James T. Cleland - "Machinery and Religion" (October 12, 1969)

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	(gentle angelic music)	0:03
	(choir singing in foreign language)	0:06
	(gentle angelic music)	2:22
	(choir singing in foreign language)	3:03
-	Because we are not perfect	4:29
	and because we'd have shortcomings,	4:34
	each one of us could fashion his own words	4:38
	or acknowledging his sins and transgressions	4:43
	but may we unite our thoughts, our hearts,	4:50
	and our voices and words, which the psalmist has given us	4:54
	to express our feeling of repentance	5:01
	and the confession of our sins.	5:07
	Let us pray.	5:10
	Have mercy upon us oh God.	5:12
	According to thy loving kindness,	5:16
	according to the multitude of thy tender mercies,	5:19
	blot out our our transgressions.	5:24
	Washed us thoroughly from our iniquity	5:27
	and cleanse us from our sin,	5:31
	for we acknowledge our transgressions	5:35
	and our sin is ever before us.	5:38
	Created in us clean hearts oh God	5:42
	and renew a right spirit within us,	5:46
	cast us not away from thy presence	5:50
	and take not thy holy spirit from us.	5:54
	Restore unto us the joy of thy salvation	5:58
	and uphold us with thy free spirit.	6:04
	Amen.	6:08
	(gentle angelic music)	6:10
	(choir singing in foreign language)	6:22
-	Old testament.	8:36
	The Book of Numbers, the seventh chapter,	8:37
	the first through the ninth verses.	8:41
	"And it came to pass on the day	8:46
	"that Moses had fully set up the tabernacle	8:48
	"and had anointed and sanctified it	8:52
	"and all the instruments thereof,	8:56
	"both the altar and all the vessels thereof	8:58
	"and had anointed them and sanctified them,	9:02
	"that the princess of Israel,	9:07
	"heads of the houses of their fathers,	9:09
	"who were the princes of the tribes and were over them	9:12
	"that were numbered, offered.	9:16
	"And they brought their offering before the Lord,	9:19
	"six covered wagons and 12 oxen.	9:22
	"A wagon for two of the princes and each one an ox	9:26
	"and they brought them before the tabernacle	9:32
	"and the Lord spake unto Moses saying",	9:35
	"Take it of them that they may be to do the service	9:39
	"of the tabernacle of the congregation	9:44
	"and i shall give them unto the Levites,	9:47
	"to every man according to his service.	9:50
	"And Moses took the wagons and the oxen	9:54
	"and gave them unto the Levites,	9:58
	"two wagons and four oxen he gave unto the sons of Gershon,	10:01
	"according to their service	10:06
	"and four wagons and eight oxen	10:08
	"he gave unto the sons of Merari,	10:11
	"according unto their service.	10:14
	"Unto the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron, the priest,	10:17
	"but unto the sons of Kohath he gave none	10:24
	"because the service at the sanctuary belonging unto them	10:28
	"was that they bear upon their shoulders."	10:33
	(gentle angelic music)	10:49
	(choir singing in foreign language)	11:00
-	The Lord be with you.	11:46
	(indistinct)	11:48
	Let us pray.	11:50
	Let us offer on the God are prayers of thanksgiving,	12:02
	our prayers, intersession,	12:07
	our prayers of supplication and the Lord's prayer.	12:11
	All mighty God our heavenly father.	12:18
	On this holy Lords day,	12:23
	we come to express our gratitude for the joy of fall	12:27
	and the cool weather after the heat of summer,	12:33
	for the thrill of a beautiful new day following the night,	12:40
	for the promise of a new chance in life	12:48
	even when yesterday was not a complete success,	12:52
	for the sense of satisfaction	13:01
	which comes to us from a job well done,	13:04
	or even which comes to us from having made progress	13:11
	toward the completion of a good piece of work.	13:16
	We thank thee for great music,	13:25
	for great musicians,	13:29
	for inspiring art, inspired artists.	13:33
	We bless thee for a storehouse of learning	13:41
	which beckons us,	13:44
	for books and teachers who guide us	13:48
	in the use of them.	13:54
	We thank thee for parents who really care for us.	13:58
	We thank you for the affectionate response	14:04
	of sons and daughters	14:08
	who are learning to be themselves	14:12
	without breaking their relationship to their parents.	14:17
	We blessed thee for the creative relationships of love	14:23
	between true lovers,	14:28
	who unselfishly are devoted to each other.	14:32
	We thank thee above everything else	14:40
	and above every one else for Jesus Christ,	14:42
	who purifies an a nobles every relationship of life.	14:48
	And now our father we come with our intersessions	14:57
	for our fellow man,	15:03
	whom thou does love as much as thou does love us.	15:05
	We pray for the sick that they may know it is possible	15:13
	for each one of them to receive a blessing	15:20
	and although not all the blessings they can receive	15:26
	are the same, we pray that they may have hope	15:32
	and expectation to receive the blessing	15:39
	that is possible for them.	15:43
	We pray for the bitter	15:49
	who've made up their minds of they're never in this life	15:52
	going to forgive certain people,	15:56
	that they may be given grace, actually to forgive them,	16:00
	that they may be delivered from hatred in their hearts	16:08
	and from the kind of relationship which hatred sustains.	16:13
	We pray for those who have prejudged their fellows	16:23
	because of their nationality or their politics or their race	16:29
	or their religion,	16:36
	that they may cease to pre-judge any individual	16:40
	and may relate to people as people.	16:48
	We have come to intercede for the person	16:55
	who is quite sure that he has gone too far	16:59
	from the path of right ever to return,	17:03
	help him to know that while there is life,	17:08
	there is always hope.	17:15
	If he will but return under the heavenly father	17:17
	and ask forgiveness.	17:22
	We come praying thy blessings upon the leaders of the church	17:27
	an upon the leaders of our state, of our nation,	17:35
	the leaders of every nation,	17:41
	that in this hour of history,	17:45
	they may be led by a wisdom and a love	17:49
	which comes from Jesus Christ.	17:54
	We pray for those whose lives and whose welfare are at stake	18:00
	in the mighty events of the world today,	18:05
	that they may not be injured and bruised,	18:12
	that they may be protected by not only thy wisdom	18:19
	but wisdom in the part of our leaders.	18:25
	We pray thee our father for those who were making plans	18:32
	for a marriage,	18:36
	for those who have just began their marriage,	18:38
	for parents who have new children in their homes.	18:44
	Actually, oh God, we need to pray for a great many people	18:51
	and we now offer our intersections for all our fellow man,	18:58
	those we know, those we shall never meet,	19:04
	those who call us friend, those who call us enemy,	19:10
	those who have found Christ as savior,	19:17
	those who are estranged from him,	19:22
	we pray for all of them through Jesus Christ our Lord.	19:26
	(gentle angelic music)	19:34
	(choir singing in foreign language)	19:51
	(gentle angelic music)	21:27
	(choir singing in foreign language)	21:30
	And now as our savior Christ has taught us,	24:22
	we humbly pray together saying	24:26
	our father who art in heaven,	24:30
	hallowed be thy name,	24:34
	thy kingdom come,	24:36
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	24:39
	Give us this day our daily bread	24:44
	and forgive us our trespasses	24:48
	as we forgive those who trespass against us	24:51
	and lead us not into temptation,	24:56
	but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom	24:59
	and the power and the glory forever.	25:04
	Amen.	25:09
	The peace of God be with you all.	25:34
	What did you make of the nine verses	25:45
	from Numbers chapter seven, which were read the lesson?	25:49
	I'm fairly sure that you could not see much point to them.	25:58
	If they had been read in the King James version,	26:07
	there would have been even less seeable point to them.	26:12
	Some of you probably feel that only your presbyterian	26:21
	would choose a passage like that as holy scripture.	26:25
	Yet I'm convinced that in these nine verses	26:33
	is a spiritual truth of vital importance to all times.	26:39
	And therefor to us.	26:48
	Let us look first at the old testament background.	26:53
	The children of Israel are in the wilderness of Sinai,	27:00
	under the leadership of Moses,	27:06
	he is endeavoring to whip them into a unit	27:12
	strong enough to attack and subdued Palestine.	27:19
	It is an early machine age civilization.	27:27
	They transport their goods and chattels in wagons,	27:33
	they even a specified amount	27:42
	of ecclesiastical furniture in wagons.	27:46
	But according to the editor Numbers	27:53
	there are several holy objects,	27:58
	particularly the Ark of the Covenant	28:04
	which Moses refused to have transported on wheels.	28:10
	The sons of Gershon may have two wagons and four oxen	28:20
	to covey the curtains of the tabernacle	28:27
	and the door hangings and all the instruments	28:32
	of their servers.	28:38
	The sons of Merari may have four wagons	28:41
	and eight oxen to tow the boards	28:47
	and the bars of the tabernacle, the sockets,	28:52
	the pins and the cords,	28:57
	but the sons of Kohath may have neither wagons nor oxen.	29:04
	There charge was the ark	29:15
	and with it the table, the candlesticks, the alter.	29:22
	The most holy things	29:33
	and the most holy of all the holy things	29:38
	was the Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh.	29:42
	The symbol of God's presence in the camp,	29:49
	more of that, the embodiment	29:55
	the container of God's presence in the camp.	30:00
	The very heart of Israel's religious life.	30:07
	The ark in particular must be born on the shoulders of men.	30:15
	Now why was the ark so holy?	30:30
	Well we have to go back	30:37
	to the theological thinking of the time	30:39
	to answer the question.	30:44
	In those times God's were local,	30:48
	constricted and confined by tribal boundaries.	30:55
	Each was tied to the soil,	31:03
	actually to the soil of a small piece of territory.	31:06
	When a man crossed a tribal boundary.	31:14
	He literally left his old God,	31:20
	that fact is evidenced again and again	31:26
	in the early chapters of the old testament.	31:31
	But the children of Israel loved this new God	31:38
	who Moses had found in the desert.	31:44
	They believed that it was he	31:51
	who had delivered them from Egypt	31:53
	and because they loved him,	31:58
	they didn't want to leave him behind in Sinai	32:01
	when they invaded and settled down in the promise land,	32:08
	in what was to become Palestine.	32:16
	So what did they do?	32:22
	They decided to carry him from Sinai into the promised land.	32:25
	They build a box and in it they placed two stones.	32:39
	We know them as the stones,	32:48
	the tablets of the 10 commandments,	32:51
	perhaps probably they were originally two boulders	32:57
	from off the mountain in Sinai,	33:06
	were Moses had talked with Yahweh.	33:11
	They place the stones in the box,	33:17
	which came to be called the Ark of the Covenant	33:23
	thus they had Yahweh in the box.	33:30
	Remember that God's were local,	33:36
	tied to the terrain and the two pieces	33:40
	of the terrain in that box	33:44
	and then they picked him up	33:49
	and carried him into Palestine	33:53
	and there they naturalized him and make him their God,	33:57
	the God, their.	34:05
	Now of course they didn't really, but they thought they did	34:09
	but notice he was not transport in a wagon,	34:15
	at least not at this time,	34:23
	but on the shoulders of men.	34:27
	Moses distinguished between that which was less holy	34:33
	and that which was more holy,	34:39
	the latter was given a more personal,	34:44
	a more intimate treatment,	34:50
	that which was most holy	34:54
	men carried on their own shoulders.	35:00
	Now is there a word here	35:08
	from an early mechanical age to our machine civilization	35:12
	about the religious life.	35:22
	Is it something like this?	35:26
	In religion there is one fact	35:30
	which is so basic as to be the holy fact	35:38
	namely the relationship between a person	35:48
	and his God,	35:54
	between a group of persons and there God,	35:58
	and one another.	36:05
	It is an I, thou relationship,	36:09
	A we, you kinship, affinity.	36:15
	The result of which is the happiness	36:23
	which the Bible calls blessedness that is the holy fact,	36:29
	the continuing symbolic Ark of the Covenant.	36:38
	It is Isaiah in the temple.	36:45
	It is Jesus on the Mount of Temptation	36:50
	and in the garden of Gethsemane.	36:55
	It is Paul on the Damascus road.	36:59
	It is Luther monkey cell	37:06
	working with half a dozen words,	37:11
	the just shall live by faith.	37:15
	It is Schweitzer,	37:22
	refusing to be God's man for nine years	37:24
	and then deciding for a medical degree	37:32
	and a missionary medical practice.	37:38
	It is a student here in a dormitory room,	37:43
	correlating his, her talents with a community need	37:50
	in the light of the I, the thou relationship with God.	37:59
	This is the heart of the matter,	38:07
	but the heart of the matter is constantly	38:14
	being lost sight of,	38:20
	tough as constantly recover.	38:23
	Now why?	38:27
	Well, one reason is because man begins to make too holy.	38:30
	The formed, the symbol, the medium	38:38
	through which we believe God makes contact with us.	38:47
	How did God make himself known to the Jew?	38:54
	Through the law.	38:59
	Now one emphasis of the law was the tithe.	39:04
	10% of ones income for God,	39:11
	but often this payment, this holy tax became	39:19
	mechanical, prefatory.	39:26
	So that Jesus said of it, "Alas for you lawyers	39:32
	and Pharisees, hypocrites that is frauds.	39:41
	"You pay tithes of mint and dill and cumin	39:50
	"but you have over looked	40:00
	"the weightier demands of the law,	40:02
	"justice, mercy and good faith,	40:07
	"it is these you should have practiced	40:14
	"without neglecting the others blind guides."	40:19
	For many Christians, God makes himself known	40:29
	through the church which in time	40:33
	becomes a professional holding company	40:38
	with a power structure be it Roman Catholic	40:44
	or Southern Baptist or United Presbyterian.	40:50
	And the along come a weekly and a Frances	40:58
	and a Luther and a Wesley and a John 23,	41:05
	to tell us that some ecclesiastical paraphernalia	41:15
	and some sacerdotal apparatus may be carried in wagons,	41:22
	but that the encounter of God and man.	41:31
	Of God and man is very personal	41:39
	and symbolically carried on the shoulders	41:46
	and hearts persons.	41:50
	Let me clarify what I'm trying to say here.	41:55
	Machinery is good,	42:01
	we much to be grateful to it for in our ordinary life	42:05
	abundance of goods improving in quality	42:12
	and diminishing price.	42:16
	Drudgery eliminated and the chance of leisure.	42:19
	Comfortable homes with a variety of labor saving devices.	42:24
	Unbelievable facilities for travel	42:30
	and miraculous means of communication	42:35
	and we in the United States are both heirs	42:40
	and lords of the machine,	42:44
	but there is one caveat the machine is a good servant,	42:49
	but a bad master.	42:58
	When the machine begins to shape the spiritual	43:02
	and ethical and political ends	43:07
	then man becomes a devil or a slave,	43:13
	this is true in the religious sphere.	43:22
	Even on campus.	43:25
	When we are swamped with committee work	43:29
	and an endless succession of called meetings	43:34
	and a growing number of petitions to be signed.	43:40
	It's time to ask about the relationship of busy work	43:47
	to the holy spirit.	43:53
	When religious offices pour their printed documents	43:58
	and mimeograph broad sheets in an epistolary Niagara,	44:02
	then it's time to ask	44:10
	what is more holy and what is less holy?	44:13
	I know one Methodist minister	44:20
	who keeps his spiritual sanity	44:23
	by never opening any envelope	44:28
	which comes from Nashville Tennessee.	44:32
	(congregation laughs)	44:35
	When the National Council of Churches	44:41
	or any national student organization	44:45
	becomes the ex officio Delphic oracle for one group	44:49
	and the voice of anti Christ for another,	44:58
	then it's time to ask about the relative importance	45:03
	of absentee steamroller wagons	45:09
	and the visible small body of Christopher's.	45:15
	Christ bearers on the local scene.	45:21
	The spiritual sons and daughters of Kohath	45:28
	who voluntarily carry the symbol of God on their persons.	45:35
	Now let us be clear about what's being said	45:44
	it is not the elimination of machinery which is desire,	45:48
	but it's subordination.	45:53
	It is that our entanglement in organizing,	45:58
	worse than that, our enjoyment of organization,	46:04
	be a secondary and not a primary concern,	46:11
	that has differentiate between means and ends	46:17
	and among the kinds of means	46:22
	which implement the desire end of a person and God	46:26
	in valid contact.	46:33
	This proposition that some holy things	46:37
	are holier than others is evidence	46:40
	both analogically and effectually in the areas of life	46:44
	which are not synonymous with religion,	46:50
	but which are influenced by religion.	46:54
	One is an education.	47:00
	It's obvious from the revamped curricular	47:04
	in almost all areas of the university's academic life,	47:08
	that many people were worrying about the mechanical,	47:15
	impersonal, stereo typed implementation	47:21
	of a rather rigorous and out of date corpus of course,	47:29
	this may be illustrated if somewhat caricatured	47:37
	by the incident of a, the French Minister of Education,	47:42
	being interviewed by a Britisher.	47:49
	The minister pulled out his watch, looked at it and said,	47:54
	every child in France, in such, in such a grade,	48:01
	is at this moment composing a Latin verse.	48:09
	Now think of it.	48:16
	Every child in France, not just in Paris,	48:17
	of a certain age was composing of Latin verse	48:24
	at that specific moment,	48:30
	maybe 40 million French men can be wrong.	48:34
	Machinery was controlling and carrying	48:41
	what individual men and women should've been carrying	48:46
	in concert with boys and girls	48:51
	in understood local situation.	48:55
	Nowadays a student may almost become an IBM Card	49:00
	whose one humane cry is that he be not stapled,	49:08
	mutilated or bent.	49:14
	Now it's too expensive too impossible	49:19
	to return to Mark Hopkins at one end of a log	49:24
	and a farm boy at the other	49:30
	but it is possible to make sure that education	49:36
	is not a systematic conglomeration of card indices,	49:43
	right and wrong quizzes, strangely known as objective tests.	49:51
	A rated diploma and an alumni membership card,	49:59
	that is why this student body is on the right lines,	50:07
	when it selects professors whom it deems worthy	50:13
	of public and cooperate recognition.	50:20
	We still need and thanks be to God,	50:28
	we still find men and women like Garmin or Ramos	50:32
	of whom it was said, he wrote on the hearts of man.	50:40
	He wrote on the hearts of man.	50:50
	The second area is in the realm of marriage.	50:56
	I often think of Duke students	51:02
	at whose weddings I'm hounded to officiate.	51:05
	In my minds eye I watch these young people standing there	51:12
	before the communion table, looking at each other,	51:24
	hands clasped, flighting their (indistinct)	51:31
	and I do promise in covenant	51:37
	before God and these witnesses	51:41
	to be thy loving and faithful husband,	51:47
	wife, in plenty and in want,	51:51
	in joy and in sorrow,	51:57
	in sickness and in health	52:00
	as long as we both shall live.	52:04
	Now what's going to make them keep that vow?	52:10
	A washing machine and a self defrosting icebox,	52:17
	a vacuum cleaner and a color TV,	52:24
	a garbage disposal unit?	52:30
	Well, they'll help.	52:35
	Let's not fool ourselves.	52:42
	Thank God for the machine age, blessings on it,	52:46
	there's good use for the wagons,	52:51
	but they're not essential for the joint pilgrimage.	52:56
	Robert Burns poem, "John Anderson my Jo, John",	53:02
	should show that.	53:07
	Do you recall the lines?	53:09
	An old woman's talking to an old man	53:12
	remembering their life when they were first married.	53:16
	Now they've not merely climb the hill together,	53:23
	their looking at a road	53:29
	as it dips into the valley,	53:32
	but she knows they will walk down together	53:36
	and be buried at the foot together.	53:45
	"John Anderson my jo, John, when we were first acquent	53:51
	"your locks were like the raven,	53:58
	"but now your brow is beld", that is unwrinkled.	54:02
	"But now your brow is beld John", bold,	54:09
	he's got a high forehead.	54:13
	"Your locks are like the snaw,	54:17
	"but blessing on your frosty pow.	54:22
	"John Anderson my Jo.	54:26
	"John Anderson my jo, John,	54:30
	"we climbed the hill the gither	54:32
	"and many a canty day John, We've had wi' ane anither.	54:36
	"Now we maun totter down, John,	54:43
	"but hand in hand well go and sleep the gither	54:49
	"at the foot.	54:55
	"John Anderson my Jo."	54:57
	Now that requires understanding, sympathy, humor	55:01
	and the capacity for not being equally mad at the same time.	55:11
	It comes from affection, confidence,	55:22
	and valuing of each other in terms of the highest	55:28
	and the deepest, they know.	55:33
	Paid labor with machines will build a house	55:38
	and furniture and labor saving devices	55:45
	will equip the house and there they stop,	55:49
	were they should stop.	55:57
	They've done their job.	56:00
	But of the making of the house into a home	56:04
	is something created by mutual love,	56:10
	something born on the shoulders	56:16
	and in the hearts of a man and a woman.	56:21
	Yes, Moses had a sound idea,	56:28
	a right idea.	56:34
	Life make sense when things are in their proper place	56:38
	and things should always be in a subordinate place.	56:47
	Machinery, wagons, they are to be used	56:57
	to handle the paraphernalia of the good life,	57:03
	in marriage, in education, in religion	57:08
	but the Ark of the Covenant,	57:13
	the symbol of the God,	57:20
	of God, is the light burden, the easy yoke,	57:25
	on the shoulders of men and women	57:37
	who are of the tribe of Kohath	57:42
	and of the lineage of Jesus.	57:48
	Amen.	57:56
	Let us pray.	57:58
	Grant us oh God to know what comes first in our faith	58:03
	and what is second.	58:11
	What this holy and what is the Holy of Holies	58:16
	and to discriminate wisely	58:26
	and rightly between them in the manner of Moses	58:29
	and of our Lord Jesus Christ.	58:38
	Amen.	58:44
	(gentle angelic music)	58:48
	(choir singing in foreign language)	59:46
	(gentle angelic music)	1:03:22

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "Machinery and Religion" (October 12, 1969)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4r789q4d

Date:

October 12, 1969

Speaker:

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

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0493
ref6191_cqj
uachapelsermaud
duke:627999
dcrau002484
ark:/87924/r4r789q4d
f3147287-6bdf-4726-8c14-c76a38d0c4af

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

In Copyright

Rights Note:

This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Transcript

Item Info

Duke University Archives

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