James T. Cleland - "My Name Is Jim C.: I Am a Sinner" (February 25, 1968)

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-	Joining together our hearts and voices in prayer	0:03
	saying our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.	0:06
	Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth	0:13
	as it is in heaven.	0:17
	Give us this day, our daily bread,	0:19
	and forgive us our trespasses	0:21
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	0:24
	And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.	0:27
	For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory,	0:32
	forever, amen.	0:36
	Peace be unto you in this house of God,	0:59
	and to all who worship with us.	1:03
	Do not allow the title of this sermon	1:09
	to fool you with wrong anticipations	1:14
	of what you are going to hear.	1:17
	There is nothing of the sawdust trail	1:21
	or the mourner's bench, or the testimony meeting	1:25
	about the subject matter.	1:31
	If you are on tip toe, expecting a spiritual strip tease,	1:34
	then you're going to be disappointed.	1:41
	The title was suggested by an experience	1:45
	at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.	1:49
	Have you ever been to such a gathering?	1:52
	It has all the fervor of a revival, with more fun.	1:57
	It is clouded in tobacco smoke, awash with coffee	2:04
	and shot through with laughter.	2:11
	And each speaker begins in the same way,	2:15
	with the Christian name and the initial of the surname,	2:20
	followed by the constantly repeated, never varying sentence,	2:27
	"I am an alcoholic."	2:33
	Now notice the tense of the verb, "I am an alcoholic."	2:37
	He may not have touched a drop of alcohol for a week,	2:47
	a month, a year, 10 years, but the affirmation is not,	2:51
	"I was an alcoholic,"	2:59
	it is the ever present recognition of a flat fact,	3:03
	"I am an alcoholic."	3:09
	And this morning I would look with you	3:14
	at a parallel statement, a basic affirmation for Christians.	3:16
	My name is Jim C. or Mary D., I am a sinner.	3:24
	Now let us see where this idea starts	3:36
	and where it leads us.	3:38
	It may tell us something about ourselves	3:41
	and about the Christian faith.	3:45
	In a previous sermon,	3:49
	we compared and contrasted three words, vise, crime and sin.	3:50
	By definition, we concluded that sin is a theological word.	4:00
	No God, no sin.	4:07
	Sin has always a vertical reference,	4:12
	whereas crime does not and vice may not have	4:17
	any religious connection.	4:22
	A sinner is one who is disobedient to what he believes	4:26
	to be the will of God.	4:32
	Moreover, he knows that he is somewhat responsible	4:37
	for that disobedience.	4:43
	The recognition that one is a sinner	4:47
	is the first step toward becoming a Christian,	4:50
	and it is our regular step thereafter in the Christian way.	4:56
	Just as the first prerequisite	5:03
	to being canonized as a saint is that one be dead,	5:06
	door nail dead.	5:12
	So the first prerequisite to being a Christian	5:16
	is the recognition that one is a sinner.	5:20
	Now, many Christians don't like this, my own mother didn't.	5:24
	Neither do some of us here this morning.	5:32
	We're decent, God-fearing, law-keeping,	5:35
	Bible-reading, church-going protestants.	5:40
	Maybe it was because Jesus knew good folk like us,	5:46
	that he told the parable of the pharisee	5:50
	and the publican, which was our morning lesson.	5:53
	The pharisee was a pillar of society,	5:59
	the kind of man who upheld the religious and civic order.	6:03
	He even disciplined his own hungry appetite	6:10
	by fasting twice a week.	6:14
	He disciplined his acquisitive instinct	6:18
	by giving away 10% of his income.	6:21
	The Loyalty Fund is gasping for alumni like that.	6:26
	The other character on the parable started	6:34
	with two strikes against him, two and a half.	6:37
	He was a publicanist,	6:41
	that is a Jew who collected taxes for the Romans.	6:44
	And do you remember his prayer?	6:53
	Let me paraphrase it.	6:56
	"I am a publican and a sinner, God, be merciful."	6:59
	And Jesus said that one of these men	7:08
	went down from the temple to his home justified.	7:14
	That is accepted by God, nearer to God.	7:20
	Can you guess which one it was?	7:28
	There's another saying of Jesus help you to a decision.	7:34
	"I did not come to invite virtuous people, but sinners."	7:38
	What do you make of the fact that Jesus was baptized	7:48
	by John the Baptist,	7:54
	whose mission was preaching the baptism of repentance	7:57
	for the remission of sins?	8:03
	The church has had a rough time with that story.	8:08
	What do you make of it?	8:14
	Some time ago, three of us sought to answer the question.	8:18
	What is the salient moment in the service of worship,	8:23
	in a service like this?	8:28
	I came out for the offering.	8:33
	Not because of my native background,	8:40
	but as the symbolic rededication of ourselves to God	8:47
	as his servants.	8:54
	Here, we offer and present unto thee	8:56
	our minted and our printed blood, that's what our money is.	8:59
	The second man chose the scripture lesson.	9:08
	The reading and hearing of the word of God,	9:11
	the weekly reminder of God's revelation	9:16
	of His will to us and for us.	9:20
	The third voted for the prayer of confession.	9:27
	For him, the essential part of every service,	9:32
	I, A, B, I'm a sinner.	9:38
	Now I know that a proper service, a fitting service,	9:44
	a Christian service requires all three elements and more,	9:48
	but one constituent is that there'd be an opportunity	9:53
	to remember and to confess that "My name is Jim C.,	9:58
	I am, am a sinner."	10:06
	Let me take a second step with you.	10:13
	I am a persistent sinner.	10:16
	Now I had trouble with the adjective before sinner.	10:22
	So let me huddle some synonymous	10:26
	or analogous adjectives at you.	10:29
	Recurring, continual, perpetual,	10:33
	constant, perennial.	10:40
	Despite prayers of confession and comfortable words,	10:44
	I am still a sinner.	10:49
	One who is disobedient to what I believe	10:53
	to be the will of God for me.	10:56
	Now, theoretically, this should not be so.	10:59
	Baptism and confession, and intention	11:05
	should have delivered me from this bondage to sin,	11:10
	but they haven't.	11:15
	Now why? Oh, it's partly my creaturehood.	11:18
	I don't have the physical and emotional makeup	11:26
	to be always as good as I know I ought to be.	11:30
	Hunger thwarts me, desire walks me,	11:36
	weariness shortens my temper,	11:43
	original ignorance leads to sinful ends.	11:48
	Again, there's something in me which leads to sin.	11:55
	Most of us enjoy rebelling.	12:00
	Moreover, we are not sure that the ecclesiastical norms	12:04
	for the holy life are really valid.	12:07
	Sin seems to be anything we delight in.	12:12
	We've a sneaking admiration for the man who,	12:17
	when asked to be sent his sins, troubled and replied,	12:19
	"No, I rather enjoy them."	12:23
	Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said,	12:29
	"As long as war is regarded as wicked,	12:31
	it will always have a fascination.	12:38
	When it is looked upon as vulgar,	12:42
	it will cease to be popular."	12:47
	Now that's a hippie point of view,	12:50
	but Oscar Wilde was the original hippie	12:52
	who walked down Piccadilly with a tooler for a lily	12:56
	in his medieval hand, you remember?	12:59
	And let's admit that we, as university people,	13:03
	are somewhat hippy-ish, as heirs of the renaissance	13:06
	and the enlightenment,	13:11
	as well as of the Christian tradition.	13:12
	So we are split personalities,	13:14
	sinful saints are simply sinners.	13:17
	But there's another reason for our continuing in sin.	13:22
	The high, high norm of Christian love,	13:28
	the impossible possibility.	13:36
	It's easier to live under the rule of law	13:41
	than by the principle of love,	13:46
	even more so when that principle has been incarnated	13:49
	in a person like Jesus.	13:55
	Paul knew that.	13:57
	Regarding his behavior as a Jew,	13:59
	he could write, publicly defying contradiction	14:03
	in legal righteous and legal rectitude, thoughtless.	14:08
	The Greek word is amomos, without spot or blemish.	14:15
	Philip paraphrased it,	14:21
	"As far as the law's righteousness is concerned.	14:22
	I don't think anyone could have found fault with me,"	14:26
	and that is written in an open letter.	14:32
	That was quite a statement.	14:35
	Then he became a Christian.	14:38
	Now it's not certain according to many objective scholars	14:41
	that Paul wrote the first epistle to Timothy,	14:46
	but I'm sure, psychologically, that he did pin one verse.	14:50
	"Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners	14:56
	of whom I am chief.	15:02
	Regarding the law, blameless, and chief of sinners."	15:08
	Paul had always to be first at either end.	15:15
	My name is Paul, I am a sinner.	15:23
	That is a persistent Christian confession.	15:28
	And in Paul's case, the confession of a man	15:33
	who had been in Christ for a long time.	15:38
	Yes, we are continued perennial sinners.	15:43
	That's why we must never say as so many protestors do,	15:48
	"You, sinners."	15:53
	The pronoun is always the first, "We, sinners."	15:58
	And especially the first singular.	16:05
	"My name is Jim C., I am and will always be a sinner."	16:07
	"You, sinners" is not prophetic, it is pathetic.	16:16
	The anger of a tired young idealism.	16:23
	There's a third state.	16:29
	"I am a forgiven sinner."	16:33
	Now, both the Old and New Testaments knew that.	16:39
	Both, this is not a New Testament discovery.	16:44
	The very words this morning of comfort to us	16:49
	as read by the chaplain, were from the Old Testament,	16:54
	from Micah.	16:57
	Listen, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,	16:59
	whose sin is covered."	17:04
	That's from the Psalms and Paul quotes it	17:06
	in his letter to the Romans.	17:10
	Jeremiah speaks of God as saying,	17:13
	"For I will forgive their inequity,	17:16
	and I will remember their sin no more."	17:20
	And Jesus regularly comments, "Your sins are forgiven."	17:23
	Why? Because that's just the kind of God God is.	17:30
	"A God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful,	17:36
	slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,"	17:42
	is how our leading laymen in the Old Testament	17:48
	by the name of Nehemiah, put it,	17:51
	but also because deep down,	17:56
	the sinner loves God more than he loves his sins.	18:01
	Robert Burns, the Scottish poet senses both reasons	18:08
	in the last verse of one of his early poems,	18:13
	it's a prayer addressed to God in prospect of his own death.	18:16
	Where with intention, I have erred,	18:23
	no other plea I have, but thou art good,	18:29
	and goodness still delighteth to forgive.	18:36
	Yes, for a Christian, adjective and noun go together,	18:43
	are inseparable, forgiven sinner.	18:48
	If you want a quick proof of this,	18:53
	read the first letter to the Church at Corinth.	18:55
	Now there was a ragamuffin bunch of scallywags	19:00
	who got drunk at The Lord's Supper	19:07
	and fought one another in lawsuits,	19:10
	where one was living with his father's wife	19:13
	and no one worried about it,	19:16
	where the local church was split into at least four cliques,	19:19
	no united christian movement here.	19:24
	And do you know how Paul addressed them?	19:28
	He called them saints, that is accepted of God.	19:32
	Now most of them were junior varsity saints,	19:42
	in fact, some were just scrubs.	19:47
	In fact, they whole gang of them were just red shirted.	19:51
	But they were within the beloved community.	19:56
	If, as Luther said,	20:01
	"The recognition of sin is the beginning of salvation,"	20:03
	the assurance of a God who forgives is the next stage.	20:08
	That is why the comfortable words	20:14
	or the words of assurance are a necessary follow-up	20:18
	to the prayers of confession and forgiveness.	20:22
	It's not enough to know that one is a sinner,	20:27
	it is essential to know that prodigal sons and daughters	20:31
	are welcomed back by a God who runs to meet them.	20:37
	So all our pain is touched with joy.	20:43
	(indistinct) said that	20:49
	"Tragedy arises when we're given a choice	20:52
	between right and right, and we choose only one right."	20:56
	But the situation is not always as simple as that.	21:08
	Today, we are sometimes given the choice	21:12
	between the wrong and wrong,	21:15
	and must choose one of the wrongs.	21:21
	Then it is wise to remember our own mistakes	21:29
	and rebellions, and failures, and that God forgives.	21:34
	Then we, too, forgive those who trespass against us	21:43
	politically, ecclesiastically, spiritually.	21:49
	When I judge and condemn,	21:55
	I should do so from the standpoint that "My name is Jim C.,	21:58
	I am a persistent but forgiven sinner."	22:05
	That is a last step.	22:13
	"I am a semi-victorious sinner."	22:19
	Theoretically, I opt to be a winner,	22:25
	victor, conqueror, all the time.	22:29
	Actually I'm not.	22:33
	This is where Easter enters the theological picture,	22:37
	as a fact and as a hope.	22:43
	You know, Paul's problem wasn't forgiveness,	22:47
	he had that as a Jew.	22:52
	He didn't become a Christian	22:56
	so as to have his sins forgiven.	22:57
	Paul's problem was deliverance from the power of sin.	23:01
	From the awful fact that the good that I would, I do not,	23:07
	and the evil that I would not, that, I do.	23:14
	His body is an arena of conflict	23:20
	between the good intentions and the wrong desires.	23:22
	He's wretched, miserable, quite distraught.	23:27
	And what steadies him is the resurrection	23:30
	plus a quite pharisaic argument.	23:35
	Here's the argument arising	23:41
	from his belief in the resurrection.	23:43
	"The wages of sin is death."	23:46
	In the resurrection, death is defeated,	23:53
	therefore sin is defeated,	23:58
	therefore Satan is defeated.	24:03
	"Therefore," says Paul, "I'm a member of a winning team.	24:07
	Thanks be to God who gaveth us the victory	24:12
	through our Lord Jesus Christ."	24:16
	However, the final victory is not yet.	24:18
	Reminds me of a Scottish minister	24:26
	trying to encourage his congregation by telling them	24:29
	that the devil was chained.	24:33
	And a skeptical and uninhibited member of the congregation	24:38
	interrupted the sermon by brashly asking	24:43
	how long the chain was.	24:47
	The minister said, "Oh, about 5,000 miles."	24:53
	And the questioner's answer was,	24:59
	"Ah, he might as well be loose."	25:01
	But nevertheless, the two facts are true.	25:09
	There is the Easter story as a sign of ultimate victory,	25:14
	and there is the indwelling Christ,	25:20
	the spirit of the resurrected Christ as an ally	25:24
	in the minor skirmishes	25:28
	and the major battles along the road.	25:30
	And don't overlook those minor engagements.	25:32
	A down and out alcoholic who was restored	25:38
	and his home and his family with him,	25:44
	was once asked if he really believed	25:47
	that Jesus turned water into wine at Cana of Galilee.	25:49
	And he replied that he didn't know about Cana,	25:58
	but that in his own case,	26:05
	Jesus had turned whiskey into furniture.	26:08
	Yes, thank God for Alcoholics Anonymous,	26:15
	but thank God also for sinners unanimous,	26:17
	which is the true body of believers.	26:24
	Sinners, persistent sinners, forgiven sinners,	26:28
	sinners who, even here, have the foretaste of victory.	26:34
	My name is Legion, we are sinners forgiven	26:39
	and on our way to triumph.	26:45
	Father Damien was the Catholic priest	26:53
	who volunteered for service among a colony of lepers	26:58
	in a segregated part of the Hawaiian islands, about 1864.	27:03
	His sermons always began in the same way, "My brethren."	27:10
	But one Sunday, some 10 years after his arrival,	27:22
	he changed the opening words to, "We, lepers."	27:28
	We, lepers.	27:37
	Our identification as Christians is we, sinners,	27:42
	persistent, forgiven, semi-victorious,	27:50
	servants of the one who came not to call the righteous,	27:58
	but sinners who ate with sinners	28:03
	because he liked them.	28:09
	Who called them his friends,	28:12
	who gave himself on their behalf.	28:16
	It is the goodly company of the reconciled	28:22
	to which we belong.	28:28
	Let us pray.	28:32
	Almighty God, our father, whose son came,	28:36
	not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,	28:40
	except us, a company of sinners,	28:47
	who loved thee more than we love our sins	28:50
	to the end, that we may more and more live	28:56
	as thy faithful children in the spirit of thy son,	28:59
	even Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.	29:06
	(gentle music)	29:35

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "My Name Is Jim C.: I Am a Sinner" (February 25, 1968)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4h993f5q

Date:

February 25, 1968

Speaker:

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

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0419
ref6041_tc9
uachapelsermaud
duke:628685
dcrau002411
ark:/87924/r4h993f5q
5e4e2fe6-5bcf-4b98-a208-d08eed347e70

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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 - "My Name Is Jim C.: I Am a Sinner" (February 25, 1968)

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1. James T. Cleland - "My Name Is Jim C.; I Am a Sinner" (February 25, 1968)

Duke University Archives

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James T. Cleland - "My Name Is Jim C.: I Am a Sinner" (February 25, 1968)

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