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

Item Info

Title:

Waldo Beach - "A Rage for Relevance" (September 29, 1968)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4dv1hq0d

Date:

September 29, 1968

Speaker:

Beach, Waldo

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0449
ref6101_er1
uachapelsermaud
duke:628562
dcrau002440
ark:/87924/r4dv1hq0d
83a1304b-376d-4e2e-93ac-fb4dd467f293

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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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:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Waldo Beach - "A Rage for Relevance" (September 29, 1968)

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1. Waldo Beach - "A Rage for Relevance" (September 29, 1968)

Duke University Archives

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Waldo Beach - "A Rage for Relevance" (September 29, 1968)

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Duke University Archives

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