Robert H. Davis - "The Waiting Father" (August 11, 1968)

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-	For his devotion to the right,	0:05
	as he was led to see the right.	0:06
	We intercede for the members of his family	0:11
	and the circle of his close friends	0:14
	who now must make adjustment to his absence.	0:16
	May the memory of his achievements and of his love	0:21
	be a living presence to them day by day.	0:25
	And we pray thee to grant them the conscious presence	0:29
	of thy holy comforter, during the months ahead.	0:33
	Heavenly Father we bring our prayers of intercession to thee	0:38
	on behalf of all thy children for we all need thee.	0:42
	We pray for the grandfather	0:48
	made fun of because he's too old to fit into the group.	0:52
	We pray for the woman	0:57
	whose husband doesn't court her anymore.	0:59
	For the unattractive girl neglected at the party.	1:03
	The child whose parent has slapped him	1:08
	without sufficient cause.	1:10
	The worried man who hasn't been able to confide in anybody.	1:15
	We pray for the troubled teenager	1:22
	whose worries have sometimes been ridiculed.	1:24
	For the desperate man,	1:28
	who is thinking of jumping in the river.	1:30
	For the criminal who is soon to be executed.	1:34
	We pray thee, for the unemployed man who wants to work.	1:38
	For the worker who is ruining his health,	1:44
	in a dangerous job and for a pitiful wage.	1:48
	We pray for the father who must pile his family	1:54
	into one room next to an empty house.	1:57
	Or the mother whose children are hungry,	2:03
	And who sees the remains of a lavish party	2:06
	thrown into the garbage.	2:10
	We pray for the man who is dying alone	2:14
	while his family in another room,	2:16
	drinks coffee and makes jokes and waits for his death.	2:19
	We pray for all who suffer.	2:27
	For all victims of injustice, of bitterness,	2:30
	of humiliation or of grief.	2:34
	For all who hate and who despair.	2:37
	For all who have unappeased hunger.	2:40
	For those, especially who hunger for love.	2:43
	And for the man who selfishly has built a disfigured world	2:48
	that is now crushing him.	2:52
	Grant us Lord to spread true love in the world.	2:56
	That by us and by our fellows	3:00
	it may penetrate a bit into all circles and societies	3:02
	all economic and political systems, laws, contracts,	3:06
	rulings that affect human beings.	3:11
	Grant that it may penetrate into offices, into universities,	3:14
	into factories, apartments, movie houses, dance halls.	3:18
	Grant that in this moment	3:26
	it may penetrate into our hearts here.	3:27
	Deepen our worship we pray,	3:32
	with some act of personal decision.	3:34
	Renew our minds, one by one,	3:37
	that each of may present the world with one life,	3:40
	that is honest, that is sincere, dedicated, and unselfish.	3:44
	We offer our prayers for our nation.	3:51
	In this day of need,	3:55
	when blundering stupidity so often puts all things askew,	3:56
	raise up among us men and women	4:02
	who know what our nation ought to do.	4:04
	Grant unto all of us,	4:08
	the grace to rise above our individual self-interests,	4:09
	above prejudice of class, or race, or nation,	4:13
	to a large and Catholic care	4:17
	for the whole body of the Commonwealth of all the people.	4:19
	Do thou beat down the swords	4:24
	that are lifted against the peace of the world.	4:26
	Give thy people grace to make peace that will endure.	4:30
	And to that end, raise up in the Church of Christ,	4:34
	a vision of what peace requires.	4:37
	May there first of all,	4:41
	be harmony within the divided church.	4:43
	Today oh God, we offer hospitality to thee in our souls.	4:50
	Spirit of God, descend upon our hearts.	4:56
	We make our prayer through Jesus Christ, our Lord,	5:01
	who has taught us when we pray, to say	5:05
	our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name,	5:09
	thy kingdom come thy will be done	5:14
	on Earth as it is in Heaven.	5:17
	Give us this day, our daily bread	5:20
	and forgive us our trespasses	5:23
	as we forgive those who trespass against us	5:25
	and lead us not into temptation	5:29
	but deliver us from evil.	5:31
	For thine is the kingdom	5:33
	and the power and the glory forever.	5:35
	Amen.	5:39
-	But while he was still a long way off	6:05
	his father saw him and his heart went out to him.	6:09
	There must be at least a dozen sermons in this parable	6:18
	which was read as our scripture for the morning.	6:22
	And I must confess that I've had difficulty deciding	6:27
	which one of these to preach.	6:29
	Whereas I tried to plumb the depths of these words of Jesus,	6:33
	I was made aware that in our time	6:37
	there are many prodigal sons,	6:40
	and there are many prodigal nations and societies.	6:44
	There are hundreds of far countries	6:49
	to which both nations and individuals travel	6:51
	and attach themselves.	6:54
	And there must be an infinite variety of pig stys	6:58
	into which both nations and individuals descend.	7:04
	The parable of the morning	7:13
	while containing these and many other ideas however,	7:14
	is primarily about a waiting father.	7:17
	It is ultimately about the goodness of God,	7:21
	the grace of God,	7:25
	which waits to receive lost men and lost nations.	7:27
	When they come to that point, when they will say	7:33
	I will arise and go to my Father.	7:37
	This morning, I would like for us to examine	7:43
	at least three aspects of this parable	7:45
	or perhaps to find three applications in its teaching.	7:49
	The prodigality of our corporate life,	7:54
	the prodigality of our individual existence,	7:58
	But most of all, the grace of God,	8:02
	which can redeem both.	8:05
	Ours is a time that is characterized	8:10
	by lostness, loneliness, emptiness, and estrangement.	8:13
	For a generation now, novelists have been writing about	8:19
	the lostness and loneliness of modern man.	8:22
	Contemporary art expresses personal alienation.	8:26
	Popular dances and songs emphasize the insularity of life.	8:30
	Technology and urbanization,	8:36
	changing social and cultural patterns,	8:38
	have all converged to make man's self enclosure unmistakable	8:41
	This self enclosure, this alienation	8:48
	is not nearly one of man from man,	8:50
	but it is primarily the separation of man from God,	8:54
	symbolically seen in the prodigal separation from his father	8:58
	and his lostness in the far country.	9:04
	Thomas Wolfe, that North Carolinian,	9:09
	who was so aware of this separation and alienation	9:11
	said that it would seem that we are all orphans	9:14
	in a very unfatherly world.	9:17
	He summed up our condition in this way,	9:21
	the deepest search in life,	9:25
	the thing that is central to all living,	9:26
	is man's search for a father.	9:29
	Not merely the lost father of his youth,	9:33
	not merely the father of his flesh,	9:36
	but the image of a strengthened wisdom,	9:39
	external to his need and superior to his hunger,	9:42
	to which the belief and the power of his life can be united.	9:47
	This is in part what Jesus is talking about	9:54
	as he relates the parable of a son	9:58
	who leaves his father's house,	10:00
	declares himself, autonomous, independent, utterly free	10:03
	and sets off into a distant country.	10:08
	He probably had in mind	10:12
	getting as far away from the old man as he possibly could.	10:13
	He had in mind that utter separation	10:18
	wherein he would be free to act	10:21
	only from his own egocentric motivation.	10:24
	Jesus in this parable is talking about the geographical gap,	10:29
	the separation of miles	10:33
	that we are able to put between ourselves and our neighbor.	10:35
	He is talking about the generation gap,	10:39
	the separation of a father who was over 30,	10:42
	not by his own choosing, from his son.	10:45
	He is talking about an ideological gap.	10:49
	The hedonistic tendencies of the prodigal,	10:52
	who would waste in immoral living,	10:56
	what his father had worked for and saved for	10:59
	for many, many years.	11:02
	But primarily Jesus is talking about that great gulf,	11:05
	which exists between man and man	11:09
	but primarily between man and God.	11:11
	All of these factors dominate our corporate life	11:18
	as well as our individual lives.	11:20
	These gaps are reflected in our national character	11:23
	and perhaps in our very civilization.	11:27
	Dr. Helmut Thielike,	11:31
	the great preacher and theologian in Hamburg, Germany,	11:32
	indicates as much in a book dealing with the parables,	11:35
	which appeared several years ago.	11:38
	He speaks of the contribution of Christ	11:41
	and the Christian heritage and the Christian teaching	11:43
	to our civilization.	11:47
	Because of Christ he says	11:49
	there rose a whole new concept of humanity	11:50
	and what it really means to be human.	11:54
	What we today call conscience, freedom, humanity	11:57
	all of this he says we got from Christ and his followers.	12:01
	It was the image of Christ that formed our image of man.	12:05
	Our ideal of freedom was patterned on the freedom	12:10
	of a man whose sins are forgiven, whose chains are broken,	12:12
	and who is the free Lord of all to use Luther's reigns.	12:17
	But now says Thielike,	12:24
	we and our corporate life have become like prodigals.	12:26
	We want to reside in the far country,	12:31
	but with all of the Father's resources.	12:34
	We want to hold on to all these good ideas and principles	12:37
	for they have proved their worth,	12:40
	but we want them without him.	12:43
	We have learned enough from Jesus of Nazareth, we say.	12:47
	We have said goodbye to him	12:51
	but we carry in our hearts,	12:53
	the legacy of his good ideas about life and death,	12:54
	humanity and neighborliness.	12:58
	And we propose to get along without it.	13:01
	And so, without being aware of it	13:05
	or perhaps very self-consciously,	13:08
	we go wandering off into the far country.	13:11
	The intellectual machinery of the west	13:15
	keeps running for a few centuries afterward	13:17
	but the motor has been turned off.	13:21
	The inherited capital lasts for a time	13:24
	but the Father's house is behind us.	13:27
	We go stumbling along	13:31
	on this presumptive Christian heritage,	13:33
	all the time living on capital	13:35
	that is being consumed at a furious pace.	13:38
	Because there are no replacements	13:40
	and contact with the Father has been broken.	13:44
	This is the picture of a prodigal society,	13:50
	a prodigal culture, a prodigal civilization	13:52
	that has strayed from its home, from its roots,	13:57
	and already the clear seeing one, men of visions,	14:01
	see the pig sty in the distance	14:04
	and fear for the beastialization, the dehumanization	14:07
	that ensues after this process has run its course.	14:11
	Contemporary man cut loose from his moorings,	14:17
	technologically proficient,	14:21
	but morally and spiritually bankrupt,	14:24
	Can only create technological pig stys in far countries	14:27
	away from the Father's house.	14:32
	Dr. Albert Outler of Southern Methodist University	14:37
	I believe is one of those clear seeing ones	14:40
	who is trying to look down the road that we are following.	14:43
	Even in our theology, he states and I quote	14:46
	we have been at this experiment	14:50
	of going it alone long enough now to suspect	14:52
	that there is something tragically wrong	14:55
	with the prescription of radical autonomy.	14:57
	That the secular city is after all	15:00
	what Saint Augustine said it was	15:02
	a society chiefly motivated by self-love	15:05
	and consequently inherently inhumane.	15:09
	He goes on to state but this much is clear	15:14
	technopolis is an unfit habitation for mankind,	15:18
	unless it becomes vastly more humane	15:22
	than any part of it we now know.	15:25
	The future of mankind gets darker rather than brighter.	15:27
	If our hopes are built on the resources of human altruism	15:32
	within the moral atmosphere of any of the secular ideologies	15:37
	now bidding for man's allegiance.	15:41
	It is this that I see facing our nation, our world.	15:45
	If we continue down the present road	15:49
	that leads to the far country,	15:51
	indeed, we are well on the way,	15:54
	and perhaps on the very outskirts of that land now.	15:56
	Where is the far country?	16:02
	The far country of dehumanization,	16:04
	of beastialization, the delacacies.	16:06
	It is New York and Chicago, Atlanta,	16:10
	Charlotte, Tokyo, and London, Durham	16:12
	anywhere society creates dumping grounds for humanity	16:15
	or permits ghettos, which waste precious human resources.	16:19
	Where is the far country?	16:24
	It is Vietnam where our civilization,	16:27
	not just the US, though we share our part of the burden,	16:30
	where our civilization wasted substance	16:34
	in destructive warring.	16:36
	And quite apart from the hawk dove debate	16:39
	quite apart from particular solutions or pet theories	16:42
	quite apart from a particular political stance.	16:46
	The fact remains Vietnam,	16:49
	both geographically and theologically is the far country.	16:51
	And it represents the prodigality of a world	16:57
	that continues to waste its resources in a very foolish way.	17:00
	Where is the far country?	17:07
	The far country is around the corner	17:10
	where our society spends its billions on luxuries,	17:11
	including beverage alcohol while babies starve in Biafra	17:15
	and a thousand other places.	17:20
	The most cryptic description of our prodigal world	17:24
	was given recently in a news release	17:27
	that came from that troubled mini nation of Biafra.	17:29
	Where the daily task is to bury the babies	17:33
	who have died of starvation.	17:36
	At the foot of a hill	17:38
	in a particular place near a Catholic mission,	17:39
	a new grave is dug each morning, a huge grave	17:44
	and it is not covered until night fall.	17:49
	The little children are buried as soon as they die	17:52
	wrapped in the little straw mats upon which they have lain	17:54
	in their illness and starvation.	17:58
	No time to make caskets, no time even for a funeral	18:01
	for these Catholic leaders in that troubled land.	18:06
	A few prayers are said at the graveside	18:10
	as the little bodies are lowered into the ground,	18:12
	and then it is back to work for those few Catholic priests	18:14
	who seek to minister in that place.	18:18
	Surely this is the far country,	18:22
	of national and international policy,	18:24
	that is so inhumane	18:27
	as to permit these little ones to perish.	18:28
	The poet speaks of the agony of God.	18:33
	And surely there is divine agony, Fatherly agony	18:37
	over a prodigal world that creates	18:41
	or even permits such conditions.	18:43
	Our theologians looking at the world about us,	18:48
	aware of the inhumanity of man to man,	18:52
	perhaps more conscious of the far country	18:55
	than of the Father's house,	18:58
	speak of the death of God or the absence of God.	19:00
	God is not dead.	19:06
	But man in his freedom has wandered to the far country	19:08
	enamored of materialistic pig stys	19:12
	and oriented to those selfish motives,	19:15
	which can only lead him there	19:18
	while the Father waits for the prodigal to return.	19:20
	I suppose we could go on and on	19:28
	with these social applications of this parable.	19:29
	I'm sure your minds have left on already	19:33
	and thought of many applications	19:35
	but we must also look at the individual heart and mind.	19:38
	For Jesus here was really talking about the individual	19:43
	and his broken relationship with God.	19:46
	Lostness is the characteristic of all men	19:50
	until they come to the Father.	19:54
	And Jesus here is talking about one man	19:56
	who goes into the far country.	20:00
	He is estranged from his father.	20:02
	He exploits his father's resources.	20:05
	The very body that was given by the father	20:09
	is exploited in sexual immorality.	20:11
	He misuses the material substance that has been given him.	20:14
	We cannot hide from the application	20:19
	of these factors to our own life,	20:21
	our tendency to rationalize promiscuity,	20:24
	and immorality in the name of freedom.	20:27
	Our tendency to misuse the very gifts of God	20:30
	in ways that are not acceptable.	20:34
	The primary concern of the parable	20:37
	is not these details, as important as they are.	20:39
	The primary concern	20:43
	is the separation of the son from the father.	20:44
	The fact that the son is in the pig sty in the far country,	20:47
	the primary concern is the alienation	20:53
	that characterizes broken relationships.	20:55
	The prodigal son is in the pig sty.	20:59
	He's away from the father.	21:01
	And the concern is to restore that relationship	21:03
	to get the prodigal back home again.	21:07
	Once again we must ask, where is the far country?	21:12
	The far country is frightfully near	21:16
	because it begins in the mind of one	21:18
	who would declare his declaration of independence from God	21:21
	and seek to move out in his own autonomy.	21:26
	Where is the far country?	21:30
	It is as close as the priorities	21:32
	and the commitments of our own life,	21:34
	that misuses freedom with scorned self discipline	21:37
	that places a premium on pleasure	21:42
	and refuses to be guided by those things that build up a man	21:45
	into Christian maturity.	21:49
	Where is the far country?	21:52
	It is found at the end of a road,	21:54
	which rationalizes immoral behavior	21:56
	and denies the more excellent way of Christ.	22:00
	Where is the far country?	22:04
	It is at the end of an intellectualizing process	22:06
	that fails to admit the limitation of the intellectualizer.	22:09
	And that intellectual capacity itself	22:15
	is the gift of one who seeks our wholeness.	22:18
	The late C.S. Lewis,	22:24
	the author and teacher at Oxford University	22:25
	gives the account of his own life.	22:29
	And it's interesting to see	22:32
	that he used the analogy of the prodigal son	22:33
	in describing his own search for the Father's house	22:37
	in his autobiography.	22:40
	He describes the way in which he fled	22:43
	to the far country intellectually and the long road back	22:44
	over all the intellectual roadblocks	22:49
	that characterized the 20th century.	22:51
	He discovered the truth, not only of a waiting father,	22:55
	but of a seeking father.	22:59
	For he discovered that God initiates,	23:01
	he seeks us in the midst of our lostness.	23:04
	The incarnation itself tells us	23:07
	that he even goes into the far country itself	23:09
	to bring back a lost son or a lost humanity.	23:13
	Listen to CS Lewis's account of his own journey,	23:19
	back to the father's house.	23:22
	You must picture me alone, he says.	23:25
	In that room in Malvern College night after night	23:28
	feeling whenever my mind lifted,	23:32
	even for a second from my work,	23:34
	the steady unrelenting approach,	23:37
	of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.	23:41
	That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me	23:46
	in the Trinity term of 1929,	23:51
	I gave in and admitted that God was God	23:54
	and knelt and prayed.	23:58
	Perhaps that night,	24:00
	the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.	24:01
	I did not see then	24:08
	what is now the most shining and obvious thing.	24:10
	The divine humility,	24:15
	which will accept a convert even on such terms.	24:17
	The prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet	24:22
	but who can duly adore that love	24:27
	which will open the high gates to a prodigal	24:30
	who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful,	24:33
	and darting his eyes in every direction	24:37
	for a chance to escape.	24:40
	The words compelle venire, compel them to come in,	24:43
	have been so abused used by wicked men	24:49
	that we shutter at them.	24:51
	But properly understood,	24:53
	they plumb the depth of divine mercy.	24:56
	The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men	24:59
	and his compulsion is our liberation.	25:06
	Indeed, it is the mercy of God,	25:12
	the compulsion of God, the grace of God,	25:14
	which surrounds this parable,	25:17
	which is at its beginning and its end.	25:21
	It is the grace of God and the love of a father,	25:26
	which is between every line.	25:29
	There is a father who cares,	25:33
	who waits for us in our individual existence	25:35
	and in our corporate life,	25:38
	in our lostness, in our loneliness,	25:40
	in our estrangement.	25:43
	Who is concerned for our individual	25:46
	and collective sin and guilt.	25:48
	The prodigal son knew that his father was waiting at home,	25:53
	a father who would forgive and receive him.	25:57
	And so he set out on the journey back home.	26:01
	And his father saw him while he was still a long way off.	26:06
	And the father's heart went out to him	26:11
	and he even ran down the road to meet the son	26:14
	and to receive him back into his house.	26:19
	The ultimate theme of this parable is not the prodigal son	26:24
	but a father who finds him and who finds us.	26:30
	The ultimate theme is not the faithlessness of men	26:36
	but the faithfulness of God.	26:40
	That is why the joyful sound of festivity	26:44
	rings out from the story.	26:47
	For wherever forgiveness and new life are proclaimed,	26:50
	there is joy and there are festive garments.	26:54
	No wonder CS Lewis,	26:59
	when he chose a title for that autobiography	27:01
	entitled it "Surprised by Joy."	27:04
	We must read this story	27:09
	and hear it as it was intended to be.	27:12
	As gospel,	27:16
	as good news for our individual lives	27:18
	and for a prodigal world.	27:22
	The ultimate secret of the story is this	27:25
	there is a homecoming for us all	27:30
	because there is a home	27:34
	and a father to receive us.	27:38
	Let us pray.	27:42
	Oh thou who dost patiently and unrelentingly	27:49
	seek those very ones	27:53
	who turned their backs and fleed from thee.	27:56
	Have mercy upon a wayward world,	28:00
	upon a wayward people,	28:03
	upon those of us who would hide from thee.	28:06
	May our nation and its people	28:11
	find their way back to the Father's house.	28:12
	A house, not only of justice, but of mercy and rejoicing.	28:17
	A house, not only of acceptance, but of transforming love.	28:23
	To a land, not only of plenty,	28:29
	but a land of goodness and righteousness and peace.	28:32
	And give unto us oh God,	28:38
	the joyful celebration in our hearts	28:40
	that is the essence of our coming to thee.	28:44
	In the spirit of Christ, we pray.	28:49
	Amen.	28:52
	(organ music begins)	28:57
	(singing with organ music begins)	29:23
	(singing with organ music begins)	32:43
-	To thy alter, that through it, we may participate	40:08
	in a worldwide exercise of spiritual uplift.	40:11
	But in addition to this money we bring ourselves,	40:17
	our souls, our minds, our bodies,	40:20
	to be a living sacrifice for service to thee,	40:23
	here or around the Earth.	40:27
	In Christ's name.	40:29
	(singing with organ music begins)	40:54

Item Info

Title:

Robert H. Davis - "The Waiting Father" (August 11, 1968)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4bv7fw9t

Date:

August 11, 1968

Speaker:

Davis, Robert A.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0445
ref6093_cy9
uachapelsermaud
duke:628197
dcrau002436
ark:/87924/r4bv7fw9t
41bc7d27-2284-48ed-b8f1-84b0d919a9f0

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

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

Rights:

No Re-Use

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