Waldo Beach - "A Rage for Relevance" (September 29, 1968)
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| Priest | Election for God who worked, | 0:03 |
| the Lord of yesterday and today and the moral, | 0:07 | |
| and who does work through legislatures, | 0:12 | |
| as well as through the church, | 0:15 | |
| help us at a time of state and national elections. | 0:19 | |
| And and let us offer one prayer, | 0:30 | |
| of scarification for ourselves, | 0:31 | |
| Thou holy spirit of God, | 0:35 | |
| who does prepare before all the temples, | 0:39 | |
| the upright and pure, | 0:41 | |
| instruct us, in all truth. | 0:44 | |
| What in us is dark alone, | 0:49 | |
| what is low raise and support, | 0:53 | |
| what is shallow deeper, that every chapter, | 0:58 | |
| of our life may witness to die power, | 1:03 | |
| and justify thy ways to men, | 1:07 | |
| in the name of Jesus the giver of all grace, | 1:11 | |
| who has taught us when we pray thus to say, | 1:15 | |
| Our Father, who art in heaven, | 1:22 | |
| hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; | 1:26 | |
| thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 1:31 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread; | 1:35 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses, | 1:38 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us; | 1:41 | |
| and lead us not into temptation, | 1:44 | |
| but deliver us from evil, | 1:47 | |
| for thy is the kingdom, and the power, | 1:49 | |
| and the glory forever, Amen. | 1:51 | |
| - | In the last decade or so, | 2:23 |
| the word that's heard more and more in talk, | 2:27 | |
| about the Christian faith is the word relevance. | 2:29 | |
| As duke undergraduates you don't care one bit, | 2:35 | |
| right daresay about the arguments of the professionals, | 2:39 | |
| that is the scholars over there and the divinity school, | 2:45 | |
| about points of theology and doctorate, | 2:48 | |
| about what are true or false beliefs, | 2:53 | |
| for you as layman as amateurs. | 2:58 | |
| The question that bugs you about Christianity, | 3:03 | |
| is its relevance or its irrelevant to your existence. | 3:05 | |
| It creates the authority of the Bible, the church, | 3:10 | |
| so far you ask, the category of relevance and irrelevance, | 3:14 | |
| is more important to you and to me, to us, | 3:20 | |
| than the categories of truth and error, | 3:26 | |
| looking at the problem, dialectically, | 3:31 | |
| let's say first that the most obvious clear point, | 3:33 | |
| is that conventional Christianity seems totally irrelevant, | 3:39 | |
| and meaningless to this, the uncommitted generation. | 3:45 | |
| We just can't care less about the nice talk, | 3:52 | |
| and cookie pushing that goes on, | 3:58 | |
| in the suburban church back home. | 4:01 | |
| Here we are, hung up in the problems, | 4:05 | |
| of Vietnam and the draft, | 4:08 | |
| and participatory democracy and violence, | 4:10 | |
| or sorority rush or the death rate or the psych quiz. | 4:13 | |
| And in the churches they just go on saying, | 4:19 | |
| the same old things in Latin. | 4:21 | |
| It's like the college choir singing, | 4:25 | |
| Kyrie eleison from the mass. | 4:27 | |
| But Lord have mercy, not one person singing, | 4:32 | |
| or hearing knows what Kyrie eleison means. | 4:35 | |
| So we just go on mumbling the mass, | 4:41 | |
| but the set hour, in the set way, | 4:43 | |
| whether anybody's listening or not, | 4:47 | |
| or in the Protestant evangelical tradition, | 4:50 | |
| which is the fast receding background for most of us here. | 4:52 | |
| The liturgy and phrases and sermons, | 4:59 | |
| and church school lessons, | 5:03 | |
| are strange and remote to our condition. | 5:06 | |
| As the animal reported by the boy home from Sunday school, | 5:10 | |
| who said they sang a song about a cross eye bear. | 5:15 | |
| And a bit of research revealed, | 5:20 | |
| the Hymn referred to was the one about | 5:23 | |
| the concentrated cross I would bear. | 5:26 | |
| The old phrases of conventional Christianity, | 5:29 | |
| come to Jesus saved by the blood of the lamb. | 5:34 | |
| Christ is the answer John 3:16, | 5:41 | |
| as it said for a while on the over path until, | 5:45 | |
| somebody proposed a better answer, he thought. | 5:50 | |
| The pious anxious praises intoned, | 5:55 | |
| by the radio evangelists, | 6:00 | |
| are tired and remote and uncap. | 6:04 | |
| They belong to a lost piety, | 6:07 | |
| for us they have as much appeal, | 6:11 | |
| as with the original charter statement | 6:15 | |
| of the purpose of King's College. | 6:17 | |
| Later Columbia university would have had, | 6:22 | |
| to the group of Columbia students | 6:28 | |
| who occupied the buildings, | 6:29 | |
| on Morningside Heights last spring. | 6:31 | |
| And I suspect they would, | 6:33 | |
| the students would not have been impressed, | 6:35 | |
| if president church had read this statement | 6:39 | |
| of the chartered purpose of King's College, | 6:43 | |
| to them through a bullhirn quote. | 6:47 | |
| The chief thing that is aimed at in this college, | 6:51 | |
| is to teach and engage the children, | 6:53 | |
| to know God in Jesus Christ, | 6:55 | |
| and to love and serve him in all sobriety, | 6:58 | |
| godliness and righteousness of life, | 7:02 | |
| with a perfect heart and a willing mind, | 7:06 | |
| and to train them up in all virtuous habits | 7:09 | |
| and all such useful knowledge that may render them, | 7:13 | |
| creditable to their families and friends, | 7:16 | |
| ornaments to their country and useful to the public | 7:19 | |
| will in their generation and uh both. | 7:23 | |
| I shutter to think that the response that might | 7:28 | |
| be forthcoming from the building. | 7:31 | |
| Out of alarm losing the loyalty of youth, | 7:37 | |
| peering anxiously across the widening generation gap, | 7:42 | |
| the churches have lately gone in, | 7:48 | |
| for relevance with a rage. | 7:50 | |
| Suffering from an inferiority complex of sorts, | 7:56 | |
| nervous, middle aged clergy are making | 8:01 | |
| a desperate attempt to break the gap to get with it, | 8:03 | |
| to translate the faith into the idiom of the present age, | 8:10 | |
| to replace conventional Christianity, | 8:15 | |
| with catching Christianity. | 8:19 | |
| This sort of thing is not new, of course. | 8:23 | |
| In my college days, | 8:28 | |
| the church was in a great peace | 8:29 | |
| to get out from under the puritan stereotype, | 8:31 | |
| and made its pitch to us with Christianity as fun, | 8:36 | |
| nothing frim or strict or stuffy about, | 8:41 | |
| just good, fun and fellowship | 8:45 | |
| in the warm blow of the closing camp fire | 8:49 | |
| at the youth conference, close to Christ, | 8:53 | |
| the dear friend and cheerleader. | 8:57 | |
| The range for relevance has taken a different turn lately, | 9:03 | |
| Christ has been moved from the sanctuary | 9:08 | |
| to the coffee house where the action is. | 9:13 | |
| And is celebrated in the beat of rock and roll, | 9:17 | |
| or in the jazz max, it's a gutsy visceral Christianity | 9:21 | |
| to be found in the ghetto or in hippie land, | 9:30 | |
| where Christ the crude harsh revel, | 9:33 | |
| from conventionality | 9:38 | |
| is honored as he smashes | 9:41 | |
| the money changers tables in the temple. | 9:43 | |
| And calls men to follow him, | 9:47 | |
| as defiant dropouts from respectability. | 9:49 | |
| It is not Jesus Christ, | 9:55 | |
| same yesterday, today and forever, | 9:57 | |
| but it's are you running with me Jesus? | 10:03 | |
| If conventional Christianity is irrelevant and ignored, | 10:08 | |
| by being remote from where people are. | 10:14 | |
| Catchy Christianity may prove irrelevant, | 10:18 | |
| by being too close in an order to speak | 10:24 | |
| to the idiom of the present. | 10:28 | |
| It may forget the content, | 10:31 | |
| of what is being translated from the past. | 10:33 | |
| In dismissing the dead wood of the conventional, | 10:37 | |
| It may throw out a tradition. | 10:41 | |
| Catchy Christianity is high on adaptability, | 10:47 | |
| but it may be low on integrity. | 10:52 | |
| Like the chameleon, | 10:56 | |
| the animal that changes its color | 10:58 | |
| to match the color of whatever it's on. | 11:00 | |
| That the kind of blue blindness of myopia, | 11:06 | |
| in too great a passion for contemporary need. | 11:10 | |
| Lord says it's temporary, | 11:17 | |
| Lord may use four letter words. | 11:21 | |
| Catchy Christianity may have nothing much to say, | 11:24 | |
| there's no sound in the noise, | 11:29 | |
| the whale and the bump of rock and roll, | 11:30 | |
| by being overly adaptable to the translon present, | 11:35 | |
| it brings no eternal transcended word to the present. | 11:40 | |
| Authentic relevance is to be found another way. | 11:48 | |
| One between and beyond the opposing, | 11:57 | |
| irrelevances of conventionality or catchiness. | 12:00 | |
| Authentic relevance presumes, | 12:10 | |
| that there is a Christian heritage, | 12:12 | |
| a view of how the universe is ordered out there, | 12:17 | |
| and how man is made in here, | 12:22 | |
| and a man's destiny. | 12:27 | |
| It presumes that there is a Christian moral norm, | 12:30 | |
| a Christian style of life. | 12:35 | |
| And this tradition may indeed, | 12:38 | |
| be twisted out of all recognition | 12:40 | |
| by Parochial Church Doctrine, | 12:43 | |
| for forgotten or almost forgotten. | 12:47 | |
| In our fierce flat secularism. | 12:52 | |
| It may seem as archaic, as a curious old carve, | 12:57 | |
| charm and grandmother button box, | 13:03 | |
| but it's there in the conscience of American society. | 13:08 | |
| And then there is the subject, the secret, you and I, | 13:14 | |
| beneath the superficial forces, | 13:20 | |
| that propel us into this chapel on a Sunday morning, | 13:23 | |
| the inertia of custom and the new outfits | 13:29 | |
| is an inner proportion, | 13:34 | |
| of our restless search for meaning | 13:36 | |
| finite bags of bones yet with a passion for infinity. | 13:41 | |
| We look for the significance, | 13:48 | |
| in all this frantic traffic of classes and courses, | 13:52 | |
| and dates and games, | 13:56 | |
| and falling in and out of love, | 13:59 | |
| this life of quiet for surly desperation. | 14:02 | |
| What's it all about? | 14:08 | |
| What's at the center of things? | 14:11 | |
| What am I here for that justifies, | 14:14 | |
| displacing this much air and this much time? | 14:19 | |
| Where does it all lead in the end? | 14:25 | |
| These are religious questions, ultimately, | 14:28 | |
| and as religious animals, we look for a faith, | 14:33 | |
| with which to cope with our universe. | 14:37 | |
| On these two assumptions, | 14:40 | |
| that there is a Christian tradition. | 14:44 | |
| and that you are in the big parts for a seeker for meaning. | 14:47 | |
| This university service of worship is designed, | 14:51 | |
| as an encounter between the tradition | 14:55 | |
| and the human condition. | 14:59 | |
| Towards the opening of the academic year, | 15:04 | |
| it might be well the state, | 15:06 | |
| while it turns of this encounter. | 15:08 | |
| In this sanctuary, from this cooperate, | 15:14 | |
| ideally speaking the God of the Christian faith, | 15:20 | |
| is celebrated in song and word | 15:25 | |
| and the sacred word of God interpreted | 15:30 | |
| and translated into our secular vernacular. | 15:35 | |
| There's a lot of gut spoken here to be sure, | 15:42 | |
| much beating of gums and windy nonsense, | 15:46 | |
| but within the noise, there is hope, | 15:52 | |
| there is solid sound and sense. | 15:55 | |
| For your part in this encounter. | 16:01 | |
| The university invites you to listen, | 16:04 | |
| for the authentic word in the tradition | 16:08 | |
| that can speak to your needs, | 16:12 | |
| and your condition, | 16:16 | |
| in a question that answer dialogue. | 16:18 | |
| It is important to understand, | 16:25 | |
| that the terms | 16:28 | |
| of authentic relevance here proposed, | 16:29 | |
| do not mean that you are defined here. | 16:33 | |
| Some instant remedy, | 16:38 | |
| for an immediate problem. | 16:41 | |
| This chapel is not a giant Gothic Coke machine, | 16:44 | |
| to which you might repair after you've tried, | 16:51 | |
| aspirin or gulitol or alcohol | 16:55 | |
| to solve your problem and get happy. | 16:59 | |
| If you construe the relevance of religion. | 17:03 | |
| is providing a pleasing quick scratch | 17:08 | |
| for your present itch, | 17:12 | |
| you are bringing a wrong question, | 17:16 | |
| to the a for the God of the Christian faith. | 17:20 | |
| Is not the consoling daddy who doles out, | 17:23 | |
| instant euphoria and Band-Aids for the soul, | 17:27 | |
| of the transcended Lord of the universe, | 17:32 | |
| who questions our answers | 17:35 | |
| before he answers our questions, | 17:38 | |
| who give shock as much as sanctuary. | 17:42 | |
| You will find true relevance here only through, | 17:48 | |
| a long patient discipline of listening and waiting. | 17:55 | |
| Where the very question you ask of faith, | 18:03 | |
| and the problems of your youth experience, | 18:07 | |
| will be challenged and changed, | 18:10 | |
| approached in such a spirit of openness and waiting. | 18:16 | |
| The drama of worship in this chapel, | 18:22 | |
| may become truly relevant. | 18:28 | |
| The encounter between the objective tradition, | 18:32 | |
| and your need it is hopes will become vital. | 18:36 | |
| Sometimes the word of God we will hear and speak, | 18:43 | |
| will be a word of joy and Thanksgiving. | 18:47 | |
| When suddenly we are moved by, | 18:51 | |
| sheer morning gladness at the brim. | 18:54 | |
| To say, we bless thee for our creation, | 18:59 | |
| preservation and all the blessings of this life. | 19:04 | |
| Or the word of God may come , | 19:10 | |
| as perspective on priorities, | 19:13 | |
| a view of what's important and what's trivial. | 19:19 | |
| We may come in assault about the 64 on a Kim quiz, | 19:23 | |
| or thrown by a nasty crack overheard about us. | 19:31 | |
| Preoccupied with food and dress, | 19:37 | |
| and here we encounter a voice by are you anxious, | 19:40 | |
| seek first, the kingdom of God. | 19:47 | |
| And we can regain the cool of our perspective, | 19:51 | |
| on near events. | 19:56 | |
| Or the word may be one of shock, | 20:00 | |
| the offense of the gospel, | 20:04 | |
| the recognition of our guilt, | 20:08 | |
| and failing to meet human needs. | 20:11 | |
| That's why we (indistinct) | 20:13 | |
| about the frostings on our cakes. | 20:15 | |
| The children of the earth are dying like flies, | 20:19 | |
| or the word, perhaps it's the last word, | 20:25 | |
| is the word of trust that responds | 20:29 | |
| to the affirmation of faith, | 20:33 | |
| that God is great and good, | 20:36 | |
| that there is meaning in the mystery. | 20:39 | |
| A grace that surrounds our little life, | 20:43 | |
| that countering our distrusts and our despairs, | 20:48 | |
| the operation that the voice, | 20:56 | |
| at the heart of things is to be counted on. | 21:00 | |
| It says, yes, the university invites you, | 21:04 | |
| to discover this authentic relevance, | 21:12 | |
| by encountering here the treasure hidden, | 21:18 | |
| in the field, the grace of God. | 21:22 | |
| Not cheap grace, grace not on your term, | 21:27 | |
| but on His. | 21:33 | |
| Yet a saving grace, by which we are led | 21:35 | |
| to live in depth are saved into meaning, | 21:41 | |
| and can discern in all this fleshly dress, | 21:49 | |
| bright shoots of everlasting. | 21:55 | |
| Come in, let us pray. | 22:02 | |
| Almighty God, Lord of our life, | 22:10 | |
| who does question our last answer, | 22:15 | |
| and who does answer our last question, | 22:20 | |
| grant has to hear and listen, | 22:25 | |
| to wait upon thee in openness and eagerness | 22:31 | |
| that we may here find by thy, | 22:38 | |
| true living and saving word, | 22:41 | |
| in Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. | 22:48 | |
| (uplifting instrumental music) | 22:57 |
