21
	For the Jew and for Jesus, they agreed on this,	16:27
	for the Jew and for Jesus murder was a sin,	16:31
	the illegal slaying of a person	16:37
	with some degree of malice of forethought.	16:40
	Jesus, however, points out that on the judgment day,	16:44
	it will be not only the murderer	16:49
	who is hailed before the great council,	16:51
	but everyone who is angry with his brother,	16:55
	who speaks contemptuously to him.	17:00
	He asserts that anyone who uses as mild a word as fool	17:04
	of his brother, shall be liable to the hail of fire.	17:11
	For the Jew and for Jesus, adultery was a sin,	17:19
	sexual unfaithfulness on the part of a married person.	17:26
	But Jesus points out that the sin of adultery	17:32
	does not begin with the act,	17:35
	but with the lust for thought	17:39
	and that hell awaits the one,	17:43
	who enjoys adultery in his heart,	17:45
	Do we grasp what Jesus has done?	17:52
	He has declared that certain areas of life,	17:55
	which had not been generally thought of as sinful before	18:00
	are sinful.	18:05
	He has moved the lookers of judgment,	18:07
	He has gone behind the act to the motivation.	18:11
	If we want to stop the sin of murder,	18:16
	concentrate on the eradication of anger.	18:20
	If we want to prevent the sin of adultery,	18:24
	pay attention to its roots in desire.	18:27
	Jesus has substituted an inner test,	18:32
	as more ultimate than a low code.	18:37
	In doing so He has altered the location of sin.	18:42
	He has pushed it back and deep.	18:47
	He has moved from the output act to the inner posture.	18:52
	That's how I understand His amazing statement.	18:58
	"If I had not come and spoken to them,	19:02
	they would not have sinned."	19:06
	Now what did this mean for those who first heard Him?	19:09
	What does it mean for us?	19:14
	Some folk turned away from Him, in anger,	19:18
	in sorrow, in despair,	19:25
	it was too much too, too too much.	19:30
	It meant that the best folk were sinners.	19:36
	Folk like the Pharisees, to whom Jesus Himself was beholden	19:42
	for His religious upbringing.	19:49
	He said so,	19:53
	"for I tell you, unless your righteousness	19:54
	exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,	20:00
	you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.	20:04
	And the Pharisees were rightfully exhibit A,	20:09
	for righteousness.	20:13
	And so were some of us, we will turn away too,	20:17
	this is too much.	20:20
	Others followed Him.	20:24
	He so disturbed their peace,	20:27
	that they could not be contented	20:31
	with what they had before believed to be right and good	20:34
	and wrong and evil.	20:40
	And the first step in the change was to admit	20:43
	that He was correct,	20:47
	that they were sinners, miserable sinners,	20:49
	but do understand that word miserable.	20:54
	It doesn't mean hangdog, cringing, low spirited.	20:58
	Remember a man being asked if sins troubled him,	21:10
	and he said, "no, love and enjoy them," sure!	21:12
	But that's not what miserable reference to,	21:17
	miserable means in need of pity, in need of mercy.	21:18
	It takes spiritual sensitivity to know and acknowledge	21:27
	that one is a sinner,	21:32
	and to want something to be done about it.	21:35
	Forgiveness and assurance,	21:39
	assurance of acceptance, which leads to renewal.	21:43
	But, the first step is conviction of sin.	21:49
	And what Jesus does,	21:57
	is to sensitize our awareness of sin,	22:00
	so that it is noticed in a new way	22:06
	and understood in greater depth as John Macquarrie puts it,	22:11
	"it is noticed in a new way	22:15
	and understood in greater depth."	22:18
	Brethren, that is why Christianity is the sinners religion,	22:23
	the religion of all poor devil.	22:32
	For in it, and because of Jesus,	22:38
	the holiness of God is judging sin,	22:42
	and the love of God is saving the sinner.	22:48
	So like a man and a woman examine himself, herself	22:54
	the remedy for sin begins there, in the conviction of sin.	23:01
	Now, as I said in the introduction,	23:10
	I probably would not preach the sermon later in advent.	23:13
	However, what Jesus said about sin	23:18
	should be remembered as we prepare	23:21
	to celebrate His birthday,	23:24
	it was the beginning of His gospel.	23:27
	Listen, now, after John, the Baptist was arrested,	23:31
	Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel,	23:36
	the good news of God,	23:41
	and saying the time is fulfilled,	23:44
	the kingdom of God is at hand, repent	23:47
	and believe in the gospel.	23:54
	But conviction of sin is assumed before repentance.	23:59
	Jesus is the Redeemer of man.	24:06
	Yet before that He is the judge of our actions	24:10
	and more important, of our hearts.	24:15
	Judgment was not the final purpose of His coming,	24:18
	but it was the inevitable result for good or for ill.	24:23
	He is for the Christian faith,	24:31
	the light that exposes as well as the light that illumines.	24:34
	I wish the alter hanging were white,	24:43
	the color of perfection and joy,	24:48
	or red, the color of fire, of fervor, of enthusiasm,	24:52
	but the church in its wisdom has decreed a violet purple,	25:00
	a color of preparation and penitence.	25:06
	Brethren, it was a good choice.	25:12
	It was well done	25:18
	at this advent season, let us pray.	25:23
	Almighty God who disturbs and redeems thy children,	25:29
	grant us an awareness of sin of the heart,	25:34
	forgiving of our transgression,	25:40
	time for repentance, amendment of life,	25:44
	and the grace of thy companionship,	25:50
	through thy son whose birthday we prepare to celebrate,	25:54
	even Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.	26:00
	(slow music)	26:22

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "The Advent of Sin" (December 3, 1967)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r40z74z0k

Date:

December 3, 1967

Speaker:

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

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0408
ref6019_x9o
uachapelsermaud
duke:628065
dcrau002400
ark:/87924/r40z74z0k
47b5d463-aaa0-43f0-be63-104fcf04b9a9

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

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 - "The Advent of Sin" (December 3, 1967)

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1. James T. Cleland - "The Advent of Sin" (December 3, 1967)

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James T. Cleland - "The Advent of Sin" (December 3, 1967)

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