John W. Carlton - "On Doing Justice and Seeking Truth" (July 28, 1968)
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| Clergyman | Here this morning, | 0:03 |
| a word from the prophet Jeremiah. | 0:05 | |
| Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem. | 0:10 | |
| Search her squares and see if you can find a man. | 0:17 | |
| One who does justice and seeks truth, | 0:23 | |
| that I may pardon her. | 0:30 | |
| Now we know, that Jeremiah was hurled | 0:34 | |
| into the time of Judah's last catastrophe. | 0:37 | |
| Indeed his ministry, embraced a period | 0:42 | |
| of history shattering events, | 0:45 | |
| associated with the crumbling of the Assyrian empire. | 0:49 | |
| Here was a man who deplored the social apostasy | 0:54 | |
| and the religious wrong of his time. | 0:59 | |
| And he vigorously, condemned his people's formal | 1:03 | |
| acknowledgement of God, | 1:07 | |
| without a corresponding amendment of character. | 1:10 | |
| He went on to criticize | 1:15 | |
| the popular belief about the protective power of the temple. | 1:17 | |
| In the end of his life, he was charged with treason, | 1:23 | |
| imprisoned and carried off against his will into Egypt. | 1:27 | |
| After the fall of Jerusalem in 586. | 1:34 | |
| But is it not significant, | 1:40 | |
| that in his turbulent and dismaying era, | 1:43 | |
| the prophet was bidden, to search the city for a man | 1:48 | |
| who does justice and seeks truth. | 1:53 | |
| Is it not possible this morning, | 2:00 | |
| that these are as indispensable | 2:03 | |
| to our survival in this century, | 2:05 | |
| as they were to the security | 2:09 | |
| of Jerusalem in the seventh century, BC? | 2:11 | |
| Let us consider, first of all, that here, | 2:17 | |
| the prophet sees the indispensable value | 2:19 | |
| and the power of the individual man. | 2:23 | |
| Now, as we all know, | 2:29 | |
| this was not characteristic of ancient Hebrew thought. | 2:30 | |
| For a by and large, the stress was not upon the individual, | 2:34 | |
| but upon the nation. But here the prophet, Jeremiah, | 2:39 | |
| sees the tremendous dimensions of the individual | 2:44 | |
| personality, the depth of a heart, the reach of the mind, | 2:48 | |
| the strength of the spirit. | 2:56 | |
| He is daring to say in a time when the political and | 2:59 | |
| ecclesiastical machinery is going up in smoke, | 3:03 | |
| that perhaps after all the only way to check the lurch of | 3:08 | |
| the world toward the abyss, is to throw against it. | 3:13 | |
| The inflexible determination of a consecrated man. | 3:19 | |
| As we all know, Jesus himself stressed the individual. | 3:26 | |
| By and large, his parables are not about races, | 3:31 | |
| or nations, or classes, but about a certain team. | 3:34 | |
| A certain household or a certain rich man. | 3:41 | |
| A certain Samaritan appears not a relief committee. | 3:46 | |
| He saw individuals sharply itched. | 3:51 | |
| Not as a blurred mass in a human fall. | 3:55 | |
| One fear, is that in this time, | 4:01 | |
| when we have all succumbed to that deadly common place, | 4:03 | |
| that betters us all, | 4:07 | |
| that we have largely lost the outlines | 4:10 | |
| of the individual man. | 4:12 | |
| The business man has banished into the giant corporation. | 4:16 | |
| The wage earner has merged into the labor union. | 4:21 | |
| The editor who wants boldly fashioned public opinion | 4:26 | |
| has now blurred into the press with unsigned editorials. | 4:31 | |
| The politician has disappeared into the political party, | 4:38 | |
| which in turn, writes the campaign, and the platform | 4:42 | |
| and conducts the campaign. | 4:50 | |
| One fears that sometimes today the individual Christian | 4:53 | |
| has vanished into a corporate body called the church. | 4:57 | |
| And that his moral energy is diffused in the structures, | 5:02 | |
| which make up its life. | 5:06 | |
| But yet, in Jeremiah's dramatic age of apostasy, | 5:09 | |
| we get this tremendous picture of a man running to and fro | 5:14 | |
| in the streets of Jerusalem. | 5:18 | |
| Seeking for one who does justice and who seeks truth. | 5:22 | |
| Another contemporary of our prophet this morning, | 5:30 | |
| Zephaniah, spoke of also going through Jerusalem, | 5:33 | |
| searching the streets with lamps. | 5:40 | |
| Ezechiel, saw a vision of the heavenly inquisitors. | 5:43 | |
| Going through Jerusalem to place a mark on the forehead | 5:48 | |
| of those who would sigh and cry over the abominations | 5:53 | |
| done in the midst thereof. | 5:58 | |
| This whole situation calls to mind Diogenes. | 6:02 | |
| Reputedly, going through the streets of Athens | 6:07 | |
| light in hand, looking for a man. | 6:10 | |
| Doesn't this suggest the call | 6:15 | |
| to our representative capacity? | 6:17 | |
| Reminding us of those marvelous extensions of personality | 6:21 | |
| that are open to all of us. | 6:25 | |
| In this day of the defaulting of individual man, | 6:29 | |
| when we all so easily surrender in despair and defeatism. | 6:34 | |
| It would be easy enough this morning to conclude with Lord | 6:39 | |
| Byron, who having read history, then wrote, | 6:42 | |
| "First freedom, and then glory. | 6:47 | |
| When that fails, wealth, and vice, and corruption, | 6:52 | |
| and barbarism at last. And history with all her volumes vast | 6:58 | |
| have, but one page." | 7:05 | |
| Yet, surely there is an incalculable value | 7:09 | |
| for any age in a man, such as Jeremiah, | 7:13 | |
| saw it in the streets of Jerusalem, | 7:17 | |
| that one, who does justice and seeks truth. | 7:20 | |
| But now the question comes, | 7:26 | |
| what is involved in doing justice? | 7:28 | |
| Surely, this is more than merely a commitment | 7:32 | |
| to an abstract idea of justice. | 7:34 | |
| You see in the old Testament, | 7:38 | |
| justice and righteousness, and truth | 7:41 | |
| are aspects of a single conception. | 7:45 | |
| Righteous, means rightness. And justice, | 7:50 | |
| suggests something very close to having things right. | 7:55 | |
| Or to put it another way. | 8:02 | |
| Justice in our world is always a vision, before it is law. | 8:05 | |
| Justice, is the effort to see men clearly. | 8:12 | |
| To understand their needs, their desires, their aspirations, | 8:17 | |
| their potentialities in private, | 8:22 | |
| and also, in their multiple relationships in the world. | 8:26 | |
| You see, the man who does justice, | 8:32 | |
| is never satisfied simply with | 8:36 | |
| the interior dimensions of the faith, | 8:38 | |
| with a kind of inner saintliness or private morality. | 8:42 | |
| He is not satisfied with the court duties of religion. | 8:47 | |
| For, he knows that more is always involved | 8:52 | |
| in simply putting in an appearance at church, | 8:55 | |
| saying prayers, making confession, going to communion. | 8:59 | |
| He takes seriously that word of the master, | 9:06 | |
| not everyone who sayeth unto me, | 9:09 | |
| Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven. | 9:12 | |
| But he, that doth the will of my father in heaven. | 9:17 | |
| He knows that doctrine is to be ratified in life. | 9:23 | |
| That the affirmations of the sanctuary are to become | 9:28 | |
| the working principles of daily existence. | 9:32 | |
| Surely, one of the prime leads of our day, is that of man | 9:36 | |
| with a vision of justice for our corporate life. | 9:41 | |
| Those who would have this sustained vision, | 9:46 | |
| who would see man clearly, | 9:50 | |
| who would work tirelessly to set things right. | 9:54 | |
| Now, obviously we cannot do this, | 10:00 | |
| until we are first of all, | 10:02 | |
| willing to recognize that the times are out of joint. | 10:04 | |
| It is strange to me that so many of our church men are | 10:10 | |
| victims of a curious astigmatism. | 10:12 | |
| They were trying to say it to us after all, | 10:16 | |
| perhaps nothing quite so bad is wrong. | 10:19 | |
| In a kind of sad and willful irrelevance, | 10:23 | |
| they are unwilling to lay aside | 10:29 | |
| their prejudices on race and other vital issues. | 10:31 | |
| That we might bring to our world, | 10:35 | |
| the redemptive healing light of Christ. | 10:38 | |
| Their perennial theme song is | 10:43 | |
| "Come we or come whoa. Our status is quo." | 10:45 | |
| Perhaps the only command they have heard is, "as you were." | 10:51 | |
| Their song is, "We're tenting tonight | 10:56 | |
| on the old camp ground." | 10:58 | |
| They would have the church to become a chaplain | 11:02 | |
| say to all good forces. To hallow the frivolous, | 11:04 | |
| to bless the hounds. To endorse materialism, | 11:09 | |
| and to sanction regional prejudice and snobbery. | 11:14 | |
| You see what is so deplorable in many quarters today, is not | 11:19 | |
| the error, which mistakes truth, | 11:23 | |
| but rather, that hypocrisy which will not face truth. | 11:27 | |
| In the annual convention of my own denomination recently, | 11:35 | |
| a statement was adopted, suggesting our involvement | 11:40 | |
| in the great social problems, which are agitating | 11:45 | |
| the minds of all thoughtful people today. | 11:48 | |
| And there was a particular statement about the racial | 11:52 | |
| tensions of our time. | 11:55 | |
| It is interesting that after | 11:59 | |
| the issuance of this belated statement, | 12:00 | |
| there has been an aftermath of self-congratulation. | 12:04 | |
| But what we do not hear so much about is that many of our | 12:10 | |
| clergyman, boggled at the thought of our corporate guilt, | 12:13 | |
| and the necessity for our corporate confession. | 12:19 | |
| It was the word confess, which was the emotional roadblock | 12:25 | |
| for many. After all, do we not have anything to confess? | 12:29 | |
| How blind can we be this morning? | 12:36 | |
| Oh, for the recovery of that vision of Isaiah in the temple. | 12:40 | |
| When there, as he saw God high and lifted up | 12:44 | |
| the prophet was overcome with a sense | 12:48 | |
| both of individual and corporate, sin. | 12:51 | |
| For you see today, | 12:58 | |
| my private life is not the only life I live. | 12:59 | |
| We are all part of a collective public life | 13:04 | |
| and of institutions, which mold and shape our lives | 13:09 | |
| in countless ways. We are the inheritors of attitudes, | 13:13 | |
| which have come down to us through generations, | 13:19 | |
| of customs, and laws and institutions. | 13:22 | |
| You see, we have discovered in our time | 13:28 | |
| they vile masses in the cold, cold ground. | 13:30 | |
| Not all of his ideas are. | 13:33 | |
| Those words, which Edwin Arlington Robinson | 13:38 | |
| puts into the mouth of John Brown on the scaffold. | 13:41 | |
| "I shall have more to say when I am dead." | 13:46 | |
| These have been abundantly fulfilled in history. | 13:51 | |
| How foolish is, already Maxim? Dead man, | 13:56 | |
| tell no tales. All for good or for evil, | 13:59 | |
| they are inveterate tellers, of tales. | 14:04 | |
| Surely today, part of our vision of justice, | 14:10 | |
| is a deep caring, an inner anguish. | 14:15 | |
| A sustained suffering for all that obviously | 14:20 | |
| is not right in our time. | 14:24 | |
| It is to experience something, | 14:28 | |
| of those words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, | 14:30 | |
| who in the day, of a fugitive slave law, | 14:34 | |
| went home and wrote in his journal. | 14:38 | |
| "There is infamy in the air, | 14:41 | |
| I carry it about with me all the days. | 14:46 | |
| It robs the landscape of beauty, | 14:50 | |
| and it takes the sunshine out of every hour." | 14:54 | |
| That remarkable lay shepherd of souls, | 15:00 | |
| Baron Von Hugo, just before he died, wrote these words. | 15:02 | |
| "I wonder whether you realize that all human souls are | 15:08 | |
| connected. That we can not only pray for each other, | 15:13 | |
| but we can also suffer for each other." | 15:18 | |
| And his dying words were, "Christianity taught us to care. | 15:23 | |
| Caring is the greatest thing. Caring is what matters most." | 15:29 | |
| And yet, as we all know, | 15:39 | |
| life is so easily organized around | 15:40 | |
| the principle of self-interest. | 15:43 | |
| "Get while the getting's good." | 15:46 | |
| "Look out for number one." "Do what you can for-profit." | 15:50 | |
| Oh, it isn't always put that way, | 15:56 | |
| but this is the underlying philosophy of many. | 16:00 | |
| It is dramatized in the play by Herb Gardner, | 16:05 | |
| called A Thousand Clowns. | 16:08 | |
| In a conversation between the two brothers. | 16:11 | |
| One of them is Arnold, who is a $30,000 a year man, | 16:16 | |
| who has safely accommodated himself | 16:20 | |
| to his environing world, no tensions. | 16:23 | |
| The brother Murray is a tortured idealist. | 16:29 | |
| Who feels humanities hurts. | 16:33 | |
| Listen to these words, | 16:38 | |
| which were spoken by Arnold, to his brother. | 16:39 | |
| He said, "I'm willing to deal with the available world. | 16:45 | |
| I do not choose to shake it up, but to live with it. | 16:50 | |
| You see, there are people who spill things, | 16:56 | |
| and there are people who get spilled on. | 17:00 | |
| But Murray, I do not choose to notice the stains. | 17:06 | |
| I have a wife and children, and like they say, | 17:11 | |
| 'Business is business.' So I get up and go. | 17:15 | |
| I lie a little, cheat a little, pittal a little. | 17:21 | |
| You see, I watched the rules. | 17:29 | |
| I play the game. I talk the talk. | 17:31 | |
| It's possible for me to stay with things as they are. | 17:34 | |
| But Murray, you are cursed. | 17:40 | |
| You don't have that gift. | 17:44 | |
| I see the torture of it in your eyes." | 17:47 | |
| I wonder after all, if that isn't something | 17:54 | |
| of true Christianity to be cursed with caring. | 17:56 | |
| Not willing to come to terms with this available world. | 18:01 | |
| Perhaps this morning, the most searching question | 18:08 | |
| we can all raise with ourselves, | 18:11 | |
| is to ask the question after all, | 18:16 | |
| what is dying inside us while we live, | 18:18 | |
| is there the death I've paid, hope, | 18:21 | |
| feeling, awareness, response, concern? | 18:25 | |
| We have no control over the fact of our existence, | 18:31 | |
| but we do hold Supreme command over | 18:34 | |
| the meaning of that existence for us. | 18:37 | |
| And our greatest tragedy is that we shall die and never know | 18:41 | |
| our greatest power. | 18:46 | |
| The power of love, to give itself for others. | 18:48 | |
| Jeremiah wanted a man who does justice. | 18:55 | |
| And he also wanted a man who loved truth. | 19:00 | |
| Truth is an evasive word. | 19:04 | |
| It's ambiguous. And surely in this academic community, | 19:07 | |
| we can easily think of truth as the examination | 19:12 | |
| or the delineation of great ideas. | 19:16 | |
| Perhaps the balancing of an equation | 19:19 | |
| in logic. Or in the laboratory, | 19:22 | |
| something to be grasped rationally | 19:25 | |
| by the objective observer. | 19:27 | |
| But you see, in the biblical sense, truth is more dynamic. | 19:31 | |
| For it suggests a discernment about reality, | 19:35 | |
| a total wisdom about existence. | 19:39 | |
| Now this would suggest, therefore, | 19:45 | |
| that truth ought to give quality to a man's existence. | 19:46 | |
| It should mean the enhancement of life, | 19:51 | |
| and the ends for which it should be lived. | 19:54 | |
| Surely the pursuit of truth, should produce | 19:57 | |
| more than merely technical accomplishments. | 20:00 | |
| Today in our vocational approach to education, | 20:04 | |
| we are thinking in terms of preparing people for | 20:09 | |
| employment in industry or a profession. | 20:12 | |
| Many times we're trying to provide specialized answers. | 20:16 | |
| But are we really asking those great liberating questions | 20:22 | |
| by which humanity makes its way through time? | 20:26 | |
| It would seem to me, that these are being forced upon us | 20:32 | |
| by the tragic events of our day. | 20:35 | |
| For example, can we match our technological unity | 20:40 | |
| with a moral imagination that is sufficient | 20:43 | |
| to save the world from the catastrophe | 20:47 | |
| of war and racial violence? | 20:50 | |
| Can we balance our superficial efficiency with a | 20:54 | |
| profound humanity, which still hears, | 20:58 | |
| the sad music of mankind? | 21:02 | |
| You know, it is very interesting and very strange, | 21:08 | |
| that the targets of the mobs in our burning streets | 21:14 | |
| have not been the courthouses and the city halls. | 21:16 | |
| We would expect this. But rather, | 21:20 | |
| those targets have been our supermarkets | 21:23 | |
| and our television outlets. | 21:25 | |
| Is it possible that these are to be regarded as symbols | 21:29 | |
| of the great American way of life? | 21:34 | |
| Perhaps today, we have forgotten that to serve | 21:38 | |
| another's deepest need to stand in faithfulness | 21:42 | |
| to another's humanity, to forgive another injury, | 21:47 | |
| may well mean more to the dignity, | 21:52 | |
| and to the health of mankind, than all of the | 21:55 | |
| technical accomplishments of which we can boast. | 21:59 | |
| Seeking truth, is always opening life to a larger reality. | 22:05 | |
| A confident and courageous hospitality to the highest. | 22:16 | |
| And to God's will for human life. | 22:23 | |
| Only then, can we come to that transparency | 22:28 | |
| and that honesty of soul, | 22:34 | |
| which are the hallmarks of a man of truth. | 22:38 | |
| Only then, can we utter wisdom from the central deep, | 22:44 | |
| and listening to the inner flow of things, | 22:53 | |
| speak to the age, out of eternity. | 22:57 | |
| Let us pray. | 23:03 | |
| Oh thou, in whose appointment our life standeth, | 23:10 | |
| and who dost call us to do justice and seek truth. | 23:16 | |
| Let not by word, become a judgment upon us. | 23:22 | |
| That we hear it and do it, not. | 23:26 | |
| That we know it and love it, not. | 23:30 | |
| And that we believe it and obey it, not. | 23:34 | |
| But grant, oh God, that it may bring forth in us, | 23:39 | |
| the fruit of good living, | 23:43 | |
| to the glory and praise of thy holy name. | 23:45 | |
| Through Jesus Christ. Our Lord. Amen. | 23:50 | |
| (organ begins playing) | 23:56 | |
| (choir indistinctly singing) | 24:28 | |
| ♪Amen ♪ | 26:00 | |
| (flute begins) | 26:11 | |
| (soft organ begins) | 26:14 | |
| (flute and organ play) | 26:54 | |
| (instrumental music continues) | 27:28 | |
| (upbeat organ begins) | 27:47 | |
| (upbeat music continues) | 28:24 | |
| (choir indistinctly singing) | 28:44 | |
| (choir continues) | 30:29 | |
| (doxology begins playing) | 31:34 | |
| ♪Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪ | 31:58 | |
| ♪ Praise him, all creatures here below ♪ | 32:04 | |
| ♪ Praise him above the Heavenly host ♪ | 32:10 | |
| ♪ Praise Father, Son and Holy ghost ♪ | 32:16 | |
| ♪ Amen ♪ | 32:23 | |
| Clergyman | Oh Lord, of word and world, | 32:30 |
| receive and bless to thy service, | 32:34 | |
| our gifts in our lives we ask. | 32:36 | |
| Redeem our days. Make our daily work our worship. | 32:40 | |
| Make our daily joy by praise. | 32:45 | |
| In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 32:49 | |
| Amen. | 32:52 | |
| And now, go into the world in peace to be God's | 32:55 | |
| faithful servants and his people. | 32:58 | |
| And may the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, | 33:02 | |
| the love of God, the father, | 33:04 | |
| and communion of the holy spirit, be with you all. | 33:06 | |
| (organ begins playing) | 33:09 | |
| ♪Amen ♪ | 33:13 | |
| ♪Amen ♪ | 33:20 | |
| (bells tolling) | 33:32 | |
| (organ begins playing sharply) | 33:42 | |
| (organ continues playing) | 34:04 | |
| (congregation begins fellowship) | 34:22 | |
| (woman laughs loudly) | 34:26 | |
| (congregation talks together) | 34:31 | |
| (organ continues playing) | 34:48 | |
| (woman giggles) | 35:06 | |
| (everyone speaks at once) | 35:11 | |
| (woman speaks indistinctly) | 35:16 | |
| (organ continues playing) | 35:27 |